The Last Word

Prior to embarking upon this course of study I feel that my personal use of media was quite passive and certainly my understanding of the production, distribution and consumption of media lacked depth and the critical understanding needed to fully engage with and manipulate media for my own purposes. Whilst I was fairly active in the pursuit of information, making use of a variety of media channels for my information consumption and entertainment purposes, I did not possess the critical skills to analyse the processes associated with media production and consumption. My media literacy skills needed sharpening.

What initially broadened my media horizons was the work of Henry Jenkins, in particular his thoughts on participatory culture and media convergence. This introduced me to the idea of a reciprocal flow of media and the power that the consumer has to shape media content, both in terms of manipulating and controlling the media that we consume and also assuming the role of producer and creating and remediating existing media for our own purposes. Participatory culture develops avenues for expression and active involvement in the media. New media technologies and the growing sophistication of the audience are facilitating a reshaping of the media landscape, allowing us to develop multiple channels of media and assume various roles in the process. Ultimately this has led to a blurring of the traditional roles of producer and consumer, introducing the concept of prosumerism. Prosumerism has been a fascinating concept to explore and I am particularly interested in the influence that Web 2.0 associated technologies have upon the production and consumption of media, arming the audience with the necessary tools to create their own media experiences or re-interpret those before them. This is of course an idea that was explored in some depth through the remediation task of assignment two.

The remediation task was by far my greatest learning experience of this unit. Prior to this I was unfamiliar with the concept of remediation and certainly didn’t possess the skills to critically analyse a media text with a view to exploring textual production. This process allowed me to question and explore my role as a media producer. Through this task I have gained insight into the process of adaptation and how this may alter a text’s purpose and reception. I have learnt that reception is difficult to gauge, being dependent upon a wide range of factors and subject to multiple readings. These were valuable insights gained throughout the remediation process.

In support of this task it was valuable to place my own remediation against the backdrop of readings for this unit including the process of creating mash-ups that was discussed by Em McEvan. Mash-ups are an excellent example of harnessing the Web 2.0 philosophies of enhanced creativity and collaboration to produce your own product. Colman and Dyer-Witheford’s discussion of video game culture and associated production and adaptation of computer games that occurs through modding and machinima was also particularly relevant. Both modding and machinima were creative media processes that I was relatively unfamiliar with prior to this unit. Both demonstrate participatory media culture in action and highlight how the sophisticated consumer explores the roles of production and distribution.

Ultimately the most beneficial aspect of this unit was developing an interest in the processes that influence media production and consumption and developing my own media literacy. I understand that we exist in a culture in which media underpins our everyday lives and that it is essential that we develop media literacy to empower ourselves in the face of dominant media culture. An understanding of media processes equips us to filter media, process it, manipulate it, remediate it and actively engage with it and this ultimately enables me to be more engaged with the media culture that I exist within.

Henry Jenkins

I have just been reading through my portfolio and have discovered that I never posted a link to one of my favourite websites i've discovered throughout the course of this unit.

http://www.henryjenkins.org/ - Confessions on an Aca-Fan: The official weblog of Henry Jenkins

It was reading Jenkins thoughts about participatory media and convergence culture that first got me thinking in a more critical way about media production and consumption. His blog is fantastic.

Engaging Media - Week Fourteen

This week's reading...

Mobility, Portability and Placelessness - Joseph Kupfer

Information, documentation and information are more portable than ever before. This portability facilitates an individual’s mobility to the extent that physical place is no longer relevant. As a result we are becoming so absorbed in our “electronically fabricated environment” that we risk becoming completely detached from our surroundings. Kupfer suggests that when this happens, we cease to inhabit our environment in any meaningful way, “over-reliance on virtual, electronic connections erode our connection to actual physical places”.

Kupfer suggests that the result is that we experience three dimensions of loss:
1. Loss of place - deprived of the aesthetic experiences that places provide
2. Loss of touch - with ourselves and others
3. Loss of sense of place

Electronic displacement has resulted from burgeoning use of electronic communications - email, mobile phones, blackberries, laptops, wireless internet connections. We are also disconnecting from physical places as our ability to perform an increasingly amount of tasks online grows - online banking, online shopping, online education and working from home. We are increasingly living our lives online.

Physical imagination is decreasing. That is that “aspect of imagination that is grounded in bodily and sensory vitality”. This occurs as we no longer have the need to visit physical places such as the library or school.

Isolation is becoming the norm as we interact online rather than interact directly in person with others. This is compounded by the fact that much of our time online is spent communing with ourselves or engaging in solitary activities. “Electronically produced experience is isolating” and we are experiencing an increasing loss of community.

Kupfer suggests that “the privatisation of space has undermined our sense of public place” and that portable electronic experiences have intensified this phenomenon.

Thoughts on Assignment 3

A sketch of Assignment 3...

• Analyse the role that media plays within our lives both personally and on a societal level
• Define and discuss the concepts of media culture and an information society
• Why is media literacy important and how can we become more media literate?
• Explore how media & information is produced, distributed and consumed
• Explore how the consumer is becoming far more engaged in the production process and is moving from a relatively passive role to a very active role in the distribution and production of media
• Discuss the blurring of the line between producer and consumer - prosumerism and convergence culture
• What factors are behind the trends towards prosumerism and convergence?
• How is a concentration of media ownership changing the media landscape and affecting traditional roles of production and consumption?
• How is the emerging participatory culture changing the media landscape and affecting traditional roles of production and consumption?

Engaging Media - Week Thirteen

This week's reading...

Friend me if you Facebook: Generation Y and performative surveillance -

E.J. Westlake

Facebook - “Facebook develops technologies that facilitate the spread of information through social networks allowing people to share information online the same way they do in the real world. This tension between specificity and generality, and local and global, affects the ways in which communities of users perform their identities, both in cyberspace and in the material world. It reflects the changing social landscape of the information age”.

Facebook was developed by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 as an online social network for Harvard students. It shifted to mainstream usage in 2006 and quickly became a social phenomenon. It differs from other social networking websites such as Facebook in its aim. MySpace has a focus on online creativity and is most commonly used for creative promotional purposes. Facebook is focused on social networking.

Contrary to popular belief, young people are not disengaged, but rather they are more connected than ever before. However this connection with society and the way in which young people build communities has experienced a shift into the virtual or online world. This connection is largely facilitated by online social networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Westlake refers to this as “the performance of self online”.

Facebook requires non-linear reading strategies. The user must choose the path and order of the text they read driven by “desire and cognitive processing style”. The experience is highly-participatory with the user contributing in many ways to the process.

Facebook has created its own language and own subculture e.g. “Do you Facebook” and “Why don’t you friend me?”

Some sociologists are concerned at how this intense level of virtual interaction may affect the face-to-face interaction skills of the younger generations. Will it shape generations of digital natives, replacing traditional modes of interaction? Many refute this, arguing that those who socialise online do not substitute it for other forms of interaction and indeed they interact on multiple levels using multiple media. Younger generations are in actuality more comfortable than other generations in interacting in a number of ways, be it online or face-to-face.

Controversy surrounds Facebook following the introduction of a Newsfeed function which many viewed as overly intrusive, raising concerns about the use of Facebook for surveillance e.g. “Stalkerbook”.

Charlie Brooker and The Guardian

With all this talk of online journalism I felt the need to mention that I have really been enjoying Charlie Brooker's column for The Guardian. His views on media culture are insightful and very amusing. My favourite recent columns include "There's too much stuff. We live in a stuff-a-lanche. It's time for a cultural diet" and "We watch them on the bus. At work. At play. We have been invaded by screens".

It further interests me that Brooker writes for the online version of The Guardian which I believe to be one of very few online newspapers worthy of reading.

It doesn't surprise me that at this year's British Press Awards Brooker was named Columnist of the Year - The judges rate his columns as "edgy, entertaining and wonderfully surreal, he has the explosive writing skills that can turn your thinking upside down. A definite destination read and a jewel of a column. Acerbic, nasty, spiteful, yet clearly in love with every subject he writes about at the same time. Must read stuff."

The Guardian was also named website of the year - "still a clear choice when you are asked which newspaper is making the most of all the online technologies at its disposal. From its podcasts to its interactive blogs and coverage of Obama it continues to lead the way. It remains the big daddy of newspaper websites. Others are getting better but it’s still the best – attracting as many as 30 million readers a month".

Good stuff.

it was named

Mash Up Blog

I came across an interesting blog this week while researching my final essay. Mash Up is a blog by Stephen Hutcheon hosted by Fairfax that covers a variety of topical digital media issues.

This week I read a great entry entitled "Google and the future of news". It deals primarily with the idea that the World Wide Web and explosion of online news websites has challeneged people's notions of how they consume news and that essentially as a growing number of us consume our news in a more participatory and highly-customised manner online, the traditional print media is facing extinction. It also discusses the idea that the days of free online news are over and instead we face an increasingly pay-for-view model of news consumption.

Mash Up Blog - http://blogs.smh.com.au/technology/mashup/

"Atomic answers for the newspaper of the future" - http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/06/10/1244313187327.html

"Q and A with Google's Marissa Mayer" - http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/marissa-mayer/2009/06/10/1244313190219.html