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— Composition Cam (@comp_cam) June 1, 2016

"Look Up" from social networks and mobile devices.

A viral video that has been floating around Facebook and Twitter over the last week, has been calling for a digital revolution. Putting to one side the irony of creating a video promoting the dissolution of social networks, which is being promoted on Twitter and Facebook; does the video have an actual moral message about how we should remove social networks and our online self from our lives or is it just taking a narrow minded single view approach to how people use the online environment?

Related theories
Nathan Jurgenson - Facebook is real life.
Danah Boyd - Social networks blur boundaries of friendship.
Steven Handel - Digital Divide
Christine Rosen - Social Networks is about self-fulfilment.
David Gauntlett - Making is Connecting
Jean Burgess - Memes

Social Media is a Game?

Watch the last 5 Minutes of Charlie Brooker's How Videogames Changed the World and you will find that the argument arises that social media such as Twitter and Facebook are now considered as games.

The idea that is presented mirrors that of Danah Boyd:

“As we Twitter our way to friendship, scoring ourselves based on the numbers of 'friends' we can convince to subscribe to our existence, perhaps we lose track of what friendship and connection mean.” 

What do you think? Are we "playing" a game online? Are you yourself online or offline or both? In fact who are you really?

Catherine Cronin - 'Creating spaces for student voices'

Having connected my students with Catherine Cronin to discuss ideas around digital identity, she asked my students to return the favour and share their ideas about learning in my classroom. They commented on the way they have a voice in the Media Studies classroom. They also discussed the openness of our learning environment and their relationship with me as their 'co-learner', rather than 'teacher'. 

Their comments were included in a presentation that Catherine was giving at #ICTEdu. She wrote up a reflection on the event here, including slides and some feedback on the comments made by my students. 

It was a pleasure to be part of this; I know that my students enjoyed reflecting and sharing their thoughts about the way they learn. Student voice is massively important and I hope that my next group of A2 students will walk away feeling that they had a similar experience. 

Media and expression: theses in tweetform

An interesting list from Nicholas Carr. One or two should definitely resonate... how many do you agree/disagree with?

1. The complexity of the medium is inversely proportional to the eloquence of the message.
2. Hypertext is a more conservative medium than text.
3. The simpler the medium, the greater the experimentation it inspires.
4. Twitter is a more ruminative medium than Facebook.
5. The introduction of digital tools has never improved the quality of an art form.
6. The returns on interactivity quickly turn negative.
7. In the material world, doing is knowing; in media, the opposite is often true.
8. Facebook’s profitability is directly tied to the shallowness of its members: hence its strategy.
9. Increasing the intelligence of a network tends to decrease the intelligence of those connected to it.
10. The one new art form produced by the computer – the videogame – is the computer’s prisoner.
11. Personal correspondence grows less interesting as the speed of its delivery quickens.
12. Programmers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
13. The album cover turned out to be indispensable to popular music.
14. The pursuit of followers on Twitter is an occupation of the bourgeoisie.
15. Abundance of information breeds delusions of knowledge among the unwary.
16. No great work of literature could have been written in hypertext.
17. Recent history proves that the philistine is ideally suited to the role of cultural impresario online.
18. Television became more interesting when people started paying for it.
19. Instagram shows us what a world without art looks like.
20. Online conversation is to oral conversation as a mask is to a face.

A2: Assignment No 2

The Matrix is real but it is not a product of mainstream media. It is self-made, constructed by the public, and proliferated by social networks. We are (knowingly) constructing personalised prisons for our minds; our realities essentially giant filter bubbles, made up of ideologies we accept. We are turning ourselves into thoughtless, marketing machines, exploited by the highest bidder.

To what extent do you agree with the sentiments above?

Make explicit reference to:

• The Matrix
• Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality
• Strinati's theories about media saturation and superficiality
• The ideas you encountered in the Boyd, Turkle, Handel, Rosen, Boder, Sunstein, and Keegan articles, including digital identity and the public sphere
• The ideas put across in Eli Pariser's TED talk
• Twitter discussion about friendship, digital self and instant gratification
• Video's about digital identity and digital self
• Notes from lessons and other discussions
• Any other research/reading that you have completed

A2 Twitter Discussion - Storify

Here are all the tweets from today's Twitter discussion...

Impromptu Lesson/Discussion About 'Kony 2012' (Friday, March 8, 13:10 - 14:00, Media 1)

In the lesson we will be discussing

• the postmodern dimensions of the video.
• the way it has become an 'Internet Meme'
• the backlash against the campaign, considering what this tells us about the way media is constructed and shared in the 21st Century.

Resources for the lesson:

Kony 2012 - Video

 

Kony 2012: what's the real story? - Guardian live updated blog about the Kony 2012 Video / Campaign.

Visible Children: Kony 2012 Viewed Critically - Very well written piece summing up some of the main concerns about the Kony 2012 campaign.

Unpacking Kony 2012 - More detailed piece about the pros and cons of the campaign.

Critiques - Invisible Children's response to the criticism they have received.

Slaxktivism - Further insight.

KONY 2012 May Be Flawed, But Slacktivism Isn’t the Enemy - Short piece focussing more on the impact of online activism. 

#kony2012 Tweets - See what others are saying.

Reflections - My students' response to the lesson, answering the following two questions:

1. What does KONY 2012 offer us, as students learning about Media in the 21st century?

2. Having now considered the campaign more critically, how do you feel about it?

Wikpedia: Joseph Kony

Wikipedia: Kony 2012

Wikipedia: Invisible Children

Wikipedia: Viral Video

Wikipedia: Internet Meme

AS Media Studies - Y12 Homework Link & QR Code

Year 12. This is a permanent link for your homework. You can scan the code with your phone or simply click on the link.

Remember, you can also subscribe to the Twitter feed to keep up to date with the course. See the link in the sidebar on the right.

Homework Link: http://delivr.com/18tq0

Homework QR Code: