Over the past few weeks, we have been working hard to put together a very creative and informative media artefact. Weeks ago we were randomly put into groups of 2 or 3, and lucky for me, I got placed with Alaine and Jess. The three of us have worked extremely well together on our topic of ‘institutions’ The project brief was very broad, and we struggled at first to get our heads around exactly what we were supposed to produce. One thing this project taught me was that, University certainly doesn’t spoon food information or instructions to you, unlike high school. However, we were quick to overcome the uncertainty, and got to work.

We started by jotting down ideas and views regarding different media institutions, and how they contradict each other. From this we decided to focus on modern vs traditional media outlets, or to be more specific, online vs print media. We all agreed that social media allowed for freedom of speech, and that traditional media is often one sided as the government control what is included in the final edit. We also wanted to include elements that would be entertaining such as videos, images etc. Alaine holds strong views (hatred) for Rupert Murdoch haha! So she wanted to find a video interview of him that we could manipulate. I thought it was a great idea but difficult to do. Nevertheless, we managed to pull together a 40 second, completely edited video of Murdoch talking rubbish. The idea of this was to show how we can control his words, just like the way he controlled print media once upon a time.

Along with this video, we created a more serious one where we interview Philip Dearman, head of Prof Comm at RMIT. We asked him questions regarding his stance on modern vs traditional media and he supplied us with great insights. We also received written feedback from Hannah Francis, who is a technology reporter at The Age. Both these professionals in the industry really helped strengthen our project. We decided the most effective way to gather as many pieces of information was to delegate different tasks. My contribution to the project was multiple, however they weren’t huge tasks. Whereas Alaine and Jess took on roles that required slightly longer attention. For example, I wrote an opinion piece that was ‘pro-social media’, I also created a media timeline and researched Instagram’s top hashtags. Jess worked on making our webpage look amazing as she had blogging experience, she also put together and edited the videos. Alaine took care of the bibliographies and did lots of research to make them perfect.

Overall, I’m extremely impressed with the way we have all worked together. I’m even more impressed with the final outcome, our website looks amazing. It also contains relevant and organised information that contributes to our project. Our website is called ‘Institution Revolution’ (came up with that one myself haha). I’ve had such a great time working with Jess and Alaine, and I hope I’ll see them in some classes next semester, they have done such an amazing job.

http://institution-revolution.tumblr.com/ 

Today Dan gave us a short lecture on technological determinism as a way of looking at the world. I found it really interesting and had to agree that we as humans are in charge of what the future will bring. I mean if you look at it in a tech sort of way, we are the ones who create and innovate, which can lead to massive changes to the way society functions in the future. I enjoyed the Kara video he played us, it was a little strange/ creepy, but the ideas it raised were intriguing. The thought of machines becoming too intuitive and powerful is a little bit distressing, but then again, we can control them..? It’s a very ironic concept.  Dan then discussed the power of ‘dust’ and showed us a short clip to support his argument that dust has “negligible matter”.  I didn’t really understand this part of the lecture, but I’m sure once I look at this weeks reading, it’ll become  far more clear.

Today’s class was the final one for the semester!!! Although I’m going to miss the Monday crew, I’m really looking forward to the break! And hopefully i’ll see them in some of my classes next semester as well. We got to present our web page to the class today, and we received a fairly positive response. We’re very happy with how its all coming together and realised we had a lot more information than we thought. The only thing we are yet to upload are the videos, but once they’re included, the blog will be looking complete. We decided to have one final meet up before submission, then we have successfully completed Media 1! WOOHOO

Today, Alaine, Jess and I worked really well together. We brought all our materials together that we set each other last week. Even without Robbie today, we sat quietly in our groups and worked on our project. Jess showed us the edit to our website and it looks amazing, so much better than I thought it would. Now we just have to add all our stuff to it 🙂 Alaine found a great interview involving Rupert Murdoch, which we began pulling a part and manipulating to make it sound like a funny love letter. We realise the video itself may not seem relevant to media institutions, however our description as to why we have done it will make sense. I showed my article and timeline to the group which they liked, thank god haha! We also interviewed Phillip today, he provided such great insights to our topic, and the whole video is going to be a great asset to our project overall. Next week we should be able to start finishing up with everything, and start writing our reflections.

The lecture this week was one I was looking forward to as ‘institutions’ was the topic my group was given for project brief 4. Although I found the lecture interesting, it didn’t really give me any new ideas for the project. Which I guess is a good thing, it means Jess, Alaine and I were on the right track when dismantling the idea of ‘what is a media institution’.  The lecture discussed institutions as a term from sociology. It also encouraged us to consider the social, cultural, political, and economics relationships. As well as the principles, values, and rules that underlay these. As I said, the lecture didn’t change my mind on what to include on our website for project brief 4, however it was great to hear a little more about the topic before we really got into it. After this talk, Paul spoke to us about our work attachments, which we have to complete as part of this degree, usually in 2nd or 3rd year. It’s basically 80 hours of work experience with a company or institution of our choice. I haven’t started thinking about where I’d like to complete mine, however I’d like to make sure I get the most out of the experience that I possibly can. Paul offered his help (if needed) to find work attachments, I may use this in the near future.

Today we allocated tasks for each member to complete for next week.  I am to write an opinion piece on modern media and create a media evolution timeline. Alaine is writing biographies of institutions, and attempting a found footage video on Rupert Murdoch. Jess is looking for trending news twitter feeds, as well as the idea of hashtags and @ symbol. As a group we decided to interview Dr Phillip Dearman, as we believe he will provide really good insights to our project. After emailing Phillip, he agreed to meet us next Monday for an interview which works out really well for all of us. We sent him questions to ponder prior to our meeting, just so he is prepared and not put on the spot. Overall, todays workshop was again a very useful 3 hours. Now that we have a clearer idea of what we want our project outcome to consist of, we are on track to completing it over the next few weeks.

In today’s lecture we were shown a clip from Simple Men and talked about the  idea of music and sound techniques, and how that can affect audiences, while also looking at feminist ideals of the time this film was made. The lecture was particularly helpful for those focussing on audience for project brief 4, however I still found it really interesting. As an audience of media it was so easy to relate to the ideas presented to us throughout the lecture. It got me thinking about how certain artefacts viewed on the television influence me, even when you don’t initially notice it. I really liked the discussion on fans and fandom, and I have to agree with how emotionally attached some audiences get to a particular show. I cried when I watched the last episode of FRIENDS….

Today’s workshop was productive, even though we were missing Alaine, Jess and I spoke to Robbie who helped us get started. We were feeling pretty lost with project brief 4, however Robbie got us back on track, providing possible ideas for us to explore on our topic; institutions. On top of that, we figured out how we would present our project. We’ve created a website, “Institution Revolution”, the title comes from the idea of how technology has revitalised different media institutions e.g. social media blogs. Ironically, we are using Tumblr to present the project. We are young adults/teenagers after all, so why wouldn’t we? 🙂 I think my contribution to the project will be a written piece. I’m happy to submit an opinion-like article on social media platforms, if the girls are happy to create their own version. Overall, I’m feeling much more confident about PB4, and feel as though we will finish on time, as long as we keep in touch and up to date with each others progress 🙂

Narrative- the persuasiveness of story!

Today’s lecture was run by Dan who took us through different elements of story telling. We watched a few short clips, one in particular towards the end which was really interesting. It raised the question of narrative or non-narrative. Shannon, Cheyanne and I discussed both aspects, and decided it was a narrative because it had continuous music throughout as well as different stages which were titled e.g. ‘birth’, ‘in between’. On the other hand, the film had no expectations or script, so it was hard to consider as a narrative piece. Dan’s argument was that “story is everything, everything is story”, which after the lecture I’d have to agree with. Story is literally everywhere, words or voices aren’t always necessary.

Today was a very useful class, we were able to split off into our groups for project brief 4 and begin working together. Alaine, Jess and I plan to create a multimedia platform on institutions. In class we used a mind map to brainstorm ideas for our project, with our main focus being on the contrast between traditional media e.g. newspapers, and modern day media outlets e.g. social media such as twitter. There’s an interesting differentiation between bias vs freedom with media texts, and we want to explore that further in our project. We created our collaborative contract and organised our availabilities so we can work together outside of class as well. So far I’d say we are on track for project brief 4, and as long as we continue to communicate and contribute we should complete the task no problems.