A few weeks after the re-election of President Obama, discussions are now turning to the next four years and what can be done to improve the economy.  Politicians are focused on the fiscal cliff and how reducing the deficit will impact our economy, with many analysts and the Congressional Budget Office itself predicting that if we cut spending and raise taxes in January the US could enter another recession in 2013.

While cutting government spending sounds like a good idea, many do not realize how muchboth individuals and companies depend on government subsidies and infrastructure.  This is especially true for start-up companies who are trying to bring innovative products and services to the public, but may not have the capital to do so by themselves.  New companies must convince people to buy their products to be successful, which can only be done in a strong economy.  For a country like America to remain innovative we need to work with all types of employee equally in order to ensure that the economy is strong enough at the bottom to support innovation at the top.

In their book Innovation Economics (2012), Robert Atkinson and Stephen Ezell discuss how policy and economic decisions influence innovation in the United Sates.  One of their most insightful comments was that  “Main Street is almost completely dependent on “manufacturing street” “research park street” and “office complex street” (p. 27), but that none of those sectors can solve a struggling economy by themselves.  For innovation to occur we must be able to invest in it for the long-term (another theme that is brought up repeatedly), which means having a strong enough economy that the government can increase R&D funding.  While free trade agreements help American companies to sell their products overseas, and have benefits such as protecting intellectual property rights, there are downsides to companies investing outside of the US.  There are conflicting views on the benefits of investment in other countries, and American companies need to do some manufacturing overseas in order to remain competitive in the global market.   Unfortunately, we will not have a strong economy if millions of people are losing jobs at manufacturing firms who are shipping both low and high end manufacturing projects overseas.

Representative Michael Honda, a democrat from California, agrees with this and has introduced a bill to encourage both US and foreign companies to bring manufacturing back to the US. In a commentary piece in the Washington Times, Honda states that “In the past, policymakers have failed to focus on developing advanced manufacturing capabilities in the United States to capitalize on these technological breakthroughs, and our economy has paid the price” (Honda, 2012)  Atkinson and Ezell mention that 51% of patents now issued in the United States are issued to non-US companies, and that even in high-end technology manufacturing the US has been declining.  Outsourcing manufacturing boosts other countries’ economies, which is why we have been leading from behind in innovation recently while countries such as China have been excelling.  In addition to giving away jobs, shifting to a model where manufacturing is outsourced to other countries can bring up other issues, such as cybersecurity.

It is clear that the United States needs to change some of its innovation policies if it wants to remain competitive globally, and a first step would be to bring manufacturing back to America. Infrastructure and funding problems also need to be addressed, but before structural changes can be made the economy has to be strong, which won’t happen if companies continue to take advantage of cheap labor overseas.  President Obama has numerous issues to address in his second term, and has to first fight against Congressional Republicans who are pushing him to cut spending, but government should realize the many benefits of having a strong and highly skilled manufacturing base to promote innovation and grow the economy.

References:
Atkinson, R. D. & Ezell, S. J. (2012). Innovation economics: The race for global advantage. New Haven: Yale University.

Honda, M. M. (November 6, 2012). Strengthening American tech industry. The Washington Times.

Top image by Seattle Municipal Archive on Flikr, licensed through Creative Commons
Bottom image by American Enterprise Institute 

With the 2012 election finally over, it seems both inevitable and laughable that 2016 is already being mentioned, and not just by Jon Stewart. At the moment I am not at all interested in what lies ahead for 2016, but I do wonder how the nature of elections will change in the next 20, 30, and 40 years.  As we have seen in the past two presidential elections, social media has become an increasingly important factor in voter engagement.  While some politicians claim to send out their own tweets or Facebook messages (which can sometimes have detrimental effects, see: Anthony Weiner), the vast majority leave social media to staffers.  Even when campaigns are seen as being active and successful online, it is unclear how much input candidates themselves have.  For example, Barack Obama, whose campaign has used social media since 2008, rarely sends his own tweets, and there is little evidence he personally is social-media savvy.

Barack Obama’s Twitter Page

Give it 15 or 20 years, however, and all of this will change.  Today Facebook has over 800 million active monthly users, with over 50% of North America on the site, and 250 million photos are uploaded per day.  With these statistics, it is almost impossible to think that when today’s 20-somethings move up in the world, they won’t have some sort of digital footprint of their past.  As The Onion joked, “Every 2040 Presidential Candidate Already Unelectable Due to Facebook.”  The question is, do we care?  After all, the people running for future office may have salacious Facebook pictures in their past, but so will the majority of the individuals voting for them.

On a day-to-day basis we willingly share pictures, personal thoughts, and political opinions on sites that are increasingly open to the public. Twitter is often used as a public news source, and Facebook’s privacy settings default to “public” as an option on many things you post.  Other networks such as LinkedIn take advantage of weak social ties, which are often more beneficial in areas such as job-hunting than strong ties. The ever-expanding world of social networking has changed what the internet is used for and greatly increased concerns over privacy and so called “big data”.  With online shopping individuals are at risk of having their credit card information stolen, and with social media, individuals expose facts about themselves each day.

Many people do not know just how much can be found out about them by looking at their social media and other internet use.  One way personal data is used is through micro-targeting by political campaigns, where voters are targeted based on data about them such as location, age, and gender.  Add to that the fact that anyone from government agencies to small companies looking to hire you can quite easily access information such as your Facebook page, and it seems like Big Brother is a real, modern-day phenomenon.  This could have major implications in the future, both for those running for office with a 20+ year digital history, and for policy makers who have to regulate what information can and cannot be shared online.

Tim Wu’s book, The Master Switch, details the rise and fall of dominant companies in the communications industry such as AT&T, and argues that the internet will become the next frontier in discussions over government regulation.  Several internet companies are already showing similar characteristics to these communications giants.  These include Facebook and Google, who now own Instagram and YouTube, respectively, and are thus taking control of more online properties.  So, will we have to see a future in which the government controls how our private information and data is shared, or will we accept data shared online as inherently “public”? It’s hard to tell, given the vastness and global nature of the web, but it is sure to be an increasingly important debate.

References: Wu, T. (2011) The master switch: The rise and fall of information empires. New York: Knopf.

Top image from daniel_iversen on Flikr, licensed through Creative Commons. Bottom image author’s own. 

Several announcements in the technology realm recently have emphasized how strongly consumers can influence both perceptions of products and products themselves. This demonstrates that society often has high expectations, and we are increasingly vocal when we feel let down by new technologies. Innovators must keep many things in mind when attempting to create something new, the most important being the problem they are trying to solve and the audience they are solving it for. If a user does not request a change or want a problem solved in the first place, it is likely that an invention will fail quickly. The Social Construction of Technology theory takes into account the influences different groups can have on an innovation as it is being created and brought to the public. Users of a technology can change its shape, features, or even primary use, and as the internet has facilitated increased feedback on technology, companies must take user’s opinions into account even more.

Although companies may be secretive about new products, they often create products or updates as responses to customer complaints. There are many blogs and websites dedicated to assessing the usability of technologies, and they are valuable resources for innovators who may be hindered by their own narrow focus when developing products. In addition to providing feedback to companies on technologies, users can also innovate themselves by combining technologies in ways companies might not expect—home improvement is one area where online users are constantly giving each other advice on how to best fix something, or what tool is most useful for a specific project. In the technology realm, two recent, high-profile announcements come to mind when discussing the importance of the user in technology: the new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, and Apple’s new operating system, iOS6.

The Amazon Kindle e-reader has been successful for several years now, and its only real competitor is the Barnes and Noble Nook e-reader, which released a new self-illuminated version several months ago. Both the new Kindle and the Nook are improvements on older products, and the improvements seem to be directly related to consumer demand for an e-reader that can be read in the dark. I personally had been toying with the idea of buying a Kindle when I saw that a new version was about to be released, and having a backlight, rather than users needing a bedside light or an attached reading light, is what made me purchase one. I did not directly request this change, but user feedback on the product was undoubtedly one of the reasons both Amazon and Barnes and Noble introduced an improved version.

An example of Apple’s new Maps, on the right, compared to the old Google Maps, on the left.

Another example is Apple’s newly released operating system for the iPhone, iOS6, whose main feature is a drastic overhaul of the maps system. The new Maps application has been criticized by users and professional reviewers for its slow and incomplete system. The backlash on this update became so apparent that the CEO of Apple was forced to release a letter to customers apologizing. Although the system was designed to give users things they wanted, such as turn-by-turn directions, it instead completely replaced the previous, easy to use maps system was already familiar to users. In his letter to the public, CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the value of input from consumers into the product, saying that “The more our customers use our Maps the better it will get and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you” (Apple.com). Apple perhaps would have been more successful if they had asked users what they liked most about the old system, rather than what what was missing. From these examples it is clear that social constructivism is still very relevant today, and perhaps even more so than it was in the past, as the internet provides the average user with many platforms to voice their complaints.

Top image: author’s own, pictures from Amazon and Apple.
Bottom image: http://theamazingios6maps.tumblr.com/ 

On September 25, Jon Stewart criticized President Obama for appearing on entertainment talk show The View the same week of the United Nations General Assembly, where he did not plan on meeting individually with any world leaders in town for the event.  While Stewart was using the appearance as a punch line for The Daily Show, the prevalence of political candidates wooing soft news outlets such as The View, Entertainment Tonight, and local radio stations, has become worrying.  Politico reported in August that Obama has held half as many press availabilities as Bush and Clinton had at the same point in their campaigns, and out of 35 media interviews in July, 26 were with local outlets, who rarely ask tough questions. But is “soft news”–entertainment-style political stories with little policy information–actually hurting America and its voters, or is it providing political knowledge to otherwise uninformed citizens?

Several studies have been conducted in the past few/several years on soft news and its effects. Baum and Jamison (2006), Baum (2002), and Prior (2003) have all conducted research which examine the potential benefits of soft news, namely that some citizens may get at least a small amount of political knowledge from soft news coverage that they might not receive at all otherwise.  Although Prior (2003) states that those who prefer soft news over hard news are less knowledgeable on political and other current affairs issues, Baum (2002) found that audiences who were not interested in politics did gain knowledge about foreign policy from soft news stories on wars and other foreign crises.  Soft news outlets cover the human-interest side of conflicts (Baum 2002), but they are still providing a valuable service to the uninterested public, who often find newspaper articles or television reports too complex to comprehend.  Baum and Jamison (2006) also examined the so-called “Oprah effect” and found that among citizens who consumed no hard news, those with greater exposure to soft news such as talk shows were more likely to vote for a candidate who was aligned with their own values.

The findings in these studies seem to support the statement that soft news can increase political knowledge in those who do not actively seek out the facts in hard news, however they leave many questions unanswered. For example, given the current presidential candidates’ preferences for engaging with soft news, it would seem they are assuming that reaching out to a soft news audience will increase engagement and voter turnout, but that question has not been thoroughly examined.

The Obama’s are covered extensively even when their outings are of no political relevance; there are countless articles on Michelle’s fashion choices, the restaurants they dine at, and Barack’s interest in sports such as basketball.  A quick search “Michelle Obama” on People.com reveals an entire section of articles with titles such as “Bo Obama is on a Diet”, and “Michelle Obama Details her Dream Anniversary Date with the President.” (People.com, 2012)  These are no doubt the easier stories to cover, especially when pictures can be added to back up a short blurb, and they are simpler to digest for an audience who is not well versed in politics.  Campaigns today see value in these outlets as they can make a candidate appear more personable without delving into the serious issues, and as the Politico (2012) article states, most of the public doesn’t care that the serious press outlets feel left out.

However, it is clear that soft-news is a double edged sword, and although entertainment-type stories may make candidates more appealing, they probably do not encourage viewers to go and research Obama’s economic plan, or Romney’s thoughts on healthcare. While it is important to have some political coverage in soft news outlets to reach a wider audience than the political junkies, this should not be an excuse for politicians to ignore more hard-hitting outlets.  If campaigns want to interact with local and soft news outlets they should do so without sacrificing their exposure to outlets that will provide a more complex view of the policy issues.  It is especially important for politicians to be available to all media types when, as Jake Tapper stated, current media policies set the precedent for future media policies, and: “today’s defenders of today’s president may not find tomorrow’s president’s avoidance of questions not about chili or fave songs as acceptable” (Politico 2012)

References

Baum. M. A. (2002). Sex, lies and war: How soft news brings foreign policy to the inattentive public American Political Science Review, 96(1), 91-101.

Baum, M.A. & Jamison, A. S. (2006). The Oprah effect: How soft news helps inattentive citizens vote consistently. The Journal of Politics, 68(4), 946-959

People.com (2012). Michelle Obama page. Retrieved from http://www.people.com/people/michelle_obama/0,,,00.html.

Prior, M. (2003). Any good news in soft news? The impact of soft news preference on political knowledge. Political communication, 20. 149-171.

Tau, B. & Byers, D. (2012, August 17). Obama’s soft-news strategy. Politico.

Note: This is a continuation of my last blog post, on the culture surrounding the young-adult book craze.

Two worlds collide: Hunger Games actor Josh Hutcherson at Harry Potter World in Orlando

Google “Harry Potter”, “Twilight”, or “The Hunger Games” and you will not only find extensive Wikipedia pages, movie reviews, and news articles, but also numerous sites that contain within them a community of thousands of devoted fans.  These sites and the fans that run them, sometimes as full time jobs but usually on a volunteer basis, have grown to be mammoth networks of individuals from around the world, connected by a common interest but often having much more in common than one book or movie. In my opinion the fan communities are the driving force behind the mass success of young-adult crossover fiction, and a lasting testament to the peak of their popularity.  It is the fans that gather around a book and demand it be made into a multi-million dollar movie, the fans that buy the tickets to the midnight screening of that movie, and the fans that hold annual conferences to discuss the past and future goings-on of their favorite characters and authors.

What interests me most about these communities is not that they exist, but how involved they can be, and how little is known about them if you are not a part of one.  Online sites that evolve into multiple offline and very real relationships are often called “virtual communities” in the field of communication, and bring to mind the question of presence–can one feel totally “present” in a place that is not physical? And can a culture be built virtually around a book, movie or other fan phenomenon?

It has been said that when studying presence in organizations it “is the extent to which a medium is perceived as sociable, warm, sensitive, personal or intimate when it is used to interact with other people.” (Lombard & Ditton, 2006). Fan communities may gather around one interest, but smaller, virtual groups can break off from the main group, and participants can use multiple means of virtual communication to get to know each other.  In the case of the Harry Potter and Twilight communities, fans that first interacted on basic message board forums were some of the first adopters of Twitter (http://mashable.com/2009/07/13/dumbledore-twitter/), and with the release of The Hunger Games movie came #teampeeta and other widespread hashtags.  Other virtual communities, such as health message boards, have also been cited as strong examples of how relationships can be formed and one can feel present in a virtual world. In his article about this community, Harold Rheingold emphasized that when individuals who knew each other virtually met face-to-face, they were able to quickly bond and feel familiar with each other as they had so many shared experiences online (2010).

The Harry Potter fandom has expanded to include conferences that are still ongoing, and Melissa Anelli, webmistress of the popular website, The Leaky Cauldron, wrote a bestselling book about the experience of being deeply enmeshed in the virtual community that emerged surrounding the books, Harry, A History.  Author John Green, whose vlogs gained fame when his brother Hank wrote a song about The Deathly Hallows, has also found success partly due to the support of his online fan base.  These and other examples demonstrate that even if not every book becomes the next Hunger Games, the support of an online virtual community is invaluable for authors or online personalities to achieve mainstream success. Would Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games still be regarded as decent fiction without an avid fan base?  Probably (please note, I have no intention of ever reading or watching Twilight), but the support of virtual communities is what has spurred their recent domination of the book and film industries.

References:
Harold Rheingold, The Heart of the WELL, in Online Communication and Collaboration, Helen Donelan, Karen Kear, Magnus Ramage.

Picture Credits: Top- Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda, Orlando Sentinel, Bottom- LeakyCon Facebook Page

The Hunger Games movie was released on March 21st, and has already made over 300 million dollars in box office sales in North America alone.  It also broke the record for first-day advanced ticket sales on Fandango, previously held by The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.  The Hunger Games movie also had the third highest number of advanced ticket sales ever, behind The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part 2…are you seeing a pattern yet?  The phenomenon of young-adult fiction that ends up appealing to anyone and everyone is not new–the first Harry Potter book was published in 1997, and by the release of the fourth in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it was widely understood that these books had a wider audience than the 10-15 year-old set.  In fact, the Harry Potter books in particular seemed to get more and more complex and mature as the series progressed, with many people my age feeling like the series grew up with them.  Although the first two or three novels (and movies for that matter) have a decidedly child-like feel and sound to them, the subsequent books use more varied language and themes, in addition to having much more violence.

What makes books like these jump from success in the young adult section to overwhelming popularity, and can they bring all of us back into the world of reading? I admit that while I was an avid book-reader before the age of laptops and cell phones, I rarely pick up a non-school-related book now.  But the week before The Hunger Games was released in theaters, I felt compelled to buy the first book to see what all the fuss was about, and three days later I had finished it and was wondering where I could buy the next two.

In my opinion there are several key characteristics that makes books such as The Hunger Games and Harry Potter attract such a varied audience.  The first is that they be compelling without getting weighed down by complex language or themes, at least initially.  While one certainly could read deeper into The Hunger Games, comparing the gladiator-style games to class warfare and slavery, you can just as easily skip past these themes and just enjoy the fast-paced detail of a thrilling story.  The story quickly moves from one dramatic incident to the next, with slower heart-wrenching scenes spliced in between to keep the reader interested.  Add in vivid details and a side love story, and the pages go by so quickly you’ll be at the end before you know it and wondering what comes next.

Another common theme with the three most well known recent young adult-to-adult crossover pieces, The Hunger Games, Twilight, and Harry Potter, is their setting: all three take place in pseudo-fantasy or completely made up worlds, and the characters in Harry Potter and Twilight have qualities humans do not possess, such as performing magic, or being a vampire.  These characteristics, sometimes set in worlds that look very similar to our own, give the reader a form of escapism that is hard to resist–after all, even if Ron, Harry, and Hermione have midterms to study for, they get to use magic at the same time! But the final and most important component a book must possess to achieve overwhelming popularity is something the author can’t craft into the pages, but an external force that is decided by the reader: a community around the book, which I will discuss in my next blog post, so stay tuned.

Image via Yahoo/Lionsgate

This time last year I remember that, within the span of about a week, it seemed as though everyone I knew was hooked into the latest gaming/social media fad: Words With Friends.  A game played on smart phones that imitates Scrabble, soon everyone had multiple games going at the same time, using the application as a distraction from work, school, or other responsibilities.  This year the newest fad game, DrawSomething, in which users have to guess each other’s drawing, seems to have caught on even more quickly.  In addition, the picture sharing and social network site Pinterest has been gaining users rapidly in the past months–as of January 2012 it was the fastest site in history to gain 10 million users.  But what makes these particular sites or networks take off when hundreds of other, similar ones are launched each year?  And, more importantly, how can they stay relevant and keep growing as newer, more novel ideas pop up everywhere?

An example of a "Draw Something" game

A successful new network must have a combination of characteristics that is impossible to define, as each one becomes successful for unique reasons.  At the moment, it is likely that users already belong to multiple social networks, and actively participate in at least two.  Each has their own purpose–in general Facebook is thought of for friends and picture sharing, Twitter for short status updates and news, and LinkedIn for professional networking.  To come up with an idea that does something unique, is well marketed and user-friendly is not an easy task, and even the best can fail. Google has now tried twice to start social networks similar to Facebook or Twitter, with the now-defunct GoogleBuzz, and Google+.  While Google+ was hotly anticipated, it lacked any features that distinguished it enough from its primary rival, Facebook.  The Google Circles were a useful tool, and offered several benefits over Facebook’s privacy and sharing settings, but most people did not want to be actively involved in two separate social networks with such similar purposes.

One way that new networks or sites might attract users is by targeting a certain population.  Much has been written in the past months about Pinterest’s popularity with women, particularly in the Midwest and Central U.S., rather than the usual techies who are first attracted to a new site.  The nature of the site is one that skews female, as some of its best uses are for wedding or home decorating planning, fashion, and food picture or recipe sharing.  Conversely, Slashdot, a technology news website that describes itself as “News for nerds, stuff that matters” is over 75% male.

Of course, with such rapid growth comes some downfalls, as demonstrated by Twitter’s frequent over-capacity or “fail whale” message during its period of rapid expansion. Sites may also find themselves under more scrutiny than they had anticipated at so early a stage in their development–Words with Friends was criticized for its vast similarities to Scrabble (in fact, the major differences in board layout are only to keep it from copyright infringement), and Pinterest has already had to tighten its copyright rules as many of users’ uploaded photos are copyrighted.  I cannot predict what will be the next social sensation, but what seems inevitable is that with growth comes not-always-welcome change, and the networks that are most popular today will have to stay on their toes if they want to be around tomorrow.

Top image from Flikr user ohmeaghan, licensed on Creative Commons.
Bottom image from Flikr user Kevin Lawver, licensed on Creative Commons.

As part of Social Media Week DC I recently attended an event in which Derrick Ashong, musician, entrepreneur, and host of “The Stream” on Al Jazeera English (full disclosure: I work with him at Al Jazeera) spoke about “The Million Download Campaign”. This effort aims to give away a million copies of his most recent album, Afropolitan.  Ashong spoke about his motivations to start the campaign and the broader implications of open source music, a topic he has been interested in since graduate school.  Hearing him speak, I learned more about the economics and behind the scenes dealings of the music industry in an hour than in 23 years of actually listening to the music eventually produced.  This realization led me to wonder why such a huge industry of producers, managers, and musicians has so far failed to adapt to the rise of new media, or rethink its outdated business model.

It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find that the complex economic relationship between an artist and his or her record label often results in waiting years to receive any sort of compensation from record sales. And those who get any money from record sales at all are the lucky ones.  Before seeing any profits, an artist must pay back the record label the money it has spent on promotion, advertising, production costs, etc. This means that even some successful artists, such as famed country singer Lyle Lovett, never make anything from album sales, generating their income instead from touring profits, merchandise sales, and promotion deals.  With the rise of digital music and distribution through online platforms such as iTunes and Amazon and streaming services Pandora and Spotify the industry is evolving, and yet record labels still use old standards to exploit artists.  For example, money is still taken out of revenues for “breakage,” a holdover from when a significant percentage of vinyl records could expect to be broken in transit, hardly a concern with digital files or even CDs.

New media and online file-sharing have also made it easier for artists to release their music without the backing of a major label, which Radiohead demonstrated in 2007 when they released “In Rainbows” exclusively through their website under a pay-what-you-want model.  However, new artists without an existing fan base would find it hard to gain recognition without the help of radio promotion, advertising, and publicity campaigns. As a result, they are forced to seek the help of a label, which will sign them into a multi-album contract, preventing them from breaking out on their own after one hit album.

Of course, “giving away” content comes with strings attached as well–questions of copyright and fair use immediately come to mind.  Sites such as Creative Commons are attempting to make more content available for adaptation and use by anyone, but the amount of content that is “owned” by a specific person or organization remains huge.  An artist may be willing to give away his music to fans, but he wouldn’t want it appearing on an advertisement or other commercial entity without specific permission and reimbursement.  Changing the way an entire industry operates is not a light undertaking, but more artists would do well to bring attention to their plight through campaigns like “The Million Download Campaign” or by otherwise informing their fans that reform is needed to keep up with changing times.

Top image from Flikr user cogdogblog, licsenced under Creative Commons. Bottom image from derrickashong.com.

Note: This is partly in response to Hanna Woodburn’s blog “Why I might no longer be a vegetarian”

As I write this, at 9:30pm on a Monday night, I am happily consuming a Philly Cheese Steak, complete with what seems like a pound of meat and masses of processed American cheese. Before you question my strange eating habits I will explain why this piece of information is significant: I have decided that from February 22nd, Ash Wednesday, I will give up meat for Lent.  

I’ve always been one to slightly scoff at vegetarian diets, mostly because I really like food, which to me has always included meat.  I only occasionally cook meat at home at the moment because of its expense and the inconvenience of cooking single servings, but I was raised in a meat-friendly home, and will not blink at consuming chicken, beef, pork, duck, rabbit, veal, venison, wild boar, or camel (it tasted a bit like salami). Sure, I have vegetarian friends, and am informed enough to have heard and watched grotesque stories about mass-produced meat, often injected with hormones, fillers, and the like, but eating questionable Mc-meat every once in a while has never phased me too much.

Meat counter at Darts Farm, UK

So why have I decided to adopt a mostly vegetarian lifestyle for at least 40-days?  That question is not something I can answer concisely, but I will try and explain my thought process as much as possible. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not because I was suddenly exposed to the terrible conditions food is sometimes created in – I watched Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution” regularly in 2011 and, while being slightly put-off by his discussion of meat fillers in ground beef, did not rush to stop eating burgers then.  Overall, the meat I eat is not the so-called “bad stuff” anyway. I typically order meat when I am out, which is much more often at good quality restaurants than fast food establishments. And I don’t passionately believe that one person ceasing their meat intake will change a multi-billion dollar industry supported by millions of Americans. My decision to give up meat for Lent is more about me as an individual than the industry as a whole, and I will admit, is partly an exercise in self-discipline. After all, everyone takes some pride out of saying you were able to stick to a significant lifestyle change for 40-days.

After reading about the experiences of Kenji Lopez-Alt, a blogger on the popular “Serious Eats” blog who adopted a vegan lifestyle for a four weeks, I was inspired to try it myself, and eliminating just meat rather than meat, eggs, and dairy, seems easy in comparison.  Having to adapt to not eating meat out of convenience, for example when I need a quick meal for lunch at work, will force me to try new recipes, and order a vegetarian option at restaurants when often I would not, due to the logic that I’d rather spend $20 on a quality meat-based dish than a vegetable-based one.  Lopez-Alt’s final summary of the experienced emphasized how much meat or non-meat eating can be more a mental block than anything, that is, that one could enjoy a completely vegan meal regularly without even realizing it is vegan. I believe this experiment will also make me more aware of the type of meat I am putting into my body – something Hanna mentioned in her blog when stating she places a “a high value on the ability to know not only where my food comes from, but how it is prepared.”

I appreciate good quality meat, and sometimes I have not realized how lucky I am to have been raised partly on a British diet of hyper-local produce – I literally walk by the fields where vegetables are grown before going into our local farm shop in the UK.  It is my hope that eliminating all meat for a period of time will encourage me to think about where my food comes from more, and as a bonus will be good for my health as well.  I don’t plan on staying vegetarian forever (and am already planning an excursion to Rays Hell Burger as my first post-Lent meal), but adopting a more healthily and less convenience-based diet for a few weeks can’t be a bad thing.

All images my own.

In this podcast, Roxana Elliott and Joshua Weaver speak to Michael Elliott, former International Editor of Time Magazine, about the pattern of ongoing corruption in the British press industry, and the seemingly unbreakable ties between the British police and press.