Captain of My Planet.

To some extent, we all live in our own little worlds. Granted, some of us are more off-with-the-fairies than others, and I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always have both feet on the ground. But our little worlds, the way we see things, shape our worldview, and the way we see others. All too often though we get comfortable there, because things are nice and familiar and normal and right. We hold on tight to our little slice of reality, and bite back fiercely at anyone who dares to question or try and change it. Slowly though, and I think a little scarily, we can become close-minded. Our little worlds stop growing, and our worldviews stay set.

In my lecture this week, which took place in the comfort of my own bed, I listened to Richard Fidler and Steve Austin talk about radio. Each of them talked about their experiences as radio hosts, and about the kinds of things you need to do on radio. But something that struck me was the idea that radio, through conversation, allows us to see into other people’s lives, and into their little worlds. Listening to other people’s stories tells us so much about the world around us, and can open our eyes to different ways of seeing things. But sometimes we close our ears to other people, because we don’t like what they’re saying, or we don’t agree with them.

Radio is one of the oldest media forms, and you’d think it might be on a decline by now. And granted, people don’t tend to huddle around the radio any more to get their nightly news. But people still listen to the radio, whether they’re in the car on the way to work, doing something at home or most recently, through podcasts. Steve Austen said that sometimes you just have to “talk less, and listen more” and  radio allows us to do that. We get to sit back and listen to what others have to say, get a little slice of their world, and compare it with our own.

Richard Fidler said something very interesting. He said to “be open-minded. Expose yourself... to thoughts and ideas you don’t agree with…try and expand your worldview as much as possible.” I think this is a challenge worth trying. Listen to the radio, dive into a book, and ask questions. Try and see inside other people’s little worlds, and expand yours. Because when it comes to worldviews, the bigger the better. Don’t get me wrong: you don’t have to agree with everyone. Just try and see the world from a different point of view. I think that’s what really good story telling and journalism does: it allows people to see the world in a way they hadn’t before.  When this happens, our little worlds keep growing, and we can stop ourselves from becoming close-minded and stubborn. So take a step inside the world of someone different to you, and have a look around. You might like what you see. 

Media Use Diary

Journalism and communication has started to see a shift from the use of old media, namely newspapers, magazines, radio and television, to new media, which revolves around the internet. As such, media platforms have had to change from traditional forms to online ones. The rise of new media usage is the topic of this dossier.

I logged my media usage for ten days (figure 1.0), and then compared it to the results of the survey.

Figure 1.0

The majority of media used was online, with online news and Facebook having the highest total time. Blogging, magazines and television were also used a lot, though their time was nearly half of that seen for Facebook.

This preference for new media was not seen in the survey results however. In the survey, more old media was used than new media (figure 2.0). This conflicts in comparison to my media usage (figure 3.0), where it can be seen that new media was used more.

Figure 2.0

Figure 3.0

While these results indicate that I use a much higher amount of new media than average, the time I spent online each day was significantly less than that seen in the survey. I spent approximately 45 minutes online each day, whereas the average was 1-3 hours. Also, television was the main way people got their news, whereas my main form of news was online newspapers.

These differences could be attributed to the fact that online platforms are easier for me to access than other media forms. Online news made up the biggest percentage of my media use, followed by Facebook, another easily accessed form. These results do have some similarities with the survey results however, as the second biggest source of news was online newspapers, and 91.1% of the time people spent online was on Facebook. My media usage, therefore, does have some similarities with the survey.

Figure 4.0

Usage versus producage was created with web 2.0. Produsage can be defined as:

“…the collaborative, iterative, and user-led production of content by participants in a hybrid user-producer, or produser role.” (Bruns, 2005).

Approximately 22% of my interaction with media was producage, as can be seen in figure 4.0. This included Facebook posts, tweets, and blogging. In regards to the survey results, while it is hard to determine exactly when people use and produce media, the fact that 97.2% of individuals have one or more Facebook accounts, 32.3% use Twitter and 41.4% have blogs indicates produsage. These statistics show that produsage is becoming a big part of media, and therefore journalism, with individuals being able to participate in media production.

These trends indicate that the way people use media is changing, with new media forms and produsers affecting media consumption and production. In regards to my media usage, it can be seen that my relationship with journalism is mostly in new media, and that I not only use but also produse. This indicates that generally, media is starting to encompass new forms, and that people are engaging with them in new ways. 

References

Bruns, A. (2005). Towards Produsage: Futures for User-Led Content Production. [available online] http://snurb.info/files/12132812018_towards_produsage_0.pdf last accessed: 29/03/12

Just Butter, Thanks.

I saw this ace little video while I was procrastinating about writing my media diary dossier, and thought I might blog about it. See, procrastination does have its benefits!

I really liked this video, because it shows the power of boring words, the kinds of words you and I use all the time. Some of the most powerful, memorable statements were just a simple, neat collection of bread and butter words.

The fact of the matter is that people need to be able to connect with what’s being said and written. “No coordinates exist like one’s domicile” really doesn’t hit home for me. It took me a minute to figure out what the hell that phrase even meant. The truth is, people hold word snobs in much too high esteem. Knowing the meaning of the word ‘tellurian’ doesn’t make you a literary god. Writing a good, powerful, simple sentence does. I must confess that I’m guilty of dropping an oversized word in now and then, and I may have possibly subscribed to dictionary.com’s ‘Word of the Day’ for just that purpose. Big words to have a place and a purpose, don't get me wrong. But this lovely little video has given me the epiphany that big words aren’t always better. So from now on, I might just start appreciating the bread and butter of the language world, without always adding the jam. 

Snap!

Everyone knows that a picture says a thousand words. So it makes sense that in the world of news journalism, a place of short, punchy sentences and word limits, that we'd let pictures do the talking that we don't have the space to do. Sometimes, in fact, pictures have a deeper story than words could ever tell.

Photo albums are a great example of this. Families keep photo albums, or these days, USB’s, full of memories. And these memories are mostly in picture form, with maybe a few words scribbled on the back. People know that pictures tell a story, so when they have a moment they want to remember they take a few happy snaps. You don’t see too many families whipping out their notebooks to take down what’s happening at a family dinner. Instead, Aunty Marg just huddles everyone around for a photo. I, for one, am guilty of sneaking out my Polaroid when a particularly memorable moment arises. So it only makes sense that journalists would start snapping away at the scene of an interesting event.  And since you’d think that journalists would only write about interesting things, there’s a place for a photo in every story.

More and more, photos are starting to tell the story in journalism. Online news websites are littered with photo galleries, and just about every news story published on the web is accompanied by a photo. While some news photos are particularly dull and posed, others stay with you, and convey a much greater meaning than words ever could. Take, for example, this photo taken of the Black Saturday fires. In one picture, so much is said without uttering a single word.

Newspapers, online news and magazines are starting to become the photo albums of the world around us. Sure, words still play a major part. Pictures don’t truly come to life until you hear the story behind them. But it’s important to think about the photos that get put with a story. Just like no one wants to see half of Uncle Albert cut off in a photo, readers don’t want to see some cookie cutter picture that has no life or story behind it. Journalists are getting creative with their photography, and through it are creating some of the best photo albums of history that the world’s ever seen. So snap away, my journalistically minded friends. Because a picture can bring your writing to life, and maybe even give you those magical extra thousand words. 

A Bit of Backblogging.

I found out recently through the wonders of Blackboard that I need to post about our first lecture. Something, I soon realised, that I'd failed to do.

I have the memory of a goldfish, so looking back on things is always and interesting challenge for me. But if there's one thing I remember about my first lecture, apart from the inevitable nerves and map-reading as I tried to find the room, it was the quotes. Granted, I didn't actually remember them. No, the slides helped with that. But I remembered sitting there, thinking about how true these quotes where, and how exciting they made the world of journalism seem.

Quite possibly my favourite was one written by a fellow called Phillip Graham, who was a publisher at the Washington Post. He said that "Journalism is the first rough draft of history." It's really exciting to think that something written for a newspaper or the 6 o'clock news could one day be the basis of what's written in a history textbook. Every day, history is getting written and recorded, and we're all a part of it. Everyone wants to make history, and to be remembered. Really, who wants to die without a mention of their name? But I'm studying to be one of the history-writers, one of the people that determines what is remembered. What journalists write decides on what will be remembered about an event in 50 or 100 years time. That's a lot of responsibility, but it's also very exciting. And I can't wait to start writing history.

Chicken vs. Chickpeas.

Let’s talk about flesh.

I’m a pea-loving, broccoli eating vegetarian. I trade chicken for chickpeas, and beef for beetroot. And when I turned veg, I made an effort to avoid being a food snob. Because once upon a time I ate meat too, and I know it’s a personal choice. Yes, I don’t eat meat because I think it’s cruel and a bit ick. But no need to get religious about it and preach the wonders of carrots to the nations. I have plenty of carnivorously inclined friends, and I’m the only vegetarian in my family. So please forgive me if this is crossing over into food snobbery, but there’s one thing that ticks me off: people not understanding what they’re eating.

I came across this article today, and I wasn’t sure whether to be severely grossed out or slightly impressed. Melbourne bistro La Luna specialises in dead animals, and using every bit of them. And I mean every bit of them. The whole shebang, from offal to brains to ears, is cooked and served up to guests. Naturally, the thought of this made me feel pretty queasy. The idea of any kind of animal being killed doesn’t really do it for me, and the article goes into some pretty graphic detail. Honestly, I think it’d be enough to turn most meat-eaters off. But one of the chefs there was talking about some of the morals behind cooking like they do, and they said something I thought was interesting:

“It also bothered [La Luna] that consumers detach themselves from the idea of meat as being part of a dead animal.”

And that

“Visually, supermarkets make meat so easy to look at,” Katherine says, “so people don’t associate it with animals. But it deserves that respect.”

What I’m saying is people should think about what they’re eating. A lot of people simply don’t make the connection between the animal and that delicious chicken burger in your hand. Picking up a piece of steak in the supermarket is the same as cutting it off the carcass yourself. By all means, eat meat. Just know where it’s coming from, and what had to happen for you to have it. No, you don’t have to go out and eat offal. I don’t eat the grapes left in the bottom of the bag, and I guess that’s the vegetarian equivalent. Just be informed about the food on your plate, and how it ended up there.

You Catch My Eye.

I like pretty things. That fact is pretty universal. People rely so much on their eyes to judge whether or not they’ll like something, or someone. We pick our clothes, our homes, our things, and sometimes even our friends by what things look like. So why wouldn’t we do the same thing when we’re reading news stories? Don’t stories get to be pretty too?

I learnt today in my lecture, taught by guest speaker Skye Doherty, that yes, they do. There’s much more to a story than just the body. The headline, images, captions and quotes are all just as important as the actual story you’re trying to tell. These are what catches the reader’s eye, and sparks their interest. In traditional newspapers, the main story would be on the upper left, often accompanied by a picture or graph, like this:

Slide Five

This is because our eyes scan from left to write. Nifty, hey? But with the development of online media, the way news stories are presented has had to change. No longer do five stories have to be crammed onto a page; the limitless expanses of the web have enabled writers to spread things out a little, and has given them the opportunity to add more than just words and pictures. Hyperlinks, videos and shortcuts to other stories can all now be included. Pretty-ifying has starting to happen to news stories. This expansion, however, has meant that the layout of stories has had to change. Now, more often than not, the look of a story changes depending on where you see it. It’s kind of like an online chameleon. The same story can have different headlines and pictures, depending on where it is on the website. This is all done to catch the reader’s eye, and to make the story more visually appealing.

This is pretty exciting for me.  While online layouts still have some kind of structure, there’s much more freedom as to how your story can look, and exactly what you can put on the page. Not being a tech genius myself, putting said things on a page might be a slight road bump, but having the possibilities there is exciting. Like I said, I like pretty things, and making things pretty is something I love to do.

My De-Muggleification

I belong to the Harry Potter generation. My teachers read the first book to my grade one class, my friends rushed to see every movie that came out, and everyone’s read the books. Except for me. For the last 12 years, I’ve lived under a wizard-free rock, and I was always that person who just laughed awkwardly whenever someone made a HP reference.  I didn’t know the difference between Dumbledore and Hagrid, and the extent of my knowledge of quidditch was that it involved broomsticks. I was probably the only 11 year old that didn’t wait for their acceptance letter into Hogwarts. I was the ultimate muggle.

This, however, is all about to change. As of last week, I’m reading the first Harry Potter novel. I’m taking my dive into the world of magic and wands and all those lovely things 12 years after it become cool, and after every single movie has come out. That, my friends, is what you call procrastination. But I’m excited. I’m excited to read what has become a piece of modern day literature, and I’m equally excited to make some HP references myself. Who knows? They might make a wizard out of me yet. 

The Start of Something New.

I’m going to start with a confession: I’ve never written a blog post before. Until last week, when I started JOUR1111, I’d always assumed that blogs were for interesting people with something interesting to say. And then I suddenly found myself starting a blog and, dare I say it, getting a twitter account, and now it seems that I have to have something interesting to say too.

After wandering around campus trying to find the mythical John Hay building that was conveniently not on the map, I started my second JOUR1111 lecture. Pens and jelly beans in hand, I learnt about the different forms of media, and more specifically, web iterations.

Until only a few years ago, journalism was confined to traditional media forms: radio, newspapers, television and the like. But these media forms are starting to die out, and so are the journalists that cling to them. So in the wake of this media crisis, journalists have started using a new tool: the internet. Their foray into the internet world started at web 1.0, which, as I learnt, was basically just repurposing old media forms for the web. This all stated to change, however, with the advent of social media, and the rise of ‘prod-users’, creating web 2.0. People no longer had to wait on the media to get their news, and citizen journalists started to pop up everywhere. Journalists were taken off their previously untouched platform as the gods of news, and replaced by the people using Facebook and Twitter. But it didn’t stop there. We are now on the verge of a new kind of iteration: web 3.0.

Web 3.0, or the semantic web, is all about making sense of information, and tailoring it for the individual. Want to see a movie, find a cheap dinner and then get home? Web 3.0 will tell you how. Web 3.0 creates hyperlocalisation, meaning that it’ll give you very specific content delivery. But what does this mean for journalism?  It looks like journalism, and the media, are going to have to adapt. Having ‘news my way’, meaning that you only getting news that is relevant and interesting to the individual and targeted advertising are some of the ways in which journalism can find its place in the semantic web. No longer are newspapers and television the way to go. People want news at their fingertips, and they want news that relates directly to them. But this upsurge in internet news has created another problem for journalists: if no one is buying newspapers anymore and web news is the future, how are we going to make a living? Is the internet the death of journalism?

Our friend Rupert would like to think not, so he’s worked very hard to come up with ways to still make a living out of internet journalism. One means of doing this is by subscriptions. The Times is currently trying this out, with ‘Times+’ giving subscribers extra benefits, in addition to their ordinary news. Also, paywalls have started to come into play, allowing readers to only view a few lines of the story, and if they want to see the rest, they have to sign up. Only time will tell what will become of journalism, but it’s definitely taking some very new and interesting turns. You know it’s an exciting time to get into journalism when the news makers are starting to become the news.