Today I arrived in class half an hour early, and there was no time to waste – I’d already done enough of that. I got straight to work, pulling up some work that I had been doing in the time not seeing the boys. When Dylan came in he seemed surprised to see me doing this. I told him about not resting until the job is done, and reminded him about our collaborative contract’s mentioning of respect. He seemed pleased.

Today we:

• Discussed the website format
• Drew up a second draft of the website
• Changed elements so that it would seem more coherent

On consultation with Rachel, we changed the whole Western vs. Eastern style of Media and scrapped the audience bios page in favour of discussing the “broadcast era” and “post-broadcast era”. We also changed the compare and contrast page to a “case study” page. This felt more natural than what was previously being mooted to me in emails and I felt comfortable in the direction we were going and what I had to do to contribute.

We asked Rachel if she could have the website put up so that we could start putting the few paragraphs we had written into it. She agreed, and Dylan sent out an email to Ariff detailing the day’s events. Although long winded, it looked like this:

“Hi Ariff,

Daniel and I have discussed a lot of the ideas that we have had floating around in some depth and have defined our key focus in a way which provides a better way to frame these. In doing so, we feel that are using all of our existing ideas and presenting them in a more coherent and connected manner.

We have retitled ‘Old Media vs. New Media’ to ‘Broadcast vs. Post-Broadcast Era’, which changes how we define certain characteristics of how we define each culture. For example, Malaysia, while technically a post-broadcast era society, has many characteristics which define it more closely to a broadcast era society.

To show how we are going to present this, the following pages are planned:

–          Home Page

oIntro into Broadcast/Post-Broadcast, Rachel supplied some rough ways to phrase this:

• “The death of ‘broadcasting’ has been largely over exaggerated, as broadcast programming still exists, just within a media ecosystem which contains a wider level of media formats”
• The debate surrounding technological change and its effects
• ‘We use these terms loosely as a way of framing and examining the differences for audiences if the broadcasting experience in a digital age”

–          Broadcast Era

o   Definition of the characteristics of a Broadcast era and its audiences

o   The role of the audience, the content creators/producers/marketers and the Government

o   Discussing and analysing this through audience and media theories (Many of which Daniel has researched, the agenda setting function as an example)

o   No specific references to Malaysian or Australia culture

–          Post-Broadcast Era

o   Definition of the characteristics of a Post-Broadcast era and its audiences

o   The role of the audience, the content creators/producers/marketers and the Government

o   Discussing and analysing this through the new introductions in media forms presented, and how it changes media, audience and content relationships

o   Introduction to individualised media, target audiences, the ‘prosumer’

o   No specific references to Malaysian or Australia culture

–          Case Study

o   Comparing and contrasting Malaysian and Australian cultures, and the characteristics of each ‘era’ that they have and which ones are more prominent.

o   Specific reference to the purpose of this media, reference will be made to the ABC charter (which states that content must be supplied which fosters Australian culture) and link this back to the idea of Malaysian censorship. Is this an attempt to achieve the same thing, or create a level of control over the audience?

o   How does each form effect the audience’s level of knowledge or idea of identity?

o   Key differences in these two audiences and the media supplied

o   Specific example to news broadcast programs (ie. Government controlled versus widely produced in many different formats)

Daniel and I are completing some more research on these areas and have planned to write a paragraph or two each on these first two areas in some depth.

What we would like you to do is write a paragraph for each section or at the very least expand on some ideas in the notes that you sent last night, as some of them are more relevant than others. For example, Malaysia is a post-broadcast era society, but one which does not use it for its full potential due to Government involvement. Remember, we need literature to support our ideas to some degree, so try to do a little bit of research in broadcast/post-broadcast cultures.

Daniel will send a scanned version of the direction that Rachel has supplied us with hopefully by tonight.

The audience bios have also been scrapped from further discussion until a more fully realised idea of how this could be implemented has been found. Otherwise, this will be scrapped.

The website will hopefully be up and running soon, once this occurs, I’ll format it and it’s as easy as getting content up there.”

We have scheduled a meeting for next Tuesday between 12:30pm and 1:30pm to bring more solid paragraphs to the table. I’ll make sure I get my part done.

Breakthrough today: we know we can get something good up now.