Reflection

It wasn’t long ago that I started my blog with the intention of creating a strong online presence, over the course of this first semester I feel that I have done so.
Whilst I tried to entertain and upload the best/funniest/most relevant photos possible, I actually did learn a great lot!

I really enjoyed writing my blog post on Transmedia as I had the honour of retelling my first hand experience of transmedia as I went to Hobbiton in New Zealand and it felt as if I was a part of J.R.R Tolkien’s middle earth world.

Another post that I found interesting and fun to write was my rant about the remix culture. Remixing is something which is a part of our daily lives and with this post and study I finally realised in depth what was required in remixing and its détournement as remixes are able to completely change the original meaning of a piece of art.

I found it really interesting to write about trolling as I was surprised at the amount of hate floating around on the internet. It was really interesting to hear about the great troubles people would go to just to tease someone and get publicity, it was quite ridiculous.

All in all I have thoroughly enjoyed my blogging experience and would like to thank everyone that has read my posts and also taught me all the content and about these interesting issues.

I look forward to my next blog post. So long for now!!!

The sad life of a troll.

Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Cyber-bulling… in this day and age? The taunts haven’t changed over time just the name for it has, this new method of cruel teasing is known as trolling.

Trolling is extremely easy due to people’s anonymity on the internet. Internet trolls can say anything in the public sphere and remain anonymous or use a fake identity. The main intention of a ‘troll’ is to get attention from their remarks. Many women have been subject to public misogynist remarks and some are starting to feel scared to post online as they fear the backlash from males. Laurie Penny has been frequently threatened and subjected to feminism; she stated that “It would be nice to think that the rot of rank misogyny was confined to fringe sites populated by lunatics. But it is found all over the web – and it’s silencing its victims. Fighting it is not the same as censorship.”

In a recent BCM112 lecture Dr Tanja Dreher presented us with interesting facts and ideas about trolls and online misogyny. She revealed to us that the male presence and power online is much stronger online with only 1 out of 10 of the most influential people online was a woman, Arianna Huffington. Also she spoke to us about gender-bias sites and online segregation with Pinterest.com users being 97% women and only 3% men, whereas the site Dartitup.com user percentage was 88% men and a mere 12% women.

It clearly isn’t every man that is trolling women and it isn’t every person that is trolling in general, however, there are many sites that prove that online misogyny and trolling is extremely present. Laurie Penny mentions the site “Don’t Start Me Off!” which is a prime example of misogyny online and she stands up for women by exposing this terrible site to the world. There are many sites that are finally trying to bring an end to this trolling, some sites include #mencallmethings, The Anti-Bogan and Destroy the Joint.

The participatory culture of the World Wide Web allows for these people to say these hate-filled words publicly and until gatekeepers are more vigilant, this will continue.

“Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights.” – Bob Marley

A common societal thought is that the youths of today do not care about social and political issues. This view has been formed mainly by comparing the way the youths today and the youths of the past (in the 1970’s etc) acted towards social issues.

The kids today may try to dress the same as the activists at Woodstock celebrating freedom (hippies) and also they may feel they are as informed about social issues as the people at Martin Luther King’s march on Washington; however, they are generally not as ‘physically’ involved with issues as the youths of the past.

The majority of youth social activism is now done through social media and they are known as ‘clictivists’. Teenagers can now sit in their chair and then post their ‘social activist’ view on a medium platform, such as Facebook, Twitter etc. ‘Clicktivism’ in simple terms is when social media users ‘like’ a photo to cure a dogs cancer… which as we all know is impossible. These clicktivists generally just like a post without getting behind the cause or knowing too much about the issue and simply feel that by clicking ‘like’ they are helping.

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

― Leonardo da Vinci

Activist work can benefit from social media posting. Seeing as most youths are on Facebook 24/7 social/political issues can go viral easily and most people will find out about these issues such as ‘KONY 2012’ and ‘Earth Hour.’ Henrik Christensen stated that “it is not possible to determine a consistent impact of internet campaigns on real-life decisions, there is no evidence of the substitution thesis. If anything, the internet has a positive impact on offline mobilisation”. A positive aspect of online activism is that more people are aware; the issue however is whether or not these people will participate in helping these causes. A problem with the KONY campaign is that it was a hoax and people that did sponsor it or spend money to help lost their money and this may discourage them from participating in social activism online.

REMIX HAS RISEN!

“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Pablo Picasso

The ability to remix has given birth to a new way in which consumers use media. Consumers aren’t forced to just sit back, relax and view/hear media, now they can alter the media and create a new piece of art.

Remixing is all made possible and easier with the improved fast internet speeds, ease of access to media and also less restrictive ways to download media. People can now change media to personally suit them and their audience; this can be both positive and negative for the original creator of this media piece.

The positive side is that it may bring more publicity to the original piece, for example the song “Forever Young” by Alphaville has been remixed many times, most famously by the band ‘Youth group’ and by the rapper ‘Jay Z’. I heard the remix before the original and my likening for the remixes got me interested in the original which I ended up liking even more then the remixes.

A negative side to this remix is that I may not have heard that these were remixes and falsely credited the remixes as being originals

In the lecture Andrew Whelan related remixing to the word détournement. The word détournement relates to changing the meaning of a media work and presenting a new idea, hence its relationship to remixing

One of the big issues/ benefits of remixing are that it can change the whole meaning of a piece of media. The example used in our lecture was a YouTube video remix of Buffy (the vampire slayer) versus Edward (from Twilight); this remix undermines the original ideologies of both media pieces. The remix video completely changes the way the audience view Edward. In the remix he is creepy, obsessive and annoying; this is a massive contrast to the twilight films where he is romantic, charming and determined.

Tolkien’s Transmedia

In November 2012 I travelled to New Zealand with my dad to go hiking, on the way was a casual stop over to Hobbiton. The movie set where they filmed the Lord of the rings town, “the shire” was quite amazing. The landscape was magnificent, there were rolling hills, stunning vegetable patches and of course houses embedded in the hills. I felt like I was a part of Tolkiens’ fictional world! This is an example of transmedia.

“Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.”

When J.R.R Tolkien first wrote the Hobbit in 1937 for his children to read he would not have expected The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings trilogy to become blockbuster movies, video games, short stories, parodies, movie sets, tours, a possible theme park and even this awesome air New Zealand safety clip.

The use of transmedia helps to appeal to a larger audience and more audience engagement. For example someone who has read the books may not like the movies but still would like to check out Hobbiton to see this interpretation of the book. Another example is that some people may not like reading and prefer just to watch a movie, which happens a lot these days.

The greatest improvement transmedia has made on stories is that it creates a fictional world for the audience to relate to and feel that they are apart of.

Hunters and Gatherers… of media

If I see a fight, a fire or a French man eating frogs legs I can talk about what I saw and post it on the World Wide Web for all to view and I could do it however I want.. I wouldn’t have to consult a higher authority as to when and how I should post this content

Congratulations Joel you have now graduated from the University of Web with a degree in Citizen Journalism… My mum’s going to be so proud

In the past it would not have been my job or possibly right to tell a story so that ANYONE could see it, this would be due to my qualifications. In an age where the kids are called anti-social it’s funny how much socialising actually goes on. People just mention a topic and then others can contribute and expand on what it is they feel about a topic forming a collective intelligence. There have been several cases recently on Facebook where customers of stores write into these stores with a story and this is presented on Facebook. If these stories are interesting which many are then they go viral… so here is a person with no journalism qualification getting their story read by millions!

A 21 year old American girl, Casey Sasser wrote up a story about her act of kindness this received 79000 likes and 2000 shares which would mean it got a large amount of views around the world!

Let me repeat she is NOT a journalist!!!

A problem that does occur with stories such as this one, which are not filtered and no authority has read over it is how do we know that it is true? This shouldn’t be such a big issue, let’s be honest there are still lies in the newspaper and that goes through a process of review and publishing .

The Newspapers main tactic isn’t to make citizen journalists look like liars, no they have a much harder job, they have to ‘stop the audience being publishers.’ Even Mr Newspaper himself, Rupert Murdoch, knows that the Newspaper is a dying breed.

There are still some optimistic journalists such as Andrew Marr a BBC political presenter that thinks citizen journalism “is not going to replace journalism” and I say good luck to that. Jay Rosen on the other hand believes that Journalists are ‘not a special class’

It will be extremely interesting over the next few years or decades to see how the saga of open versus closed pans out!

Mesmerised by the media

After a long 6 or 7 tedious weeks of blogging about media, I must now think to myself what did I learn? Well besides learning my best friends sleeping pattern revolves around lectures I have surprisingly learnt a lot.

It was not apparent to me before this course how interesting media actually is and what goes on behind the scenes.

It’s amazing how influential ANY person’s opinion can be on ANYONE! Media is such a monumental part of our lives that it has an effect on people, and rightly so. It was also was identified that some media has more effect on people than others, for example a superhero movie may not influence kids as much as adults as generally the majority of adults can understand the difference of fiction and nonfiction better then children.

Another interesting discussion was about controversial advertisements and this presented to us advertisements which included the use of drugs, sex, Hitler and many more taboo public subjects.

But then, surely, we had to question who was allowing this media to go out in to the realm of the mediated public sphere… for EVERYONE to see. It’s the likes of Fairfax and Newscorp which have mass control over media. Does this bother YOU?

Who controls the media does not bother me one bit, however if the owner uses media to strongly persuade people to believe certain things such as who is wrong or right at war or presents one sided views, this is wrong!

Possibly the greatest part of the mediated public sphere is that it in fact allows people to comment on bias news reports and have their say on what happened and allow for other people to back them up… unless of course you live in North Korea. North Korea, to put it politely, is not mates with the mediated public sphere and they have full control over what their citizens see. A funny yet shocking example of North Koreas overpowering media control took place at the 2014 South African World cup. In North Korea the news presenters lied to fans stating that they had won games that in actual fact they didn’t win.

The BCM110 course has been extremely interesting this far and I am looking forward to learning more… and blogging more

Peace! Bless!

What is the world’s opinion?

It is possible for people to have their say on almost any subject and share this globally on the World Wide Web. Then other people in this mediated public sphere may also comment on someone else’s comment and it goes on like so until whole conversations between people are viewable on the Internet.

An example of an event that is displayed in the mediated public sphere annually, is the Golden Globe Awards this attracts viewers from all over the world. In 2011 The “Golden Globe ceremony was up 14 percent from 2009’s roughly 15 million viewers.” The 2010, 2011 and 2012 awards were hosted by Ricky Gervais and the reasoning behind its viewer increase is that viewers were eager to hear and comment on Gervais’ controversial presenting.

A large amount of people were offended by Ricky Gervais comments at the three Golden Globe awards he hosted as he presented an array of controversial comments on the Hollywood realm.

I personally thought they were funny and must admit Gervais is my favourite comedian, but some of the people that were the subject of his taunts did not and nor did their fans, and Gervais ‘haters.’ Gervais’ remarks were challenged by the mediated public sphere with articles deeming him as “racist, sexist and homophobic”… That’s a bit harsh.

The U.S., media rounded on The Office comic dubbing his performance ‘uncomfortable’, ‘corrosive’ and ‘abusive’.

Actors such as Christian Bale took it a lot lighter; he made this comment “Thank God for comedians. I’m hoping he’s going to keep going further.”Gervais thrived on the opportunity to scare people stating, “To be the most feared man in Hollywood for three hours is so much fun.”

It is interesting hearing EVERYONE’S view on topics, however some people take things too far and actually begin to try strongly influence people to agree with their personal hate or love towards someone.

Gate closing, please stand clear.

The game has changed but do you know how to hustle?

Nowadays almost EVERYONE in some way or another is involved in social media and different media platforms. Originally ‘back in the day’ people’s involvement was minimal, these people were ‘formerly known as the audience.’ But the audience is now the new participant, 30’s the new 40 and Androids the new apple.

These days anyone can present their opinion on the internet. Everybody is a commentator #mygrandmapassesbetterthanthat and everybody is a chef posting pictures of the food they made on Instagram, 10 years ago i wouldn’t have known what my best mate had for lunch unless I personally asked them but now their peanut butter and jelly sandwich is imposed on me. Most people now want to be heard. Facebook should say ‘sign up and Insert YOUR opinion here ______’

I’m not against presenting my personal opinion as you can see I’m doing it right now, and I also must admit that it is addictive. People are constantly checking their news feed, sports results, what events are taking place on the weekend etc and the interesting thing is, that all this information does not only come from credible sources. Someone may post a football result on Facebook that is not the correct score and the viewer could easily mistake this for being the correct result. Insignificant events such as this are not monitored by ‘Gate keepers’ people who monitor what does and doesn’t go on the internet or what is taken off the internet. Companies hire their own gate keepers, but a common form of this protection is allowing users to report a photo or post … then sending the information to the Gate keepers to take this down. But what if this information isn’t reported? What If this information is posted into a group page with supporters that share the same ideologies? An extremist rally date posted on the public domain would surely get taken down however; an extremist rally date posted on a private Facebook page that only these extremist members know about probably wouldn’t get taken down due to its secrecy and this is where the gate keeping system is flawed.

Any message can reach the global audience, so be careful what you post!

The Phat Controller

The media has to be controlled to a certain extent.

For instance, companies need to make sure that their program does not present any unethical or immoral ideologies from the TV presenters themself. They can, however, show an immoral event such as a murder, but they will of course present their personal view that what happened was a terrible event.

Think about this… when was the last time you saw a news presenter, or any news source be racist, encourage murder, or swear on TV? Hopefully never, and this presents the good side of media control as the owners would not allow this.

Now let’s look at the other side of control. When was the last time that you saw the media support a certain side of politics, or promote/demote a celebrity due to their best interest? This happens all the time! The owners of media companies such as News Corp and Fox will generally not allow for their media platforms to present anything that may hinder their amount of viewers. For example Fox news will not present the Middle Eastern view on the War in the Middle East because Fox is mainly based in America. Adolf Hitler showed the world in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s how it is possible to persuade people, through media, to follow you. Along with his minister for enlightenment and propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler was able to broadcast his speeches, ideologies and ‘Fuhrer myth’ to the German nation and the world. The media helped to give him Demi-god status, gain him full power of Germany and also time magazine man of the year… sorry what? Yes that’s right he was voted time man of the year in America in 1923

Imagine you owned a media company such as fox or Newscorp and your best friend was running for prime minister… would you publish a story on a sex scandal from their past or a gambling addiction they maintain, probably not.  So in these circumstances it is an issue when viewing the news from a biased source, but most people are biased in some way.

Personally I try my hardest to stray away from viewing the news; this is mainly due to the farfetched news and desensitisation presented by “news” shows such as ‘a current affair’ and ‘today tonight.’ The link below shows ‘The Chasers war on everything’ team mocking today tonight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG2tWuLTS_A

This video shows the poor quality of news; this quality begins from the top with executives and owners of companies ordering these stories to be published so they appeal to the mass public and instead of broadcasting a story on global warming and what we can do to help they’d rather a story on cats that eat garbage and turn into vampires at night due to the chemical imbalance of astronauts.