During our week 2 Media lectorial, we discussed the topic of mediated interactions/communications, which can be found virtually anywhere we look. Different forms of communication can include, posters, film, blogs, speech and writing.

In pre-modern society, the social world was predominantly experienced through face-to-face interactions (which can also be called one-to-one communication), whereas nowadays in modern society, there is the new form of one-to-many or many-to-many communication with interactions being mainly through media and texts such as books, newspapers, television and social media.

The media weaves in and out of our lives
 and, “their constant messages and pleasures seem to flow around and through us, and they immerse most of our waking lives” – Branston and Stafford. 


In groups, we were sent into different directions of the city and as my group wandered around the RMIT campus and its surroundings, we noticed many different mediums of media. Most of them being advertisements for companies, groups and events. These could be found from up as high as a thirty storey building, on the ground we stepped on to everything in between.

Upon reading Charissa Coulthard’s article on ‘selfies’ (), an idea that has lingered in the back of my mind for a while returned to me. Many people are shamed or criticised for posting too many ‘selfies’ on social media networks such as Instagram, being called “vain” or “attention-seeking”, but I think there should be a new mindset; a new hashtag: #BanTheSelfieHate.

I am not saying I dislike these photos or in any way saying that they are not considered a form of art, because personally, ninety-percent of the accounts in which I follow on Instagram are of people taking photos of landscapes, buildings, architecture, towns (in amazing Amsterdam and London) and cities (New York my inevitable future). But with these photos, anybody can take them. Anybody can travel to that part of the world and see it for themselves. One thing that not everybody has access to, is how a certain person looks at that certain moment in time.

People underestimate the ‘selfie’.

Nobody can take a photo of you, by you, but you!
Has anybody ever thought that that certain ‘selfie’ somebody has taken, is literally a one in seven billion?

So don’t be one of those people who selfie-shame. Selfie-celebrate!

Because nobody has your face, in that lighting, with that angle and that smoulder.