Decision Time

This lesson was quite literally a reverse of last weeks, in that Ariff and I were present and Daniel was sick. This was unfortunate, but at least having Ariff in the room meant that some level of discussion about the project brief could be had and some decisions could begin to made. At the very minimum, it was imperative for us to start working towards some form of product.

After discussions about the viability of the different mediums available and how we wanted to present what we had available to us, a decision was made to use a website to present our ideas. This was mainly due to concerns about how little discussion we were able to have until this point, and my own concerns about this being a problem in the future as well. This is a little disappointing to me, but at least I can have some form of relief in knowing that I can manage a product of scale.

Here are some copies of emails that I sent out during the class to show a progression of our ideas.

7/5/15

‘Alright boys, we’re finally getting somewhere!

Factoring in the brief amount of time we have to get a prototype artefact, combined with the wide range of material to choose from at this point, we’ve decided to present our theme in the form of a website. I will be developing this, and will have a prototype (lacking in written and visual content) by next week pretty easily.

Ariff and I have broken it down into 4 pages at this point:

Home Page:

• Introduction

Understanding the Audience

• Definition of an audience
• Discussing audience theory
• An interpretation of the factors that make up an audience reading

Old Media vs. New Media

• Comparison of audience culture
• The introduction of technology that shapes the audience
• Globalisation of the audience

Role of the Audience

• The media-audience relationship
• Consumer vs. Prosumer
• The mass audience vs. the individual  

Breaking it up in this form allows us to assign a topic to each member based on the group’s research, which we have to make available to each other on the groups google drive folder by tomorrow. The website form also allows us to make changes or expand our scope at any time, so have a think about what we really want to put up on there.

We’re hoping to another meeting next Tuesday at 12:30, most likely in the atellior space (building 9, floor 2). We can discuss more specific stuff then and decide what everyone wants to do going forward. We will also need to come up with a visual style for the site, so we’ll have to discuss colours, images, tone etc. 

Thanks guys,
Dylan’

‘To build upon this, each point needs to have an argumentative element to it. This isn’t a summary of these areas, we need to provide research evidence purely as the basis of our point. We have discussed the importance of case studies to present these ideas and made a couple more decisions (or suggestions, in some cases). 

Ariff will explore a case study for globalisation, perhaps based in part on his own experiences. For this reason, he’ll be assigned to ‘Old Media vs. New Media’. 

For the ‘Role of the Audience’ page, some possible case studies would be social media platforms (facebook, twitter) or creator platforms (youtube, vimeo). Changes in media usage are also relevant here (like the figures that were presented to us in the audience lecture the other day)

‘Understanding the Audience’ has a smaller scope, but we could also possibly discuss ideas based around marketing/advertising of products within this, or audience culture surrounding reviews of movies/TV/games. 

It is also possible to do an almost character-bio-esque setup for the site, discussing our own usage of the media and highlighting the differences between us as ‘an audience’ to highlight the individual element. This could be easily achievable if we break it up across the page, or even across the site as a whole (the profiles being the relevant pages that we wrote). Just labelling it as something like ‘I am the audience’ could communicate a lot.

I’ll be (hopefully) sending out a timetable for these tasks by tomorrow.

Have a think about it and let me what you know.’

‘And a final decision has been made!

After careful consideration, we’ve decided to place the emphasis on Ariff’s case study, so this means a change in setup and focus.

We will now be looking at a comparison of Malaysian and Australian (or Western) news. The Malaysian culture still uses a conceptually broadcast era media format to present their news, with the vast majority of news being told through a single, Government run news program once a night, broadcasting to a mass audience. We can compare this to the post-broadcast western culture, which has many different news programs available for very specific demographics, as well as a higher level of reliance on internet based news.

To go with this, the new format of the site will scrap a lot of the ideas based on audience theory. However, it will allow us to expand upon ideas of the mass audience in Malaysia against the highly individualised media that Western culture has. We can also briefly talk about censorship and the wider range of content available to Western audiences, as this forms much of the media-audience relationship that we have. A large emphasis will be placed on this comparison on the ‘broadcast vs. post-broadcast’ era.

The character bio element at this point will most likely stay, we’ll decide what we want to include in this in the future.

Due to the change, I’ll wait out on making the project timeline, and we can discuss all of this further in our meeting Tuesday. The one focus will allow us to find a more fitting visual style to the site (which apparently must be through media factory).

That’s it for today guys, make sure you put your annotated bibliographies in the dropbox by tomorrow night at the very latest. Have a think and maybe do some research before our meeting next week. 

Thanks,
Dylan’

From these, it can be made apparent that although the scale of the project is still quite large, we at least have narrowed down a discussion point to present our ideas, using Ariff’s unique knowledge of Malaysian culture to make a case study that we can apply what we have learned to. Looking at what is planned, I expect cuts to be made at some point, but I am not concerned about this due to the website format chosen. It makes it far easier being able to have a dynamic scope for this project at this stage. The three of us will start some form of research or research into these areas in order to grasp the topic better and be better informed into what is needed and what is irrelevant.