Preparing for the Individual Interview

The initial talk about the interview made me feel a bit worried as I’m not overly confident in my interviewing technique. I find I can come off a bit stunted just because of nerves, something that I always struggle with. I was never a great public speaker and I can become very inarticulate when I get nervous.

I have had a listen to RRR and I was really hoping that it would spark some sort of inspiration for a interview topic, but unfortunately it didn’t quite happen for me. I enjoyed listening to the station and getting a feel of what goes to air, however, I listened to the Breakfasters and there was a lot of political segments and interviews. I think that was because the budget had just been released. So I was struggling to come up with a suitable topic and interviewee for my own interview.

The ideas I brought up in class were:

1. Recent thoughts about volunteering overseas as a few articles have come up presenting organisations that send people overseas to volunteer in developing communities as somewhat of a scam. The articles look at how, especially in orphanages, having volunteers going over all the time creates a very unstable environment. This doesn’t necessarily do the kids any good at all with people coming and going regularly and can be utilised as a bit of a opportunity for travellers. The major problem I had with this idea is who I could interview, I highly doubt that going directly to a organisation such as this would work.

2. The question of where money goes to when people donate to charities.  A high risk of donating to some charities is that only a small percentage of the money goes to the actual cause the rest gets lost in transactions and admin costs. Once again, the question of who to interview created a struggle.

3. My final idea was about the impact that modern technology is having on eating out. Restaurants have been complaining that with the surge in people wanting to post up pictures of their food or coffee on Instragram or Facebook it is taking a much longer time to serve customers. By the time people check in on Facebook to where they are and who they are with (and reply to any text messages), it’s at least 5 minutes before they get around talking to who they’ve come with and then even longer to look at the menu. Then once the food as arrived they take photos and post that up to Instragram – all while the food is getting cold, meaning they are then less satisfied with their meal and the turn around in busy restaurants is much longer.

The final idea seemed to spark the most amount of interest and Bec suggested a friend of hers that was the face of the Stop Phubbing Campaign so I decided to land on that.

Beginning Room With A View

I throughly enjoyed our second class at the RRR station. It was great to get a tour of the station and studios. Walking around made me realise what a fantastic opportunity this class was providing us with.

We met Elizabeth and Archie and got a feel of the environment. Elizabeth’s run down of what was expected was useful to get a better understanding of what was ahead. The biggest point she made for me was that RRR presents things from a scientific perspective. These strong details of the station made me feel somewhat nervous as it is a much stricter environment than I was conditioned to previously on radio.

Archie ran over the panels and operating systems. The most daunting part of that is the computer 2 system that holds what sponsorship announcements we had to play and our RWAV themes. I’ve never used a system like that before so that might take some practise to get used to.

I’m looking forward to going back in and booking some studio time to refresh my memory – it’s been a year since I presented on air and used a panel.

I am really looking forward to getting back into radio and learning about the station.

Just did another google search on myself, I now come up on the 10th page when you search for Jane Weber – I guess this course did improve that!

Their Weeks.

I feel like Nethaniel may have had a little too much time on his hands this week with his post – although it was totally worth it, I’m impressed!

Kiralee misses year 12. A feeling I must admit I don’t share.

Brady does a bit of promotion for his Dad’s business using his blog.

And I’ve realised I can’t find anyone who has written anything this week yet!

Final Reading

So after I realised I did the Galloway reading a week early, I had a quick look at the Gitelman reading where the concept of ‘the media’ is examined and I think this was quite a nice way to end Networked Media. I particularly liked the idea of representation vs transmission, as even though we have these new technologies journalism and what we write is still important and cannot be forgotten in the whirlwind of new technology.

I also really like this definition:

“I define media as socially realized structures of communication, where structures in- clude both technological forms and their associated protocols, and where communica- tion is a cultural practice, a ritualized collocation of different people on the same mental map, sharing or engaged with popular ontologies of representation.”

Even though they say it keeps things ‘muddy’.

Intertwingled Symposium Nostalgia

Jokes. Well…. maybe.

It’s sad that first year of uni is rapidly coming to an end but honestly, I don’t think I’m the only one getting excited for days not filled with guilt because you chose to have a coffee with someone rather than be doing more research for those damned essays.

Instead days filled with sun, beer and laughter. Okay, maybe I’ve gone a bit too far and have an overly romantic view of what summer is like. For me, it is probably going to be more like pouring beautiful cold beers to customers getting to drink in the sun with their friends while I wear a hideous apron behind the bar. ANYWAY, enough of my rambling!

The symposium. I thought I’d pay homage to it for the semester by replicating a regular occurrence that Adrian and the other tutors are guilty of: where they capture one word of a sentence and have a full blown conversation revolving around that one word – even if it had little to do with the question initially asked.

INTERTWINGLED.

Yes. Adrian used the word intertwingled, which I had a little laugh at at the time, especially when I looked over to Elliott and saw him do his little nose twitch and slight hidden smile at Adrian’s use of such a funny word. And yes, my computer does not accept this is a proper word but I thought I probably shouldn’t doubt Adrian too quickly even though I’m learning to trust that I am right some times – especially when those customers try to tell you your wrong and that the beer you are pouring is a DRAUGHT NOT A LAGER – to them – draught means a beer that is on tap, it is not a style of beer and indeed the beer I was pouring for you WAS a lager.

Sorry I’m getting side tracked. Intertwingled is word that has been previously coined before Adrian’s use of it in the symposium. I googled it and the oh so trustworthy Urban Dictionary, told me that intertwingled is in fact a word. Initially used to describe “computerdom and information” but now can be used in any situation. So do not be afraid to use the phrase “EVERYTHING IS SO DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED” because, really, people shouldn’t laugh. Although, I did.

Mixed Media Essay Research

So for my essay, I’m looking at the online participation in the music industry, in particular for the artists themselves. As I feel nowadays, every public figure is expected to have a presence online and this obviously will help their music if they do, however, as an avid music fan it seems to take away from the quality of the music.

Miley Cyrus (albeit, an obvious example) is now better known for her close relationship with a plastic hand then for her music. 

 

The sexualisation of women in particular in the music scene has been terrible but this has been fuelled by the internet and trying to create a name for themselves amongst all the chaos.

I stumbled across this great article by Mia Freedman, which I’d suggest you have a read of here.

Week 11 Readings

Galloway’s reading was interesting, however, I feel like a lot of the technical stuff was going over my head and I really only got concepts from half of it. The ideas of the hierarchies that exist and communications betweens the nodes. The concept that “two nodes must speak the same language” to communicate is cool, it’s similar to humans communicating – I suppose this was all designed by humans!
This all then linked up to protocols and shared protocols which “define the landscape of the network”. I found the connection to Foucault’s work interesting too and that his relationships to other life forms are structured in a similar way to protocols.

Drawing onto Vapour theory was interesting since I’ve never heard of it before. It’s basically just forgetting the computer!

Protocols turning to be more ‘democratic’ definitely personifies protocols but this also makes the reading more relatable because you can draw the connections between what Galloway is saying about protocols and human relationships.

2nd Last Symposium

The symposium this week had a major focus on databases, something which I’ve never been interested in. And I’m sorry to say, this week hasn’t given me any big realisation or changed the way I think about databases. However, I did like how we connected it back to stories and the fact that humanss always seem to feel the need to make things into stories and make connections between things when they may not necessarily have had a connection to begin with.

The main thing I took out from the symposium is that: STORIES DON’T ACCOUNT FOR ALL OTHER STRUCTURES IN OUR WORLD.