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

Engaging Media - Week Eleven

This week's reading...

Blogs of war: weblogs as news - Melissa Wall

Blogs - "a new form of journalism...offering news that features a narrative style characterised by personalisation and an emphasis on non-instituational status; audience participation in content creation; and story forms that are fragmented and inter-dependent with other websites" Everyday people become creators, producers and distributors of their own media.

Blogs tie in with the concept of citizen journalism - the idea that everyday citizens can perform the role of journalist, particularly in the digital world.

Blogs highlight the participatory media culture that currently exists which is "characterised by decentralisation and powered by technological changes".

What is 'news'? Essentially news is "what is on society's mind". Throughout the 1970s and 80s media researchers started to propose the view that "news was not a mirror of reality but a manufactured cultural product".

New Journalism - A style developed in the 1960s that relied heavily on the characteristics of fiction - character, scene and dialogue. It abandons the concepts of objectivity and detachment.

Media Ownership - Current legislation favours foreign ownership, cross-media ownership and an intense concentration of media ownership that undermines the public's access to information that is unbiased, broad in coverage and able to be accessed at little or no cost. Information is subject to increasing commodification and as such, serious journalism and news takes a back seat to entertainment and sensationalism.

Blogs are a response to this, the ultimate DIY media product that combines the roles of consumer and producer. They offer an alternative to traditional media that views "audiences as customers who passively receive their product".

Citizen Journalism

PRESSthink -
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2008/07/14/a_most_useful_d.html

A useful blog created by Jay Rosen that examines journalism and the need to prevent the absorbtion of the press into the mass media. Rosen suggests that "the press has become the ghost in the democracy machine" and lobbys against the commercialisation of journalism.

I have found his views on citizen journalism particularly interesting. Rosen defines this conecpt as "When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform many others of a newsworthy event, that’s citizen journalism.”

Did You Know 4.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ILQrUrEWe8

Excellent YouTube clip on the topic of convergence, the explosion of online media and Web 2.0 technologies. Produced to promote the third annual Media Convergence Forum in New York later this month.

Deuze and Media Theory

Deuzeblog - http://deuze.blogspot.com/

Mark Deuze is an academic at Indiana University with key interests in journalism and new media, specifically the cultural and technical convergence of media culture and the creative industries.

His blog is well worth reading and I am finding his paper regarding convergence culture in the creative industries very useful for my major essay.

Digital Journalism

Following on from week nine's reading, here is a link to another article of interest by Christopher Harper - Doing it all - covers the topic of digital journalism and the resources, or lack thereof, that media companies devote to online versions of their newspapers.
http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=398

Machinima

Found an interesting interview with some of the technical crew from South Park regarding a machinima inspired episode invloving the MMOG World of Warcraft.

"Make Love, Not Warcraft" - http://www.machinima.com/article/view&id=459

Engaging Media - Week Nine

Reading for this week...

Journalism in a Digital Age - Christopher Harper

The media plays a specific role in ‘agenda setting’ in so far as having the power to “emphasize specific events, ideas and social values”. The media also deliberately “frames” the news so as to be interpreted in specific ways by the public.

Harper does not see the internet / www as having the same power to “set the agenda” largely because the audience is too small and the broadcasters that own the websites are still setting the agenda.

Online journalism is altering the traditional role of the journalist. Firstly by placing far more power in the hands of the reader and secondly through allowing the journalist access to a wide variety of new technology to tell their story e.g. audio and video.

Online journalism audience is increasing but is still quite small compared to other forms of news media. There is a trend for users to use the web for quick snippets of news and headline stories.

Clear division in internet usage based on age - older users more interested in following the news, particularly on a daily basis.

According to Michael Kolowich (http://www.newsedge.com/), people are turning to online services for several key reasons:
1. News consumers want filtering
2. The ability to search for news is important
3. Browsing
4. Communing

Journalists divided into three groups:
1. Benevolent revolutionaries - enthusiastic about new technologies
2. Nervous traditionalists - the opposite of the above
3. Serene separatists - do not fear new technology as they do not see it having a great impact upon their profession

As classified advertising becomes increasingly online-based as opposed to print-based, some traditional printed newspapers will likely go out of business. This revenue is crucial for a newspaper’s survival.

Related Links...

Murdoch to charge for online news - http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/not-happy-rupert-readers-say-they-wont-pay-for-online-news-20090807-eco0.html

Fairfax losses and plans to form consortium to charge for online news - http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,,25975971-643,00.html

Some advice to Fairfax from Crikey - http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/08/24/crikey-says-70/

Engaging Media - Week Eight

Reading for this week...



Playing on the digital commons: collectivities, capital and contestation in video game culture - Sarah Colman and Nick Dyer-Witheford

Examines the concept of a media commons and how that operates against a global backdrop of information capitalism.

Commons - “resources that all in a specified community may use, but none can own”. Contrasts directly with a commodity and has no profit agenda.

Commons concept is popular with those that buck against the trend of capitalism and corporate globalisation and has grown alongside the growth of new media.

Anti-piracy laws are breeding new resistance from those who resent the financial cost and cost to system performance that anti-copying technology brings.

Element of “unavoidable co-existence” between game pirates and the game industry.

Modding - generating new forms of game production and expanding current games, builds on the concept of hacking and “digital tinkering”. Gained popularity in the 1990s. Excellent example is the adaptation of Half- Life to create Counter-Strike. Mods are circulated free of charge and are welcome to some extent by the game industry as they generate publicity.

Machinima - adapting games to create movies, a concept that is developing rapidly as computer hardware and software becomes increasingly sophisticated.

Both modding and machinima “represent a return of the digital ‘DIY’ practices at the root of game culture” and serve to re-purpose games for collective use.

MMOGS - Massively-Multiplayer Online Games. Follow on from MUDS (Multi-User Domains) and essentially create a synthetic game world in which thousands can interact. MMOGS represent a shift from commons to commodity and usually entail both initial outlay and ongoing expense for the player e.g. World of Warcraft nets its developer Blizzard $1.5 billion annually. MMOGS have their own behaviour patterns and social rules and largely fail or succeed based on the vibrancy of the player community. Players may not own them, but the direction of MMOGS is very much determined by the consumer.

MMOGS have led to practice of virtual trading, in which useful objects within the game are traded in real life for actual currency. “Virtual trading shows how paradoxically intertwined commons and commodities have become”.

We live in an era of multi-dimensional media in which the roles of creator and consumer are blurred. This is apparent in the world of digital game play, where the defining feature is interactivity and the consumer very much shapes the game and determines its success.

Remediation Project - Reflective Essay

My essay outline is basically to discuss the process and aim of my remediation, how changing the text from a TV series to a series of newspaper articles altered the roles of the different media 'actors' that I had identified in assignment one and how the finished product impacted upon the meaning of the text and its reception.

I write about some of the differences between the two mediums of television and newspaper and make reference to McLuhan's concept of "hot" and "cool" media and the challenge of adapting a product made for a medium that is highly collaborative, multi-layered and visceral and successfully remediating it into a medium that is quite singular, independent and focused on information needs rather than entertainment needs.

Remediation Project

Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media

Published in 1964, McLuhan's well-known study of media theory provides some useful information for my remediation project. Specifically, McLuhan's concept of hot and cool media.

Television is a "cool" medium, requiring greater user participation. The viewer must actively involve all their senses for viewing television is a highly sensory experience. Print media, including newspapers, are what McLuhan referred to as a "hot" medium. Newspapers may offer the user large amounts of information, but at a low sensory level with less user participation required.

One of the major challenges in my remediation was to try and foster a high level of sustained involvement in a medium that is primarily passive. How to adapt a television series into a series of newspaper articles and still maintain user interest? I tried to achieve this by adapting the major storylines from the series that would have an element of sensation and would grab the attention of the reader. I would try to capture with words what the television series would capture with graphic images, dialogue and music.

Engaging Media - Week Seven

Reading for this week...
Alternate reality gaming and the convergence culture: The case of Alias
Henrik Ornebring



Alternate reality gaming (ARGs) - "a form of internet-based mystery game in which participants are immersed in a fictional world and engage in collective problem-solving". There is a group mentaility to this type of gaming with the puzzle being impossible to solve through solo effort.

ARGs are becoming quite common and started with The Beast released in 2001 to coincide with the release of the film A.I. In this article Ornebring focuses on the game associated with the TV series Alias, of which there have been three.

ARGs are an excellent example of cross-media promotion or media convergence - the game feeds off the TV show/film which then also may feed off the success of the game.

Jenkins highlights The Matrix as signalling a shift to more active participation. Old Hollywood relied on redundancy and did not challenge the viewer. New Hollywood requires a greater attention span from the viewer and even the need for the viewer to do research.

Ornebring argues that convergence culture doesn't necessarily dissolve boundaries between media but "creates new opportunities to market a specific text or set of texts...through other texts".

ARGs blur the boundaries between the roles of producer and consumer, creating the prosumer and a more participatory culture.

Ornebring is however, critical of the little attention given to ARGs as marketing tools and examples of viral marketing or buzz marketing. Those critical of ARGs may see them not as new opportunities for interactivity but just as marketing tools to build a brand.

Fan-cultural production - fan fiction, fan videos etc, otherwise seen as kind of "cultural labour". It is highly active and highly engaged consumer culture.

Alias ARGs are examples of both corporate convergence and grassroots convergence as the first two games were prodcued by the corporate media and the other example was produced by fans.

There are differences between the industry-prodcued and fan-produced Alias ARGs, for example the former gave no additional backstory whereas the latter focused strongly on backstory. However, Ornebring believes that "despite their differences, commercial and non-commercial ARGs based on existing media properties still follow a similar logic of fan consumption". They perform the same cultural function - "extending the narrative of an existing media property in ways that conform to corporate goals of marketing and brand-building
as well as fan audiences’ goals of pleasurable consumption."

Engaging Media - Week Six

Readings for this week...
Recovering Fair Use - Steve Collins
Boulevard of Broken Songs - Em McEvan

Well I’ve been discovering the world of mash-ups since reading the Boulevard of Broken Songs and can see how people get sucked into spending large amounts of time cruising YouTube.

I would agree with the comment that “mash-up artists take a common popular culture and appropriate it for their own desires and creative impulses” and this really appeals to me. I would also highlight how mash-ups are quite often used for satirical purposes or as a social commentary tool. My brother-in-law drew my attention to the enormous number of mash-ups on YouTube based around the 2004 German film Downfall, a film about Adolf Hitler’s last days. There are a number of mash-ups that take this film as their basis and apply modern-day political events and characters including British PM Gordon Brown, US President Barack Obama and the European Elections. I particularly like one that takes a terrific scene from Downfall and re-writes the subtitles to portray Gordon Brown’s reaction to a disastrous election result in Glasgow - my brother-in-law is from Glasgow so he was very keen to show me this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4n--IXg6HY - Not for kids. Very bad language in this one.

I just really like the creative practice of combining different elements to produce something unexpected or something with a deeper commentary. I guess mash-ups are a perfect example of Web 2.0 technologies at work and the essential Web 2.0 philosophy of enhanced creativity and collaboration and the development of web-based communities and social networking tools.

I quite liked this blog that I found when I was doing a little more reading on the subject -
The Synthetic Librarian -http://syntheticlibrarian.com/2009/07/30/mashup-sharing-little-mashups-have-big-value-when-you-share-them-like-social-media

Obviously the subject ties in well with our other reading for the week Recovering Fair Use. Mash-ups are clearly a great example of prosumerism at work. Copyright and the concept of fair use have always been difficult areas but the rise of Web 2.0 and associated technologies are obviously taking the issue to a completely new level. The laws involving this sort of user-generated content must be complex and undoubtedly need to evolve to keep pace with the popularity of the technology. There has to be some protection but I tend to agree with the idea that Collins puts forward “that an overly strict copyright regime unbalanced by an equally prevalent fair use doctrine is dangerous to creativity, innovation, culture and democracy”.

Week 4 Activity - Example of a highly interactive media text

My example came to mind when I was hanging out with my kids today. They really enjoy watching a number of shows on the ABC and are often looking for other ways to interact with the shows and characters. With this in mind, some time back I visited the ABC Kids website, in particular the sub-site called The Playground. I think it’s a great example of taking one form of media, kids TV programs in this case, and developing so much more from it in a creative and educational online format that is highly interactive. Although I know there is obviously a promotional aspect to its creation.

I think it is particularly clever as it is quite sophisticated in style but also manages to cater very well to a young audience. Kids are encouraged to engage with their favourite programs and characters online by listening to audio books, playing board games, solving puzzles, downloading colouring-in sheets etc. I also really like the Playground Radio application that allows them to listen to their favourite kiddie tunes.

Older kids can move on to The Rollercoaster sub-site that includes similar interactive tools but also exposes them to some more sophisticated concepts such as blogging and creating podcasts.

For adults the website is a great interactive tool with program schedules and information and printable art & craft sheets to recreate the projects seen on the TV programs.

ABC Kids The Playground - http://www.abc.net.au/children/

ABC The Rollercoaster - http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/

Australian Children’s Transmedia Storytelling - case study of the ABC Kids website - http://childrenstransmedia.wikia.com/wiki/Case_study:_ABC_Kids_TV_online