Skye's the Limit

Skye Doherty, our guest presenter for this lecture, discussed the inverted pyramid and the construct of news in different forms. While overall nothing really stood out to me as new, seeing as I’d read the course readings before the lecture, Skye did express some interesting ideas and facts.

Initially we discussed text and its domination in most forms of the media – including online. Of course, as Skye pointed out, there is an inherent difference between people who read articles online and those who use the “traditional” media texts. These differences, while still conforming to the inverted pyramid, ultimately lie within the content; with online having more links to other related articles and information about the news story. Interestingly, I would have thought that pages with more links would lose the time that readers spend on their page, however, Skye pointed out the contrary….. If only I had related content to link to my blog!

Inverted Pyramid Structure

We further discussed how text rules the computer screen, and not the picture of the article which everyone seems to think is the most important part. It is, in fact, the headline which draws people in to read the article – but of course on a web where the power is placed upon the tagged words, they can’t be the clever puns and pop-culture references the newspapers and magazines are so fond of!

Underlying all this info was of course the link back to the course. Online it’s all about broadcasting to the greatest audience – include the keywords, links, metadata, content in your media articles/posts and you’ll get the audience, or at least a lot of traffic through your site!

While all the lecture content was pretty straight forward, the most interesting part would have been the question time at the end where none other than News Of The World came into the limelight. To think how the course of media will change thanks to the issues brought to light in the phone hacking scandal is always interesting to discuss, especially when you’ve got someone in the field confined to the lecture room!

The Start of Something News

 

Like most new things in life, you dip your toe in before making that all mighty jump; and JOUR1111’s first lecture was no different. As I wandered into the comfortable Schonnel theatre (for the first and last time in this course - sadly) there was naturally an overwhelming sensation. Collecting the course profile didn’t help, especially when the first word that catches your eye in the assessment column is “blog”. But hey, there’s a first time for everything!

For the most part this lecture was about housekeeping matters; sign onto tutorials, introduce the tutors, highlight the assessment plan, what to expect from this course and so forth. However, apart from just the general course info, there was some content that stood out as interesting.

While surely some in society will not appreciate first years running around considering themselves highly important journalists, this is exactly the philosophy we have to adapt for the course. “YOU are the journalist”, easily said but harder done. Of course, journalism is intrinsically interesting because we are surrounded with it everywhere and everyday – so really it just comes down to how we internalise the information around us.

To finish off, overall, my favourite part of the lecture was Auberon Waugh’s quote… it certainly ran too true in regards to the people I know!

Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics and the shi*s into law.

Auberon Waugh

Social Conscience Media 2.0

Unless you’ve been suffered the terrible and heart wrenching loss of all internet and media communication for the last few weeks, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the Kony 2012 campaign instigated by the Invisible Children group. Along I’ve seen countless Facebook, Twitter and online news articles trying to convince me to support this month’s “it” thing by signing petitions, donating to different charity groups or just sharing different YouTube or Vimeo videos.
In a matter of 12 days since it’s viral release on March 5th, the Kony 2012 video created by “Invisible Children” has received approximately 80 million hits on YouTube – not to mention the millions of other views on associated videos. Clearly this mass marketing at its finest; you couldn’t ask for a better target audience.

While I would love to throw out my many opinions on this Kony campaign issue (and trust me there are many) I would instead like to link this issue to my assessment and JOUR1111 course content; albeit slightly late! In our second lecture we discussed the changing use of web in society, from the traditional 1.0 information web, to the 2.0 new media “social” web and coming into the 3.0 semantic web.

Obviously there is no better current example than Kony 2012 to highlight the extent of connectedness in the 2.0 social web. Think about it, Kony and his guerrilla group “The Lord’s Resistance Army” (LRA) have been abducting children as sex-slaves and warriors since 1986, but most people until last week hadn’t even heard of him. Even in 2005 Kony’s actions should have become world news when he was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) – but sadly it wasn’t until September 2006 that Facebook was open to anyone who wanted an account, and it wasn’t until August 2008 that Facebook had the capacity to branch out to its first 100 million users.  

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that there is now mass awareness of the atrocities that have been committed in Uganda and, from extrapolation, the numerous other crimes against humanity in the surrounding African nations. It’s just sad to think that if we had had this connectedness beforehand, and hence the pressure on governments to intervene in these states, that the lives of so many people could have been saved or free from torment.

Though this raises another question from our lecture, would we be willing to pay for this information? While for the most part we were discussing high-end newspapers restricting access to their online content to paying customers only, would we be so socially aware if we had to pay for out 2.0 media devices?

I know I would certainly reconsider my Facebook and Twitter accounts if faced with the idea of having to pay for it. As such, I would miss out on all the latest social-media trends and undoubtedly be on the back foot with knowing what the latest “it” topic is – well at least until the old media caught up with the hype. Thankfully though, for the time being, Facebook’s 845+ million active users can enjoy their free access to the social media news.

At least that’s one good thing that’s come out of our entitlement to free social media, the governments are forced to listen to the masses – just like my tutor is forced to read this terrible blog!