I'm On A Train!

As you may have guessed by the title of the post, I am in fact on a train at this very moment. To normal university students, or ‘day rats’ as we know them, a train or public transport is the usual way to and from university. They use it many times a day to get to where they want to go.

For us college kids however, public transport is still something that we’re all getting used to. We’re trapped in this ‘St Lucia bubble’ where everything we need is a walking distance away and the only transport we generally use is a bus to the Royal Exchange on a Sunday night. Thus, there is always a little bit of anxiety when it comes to venturing outside the bubble and using these forms of transport.

Today I am going back down to my house in Byron Bay for the weekend to see the family. It is father’s day after all, so it was a fitting time to head back and catch up with everyone. I decided to leave my Psychology tute just a little bit early, to ensure that I would make the bus to take me to the train station. But as the tute went on, the anxiety built up. I ended up leaving 15 minutes earlier than I planned to. Another contributing factor to this may have been that the tutorial was utterly boring, but that is irrelevant. So arriving at the train station 40 minutes before my train was supposed to arrive, I sat myself down, mentally preparing myself for a long wait. An announcement then was projected over the loud speaker announcing that the gold coast express was arriving in two minutes.

Ultimately, I am now sitting on the train before my planned train because I was so nervous about missing it that I arrived TOO early. I don’t know whether this is a triumph or defeat. I am however  highly disappointed that no one is willing to speak. Every seat is full and people are standing, however no-one is opening their mouth or engaging in conversation. I miss the days when talking to strangers was a normal thing. When people couldn’t hide behind their headphones or bury their head in their IPad.

Though my journey is nearly over and I am coming to the conclusion of this blog post, I would just like to say this. Socialise. I’m sure I’m not the only one sitting on the train hoping someone will make contact. Maybe you might even make a friend!

Think about it. 

MTV On A Sunday - Lecture 6

Walking into lecture six on a faithful Monday afternoon, I was feeling pretty content about life. I’d just had an amazing Sunday planted in front of MTV with my friends, ‘studying’ and watching the music countdown titled: Top 400 Song of the Noughties.

You can imagine my guilt when the lecture was on commercial media. I was ashamed to find that, yes; MTV was pay TV and thus a part of this commercialisation. Commercial media can come in different forms such as newspapers, pay TV and free-to-air TV, radio, magazines, and a lot of various digital media.  After listening for the lecture for about fifteen minutes, I wondered whether I should feel guilty about using commercial media. Sure, I did waste a whole Sunday watching pointless television, but it was worth it, right?

So todays lecture rant is about how the lack of quality in commercial media is dumbing down society. Long were the days when documentaries played on free TV. Gone are the days when decent radio and talkback happened without being interrupted by hundreds of ads. Really channel Ten? The Lara Bingle Show? Surely this will be the downfall of your station. As poor university students, we can’t afford to have pay TV, so are we left with game and reality shows? Where are all the programs on free-TV that have heart? Programs that enlighten us with knowledge and educate us, challenging our thoughts and opinions! Lara’s IQ can only be negatively affecting us!

 

It’s not only what they say on commercial media, it is the time consumption that also affects us. I lost a whole Sunday of being studious to watch a pointless music countdown. Yes, I could have turned it off, but advertisers have spent time and effort finding the perfect way to attract the audience and leave them hanging. All this potentially productive time spent on nothing. So my final statement of the rant is this: Although commercialisation of media seems to make the big dollars that everybody seems to love, it is ultimately not challenging those who use it and thus, not allowing their minds to grow and filling them with pointless advertisements. This may be the downfall of media as we know it.

Think about it.

How Selling Things Leads To Deep Thoughts About Life

Today I tried to sell things in the Great Court on the University campus. Chocolates, to be more specific. I spent the whole morning sitting with a friend of mine yelling at innocent people walking past, demanding that they buy chocolates for the cause I was fundraising for. After watching many people avoid eye contact, walk faster and try not to smile at our poor sense of humour and marketing skills, I couldn’t help but wonder if this is what it felt like to be a journalist. Chasing people around trying to get them listen to what you have to say and answer the questions you yell at them. The feeling of rejection always looming in the air, not knowing where it would strike next. I then wondered if every stereotypical movie about a journalist living a tough life in the big city was true. Was it really a dog eat dog world? All that I knew about journalism before this course, I’ve learnt from ‘Confessions of a Shopaholic’ or ‘Sex and the City’.

I then thought about my future career and how a person is supposed to decide what they want to do for their rest of their life at a mere 18. I still don’t know what I want to be. I feel as though when I decide, I’m going to be trapped in that field for the rest of my life. Also, with the economy the way it is today, is it better to go for a career with job stability rather than a job you enjoy? How do we decide to take risks or play it safe?

So many factors to take into account. It’s such a big life decision. It makes me wish someone would just tell me what to do with my life so the dilemma would just be over. In the end though, personally I believe passion should win. What is life without passion and fun? At the end of your existence, it’s not going to matter how much money you earned or how long you worked for one company or another. All that you will think back to is everything you loved and if you don’t love your career, then so many hours of your life would be nothing but wasted.

Just food for thought.

I would also like you leave you with a link to a news article I found about men stealing a penguin from Sea World.

Enjoy!

http://mashable.com/2012/04/23/stolen-penguin-seaworld/

What You See Is What You Get - Lecture 5

I’ve always appreciated photography. It’s ability to capture emotions draws me in. So many various feelings can be communicated to the audience, engaging each individual and allowing emotion to brew inside themselves. The power photographs hold is astonishing; however people don’t seem to understand their full potential. As you may have guessed, this week’s lecture was about picture stories and visual media.

We discussed early newspapers and newsletters with line drawings used as visual aids. The evolution of photographs was then taught to us, from the first colour picture in the newspaper to the first video uploaded to the internet (which was highly anticlimactic). Looking at all the amazing images that were being projected on screen, my self-esteem rates were low. I despise psychologists for saying left-handed people are more creative and giving me false hope.

Bruce Redman must be a mind reader, because at that point he provided the class with factors that make a great photo such as framing, focus, angle and point of view, exposure of light, and most importantly timing and capturing ‘the moment’.

To me, ‘the moment’ seemed to be the key aspect in any good photograph. The one moment that captures the raw emotion of a person. When their defences are down and you can see true feelings written all over their faces. I believe THOSE images are what draw in the audience. They engage them, appeal to them.

Now I would like to leave you with my favourite image. I studied this in year 11 photography, but every time I look at the image, regardless of how many times I have looked at it before, fresh, raw emotions flood straight back to me. The photograph is by Phan Thi Kim Phuc and communicates young children fleeing the attack of a napalm bomb that has been dropped in Vietnam in 1972. You can see the pain in their face clearly, both physically and emotionally, a pain that they did not deserve.

Thus, my final statement of the blog post is this: a picture has no meaning at all if it cannot tell a story.

Media Usage/Production Diary - Assessment One

Media Usage And Production Journal

Table 1: Raw data collected of all media use over a ten day period.

Figure 1: All recorded media use over the 10 days.

This graph demonstrates the various forms of media that were used over the duration as well as recording how long each was used for. This allows for an easy comparison of which forms of media I use the most and the least.

Figure 2: The comparison of print, visual and audio media use over the 10 day period.

The graph and table clearly demonstrate that audio media was used the most over the ten day period, as it alone is greater than print and visual media usage combined (56%). This is possibly due to the convenience of an iPod which allows me to listen to music during other anti-social activities. Visual media such as YouTube and television were used the least amount, a mere 13% of all media usage. Print media was moderately used, with 31% of my media use being in the form of a website, magazine or newspaper.

Type of Media Examples of this Media Time (Minutes) Visual Television, YouTube, Films 620 Print Websites, Magazines, Newspapers 1540 Audio Music on iPod and computer, Radio, Phone call 2730

Table 2: The recorded minutes in ten days of each type of media, including examples of each media type. The table clearly shows that audio media is used the most in my daily life.

Figure 3: Comparing the average media usage on a day that I attend university with average media use on a day when I don’t have University.

Figure 4: The amount of time each media was used throughout the ten days (in minutes).

The graphs from figure three and four demonstrates that on average, I use more media on days that I go to the university campus compared to days I stay home. This may due to the fact that on days off, I have to ability to do recreational activities that don’t require media, whereas on university days I am constantly using media for class work, as well as social media.

Figure 5: Use of old media compared to new media over the duration of ten days.

These results clearly portray new media as my most dominant form of media use, as it is used 97% of the time, compared to old media being used 3% of the time. This highlights my full transition to new media, only using old media such as newspapers on rare occasions.

Figure 6: Comparison of my daily internet use to the average internet use of my Jour1111 class.

The results demonstrate that my personal internet use is on average, slightly lower than that of the class.

	Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5	Day 6	Day 7	Day 8	Day 9	Day 10
Social Network	120	110	65	130	110	120	125	15	90	100
Youtube and online video media	15	25	80	90	10	50	60	85	90	25
General Internet Use	15	30	40	0	10	65	35	50	10	15
Online newspaper	10	15	5	0	15	5	20	5	10	0
Email	25	15	10	5	10	15	15	20	25	20

Table 3: Amount of Time the Internet Is Used On A Daily Basis- Over the duration of 10 days.

 FORMAL ANALYSIS:

Over the last decade the world has experienced an extreme transformation from old media such as newspapers and magazines to new media such as social networking and the internet. With each person having the ability to produce and express themselves creatively online, the boom in media throughout society is not surprising. Over the duration of the ten days, it became evident that my use of old media is a rare occasion (3% of the time), with my time constantly consumed with new media (97% of the time). Living in a city and constantly being surrounded by people my own age at one of the top institutes in Australia, it has become unavoidable and old media has been phased out of my life.

The media diary brought to my attention that I have unconsciously joined the social networking craze; however it seemed I was not the only one in my journalism class. Results from a survey demonstrated that 95.8% of students have a Facebook account, and astonishingly 81.2% of those students social network on a smartphone.  Furthermore, when analysing data it became evident that my media use was relatively higher on days which I attended university, rather than days I did not have class. I have concluded that this is due to the developments in learning which allow students to read lecture notes off media devices such as laptops and iPads, as well as download recordings and readings. A survey taken on my journalism class shows that 24.8% of the students use the internet 3-4 hours a day, similar to my usage on days I have class. Additionally, when returning home from university tired, watching a film or television is commonly used as a tool for relaxing, extending my media usage.

A large majority of the media use that was recorded in the diary surrounded audio media, possibly explained by convenience. Using an iPod allows me to listen to music when performing anti-social activities such as walking to class or going to the gym, thus showing that many hours are spent listening to audio media. Another contributing factor to the increased use of audio media is that I live away from home with my family and friends back in my small town in New South Wales; therefore I am constantly making phone calls to keep in contact with those I love.

Although there are various reasons for the obtained results, I strongly believe one major contributing factor strongly influences my media usage. I currently live at Duchesne College, surrounded by 200 girls my own age and the latest learning facilities on campus. Living with so many people, social networking has become a key aspect of my life as it keeps me updated on upcoming sporting and social events within the college. Furthermore, old media is only found in communal areas such as the common room or library which I rarely visit, therefore my exposure to old media is limited on a day-to-day basis.  Likewise, on days I don’t attend classes, social activities and face-to-face contact usually occurs, reducing my media usage.

Through the results of my media journal, I can successfully conclude that I am amongst the rest of society when it comes to using media in daily life. I have transitioned without realising it into the next generation of media usage and I believe there are only positive things to come.

The Sound Of Music - Lecture 4

An audio lecture. Something lectopia has educated me on. This week in journalism we didn’t have to attend the lecture in person because it was all about audio, and when you teach audio, why would you not have an audio lecture?! Good thinking Bruce! The audio lecture described what it was like to work in radio and how significantly different it is from television. Did you know that you’re more likely to tell when someone in lying in radio rather than in television? This is because there is no visual to distract the audience so they focus more on what the individual is saying. It is also easier to personalise and create an intimacy between the speaker and the audience. Throughout the lecture I picked up little ‘handy hints’ you could call them, about audio media and radio.

However, there was one thing that stopped me in my tracks throughout the lecture. That made me zone out and ignore everything else that was being said for the following 5 minutes. This was that radio is booming. It was highly unexpected. As a form of old media, you would think that it was slowly being phased out of society and people would be moving towards more modern types of media. Yet it seems that radio is adapting and moving WITH the transitioning media to blend into the modern world. Using technologies such as podcasts and radio over the internet, people tend to listen to broadcasts more often. This is explained by people being time poor. In my mind, I tried to make sense of this. I didn’t really understand why time poor people would listen to the radio. Yes, it helps us connect with other human beings, but you would think that if they were time poor, they would do more important things than listen to the radio.

The beauty of audio then hit me. People listen to the radio in their car, while they walk to work, on their laptops while they are studying. Podcasts can be downloaded and listened to as ease with the touch of a button. It is so easy to use, yet allows you to concentrate on other things while you listen. Somehow radio has successfully transformed without me even realising it and society has loved the change.

It seems every week in journalism, my previous opinions on a subject is shot down like a bird on hunting day. But that is what learning is about right?

That’s all for now! I leave you all with a link to my favourite scene in The Sound Of Music!
My Favourite Things - Sound Of Music

Ciao!

Squashed Hopes And Dreams - Lecture 3

What is text? This seemed like the theme for lecture three. If you asked me before the lecture, I would have told you text was anything written. Text is just words on a page. Someone has created it with meaning. That was the extent of text in my mind. It wasn’t really something I sat down and thought about on a daily basis. So walking into the lecture and finding out it was about text, I thought they were crazy. How much could they really say about it? A lot apparently, according to journalists everywhere. Skye Doherty, our guest lecturer, clearly squashed all my opinions about text into a million pieces in the first few seconds. “Text is: fast, flexible, portable...it is email, blog, twitter…metadata, tags, exerpts” So many meanings. The importance of text in journalism hit me like a ball to the face. She then moved onto teach us concepts that are necessary when writing an article.
The inverted pyramid seemed the most significant, stating that when you write an article the vital information goes first and the fluff goes towards then end. Techniques to catch the attention of the audience and engage them in the news story were then explained to us. Different tactics such as using photographs, catchy headings and changing the size of the font are used to draw in the reader, but its success varies on the type of media and what the audience is looking for. It may be magazine, printed or online newspaper, what works is always going to vary. Personally I love reading the headlines before looking at the pictures on the page. My sister on the other hand will only open the newspaper if there is a half-naked picture of Ryan Renyolds on the front.

 

Ultimately, the underlining message I got from the lecture was that news is changing. Moving online and adjusting to the modern world, with hypertext and tags becoming vital for a newspapers survival.

This saddens me. Will we never go back to the days when grandparents sat on the back porch to read the Sunday paper? Will movies not start with a paper boy doing his rounds on a push bike?

Think about it.

I'll leave you with one more thing. 
Did you know 'Bye' translates to 'Bless' in Icelandic.
You're welcome.

Caught In A Web - Lecture 2

The web. My whole life it has always been there. I’ve grown up with it, yet my reasons for using it seem to be constantly changing. When I was younger I would play meaningless games such as ‘Dress Your Barbie’, or stalk out the release of a Barbie Dream Car. As I got older, I finally had a purpose to use it. High school assignments helped me branch out and see more that the internet had to offer. Now at university, I seem to use Facebook more than anything. Between untagging hideous photos of myself from the previous weekend and battling people on Words with Friends, I feel as though I don’t use the web to its full potential.

So when this week’s lecture rolled around and they discussed the web, I felt excited to be able to view it from a different angle. To broaden my horizons! Set sail on the voyage of learning!

Web 1.0 has a main focus on companies. It made sense; we’ve all seen those basic websites that is straight content surrounded by hundreds of ad’s trying to get your attention.

Web 2.0 has a focus on social groups. Facebook. MySpace. Twitter. I knew exactly what he was talking about, being a self-diagnosed Facebook addict. Prod-users like myself were filling the internet with pictures, drawings, quotes, videos and endless information that they want to share with the world.

Web 3.0 has a focus on the individual. I just had to look around me to understand what he meant. We all have iPads, smart phones and tablets. We can even customise things so specifically that anything irrelevant to our interest is eliminated from our view. Its border-line stupid. But it gives the internet meaning. Web 3.0 IS internet with meaning.

After the lecture, I felt as though a whole new world had opened up, like I had the knowledge in me all along but it took Dr Redman to put the pieces together in my mind. Call me a nerd, a geek or just plain weird, but I don’t care. I’m going to claim that I enjoy learning while I can, because it doesn’t happen often.

However, there was one point of the lecture that upset me dearly. While the lecture was taking place, my body had given up and I had the flu so I had to watch the lecture on lectopia. Thus, you can understand my devastation when the class were all given jellybeans and all I could do was sit there and listen to them all enjoy themselves. My post-lecture high was shot down in an instant and I returned to my bed of self-pity, cold and flu medicine and numerous tissue boxes.

Out of my comfort zone - Journalism Lecture 1

Journalism. It is a foreign concept to me. I had no real idea what I was going to walk into when the day came to attend the first lecture. I am not a journalist. Nor do I have any aspirations to be a journalist. I simply did the course to challenge myself. To see the world differently.  It was a pleasant surprise that the lecturer was upbeat and excited to be teaching the course, after all, passion for what they are teaching is necessary to keep students motivated. Without having a mentor that loves journalism, how are we supposed to love it ourselves?

There is one aspect of the first lecture that I would love to draw all your attention to. It’s not how to use blackboard or getting to know our lecturers and tutors. It’s the various quotes that Dr Redman presented to his class.

 “Journalism is organised gossip” – Edward Eggleston

“People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true” – Lewis H. Lapham

“Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics and the shi*s into law” – Auberon Waugh

These are all very different opinions on journalism. This got me thinking, there is no real definition of journalism. There is not one specific way to be a journalist. No guidelines you have to follow. No rules or regulations. You can be as creative as you like, write about anything and voice your opinion to the world. I was previously a student in the Health Science faculty so you can imagine my struggle when I have so much freedom to be creative and form my own opinions without being persuaded by others. This lecture made me realise that if I can see something my own special way, I then have the power to persuade others to feel the same way too. I feel inspired already.