As there was no lectorial this week due to labour day the first post of this week is dedicated purely to  this week’s reading and video, both are discussions by David Gauntlett as he talks about aspects around ‘Making Media Studies’ (also the name of his published book).

In the video ‘Remaking how we think about the Media’ David really talks about “learning with media rather than learning about media”. His views state that generally we move forward rather than looking backward, to make media and move forward rather than describe when looking backward. He wants to refresh people’s views and values on the media by adding a creative aspect. It highlights how things work and knowing how to make a difference and you need to know how things work in order to make a difference in the first place, tying in with the learning with media rather than about it.

The blog post focused on very similar themes but also and focused on Gauntlett answering What kinds of knowledge do we need now? (A question asked by Graham Meikle who is also his colleague).

There were three main points he displayed into dot points that reflected the main areas of knowledge.

  • How things work (technical and economic knowledge)
    “You need to know what technological and/or economic systems make possible, what you can and can’t potentially do with them, if you’re going to develop any kind of really informed critique of how things are currently done and the ways in which they should be done.”
  •  How things feel and fit (emotional and embodied knowledge)
    “The need to build knowledge about the relationship between physical and material things, and digital items (content and software), and human ideas and feelings.”
  • How to make a difference (creative and political knowledge)
    “Come up with brilliant ideas and implement them effectively in the actual world that we live in.”

Reflecting on Daivd’s words we would prefer immerse ourselves in new things compared to learning about them, to go out and do something compared to studying about how it is done. He really talks about the creative homage to media and again the idea of moving forward and not reflecting back to papers in an ever-growing industry.