Month: May 2015

With the discussion regarding media materialism, and examples in the lecture such as the video game The Last of Us and the short film involving the character of Kara, I can’t help of think of texts that relates to novels about dystopian futures, such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s tale.

1984 is clearly relevant to this sort of topic due to the heavy surveillance technology that is described in the novel. It is important to keep in mind that Orwell wrote this in the 1940s, and yet describes surveillance that, to some extent, is used in our every day lives now, and is considered completely normal. Although the reader experiences examples of characters who accept this, the society of the novel accepts this without thought, choosing to remain in fear rather than question in the world that they live in. The characters are only surrounded by political propaganda, and are so persuaded by it that is consumes them.

In regards to Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, if anything, one can argue that it warns of the dangers of not progressing with the future. The feminist novel points out that if we remain in a traditional manner, choosing to remain in the past rather than progressing with the future. This is relevant to the field of media, due to the constant changing of theories to how audiences consume media. With more research and opinions coming forward for over half a century, the research into finding how audiences consume media is increasingly important as technology grows to produce more and more media.

To provide more content and examples of the wide range of media, we have decided to include news stories both as an online format and a printed newspaper format as examples of the invented story that we as a group have created. Although it added significantly to the workload, I feel that it added more variety and a great deal more to our project. By offering publications of both conservative and progressive publications, as the majority of news publications in Australia (both online and print) are differentiated by their political stance. It was, at times, a struggle to distinguish the tones between a more sensationalised conservative publication, and a more even tone for the left wing publication. However, it was something that was discussed in the class presentation project of week 12. As I was, unfortunately, too ill to attend the presentation in Week 11, I was unable to hear of the opinions of others in regards to my plans for writing the news stories.

It was pointed out to me that I should replicate how many news institutions online format their reporting online. Often, they include an image relating to the case along with the story. Although I am worried about the formatting in terms of the blog, I feel that I should include the pictures that Jen had created for the Facebook page, to emphasis how news institutions gain their information and news sources. I will have to make sure that the pictures I use are the same ones that Jen has used in creating the fake Facebook page for “Izzy Varis”, as it is something that all news do to provide more substance to the story, as well as make it less “wordy” for the average audience member to use. It will also provide more evidence that the publications are relying on the words and the social media reaction to Virgina Varis and her story telling.

Overall, I feel that the group is well under control with the presentation. However, I am trying to remember to keep the information consistent and what the group decided on, as even the smallest incorrect information that is against what the group decided on can cause major differences and lack of consistency in the making of this fake news reporting.

In our last workshop of semester one, we created a graph to reflect our blog before presenting the final draft in front of the class.

My blog posts have been a major flaw in my work this semester. It has been a challenge, as I have been self-conscious of my work this semester. But, it has been a major learning curve for me this semester, and something that I will make sure I improve on next semester. I feel that I have gained a lot from this experience in blog posting, as well as achieved one of my main goals of learning how to make a blog. I think I may have been a little genrous with my feedback, but overall- I think that this well represents my point of view and experience with blogging.

The majority of documentaries today use already-createed/stock footage to create something new.

 OJ Simpsons: Caught on camera (2014) is a documentary that only uses stock footage that was broadcasted at the time of the case. They offer no academic opinions or the filmmakers constructed interviews. The film only uses the news reel to re-create the event of the Simpson case moment by moment.

I saw this without having much detailed information about the case (and obviously not being born/being a young child at the time of the events.) I thought it was a gripping and interesting way to portray the events that happened. All information that was provided were from US and international media broadcastings, with newsreaders and news reporters giving the audience information as it happened.

This is also interesting to look at, due to the fact that it provides insight to the media usage in the 1990s, were the internet was not as widely used for news events as it is today.

The idea of no art ever original is a complex one. For art to be created, there has to be inspiration. As I love to write stories and pieces, I am inspired by a range of different media texts, such as the work of director Wes Anderson to more traditional forms of inspirational texts, such as Margaret Atwood. A wide, and rather different, range of media forms inspire me to create many different pieces that although I am proud of, always without a doubt need some sort of improvement. To put it simply, texts are there to inspire others; does that mean that it creates work that is not original? How is creating a new twist on an old idea not considered “original”? There are many works of media, and art, that are inspired by something. What about all the classical works of art that many take inspiration of today? The vast majority of those were heavily inspired by the bible, or other religious texts. Does this take away the validity of the work of art?

The examples of remix music is a primary example. The sound clip we listened to in class, was difficult for myself to interpret. I could only recognise a handful of songs, and to even guess a few correctly- I really had to concentrate. Yes, original and well know music was used to create music, but they are re-created to be something completely different. The reason why it is more targeted as “copy-right breach” is because to create the music, you need the music source directly. But what is the difference between this, and being inspired by a media text to create a new one? The music source that is used in “remixing” usually sounds different to the original text.
I do agree with the words of Walter Benjamin in context of this:
“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be…”

Unfortunately, due to illness, I was unavailable to attend today’s workshop. However, I do feel that we as a group are under control with the amount of work, and feel that we are producing work that suits the brief well. The news stories for the invented Varis case are under control, and I think that a draft will be finished by tonight. Tomorrow, after the lecture, I will help my group film the final part of the production side of this project.

In the discussions of media institutions, I think that the political stance of companies reflect the guidelines and the content of story writing. As anyone who consumes media can see, there is a substantial difference in reporting styles in context of institutions. For example, Australian media institutions of Fairfax and News Corporation are widely differentiated by their individual guidelines. To some extent, these guidelines are based own the companies political stance.

Since journalism centrals around the idea of offering information with an unbiased stance, media watchdogs such as Crikey.com and ABC’s media watch offers a critical eye over a range of media consumption. This would include television, radio, print and online reporting.

As institutions are responsible for their own guidelines in reporting, its inevitable that there would be a difference in the independent reporting from journalists. However, traditionally- journalism is used to provide unbiased information to the public regarding stories that affect them and their community, especially in regards to politics. This is because it would be viewed unethical for journalists and institutions to persuaded the audience to support their political ideas for their own gain.

Journalism is used in extreme ways for political propaganda in political situations such as the former Soviet Union (one would argue that the Russian media continues to do this in the 21st century) and other communist nations such as North Korea. However, Western societies are not immune to this; as it can be seen during the coverage of political elections. A recent examples of this includes the Australian federal election in 2013, where the Labor party was consistently attacked by the media, particularly the more conservative News Corporation publications. Although, this can also been seen around the world, such as America and their more conservative publications promoting the beliefs and stance of the Republican party.

As it is accepted that media has, indeed, some effect over audiences- media institutions have a responsibility for audiences to discover their own political beliefs.

This week’s focus on “institutions” is fairly interesting for me. My family has a history for working for institutions such as Fairfax and News Corporation, and I follow a number of media institutions on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

As a result of group work- we created this brainstorming sheet to display our collective thoughts after being assigned to focus on Facebook as a social institution.  Facebook as an institution has grown as its popularity has risen. There are a number of guidelines that has changed as the company grows to suit the demands and the ever-changing face of media. Some moves are seen as unpopular, such as numerous format changes over the years. However, Facebook has been created to be an easy format for users. Even today, Facebook is losing its popularity to other social media sites, with research indicating that Instagram and twitter are more popular. However, it is generally agreed that having Facebook is viewed as a ‘necessity’ for communication. Even if people do not use it for its intended purpose of posting events and opinions online, it is audience is still strong due to its messenger system, with the majority of Facebook users using its message bank.

This week’s workshop was mostly dedicated to the brainstorming of the group’s idea. Whilst we do have more a general idea at this stage, we are all trying to figure out how to offer a wide range of media sources on the website without overwhelming ourselves. It was for this reason that we decided that the invented and false case would go for around a week. Our formatting of the blog, at this stage, would show a day by day analysis of what happened in the false case, displaying how different media organisations would react to such an event. We as a group have been inspired by a number of different cases where individuals have manipulated the media to their own advantage by creating a false story, but we have to make sure that there is no similarities to any of these cases,  instead creating a entirely different and fabricated case.