Assignment 1- Annotated Bibliography
Name: Laura Overgaard Sørensen, s3767020
I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration – https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/support-and-facilities/student-support/equitable-learning-services
Blog reflections
Annotated Bibliography
Selected text 1 – Blogs (word count 521)
Miles, A 2006, ‘Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning’, Australian Screen, vol. 41, pp.66-69.
The article investigates the practices and benefits of using a blog as an integrated learning tool for e.g. media students. The article advocates that a personal blog is a great teaching instrument because it creates a rich communicative environment for the students to express their thoughts about what they learn in the readings, lectures and tutorials. The text features various concrete suggestions of how to use a blog as a teaching tool.
Furthermore, Miles creates a definition of a blog as a web-based publication that features posts with headings, time stamp and authorship. The main argument of the article is explaining why you should use a blog. The first reason is that students have high quality training in print literacy and blogging can be perceived as “post-print literacy”. The second point is that the usage of the blog should be highly integrated in the learning and assessable outcomes and this is both the student’s and the teacher’s responsibility. Moreover, the blogs can give the students great motivation because the poor students can read the excellent students work and vice versa. The concrete reasons for utilizing blogs is that they encourage a reflective and process-based learning, they also incite peer support and cooperation and lastly, they function as a record of achievement for every individual student. By making use of blogs in media education the students become active creators of content rather than being passive consumers.
As the author has been part of a big project on this topic, he has gained empirical knowledge that he uses as his foundation for writing the article. Furthermore, the author has explored this method for several years and thereby fine-tuning his concrete suggestions on how to implement this in practice. Even though the article cannot be considered new in the dynamic and evolving media universe, I still find that the basic ideas of the article can be applied to a 2019 context. However, I do find the article to be very little critical of its own findings which can be seen as problematic. I cannot help but wonder; if the blog should weigh thirty per cent of the total mark, as Miles suggests, what is it then replacing? Teachers implementing the blogs for the first time will have to cut something else out of their course prompt to fit in the blogging – and is that possible?
The discovery that a student blog can be a great learning tool if used right and the concrete usage suggestions from the author can be very useful for everyone studying or especially teaching media. I find the article useful as I have not previously used a student blog and this article gives a thorough insight into why it is a useful learning tool. The article also gives specific instructions about how the blog should be used, which I find very helpful. The fact that Miles puts a lot of emphasis on the blogs creating a communicative environment where you can compare your work with other’s has made me interested in reading my fellow students blogposts.
Selected text 2 –Affordances (word count 515)
Norman, D 1999, ‘Affordance, conventions and design (Part 2)’, Nielsen Norman Group, viewed 1 April 2012, http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordance_conv.html
The article is a follow up on the professor’s previous work. The text sets out to thoroughly explain the term “affordances” and various terms that has to do with it seen from new and more digital perspective. The article suggests that the design community and others who have adopted the term affordances are actually misunderstanding the use of the term. When they talk about affordances, especially in regard to digital technology, they are actually talking about “perceived affordances”. One of the main arguments that Norman presents is that affordances has to be a physical possible act while perceived affordances are influenced by cultural conventions. For example, buttons or icons on a touch screen smartphone are not affordances – they are visual feedback that advertise the affordance. Thereby they contain a perceived affordance. The real affordance is just tapping on the screen – which you can do whether or not there is an icon on the screen.
Another main argument is that there are three types of constraints that influence our use of things; physical, logical and cultural. A convention is a cultural constraint because plays a big part in our usage of different objects. Conventions help us navigate between good and bad and thereby encourages some behaviors while prohibits other activities. These are important to consider when designing a new product because it will greatly affect the way people use the product.
The author suggests that the communities that has adopted his term “affordances” to not confuse it with “perceived affordances” as that can lead to sloppy work that can end up being useless to the consumer.
The article provides definitions and concrete examples of the authors most important terms. The findings make a good basic knowledge for anybody working with design whether they are creating physical things or digital solutions. By introducing the term “perceived affordances” Norman admits that his previous terminology was not clear enough or at least that it has been misinterpreted. This could be problematic as he explains that the term has been employed and highly used in the design community, because it is very difficult to change the meaning of a term once it is embedded in a community or school. Furthermore, the article might have constraints when it comes to using the terms on e.g. new an evolving media.
The discovery that there is a big difference between affordances and perceived affordances is very important in connection with studying Instagram and social media in general. Furthermore, the concept of conventions also plays a big part in regard to perceived affordances. An example is the icons that are in the Instagram app: when we see the magnifying glass-symbol we know it will lead us to a search-function and the stick man-symbol will show us our profile. We only know this intuitively because of cultural conventions.
The article presents various concepts that can be used to do a thorough examination and analysis of Instagram because it both considers technical functionalities as well as the actual usage.
Selected text 3- Social Media (word count 529)
Siapera, E. 2013, Understanding New Media. SAGE Publications, London (Section: pp.1-16).
The first section of the chapter discusses the terminology of “new media”. The next section of the text deals with the dialectical relationship between media and society and tries to answer the question »what are technology and media and why are they so important for us?«. To answer this question, Siapera presents the theories of the four important thinkers McLuhan, Kittler, Stiegler and Castells. I have chosen to elaborate Siapera’s own thoughts that she presents in the first part as I find this is the most important part of the text.
There are different other terms like “digital media” and “online media”, but Siapera finds these to be too exclusive compared to the term “new media”, that includes both the other terms. The reason why “new” is better to use than “digital” and “online” is that according to Siapera there is a difference between them because they prioritize different attributes.
An important characteristic of (new) media is that it is digital. “Digital media” is encoded in numbers and the data can be accessed very easy and fast. A lot of ‘old’ media now exists in a digital version.
Another term that is often used is “online media” which refers directly to the internet and its connectivity. Siapera believes the online factor is very important, but still the term is too exclusive. Because off this, Siapera chooses to use the term ‘new media’. Even though the term has some downsides as e.g. suggesting an arbitrary split between old and new media, it is good because in can include several attributes such as ‘online’ and ‘digital’. By using ‘new’ it suggests what Siapera finds to be the most important thing about new media – they are always evolving. The reason new media evolves is because they are novel, innovative and dynamic.
The article presents a useful definition and discussion of the term “new media”. I find it a bit paradoxical that Siapera emphasises the importance of terminology when at the same time choosing the very vague term “new” in her definition. Siapera underlines that the terms “digital” and “online” are too exclusive, but something in between would in my opinion be better.
The article also provides an exhaustive presentation of McLuhan’s, Kittler’s, Stiegler’s and Castells’ thoughts on the dialectical relationship between media and society. By doing this, Siapera gives the reader the basic knowledge needed to read her book (not just this chapter). Siapera’s research about the five thinkers helps support her own theory.
The discussion of terminology which leads to a definition of “new media” being something dynamic and evolving I find very useful in connection to my understanding of social media. This article is great for defining new media which gives me a good foundation for exploring Instagram more thoroughly. The article has limited uses when it comes to using it as an analytical tool in e.g. a paper, because it does not provide many analytical terms/ideas. This is not a critique, because the article is an introduction to a book, so I find it is good that it is mostly accounting (opposed to being e.g. analytical or perspectival).