Having joined the faculty only two years ago, Ryan Milner is fast becoming one of the students’ favorite communication professors. We caught Professor Milner in a free moment and asked him to share his interest in new social media tools, the future of communication and his love of video games.
HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE STUDY OF COMMUNICATION?
I joke with my intro media studies class that it started when I was 2 years old and my mom sat me down in front of Ghostbusters. I was entranced. I wouldn’t move. From then on, I was always intrigued by stories. So, combine a lifelong love of story with a lifelong interest in how people engage with each other, and you have a scholar who looks at the crazy cacophony that is participatory media. Now I get to see how people share Ghostbusters gifs on Tumblr, not just watch the movie at home.
WHAT’S THE MOST EXCITING NEW THING IN YOUR FIELD?
Particularly when you study what I study – the newest new media trends – everything can seem exciting and different. Whether we’re being utopian or dystopian, we can chase what’s changed. Is Facebook destroying our relationships? Is Google making us stupid? Is Twitter helping the youth free Egypt and Ukraine? I’d say the “holy grail” – for me at least – is nuance. Looking for the social shifts that come with new social tools, but doing so in a way that ties into bigger, older, broader social practices, ones that will persist across new tools. This means work that ties the old to the new, and is still relevant when the new becomes old.
WHAT’S THE MOST INTERESTING THING IN YOUR OFFICE?
My wrinkled old Monty Python and the Holy Grail poster, which I bought at one of those campus poster sales when I was a freshman in college. That poster and me – we have seen a lot.
PLAY THE FUTURIST HERE. HOW DO YOU SEE THE INTERNET TRANSFORMING THE WAY PEOPLE COMMUNICATE?
The funny thing is that so much of the field I’m in is about troubling that notion of “transformation.” It can be easy to make assumptions that new technology equals new communication.
You want to explore what’s new, for sure, but always with an eye for what persists across what’s new. The social practices that persist across different eras and modes of communication.
In the early 20th century, some thought telephones would destroy domestic life because homemakers would spend all their time talking to friends instead of doing chores and taking care of kids. In the 1980s, there were panics about home dubbing from audiotapes and how it would kill the music industry. In the 19th century, people thought the telegraph would end war because foreign leaders would be able to talk issues out in real time. So you can see why I’m hesitant to make any predictions about sweeping changes.
We still have war, the music industry is consistently adapting to technological changes and shifts in domestic life have been about more than phones. Whatever “transformations” occur because of the Internet – and I’m encouraged by the potential for public participation and interpersonal communication across great distance – will be enmeshed in a lot of very familiar communicative practices. Any technological shifts will be enmeshed in very broad social shifts as well.
YOU’RE A GAMER. YOU EVEN WROTE YOUR THESIS ON THE VIDEO GAME FALLOUT. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE VIDEO GAME GROWING UP?
I remember getting my Nintendo 64 and playing way too much Wave Race 64, a game about Jet Ski racers that was just breathtaking for its time. Then I stumbled my way through Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the same console and, even as a middle schooler, realized the medium could be art, could express an epic story.
But I really, really cut my teeth on the original Fallout role-playing games in the late ’90s. I remember so vividly the first time my friend dropped the disc into his PC drive, and the hours I spent wandering the post-apocalyptic wastes after I got a copy of my own. They were funny, gritty, and allowed you as a player to make decisions about what happened in the world. Your choices meant whole different dialogue, twists, different endings. I hadn’t engaged stories like that, and I fell in love.
Video games have established their commercial viability and are on the verge of acceptance as a mass medium like film, music or TV. I think more attention to artistry develops next.
YOU’VE INCORPORATED MEMES INTO YOUR ACADEMIC RESEARCH. WHY ARE MEMES WORTH STUDYING?
Went right for the heart, eh? They’re not exactly blood cells or even presidential addresses, sure. They’re jokes of varying taste and aesthetic quality people share on reddit or Twitter. They’re remixed diversions, yeah. But they’re crafted by that buzzing cultural cacophony that is the mediated public sphere.
They’re cultural artifacts, and everyday culture is worth understanding. Wrapped up in these jokes of varying taste and quality are clues about how we use humor to make public arguments, how we connect with friends at great distance, how we represent and misrepresent different identities. I’ve seen people collectively use these little jokes they’ve made and shared to draw attention to protests, to set the agenda during a presidential debate, to act like sexist jerks and to critique people who act like sexist jerks.
In short, Internet memes are worth studying because they’re a visual “lingua franca” for all kinds of worthy discussions in mediated spheres.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK AND MOVIE OF ALL TIME?
The book’s East of Eden by John Steinbeck. The movie’s The Big Lebowski by the Coen brothers. I’m not sure if that seems like a disconnect. I mean, a multigeneration American epic vs. a nonsensical cult comedy largely about bowling.
But I see a lot of similarities. They’re both set in California and use that archetype pretty heavily. They both convey a lot of philosophy in their portrayals of “salt of the earth” characters whose lives spiral into bigger and bigger problems. They both are about people in over their heads, who are doing their best in a world they don’t understand, a world changing all around and sometimes without them. And that’s why you need to take media studies with me.
