Month: June 2015

Final Reflection

aishastevens on

With the first semester done, I feel that I have learnt a lot in the first semester of media. I feel that the various project briefs throughout the semester has been most helpful to me this semester, due to the practical skills that it has given me. However, I feel that the lectures and workshops helped most in providing information to understanding the key wider-world knowledge that is necessary for a better understanding of media.

Week 2 Lecture

It was in the week 2 lecture where I feel that I started to gain more of an understanding of what this course is about. In it, I completed the group task in the lecture whilst also explaining some of the broader ideas that was discussed in the lecture. I thought that the discussion that “media is everywhere” was an appripriate way to start the broad area of media studies.

Week 10 outer media example

In week 10, I found the topic of “institutions” as interesting and appropriate for the media subject. My focus for the example was institutions and how their independent guidelines are often motivated by the political stance of the company. I think that the outer media examples discussed in the blog post are appropriate for the topic in focus.

Week 11 lecture

I found the week 11 lecture of remixing interesting, because I never really regarded the copyright breaches or the politics behind remixing music. I also agreed with the discussion of the theory that nothing created is originality in its pure form.

Week 12 lecture

Week 12’s lecture was one my favourites, due to the stream of consciousness exercise. I focused my writings on the prompt of Humanity is in charge of its own future. The focus of media materialism was also interesting to discuss, as with the increasing use of technology, the idea of materialism and its executives can be easily forgotten about.

Week 12 outer media example

For an outer media example in week 12, I decided to focus on a less widely discussed media format of novels. In it, I discuss dystopian future novels by authors Margaret Atwood and George Orwell. This was due to the examples that we were given in the week 12 lecture, as well as the overall idea of media materialism.

Overall, I think that my first semester of University was a success for me. But I aim to try even harder next semester.

Extra link: Week 12 workshop (including graph)

Final Reflection: 

This semester, I feel that I have accomplished my goal of how to successfully make a blog. To make and create posts has been something that I have been nervous about previously in terms of running a blog, but with more and more use, I have gained more confidence. Although I do have some room for improvement in terms of understanding the technology of the blogs, I feel that I have improved a great deal since the beginning of the semester.

I have learned this through many means, but it has mostly been allowing myself to make mistakes and then figure out how to fix it. It was challenging sometimes, because I also feel like I did not use my blog to its full extent. However, I feel that this will be something that I, with no doubt, plan to improve on next semester.

I think the running of blogs is a creative way to managing this course, although I do feel like I can improve on many things in the future. Looking back, I think that my general format of the blog is a little boring, and aim to find a more visually pleasing one next semester. Although I know that this was an option throughout the semester, I only realised that it would be more useful that I initially realised after completing Project Brief 4 (where my group created a blog.) I also aim to proof-read my work more, as I feel that my wording was, at times, my downfall in the blog.

 

I have found the outer media examples to be the most challenging in the course. It was hard to find a media text example week by week, and I do not feel that all my examples would be considered “creative” enough, particularly in context of others who have done so. I have chosen to (mostly) write my response instead of providing examples such as films and creative forms of visual media, however- I feel that this is the best way for me to relate to the week-by-week content of the course.


In terms of discovering my own creative practice, I realise that I need to gain more confidence in actually publishing my work. The majority of my work remained in drafts, mostly due to the fact that I was nervous about people’s reaction when I published them. However, I have written them in stages throughout the semester, and although I do not feel that they are perfect, I do feel that it is something I will definitely improve on next semester in the media studios. In terms of my blogging, I have realised that I prefer to write instead of providing examples. This may be frustrating for some, but I prefer it. I did provide examples in terms of the lectures and workshops, displaying photographs of work that was completed in class. In terms of writing, I do prefer to work in a “stream of consciousness” style, but that can also be frustrating for some, and hope to work on it next semester.

Project brief 4 reflection

aishastevens on
I feel that the group work involved for project brief 4 with group members Jen and Trong, was effective and suited the brief very well. We were assigned the media idea of “texts. However, with such a broad area, it took us several weeks to find an idea that we felt suited the brief and that we would all enjoy doing. It did take some time, but with the help of weekly tutorials and constructive criticism in presenting our ideas to the class, we were able to think up of a more solid idea and concept for us to work on in group project.  We decided to focus on the idea of the validity of media texts in the constantly changing world of journalism. There have been many cases of fabricated stories online that were quickly picked up by more traditional news institutions and portrayed as real. An example of such a case infamously happened a few years ago, where a false tweet had suggested that the President of the United States had been shot. This was picked up by news institutions, and led to massive consequences in the American economy, with financial stocks plummeting due to the false information. We as a group decided to focus on this in the context of a fake family and a daughter reported missing, based on a number of cases in the past few years. Another infamous case involved four sisters and their mother fighting an international custody battle for them to remain in Australia, whilst their Italian father fought for the girls to be in his care. The mother and grandmother of the girls approached the media, and provided unproven allegations that the Italian man was an abusive husband and father, something proven false some time after the media focus of the situation. These certain cases helped us establish an idea of how to approach project brief 4, which we feel was a suited idea. I feel that we have accomplished this project well.
My main task in the project in involved writing fake news stories (both traditional and online institutions) and assisting with the second day of filming. Due to external circumstances, I was unable to attend my group’s first day of filming. I made sure that my group was well-aware that I was having some trouble due to these circumstances, and also aimed to keep information open by being available to work on google drive on a day when I was ill. I was there on the second day of filming, and was glad to find it under control.
I think that the formatting of the blog was effective. The layout turned out very clean and user friendly, as the invented case is shown day by day. It explains the information well, offers a wide range of resources on the story, reflecting across all different types of media where individuals gain their information from. However, there were some troubles in the formatting of the blog, due to the amount of information that we had made in this invented case. Although we had sorted though it, it was some trouble at the time.
I found the annotated bibliographies to be the most challenging part of this assignment. This is because the idea of validity of text in media is quite a broad area, and many articles that I had gone through and looked at did not suit the task well enough. The information I did find, although useful, did have some strong limitations to the research sometimes. the writing of the news stories was also a problem at times, as I had to change much of the information to suit the information made by the rest of the group. It was also difficult at times to establish a more conservative tone in writing, while also differing a left wing article’s tone.
In this process, I believe that I have improved on how to communicate with group members and to work as a group, and I feel that this is our greatest success as a group. Because of our constant communication, we made sure to get the group’s approval across all aspects of the film, meaning that we are able to provide consistent information about the case, and made sure that all three of us were happy with the work and our own progress. I feel that this is an important asset to learn in terms of developing as a media practitioner.  I also think that myself and all members of the group worked well in sorting out problems of the group, and did not experience any arguments or much difference of opinion in such a large project such as this. With the amount of content that we produced, we consistently remained organised and dedicated to the working of the project. We all negotiated when necessary, but there was rarely any problems in the group, due to the constant information that we provided each other about our work and our personal situations.