Studying media is confusing. Personally, I find the term hard to define. What is media? It’s everything. It’s everywhere in what we see, touch, hear, etc. That white t-shirt my friend is wearing speaks to me as a piece of media, as it broadcasts the kind of fashion she is into and how she chooses to dress her body says something about her personality.
I found this whole idea come to life in this week’s reading where a particular quote stood out to me:
“We should look at media not as channels for communicating messages, and not as things. We should look at media as triggers for experiences and for making things happen.” (David Gauntlett, 2015).
We also spoke about this theory in the lectorial, in which afterwards we were prompted to go out into Melbourne CBD and search for pieces of media. And while I stood in Federation Square taking photos of signs and television screens, I could have really taken photos of people simply talking or someone ordering their soy flat white at one of the cafés. But it took me going through this exercise and later reflection to digest just how much of the world, I believe, is media.
Still, Federation Square had some excellent examples of tangible media in the form of signs, advertisements, architecture etc…
