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.

Week 7

This week the main focus was on this question;

What does it mean to live in an era of global media entertainment?

We talked about this topic for a while in small groups and then in a larger group.

I'm not sure what the class discussed really answered the question but this is what I think...

• The types of media we view is not just Western culture made anymore. Because of media being exported out of other countries we receive a number of different media from other cultures.
• Because of the amount of globalised entertainment franchises our own culture is increasingly being influenced from other cultures particularly Asian and American (Note; I think it could be argued that American culture is too similar to ours to be considered having a cultural influence. I would argue that American culture have just been in our media for longer and perhaps we have received so much of it through our media it has already had an enormous effect on our own culture).
• People are drawn to the exotic strangeness of a media product developed by a different culture. This creates fan bases that are particularly interested in a media product that isn't from their own culture. Fans of japanese anime for instance.
• Finally I've noticed that Australian media has constantly been attempting to re-create shows made famous in other countries. Some work. Others don't...

Next question was;

How does globalisation change the ways in which media is produced, distributed and consumed?

• Even if a certain media, such as that obscure japanese manga about transforming hats, isn't available in our shops it is still possible for us to get it through the internet. Distribution is not just done in shops anymore but through online stores which can stock almost anything they want. It gets better if the product is digital because you get it almost instantly and theres no postage costs.
• Quite often media from other cultures that might be profitable in western culture is changed slightly before being distributed west to make it more accessible to us. For example; Pokemon episodes were edited to change japanese food into doughnuts and segments of the power rangers were re-shot in California to make it more American.

A lot of these questions are answered in this weeks readings which I'll do a short summary on later.

At the end of the tut we watched some remediations ready to inspire us for our next assignment.

Heres another one I like;

Essay due in two weeks;

Choose two texts you have used in your portfolio or discussed in tutorials.Drawing on these texts as examples, write an essay response to the following question:
How does convergence effect the relationship between users and producers of media texts?

The texts I want to use, I haven't used in in either so I'm just going to dump them in my portfolio and therefore can use them as examples. Woo.

Example 1. Halo 3 and http://www.bungie.net/

I wanted to use this as an example because the creators of Halo 3, Bungie, have purposely included tools in their 2007 game to allow users to create their own content using the in game engine. They actually encourage users to create great things, often giving away prizes to the best. In fact, the image on the multiplayer map pack expansion disk that was released last year wasn't created by them, it was created by one of their consumers. This type of stuff is just what I need to answer the essay question.

Heres an example of prosuming too,

I'll think of another later, I feel like playing Halo 3 now...

Week four reflections!

Last tuesday was our last day of engaging media for two weeks, which made me very sad indeed.

This week we covered Copyright.

To begin with we played a little role playing game where the class split into groups of two and one was to be a teacher whilst the other was a student caught plagiarising .

They then had to think how they would feel if in this situation and then act it out.

I however, was the actual author of the plagiarised book.

The exercise was rather strange. I walked around the room and talked to 3 different groups of teacher/students and told them I felt rather mad that my work was being used without giving me credit, which I suppose would be what would actually happen. The first two just sat there, confused, just like any normal students would.

In the second group I decided to try and blame the teacher for not teaching the student how to reference.

They didn't know what to think!

The person playing the student then told me she really liked my jeans. I think that statement wasn't acting. I do have nice jeans. Thanyou. :)

The third group was tricky, as I began to yell abuse one of them tried to bamboozle me with Presentism and Galilean relativity theories. But I wasn't fooled, I avoided having the abuse hurled back at me by hastily returning to my seat.

Then we watched this, a video about the new way to copyright. Watch it, it'll help you understand this post a bit better.

Next we watched this video about the horribly wrong lawsuit against men at work.

Bullshit right?

I've written on my notes "terrible segway". When the reporter said,

"Was the song about beer and women so manly after all? Or was it more akin to the girl guides?"

I thought it was a terrible segway. Terrible!

Anyway this video was relevant to our topic this week because ANYONE even the awesomest band in the world can be sued for copyright infringement these days.

Radiohead.

Then we were asked "How does remediation impact copyright?"

Well, in many cases, I've noticed that people are allowed to remediate work without infringing the big C.

As long as it is not for profit.

There are so many big websites that have huge amounts of remediated work on them, fanfiction.com is solely about remediated work and on youtube it is impossibly hard to find something that has not been influenced by another persons piece of work. That includes songs, clips, characters, stories and products.

More Radiohead.

And thats what I got out of the tut for last week.

See you all in two weeks!

Digital Distractions

I thought this video from last nights Hungry Beast episode might be relevant...

Week 3 Tut (March 16)

First we were asked a few questions this is what we came up with;

"Who Produces our Media?"; Companies, Creators, Designers, Public, Journalists.

"How do we get it?"; Over the net, by paying, from TV sponsors, other people giving.

"Where do we get it?"; In our homes, TV, cinema, on the net, mobiles, basically EVERYWHERE.

Then we watched this masterpiece;

This is a type of fan art or "vidding", the art of gathering footage off 1 or more medias and mashing them together to create your own movie. These mashups are a very popular and often hilarious new media that is all over youtube these days, a sign that participatory culture is very alive.

Next we had a group discussion about the topic

"How useful is the net in terms of active resistance to powerful institutions?"

Although everyone talked we didn't actually talk about the question...

These are the points that I gathered from the talking;

• Comments online are useless, why bother
• Its easier for the "youf" to use becuase they have been growing up along side the net.
• Apparently it's good for creating awareness of problems but it can not fix them.

Didn't really answer the question...

I'm going to answer it myself and say not very, the internet is used best by big companies and in fact some of the richest ones exist purely because of the net. Because they can actually employ internet marketers to think of the best way to keep people interested in their company online, the internet in fact becomes very focused on the big companies because they have the best websites. And don't be fooled by some guy on a forum saying how great something is, most of the time they actually like the product but many times it could be an employee of a company employed purely to troll forums and tell everyone how great their product is.

At the end of the tut we were asked to create a spoof ad for next tut. Mines in the previous post.

Spoof ad.

We were asked to create a spoof of an ad for next weeks tut.
Heres mine, a spoof of the current coke advertising campaign, "open happiness".

The spoof compares a 600ml bottle of coke's nutritional info to other unhealthy foods.

The results are surprising.

If you don't believe me check the different nutritional information here.

Summary of: The Promise is Great

This week we were asked to read a piece of text about a type of movie dubbed "Blockbusters".
This is what I learnt from it;

In the late 1940's and early 50's due to the baby boom, financial struggles, TV and scandals concerning movie stars people were becoming less inclined to seek entertainment at the cinema. This lead to the cinemas trying to beat that by creating bigger, better and more expensive movies.

The first movie to advertise on TV and premier at a large amount of cinemas was Jaws, possibly the first blockbuster.

Blockbusters cost a lot to make and advertise, they need to guarantee success so they operate at a profit rather than a loss.

Things that define a blockbuster;
Born from US pop culture
Targeted at the mass public, particularly young people.
Few artistic expectations
Contain enthralling situations and characters
Uninnovative and simple narratives
Call themselves "Must see!" They promise something great.
Commercial, generates merchandise.
High concept, can be summarised in one sentence or image to stick in peoples minds.
Effects are better than the actual story.
They tend to produce sequels or are already known from another media.
Sometimes rely on star power.
They are trendy to go see.
Very expensive to make and advertise.

I believe if the movie you are going to see next has a large number of these things in it, it could be called a blockbuster.

Because these movies are so expensive and absolutely need to make a profit they really rely on making a lot of money in opening week. To do this they make their movie a must see and advertise heavily the week before the opening night.

The internet has made it difficult for these movies to do as well, particularly if they're crap. It allows people to tell each other about the movie much quicker and if the movie is bad it may the ruin the chances of it doing well.

And that is what I got from the text.

Second Tut Reflections (March 9)

Today we mainly looked at and discussed in class the topics of participatory culture and convergence.

To begin we watched this;

In this Jeff Greenfield is explaining how far the world of media has come due to the wonders of the internet and little devices!

He seems to really want to tell you how AMAZING it all is so he emphasises almost every 3rd or 4th word.

I find it interesting when Jeff begins to talk about convergence. The way he says every type of media comes to us on the same device completely contradicts the text we read during and after our first tut (Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture, Introduction).

"Much contemporary discourse about convergence starts and ends with what I call the Black Box Fallacy. Sooner or later, the argument goes, all media content is going to flow through a single black box into our living rooms... I don't know about you, but in my living room, I am seeing more and more black boxes.... there will be no single black box that controls the flow of media into our homes."

I completely agree with Henry Jenkins in this argument.

Jeff suggests that we don't have to use anything but an iPhone to get our media these days which I believe is completely untrue.

Whilst it is true that the iPhone can basically do anything most of our older media technologies could it is certainly not a convenient way to do them and could never be the single supreme device (I scoffed when he said it's a movie theatre and a TV. It isn't).

Jenkins point is one I am sure many people can relate to, the number of different media technologies they must learn to use and swap when they want use different media types clearly demonstrates as far as technology goes we have not reached a point where a single device can do everything comfortably.

He says "there will be no single black box" and I believe that there never will due to the competing media and technology companies, their different business goals and the different needs of the various consumers.

We were then asked the two terms, heres the little I wrote;

Participatory Culture: Media companies allowing to actively comment on, contribute and shape content within the media.

Convergence: Everything coming together as one.

On reflection and further research, whilst the definition of participatory culture isn't wrong I should have included that everyday people can bring content and ideas to the world (over the net) that they previously would not have been able to do.

This is what the class as a whole defined the terms as;

Participatory Culture:

• Audience participation in media
• Circulation of media texts
• Allowing consumers to contribute to content creation across media platforms

Convergence:

• Cultural shift
• An ongoing process
• Simplification by bringing media together
• Lines between different platforms are blurred
• Constant adoption to new media and increasing consumer power

Finally we watched this;

Four Stories from Cyberspace Summary

Last week we were asked to read some text with the title "Four Stories from Cyberspace" then summarise it with the help of other class members.

The text was a chapter from a book that gave four stories about the different problems that can arise when people are online or in "cyberspace" and then used these examples to make the reader think about how the cyberspace should be changed or kept the same to address these problems.

Here is what we thought were the most important points;

• Laws are different in Cyberspace, it may need to be refined.
• Lives are spent online now more than ever.
• The anonymity of the web can bring out peoples true natures or give people a chance to try a new one.
• Real world laws are being applied to the cyber world and sometimes they aren't compatible.
• Therefore we need a separate set of rules or laws for the internet.

First Tut Reflections (March 2)

In our first tut we were introduced to Deepti, our tutor, before she showed us this;

This video is someones view of what could possibly happen to the media over the

next few decades.

It concludes that the world become even more online and suggests that as the internet

becomes bigger people may opt to become part of it themselves.

This may have been deduced by looking at the way MMORPGS (such as Second

Life or World of Warcraft) have already had an impact on people living now.

Next we were asked to write down what type of Media we had used before coming to this class.

Many of us were left with very large lists and it showed us how large the world of media is.

Lists were compared and we discovered that our group uses the internet way more than anything else.

This was easily the most used media source.

Note: I would assume the most used type of media would be different depending on the age/sex

of people asked. (Refer to the very big generalisation below)

Gen Y= Facebook and almost purely internet.

Gen X= Internet mostly but still enjoys the TV and some even read the... paper?

Baby Boomers= More and more are beginnig to brave the seas of the WWW but many like to stick

to the good ol' TVs, newspapers and Radio.

Pre-BB= Many like the comfort of the traditional radios, newspapers and TVs.

Next we watched this very interesting video.

It shows us how big and amazing the Web, particularly Web 2.0 is and raises some interesting points about

how we need to refine the way the web is being used, particularly regarding the legal side of it.

We read some text (which will be covered more next week) and then watched this before we left;

This video was particularly interesting/ funny and I hope to be able to reference it at least once this

semester.

And that was the first tutorial!