Radio: The Underdog

As a nation we have access to so many different types of media, as a result of this many forms may get put to one side. One interesting part of this module for me was convergence, how year on year medias are coming together and producing something brand new. Radio is sometimes seen as a dying media, and many believe that it will not survive among the crowded media market. Radio out of all forms of media is considered to be one of the oldest yet most powerful forms, would it have come this far however without converging with all other media formats, who knows. As a radio student i obviously would argue no, it opens the minds eye and encourages imagination, there is something quintessentially personal about turning on the radio rather that staring mindlessly at a screen. Although looking at the statistics from RAJAR you can see that radio listening is on the rise year on year. Media forms are personal to all of us we sometimes represent ourselves by what station we tune in to, what television shows we watch or the papers we read. i would argue that radio is the most personal of all media; David Lloyd claims that a radio station defines a person’s identity audiences proudly say they are a listener of a certain show or station, ‘I am yet to hear anyone say proudly I’m a ITV listener, the specific radio relationship is a strong one.’ (Lloyd, 2015, p8.)

In 2016 radio covers all areas of the media, integrating with sites such as YouTube as well as the use of webcams becoming used more and more, along with that radio has large fan bases on social media posting photos and videos. The other main stage of convergence within radio was allowing listeners to tune in digitally useing their phones and laptops. The most exciting thing about convergence is we don’t know what to expect within the future the possibilities are endless.In years to come which form of media will die out and would they all still be around today if it weren’t for convergence?

• Lloyd, D (2015). How to make great radio. London: Biteback Publishing
• (2016).Quarterly summary figures. Available: http://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/2015_12/2015_Q4_Quarterly_Summary_Figures. Last accessed 02/03/2016.

 

 

Internet memes

Personally I found this module very interesting. I discovered many new things and had the opportunity to participate in various discussion, hear other peoples’ opinions and see things from a different angle. We took a journey from the beginning of the internet and learned about how it developed and it influences our every day lives.

The most interesting topic from this module for me was the Internet memes. It all began with Richard Dawkin in 1974 and his book The Selfish Gene. He described a new type of transmission device, one that allows cultural evolution and calls it a Meme. With the development of the internet and social networks a new type of internet communication was created. We are all more or less a part of the Internet meme community. We participate, we share them and even create them. The most fascinating thing for me is that Internet memes are on of the first cultural objects that fully depend upon the medium of the internet.

Memes are not only humorous pictures. They raise some important questions about copyrights, a topic we also discussed in our seminars. Finally, memes are a pat of the convergence culture. They are the product of merging of the old and new media.

Internet: The Good The Bad The Ugly

They ask us to not use our phones, but they don’t understand, they are the generation who produced them. It’s almost as funny as asking us not smoke but still they have enormous factories manufacturing them. In a world full of puns, banters and ironies we submerge ourselves in fantasies hoping to catch someone’s attention and re-branding our image, a person being pretentious online is scream to make them feel better offline, who can blame them? Social media is a second chance to life, {and maybe more with different usernames}.

Not long ago, our generation shifted from “the 90’s kids” are cool, who would use plastic cups to talk across the room, Fashion inspired by the Spice girls, who remembered the single chewing gum flavour that apparently each kid from every corner of the world used to chew to being any other regular generation, (no offence to the 20’s kids) . We ourselves talk about the “fake-ism” online. But are we really unsullied? The ‘internet’ was a revolution, and still in process. We stray from real life conversations to get home, home to our rut, a rut where we watch movies online or stare at the computer screen for hours see what is trending, not news, but clothes and celebrities. I say this because I am a part of this routine. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have dinner’s or go to parties or have a real academic conversation with other people. It is all a matter of priorities, in the 50’s they used the birds to send messages, we use the phone. Unfortunately, phones stay with us 24/7 but birds don’t. In all seriousness: Can we balance our social media life vs real life? How long can you go without using any electronic devices?

 

 

Final BlogPost

Network Society and the Media was a really interesting topic for me as I explored every angle of media and how we perceive it.

What I enjoyed was that all the post topics were related somehow, and that the previous posts could be something to keep in mind when writing the next one. One topic of this module that i enjoyed the most was “Online Visibility.” I found it fascinating how people visibility is different to other people and the way the moderate what they put on the internet. It really made me think about how one post on Facebook could affect your future career for instance.

The way “Online Communities” and “Online Visibility” links pretty well. By having platforms to express ourselves like YouTube and Facebook, it does fall into the online visibility category and what we post very much affects how other people see ourselves online too. The way we reserve ourself online and can almost become keyboard warriors is almost frightening but funny at the same time. Something id like to look into more is convergence and the research into that.

 

Obsessed with Body Image

Selfies, waist traners, teeth whitening, lip injections… those are some of the things that women of today can’t live without. The way we look has become something that we are very obsessed with. If we look at the way women used to look back in the day, we can see it was very different from now. Most of today’s women look far from natural.

If we look at TV adverts we see beautiful, tall and skinny women with amazing hair and make up, if we scroll down through social media, we see girls who look like dolls, with perfectly arched eyebrows, contoured face, pout and the latest fashion. I personally find a huge difference between the men and women I see on the media and the ones I see in my everyday life. I think the media has put a lot of pressure on women as to how they should look and that has affected their self esteem and confidence.

We have come to a point, especially young women where we want to get the most followers and likes on social media, so we take hours to get ready for the perfect selfie, we then take another hour to get the right angle, lighting and even more to edit our pictures with the right filters.

The truth behind it is that media shows us what they are paid to show us. Behind media is multi million pounds beauty industry that wants women to believe that makeup, teeth whitening and and a waist trainer will help them to feel more confident and will magically make them look like their favourite celebrities or like models. The beauty industry wants us to spend money, they don’t care about how the image of “perfection” can make us feel, they take women’s low self esteem as an advantage to make profit. Just because your favourite bloggers says that a product is great, doesn’t mean it really is, or that she has even tried it. It means she was paid to advertise it and she will make more money when you buy it. Because your favourite celebrity has lost 20 kilos in 2 months, is not because of those fabulous drugs on TV that she advertises, is probably because she just had a liposuction done. Some of us don’t realise how we are becoming a victim of the beauty industry and how obsessed we are becoming with our bodies. We need to learn to love ourselves as we are, because if you don’t love yourself, no matter how much make up we wear we will still not be in peace with ourselves. Confidence isn’t about feeling powerful when you walk down the street with the latest fashion, silky hair and a nose job… Confidence is knowing your worth, your personal values and knowing you are amazing even when you don’t wear all that fake stuff…

Final post!

The module network society and the media expands on various interesting topics such as convergence, the transformation of news ect. One of the topics i really enjoyed was the networked self and ideas of community. This specific week was interesting to me as it gave  strong insight on how we portray ourselves online in regards to what online community we are a part of. This topic easily relates to regulation and social media and also privacy and surveillance. How private are we? Who sees what we post? Privacy and regulation and social media link as it is referencing to social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat ect. as us as users put content out there, regulations on social media are more relatable to this generation as we are revolved around the internet. Social media has become an essential part of peoples everyday life.

Internet memes and remix cultures was also an intriguing topic as it requires the audiences participation on what is trending and what is ‘popular’ in the internet world. Memes can be viral meaning that they spread rather quickly and become sort of famous. The convergence topic links really well with internet memes as Esteves & Meikle said it is the form and practise of storytelling, artefacts of remix culture. In conclusion the internet is a vast space of unimaginable content, it is so useful and relevant to everyone.

 

This Meme will be tweeted

It takes a lot for a minute of a lecture to make you keep thinking about it for the rest of the day; but that happened today in the last lecture. Seeing Twitter as not so vital to revolutions that are not happening in the Western world really opened my eyes about how we are completely alienated from what is happening in those situations, and that everyone should remember that a hashtag can help in bringing your favourite artist to your country for a concert, but certainly not to help a movement in a different time zone.

 

Even politicians seem to forget how out of place they can be. For instance, Matteo Salvini, member of the European Parliament, was about to take off from Brussels when the attack was happening. Once he had to stay he thought it was appropriate to share with everyone on Twitter pictures of him walking and showing his “concerned” face in the city. He took advantage of the situation, bringing up a comparison with the state of the Italian underground in front of one of the tube entrances that were closed in Brussels.

E qualcuno continua a dire che non ci hanno dichiarato guerra…
Sveglia! Le preghiere non bastano più.#Bruxelles pic.twitter.com/LDf2kNxyHX

— Matteo Salvini (@matteosalvinimi) March 22, 2016

 

Memes were made, and him on the phone was photoshopped into historical pictures, classic movies and paintings.

 

 

This use of content is what defines Twitter more than pretending to save the world. But, as we have seen from this module, you can have another opinion.

The Final Post

Network Society and the Media has really opened my eyes, as to what makes up the industry in the 21st century. I’m glad that I have been able to take advantage of this module as I feel that without this knowledge, working in the media sector would be challenging due to communication.

The privacy of people online and in real life is a topic in which I find the most interesting. I am intrigued with what others can see and what they use this information for. I was lucky enough to have presented for this weeks presentation, which allowed me to scratch beneath the surface to find out more about this subject. It’s interesting, because even now and after the hours of research that I have put in, I still remain on the fence, as to whether the government and special forces should be able to use our information to enforce certain laws and regulations – but I guess, if you haven’t done anything wrong, then theres nothing really to worry about?

I discussed in brief, during my presentation, about mobile phone offloading. This is when a mobile company offers free wi-fi in a public place, but sells your information, habits and location to third party companies. You could argue that this is in return for free wi-fi, but in most cases the land owners will pay for these services to be placed in the facility.

This fits in nicely with the topic “Online Visibility”. It is all dependant on how visible you are online, as to what information third parties are able to gather about you. If certain social media accounts are locked down, then they will find it hard to track habits etc. But mark my word, they will still find a way.

Overall, I think that the module was useful and although some lectures were not one hundred percent relevant to my degree (Radio Production), i found them interesting. My saying is, you can’t know to much!

Final Post

For my final post I was able to reflect most about how I feel about privacy and how much is shared through the internet. I am actually grateful for it. With recent events like the Brussels and Paris attacks I realized that the instant connection really lets us know right away what is happening and who was there are who is safe. Facebook can detect your location and will send you a notification asking if you are safe so you can share that with everyone. This is an amazing tool that is very helpful to many people. Also if we are constantly being tracked it is easy to find us in an emergency. People question whether it is worth it to give up a lot of our freedoms for safety. I think with the heightened risks we are facing now a days I feel like a lot of people are more willing to give up those freedoms. The negative side is that terrorism is all over the internet reaching mass audiences and gaining followers.

This is also an example of convergence because the media is now involved in national security. With recent events do you feel more likely to give up freedoms or less likely?

Is the government’s access to our online content that harmful?

One topic I found particularly interesting was brought up during a presentation I was a part of. We discussed the topic of how safe people thought their personal details were online. When discussing the fact that government has access to what we post and what we choose to hide from public viewing, the debate of whether the government having full access to our online activity can be considered as an act of terrorism.

terrorism – noun:
the unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

Going by the official definition of the word terrorism, the government’s ability to view our online content is not terrorism but in certain situations it may be seen as such. For example, the government being able to view content without consent could be seen as unfair and if used against us, a form of intimidation.

The way in which this argument can connect the topics discussed in this module is through the way that the government uses their intelligence in order to change things. Doug has mentioned in a few seminars that we, as University students, are now in the top percent of people with access to such a large amount of information. We have so many options with what to do with this information. The way in which this connects to the government being able to access our online information is the fact that they will be able to do so many things with our information, and act upon some of the ways.

Throughout this module we’ve delved into deeper social issues and somehow have always come back to the use of the internet. As a seminar group we’ve discussed how copyright laws, personal identity, and convergence has all been affected by the use of the internet.