Tuesday 29 May 2012
Useful Prezi from another centre to help you revise Section A Q1a and Q1b
This might also be of interest (though McLuhan is the right spelling):
Wednesday 23 May 2012
Question 1a Exam Preparation
Here are 2 good presentations from other centres to help you prepare, revise and structure your essays.
The other one cannot be embedded but is from Long Road...
SEE IT HERE
The other one cannot be embedded but is from Long Road...
SEE IT HERE
REVISE - Links recently tweeted by Julian McDougall.. (you know, the man who writes your A2 paper...) and by Long Road Media
Marshall McLuhan: McLuhan is known for coining the expressions "the medium is the message" and "the global village" and predicted the World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented.
In the early 1960s, McLuhan wrote that the visual, individualistic print culture would soon be brought to an end by what he called "electronic interdependence": when electronic media replace visual culture with aural/oral culture. In this new age, humankind will move from individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity, with a "tribal base." McLuhan's coinage for this new social organization is the global village.
Whereas print media tend to fragment society, the new electronics technology, particularly the television with its mass availability, will effect a web of interdependence that can unite humanity in a "global village."
See also: Marshall McLuhan Foresees The Global Village
Charles Leadbetter: We-Think / Creativity - His most recent book, We-Think, explores the new phenomenon of mass creativity exemplified by web sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia and MySpace. The book, which in a preliminary version is open to public criticism and revision, argues that participation, rather than consumption or production, will be the key organizing idea of future society.
In Contrast, Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture
His 2007 book is a critique of the enthusiasm surrounding user generated content, peer production, and other Web 2.0-related phenomena.
Also in contrast, Morozov: How democracy slipped through the net (Guardian article)
The author of The Net Delusion has serious doubts about the web's ability to bring change to oppressive regimes – and he's inspiring a new generation of cyber-sceptics
EXtractfrom the article:
As we sit and talk in a cafe near Capitol Hill in Washington, Morozov admits rather sheepishly that in the beginning he was himself a passionate believer in the democratising potential of the web. After school, he moved to Bulgaria with the benefit of a grant from George Soros's Open Society Institute and then worked for an NGO in Berlin. He even become one of the first to use the term "Twitter revolution" at the time of the protests in Moldova in April 2009.
"It was hard not to be infected by a sense of optimism and excitement about the freedom agenda that was around at that time. I genuinely thought it was making a difference. Democracy appeared to be advancing and marching, and the web 2.0 seemed to be part of it, bringing people on to the streets."
Then when Tehran erupted, Morozov had a deepening sense that the claims being made for the internet as a pro-democracy force were being wildly exaggerated. In his book, he points his finger at those he accuses of hype, or as he puts it "cyber-utopianism" such as New York University's Clay Shirky – "this is it, the big one, the first revolution transformed by social media [...]
That failure has allowed authoritarian governments to develop their own presence on the web, to powerful effect. Initially, the techniques used were blunt and unsophisticated, such as the Chinese government's decision simply to turn off the internet for 10 months in 2009 amid the growing unrest in Xinjiang. But over time dictators and oligarchs have become adept at fine-tuning their methods..."
Jeff Jarvis's extract: A Hippocratic oath for the internet
There have been many attempts to craft bills of rights for the net, from the Association for Progressive Communications, to a group of Chinese intellectuals, to the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition, to the Brazillian Internet Steering Committee, to the Facebook users who wrote a set of social rights. There is much good thinking there. I offer mine to add to the discussion, broadening it, I hope, to embrace not only the openness of the internet but also the principles of publicness (I go into these in greater depth in my book):I. We have the right to connect.
II. We have the right to speak.
III. We have the right to assemble and to act.
IV. Privacy is an ethic of knowing.
V. Publicness is an ethic of sharing.
VI. Our institutions’ information should be public by default, secret by necessity.
VII. What is public is a public good.
VIII. All bits are created equal.
IX. The internet must stay open and distributed.
Marxist Media Theory: Gramsci, Althusser and hegemony (+ Fiske)
Gramsci used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others (e.g. bourgeois hegemony). This represents not only political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common sense' and 'natural'. Commentators stress that this involves willing and active consent. Common sense, suggests Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, is 'the way a subordinate class lives its subordination'.
As Fiske puts it, 'Consent must be constantly won and rewon, for people's material social experience constantly reminds them of the disadvantages of subordination and thus poses a threat to the dominant class... Hegemony... posits a constant contradiction between ideology and the social experience of the subordinate that makes this interface into an inevitable site of ideological struggle'
And to finish on a slightly different note...
Twitter power: how social networking is revolutionising the music business
A&R men and other traditional insiders bypassed as new sites connect artists directly to fans (Guardian article)
"But with the number of independent record stores in terminal decline and the boundaries of the internet limitless, online music social networks have sprung up to meet the demands of gregarious music lovers who want to share ideas and loves. Tuesday sees the launch of The Pic-Nic Village, a new social networking site created by Pete Lawrence, founder of the Big Chill festival, which will be funded and run entirely by its users – the most recent of a wave of music social networking sites that is revolutionising the way people discover music. The new social network Meanwhile Ping, launched last week and based on iTunes, has already attracted more than 1 million users, according to Apple..."
In the early 1960s, McLuhan wrote that the visual, individualistic print culture would soon be brought to an end by what he called "electronic interdependence": when electronic media replace visual culture with aural/oral culture. In this new age, humankind will move from individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity, with a "tribal base." McLuhan's coinage for this new social organization is the global village.
Whereas print media tend to fragment society, the new electronics technology, particularly the television with its mass availability, will effect a web of interdependence that can unite humanity in a "global village."
See also: Marshall McLuhan Foresees The Global Village
Charles Leadbetter: We-Think / Creativity - His most recent book, We-Think, explores the new phenomenon of mass creativity exemplified by web sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia and MySpace. The book, which in a preliminary version is open to public criticism and revision, argues that participation, rather than consumption or production, will be the key organizing idea of future society.
In Contrast, Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture
His 2007 book is a critique of the enthusiasm surrounding user generated content, peer production, and other Web 2.0-related phenomena.
Also in contrast, Morozov: How democracy slipped through the net (Guardian article)
The author of The Net Delusion has serious doubts about the web's ability to bring change to oppressive regimes – and he's inspiring a new generation of cyber-sceptics
EXtractfrom the article:
As we sit and talk in a cafe near Capitol Hill in Washington, Morozov admits rather sheepishly that in the beginning he was himself a passionate believer in the democratising potential of the web. After school, he moved to Bulgaria with the benefit of a grant from George Soros's Open Society Institute and then worked for an NGO in Berlin. He even become one of the first to use the term "Twitter revolution" at the time of the protests in Moldova in April 2009.
"It was hard not to be infected by a sense of optimism and excitement about the freedom agenda that was around at that time. I genuinely thought it was making a difference. Democracy appeared to be advancing and marching, and the web 2.0 seemed to be part of it, bringing people on to the streets."
Then when Tehran erupted, Morozov had a deepening sense that the claims being made for the internet as a pro-democracy force were being wildly exaggerated. In his book, he points his finger at those he accuses of hype, or as he puts it "cyber-utopianism" such as New York University's Clay Shirky – "this is it, the big one, the first revolution transformed by social media [...]
That failure has allowed authoritarian governments to develop their own presence on the web, to powerful effect. Initially, the techniques used were blunt and unsophisticated, such as the Chinese government's decision simply to turn off the internet for 10 months in 2009 amid the growing unrest in Xinjiang. But over time dictators and oligarchs have become adept at fine-tuning their methods..."
Jeff Jarvis's extract: A Hippocratic oath for the internet
There have been many attempts to craft bills of rights for the net, from the Association for Progressive Communications, to a group of Chinese intellectuals, to the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition, to the Brazillian Internet Steering Committee, to the Facebook users who wrote a set of social rights. There is much good thinking there. I offer mine to add to the discussion, broadening it, I hope, to embrace not only the openness of the internet but also the principles of publicness (I go into these in greater depth in my book):I. We have the right to connect.
II. We have the right to speak.
III. We have the right to assemble and to act.
IV. Privacy is an ethic of knowing.
V. Publicness is an ethic of sharing.
VI. Our institutions’ information should be public by default, secret by necessity.
VII. What is public is a public good.
VIII. All bits are created equal.
IX. The internet must stay open and distributed.
Marxist Media Theory: Gramsci, Althusser and hegemony (+ Fiske)
Gramsci used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others (e.g. bourgeois hegemony). This represents not only political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common sense' and 'natural'. Commentators stress that this involves willing and active consent. Common sense, suggests Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, is 'the way a subordinate class lives its subordination'.
As Fiske puts it, 'Consent must be constantly won and rewon, for people's material social experience constantly reminds them of the disadvantages of subordination and thus poses a threat to the dominant class... Hegemony... posits a constant contradiction between ideology and the social experience of the subordinate that makes this interface into an inevitable site of ideological struggle'
And to finish on a slightly different note...
Twitter power: how social networking is revolutionising the music business
A&R men and other traditional insiders bypassed as new sites connect artists directly to fans (Guardian article)
"But with the number of independent record stores in terminal decline and the boundaries of the internet limitless, online music social networks have sprung up to meet the demands of gregarious music lovers who want to share ideas and loves. Tuesday sees the launch of The Pic-Nic Village, a new social networking site created by Pete Lawrence, founder of the Big Chill festival, which will be funded and run entirely by its users – the most recent of a wave of music social networking sites that is revolutionising the way people discover music. The new social network Meanwhile Ping, launched last week and based on iTunes, has already attracted more than 1 million users, according to Apple..."
Thursday 17 May 2012
Exam Prep - watch and comment
Here is the first part of a response to the question about the extent to which new media can enrich democracy, by Josh and Matthew.
They focused on the Social networking / citizen journalism angle which could be the first half (or 2/3) of the essay. Devki and Shreyaa focused on the Creativity angle. I'll try and upload their video tomorrow.
The boys are very clear and specific in places but less certain or vague in others. Also, there are a few more theory 'ingredients' that could be added and a mention of blogs.
Help create the ultimate answer by adding your comments below in response to what you hear.
What is good and why?
What is vague and needs clarification?
What's missing?
What could have been linked differently?
What theory could have been included and applied to the examples?
Of course you don't have to address all the above questions but make a start where you think it's most needed.
If you'd rather respond on your own blog, do so and let us know in the comments. You could also save the picture and add notes to it, then post it on your blog.
They focused on the Social networking / citizen journalism angle which could be the first half (or 2/3) of the essay. Devki and Shreyaa focused on the Creativity angle. I'll try and upload their video tomorrow.
The boys are very clear and specific in places but less certain or vague in others. Also, there are a few more theory 'ingredients' that could be added and a mention of blogs.
Help create the ultimate answer by adding your comments below in response to what you hear.
What is good and why?
What is vague and needs clarification?
What's missing?
What could have been linked differently?
What theory could have been included and applied to the examples?
Of course you don't have to address all the above questions but make a start where you think it's most needed.
If you'd rather respond on your own blog, do so and let us know in the comments. You could also save the picture and add notes to it, then post it on your blog.
Wednesday 16 May 2012
Gauntlett and Jenkins - Thursday's lesson and independent study
FIRST WATCH THIS: David Gauntlett.
And this even better one!
Now read this:
Gauntlett interviewed by Henry Jenkins (from Jenkins' blog). Scan to find the relevant bits but look closely at part 3!
Moving on to Henry Jenkins, have a look at this:
Jenkins' post from his blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan
Particularly watch this video!!!
And if you can this one:
Henry Jenkins is in London talking about his new book, Spreadable Media, and much more! He was interviewed by David Gauntlett on Tuesday night. Search #digitaltrans on Twitter for nuggets from the talk.
Someone has helpfully provided a rough transcript of what was said. You can read it here:
And here are poor videos of that talk.
Link to the Lost Zombies Project website
And here someone explains the project:
Here is a link to an article about the Palestinian protestors who dressed up as Avatar characters
Here is a link to the Harry Potter Alliance website that Jenkins mentions.
If it doesn't work, go directly there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNqgXbI1_o8
And this even better one!
Now read this:
Gauntlett interviewed by Henry Jenkins (from Jenkins' blog). Scan to find the relevant bits but look closely at part 3!
Studying Creativity in the Age of Web 2.0: An Interview with David Gauntlett (Part 1)
Studying Creativity in the Age of Web 2.0: An interview with David Gauntlett (Part Two)
Jenkins' post from his blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan
Particularly watch this video!!!
And if you can this one:
Henry Jenkins is in London talking about his new book, Spreadable Media, and much more! He was interviewed by David Gauntlett on Tuesday night. Search #digitaltrans on Twitter for nuggets from the talk.
Someone has helpfully provided a rough transcript of what was said. You can read it here:
| Henry Jenkins' talk |
And here are poor videos of that talk.
Link to the Lost Zombies Project website
And here someone explains the project:
Here is a link to an article about the Palestinian protestors who dressed up as Avatar characters
Here is a link to the Harry Potter Alliance website that Jenkins mentions.
For Thursday 17.5.12
See last week's H/L.
Hand in (or post) your redrafted / improved first essay on We Media so I can mark it.
Remember that an essay has been set for tomorrow!
For those who were away, you need to choose between:
1. "We get the media we deserve." Discuss in relation to the media in a democracy.
2. As a citizen, to what extent do you feel that the media provide you with a democratic service?
It's time to make sure you're absolutely ready for the exam. Be there.
Hand in (or post) your redrafted / improved first essay on We Media so I can mark it.
Remember that an essay has been set for tomorrow!
For those who were away, you need to choose between:
1. "We get the media we deserve." Discuss in relation to the media in a democracy.
2. As a citizen, to what extent do you feel that the media provide you with a democratic service?
It's time to make sure you're absolutely ready for the exam. Be there.
Exam Advice and past questions from Pete's Media Blog
Here are ALL previous questions for each element, from the exams in Jan and June 2010 and Jan 2011:
Section A 1a
Describe how you developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.
Describe the ways in which your production work was informed by research into real media texts and how your ability to use such research for production developed over time.
Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.
1b
Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.
Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre.
Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.
Section A 1a
Describe how you developed research and planning skills for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.
Describe the ways in which your production work was informed by research into real media texts and how your ability to use such research for production developed over time.
Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your creative decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.
1b
Analyse media representation in one of your coursework productions.
Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to genre.
Apply theories of narrative to one of your coursework productions.
How to approach question 1a
How to approach question 1b
Section B
WeMedia and Democracy
How far can the media in 2010 be considered to be democratic?
Assess the claim that the media is becoming more democratic.
Discuss the meanings of the term ‘we media.’
Explore the claim that the ‘new’ media are more democratic than the ‘old’ media.
What is ‘we media’ and what difference does it make to citizens?
‘We get the media we deserve.’ Discuss, in relation to the role of media in a democracy.
Now look at his presentation:
Now look at these fabulous posts on the London Riots and how it can be approach for We Media and Online Age:
How to approach question 1b
Section B
WeMedia and Democracy
How far can the media in 2010 be considered to be democratic?
Assess the claim that the media is becoming more democratic.
Discuss the meanings of the term ‘we media.’
Explore the claim that the ‘new’ media are more democratic than the ‘old’ media.
What is ‘we media’ and what difference does it make to citizens?
‘We get the media we deserve.’ Discuss, in relation to the role of media in a democracy.
Now look at his presentation:
...and this one:
Tuesday 8 May 2012
For Thursday 10.05.12
- Make sure you have at least one draft for each Q1b.
- Redraft / Improve them as much as possible. SHOW ME YOUR AMENDMENTS.
- Use the notes made in last lesson to improve your We Media essay. I need to see corrections / improvements made. You MUST bring it to the lesson as we will use them in class. Keep reading! It's the key to improve understanding and fluency!
- Manan's link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopians?INTCMP=SRCH
- Hemal's link/video: http://hemalsperspective.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/jared-cohen-technologys-role-in-arab.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)