Week 13

This week we briefly talked about advertising and mobile media.

We answered the following questions,

How much do you spend on communications?

I only usually use my phone for text/calls and facebook n my laptop.

Time; I usually am on facebook for about 20 minutes every day and maybe spend 10 minutes texting or phoning. This is all on average.

Power; Power of keeping my laptop and phone charged up is all.

Money; ~$20 a month for internet but facebook is a tiny portion of that, same goes for phone which would be another $20/month probably.

How does technology shape communication?

Gives you more choice in what you can do. Everything becomes simpler, easier.

How do companies shape communication?

Unfortunately companies like to use communications technologies to advertise so communications is quickly becoming a very commercial technology.

The iPhone is a good example, Apple has completely revolutionized the way people think about mobiles because it becomes so much more than that.

Week 12

Firstly in this tut we were asked to construct a news story from twitter posts about Bangkok. 

It’s bloody hard!

Then we asked the question; what is lost when you try to construct a story out of twatter, sorry, twitter posts.

I answered any form of coherency ( I don’t understand twitter posts much) and a proper story.

However what is gained is instant broadcasts that can literal by by the minute and also perspectives from different people.

It is a good example of the internet allowing practically anyone with access to it the ability to participate with news telling.

This week the readings were about facebook so of course everyone read it.

•          Facebook is addictive.
•          It makes stalking easy. Privacy is a concern. It easily enables sharing of personal information.
•          It is used heavily as a promotional tool, like advertising stuff.
•          And as a way to promote yourself.
•          Although it can be seen as a distraction from ACTUAL social interaction it can be seen as a promotion to actual social interaction. Like those EVENT things.
•          It originated in education.

Facebook really asks the question, how has privacy shifted over the last decade or so?

I could answer that due to the ability to share information with the world easily it has made our lives a lot less private and unfortunately many people are naive about it.

We also spoke briefly about the benefits of different communications.

I think the conversation was quickly over deciding that facebook is awesome.

2 more weeks!

Week 11

Hello! This week was all about Blogs! Like this one! Only interesting…

For the first reading about news blogs we got these points;

•          People get more involved in blogs than traditional media.
•          Blogs are like do it your self journalism.
•         The more visitors the more successful your blog appears to be.
•          Blogs are not subject to restrictions of traditional media (this means more swears J. Or seriously, stuff like news that is not usually reported on, local angles etc.).
•          It gives a different perspective. Although this can be a bad thing as blogs are a lot more opinionative than news.
•          Anyone can spread news.
•          Doesn’t always focus on facts. Blogs’ curse in my opinion. My motto; never trust a blogger.

We were asked to share our favourite blogs in class,

Laugh out loud, no one had any.

As a class we decided news websites were a better alternative to news blogs as they’re less likely to be biased and do focus on facts.

See you in week 12.

Week 10

This week we had an interesting reading. Let me just say this now, it’s very outdated. I’ll explain why as it show you my dot points. It discusses internet news.

•         Old media (newspapers & TV) is agenda setting, it tells us what to think about.
•          However Internet cannot set agenda as it has a small audience (DERP! SO wrong, heaps of people read news online, many as the only source of news they get. This is so outdated).
•          However it cannot set an agenda as well as old media because internet uses can choose what to read and compare stories more easily. Also anyone can publish news, which also effects agenda setting.
•          Newspapers and TV are being replaced by web news. Old people are sticking to old media more though (OMG WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN? 7 YEARS AGO?! Actually it has you idiot. So outdated).
•          He presents us with studies that were carried out in, get this, 1949 and 1966. Seriously when was this written? So irrelevant and outdated.
•          Digital publications don’t use the following as much; time span (news can be broken instantly), composition (placement of stories in the newspaper to contrast with other similar or opposite stories) and space (so much space on the internet not so much on the paper).
•          It talks about how people that use the Internet are like geeky people from sci-fi movies. Seriously? SO outdated, I’m pretty sure my dogs are even online now. Or are they alien sci-fi dogs? People from 2003 are stupid.
•          Web design should follow designs like magazines. I agree with this.
•          The author reckons many Journalists don’t agree with this “new” style of writing. Maybe in the 1920’s, idiot, now they just do their jobs, they don’t care if it’s on the internet.
•          Internet news has lower production costs.
•          Finally I liked this point, he thinks newspapers will be killed by web papers but that won’t be the case, if every paper also has a news website then the websites profits can in turn support the newspapers.

Obviously I didn’t think this reading was very useful but I still got a lot of good points so woot. We talked a bit about topics related to the reading in class too but most of it is covered in the points I already discussed.

Four more weeks to go.

Week 9

This week we looked at more video game related material, particularly online and fan culture.

The first reading we had to do this week was on alternate reality games, mystery games that take place in both a fictional setting and the real world and are often used to promote other media products such as TV shows or games.

There are a few points that I gathered and the class gathered;

•          It contradicts Jenkins views on decentralization as ARGs partly take place in the real world and are kept relatively local. Also if it’s marketing a TV show, many TV shows don’t air at the same time in different countries so an ARG that runs concurrent with the TV show (like ALIAS) will make little sense to someone from another country who isn’t receiving the TV episodes at the same time.
•          ARGs are made by the industry and can also be made by fans. They both have strengths and weaknesses.
•          ARGs teach participants to work together to achieve a goal, such as solving a mystery together. Some can affect how they live. (World without oil).
•         ARGs make the TV show more interactive by encouraging the users to participate with the fictional world.

The other reading named Playing on the Digital Commons discussed gaming, piracy and fan culture and the affects of these.

•         The first video game was actually a hack of a computer system. Wow!
•        It discusses the ease of piracy thanks to the Internet and the prevention of piracy as well. Gamers are quite often fairly tech savvy so this can cause gaming to be a very pirated medium.
•         It assumes that the gaming industry gets significant losses due to piracy. Being a gamer I can say this is not necessarily the case, many of the last generation of video games had ways to prevent piracy over the internet (the Gamecube being one example with it’s stupid tiny discs) and the current generation has numerous countermeasures against game piracy. PC games are the easiest to pirate however the majority of PC gamers don’t actually pirate games and so the losses are not particularly significant.
•          Machinima creation= promotion of the product. I think I’ve discussed this before. It’s true, some games actually give gamers the tools to make their own michinima as it is seen as a profitable idea. However film makers have to be careful with copyright issues.
•          Virtual trading. I can’t remember what this was written for but I’m going to say “Godammit I hate virtual trading cause I like having a cover come with all my games, it makes my game collection look awesome when I’ve got like, a million covers. Virtual trading will ruin that for me. And it ends up costing more cause they take up so much of your god damn internet download limit. Virtual trading is lame. But it’s the future so... L

Other things we looked at in class was participatory culture in games. This can include modding (which is very popular with PC gamers), machinima, cosplay (eurgh), everything else that can be done with movies and books and I wrote down Halo because it’s a good example of getting gamers to come online to share each others experiences.

We were asked if there is any constraints to this to which I answered legal constrains and if there are tools included in the game code to aid you participate with it your are limited to what the game allows you to do.

And is the economic model different?

Well, most user-made media is low budget but that applies to nearly every form of user made media…

Till next week!

Week 8

Ah... The week we talked about gaming all lesson.

Now it's no secret that I love a bit of a game. I've got a Wii, XBox 360, Nintendo DS and all the previous generation of those as well with a large collection of games to go with them. In addition all the books I own that are non-fiction are about video games. So, naturally, I quite enjoyed this weeks topic.

In the tut;

What games do we play?

So easy question for me heres the 5 games (franchises) I have played for a LOT of time;

1. The real Pokemon games

2. Halo

3. Call of Duty

4. Metroid Prime

5. Super Smash Bros.

So being a gamer I could go on and on about which games I play and whats the best, I have a feeling that most of the class do not actually play games such as I do.

I think this is because most of them are girls and unfortunately gaming is still very much male-centric despite Nintendo's efforts to change this by releasing pink Nintendo DS consoles.

"If the console is pink then girls will buy it. Girls love pink! Amirite guys?!"

Anyway the rest of the class answered this question with about the same thing.

iPhone and mobile games. Oh and farmville. Farmville...

So the class is a very casual gaming class. Something that made me mad when everyone was talking about video games as if they knew them and they don't even play them!

Is gaming a social past time?

Okay so maybe a decade ago gaming wasn't seen as social as it is now. A gamer was a nerdy guy who sat in the basement eating pringles and was too busy gaming to go to the toilet.

However not necessarily true, back in the good old days we'd pack up our controllers, run over to a friends house and play games all day on a tiny screen made even more tiny by the split screen multiplayer games. Oh and trading and battling Pokemon. Thats basically all we did in primary school until that got banned. I was the coolest kid in school for a day when everyone found out I had a level 100 Pickachu without cheating.

So it's pretty social then.

I find it strange that gaming is seen more social now than it was a decade ago.

Gaming has turned to the internet and now you can play with hundreds of people anywhere in the world at anytime and even speak to them. You can also play with your friends online if you don't want strangers. So this is pretty social but it is certainly not as social as when you went over to your friends house to play something with them. Many games aren't even including that option anymore saying that you MUST play this online and not with your mate sitting next to you on the coach. Thankfully games aren't all like that, Halo is still the best split screen game you can have at a party and casual games like Wii Sports are both brilliant at bringing friends closer together in real life rather than through a series of networks.

Gaming certainly is social. Don't be a player hater.

Is gaming addictive?

Case 1; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm

Case 2; My friend Thomas wont shut up about Pokemon lately. Sure he doesn't play it all the time but that fact that he keeps thinking about it is a sign of addiction.

Case 3; This video was posted about 1 and a half days after the game was released. Look how many hours these guys have put in already...

So yes, gaming is addictive. Watch out.

So for the rest of the tut we discussed;

Do video games effect behaviour?

This conversation went on for an epic-ly long time about wether or not they do cause problems.

We decided that the parents should be a bit more strict when buying children video games.

In the couple of weeks after this tutorial there has been a couple of things about tis very problem in the media, here are two links;

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20003448-38.html

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/video/default.htm?pres=20100503_2030&story=5

The first is a news story discussing laws that are upheld in some states in America that have actually banned sales of violent video games to minors.

The second is a feature from a gaming program that asks the same question we did this lesson.

As for the reading, the author basically tells us that adult gamers have to explain why they're gaming rather than just saying they like to do it. One of the examples is someone said they bought their XBox because it plays DVDs.

What a load of crap! Everyone owns DVD players these days. You bought it because you want to play Halo and Forza Motorsport. Don't be such a closet gamer!

Thats enough text for this week. See you next week!

Pop Cosmopolitanism Summary

Alrighty heres a quick summary of last weeks readings by the god-like HJ.

• A pop cosmopolitan is a person who embraces cultural difference, they seek to escape their own pop culture and embrace culture from another place far away. Because of the globalisation of media a cosmopolitan instead develops a taste for international culture(Example; people who enjoy japanese style comics or "manga").
• HJ thinks that particularly younger people are drawn towards pop culture from other cultures. I think this is changing just like there is an increase in the age of gamers in Australia there is an increase in the age of people who enjoy foreign media. For example I find that people who are true massive japanese manga or anime fans are closer to their mid twenties and thirties. Children do enjoy a good dose of Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh but they rarely go looking for less Americanised products.
• He gives examples of TV shows that have been edited (or Americanised) to be more suitable to our western culture. I would argue that by doing this a product that was originally Japanese begins to lose that Japanese identity. Anyone who only appreciates these mutated "Japerican" TV shows and not purely Japanese products surely could not constitute as a pop cosmapolitan.
• He believes that the amount of media and influence we can obtain from other cultures is larger than it used to be. I agree. I think its a good thing also.