Media: Making, Creating and Noticing.

“Making Media Studies”, our reading for this week was both challenging and expansive. Media Studies is something that is particularly hard to define, as is the world of the media itself. Around the 1980s, Media was encompassed by institutions, production, the audience and texts with a strong focus on traditional media (eg: journalism). Nowadays, Media can range between blogging to videography, print journalism and popular culture – the possibilities are almost endless. These ideas of ‘production, audience and texts’ have all rapidly evolved from when they were first developed due to the ever-changing ideas of the media.

Media is often used as a trigger for making things happen – take protests and activism, for example. These are often conveyed through flyers and signs (forms of ‘print media’ to take a stand against something an individual thinks is wrong) and this can end up on either print journalism (newspaper), written about in blogs or on the news itself. This shows media as a form of communication between the masses, allowing individuals to have shared experiences thus, allowing them to exchange conversation about a certain topic (whether that be positive or negative). Furthermore, this shows media as an area of engagement, especially in the 21st century – this can be further added by the impact of social media (not only applications but the rise of vloggers and bloggers as influencers of the media) and how the individuals can pose the question “what does the media do to us? What can we do with the media to change individuals views and ideologies of the world?”

During the lectorial for week two, we were asked to notice and consider what media is, how it is formed, how individuals can reflect upon it – and how much of it there is. I have now understood that media is an ‘umbrella term’ meaning it cannot be generalised. This means new media has moved away from the ‘sender to receiver model’ that print media acquires to everyone consuming media becoming a creator. This form of “mass communication tradition” assumes a linear flow and can represent different switches in society. For example, a “pre-modern society” follows a social world drawn by face-to-face interactions whilst a current and modern society is influenced predominantly through texts and media (for example; maps, books, newspapers and photographs).

We were then split up into groups of five to explore a certain area of Melbourne and note all the forms of media we could find. Our group was given City Square (actually a place I was not super familiar with, I only moved here two weeks ago!). Although there was not an overwhelming amount of media at City Square, once we sat there for a around half an hour, we began noticing alot more. Being a millenial, there is often the saying that we are ‘glued to our phones’ so things often go unnoticed. I found this excersise particuarly interesting as I am so use to being ‘connected’ it was nice to unconnect, even for a little while. Our group noticed a number of things including:

• banners/flyers for a japanese festival
• adversiting on numerous shops
• adversiting on trams
• flyers on the ground
• statue of a significant individual in melbourne
• music
• people on their phones
• people chatting/taking photographs
• tram sounds (both moving and beeping)
• smartphones/individuals accessing the internet

I found it really interesting that whilst we were disconnected and noticing our surround, so many people were connected to their phones – I guess we really are a technologically driven society.