Tag: Big Group Project

Today we worked on our project some more. In our group we worked together to go through all the work we’ve accomplished so far and collate it onto our site. It’s coming together rather nicely so far, all of the images and text are up but the videos of the interview, Rupert Murdoch, and my video essay are still to be completed and will be posted later in the week.

The site is really coming together, and even though when we first set out we imagined creating a clear platform dividing both traditional and new media in two, it seems as we progress through our tasks and we develop our ideas more, through this website based collaboration, that the two forms are blurring into one, as traditional media institutions aim to produce more viral and entertaining content and modern media institutions aim to produce more factual and credible content, effectively evening each other out and reaching an equilibrium.

We also created ‘learning graphs’, graphs which objectively assess how much we think we’ve progressed in our first semester. Basically, I just drew a bunch of squiggly lines heading up, because this whole semester has just been a crazily amazing learning curve, and I’ve loved every second of absorbing it all.

On Monday we got together during our regular class time (since Robbie wasn’t there) and worked together to create a video filtering a speech presented by Rupert Murdoch. Jess transcribed the speech so that we could work together to pick apart what he said and twist it into unique and hilarious sentences that all somehow worked to create a love letter from Murdoch to his institutions. Although we found it progressively difficult at times to edit the audio, it is always interesting to find ways in which to overcome such obstacles.

I also worked more on the biographies which will focus on seven institutions spanning both traditional mediums, such as print and television news media, and blogging/social media. These institutions which I am focusing on and which have a great deal of influence within Australia are: The Age, Herald Sun, Channel ten, SBS, BuzzFeed, Humans of New York and the YouTube channel; the VlogBrothers. These biographies will feature on our multi-media platform and will act as a way of showing our visitors the ways in which such institutions can influence the way in which we access information.

We also interviewed Philip Dearman, asking him a range of questions:

1. What do you think is the biggest difference between traditional and new media?
2. How do you think the evolution of new media has affected traditional media e.g. journalism?
3. How do you think journalism has evolved in recent times?
4. What kind of effect do you think media ownership has on the material produced in journalism?
5. What do you think is the role of politics in sources? For example, newspapers and other traditional media using only government officials as sources.
6. Could you talk about the (potential) difference in ethics between traditional and modern media institutions? e.g. traditional media institutions are run for profit, whereas some modern media institutions are not.

It was very interesting hearing from the head of journalism at RMIT and seeing what his perspective on the issues we presented were.

I hope to find information on the comparison of different ways in which news is presented on TV, such as discussion based, like Q and A and the Project, Current Affairs, such as A Current Affair and Today Tonight, and Regular Nightly News, such as SBS World News and Channel 9 news.

I also hope to find another journalist to interview, and hopefully gain another person’s interesting perspective on such interesting issues.

On Monday we brainstormed more ideas and concepts that we could use for our website, bringing together different threads to create entirely new content.

Alana will be writing an opinion piece on modern media and a timeline to show the evolution of both traditoinal and modern media side by side.

Jess will do a comparison of both traditional media institutions and modern media intitution, looking at how they filter and utilise information from the same topic, e.g. the earthquake in Nepal. Some chose to cover the devastation in Nepal which caused thousands of deaths, while others chose to focus on the trpped climbers, both sending drastically different messages. As well as the idea of the ‘trending news feed’ and the ‘hash tag’ and their recent evolutions.

I will create small biographies on a variety of institutions of varying political bend and form of address, from the Age, to the Humans of New York blog, to Channel 9 news. I will also find archival footage of Rupert Murdoch in order to create a filtered view of him, showing how the media filter everything they produce in order to produce a desired response. Through the edited piece we hope to achieve a different persona and view of Murdoch, creating a different image.

We also came up with a list of questions to ask Philip Dearman, ranging from ethics and ownership issues in traditional media to the evolving landscape of news media itself. It’s shaping up to be a very interesting project.

Today we were sorted into our groups for our big final project, through the use of a deck of cards. I have to admit ‘pick a card! Any card!’ is much more fun than, ‘1, 2, 3… ok, 1’s over there.’ So now the project has officially begun and we’re working on the topic of media institutions, and the first thing we all thought of was traditional media institutions such as journalism and news media and how the landscape for such mediums has changed since such social mediums such as blogs and vlogs came into being. This gave us the idea for the entire premise of our project: traditional media vs. modern media.

Exploring the idea of traditional media institutions, one key figure immediately came to mind; Rupert Murdoch has a huge monopoly over the print media industry in Australia, England and some parts of the U.S. This case study of sorts led us to the question of ownership, political and economic agendas, and ethics, especially in traditional media, and how this contrasts to modern media institutions.

for the next part of the project, each member has to compile an annotated bibliography of five articles and we decided what areas each member will research. Alana will research social media institutions, I will research traditional media institutions, and Jess will research comparisons between the two forms, as well as a general overview that links all the aspects we brainstormed together. From this we will brainstorm further ideas and concepts to develop our overall project, which will be a multimedia platform, a.k.a, a website involving articles, videos, and any other pieces we can come up with.