CONCEPT

The whole sound environment will aim to visualise a dream of a fictional modern war. The war is coming to the end. The general realizes that the situation is hopeless and he makes his last announcement to request soldiers to withdraw from their positions. Then, the dreamer is woken up from his dream by the alarm clock.

SOUND ELEMENT

Atmosphere: focus on giving an idea of the war is going on.

• Distant combat
• Distant explosion

Sound effect: make the story more realistic

1. Gun

• Gun shot: machine guns, pistol on different modes
• Gun shell: falling shells on the ground

2. Soldier footsteps

• Walk
• Run
• Match

3. Air craft: tearing the sky
4. Explosion: put an end to the story

• Big explosion
• Close explosion
• Explosion eco

5. Alarm clock: digital type
6. Dialog

• Soldier’s report
• The General’s announcement
• The Dreamer’s complaint

7. Music: enhance the emotion of the story

• A sad instrumental music
• A sad song

As far as I concern, I agree with Dan’s statement: “there is no such thing as an original idea “. There were so many times that I have to ask myself if I read, saw or heard about ideas which just pop up in my head. And of course, I have no idea where they come from almost every time.

“Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be… The presence of the original is prerequisite to the concept of authenticity.”

Benjamin, The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction

Benjamin makes a valid point here. Just like Dan mentioned on his example , no matter how hard we try, we can never capture the whole feeling or meaning of a particular moment. All we do is capturing a moment with our unique interpretation based on our knowledge and experiences ( or closure ).

So, what about the discovery of the gravity by Isaac Newton and 100 inventions of Thomas Edition? There are so many names of scientists whose discovery rose our  society to a new chapter. However, in term of original idea, I think they might not be the first ones who came up with those ideas. Their might be people who introduced the ideas before famous names, but those people failed to develop, present or clarify them. The reasons could be lack of enthusiast, courage or just because the society in which they lived did not acknowledge their efforts.

Reference:
Benjamin, Walter. (n.d.). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, EReserve.

In the paper ‘Social media as beat’, the authors argue that tweets are being considered as a new worthy resource for journalist because of their richness, quickness and accessibility.This paper mentions about the rapidly increasing use of Tweeter in journalism, political field in particular. First the article explains the function of Tweeter in political campaign. Then the authors clarify character and credibility of Tweets. Furthermore, Broersma & Graham also introduce how politicians successfully take advantage of Tweeter to earn votes in their campaign.

Broersma & Graham treat the use of Tweeter in the 2010 election campaigns in the UK and the Netherlands as the two study subjects. The article is reliable and highly readable because its arguments are strengthened by statics and frameworks in the same field. The paper also proposes how Tweeter shifts the balance between journalists and politicians. Politicians find this social platform very handy in term of communicating with their voters. Tweets offer politicians an extended control of their coverage and image without being less afraid of mediating ability of journalists.

In general, this paper offers valuable key insights of how Tweeter is being exploited by political journalist and politician in an era of technology and globalisation. The paper will matches perfectly in our research focusing on news media.

Reference:
Broersma, M, & Graham, T 2012, ‘SOCIAL MEDIA AS BEAT’, ‘Journalism Practice’, vol 6, no.3, pp.403-419.

This article discusses the extensive use of social media, Twitter in particular, by protesters as well as journalists and media in the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Researchers also explore the strong interaction between the sentiments expressed by Twitter users and the actual tweets.

The article is well structured and logical. The findings are supported statistically by  the method of collecting tweets on specific days and presenting them in graphic forms using a table of top five most influential individuals and organisations tweeting on the revolution around the world. This report also pointed is that news and important updates on Egyptian protests were the most popular topic  attracting  followers.

A limitation of this study is that the researcher cannot separate tweets within Egypt to those from other countries since Twitter does not provide a geographical tracking function. As a result, it is hard to tell how successful the Twitter operation is worldwide

The paper does support my argument that social media platforms are not just for private use. If they are used at a right time correctly, they will provide an enormous valuable information resource.

Reference:

Choudhary, A., Hendrix, W., Lee, K., Palsetia, D., & Liao, W. 2012, ‘’Social Media Evolution of the Egyptian Revolution’, Communications Of The Acm, vol 55, no.6, pp. 74-80

Frankly speaking, I’m not sure that my bet for this media course is the right decision, but still I’m going for it.  “A stable job” is always hanging in my mind. People are talking about how lame the Australian media industry is. From cinema to TV show, American products have been dominating Australian ones even though Australian have all he resources to make great ones. There’s about 1/10000 chance (may be more or less in the future) that  I can get a job after graduating, but still I’m going for it.

Flash back to the moment I decided to become a bartender in a big hotel, I was facing the same problem.  People said that ” There’s no way you can work at fancy hotels unless you have some kind of relationship with the management board.” Then when I finally got a casual position in a 5-star hotel, they said “It will take you years of working to get a permanent position there unless you have a good relationship with the board management”. After 8 months of hard working, I got a permanent contract and they said something which I did not care about.

There are always people who will tell you difficult things are impossible. On the contrary, There are a lot of people who will definitely tell you to go for your passion, for your dream. May be I’m still waging because I lacks something burning for this career, but still I’m going for it. I’ll will stick  with media for a while to see how things will go on.

Himelboim I focuses on studying the structure of the international communication network built by news media organisations as well as the use of external hyperlinks. The article also discusses the use of news media via internet and its capable contribution in the social context despite the geographic and political barriers for international information streams . Moreover, the network access, the preferential attachment and the world system theories are also covered.

This article is easily readable and informative because of its logical structure. Besides, the key findings are solidified by statistics and figures. The author also expands his findings to different aspects based on network theories and identifies barriers to this type of information sharing.

However, there’s still no answer to the reason why there are so many countries still not trying to tap into this beneficial and resourceful communication network. A limitation within this paper is that some countries attracted more hyperlinks because major stories were broken during the collecting data period.

 Reference

Himelboim, I 2010, ‘The International Network Structure of News Media: An Analysis of Hyperlinks Usage in News Web sites’, Journal Of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 54, no.3,pp. 373-390

The paper “Information sharing on social media sites: Computers in Human Behavior” conducted by Babajide Oyatuyi explores the issue of using and sharing information in social media as well as its credibility. The author also reveals how social network users share their information differently on diverse social media platforms.

This study includes an in depth exploratory analysis and evaluation choosing four categories of information across five popular social media sites. The analysed results are supported by data collected from an online survey instrument. The findings have potential to contribute to future development of the media industry in terms of shared information credibility.

However, the research findings may be biased because there are only 114 participants  out of 200 random invitations in this research.  Furthermore, the reliability of feedbacks using online survey method and the unbalanced genders among the participants can affect the results.

The study covers a wide range of aspects, so it helps me observe social media information sharing from different angles. This study will fit neatly into my research on news media because it also points out that private information seems to be the most attractive topic for information seekers.

Reference:
Osatuyi, B. 2013, ‘Information sharing on social media sites. Computers in Human Behavior’, vol. 29, no.6, pp. 2622-2631

Is this work narrative or non-narrative? It depends on how an audience interpret it. From my point of view. It’s more likely a narrative one than a non-narrative one. The background music is mostly intense, no presentation, no dialog, half-way resolution. However,from my point of view, it’s more likely a narrative one than a non-narrative one. It’s chaos but it does have a unite sequence. From the headings: birth-between-rebirth to the plots, they are paralleled. The 3 characters  begin at a low emotional stage; then they go through a struggling stage to  a extreme emotional stage to reach their resolution. The same idea or meaning is transmitted via 3 separate rituals: one must overcome  his obstacle even though it is harsh before reaching a new stage of his life circle.

Further thought:
This artistic work is brilliant for studying, but it is kind of boring for most of common audiences. There is a heaps of negative comments for this one: boring, weird or even crap etc. I myself can interpret the content but also find it really boring. If I accidentally  brows this one on Youtube, I will not have enough patience to watch all of the 3 rituals. May be just the 1st one and I’ll hit the fast forward button. Is this type of product worth to invest when the majority of audiences will turn their back on it?

“Text” is the  topic for my group work. The very first thing popped up in my mind was readings before going to.  Then a loads of processes that I have to  go through when it comes to academic reading: skimming, scanning, note taking and so on followed. “But wait a minute, I’m doing Media so ‘Text ‘cannot be that narrow. Alan Mckee (2003) says: “Texts are the material traces that are left of the practice of sense making – the only empirical evidence we have of how other people make sense of the world”. Ah ha, to make it simple, in media concept, ‘text’ is what comes to our eyes and interpreted by our brain and experience. The question is, as Media future practitioner, how do I read a ‘text’ effectively? Is it how we see and how we feel?

In today lecture, Brian Morris talked about ‘ The semiotic of tradition analysis’ which is a method of how to ‘read’ a ‘text’. At first, it was hard for me , but somehow I got it after the family picture. I find it very useful when I have to analyse a ‘Text’ in a technical way, not in an emotional way. Personally, I think emotion or feeling is the core to remind consumers of what they ‘read’. In general, I believe that to successfully ‘read’ a ‘Text’, we need our eyes to capture it, our brain to analyse every element of it and our heart to feel it.

“Texts are the material traces that are left of the practice of sense making – the only empirical evidence we have of how other people make sense of the world”

_ Alan Mckee (2003), Textual analysis: A beginner’s guide, p.19

This project is harder than the first one in many ways. Shooting other people can be problematic like permission or timetable. My first option is to make a video of an crossing supervisor working near where I am living. I got the whole idea right away, but approaching her is nearly impossible due to some kinds of laws. Then, I switch to my nephew on square one. Another problem is combing my footage with found footage. Most of the free footage seems to be outdated. There are still some points which satisfy me. For instance, I managed to capture unique moments of my nephew. Kids are really unpredictable. The Sony MC50 had to be ready to shoot at any time with his presence. However, this leads to another difficulty: cutting your raw videos. I hesitated to get rid of unfit scenes just because I worked so hard to shoot them.

After this project, I realized the importance of the background sound. It enhances the feeling of a video and help the story run smoothly. Besides, if I want put my voice in a video as a narrator, I must practice everyday. Moreover, I believe that the art of noticing is essential to Media practitioners. I would not be able to finish this project without paying attention to my nephew: his habits, hobbies or favorite things.