It’s judgement day!! Today Katherine (I’ve forgotten her last name) came into class and gave our group some well needed feedback on the rough cuts of our podcasts.

As a group, we went in knowing what exactly we wanted feedback on. With our podcast, we knew we wanted our information, and story telling to follow a clear narrative. What we wanted to know, was that our narrative came off strong to someone who had not been present as we created the podcast. We gave Katherine the headphones and watched her listen to our piece. As nerve wrecking as it was, we knew she would give us the praise and criticism that we needed to hear.

One of the tips she gave us was to use less ‘big’ words in one sentence. What she meant by this was, to “write how you speak”. She told us that some of our sentences/paragraphs were a bit wordy, and should come across more casual, so that it is easier for the listener to take in and understand. As a group, we’ve decided to go through and re-word some parts of our planned speeches, and make them more casual, as Katherine has told us to. We aren’t changing our information, or making it less professional, we are however just making it easier listening for our audience.

Another tip she gave us was regarding our narrative. Katherine told us, that to create a strong and clear narrative, that we need to have a distinct closing, or passage/clip that ties our entire podcast together. Our podcast is based largely around comparisons between Donald Trump and Warren G. Harding. As a group, we were unsure whether to end our discussion with statements/clips regarding Trump or Harding. Katherine mentioned to us that the end should bring a sense of closure to the piece. For this, she has said we should end with Warren G. Harding’s death, yet follow up shortly after with a more recent clip of trump. It shows a clear jump from past to present, whilst making for a clear closing, as we use Warren G. Harding’s death. She told us that it will leave the audience curious, but not confused, or asking too many questions.

As a group, we are definitely going to incorporate Katherine’s feedback into our piece, before the final cut is due. We have planned to meet as a group to rerecord some of our audio pieces and make them flow better, and easier to consume, as well as plan exactly how we want to close our podcast. Overall I am very confident in our piece, but Katherine’s feedback and tips will definitely help us create an even better podcast.

In this weeks lectorial, we had our final guest speaker for the semester. Dr Ramon Lobato came in to discuss all the changes in television, and online television culture over the past however many years. For me personally, i’ve been using Netflix for years, but from my knowledge, it’s become extremely popular over the past 5 years or so in particular. I was obviously aware of just how popular Netflix is, across Australia, and the rest of the world, but when Ramon asked everyone who uses Netflix to raise their hand, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a single hand that was left un-raised.

By far the most interesting part of what Romon told us, was the statistics behind online television use, and traditional television. When we were asked how many hours of traditional television a day households watch, a majority of the room said about 1 hour (most of us thinking about our families watching the nightly news). When we were told it was 2.7 hours a day, we were a bit surprised, but not awfully shocked. It was Ramon’s next statistic that I think shocked most of us. Being young people, and especially media students, we spend a lot of time online, and consuming online video content on Youtube, Netflix, and other streaming sites. Again Ramon posed the question, “how many hours of online video viewing do you think the average household has a day?”. This was a no brainer for me, I quickly assumed at least 3 to 4 hours a day. I was so far off, the answer being only half an hour!

Ramon spoke about the ins and outs of television and it’s transition to an online platform, but it would take so much more than one blog post to discuss all of it. His talk was definitely some food for thought. I’m planning on taking a television cultures elective next semester, so hopefully I can look into this topic some more over the year.

In todays lecture, Kyra Brettle gave us an amazing speech on sound and sound production. Kyra went over so much information, and even though to an extent, it was slightly overwhelming, it has also eased my mind a little bit regarding PB4. Kyra asked us whether any of us listen to podcasts, but I didn’t raise my hand. I have listened to podcasts in the past, but I can’t say I’m an avid listener, and I definitely don’t actively follow any podcast creators.

One part of Kyra’s talk that I found really interesting, was when she compared sound production, to music. I grew up around music, listening to it, and playing it, so linking something that I am not hardly at all familiar with, to this topic that I understand really well, made everything just a bit clearer for me. Another element she spoke about was ‘expectations of narrative’. For me, I link narrative to film and television, I would never think to link it to a podcast. This sounds really dumb when I think about it now, because I guess, like everything, a podcast still does have a beginning, middle, and an end. Duh.

With everything Kyra mentioned and made links to, i’ll admit, I zoned out at moments when I began thinking of new ideas, and techniques to incorporate into my final podcast. She highlighted multiple times how important layering is to add texture to our piece. My group, we had planned a few different ideas for how we were going to add texture to our piece, so this definitely gave me, and hopefully the others, a much needed confident boost, regarding the direction we had planned, and were already going in. I’m really looking forward to putting all of Kyra’s tips into place, and see how much our audio piece can evolve from here.

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the ‘clickbait memes’ that circulated around facebook a couple of months ago. Essentially, there’s multiple angles to look at clickbait. The main one, is that it is really just the exploitation of information for money/attention. Like all other online media presenters/bloggers, they rely heavily on income, that is generated through clicks and ad views. Oh but the question arises, when there is hundreds of thousands of videos/articles at our fingertips, how do you get someone to click on YOUR link? Clickbait. It’s pretty simple really. Clickbait isn’t always an individual lying, but it is them twisting the truth, exaggerating only the most intense, and exciting parts of it.

Clickbait probably couldn’t be referred to as actual “fake news”, as it is usually quite obvious that after watching a video or reading an article with a clickbait title, that the truth was in fact, heavily twisted and exaggerated. Clickbait becomes a real issue when it is the headline, the fake headline that begins circulating the web. More often than not, an article with an interesting, or controversial statement will being circulating the internet, with no real context. The context of the piece? Hidden in the article that is left behind.

The dreaded group project time has come. Maybe not ‘dreaded’, but definitely not something I’ve been exactly looking forward to. Putting my grades in the hands of someone else? No thanks. Someone else putting THEIR grades in MY hands? Even worse… I’m probably exaggerating a little bit, oh well. We got put into our randomly assigned groups, and I was actually pretty happy with who I was grouped with. From the work I’ve seen Christian and Sophia produce over the semester, it seems like they both put a lot of effort and pride into what they produce, so I think that will be reflected (hopefully) in what we produce as a group.

As a sort of prep exercise as a group, we were given sound recorders to go practice some sound recording (thanks captain obvious). Definitely I found it beneficial to practice with the recorder, but also it gave us time to get to know each other as a group. Both Christian, and Sophia have strong personalities and are open to voicing their opinions and ideas, which seeing as we’re all sort of only just getting to know each other, seemed like a really good start.

We’ve formed a group chat on facebook, and we’re planning on using it to communicate about tasks that need to be completed. We’ve been working on completing our collaborative contract, as well as our individual SWOT analysis’, and so far we’re all keeping our end of the bargain and putting in the necessary work.

In todays lectorial, Rachel helped prepare us for our first group project. This isn’t my first group project, but I think all the points that Rachel made in her talk, have really prepared me better to take on this one. A lot of the points that she went through, were fairly self explanatory, but for me, a reminder of all these things did me good. As well as being a reminder to myself, it also gave me piece of mine, knowing that the people I would be working with, listened to the same talk. One thing that she mentioned, was with our group, since it’s likely that we don’t know each other well yet (yay for assigned groups), that we should go do something together to get to know one another. I think it’s a nice idea, but me being an, initially, pretty shy person, I can only hope one of my group members initiates the first get together…

We also had a brief discussion this week on the reading, based all around fake news, and what to trust, and what not to trust online.

This weeks reading was written by Danah Boyd, a researcher of technology & society. The general outline, that I gathered from the reading, was around what we do, and don’t trust online, and our perception of this. I really enjoyed this weeks reading, because things such as fake news, or even just simply, exadurated headlines and articles always make me laugh. The reading wasn’t exactly about fake news, but more so learning, and knowing what sources to trust. The prime example, or the one that stood out to me, was about how most of us have grown up with the mindset, to not trust sites, such as Wikipedia. When it comes to researching online, it comes down to more than just the website that the information comes from. It is about many other aspects, such as, when the article was published, and who it was published by. Being able to analyse and realise a trustworthy article, is a critical part of conducting strong, and concise, research.

What different people believe to be trustworthy can also be influenced. An example that is mentioned in the reading, is based around the dispute between democrat voters, and republican voters, during the US election. Republican voters (those voting for trump) were quick to believe information spread, against Clinton, despite the reliability of the source the information was found from. With lack of evidence, if individual people wanted to believe something, they would make an effort to share it, despite any claims.