Prompt 4

Prompt 5

Prompt 6

1: Clark, T 2015, ‘Chapter One: The Anthropocene – Questions of Definition’, in Ecocriticism on the Edge: The Anthropocene as a Threshold Concept, Bloomsbury Publishing, p.1-28.

This reading by scholar Timothy Clark is essentially a foundation and framework for how Anthropocene could be processed and defined. The term “Anthropocene” is said to become widely adopted outside of its initial sense of strictly geological to have widespread contexts culturally, ethically, aesthetically, philosophically and politically surrounding environmental issues. The term, pointing out by Clark, attracts incoherent points of view. The viewpoint of Cohen suggests the popular of the term which was set for an era, the “Anthropocene era” in 2011 when the issue of global warming received overwhelming reception at a level never seen before. Morton suggests to the term to be “daunting, indeed horrifying” that opens an era for new realisation while scholars such as Menely, Ronda and Zizek links Anthropocene to expanding of capitalism globally. Clark stresses that the term is now used both academically and novelly which could be useful in recognising a new planetary context.

Clark mentions the three levels of complexities regarding human effects on Earth, which is a study initially set up by Allenby and Sarenwitz in showing that there consists an action-consequence relationship between human actions and planet Earth, which brings “very often heated controversy over definitions, causes, rights, and responsibilities, and, for some, even whether it exists at all”. Here, Clark identifies the scramble that Anthropocene brings to how human makes sense of the world, such as putting in “the lines between culture and nature, fact and value, and between the human and the geological or meteorological”.

Clark also suggests that politically, the reason that responsible figures and bodies often struggle for an adequate strategies against global warming is because the issue is impossible to confront directly and any effort to tackle it would be unsustain. For ecocritics, “the issue is one that refuses to stay put” and brings up more and more issues. The scale of Anthropocene, hence, lays “a true sense of scope of the challenges an environmental criticism must take up”. Clark says that humanity has to consider its impact as a whole towards the planet, and the totality school of thought is the solution to the issue as well as starting “new reflexivity as a species”. The shift towards this mentality could be aid via politics, culture and art “without erasing important culture and political differences”. Clark states that ecocritics have the role to reshaping imagination, questions whether or not the environmental problems come from a crisis of imagination and asks: “How far does a change in knowledge and imagination entail a change in environmentally destructive modes of life?”

2: Hammond, P 2017, ‘Introduction: ‘Post-political’ climate change‘ in Climate Change and Post-Political Communication: Media, Emotion, and Environmental Advocacy, Routledge, pp. 1-17.

In this reading, scholar Philip Hammond first acknowledges post-politics to be “attempts to understand what has happened to political life in Western societies since the end of the Cold War”. Citing Zizek, it is suggested that the traditional ideology of left and right politics is no longer efficient compared to need for negotiation of interests and taking people’s concrete needs and demands into account. Hammond brings in many arguments from different scholars that either post-politics are inevitable or that “nothing fundamental has really changed”. Hammond acknowledges the yet incoherent nature of post-politics, saying that it is “understood differently by different theorists.” The scholar then emphasises that “politics most certainly does not carry on as before, and that it will be a challenge to reinvent it”. This point could be seen as a solid foundation for putting post-politics climate change into the context, as the goal of negotiating and recognising needs and demands being more essential.

Hammond points out that the basis of Western elites’s interest into the agenda of climate issues is due to economic competition. However, there is a bigger argument that environmentalism is a “camouflaged religion”. Hammond draws in studies that refer environmentalists to “opium of the people”, such as bringing ecology and catastrophe in “to unite social classes”. The scholar then suggests that climate change presents “an existential challenge to capitalist order”, hence environmentalists find themselves among capitalist. However, there is still a sense that climate change is depoliticised and attracts analysis on how its framing is related to the issue.

Hammond then discusses the role of media, culture and emotion. Regarding the media, Hammond, citing arguments made by Carvalho, acknowledges the important role of news media in “processes of political (dis)engagement in relation to climate change”. It is said that the media is fundamental in “presenting climate change as the concern of elite decision-makers”, while ordinary citizens play the spectating role. Hammond goes on to discuss about the emotional aspect of post-politics climate change, most notably “the continuous invocation of fear and danger”. The use of fear turns in to a “culture of fear”, involving “millennial fears” and “apocalyptic rhetoric”. Fear is “problematic for various reasons” such as inaccuracy, but is argued to be “a useful mobiliser for environmental action”. Citing more studies, Hammond suggests that emotion is integral in how climate change is portrayed on media when being compared to information and rational argument.

3: Nurmis, J 2016, ‘Visual climate change art 2005–2015: discourse and practice’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, vol. 7, no. 4, p.501-516.

This reading by scholar Joanna Nurmis discusses how the issue of climate change is portrayed via media practice as an art. The scholar starts by addressing that generally, the presentation of climate change on media is uninspiring despite the fact that the media world is image-saturated and images play a vital role in journalism in order to attract readers. It is the fact that the media seeks “images that bleed” makes climate change “defies visual representation”. It is acknowledged that in recent times, this “uninspiring” nature has started to shift, “expanded from an almost exclusively activist genre to being a type of artwork that mobilises knowledge and emotions relating to climate change without being explicitly instrumental”.

Nurmis then looks inside the emergence of climate change as being a topic of art. Initially, climate change art was not at an appealing level that could attract people to know about the issue, and then “to be engaged”. Climate change art is stuck in a “double blind” between art connoisseur and journalists or activists, which limits public engagement. Nurmis makes a point that climate is culture, and that “an honest response to climate change requires a culture transformation”. More importantly, the author emphasises that climate change art has a role, just as journalists, scientists and activists all play a role in engagement. Art can “educate the senses”, being a hub for imagination and a potential outcome. Another important point being claimed is art has the power to communicate things about climate change at a more efficient level compared to other forms of media. An example is that art can provoke emotions, while science is prohibited from doing so.

Nurmis also brings in three categories that climate change art can provide for public engagement: representations, installations and interventions, bringing in many artwork examples to discuss. Representations essentially consist of two-dimensional pictorial art or photography as well as other medium. These works “tell the story of climate change from near-depictions of actual impacts to imaginative visions of climate change futures”. They have the role draw attention to the topic, most notably the “future that climate change is generating”. Installations refer to works that can be interacted with three-dimensional objects. The key is that these works could be physically engaged. Interventions refer to works where artists place “within the landscape” with the hope to make the climate challenges portrayed “tangible”. All three categories have the same purpose of public engaging, but the difference lays in their effectiveness.

Video

I had a lot trouble coming up with what I want to produce for this task. While writing down my thoughts is, as I found not only through prompt 4 but on social media as well, an efficient way of processing my emotions, making a videos always carries a barrier for me as I rarely consider my media making and creativity level to be fully refined.

Hence, I wanted to make my work for prompt 4 being the focal point. The idea was that the first moment of ecological grief that I fully acknowledged was when I saw a picture of polar bear cannibalism on social media, so I will definitely feature them but not with the shocking images of them eating one another. Polar bears, regarding climate change, are species that can easily be used to portray the matter due to their shrinking living habitat. I decided to use the footage of polar bears from prompt 2 in any way I could because it is a very powerful footage of a lonely bear struggling for food. At this point, I started having an urge to write a script from here because the clip needs to feature my own voice.

Drawing up a script was not as much of a struggle as brainstorming the whole idea. The things I said were purely from the perspective of a media student being limited to his woefully-functioned laptop and the inability to produce any footage. The script features a lot of similarities with what I produced for prompt 4, and I was completely fine with it. The problem lies in the footage and I decided to base them upon the script. Anything I say would be relevant to the videos or images being shown. Hours of surfing on the net leaves me with images of climate strike, high pollution level, social distancing around the world, and more polar bears. All of them would address points like how the current pandemic lockdown could be similar to how the world would be once nature catastrophe occurs, or how we should all be at ecological grief to some extent.

Then, I came across a TED talk by Heidi Hutner about ecological grief. Some of the footage was so powerful that I decided I want them in the video in order to express how we should all be at grief. The footage became the catalyst to what I want to express as she expresses my points perfectly. The last thing to consider was the sound. I found a free licensing track on Bensound called Instinct which only features drums. I found this to be effective for using as it shows a sense of rushing as if saying, “come on, we are all gonna die sooner or later if the situation sees no changes.”

The difficulties, as mentioned, were of equipment and footage. I could not produce any footage and I have nothing of use in my phone that would be relevant par from images of the sky that I took years ago which were used towards the end of the video. The quality of my voice was also not decent as I had to record via my phone rather than a micro. But overall, I was quite sound with what I managed to produce considering the circumstances that we all find ourselves in at the moment.

I want to begin by saying that I am not at grief. The last few weeks have been challenging physically and mentally for me, but I guess there is always a silver lining. In times like this, I get to contemplate more on so many things. Before I got on the soonest flight I could get to Melbourne (because anything could happen – that’s the charm of the pandemic!) back in February, one night, my dad told how the circumstances and quality of life was during the SARS pandemic in 2003. The world in 2020 is too much of a change from 2003, but I guess it draws some resemblance. I had not left my apartment for the whole month and only got out for some groceries very recently. I got to experience how it felt to self-isolate when I found out that one employee at my complex got contracted to the virus. At the same time, there were days that I got a cold and constantly asking if somehow the virus has got into me. I know even if that is the case, it would not be the end of the world.  But I still feel anxious.

It doesn’t help when you live alone either, but I got time to care to people around me more and talk to them, even if they live miles away. One of my aunts says to me that to experience a pandemic lockdown is something to remember, and in a way it is an interesting experience. I guess she is not wrong. I keep telling myself, “No, I am not at grief. Look at the situation in New York, in Lombardy. No one you know got it. No one you know is gone. Your area is considerably safe. You are lucky. You are not at grief.” Each morning, I repeat that like practising the Bible, then go to Channel News Asia to see what is happening because they always have the latest headlines around the world. This is a habit I have grown into doing while at an internship earlier in the year. How time has changed. I certainly did not have to say tell myself that I am not at grief.

As a media practitioner, this is a disastrous time. Two months ago, I got offered a freelancing job for sports content. That offer is now gone because of the lack of content in the world to offer at the moment. I guess not only on the journalism side, social distancing is making going out and shoot something particularly difficult. The media world obviously has been shaken. But that would not stop me from learning more about climate, not just for the sake of this course. Times like these are perfect to read and learn something new. Hence, I want to discuss about ecological grief – a concept that I only came into acknowledging recently.

Has climate change ever come into my emotions? I suspect not. Not deliberately at least, meaning I don’t think I actively seek to be affected by some footage or environmental disaster shown on television or somewhere on the internet. Maybe I just haven’t cared enough about the climate. I think this would be due to my background and style of living. I grew up in an urban area, and do not go to the countryside too often. When I go back to my home country, I work in an office-based headquarter with not much access to fresh air. Still, I go for a run a few times a week, and I grow some plants in my apartment. I think if one day my plants suddenly die, or I find myself stuck in the middle of a bushfire during a run, I would feel devastated and threatened. But it is easy to just say rather than going through ecological grief, which I don’t think I had in the past.

This all changed in me since I joined the course. Not too long ago, I saw an article and some photos on Facebook regarding polar bears eating one another because of the shortage of food due to the shrinking of Arctic ice, limiting their living habitat. The photos (I won’t put on here because they were so disturbing) shocked me and it was only then that I started to recognise the true significance of climate change. Along with the footage of the bushfire crisis earlier this year that I’ve seen, my conception on climate change over the past few months have changed completely. In a way, I guess I am at ecological grief to some extent, as those graphics were so haunting that I even see them in my sleep. Just imagine if those are not polar bears, but humans…

There is one very interesting article on the Guardian that provides insights on how scientists cope with ecological grief. Interviewing many different scholars, they also give their experience on how they manage the inner grief in a sense turning them into motivation to form new questions. Ecological grief draws anger and anger draws action. The important thing I found in the article is the advice that scientists give for others who experience it, stressing on the importance of sharing with others and a sense of unity. As one of the scientists say, “we can become stronger”. I think sharing is also the key for self-helping during this pandemic period too. Just simply writing down my feeling for this blog post has made me feel better.

Finally, I would like to share a photo that I took near where I live in the pre-lockdown days. Looking at clear sky helps and gives me hope that our norm daily routine will soon return, but on another perspective, who knows how long the sky will stay clear for. I am not at grief, but I guess it now depends on what kind.

References

Vince, G 2020, ‘How scientists are coping with ‘ecological grief”, The Guardian, 13 January, viewed 16 April 2020, <https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/12/how-scientists-are-coping-with-environmental-grief>.

If there is one thing that I realised after 4 weeks of the course, it would be that I need to be more conscious to everything around. I say this because having been using the web for years and years, I am only able to differentiate the “internet” and “the web” recently. It really never got into my mind, and I guess I am among the “day-to-day circumstance” people who simply considered these concepts the same purely because of the experience with the web browser. Like many other people, the browser was my first point of interacting with the internet, and as pointed out in one of the readings this week, it is the versatility and well-put together nature of browsers in assembling different kinds of media that cause this misunderstanding (Hinton & Hjorth 2013). But to be a professional media practitioner, I guess it is important to be precise and think more critically.

I found the shift between “Web 1.0” and “Web 2.0” quite interesting in the extent that there is actually not much difference between the two concepts. The reading by Hinton & Hjorth shows that actually, on an infrastructure level, the internet’s architecture does not change. What is changed is rather a kind of mentality. Web 1.0 attempts to drive the desire to make money from internet users. Web 1.0 fails. Web 2.0 attempts to drive the desire to make money from internet users. Web 2.0 succeeds. With Web 1.0, the internet did not reach to a peak period like the latter. This combined with the use of original model of one-way communication with audience led to the dotcom bust. Then users were being put into the central – a two-way communication and it worked as many start-ups then made money from user-generated content.

I guess then, all of it led to the age of me being on my phone the whole day, and one of the SNSs that I access the most is undoubtedly Instagram. How does Instagram make money from letting users decide the content that they want to publish themselves? This would worth a decent research.

Reference

Hinton, S & Hjorth L 2013, Understanding Social Media, Sage Publications, London, UK.

If there comes any week that could be an eye-opener for me, this would be the one in terms of new knowledge as I felt I acquired a lot. The internet and the web were concepts that I did not pay significant attention to in terms of differentiating them. Sure, they are the basis, the foundation for contemporary (and in fact arguably, everything) media practices. It just never got into my consciousness.

Hence, learning the differences between the web and the internet was something new. However, the most interesting thing I found is that one of the readings shows the most significant factor of the web at the moment compared to its “historic structure” (p. 168) is the significance of advert. It is said that “the web is now more commercially viable, and therefore, sustainable”, and the most significant development of web media in recent times is “its establishment as a reliable advertising market”.

Personally, as a content maker, I have experienced the importance of advert to the extent of my work. I learnt that, essentially, it was not the quality of the content or the amount of articles I could produce in a set amount of time that would generate income. Even though I got a KPI (key performance indicator) of 5 articles a day, it was always the view-count that would determine how much I earn along with any bonuses. It was part of the reason why I left my job and became more of a freelancer, as I felt that chasing after views is not what I want to do and achieve at the moment of my life. Still, I can understand how exposure is one of the most important factors and aspects in the media world at the moment, especially online. It would be interesting to see how this would go on with time because, as I mentioned in my first blog, the media world is an ever-changing one.

Reference

Lister, M et al 2009, New Media: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, NY.

Affordances are a concept that I only came into knowing from the start of this course. I have never paid attention to objects to such a deep extent. The concept is essentially the components of objects that provide interactions towards them. The interesting thing I found is that affordances would refer to both the uses and constraints of objects, and that the objects could be intangible and something like software would fall into its category.

To briefly explain, it is how things work the way they do and many things are designed specifically to fit to uses. For example, a chair is designed with enough space for a person to sit on. The width of the chair makes it unable to sleep on, while something like a sofa or a bed has enough space for this purpose, although the material might not be as comfortable as a bed because it is not specifically design for such purpose. Digitally, in video games, sometimes the use of signs such as arrows is put into the story world to help players navigating with the characters throughout the journey of the game.

This concept makes me being more aware of designs, and a good one is one that provides many affordances without restricting users. Everything, including hardware and software, has constraints, and they come in four forms. Physically, they either fit with the purposes of using or they do not. Semantically, socialising and past experience allows us to understand how something is meant to be used, which is basically a watch-and-learn scheme. Culturally, we shape our interpretation of using something via cultural context, such as a green light means moving because this is a cultural convention of vehicles. And last, logically, some designs work because they make sense like how a puzzle is meant for all pieces to be put together or how a Rubik’s cube are meant for all sides to be of the same colour.

Referring the concept to Instagram, I think it is an app offering a wide range of affordances. You can post photos, allowing captions, like photos and view stories seeing what someone is up to. It also has constraints like you can allow only specific to view your stories, and you have to reach a certain amount of followers to gain access to some features. In tutorial, we discuss specifically the use of the double tap to like a photo. I never realised, despite it being so apparent, that there is nothing else in the app that responds to the double tap. This comes semantically for me personally, as if I did not first perceive my friends doing so to like photos, I might have just clicked on the heart icon, which serves the same purpose efficiently.

Being a third year Media student, it has come to my acknowledgement for some time now that the world of media is a highly dynamic, ever changing place. When I started my first step on my way of being a media practitioner in 2018, I got to experience the world of media from the very first steps, and considered these steps to be the baby steps. Learning from the basics like video editing to experiencing more specialised aspects of media like film-making or news production consolidates my initial, although vague, thought of the media world is one of varieties. I also got to experience opportunities in the industry in my own country of Vietnam, from news to television production, which was eye-opening with valuable experiences. I am an experience-driven individual and love to learn a new thing or two.

I bring that always-ready-to-tackle-new-challenges mentality into my last year of the Bachelor degree, with Networked Media being my first selection for an elective this semester. The course tempted me most because of a simple but problematic word: “platform”. Half way through my first year of uni, I had my first opportunity in the sport journalism field during World Cup 2018. The site I worked for content wise was essentially one of the presses, but on paper it called itself a “social media platform”. This clash of platform was confusing for me. While it might be a way to get around with regulations and licenses, this experience made me question the lack of distinction of the online network. In other words, to put it into a proper question, is the form of network that important in an online media environment? I feel the course will help me come up with some kind of an answer. About that site, it has not lived up to expectation and might be closed down soon, especially if the coronavirus pandemic gets even worse. I wonder if the platform issue that I have questioned might have a role to be played there.

The course’s prompt focuses on Instagram, which I find to be really amusing. I think discussing about Instagram would be worth a blog itself, and of course the blogs will slowly contribute to answering that question. It would be interesting to focus on the affordances of Instagram as this would focus on many aspects. On the top of my mind: images, texts, hash tags, stories, advert (potentially). Hopefully I could come into understanding this concept more in the past few weeks to draw up a better discussion. After all, this is the introduction, a fresh start of something new for me to learn.

The reading provided for this week has one point that stands out for me: software overall and software studies are somewhat undermined. There are many points in the reading where the authors discuss of the lack studies that have been done on various scales and matters regarding software studies. I find this to be rather surprising as we have come to the age where technology is one of the most important aspects of life. Considering how long essential applications such as PowerPoint have been around, it is really surprising. Another interesting point that makes me consider is “software is also an evolving part of culture.” (2017, p.3). It is interesting how Instagram is now one of the most significant apps for photo sharing. Did that change how photos are produced and share? I think that would be the case as people would look into finessing specific components and ways to share photos. In other words, it is more problematic to share a photo as the photo itself, the comments, the hash tags and many other aspects would play a part in producing culture. And maybe vice versa. In the end, I guess the only factor that is eternally benefited is our creativity.

Reference

Khoo, E, Hight, C, Torrens, R & Cowie, B 2017, ‘Introduction: Software and other Literacies’, Software Literacy: Education and Beyond, pp. 1-12.