Netflix has just come to Australia and like many others I am blown away. I always heard or rather read about people overseas in the US who had access to Netflix and how they would just spend hours after hours watching. I thought, ‘yeah, yeah whatever just another stupid thing’, but I must say after a few weeks of having access here in Australia it is fantastic (I don’t actually have my own account yet, I’ve been using my boyfriend’s…. shhhhh). This huge institution which has now become so much more widespread in groundbreaking. Everybody knows that Australia is one of the most expensive countries in the world which is why we do so much downloading of films and TV series. However, with Netflix, the price of a monthly subscription with access to anything on there is about the same price it would cost you to go and hire two DVDs from the video shop, or nearly half the price it would cost you go to and see a movie in the cinemas. Netflix is changing lives. I love it and can’t get enough.

In class today we got together in our groups and continued broadening our ideas as well as developing ideas and creating our artefacts for our first draft next week. We have come together and created a basis for our girly magazine formatted in a website. Each of my group members will take on a lump each and write an article relating to the topic. Here are our basic ideas for each of our articles:

My article:

• Sexualisation of young people
• Sexting and Online behaviour
• Social media’s false sense of maturity
• Children and Makeup (representing sexualisation, e.g. why shouldn’t little girls wear makeup? Because it’s the gateway to sexualisation?)

Kelsey’s article:

• Online identity/performing for an audience (the ‘imagined audience’)
• Consuming the product (social media) to perform identity and to thus transform yourself into the commodity with a viewing audience.

Amalina’s article:

• marketing of women on social media + how social media targets young women?
• Creating online values e.g. “10 signs he’s cheating on you

As well as having the articles as the bulk of our artefact we will also have fun things like the latest music, movies etc. As well as an ‘ask’ section or a photo essay. Next week we have to have a draft of our artefact so this week we will be working on our articles and fixing up the website for how we want it to look.

In today’s lectorial, the issues around institutions were discussed. The term institutions can be used to describe a company or group of companies as well as a list of other collective organisations; it is hard to know where the line is drawn. Institutions have become quite a rather big side of the media industry, how it works and how it is run. Therefore these media institutions must set in place values which underline social, cultural, political and economic relations. Some examples of media institutions are the news, journalism, cinema, broadcast television, community radio to be broad and then the more specific companies such as the ABC, SBS and the list could go on forever. These types of institutions are quite enduring as they regulate and structure certain activities in a collective way. They develop specific working practices while employees and people associated with these institutions are expected to share their own values.

One of the institutional ideas that was explored was marriage as a social instution. There are expectations when you marry someone, that you will be faithful to them and that you will follow the vows you make to that other person ‘through sickness and through health,’ that you are monogamous within your relationship and that you will care for this person with respect. Then there is the legal side of it all; paperwork and getting a qualified celebrant to marry you and your partner, etc. There are certain rituals that people follow whether it be due to different cultures or what is seen as a ‘social norm’. And of course there is the whole commercial side of it as well. The industries which make money from the two getting married; catering, venue hire, decorations, bridal and groom party dress wear, travel, accommodation, and perhaps even bucks or bachelorette parties.