Todays lectorial covered institutions, which was a very interesting topic.

One activity that was particularly engaging was getting into groups and writing about different media institutions (Facebook, Google, News Corp and Local Media).

The opinion of each varied greatly, with News Corp being generally disliked, Facebook being seen as a necessary evil, Google being mostly praised but with some questioning of their ethics and Local Media being praised.

• Experience of having stories read to us as children.
• Narrative relates to everything
• What seperates us from animals.
• Story is a way structuring existance, and chosing bits.
• Narratvie is anything that is a retelling of events, casuality.

Cause and effect (cant fly from Perth to Broome without being in Perth)

3 key elements

• Character development (takes time, present audience with number of situations in which they can respond to, so that audiance can learn how the work)
• plot (skeleton of the story, usually written briefly with simple sentences)
• resoltuion (dictated by the events that take place during the plot, as well as character development and how different people reacted to plot)

“The stuff of story is alive but intangible”

everything is story _ Story is everyithing

Minutes

• Progress report on annotated bibliography

1. Sandy – a bit behind because I was sick, but will be done by tomorrows class.
2. Kristian – done
3. Ali – done

• Spitballed ideas for brief, including a mockumentory about video games as a medium, looking at GTA and how it incorportates many mediums, as well as looking at Red Dead Redemtion and L.A Noire as games reviving “dead” genres in a new medium.

Our definitions of “Medium”

• Sandy: The different formats that artists can use to convey their message.
• Kristian: A channel of common intercommunication across avenues such as print, visuals and sound
• Ali: Communication tools that can change the perspective of the masses.
• Talked about the general summary of our bibliography

We will further discuss what our artifact will be tomorrow in class with Racheal for advice.

End of meeting.

This weeks topic was collaboration, I have traditionally disliked collaborating because I have had bad experiences with group projects in the past. However I do see the potential value in collaboration when working on a media artifact.

Collaboration can be used to insert multiple ideas, as well as gather criticism and feedback internally from a source other than the eventual audiance.

In this weeks media lectorial, the topic was “audiences”. This brought up many interesting topics, such as the concept of “The Masses” and how the methods audiences receive media is changing with time.

One section which stood out for me personally was the concept of Fandoms, or groups of extreme fans of a particular media entity (for example a TV or Movie series or a particular Band).

What is interesting is that being part of a fandom can become a large part of someones identity, for example:

• Trekkies
• Whovians
• Potter Heads (this one makes me laugh everytime I hear it)
• Bronies
• etc….

These groups usually operate via online forums dedicated to their collective interest, sometimes it can be a dedicated standalone forum or it can also be a part of a larger online community (for example a Sub-Reddit, or a Tumblr, or a Facebook page). Or in many cases a plethora of forums across the internet, with standalone and setting up groups on many major social network platforms.

Being part of a fandom has traditionally been associated with negative connotations. However, attitudes towards people expressing their love of particular media has grown more positive in recent years, likely due to the rapid rise in social media.

There are also fans who dipise the assocaited fandoms, “I love xxxxx, but I cant stand xxxxx fanss” is a common phrase to hear across social media landscapes, as people grow frustrated and ostracised from Fan groups because of differing opinons on acceptable behaviour to the majority, or being well outside the age bracket that makes up most of the fandom.