Photo Credit: Jim Frazier via Compfight cc

Today’s lectorial covered two topics of interest. First of all we covered the importance of editing. We learned how the most minute changes can greatly affect the result. I will cover this topic in a later blog post, sometime during this week.

What I want to discuss today is the second topic; the importance of media. Today’s class began with a very important question – what is media? Upon hearing this question, I was actually stumped. You would think that a student undergoing a media course would know what falls under the umbrella of ‘media’. However, I found myself struggling to give a simple definition of the term ‘media’. As individuals, we were told to come up with the first five things that we think of when we hear the word ‘media’. As I did with a similar task that we did in the first lectorial, I ended up with less answers as was instructed. Oops. As a class, we discussed the different types of media and its effects on its audiences. As I jotted down the answers of the other students, my list of three media related things soon turned into twenty. By the end of it, one thing was made certain by this activity. Media is everywhere.

You never really think about it until someone shoves it in your face, but media isn’t something you can really avoid. Sure, you can pop your phone down and force yourself to not look at it for the rest of the day, but in the end, you’re going to encounter some other form of media, whether you want to or not. As you walk down the street, you encounter store signs advertising their business, people holding shopping bags with store logos printed on and big billboards stationed on the side of a busy highway. If you walk into a store, you can hear music playing in the background with more signs advertising 50% off sales. If you go into a library, someone is reading a novel, while another person is on their laptop and someone is sat quietly in the corner reading a newspaper. “What about my home?” I hear you ask. I mean, surely it’s the one place that’s safe from all this media influence. Well in homes nowadays, it’s not uncommon to find televisions blaring popular shows. The infamous Apple products decorate your home, showing the latest cat videos. My point is, media is inescapable. Unless you’re a hermit living on a mountain, media is staying whether you like it or not. Some of it we absorb and digest, and the rest just goes right past us.

Photo Credit: helenebrodin via Compfight cc

This was made evident in today’s group task. Our job was to go around the Melbourne CBD and take note of any media; no matter how big or small. In the skies above, satellite dishes collect radio waves, which broadcast whatever television show is on at the time. Back on the ground, advertising is scattered everywhere for people to see. Every store is playing their own music, to help set the ambience. Almost every single person had some form of media in their hands, including; phones, novels, brochures, magazines, newspapers and shopping bags. I even had my own experience with in-hand media, when I bought a cup of bubble tea, which came with free advertising on the sides of the cup. Media has influenced me so much, to the point where I spotted a sparrow darting across the building, and the first thought that came to mind was the logo of Twitter.

But maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. On one hand, media has made it so we don’t necessarily have to verbally communicate with one-another to get the information we need; which can either be a good or bad thing depending on your perspective. But on the other hand, media has made information so much more accessible and has provided a sense of freedom with the information we receive. We can find out anything nowadays, and all it really takes is a simple Google search and a couple of clicks.