Week 6 - 2.4 Play with me!: Having fun with media

Read:
Helen Thornton, (2009). Claiming a stake in the videogame: what grown-ups say to rationalise and normalise gaming. Convergence 15 (2), 135-139. (electronic databases)

Very thorough take on gaming, analyses discourses of gamers, especially gender and sexuality.


Read:

Jenkins, H. (2006). The War between effects and meaning: Rethinking the video game debate. In D. Buckingham & R. Willett (Eds.), Digital Generations: Children, Young People, and New Media (pp 19-31). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. (E-reserve)

Summarising the main points in the two articles (posted on Blackboard):

Thornham Reading:

Helen Thornham visits a number of console gamers over a certain period of time, across Ireland and England. She finds that gamers are not just knowledgable about their games, they also have an enhanced knowledge of technology. As it seems, to be a cool member of the gaming community you have to take sides. Just as with the Apple vs Microsoft discussion there is a Sega/Nintendo decision to make. You can't like games from one vendor and like those from the other as well. Also, peer pressure seems to have a certain impact as credibility grows with the coolness and the performance of the consoles that gamers own. There seems to be an ongoing competition between gamers. This might be about the hardware, the games, technology, performance etc.pp. Thornham also claims that sexual orientation plays a role in the way the gamer hirarchy is settled within the group of people that live in a house and engage in gaming.


Jenkins Reading:

Jenkins takes sides for a more differentiated view on violence in games. The most interesting remark I think he makes is that not just because you engage in violent online games you automatically become a violent person. "New meanings take shape around what we already know and what we already think, and thus each player will come from a game with a different experience and interpretation." (p.20) He further reinforces this thought with an example brought forward by Gee (2003):

"Gee, for example, discussed Ethnic Cleansing, a game designed by Aryan Nation to foster White supremacy. For many students, he noted, playing the game will encourage critical thinking about the roots of racism and reaffirm their own commitments to social justice, rather than provoking race hatred. Whether the game's ideas are persuasive depends on the player's backgrounds, experience, and previous commitments. Games, like other media, are most powerful when they reinforce our existing beliefs and least effective when they challenge our values."

Gee, J. (2003). What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy. New York: Palgrave.

I think that problem gamers are those who already have their issues with connecting with society. Having little connections with the outside world might distort the perception of what people are like. To relate to what Gee explains, the gaming experience might reinforce this perverted perception of the world around these people and lead to incidents like the Columbine shootings.

Then again to derive from incidents like these, that gamers engaging in violent games are all ticking time bombs, is an exaggeration. This would then mean that all gamers have had the same social experience and set of values that would be reinforced through this kind of games.



Response by Annalese Fowler:

Author: Annalese Fowler

Posted Date: Wednesday, 4 April 2012 13:53:15 o'clock WST

Edited Date: Wednesday, 4 April 2012 13:53:15 o'clock WST

Hi Volker,

I certainly agree with your comment. Jenkin's article gave me a new perspective on violent gaming. I had never thought that the games represented huge advances in technology and niether had I thought that violent people gravitated to play these games to fuel their actions and in fact that is quite contrary. Particularly where Jenkins goes onto explain that, "in Grand Theft Auto 3 ... but more experienced players tell me they often see how long they can go without breaking any laws, viewing this as a harder and more interesting challange." Jenkins, H. War Between effects and meaning: rethinking the video game violence debate. (p28)

Annalese


My Response:

Hi Annalese, when I read that remark about Grand Theft Auto 3, I was absolutely stunned. I always considered these games as a little dull and created for the simple minded car buff. But placing social conscience into a game like this, I think, is quite an interesting move. In fact, I regard this as a step further to reality. Then again, I find this idea pretty spooky as it plays with our psyche. Just think about it, when you play with a friend and you survive because you decided to become a good person within the game.

It actually sparked my interest in giving this game a try.



Write about your personal experience with games and your attitude to video and computer games.

Referring to the Thornham Reading, I would regard myself as a solo gamer. The reason to do so might derive from my preference to challenge myself at sports, rather than compete with others. Rather than engaging in field games like Football or Volleyball, I'd rather engage in street bicycle racing. Transferring these preferences to online gaming I never engaged in network games. Rather than egaging in a virtual war, I prefer to play strategy games by myself. My favourite ever was Pharao, which only was available for the Windows '95 platform. With the mergence of Windows XP, Pharao vanished from the screen. Today I don't engage in PC games or online gaming at all. I feel uneasy sitting there, staring at the screen and clicking away with the mouse without getting anything done. I think, after a while I realised that gaming is just a waste of time. I also realised that gaming is more of an IT-Geek thing. When I worked in a bank related IT-Service business, the gamers were all software programmers. I remember one of them starting his own business as a subsidiary of his employer and actually developing his own game - Bomber Man. It was a jump and run game that could be played solo or in a network environment. The developers got together on a regular basis at his place, networked their PCs and played all night. Of course it was not only Bomber Man, but also other popular shooter games from the early days of the 2nd Millennium. However, the game never made it into the shops and the developer realised that there was already a game called Bomber Man that had been developed in Japan. Although I was close friends with most of the developers around Bomber Man I never had any interest to get involved in gaming.

Discussions

Contribution to dicussion board about a report featured on the ABC TV-series Catalyst:

Hi all,

I hope that people will find their way back to this interesting feature on Catalyst, broadcasted on 26 April 2012. It is about game addiction and also cmprises the story of a young man who played World of Warcraft (WoW) for almost six years, before he decided to move on and get a life. The interesting thing is that - although many parents are concerned that their child would become an addict - this is one example of an individual who would decide by himself, that this is going too far and that it would be time to quit. Here's the link to the video for download or stream from the ABC-Catalyst Website: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3480368.htm

Week 5 - 2.3 Entertaining the World: using media across cultural boundaries

 Read:
Jenkins, H (2006). Pop cosmospolitanism: Mapping cultural flows in an age of media convergence. In H. Jenkins, Fans, bloggers and gamers: exploring participatory culture (pp 152-172). New York: New York University Press. (e-reserve)

Comment:

I remember being introduced to the Japanese Easy Listening Band Pizzicato 5 in 1997. However, Japanese were cross cultural pop cosmopolitans long before US Americans even knew what this meant - think about vinyl pressings from Japan (Deep Purple, The Beatles etc. - high quality re-issues some even with the correct heavy 60s cardboard covers).

Increasingly, US Americans obviously recognize the world around them. Rather than being the epicenter of everything, at least on the pop-culture front they seem to accept that there are influences from outside changing their self perception.

Definitions:

• Corporate Convergence ("Konzentration"): The concentration of media ownership in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of multinational conglomerates who thus have a vested interest in insuring the flow of media content across different platforms and national borders. (Top down approach)
• Grassroots Convergence: The increasingly central roles that digitally empowered consumers play in shaping the production, distribution, and reception of media content. (Bottom Up approach)

Together they create a multidimensional flow of cultural goods around the world (p. 155)

"Many American children are more familiar with the characters of Pokemon than they are with those from the brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, and a growing portion of American youth are dancing to Asian beats."

While Jenkins seems to have a bourgeois elitist view, comparing American culture to foreign cultures he even goes to such extend to claim Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson as authors that would be expected by American children.

"...By contrast Allison argues American (US) cultural exports typically retain recognizable ties back to the United States, a claim supported by the findings in Global Disney Audiences Project, which found that the majority of comsumers in a worldwide survey saw Disney as distinctly American or western in its cultural values and orientation."

To me this comes as no surprise as US Americans are anything but cagey about the origins of their products.

(p.160 - reference to Sesame Street) In regards to Sesame Street, German television soon realised that the series was too American for German taste. Bob, Mr Hooper and other real people were replaced by German actors. Also animation pieces were soon eradicated from the series only leaving space for plays with Ernie & Bert, Kermit, the Cooky Monster and Grumpy, all translated into German (sometimes quite awkwardly). In fact this was not only a change of fragrance - it started smelling funny...

I believe SBS to be a great example of grassroots convergence. As Australia has always been a melting pot of different cultures - especially after the drop of the Whites-Only apartheid in the early 70s, confronted with the task to make sense of the cultural differences between Asian, Arabian and Western cultures. Providing a large number of niche programs to connect different cultures with their own cultural roots, SBS is an invaluable contributor. I sometimes watch German news in the early morning hours and after that Italian or Phillipino news. I don't know a word of Italian and neither do I know Phillipino language. But it is interesting to see how news is served in different countries.

An example of Bhangra club culture, Western style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm2uQDvjAK0

Only recently another culture mash-up has been produced with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, combining the love story of a young Indian hotel owner and the arrival of Western retires hoping to find a better place to spend the latter days of their lives.

But Westerners have always been drawn to exotic India. Waldemar Bonsels wrote his book "Voyage in India" in 1916. Hermann Hesse's "Siddharta" was written in 1922 and hordes of Westerners flocked to the the Shree Rajneesh OSHO temple in Poona, to find relief from the pressures of western culture life and wisdom in the Shree Rajneesh's teachings. Similar things happened around Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who even attracted the Beatles.

Srinivasan, R (2006). Indigenous, ethnic and cultural articulations of new media. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(4), 497-518. (electronic databases)

Reference to the Digital Divide Network: http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org/College-and-University/

The digital divide - it may have two meanings

1) Applied to the notion of ownership it indicates that existing ethnically correlated (in Wechselbeziehung stehen) stratifications (Schichtungen) would be accentuated only by those, who own operate and control the roles of new information systems.

2) A number of writers have flatly assumed that new technologies inherentky create ethnic biases, referring to how it is used to reinforce structures of power and therefor stratify, rather than technological issues.


Discussion
Open Discussion - Questions about the Jenkins Reading

Hi All,

I feel quite uncomfortable with this particular Jenkins reading. I'm surprised that Jenkins takes on a dominant US American pop-culture view. I've only read a couple of pages yet and found disturbing if not patronising statements like:

"...teens in the developing world use American popular culture to express generational differences or to articulate fantasies of social, political, and cultural transformation..."

"To be sure there is probably no place on the planet where you can escape the shadow of Mickey Mouse."

But then again he claims:

"Many American children are more familiar with the characters of Pokemon than they are with those from the brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, and a growing portion of American youth are dancing to Asian beats." (p.157)

Brothers Grimm were German, Hans Christian Andersen was Danish. What is their part in US American pop-culture? Why would US American kids be familiar with these characters when the world seems to be in love with Mickey Mouse?

Can anybody enlighten me?

Responses: Fellow students informed me that Brothers Grimm are quite popular in the US. However, the stories have been heavily altered to adapt them to US norms. They are less graphic and the things that happen have been tamed down to adjust to U.S. American popular culture.

Week 3 - 2.1 Entertain Me!: Who makes your entertainment? Actors, institutions & participatory culture

Read:

Cucco, M. (2009). The promise is great: the blockbuster and the Hollywood economy. Media, Culture and Society, 31(2), 215-230. (Available through library's electronic databases)

Summary of essential conclusions (citations):

As Douglas Gomery recalls: ‘Jaws was not the first film sold by and through broadcast television, but its million-dollar success proved that that strategy was the one that would redefine Hollywood through saturation advertising’ (1998: 51)

In everyday usage the word ‘blockbuster’ is usually used in a derogatory way, referring to a worthless film that restates something that has already been seen. That is not completely off the mark, even though there is the risk of underestimating the strategic complexity of the production and distribution of these movies. First of all, blockbusters are born from US popular culture and their target is the mass public, with few artistic-expressive expectations. They are films which appeal to feelings and primary emotions, with charac- ters and situations able to enthrall emotionally, whose stories give universal messages. The narrative construction is usually simple, not highly innovative or revolutionary in content and apolitical.

The use of special effects tries to push for- ward the visible, displayable and imaginable boundary, and the trailer of the film tries to enter into an agreement with the members of the public, asking them to watch the film to see to what extent the film-makers have dared to push their ability. It’s a promise of novelty dictated by conservatism, where novelty means the use of technology because there is no advancement in the themes, content and style.

The identity of a high-concept movie is simple and easily communicable since it is designed around the public’s taste and market research. Its funda- mental features are the simplification of characters and narration, and a close relationship between image and sound. As already explained, blockbusters usually give more importance to special effects than to narration because the former can intensify the spectacularity.

Avoiding qualitative debate:
By showing the film in many theatres at the same time, the number of people who watch a movie without reading reviews or hearing opinions beforehand increases. As De Vany put it, these movies depend on the so-called ‘uninformative informa- tion cascade’. Moreover, they are usually defined hit and run as they earn a lot of money when they come out in theatres but disappear from programming in a few weeks.

While reviews are not a particularly serious threat, because some studies have demonstrated that their effects on revenues are fairly limited (Eliashberg and Shugan, 1997) and that they are directed at adults who are not the blockbuster’s main target, word-of-mouth is a different matter. The danger of this lies in its unpredictability and ungovernability.

However, he can also decide to join the argument, to turn it around and pull potential movie-goers to the cinema. For instance, The Da Vinci Code devised a clever policy to accentuate (and limit) the debate surrounding the film. Sony’s marketing office called in theology experts for an online debate on the book and film. It was allegedly a website for the free exchange of thoughts about the film but in actual fact it was run by Sony’s marketing office.

The pre-sold identity effect can attract viewers to the theatres as well. The pre-sold identity concept is extremely wide-ranging so we will only consider the phenomena of sequel, prequel and remake. Of the 65 movies that earned most on the opening weekend, there are 29 sequels, 3 prequels and 3 remakes, for a total of 35 titles. Also considering the movies that have had the widest release each year since 1980 (Figure 1) sequels, prequels or remakes are numerous (19 out of 26 movies) and represent the key moments in the growth of the wide-release approach.

Comment:

Cucco argues that in the aim to attract as many visitors as possible to so called blockbuster films, quality is not so much the main aspect in the creation process anymore. Rather than delivering a good story, modern films thrive on the technical finesse of CGI programmers, producing more stunning effects all the time. Also, the target group of blockbuster movies are younger viewers, who are also easier to target as mature viewers. Older film viewers wait for critics to give their expertise before deciding to go themselves. Also, rather than producing a completely new film, film producer prefer to create/use iconic figures (Spider Man, Indiana Jones, Batman etc.) for the purpose of creating sequels and prequels, also reducing production costs by re-using materials that were already produced for the initial film.

All in all it seems as if film studios are more concerned with maximising box office results at the lowest possible costs and the lowest risk, rather than producing intelligent films.


Comment on Tama Leavers I-Lecture for this week:

"Zappers - Casuals - Loyals": 

Tama is referring to TV in his examples. In music I wonder if the situation hasn't changed, in terms of religious followers, buying everything around a favourite band. If you think about all the bands that are now online and distribute their music by link to YouTube, their fan page, MySpace etc, I wonder if there is actually any space for the purchase of merchandise, limited edition CDs and vinyl etc. Why do that, when their material is ubiquitously available online?

Consuming television in Australia seems to be something that people don't really do. While in Germany, where I come from, all the people who put on their TV, put it on to watch something. Nobody would get the idea of having the TV run in the background without anybody watching. Quite a few Australians told me that they need the TV or the radio running to produce some background noise. Quietness makes them feel uncomfortable. What a strange behaviour - it's almost like coming home and opening the tab, just in case you need some water later on...

As in Joss Whedon's case, engagement with your audience pays. Some writers of TV series take their audience seriously which pays off as they stand loyal to the writer, if something happens like the network interfering with a series, taking it off the program schedule or refusing to accept a sequal of the series although a huge fan base is demanding it.

Creating such a large fan base by actually listening to his audience and even responding to them, Whedon was able to activate these fans for his low budget online project Dr Horrible - a sing along blog. Rather than creating his own webpage and dragging all the attention to himself, he took the contrary approach and vsited fans in their spaces, on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Digg and as a contributor to the Whedonesque portal. There he would post his own thoughts or respond to thoughts from others, rather than being the centre of attention. In fact, from a fan base "he is one of us".

Particiation - not dissemination.

More detail on the project:

http://blog.jeffreymcmanus.com/896/whats-in-it-for-doogie-howser/



Watch: 

Vidding (2008) a series of short videos about vidding - you don't have to watch them all.
Viding: What about copyright concerns?

Comment:

Obviously vidding has been around for a while now. The videos shown here are all from 2008 - now it's 2012, an incredibly long time in terms of online popularity. Still, the Facebook Vidding page clearly indicates that there are ongoing contributions, linked on a regular basis.

Looking at Vidder.net I found out in the 'about'-page, that vidders are mostly female.

Week 4 - 2.2 Don’t touch that! Copyright, ownership and institutional control

Read:
Steve Collins, (2008). Recovering fair use, M/C Media Culture 11 (6).

Article about fair use and copyright. Gives a good summary of the legal history of the term, and its applicability to digital media through specific cases.

Comment

posted on Blackboard, 19 March 2012, 19:50

Hi Deb, I just started with reading the first article by Steve Collins. A brilliant piece of work that definitely helps to understand that fair use is not at all about good will, but a strong companion against overzealous law departments claiming copyright on basically anything and everything.

Looking at all the trouble people go through that upload videos on YouTube, I am constantly stunned about the media industry. I have been through the history of sound storage media since vinyl and the emergence of cassette tape. Apart from buying excessive numbers of vinyl albums in the 70s and early eighties and being a good consumer from the music industry perspective, I also used my tape recorder to record songs from radio, like chart shows and music specials. Also, I tape-recorded my records and shared the mix tapes with friends. It was common practice and nobody had any concerns. When CDs hit the market I slowly changed from buying vinyl to buying CDs, still creating mix tapes from the CDs and vinyl I possessed.

The whole trouble with an avalanche of copyright infringement claims started, when the music industry realised that their distribution monopoly was about to fade away. While CDs were easier and cheaper to manufacture than vinyl copies and also less delicate, the emergence of CD-burning facilities opened a pandora's box. All of a sudden anybody with a computer could mass-reproduce music at an amazing rate. And things have gone worse with portable storage devices enabling their owners to store a music library larger than the entire back catalogue of some of the biggest music businesses. But as it seems, artists have less problems with copyright than the music industry itself. Rock music legends like Dick Dale openly criticise the music industry and recommend to young and coming artists to take a DIY-approach. 

I personally believe that the media industry (radio, TV, music and news publishers) is only concerned because they are no longer needed for the distribution of media. And it's the same with newspapers. Social media has taken their place online and people are happy to share, but less and less to buy. Fair use is a good way to protect these people from being over regulated and also suffocated in their creativity.

Today I received a Tweet telling me that the designer who created the Nike Swoosh was only paid $ 35.- for his creation. Thinking about it and about the current copyright infringement frenzy going on, I was wondering why not every man and his dog claimed copyright, because they were the first to draw a swoosh.


(Further to clarify my point, posted on 20 March 2012)

Hi Deb,

Sorry I went a bit off topic. But yes, I think it is always important to look at the change in which law is interpreted by those who apply it. Where I work everybody is terribly concerned about copyright breach to a point that seems a bit hysterical to me. Although I totally agree that copyright is a very important issue in the age of Web 2.0 and the opportunity for everybody to be a producer and a consumer at the same time, I also think that it is crucial to understand how fair use can work for those who wish to create and use existing media for this purpose.

Also, it doesn't hurt to ask those who created media if they were happy for you to use it. Eg. when you select images from Flickr, people are quite happy to grant copyright if you mention that it is their creative work. That's all. No money involved.


In response to the file sharing question:

Author: Deb Pearson

Date: Tuesday, 20 March 2012 07:49:25 o'clock WST

Subject: File Sharing: Discussion of the week

We have spent some time looking at participatory culture, vidding and remediation over the past couple of weeks.

This week we are considering the implications of copyright and fair use and our group discussion will be on file sharing.

What are the material and ethical implications of filesharing? What about when artists distribute themselves? Does this signal the end of traditional economic models?

What are your thoughts?

Deb


My response:

I wouldn't say that it will change the traditional economic models as the implications are limited to things that can be converted into digital files (media). But what will certainly change is the way in which media is distributed. In the traditional sense distribution was one-to-many. You had to rely on the distribution channels of distribution specialists to get your work "out there". In general that was the work of publishers. But "out there" is no longer restricted to RL (real life). Anything that can be transferred into an electronic file (music, the written word, images) can be replicated in massive numbers and distributed in a mouse click. As there is no sense of time or space online, data provided is also available at anytime from anywhere in RL.

Taking musicians as an example, many have realised that file sharing opportunities have taken away the benefit of limited availability. Today it wouldn't make sense anymore to release a limited edition of a song. In the end it is just another digital file. Even making it available only on vinyl, it wouldn't keep consumers from making digital copies. Here is an example of anextremely rare record from the 50s, copied onto YouTube. It is simply not necessary anymore to go to a shop and buy music.

As a result, musician like the Raveonettes decide to go online and engage with their fans. Telling them about the latest releases and putting them out on YouTube straight away. Rather than use traditional distribution channels they take ownership from creation through marketing to distribution. The music has become the advertising vehicle and the concert the main source of income.

From an ethical perspective I think that producers who use third party content should at least recognise those who created the original work they use for their own creation. Interestingly this never seemed to have been a problem in Jamaica, where every composition seems to have remained in the public domain for multiple reuse. One example is Stop That Train by Keith & Tex. This song like many others has been reused by Scotty. This one he renamed Draw Your Brakes. Rather than using samples or using the inspiration from the song for his own ideas, he simply put his own lyrics on top of the original recording. In other places it would have not only been a breach of copyright, but also a blatant attempt of plagiarism.




In response on File Sharing: Discussion of the week

Responding to: 

Amanda Helmes

Posted Date:Tuesday, 20 March 2012 18:35:34 o'clock WST

Edited Date:

Tuesday, 20 March 2012 18:35:34 o'clock WST



My response:

Hi Amanda, this actually reflects what Lessing says at the end of his TED presentation. It shouldn't be a copyright issue if you do it for the love of doing it (Vidding). If there is no commercial interest behind it it should be fine. In the end we all have to dwell on our experiences and most of them come from established sources.



Responding to:

Author: Stephen Oakes

Posted Date: Saturday, 24 March 2012 10:39:06 o'clock WST

Edited Date: Saturday, 24 March 2012 10:39:06 o'clock WST


My response:

Hi Stephen, I totally agree (again). But as I said before, what really bothers me is when YouTube users "share" music with the online community, stating that the copyright owner is someone else ("no harm intended") and at the same time placing advertisements at the bottom of the video they just uploaded. This is where copyright should be put in place. Still, I believe that many "file sharers" just don't get the idea behind copyright and that copyright has nothing to do with the copy itself, but the issue of making money based on the copy displayed. Also, from an ethical perspective, I believe that it should be in the interest of YouTube and other file sharing platforms like Flickr and Pinterest, to make it clear to their customers how copyright works.

One application would be a test that users would have to stand before uploading or copying stuff. I think it would be far more efficient then simply asking users to tick a box, limiting the providers liability but not really putting the user in charge.



View:
A Fair(y) use tale

A clever and enjoyable comment on institutional attempts to curtail the doctrine of “fair use”.


Lawrence Lessig on "laws that strangle creativity”

An excellent talk about the impact of technologies and regulation on creative experimentation and expression.


Comments:

User generated content - three stories

1st story:

Souza like so many older people is hesitant to change, worrying rather than trying to look at the advantages and the disadvantages. Souza predicted we would loose the read/write capacity due to "talking machines". He predicted a move from the read/write culture to a read only culture and Lawrence Lessig thinks he is right. Is he?


2nd story:

Protecting property all the way up to the sky has no place in the modern world. I agree in so far that in the days, when property rights were first established there was no man made machine capable of trespassing over people's properties so there was no reason to negotiate issues like this. I regularly fly to Europe and it would be rediculous to ask for trespassing permission by every single land owner on this trip half way around the world.

However, in the realm of the Coal Seem Gas exploration attempts in the richest farm land areas of Queensland, farmers' property rights are limited to the top soil. They have no right to restrict the gas and oil industry from exploiting the land underneath the top soil. (!)

3rd story:

BMI - a counter organisation formed in competition with ASCAP - were the first to collect public domain works and give them away for free to their subscribers.

Lessig talks about spreading amateur culture and reviving the read write culture. Where people produce for the love of what their doing and not for the money (!!!) This is the perfect foundation and specification to wall off copyright arguments from industry. While there certainly are people who wish to profit on other's creative property, I agree that the majority of those people on YouTube, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and all the other platforms that create the social environment online, are primarily concerned with sharing what they love.

RE_CREATIVITY IS NOT PIRACY! Very good point.

BMI confirmed that competition can create balance.

Week 2 - 1.2 The Medium is the Message: When media converge?

Reading: 

Lessig, L. (2006). Four puzzles from cyber space. In L. Lessig Code version 2.0 (pp 9-30). New York: Basic Books. (available online through the code 2.0 wiki - you can also download the entire book))

Comment (also posted on Blackboard):

For me, the protagonists from the first two stories from cyberspace are clearly experimenting with the opportunities the cyber world provides. It seems as if there is some sort of escape from the real world. However, I can comprehend how tempting it is, when you have the opportunity to change basically everything to your own demands. A godlike scenario is described on "Borders: "He [Dank] also had a choice about whether a copy of the dog could be made, so that if it died it could be 'revived'. In MMOG space these possibilities are not given by God. Or rather, if they are defined by God, then the players share the power of God."

The danger I see is that people with a less stable psychic constitution could have trouble finding their way around in the real world after spending excessive time in cyberspace: "What does it mean to live in a world where problems can be coded away?"

Also, in cyber world, real world ethics have no meaning. I think that people or organisations with low ethical standards find a perfect playground online. In the case of the article 'Jake's Communities' this might actually be a good thing. Although I personally regard his stories as plain sick, I think it is a good thing to transfer these phantasies from the real world into the Web. I think that the morally deranged are those who make an effort to condemn people like Jake. In my own opinion we are all guilty of having double standards - while we expect high standards from members of our social environment, we put the lesser ones upon ourselves. Interestingly it doesn't even occur to most of us that we have these low standards until somebody points them out to us. Jake has these double standards too, with the exception of living out his dark side disguised as an online-ID, rather than trying to hide it away from his real-world social environment, without any valve to take off the pressure of not being able to express himself. In Jake's case real-world peers had no idea about his strange phantasies until his ID was revealed. At the same time it must have been a revelation to Jake to find out that he was not alone with his deranged phantasies. The question that still lingers in the air is: Would it have been enough to express the wish to rape and torture women to a slow death in the long run? And would he and his online community have been intelligent enough to realise that they need professional help?

When I first read Tim Berners-Lee's book 'Weaving the Web' I was absolutely stunned that a man would give away the opportunity for World Domination by making the Web absolutely free to it's users. The biggest legacy that we will struggle with is certainly the aspect of total freedom. With it comes total responsibility and total tolerance for everything that is put on the Web. Cases like Jake's make it hard for many people not to cry out for regulation. But regulation would tell us again what we are supposed to process and what not to process. But we are all capable of making decisions without a Fuehrer, who tells us what to think.

Pornography, excessive violence, racism, terrorism etc. are not problems of the Web. They are problems of society. Hiding their online expressions away would not achieve anything, except for making them profitable for those who use illegality to sell forbidden stuff at excessive prices. The problems are not on the Web.

As the story about Jake concludes, "when Jake was prosecuted, many First Amendment defenders argued his words, however vivid, never crossed into reality. And no doubt there is a difference between writing about rape and raping. Just as there is a difference between an actor enacting rape and actually raping someone."

Interesting responses: 

Yes Volker, this reading confronts us with many challenges...and my mind is want to drift sideways into real life with the present ongoing problems which police and lawyers face in a cyber world which has outpaced our laws of the land. We need our laws in cyberspace. Where are the borders? Who defines the borders? I am wondering who is beavering away trying to work all this all out for us? It is a fine line between a good law and an oppressive law. And how is it to be enforced in order to be effective? Eliza

My re-response:

Hi Elizabeth - that's just what I'm thinking. But what I also wanted to point out is that the Web is something that has been put into our hands. I don't think that we should let anybody work it out for us in terms of any laws or regulations. We are free to use it and to make it work which ever way we want.

Also, in the reading about Jake it seems that US American citizens don't understand that the Web doesn't end at the borders of the US. So, how can US American law apply to things that happen online? It's also funny when you look into social networks like LinkedIn and discuss professional issues. Americans always take it for granted that everyone they discuss something with has to take an US American view on the issue.

But if you take into account that the Web exists as one large society of a broad mix of cultures, languages, religious and political views, who shall decide about regulations? Here nobody tells us what to think. We can get into contact directly with people from Yemen, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Uganda, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, just like I am writing to you. If political upheaval appears somewhere, we don't have to rely on what we're told and we don't have to trust news outlets because of the lack of alternatives. Instead we are free to conduct our own investigations.

I think that it will take a while until people realise how much power they have, if they join forces online. To me it sometimes occurs to be an anarchistic experiment. 

Watch: 

Henry Jenkins on Participatory culture

Comment:

Comments on the Jenkins video: http://vimeo.com/4672634

This video really grabbed me by the throat. Most of it I can absolutely relate to:

Indeed, old media is dying. Instead of having others decide what we are supposed to know and filtering down to what is alleged customer expectation, now the average consumer is in control. As long as any people have access to the Web they will have the opportunity, not only to decide what to know more about, but also what to make of it, analyse it and even discuss it with total strangers on the other side of the world.

I also like the definition of convergence culture: "Every story, sound, image, relation plays itself out over a maximum of media channels." Media today functions as collective intelligence. We are a trinity of journalist, editor and reader - all one and the same person.

I still remember first reading 1984 by George Orwell - a gloomy painting of the future in the 1970s. Now it seems like we are watching and analysing every move of Big Brother, actually tearing down the walls that protect Big Brothers exclusive knowledge and source of manipulative power. Wikileaks, blogs, forums and newsgroups all contribute to a 360 degree look at every single news feature. Not only are we able to verify a story, we can all actively contribute to it. Online society has the capacity to collectively assess information upon its accuracy and application.

In his last election Barack Obama used the power of the masses rather than corrupting himself with the power of the rich, being voted president of the USA. I wonder if it would be thinkable to have Barack Obama be the real world representative for the online society. He has followers who actually understand how to use the power of the Web. The vast majority of the earth's population still doesn't understand the Web. They fear it and therefore want to regulate it. If a leader can use the power of online society to win a real world election, maybe he can use the same power to make real world people understand and join the online society.

Response from Stephen Oakes:

Hi Volker -
It is great you have put into perspective that most people on Earth don't understand the web.
I found an interesting statistical web link on Internet Usage and Penetration:
http://blog.ausweb.com.au/internet-usage-statistics/
No surprise that the United States has the most amount of penetration, with Oceania/Australia coming in second.
Overall the world average is 28%.
I wonder what internet usage will be in 5 years ?
Stephen :)


My response to Stephen Oakes:

Hi Stephen,
Thanks for posting this link. Indeed, the stats are quite revealing.

I have no doubt that Web use will increase massively over the next years. First of all the older non-IT generations will die away and then 4G technology will heavily extend possibilities of transferring massive data amounts by mobile device, making it even more convenient to communicate with the world from your palm.

Only recently I've been to a Cisco Business Insight program with a couple of students from my university. The presenter was one of the top developers in Melbourne. Being asked what he thinks about the future development in IT he was convinced that in 5-10 years time everything Web will happen from a hand held. Let's wait and see...

Volker

Elizabeth Cowan's TED video contribution: http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_mackinnon_let_s_take_back_the_internet.html

Hadiyah Stephens: 

I find it fascinating that the Egyptian government kept transcripts of it's people's online conservations, and even their face-to-face ones! I wonder if we have anything like that here in Australia; it's rather worrisome.

My response: 

Hi Hadiyah. There are many more examples of totalitarian Governments (some of them posing as democracies) like this around the world. Before the fall of Eastern Germany in 1990 the so called Stasi (STAtatsSIcherheitsdienst) -a secret police created to control basically any move of any East German- encouraged citizens to spy their own neighbours, friends and even relatives. This went on for 40 years. The Gauck office named after Joachim Gauck (currently Federal President of Germany) was founded after East Germany and West Germany we rejoined in 1990.The Department was formed to make sure that the Stasi Archives would not be destroyed and to help former citizens of East Germany to find out if and by whom they were denounced.

Some of the revelations from the Stasi Archives had severe impact on friendships and family relations. But overall it definitely helped to clean the air - especially for those who were held as political prisoners or received other kinds of punishment due to their deviation from the enacted political view. 

Personal comment on Australian Universities using US resources:

Again, this is an article from the US. It is quite revealing that Australian Universities do not find enough local material to fill their studies. And as if there is only one country in existence outside Australia, we refer to the US. Are we really that similar to the Americans that we can accept their material 1:1? It is interesting to find out that a university in a multicultural country mostly inhabited by Australians of English heritage followed closely by those from other European countries and also increasingly Asian background prefers to refer to specific US material.

Week 1 - 1.1 Introduction: How does the media engage you? How do you engage with the media?

Watching & Listening:

View: Did You Know 4.0

Although this video uses American statistics, it illustrates the rapid changes effecting the production, distribution and consumption of media texts as a result of the digitalisation and convergence of technologies.

Comments: 

This is a collection of statements and assumptions that would need a little more detail to be fathomable by those who watch the video. Really - it's a waste of time.

Reading:

Henry Jenkins, "Critical Information studies for a participatory culture (pt 2)", blog post, April 10 2009.

Comments:

An interesting article and a lot to discuss. However, my main issue - older generations being left behind and intimidated by the shear vastness and complexity of the Web - is not discussed. Also I am waiting for someone to tell me that trades will be online too, very soon. It seems to me that there is always a little bit of hysteria going along with the 'all new' Web. Of course it is amazing what is possible with new media and it is absolutely fantastic to think that what was impossible few years back is now easily achievable in terms of communication.

Also, sometimes traditional thinking is used to explain how things will develop in the future. There are certainly online communities that block themselves off (silos) against other parts of the online community. However, looking at examples like Facebook or ASmallWorld, participants seem to be happy with the idea of being part of an exclusive society on the Web. But isn't this a behavioural pattern that we can also experience in the real world? Why do clubs attract crowds, when it is very hard to get inside? Because people like to be part of an exclusive society - the in-crowd.

I could go on and on about this...


Class discussions


Response to Deb's questions:

How do you use media?

My habits towards media have changed a lot over the past few years. I immigrated from Germany in 2007 and the first thing I realised was how aggressively media is used to advertise. Watching commercial TV is very annoying as you will spend most of the time staring at the screen while someone is shouting at you, basically telling you that you are stupid if you don't buy their stuff. I get particularly annoyed when I have to watch a stupid commercial over and over again. Top ranking on my hate list are Harvey Norman, Godfrey vacuum cleaners and Coles supermarkets.

Also, what they call news on channel 7, 9 and 10 is hilarious. Mostly it's fallen trees, crashed cars, bad weather and celebrity gossip.

However, ABC TV isn't much better. You get a break from stupid commercials, but current affairs are always about suffering and in terms of feature films or series you might be happy if there is one Australian production featured every two months. Everything else comes from mother England. In terms of news you may get one or the other item from the US or somewhere, where Australian soldiers are stationed. Also news, especially 7.30 Report and Lateline, comprise of the above combined with a game they call interviews. Anchormen and women ask "hard" questions, politicians avoid giving anything away, anchormen and women interrupt and insist on more specific answers, politicians say nothing again, phrasing it a little different etc. pp. However, I do love to watch Q&A every now and then. Not because of the panel, but because of the Tweets displayed at the bottom of the screen. What the public has to say in 140 characters is more interesting than most of what panelists will say during the whole show.

That is why my average TV-digest comprises of 10 minutes per day, watching the weather report on ABC breakfast TV and 2 hours on Fridays, watching Rage.

I don't hear any radio at home because the reception is really bad. Sometimes when I can't afford to take the risk of public transport, because I have to be at work on time, I listen to PBS FM in my car on the way to work. An independent radio station, run by it's members, playing really interesting and awkward stuff. It's all about music and no gossip at all.

I have tried to read The Age for a while, but didn't find the reading very interesting. Also, I hated to crawl around in the shrubs on weekends to find my copy.

What are your preferences within your personal media life - do you read the morning newspapers or get your headlines from the television, news websites, or via posts on Facebook or Twitter (or indeed, all of these and more!). What media do you use for entertainment, information, and communication purposes?

I prefer to engage with others online. My favourite spaces on the Web are Youtube (music, slow TV, recordings from conferences, what social commentators have to say), LinkedIn (job related information, contributing to association groups like APESMA, NAGCAS or networking with business contacts), Twitter (work related announcements, seeking interesting articles or sharing stuff that I find interesting), Facebook (for laughs and to run my "What Are You Listening To Right Now"-group, which is dedicated to popular music that's been forgotten or to share some interesting finds with other group members and to comment on them).

How often might you use these different media?

I am a fan of seldom heard music. I love to listen and explore it and find a gem every now and then. This is why I am on YouTube a lot. I think it's my favourite entertainment area.

At work I am online on LinkedIn and Twitter most of the time.

We have a Facebook page to engage with our students. As an administrator I regularly update the account or delete inappropriate entries from third parties. Also, I make sure that comments or questions about posts are attended for a.s.a.p.

How might the views on media developments differ between students and friends/family/older generations/different cultures, and why? You can think about your own personal experience as well as the readings for this week in answering the questions!

I could write a book to answer this question, looking back at the development of media, post vinyl and cassette tape. It is a bit more than 25 years ago, during the New Wave era, that CDs became popular. In the mid 90s we started developing our own Websites. 10 years later Web 2.0 happened and slowly began to deteriorate the media monopoly of the big news agencies, music labels and any organisation that was engaged in filtering and delivering information, from news to entertainment, to the masses.

The development of the digital world as we know it today has commenced at neck breaking speed. And it seems to me that the speed is still increasing.

My own experience is that specifically older people who are not or have not been particularly engaged in IT are falling behind, having trouble to understand this increasingly crazy world. My mum is scared of the Internet and only uses her Web connection for emails. She doesn't even open attachments.

To the contrary, students at the university, where I work organise their life around their iPhone. There is nothing awkward to them about sitting around a table in a cafe and texting away rather than engaging in face-to-face communication. In places like Finland there are already more mobile phones than inhabitants. You might assume that mobile phone applications are a great pass time to get them through a long and dark winter...

I think, that there has always been a lot of chauvinism involved in being IT-savvy. If you weren't up to using the latest technology, that made you uncool in an instant. Not having a CD-player, later not having your own Website even later not being on Twitter or Facebook and finally not having an iPhone, Blackberry or Samsung Galaxy was very uncool. I'll reveal something here: I don't like my mobile phone at all. It's not even an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy. It's a stock standard Nokia, but it can read QR-code. You don't know what QR-code is? That is so 2011. Anyway, I hate being called at all hours by friends who are bored and just want to talk to someone. These friends are so "me" that they don't even get it that I might actually have something more important to do than listening to their rant. On the other hand I don't have to attend to every single call if I don't want to.

Today the CIO of ComputerShare held a presentation in front of our students, explaining the undertakings of the organisation and which technology they use, to our students. As a representative of my department that organises the presentations I was around, trying to follow what he was talking about. It has always amazed me how much these people know about IT. While I completely lost the plot, students engaged in asking questions about certain technological aspects and laughed together with the CIO where I didn't even get the joke. It is almost like a parallel world, a culture silo that exists next to the "real world".

While this is a western culture experience there are also those people in 3rd world countries who cannot even write or read. I wonder if they will ever be able to catch up with the development in the first world or if they will stay behind forever.

Med 104 - Learning Portfolio entry 1

This is the start for the Learning Portfolio in Med 104 - Engaging Media.

Started Reading Four Puzzles From Cyberspace


FIRST ENTRY FOR THIS UNIT

Comment:

A definition of Cyberspace from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberspace

The interesting thing about this read is -again- that we look at the way the US will have to deal with the problem of regulating the Web. It is paradox to understand on one hand that the Web is borderless, timeless, and omni accessible, while arguing that US-American Amendments need to be taken into consideration when aiming at regulating the Web. The first thing that has to happen is to understand, that the Web is a nation by istelf. Not only cyberspace, but also the Web and the Internet that actually make cyberspace possible exist parallel to the real world. No matter from where you access this space, it is always the same. This is why I argue that the rules implemented on the Web should not reflect on the US-American constitution alone. It would require all countries in the world (including those outside the UN) to come up with a combined approach. Looking at the immaturity of governments and politicians in general that in itself is a mammoth task.

_______________________________________________________________________________

General Information 

Assessment 1A (due date 23 March 2012)

Assessment 1B (due date 6 May 2012):

Portfolio

Students should summarise and critically engage with the central arguments proposed in each of the weekly texts for reading and/or viewing. In addition, students will undertake a number of analytical and reflective tasks centred on media texts from each of the four ‘uses’ – entertainment, play, information, and communication. These tasks may involve personal reflections, short opinion pieces, rewriting/ re- mediating their work into different media forms, planning for assignments, and providing feedback/reflection on other students’ work. These tasks should be included in your learning portfolio. You are welcome to extend your learning portfolio to include any ideas or information that you consider relevant to the learning outcomes for this unit. The portfolio may be kept as a word document or in an online format such as a website, blog, or wiki.

Optional Portfolio Interim feedback

You have the option, if you so wish, to submit a sample of your learning portfolio in week 4 in order to gain feedback on how you are progressing. You will not receive detailed commentary, but a grade that indicates what you would be likely to receive for your final portfolio if this was the standard of work submitted. This grade is indicative only and is not recorded as part of your final mark for the unit.

Portfolio Reflection

Towards the end of the study period, you will choose four entries from your portfolio which you think best reflect your learning process throughout the unit. You will submit these entries along with a portfolio reflection: a short analysis (no more than 2 pages) of how the activities documented in your portfolio relate to the learning goals of the unit. (A pro-forma to aid you in writing this piece is available on the unit website). A key function of your learning portfolio should be to reflect on your learning, and to think about the ways in which the readings, tasks and conversations with the other students relate to the core themes and unit learning outcomes. Taking such a reflective approach throughout the learning portfolio will assist you in writing the final reflection.

Assessment 2 (due date 13 April 2012):

2. Remediation Project and Outline

This assignment consists of a practical creative response to the notion of remediation, as well as research preparing you for the assignment 3 essay. Thus assignment 2 and 3 are closely linked, with assignment 2 providing the groundwork for the final essay: both in terms of a creative example to discuss (the remediation) as well as a brief summary of the structure and content of your final essay (the outline).

The Remediation

Work with a text of your personal choice that you have used in your discussions and Learning Portfolio. You need to ‘remediate’ this text – i.e. re-present the text in a different media format. For example, if the original text was a newspaper article, you could rework it as a webpage, or video. This part of the assessment may be done individually or working in groups.

Your remediation will not be assessed according to technological or artistic prowess, but on the success of the process of transforming the text into a different form, and the understanding itdemonstrates of how remediation impacts the contemporary media environment. Your remediated text needs to be presented in an electronic format so it can be shared with other students in an online format (e.g. as pdf, video, webpage, blog, jpeg etc).

The Outline

Along with the remediation you need to submit a short (no more than one page) outline that will form the basis for your assignment 3 essay. The outline should identify, in dot point form, the major groups of people / companies and institutions involved in the production, distribution and consumption of both the original text, and the likely groups which would be involved in the production, distribution and consumption of your remediated text.

You should also provide an outline of your essay structure (headings and subheadings indicating what the major sections of your essay will address). Finally you should include a preliminary bibliography of at least 3-5 academic sources (outside of those set as unit reading) you think will be relevant to your essay. A proforma for the outline is provided on the unit website.

Assessment 3 (due date 25 May 2012):

3. Final Essay

Write a 2000 word essay commenting on the implications of remediation for the reception, production and distribution of texts. Using key terms and concepts of the unit, and drawing on your remediated text as an example, respond to this question:

How does the production and/or consumption of media texts change through remediation?

Your answer should not merely reflect on your own experiences of remediating a text, but use this text as an example or case study for exploring the opportunities, challenges, limitations and problems associated with new media. You should also draw on academic texts and other media examples to support your argument.

In researching your answer, think about audience, cultural context, media organisations and institutions. Your answer should also make reference to the overarching themes of ownership, privacy, participation, ethics and credibility. Your essay should be properly referenced according to APA guidelines and include a reference list.






Submission:



Additional information


Assignment submission


Professional communication almost always involves adhering to set formats: start practising now by presenting your work as required.


All assignments should include a cover sheet with your name, unit number, assignment number, due date and name of your tutor. Cover sheets are available on the unit website.


All assignments are to be submitted electronically through FLECS-Blackboard by the due dates indicated above. (Please keep a copy of your assignment and your submission notice from blackboard).


Important! Assignment files must be named: Med104_a.[insert #]_[your surname]; eg: Med104_a.1_Leaver.doc.


Please submit in word (.doc) or rich text (.rtf) formats only