HELLO MY NAME IS

"When I was your age, Television was called books."

William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Hello, My Name is Caryn Wiley-Rapoport 

My favorite media property is The Princess Bride.  I wear a bracelet that says "As You Wish."  I call it a property, because it is so much more than a movie. It premiered in 1987. At the time my daughters were 2 and 4 years old.  They loved watching this movie and I loved it too, happy to watch it over and over. It wasn't much of a hit when it came out, but I had a friend that had worked for Rob Reiner and she got it on my radar. Over time it developed quite a cult following and much of the script has found it's way into the vernacular. "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die," is a line that is oft quoted.

JFK 

I was born in 1959. The first high impact media memory I have is of watching J.F.K.'s funeral on television and in particular the image of John-John saluting was forever burned in my mind.  He was 3, I was 4. So yes, we had a television, one television and many, many books.

Iranian Revolution

In the late 1970's I took care of the son of the people next door who were from Iran. This was during the time of unrest leading up to the revolution.  The conversations I overheard during that time were a window to a world far, far, away from my Los Angeles suburb reality. Ten years later I read a book called Small Media, Big Revolution: Communication, Culture and the Iranian Revolution, by Annabel Sreberny-Mohamed. In it she argues that the revolution was fuel by small, participatory media, at that time the distribution of fliers and cassette tapes, as big media was state controlled.

World Trade Protest

I audited a graduate seminar at UCSB in 1999 on the Globalization of Media.  I happened to be in Seattle visiting my sister that November, during the World Trade Organization protests, and we were following the news events closely.  It was the largest demonstration of it's kind in the United States at 40-50,000 people. I was struck by some of the similar themes, in terms of the role of small media in the ability of the protestors to organize. I wrote my paper on that theme. In this case it was the emergence of the internet that allowed people who did not know each other to organize quickly in huge numbers. Where to meet, eat and sleep to stay one step ahead of the authorities was the key.

Formal Education

After years of taking classes catch-as-catch-can at UCSB, UCLA, Ventura Community College, Santa Barbara City College and El Camino College. I enrolled at UCSB and completed my degree in Cultural Anthropology in 2010. I immediately began to miss the intellectual academic engagement I found at University and have been thinking about the Fielding Media Psychology program ever since. My objective in pursing the Media Psychology PhD is first and foremost to have the forum within which to explore the relationship between people, media and technology.

Video Link

Prius: Harmony Between Man, Nature and Machine

Career

Simultaneous to the pursuit of my education I have been fortunate to be employed doing consumer research and strategic planning in the advertising arena.  My passion continues to be the exploration of media and specifically how media motivations reveal so much about who we are as individuals and in our social groups. The work above is an example of creative that was produced reflecting our media motivation insights for people who were interested in the Prius.

Personal

In my free time I'm trying my hand at Horse Whispering. I live in the South Bay with my husband and sixteen year old son. My daughters are now grown and I have a six month old granddaughter. I can't wait to watch The Princess Bride with her.

You can follow me on Twitter @carynwiley and on Instagram @semiotica.ryn