Week 11’s topic was the concept of mediums – the form in which messages are carried from a sender to a receiver.

Accrding to Meyrowitz, there are several characteristics of media we can use to distinguish different mediums:

  • type of sensory information transmitted
  • form or forms of information conveyed
  • the degree to which the medium form and “reality” align (ability for one to distinguish message is coming via media)
  • Whether communication goes one way, two ways or multiple ways
  • Whether exchanges are sequential or simultaneous
  • Degree/control users have over reception and transmission of information
  • Physical requirements for using the medium
  • Degree/type of human intervention necessary in creating message
  • Scope and nature of transmission
  • Durability and portability
  • Ease or difficulty in learning to code or decode messages
  • The ways in which mediums interact with each other

This last point was the most interesting to me, as I found that this reading – published in 2009 – accounted for technologies that would emerge in future. The technology that first sprung to mind when I saw this was the idea of “second screen applications”; which have become popular with a lot of reality television programs. There was even an ill-fated singing show in the US in which the singers would be rated live by the viewing public at home; and required a certain percentage of the viewer approval in order to have the curtain raised.

Here is the “audition stage” performance by eventual winner Jesse Kinch.

The concept didn’t quite take off as the show only ran for one season, but it’s an interesting experiment with simultaneous platform engagement between television and tablet/mobile mediums.

 

 

 

Also in the lectorial for the week, we covered the work attachments that we are expected to complete as part of our degree. The idea of these stressed me out a little bit – 80 hours of unpaid work on top of all the work we’re doing for class AND the extracurricular work I’m doing for RMITV/SYN FM?

Give me a break!

But once I heard a little bit more about what was expected I realised it’s probably not as hard to achieve as I originally thought. I definitely want to use the time to get some experience working in commercial radio if possible; but if it means I have to travel out of Melbourne to get it I’m okay with that. I feel like that sort of learning and guidance is invaluable and if the university is willing to help and expects it to be done then I’m not going to complain.

 

After the lectorial, my PB4 group reconvened for another brief meeting to discuss how things were going; and shared round the editing files, which we decided would be necessary in order for us all to get experience editing and for us to end up with a product we would all be satisfied with.