Engaging media has been an interesting learning experience, giving me an opportunity to discover concepts about something which I just take for granted every day. I chose a blog to be my portfolio as it effectively is a piece of media and can be applied to the concepts. These are the portfolio entries I think have helped me show I have learnt from this unit;
Week 2
Week 8
Week 10
Week 2
This week was when we started learning the fundamentals of the unit and we began talking about convergence, a topic that carries through the whole unit. This portfolio entry discusses the contradiction the youtube video presents against the first reading and then uses general knowledge of media to analyse who is right. In doing so it demonstrates an early understanding of the fourth learning outcome (Utilize concepts relating to institutions, audiences and cultures to explain and analyse media) as it analyses how media can converge on a single device. It also discusses how media institutions effectively block complete convergence on single devices due to competing markets and different needs from consumers. This demonstrates outcome 4 again as well as 3 (Present analysis of the processes influencing the production and consumption of texts in different media) as it discusses how competition between companies in media is high, which affects how media is produced and consumed on different platforms.
This entry is also the first time I have tried to describe participatory culture and convergence. By comparing this entry to what I know now at the end of the unit I feel this early portfolio entry is a good representation of what I knew before we started the unit and shows how far I have come in my learning of the unit material.
Week 8
I chose week 8 because it was a particularly interesting topic that week for me and I quite enjoyed it. I feel I have demonstrated outcome 3 again in this entry by addressing the fact that media institutions always try to increase the demographics for their products, this entry points out Nintendo trying to get more female gamers. This affects how gaming media is produced as they try to create games and gaming consoles that is more attractive to female gamers, which also affects how the audiences consume the final product. This statement also demonstrates outcome 1 (Demonstrate critical awareness of the contexts in which various media are produced and distributed) as it provides us the context why a media company would distribute bright pink gaming consoles when gaming is dominated by male consumers. By writing such a long piece with a very informed tone and mentioning companies like Nintendo this entry demonstrates outcome 2 (Apply critical understandings of media institutions to reflect on your own use of media) as I prove that I am very involved with gaming and the way companies don't include split screen multiplayer ,for example, affects the way I use and feel about games.
Week 10
I chose this as it's a reflection of how much media has changed in just seven years. By discussing how outdated this piece of work about the internet news is it becomes clear that media is rapidly changing even if a piece of work might be relevant a few years ago it certainly isn't anymore. Although this entry may not directly demonstrate the learning outcomes by doing this portfolio entry it helped me understand just how forever changing media is, something which I think is incredibly important in this unit as it means the unit engaging media will actually be completely different in a few years time.
