Open braket. Close braket.

I found this weeks readings a bit all over the place. The majority of first reading focused on the Quantitative methodology of collecting research. This was my personal downfall in the first paper. Not that it necessarily effected my overall mark, but it mean’t that I didn’t get an overall understand of the reasons behind my subjects media use, rather just their uses on a daily basis. So the first reading was lot on me seeing as the second half of the reading was very simple “don’t ask closed end questions if you want a real tangible response” etc etc. It all seems pretty simple.

However, we then got to the juicy stuff! 🙂 The focused outlined in Liamputtong’s writings shows us that we need to make sure that there is a clear orientation of our writing, that we’re writing for a purpose and one that can be clearly explained in qualitative research. And that is what we’re left with, explaining our points clearly. Easy right?

Not so, I agree with Lauren, this could be a really cathartic experience for us in getting the informations we’ve stored and rattled around out of heads and onto paper in, hopefully, eloquently written research report.

Here’s for hoping our subjects don’t kick up a fuss 🙂 I know mine is wearing thin with my probing questions.

Reworking our wiring

Like most of you, I found this weeks readings to be very though provoking and insightful. Not only in a linguistics sense but also in human interactivity with the world. Without being too existential, the key idea that I gained from this weeks readings is that perhaps as a society, we have become lazy and rely on the sign to dictate our thinking. We see this so much in the way advertising has infiltrated our lives, no longer do we have to have all three systems of relation in the one ad to understand what is the ad purpose. Nowadays we will just see one of the 3 and understand subconsciously what is being presented to us.

Think of the way that language has evolved. MacDonalds is a universal empire, however we have uniquely taken it’s name and evolved it into our conversational repertoire    – Maccas, MD’s, etc. This is a clear indication of Volosinov’s propositions, particularly that of signs being adaptable and changeable. This video show’s how we are able to so intrinsically take in so much branding without recognising. Lauren might recognise the brands a bit more than us, but you get the gist of it!

However it’s even more dangerous than the infiltration of marketing and branding into our brains constantly. As seen in the Annabelle Lukin reading “Reporting War: grammar as covert operation”, the power of the masses is destabilised through the editing and control of the signified. By controlling the active voice of communication many journalists can dramatically impact transformation of the sign to the signified. The political meaning overlap between this reading and the original Signs and Meaning readings by Shirato+ Yell is seen through the censoring of content, and it’s something that is still very relevant in an age of internet censorship and how the government frames the key concerns of this generation – violence, pornography, fraud, lack of morality and a constant lack of privacy . It’s a bit scary to see how this impacts us so easily every day. But we have such limited control over any of it.

Happy pondering all.

Hiding in the web

This weeks readings talk about Media Audiences, and i think Alyson was right to ask, “Where are they?!” I know there may be a trend in my blogging focus on social media, but i think we can’t go past it. Again this week I feel that it is the clearest indication of how the diffused audiences exists within society, and how we find them. As discussed in the Couldry reading, these three different audience types have evolved over a number of years and decades to what we have now, Diffused Audiences. These highly developed and constantly changing audiences are something of what seems like a temporal and evasive group of identities.

Reality TV as outlined in Couldry’s reading, being almost voygeristic in it’s nature, is quickly becoming the most watch genre of television. And increasingly so, we are seeing shows that a produced in the vain of reality TV, the genres of television and entertainment are blurring. I have started watching “Modern Family” which is about to start on Australia TV very soon, however, like I have just mentioned, this series is taking characteristics of reality TV and imprinting them within a sitcom framework. It is a one camera comedy, it involved interview styled debriefs between scenes or stories.

My point comes back to this idea of reproducing reality. Being such a diffused audience, we are the ones creating reality through social media. Think of Kate’s Party again (albeit a hoax) it was ordinary people signing up for this online event that made the news. You didn’t have to be anyones friend, you just needed to be online and watching. However, don’t go off feeling too empowered just yet. Remember that we are still a slave to facebook, addicted to checking what’s happening, whether out of boredom or necessity we are still online everyday.

I posted a similar video towards the start of the semester, however this focuses much more on the social media aspect of what we are being exposed to, the corporate structures behind the online marketing.

Playing with the List

First of all, sorry that this is so late and that i wasn’t in the tute, i’ve been attacked by a vicious flu and am bed bound for another day or two. But on the bounce up, i’m taking the opportunity to catch up on my overdue blog love.

I’ll be focusing mostly on “Programming Your Own Channel”. I hold a particular interest in networks, mobility and the use of space and time, and this reading really fascinated me. I have a confession. I am a TV addict. Not in a “spending my whole night watching crap”, but every night before bed, often when i’m doing work, or just conducting life admin, i will be watching something. Whether it be Brothers and Sisters, Bondi Rescue, The Zoo, Royal Pains or How I Met your Mother, I appreciate the power and creativity of good TV. Unlike previous couch potatoisms being thrown around, i do not feel guilt, remorse or shame for this constant TV watching. Rather i put it down to a well planned, scheduled day. I can watch what i want, when i want, how i want and why i want to. And i have playlists to thank for that.

According to Rizzo – I am able to defy time, i am empowered by choice and i can personalise my viewing experience. Therefore life is dandy! But I don’t think this would work for everyone. My personalisation revolves around evolving drama series, sit coms, and reality based events of little “newsworthiness”. However, if it was my brother subscribing to my media habits, then things would be different. He would know the Sports scores before he could watch it, his friends would’ve already told him what happened in underbelly, and the news stories would be broadcast across various media platforms that what is record would be irrelevant. However, what if my brother was much more reliant on mobile media devices rather than tv and playlists, his network preference differs, but suits him and his tastes.

No matter the changing network choices, the flow remains a constant issue, we are both being advertised to constantly. Even when i’m watching catch up episodes on the channel 10 website i’m exposed to advertising in breaks of my shows which i have no control over. Much like my brother browsing the web on his phone, there is a constant flow of advertising and strategic messages customised for our network choices.

Either way, these networks are well constructed and thought through processes of which there is a constant understanding and deliberate architecture of flow. So, Rizzo, am i really empowered?

Remixing Content

As per usual, i found the readings this week really interesting. My focus for this blog will be on the first reading of Convergence. I think the reason that i enjoyed this reading so much was because of the way that it tracked the development of media uses and the functionality of the specific mediums over time.

Traditional media, for example the newspaper, has been slow to adapt to digitalisation or internetisation (i think that’s the most ridiculous term). It was only a month or two ago now that SMH online launched it’s iphone friendly mobile web page. It appears to me that more often than not, these traditional media structures are taking too long to respond to convergent media that they are loosing a cutting edge advantage that other sources are taking, such a gaming.

It is understandable that traditional media has higher overheads than consumer created content and thus they must diversify their product values. However, with such big budgets behind these tycoons, it seems disappoint that there isn’t more a response to these convergent media sources. Many of the great convergent media examples today came about through small budget (if budget at all) ideas, for example, facebook, google, etc.

My argument here is that perhaps this disintermediation will be a good thing for traditional media responding to convergent change. Change is happening within these convergent sources likewise through the way we use content. As touched on in the reading, content, creation and copyright are issues facing institutionalised media businesses. I came across the idea of Remixing – this is the notion that enough content is out there that we feel we need not create more, but use, essentially recycling the material creating something original.

Here is a website with more info if you’re keen to check it out, it also has some great stats and facts about the content production in America.

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults/Part-3/6-Content-Creation.aspx?r=1

No Place for Space

Circumventing the communicative limitations of the classroom. That statement from Mizuko Ito sums up a lot of what i feel that mobile technology is moving towards. We are very much a generation born and bred into mobile advancement. Much like Lauren, i can always remember technology changing, upgrading, getting smaller, more difficult to understand for my parents and easier for me to understand.

I loved the video Lauren, I think it’s very funny and an accurate depiction the arrogance that new technology brings. The more we put onto our phones (maps, music, books and all the rest) the more we think we have control over our media use. But is that necessarily the same or are we just conditioned by the media that has surrounded and been tailored to our “every need”? We think we are able to “circumvent the communicative limitations” that life presents, but are we just creating another limitation? I think the research conducted in Ito’s case is very interesting when thinking about this.

Don’t get me wrong, i love me some technology, i love my iphone –  all the apps, all the ease of an integrated calendar, mail, you name it, it does it! But sometimes this compartmentalised structure of space gets a bit confusing, i forget where i wrote down my shopping list on my phone, i forget how my phone categorises my groups of contacts, and i never remember to update my music. And then i just take out my favourite Kikki K diary and write down my weeks activities again. Am I blemish on the name of Gen Y?

I think not.

I don’t like being on constant contact with people, some people are an exception of course, such as my boyfriend. I do favour text messaging over calling in the majority of cases, however, sometimes a call is just need and i will never shy away from that opportunity. I don’t think it’s healthy to be having a constant “co-presence” of private communication with someone as Ito describes most Japanese youth of having.

My only experience of this, was dating a boy from Port Macquarie in year 9. Phone calls were the only form of relating to each other, as we only physically saw each other once a month, if that. It became so obsessive that i would be in tears if i missed his call because my parents wouldn’t let him call during dinner. We were in constant conversation and texting, calling. But what was at the heart of these conversations? How much i loved him? What we were going to achieve in life? Plllleeeeeaasssseee, most the text messages consisted of “I had a really boring english class” or “Mum packed me a peanut butter sandwich again, doesn’t she know i’m allergic?!”. Phone conversations consisted of, “what did you do today?” “Oh i had english.. it was so…” “…boring? I know you told me” *Silence*. True love was shattered when the phone bill came. $1400 in calls over a month. And what to show for it? A texting speed that would blow your mind, countless love letters, and a boyfriend who’s face was a forgettable memory.

I’m no so convinced that this new space of private text communication is really the way forward for people relating in society in a constant way. There has to be a balance of space. I cant stand another big phone bill, please, coffee is cheaper!

Alter-Universe

Hi all,

Well, let’s start at the very beginning (as one Julie Andrews would teach us). The Shaun Moores reading for me didn’t really bring forward any major new concepts that we haven’t already touched on in other topics. Domestication was a strong theme intertwined in this “Space” reading. However i found his key argument very engaging – applied more generally in the annalysis of those electronic media, such as Internet, telephone, which share with radio and television a capacity for the virtual instantaneous transmission of information across sometimes vast spatial distances. Although this is a very simplified explanation of what he elaborates on I felt it captured exactly what the key concepts were. The three account, sited by Scannell, of doubling of place were the centre pieces of this reading –

1. Public events and the interruption of routine
2. The Internet as part of everyday life
3. Two ‘theres’ in mobile phone use

I felt that all three subheadings related strongly back to last weeks topic of Time and in particular our Frequencies reading. Particularly in the first two topics the idea of interrupted routine for media consumption (chatting on the internet, or watching an important event on television) seemed key to what was being put forward by Moore. The final subheading seemed directly linked to the domestication concepts we discussed in the first week – the idea of the private existing in the public world. The idea of space i supposed was an overriding factor that seemed very basic, in terms of the fact that we live in a spider-web of connections all across the world in all forms of communication. It is inevitable that through these connections we can co-consume different media across the world.

These are the key ideas i have picked up from this weeks reading. Have i totally missed the point or did everyone else find it repetitive? I also really enjoyed the second reading, but thought I would wait to see what everyone else blogs about it and just join in on the commenting forums.

Time after Time

Hi all!

Well it seems that the common theme this week is time! I will be referring mostly to the “Frequency of Public Writing” article by Jenkins and Thorburn. I found this a much easier reading to understand, simply because of the terminology and style. The key ideas around this reading came about from time, it was interesting to note the deconstruction of tradition news time functions as new media (twitter, the internet, etc) have created access to such information instantly! This is seen as he states,“In news, the frequencies of production and consumption are designed to match that of publication.” I struggled to see the key argument but rather saw the reading as a holistic discussion of  the key concepts. The key concepts and themes introduced by Jenkins and Thorburn are;

• Time (frequency – before the event, high frequency, mid-frequency, low-frequency)
• Space (the public sphere, concrete spatiality of the city)
• Citizenship (The role of democracy, national identity [or lack there of], soverignty
• Public Writing (from stone inscriptions to blogs)
• New technologies (“Hunters” and “Gatherers”)

Obviously these all intertwine, but for simplifications purpose, these are the five I picked out as most important and vital to his core discussion. I would like to pick up on just a few key points that particularly interested me out of these concepts.

Firstly is the new technologies discussion, Jenkins & Thorburn state “There might even be an argument to suggest that new technologies are less ‘revolutionary’ in their uses than mature ones. It is necessary for a culture of epoch to become familiar enough with a medium to be able to break the rule with it before it can be used for seditious, incendiary, or reformist work.” I have to disagree with this – ever since the get-go the internet has been used to circulate radical information. New Technology is created for radical purposes, and then are filtered down through society for ‘appropriate uses’, look at the satellite imaging now used on google maps – our government have used this technology for years before it was released for public use.

Also another example is the use of Twitter. I read this article a few weeks ago and it was such a strong example of how new technologies are being used for what are seen in society as ‘radical’ purposes. This is the story of a woman who tweeted her abortion process in order to “demystify abortion”. Here’s a news story if you feel like a read, http://www.newsweek.com/id/234382

Claudia 🙂

To the virtual home –

Hi all,

I’ve really enjoyed reading all your responses! And i have to admit to agreeing with what a lot of you have said. But over all i found Silverstones reading very confusing and i’ve really appreciated your comments.

Now i understand these readings are about the theories, but i’m not the biggest fan of theory without application. Domestication is seen in social media as Silverstone states it’s integration of technology in every day life. New media stretches the boundaries of the home, as Stuart outlined, it’s about the virtual home these days rather than the brick structure. And this was an appropriate video to see that, just the sheer statistics of what we face.

Domestication can seem like a far off theory as to how the world acts and how we should be integrating our lives, but I find it interesting having the contrasting reading of Michael’s example of over stepping the mark with couch potatoism! Another – slightly more entertaining view of this couch potato is this video –

I find it interesting that Michael hints towards this guilt we feel when watching TV for too long, or in the middle of the day, etc. Does this hint towards the control and the tension that will always exist (as suggested by Silverstone) between media and humans? We don’t want to feel subject to media sources. However Scott mentioned that invention comes from the need to simplify, unmet needs and technological determinism. Technological determinism was dealt with in the readings in much detail, however the unmet needs and simplification tie in well with this guilt/reliance/addiction cycle. I’ll leave you with this last video –

What’s funny is that it’s an ad for sony – talk about the domestication of technology!

Enjoy 🙂

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!