In this week’s reading, David Gauntlett introduced us to the concept of what the media is like now and how we should deal with the rapidly changing and evolving situation in media.
‘For me, media studies today consists of a diminished blob of the old themes, but with two new peaks of exciting and vital activity on either side. One is basically inspiring and optimistic, and is about people being empowered through everyday making and creativity. The other is basically troubling and pessimistic, and is about data exploitation, surveillance and extreme new forms of computerised capitalism.’ Gauntlett stated that media in the modern age is quite different from what it was like back then. It has evolved and progressed through time and become far more complicated with new pros and cons
“it’s about learning with media, rather than learning about media; e this is because we intend to move forward through building meanings and understandings, rather than looking back over accounts of how things are; a and this is because our aims are primarily transformational, rather than being essentially documentary.” Gauntlett suggested that as media students we are learning about media and creating new content for it at the same time. He encourages us to make media and think some more with what we’ve made.
Through out the past 20 years, media has gone from simply watching/reading to a more complex mode that consists of creating, discussing, exchanging and developing.
Gauntlett listed 6 implications of approaching this practice for us to think about:
#1 is to think about what can we do with media.
#2 is to collaborate with people in other fields to create tools for more people to create.
#3 is to think of media in a multi-modal way.
#4 is to support media makers financially
#5 is to build a different education system that builds and critiques knowledge.
#6 is to have a more artistic and experimental approach to media-making. Leave space for viewers to engage with.