Tag / deep attention

by harrietread

Basic Comms 101 by Me

In my New Media New Asia class, for a group assessment task, my group pitched an idea for an app that would incentify taking public transport in China to reduce congestion and air pollution.

Essentially, in big cities in China such as Beijing or Shanghai, public transport is not utilised the same way as somewhere like Melbourne, because there is a more prominent culture of hierarchy and status for the Chinese, and one way of showing off status is by owning a car. Thus, logically, it makes sense that people in China are more interested in showing off the fact that they have a car than waiting an hour for a bus.

The feedback that we got from our tutor for this pitch was that we should reconsider how to approach the issue. What we wanted ultimately from this app was to change the behaviour of people in China; and this, to me, has become a key factor in the philosophy and aims of media/communication practitioners.

Behavioural change through our app, as our tutor suggested, would be based around Acculturation (Merriam Webster definition: cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture). In a sense, this app would be aimed at 18-30 year olds in China, students and young professionals, in the hopes of normalising use of public transport for their generation and future generations.

Behavioural change in communications is vital to communications now that I think about it more closely. Raising awareness, as enlightened to me in my earlier classes, is not actually that important on its own. Raising awareness doesn’t do anything on its own. When David Attenborough released his documentary about the Great Barrier Reef in December 2015, sure he wanted awareness of the environment’s vulnerability to be raised. But what the producers, writers and Attenborough ultimately strived for in the making of the documentary was to change the behaviour of those who watched it in a way that would benefit the environment’s health.

So now, after this enlightening class, I intend to go forth in my media career with a better understanding of what my intentions are: do I want to tell a story, show off some pretty pictures, or do I want to encourage a change in behaviour?

by harrietread

My Take on Medium Theory

For our PB4, my group has been given the subject of Technology and Mediums, and we seek to explore the evolution of cameras and photography since the beginning of the 20th century and its place within society as a media form. Relative to our topic of Mediums, I read through Meyrowitz’s reading regarding Medium  Theory.

To start off with, Medium Theory is the study of the distinctions between mediated forms (audio, print, text, visual, etc.) on social, psychological and physical levels. The simplest summary of the definition of Medium Theory in my opinion can be found in a quote by Marshall McLuhan, a literature scholar: ‘The medium is the message’ (1960s). The meaning behind this quote is that social influences that arise out of the media are influential not because of the message that is decoded, but because of the medium’s effect on recipients.

Distinctions made between different medium forms include the degree of verisimilitude (dictionary.com: ‘the appearance or semblance of truth[reality]”), the degree of human intervention and interaction required of varying mediums, and the degree to which a medium can be distributed or received simultaneously to many people in many locations at once.

Something that interested me in this reading was the history of medium theory being dated back to Socrates in ancient Greece. Now, first and foremost, I am someone who admires Socrates; my favourite quote by him is ‘All I know is that I know nothing,’ and it really feels relevant to my brain at this point of the year. Anyway, he argued that writing had negative effects on the mind; he believed that we literally no longer needed to use our brains to remember things because we could write it all down. This interests me in regard to the subject of mediums and medium theory because I see it as a fitting and humbling show of the beginnings of communication media studies, way before media was even a thing. Additionally, I find it ironic that Socrates thought writing was bad for you because if he was zapped across time to the present day, imagine his reactions to phones, tablets, laptops, smartboards, printing presses, etc.

 

by harrietread

Should we Prioritise Psychology in Media Studies?

In 2015, the subject Psychology was the most popular subject among VCE students; at the school I attended, there were two full classes out of our 80 student cohort studying the subject. However, only a handful of these students studied Media as well, or went on to study a Media based subject after high school. I did not study it with an ill-informed prejudice against science subjects, and now I wish I did.

In my New Media New Asia class, our current assessment is to pitch an idea for a mobile app that informs its users of how they can be more sustainable citizens. One group came up with the idea of getting users to donate to charities, however the idea would have some flaws if put into action.

Firstly, human beings, as put by my tutor, tend to be selfish. By understanding this inherent selfishness that is evident in human nature, the designer of an app like this could give incentive for the user to donate, and also feel as though they have been personally fulfilled in some way.

Take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge for example; the campaign to  raised over $100 million in donations, and was immensely succesfully. My understanding is that the challenge, while allowing all sorts of people globally to raise awareness and donate money, also gratified some subconscious selfish desires to be noticed or admired.

What the Ice Bucket Challenge did was that it had people showing off that they had been nominated, indicating that they had popularity. Secondly, it involved people showing off that they were ‘generous’. In fact, many people who did the challenge did not necessarily donate, but rather they wanted to simply show everyone they knew, and the whole world, that they had done an uncomfortable and amusing challenge.

In summation, the brains behind the challenge knew that they could make a campaign successful by creating a rewarding incentive for anyone who joined. The challenge placed ordinary people on the same level as celebrities and movie stars, becoming one of the most successful social media campaigns in the last few years. Understanding psychology was key to making the Ice Bucket Challenge go viral.

by harrietread

My take on Katherine Hayes

What I found interesting in Katherine Hayes’ work Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes, was the notion of there being a generational divide in how people learn, behave and act in everyday life. To me,this divide is incredibly clear in everyday society in particular when those predominantly born in Generation Z (1995-2015), (such as myself, as I was born in ’97), are asked to explain how to use 21st century technology and software to older generations, whether it is how to use smartphones to computers and other communication technology.

What I have noticed from explaining the workings of technology to older generations, is that there are different motivations behind understanding how everything works. This correlates with how old the person being explained to is; for me, as a relatively young person, I know that ‘Ctrl+C’ copies and ‘Ctrl+V’ pastes, and that’s all I feel that I need to know. However, older people often feel that they need to know ‘Why do I need to copy this?’ ‘Where does it go when it is copied?’ and for many people of more recent generations, this is unnecessary information; we don’t care where something was copied to, we just need to copy and paste and be done with it.

This analogy holds relevance to the subject of Hyper Attention and Deep Attention because, as Hayes’ evokes in her essay, Deep Attention is cognitively the ‘de facto norm’ for older generations that did not have such mentally stimulating activities available to them. Therefore Hyper Attention is perceived by older generations as ‘defective behaviour’ and not an effective approach to everyday life, let alone education and academia. Yet Hyper Attention is the cognitive approach preferred by younger generations that tend to opt for mentally stimulating activities such as using video games, computer games, and multi-tasking constantly in everyday life.

The divide that I detect between generations in the 21st century is that older generations that are accustomed to Deep Attention are not accustomed to the mentally stimulating nature associated with Hyper Attention, which is a massive part of modern communication technology that Generation Z has practically grown up with.