3.4 Who’s listening? Mass communication in a networked, mobile environment

Preparation

Read:   
Malpas, J. (2009). On the Non-autonomy of the Virtual. Convergence 15(2), 135-139. (Electronic databases)

Watch:
TED talk: Seth Godin on the tribes we lead

Seth Godin discusses the effect of the internet on mass advertising.

Learning Portfolio entry
1.    Summarise the main points in the readings noting your agreement and disagreement with the ideas and opinions of the author/speaker.
2.    Account for your own use of media technologies and make note of the costs and benefits.
3.    Brainstorm ideas about who gains and who loses in terms of contemporary communication media including costs and gains for the environment.

Discussion

Topic Themes / keywords: 
ICT ownership; One to many and many to many communications; Communicating with media producers, communicating with audiences?

learning goals:
Thinking about how institutions and infrastructure order ICTs

Group work:

• Map your personal use of communications technologies for one average day.
• In groups, assess the relative ‘value’ of these communications to users and providers.

Discussion Questions:

• How are techs and companies shaping our communication and use of mobile devices?
• What does it mean that they are converging with other forms of mobile media?

3.3 Talk to me! Chatting/texting/twittering at each other

In preparation for this unit we read E.J Westlake (2008). Friend me if you Facebook: Generation Y and performative surveillance.  The Drama Review 52(4), 21-40.  (Electronic databases)

 on Twitter

Learning Portfolio entry
1. Summarise the main points in the readings noting your agreement and disagreement with the ideas and opinions of the author/speaker.
2. Reflect on your own use of messaging, facebook, and twitter concerns or fears you may have and economic opportunities you might recognise.

Our discussion topic this week was privacy, participation and networks

Our learning objectives were to understand the role of media in social communication and consider concepts of privacy and control in new media/ communication environment
This article discusses the social networking tool Facebook and how people perform themselves through digital media.

We also watched the video presentation: TED talk – Evan Williams

Weekly discussion questions:

• Discuss kinds of communication media used – what is old what is new – what is the balance? Why? What are the benefits of each type?
• How has the concept of privacy shifted in terms of media subjects and media users?
• What happens when communication and other forms of media merge?

3.2 Networks of information: blogging, citizen journalism & collective intelligence

In preparation for this week we read   Melissa Wall, (2005). Blogs of war: weblogs as news. Journalism 6 (2), 153-72. (Electronic databases)

Wall analyses the cultural conditions that gave rise to blogging, situates it with regard to “old media” and then analyses the ways in which blogs reconfigure journalistic discourse, specifically in relation to blog coverage of the Iraq war. 

Gordon, J. (2007). The mobile phone and the public sphere: mobile phone usage in three critical situations. Convergence 13(3), 307-319. (electronic databases)

Watch:   
TED talk – Jimmy Wales on the creation of Wikipedia

Learning Portfolio entry:
1.    Summarise the main points in the readings noting your agreement and disagreement with the ideas and opinions of the author/speaker.
2.    Make note of the blogs you visit and the features of this blogs that attract you

Discussion
Topic Themes / keywords: 
participatory culture, ethics, credibility

learning goals:
Thinking about how notions of credibility, editorship, control and open source operate in the new media scape.

Group work:

• Share examples of your favoured sites for news / information.
• Discuss how credible you find it – do you cross check with other sources? Why?
• Look at de-identified articles on same topic from different sources and decide which are professionally edited, which are more credible etc

Discussion Questions:

• What do new forms of information / journalism such as Indymedia, citizen journalism / blogging mean for traditional news media?
• Is this the death of the editor?
• If so how important is this for the credibility of the new/ information we source?
• What do we mean by collective intelligence?
• What are the risks to the blogger?

3.1 Inform me! news media

In preparation of this unit we read Christopher Harper (2003). Journalism in a digital age. In H. Jenkins  & D. Thorburn (Eds), Democracy and New Media (pp. 271-280). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
(In E-reserve)


This paper examines how journalistic practices have changed with the internet.  It is from 2003, takes a good look at “old media” journalism and continuity in the present.

We were then asked to explore online mainstream and alternative news sites including:
· Crikey: http://www.crikey.com.au/
· Perth Indy Media: http://perth.indymedia.org/
· The West Australian: http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/
· The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
· Salon: http://www.salon.com/


For our Learning Portfolio entry
1. Summarise the main points in the readings noting your agreement and disagreement with the ideas and opinions of the author/speaker.
2. Compare the form and content of the on-line news sites you visit with traditional newspapers.


Our discussion topic for this week included ethics, credibility and editorial control


We are asked to consider changes in ethics and credibility in shift from old to new forms of informational media


Discussion Questions:
· Are traditional forms of informational media dying? What are their equivalents?


· Are they in competition and if not why?


· What happens to editorial control, credibility and ethics in the new media forms of information presented in wikipedia, blogs?

2.5 All the world’s a game: virtual worlds, interactivity, convergence

In preparation for this unit we read Ornebring, H. (2007). Alternate Reality Gaming and convergence culture: The case of Alias. International Journal of Cultural Studies 10(4), 445-462. (electronic databases) and Sarah Colman and Nick Dyer-Witheford (2007). Playing on the digital commons: collectivities, capital and contestation in videogame culture.  Media, Culture and Society 29 (6), 934-953.

Learning Portfolio entry
1. Summarise the main points in the readings noting your agreement and disagreement with the ideas and opinions of the author/speaker.
2. Outline your plan for your remediation that identifies the form, proposed content, technological tools and intended audience of your remediation project.

These articles offered a concise and thorough discussion about gaming, fan production and how this works for and against corporations. 

Our discussion topics were:  Ethics; ownership & economics.Our learning objectives were to recognise the changes in audience, cultures & production that have driven the rise of games in relation to other media

Discussion Questions:

• What forms of participatory culture available in games? Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world.
• Consider the role of fantasy in game play, and the relationship between virtual and non-virtual worlds, What constraints are there?
• fantasy and creativity are a large part of both virtual and non-virtual worlds, although the the virtual player culture exists where games circulate for free and content is shaped by voluntary collectives and virtual worlds depend on creativity of their player populations.Since MMORPGs have many elements in common, and these cross game elements are experienced by many varied users and create a common virtual game culture among all players, leading to players expectations, for example "buffing" or "nerfing", which describe the strengthening or weakening, respectively, of particular game elements and in-game effects that temporarily enhance performance.
• How is the economic model of games different from other media? Commodification of digital networks and 'multidimensional' media model allows the examination of producers as consumers
• How is user production in games different from other media? the fastest way to progress was simply by killing the same monsters over and over again, and as this is still common in the genre, all MMORPG players know the process as "grinding", or "camping" (sitting at a monster's spawn point in order to attack it as soon as it respawns). The importance of grinding in MMORPGs, and how much "fun" it contributes to the experience, is constantly debated. Many MMORPGs have taken steps to eliminate or reduce grinding. For example, in Tibia a monster doesn't respawn if a player is near its spawn point. But few such attempts have met with success, and it is generally accepted by players and developers alike that some amount of 'grind' is required to maintain a stable playing experience.

2.4 Play with me!: Having fun with media

In preparation for this unit we read  Helen Thornton, (2009). Claiming a stake in the videogame: what grown-ups say to rationalise and normalise gaming. Convergence 15 (2), 135-139. (electronic databases)

Jenkins, H. (2006). The War between effects and meaning: Rethinking the video game debate. In D. Buckingham & R. Willett (Eds.), Digital Generations: Children, Young People, and New Media (pp 19-31). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. (E-reserve)
We then had to select a game to play:

• Dolphin Olympics   OR
• Plants vs Zombies  (For Mac /  For PC) (You can download a free trial for one hour’s play. Be warned - this is very silly but very addictive!)

I found the  Thornton reading a very thought provoking analysis on gaming and of particular interest was the discussion of pleasure and personal and subjective desires within the discourse of gamers and how these complex articulations of pleasure are entwined in issues of power, gender, class and context of gamers.

As for Jenkins, the quote that had the biggest impact for me was “Meanings emerge through an active process of interpretation - they reflect our conscious engagement, they can be articulated into words, and they can be critically examined”. And the further summary that “New meanings take shape around what we already know and what we already think, and thus each player will come away from a game with a different experience and interpretation.” This made me examine my own response to video games and my repulsion of games as time wasting and largely useless entertainment.

2.3 Entertaining the world: using media across cultural boundaries

In preperation for this unit we were asked to read:
Jenkins, H (2006). Pop cosmospolitanism: Mapping cultural flows in an age of media convergence. In H. Jenkins, Fans, bloggers and gamers: exploring participatory culture (pp 152-172). New York: New York University Press. (e-reserve)

Srinivasan, R (2006). Indigenous, ethnic and cultural articulations of new media. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(4), 497-518. (electronic databases)
For our Learning portfolio entry
1.    Summarise the main points from the readings;
2.    Identify media texts from other cultures that you enjoy. Consider whether your use of these texts makes you a “pop cosmopolitan”.
The media text that I selected for my learning portfolio entry in relation to cross cultural boundaries is the short animation series “Minuscule” by the French creators Thomas Szabo and Helene Giraud. The animation is produced in France; it uses the sounds of the insects, music and simple country settings that share universal appeal and understanding.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MleXPVxLGX0

I think this clever French animation series appeal is through the use of quirky animated insects combined with high quality cinematic footage to create a common shared humor; viewing the human world from the perspective of an insect. The production quality is excellent and the characters are endearing and have a gentle philosophical message to not take the world too seriously.

When I consider my understanding of this topic after completing the readings / tasks and activities for this topic, I realized that my views have changed and I can now see the capacity of new media technologies to promote and encourage cultural practices and also to erase cultural difference, allowing the removal of language and geographic barriers that impair cross cultural exchange as explored in the lecture by Dr Jayaprakesh, examining the global similarities of young people how this could be seen to be reinforcing their beliefs and homogenize linguistic practices, while also exploring and interrelationship of intercultural influences.

2.2 Don’t touch that! Copyright, ownership and institutional control

The key concepts for discussion topics are Political /economic contexts – copyright, privacy, ownership; ethics

To begin our week we did a critical reading Steve Collins, (2008). Recovering fair use, M/C Media Culture 11 (6).

This article about fair use and copyright and provides an excellent summary of the legal history of the term, and its applicability to digital media through specific cases. 

A cleverly edited video collection of ‘Disney’ movies to explain the concept of “Copy Rights” and “Fair Use”, which allows copyrights to be broken for the purposes of teaching, News reporting, parody and critical comment, based on the nature of the work, amount of the work borrowed and the commercial impact to the copyright holder.

Ted conferences presentation by Harvard professor Larry Lessig

http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

Where Lessig promotes the argument that the impact of technologies and regulation on creative experimentation and expression will mean for the youth of the future vocal cords (of creativity) will be eliminated by evolution.

John Philip Sousa said that  "These Talking Machines are going to ruin artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy, in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day, or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal chord left,".

2.1 Entertain Me! Who makes your entertainment? Institutions, audiences & participatory culture

The key concepts for discussion topics are Media institutions; fans & audiences; participation and remediation; culture jamming

To begin our week we did a critical reading Cucco, M. (2009). “The promise is great: the blockbuster and the Hollywood economy”. Media, Culture and Society, 31(2), 215-230

We then watched a series on fan vidding produced by the Organization for Transformative Works. http://transformativeworks.org/

The viding documentary series was very insightful, as it gave an understanding of the variety people and reasons/passions that drive fans to produce these music video clips.

The media that I identified for discussion was a viding construction of television footage from the hit 1970’s television series “The Bionic Woman” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kFa58BJWrA

The vid was uploaded by http://www.youtube.com/user/BenHallert onto youtube 30 December 2010 and edited to an electro pop song by Swedish musician ‘Robyn’. The song lyrics are self descriptive and refer to a gynoid (fembot) describing herself, as ‘fresh out the box’ and the ‘latest model’ with her system in ‘mint condition’. The accompanying imagery is from the 1970's hit show, in which the 'febot's' were a frightening evil nemesis to the 'Bionic Woman'.

The socially dated 1970's television series plot was that the strikingly beautiful robots (fembots), designed and operated by an evil male genius, were to replace strategically placed women in key administrative support roles and take over control of the American government. It was the role of the 'Bionic Woman to discover and foil the plot (as the eerily life like robots could only be detected by her bionic hearing).

The song lyrics referring to the fembots strength and perfection and also to her search for a perfect mate to ‘plug her in and flip some switches’ she also reveals a longing and vulnerability as the robot states she has feelings as well (the overall effect is to sexualise the characters as in the 2004 movie 'The Stepford Wives').
The songwriter Robyn wrote the song about herself turning 30 and contemplating children, and considers the song her playing around with the concept of being a woman, and what it means to physically be able to carry children.  

1.2 The Medium is the Message? When the media converge

The key topic themes for this module are: Participatory Culture, Moral Panics & Ethics

We are asked to do a critical reading of Lessig, L. (2006). Four puzzles from cyber space. In L. Lessig Code version 2.0 (pp 9-30). New York: Basic Books.

The article by Lessig explores the Internet as 'Cyberspace' as opposed to “Yellow-Pages-on-steroids” as a place to develop and illustrate  four themes and examples relating to 'regulability', 'regulation by code', 'latent ambiguity' and 'competing sovereigns'

Our next task was to watch a five-minute video by Niko Pereira featuring MIT professor and author of 'Convergence Culture - Where Old and New Media Collide' (2006) Henry Jenkins,  in the video Jenkins discusses Participatory Culture' and how the media landscape is changing http://cinematech.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-video-w-henry-jenkins-on.html

In this past paced video rich in contextual media examples Jenkins states that”People can tell their own stories in powerful new ways", he discusses how conventional spectatorial media is giving way to a participatory culture. I think the video was a provocative and optimistic look at American culture.

Fembots have feelings too

Fantasitc bit of fan remixing from 1970s Television Show ,The Bionic Woman, Fembots

Steve & Super

Remediation example of 1970's television show "Bionic Woman"

1.1 - INTRODUCTION: How does the media engage you?

Our first discussion topic asks that we watch the Youtube clip Did You Know 4.0 and reflect up how we engage with the media, by examining our four main uses of media:

1. Entertainment: Youtube (harry77), Ebay (power seller), Television, Radio, newspaper, Notebook magazine (sadly ended publication last year – not economically viable)
2. Play: Second Life, ifish Pond (App)
3. Information: ABC, The Age, diggo, Google Maps, Wikipedia, Google Reader, Pocket Weather,
4. Social: Facebook, Skype, Blogger, Twitter, Delicious, LinkedIn, SMS, Email

As I started compiling this list it occurred to me that a number of these media seem to serve cross purposes for me, the entertainment and social are intersecting, friendships lead to shared information and shared information leads to friendships.

I still retain a bit of my old media, I still get my weekend printed newspaper (The Age)  but have noticed a dramatic change in the size of the paper especially the Saturday edition and quality of content, seems to be a lot more advertising and less in-depth researched journalism. The paper in recent years has cut its pricing twice and now gives me the Thursday and Friday edition at no additional cost. (I don’t have the heart to break up with them; they are trying so hard to keep me!)

I have never been much of a game player, but we do have a PS2 and Wii (kids), I have never participated much in online game but had a brief fascination with the virtual world opportunities offered by gaming sites such as Second Life.

I have an iPhone with a number of applications that allow me to have media sources available in remote locations and I can see this is creating an information divide between my friends and family, depending on how computer/technology literate they are but also a financial divide, as not everyone can afford to have broadband and 3G networks (I totally take it for granted in my life now).