The Death of Steve Jobs

By: Jen Gardner, Kelsey Paulson and Megan McPherson

Our group decided to track the story of the death of Steve Jobs thru three different forms of media. A regular news article, the top tweets on Twitter, and the most popular posts on Tumblr.

News Article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2046237/Steve-Jobs-dead-Brilliant-yes-wasnt-Einstein.html

This article, titled "Steve Jobs dead: Brilliant, yes, but he wasn't an Einstein," is approximately 750 words long and was featured on Mail Online, the website for the British newspaper, The Daily Mail. It was published online two days after Steve Jobs' death date of October 5th, 2011.

The majority of "Steve Jobs talk" I have seen online since his death has positive tones. My news feed on Facebook was covered with "RIP Steve Jobs" and friends' statuses about how important he was, how he will always be remembered, and how much they appreciate his technological contributions that they own. This seemed to be the same message that most blogs and online news articles contained. Each publication I read seemed to be a repetitive celebration of his accomplishments, so this article was a refreshing change of pace. Whether you agree with the assertions in the article or not, you cannot argue that it does not make an impact. It does not produce the "I already read this" feeling that the majority of post Steve Jobs' death articles do.

Part of the different tone underlying this piece may be attributed to the fact that the writer is from the UK as opposed to the US. He lives in a country that uses technology that Steve Jobs engineered, but is not in the same country of origin and does not, personally anyway, seem to be as technology obsessed as so many Americans are.

This article is filled with clear tone, opinions, and bias. The writer makes little attempt at being objective. This subjective work is a typical example of a representation of news that illustrates how partial and rhetorical "news stories" can be. It is a representation because the actual news topic of "Steve Jobs is dead" is clouded by the author's numerous examples of why we should not be, in his opinion, overemphasizing Jobs' importance. This is a partial piece of writing due to its fairly bitter tone and how it communicates its message by zoning in on modern society's focus and reliance on technology and expressing his belief that so many more people are more important to our world. It is also rhetorical for similar reasons, because of the writer's position on what constitutes an influential person that deserves high levels of praise and recognition. These factors contribute to how far this article strays from factual news. It never mentions how he died or what happened; the article instead focuses on the aftermath of his death and his viewpoint on how people are responding.

This article depicts politics of representation as the writer presents his beliefs through examples. He includes figures that are widely accepted as some of the most important, intelligent, and influential people ever, such as Einstein, as bases of comparison for Steve Jobs' importance.

It may not be a complete "story," which is arguably not even possible, but it is clearly effective. With a quick first glance, it may seem to be an attack on Steve Jobs and an attempt to belittle his accomplishments. With further reading, it becomes more apparent that the author still respects Jobs, but just wants people to stop acting like he is a god. He constructs this object (his article) to force you to alter your previous view of his subject, Steve Jobs, into what he feels is a more realistic view: one of a man that was brilliant, yet not as much of a life changer as so many other people.

Twitter:

Twitter is a social networking site that allows all users to express their opinions on anything in life and have their friends and family view their day to day activities. Twitter has also become a site, though, to interact with others regarding top news stories of today. People have the opportunity to post links to other news articles or interesting websites, and there is the hashtag # feature, which allows for individuals to create trending topics and any post with that particular tag can be searched for. I searched for the #stevejobs in order to find a wider view of what people felt regarding the situation. There are so many tweets about Steve Jobs, it is impossible to filter through them all, so I have copied the most relevant ones from the top tweets and posted them on the next page. I also refined my search after searching all the tweets in order to narrow it down to only the Minneapolis area in order to get a more generalized feeling from those around us.

Included are tweets favoring and disapproving of Steve Jobs’ work throughout his life. Majority are mourning the loss of such an important figurehead in business, and others, such as one who tweeted “He was no genius, he was a businessman. Geniuses don’t have their own outlet stores.” Really, the twitter community makes their own news stories about him, by offering their opinion on the subject. One can read and see exactly what the feeling amongst the public is, and they can also be directed to various places to look for more on the topic if they so desire. So many links were posted to read about the PBS special occurring Thursday night about Steve Jobs’ and his accomplishments. There were also several links to his sisters’ eulogy, and even one to an interactive Steve Jobs model (which I did not click on to confirm the identity for fear of computer viruses. I am not quite sure how frequently those occur on twitter.) I also included a tweet from Germany, which roughly states the tweeters’ displeasure at the lateness of the Steve Jobs biography he ordered off of Amazon. This particularly shows the impact that he had globally on others, and how much others think about situations, because Americans tend to believe it may only be isolated.

Twitter tracks all news, and compiles it into one place, based on what others find interesting. If something major happens in the world, all one has to do is go and check twitter in order to get the latest on the situation from those who already know. Although, anyone can post anything they would like on twitter, the reliability of the information can come into question. But when it comes to world issues, many are alerted to what has happened through a social networking site such as Twitter or Facebook. The thing one always realizes when looking at twitter is that every single tweet is biased, and that is the exact point of it. Twitter was created for those to express their opinions in less than 140 characters; basically to get a short snippet of what users really feel about the world around them. Everyone has a side on an issue, and Twitter is one outlet for them to show it. So, when going on Twitter to read about how Steve Jobs is affecting the world and the people in it, it is important to keep in mind that nothing is impartial, because that is not the reason Twitter was created. It can be used to track news and how rapidly it changes throughout time based on what is popular and important, such as Steve Jobs’ death. His death, according to Twitter, is still extremely relevant.

Top Tweets:

Here are some of the more relevant tweets that I found in doing some of the research. They had to be limited in some way, due to the sheer amount and popularity of Steve Jobs. They were only available for the last two days as well, again due to the amount of them.

#SteveJobs PBS Documentary Airs Tonight Nov 2 on PBS @ 10PM; Biography a Smash Hit mashable.com/2011/11/02/ste… via @mashentertain @mashable #TECH

25 October

mroskom McKenzie Roskom

#stevejobs had a disease. #steveo had bad parents.

26 October

NBCActionNews NBC Action News

The best tidbits from the #SteveJobs bio pub.vitrue.com/VPJ

25 October

audaX19 Jens

Wieso verschickt #Amazon eigentlich die #stevejobs Biographie bei mir erst am 2.11, wenn sie schon am 27.10 erscheint? #dislike

25 October

coopfuneraire CoopFuneraireMTL

Chacun mérite un dernier hommage. Peu de gens reçoivent cet hommage de Norah Jones, Al Gore et Coldplay. #SteveJobs on.mash.to/t3yRsy

25 October

CTinaR ChristinaRodokanakis

Watching iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed The World. I know it's been said, but wow, what a man, legend! #SteveJobs

2 November

Top Tweets Near Minneapolis

In order to make the tweets more applicable to us, I did a search of the people who we live with by narrowing the field to those living in or near Minneapolis, and the results were the same as those above, which were mostly positive, interspersed with some of those who feel negatively.

jonmarcbauer Jon Bauer

Well that was underwhelming. #SteveJobs' last words, "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."

sarathatcher Sara Thatcher

It's hard not to be a fan of #SteveJobs after you read his sister's eulogy

AndrewJRamirez Andrew Ramirez

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." #SteveJobs

misterviddy Mister Viddy

The virtual Steve Jobs by Google. Bend him, spin him, look at his internal organs. All for free! google.com/stevejobs

bc3tech Brandon

RT @DavidGewirtz: much wisdom coming frm @BillGates. Maturity & societal contrib contrast 2 #steveJobs is startling bit.ly/tkkkFR

itsOnlyProper Dani

I'm sorry but he was no genius, he was a businessman. Geniuses don't have their own outlet stores. #SteveJobs

Tumblr:

Tumblr is a blogging social media website that allows its users to post text, videos, audio clips, links, and pretty much anything else one would like to display on their blog. Tumblr’s tagline is “the home of the most creative people in the world.” What kind of perspective of the news are we getting if we follow a site like this?

To find out, I created my own tumblr blog especially for this project. (It has all the pictures and articles talked about, as well as others: culturalstudiesisforhipsters.tumblr.com) There I searched the tag “Steve Jobs” and read thru the posts that included this tag. After scrolling thru weeks worth of such posts, I reblogged the most popular and most reoccurring posts to my blog. In these posts, a couple of things were clear about how users on Tumblr were representing this news story. Almost none of the posts focused on how he died, or where or when for that matter. They didn’t describe his battle with cancer, or the status of his company, or really anything fact-based that we would see being reported on FOX or CNN. Almost all posts took the form of a eulogy. There was a lot of tribute art; many posts taking his quotes weaving them into an artistic background or homage photographs of different items representing the iconic bitten apple. My favorite being the Steve Jobs carved pumpkin. Other popular posts were videos; like the 1997 Apple commercial when they launched their “Think Different” campaign. (http://tumblr.com/Z9FPdwBRhjlA) It’s an inspirational video that celebrates iconic figures in our history that chose to think differently and changed the world; something that Apple is encouraging us to do. After Jobs passing, I think this video starting circulating as a type of renaissance of the ideas this company wanted to associate itself with, and looking at in retrospectively, it did. It’s like its reminding us, remember when I said I could change the world? Well I did, and now it’s your turn to. Along these same lines, another video that was extremely popular was the 2005 Stanford commencement address Jobs gave. Before his death, this was just another advice-filled speech giving by a progressive businessman, but now his words are almost immortalized as they are frequently being quoted not only on Tumblr, but other media sites as well. But, the most popular quotes that were being reposted derived from Jobs’ new biography that was just released, written by Walter Isaacson. Just like all the examples before, these quotes were meant to inspire, meant to motivate and encourage the reader to achieve their own goals and make a difference like the man behind the words did.

Tumblr is notorious for being a place to “fan-girl” or “fan-boy” over something, Jobs is a perfect example of it. But for as much singing of his praises and putting him up on a pedestal that went on, there were posts that put his death in a realistic perspective. One especially moving photo (http://tumblr.com/Z9FPdwBRfXRS) shows the Apple icon with the caption “One dies, millions cry” and next to that a silhouette of Africa with the caption “Million dies, no one cries.” Agree or disagree, it definitely makes the viewer think. And lastly, an article that only went viral a few days ago brings up the question if we should realize idolize Jobs at all compared to his longtime rival, Bill Gates. (http://tumblr.com/Z9FPdwBRdK8W) The article, written by the Harvard Business Report, explains that while Jobs made exceptionally beautiful products that we all feel privileged to tap away on, Gates used his wealth to impact the world, not just the business side of it.

Whether it is true or not if Tumblr is home to most creative people in the world, the nature of the posts represent a way of presenting a news story that FOX or CNN cannot. Everything that is posted on Tumblr comes from one person, not a large company or interest group. By design, each blog is extremely personal. And when looked at as a whole, the reader gets a sense of how many independent individuals were affected by a story. In this case, what I found was that users didn’t really care about the facts behind his death, just that the world lost a great mind but are inspired by his legacy.

Conclusion:

Each of the news sources we selected have very different politics of representation because they come from a diversity of sources. The Mail Online is an online outlet for the widely-read British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail that is distributed across the UK. It is a type of news-entertainment source. Twitter and Tumblr are social media websites that allows any user to express their thoughts and post things of interest, and both are free. When thinking about the politics of representation, Stuart Hall argues that power strives to fix meaning to support its agenda. Putting this into context of our news story, the elite consensus that Herman and Chomsky talk of are always looking to bend the news in order to thread in their own opinions. But we are not convinced that that is taking place in our example. Firstly because in the selections we picked, no elite interests are at play. The Daily Mail is taking an alternative stance to what has already been said about Steve Jobs, to what other news sources that care for the interest of major businesses reported. The writer avoids being subjected to/conforming to the praise that everyone is directing at Steve Jobs because he finds it excessive and other figures to be more worthy. The writer believes that people are too technology obsessed and will worship anyone that contributes to this field. In this case, the reader is positioned into thinking that Jobs wasn’t deserving of “the kind of veneration he has received from his fans and a fawning media.” This article also calls into question how other media sources are representing this story. It seems that this article is a good example of the alternative media that Herman and Chomsky are urging us to use, it is not dominated by a general ideology, this opinion strictly belongs to the writer.

In terms of Twitter and Tumblr, there is no elite consensus because no real consensus is present. Twitter and Tumblr validate Hall’s claim that individuals receive meaning and remake it minute by minute, causing it to constantly change. This does mean that each tweet and each post is subject to rhetoric, but there is enough variation of it to say that one frame of thinking isn’t dominating. Twitter’s rhetoric is present but not on the level of a compelling news article. Tweets are passive, if you don’t agree with them you just scroll to the next one. Each tweet presents an opinion but doesn’t offer any evidence, as their space is limited to 140 characters. They aren’t being filtered or regulated. Tumblr does this to, but gives its users complete freedom to display their opinions in a variety of ways. There is no word limit so users have more space to be rhetorical and argue, essentially creating their own articles. Uses also can include pictures and videos that contribute to the point they’re trying to make, often more convincingly then text. The fact that anyone can use these sites eliminates the any claim of an exclusive agenda. Everything that is posted on Tumblr or tweeted on Twitter comes from one person, not a large company or interest group.

All three sources prove that media, at least in the examples that we chose, isn’t embedded into a market system or controlled by one. The Mail Online is the only case where profits are at stake. It is clear that they are trying to sell the news because their company is a tabloid newspaper. But rather than elicit support for their own ideology, they are doing this mostly just to entertain. Plus, reading their news online is free. Twitter and Tumblr certainly don’t fit Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model because neither site is a “profit-seeker.” Therefore, if no leading class opinions are present in our news sources, they can’t be controlling the news that is present there.