Okay, so this week has actually been quite boring. My days have mostly consisted of study as my exams were all this week. But guess what!? I'm done! No more UQ centre for examinations this semester. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeow!
But. Let me think of what I can tell you... Monday. Day and Night = Study.. AND my brother's house for dinner! Check out the video he showed me. Tooooooooooooo funny!
Tuesday. Day and Night = Study... Wednesday. EXAMS! Thursday. Study....OH and I went out for dinnert! A girl is leaving Duchesne because she doesn't like the course here, and she's heading back home to do teaching. :( A bunch of us went out for dinner with her last night to Grill'd to say our goodbyes. It wasn't too emotional or anything, just a bit of fun for the last time as a group. :)
And once I got home, I studied some more...
This morning I had my exam at 8am. Which I actually liked, because I don't have to spend the whole day thinking about it. :) It's over! It wasn't too difficult but I hate being confident about exams, I prefer to play the 'anything could happen' card.
I leave college tomorrow morning. I can't believe how crazy fast this semester has gone. Only 14 weeks or so ago I was thrown into O week, not knowing what to expect. And now I have this blog as a reminder of all the events and fun times I've had.
I feel so privileged to be able to live here and have such a happy life. It is something that you cannot take for granted and it seems that other girls here feel the same. Just this morning, on our Duchesne Facebook Group, a girl has thought that maybe we should sponsor a child as a college. All up it would only be $2.50 each a year! And to put it in her words, "I guess at the end of the day, even if we fail our exams we can say we made a difference in one person's life."
And that, sir, is the note on which I wish to end my blog.
All up, I found Intro to Journalism an enjoyable class and found that my ability to blog grew over the semester. Well, at least I hope it did ha. I really didn't know how well I'd take to it when I first started the course and to be honest once I was about to submit my first blog assessment I saw how poor my first few lecture blogs were and edited them hugely! But overall, I think I'm happy with my bloggo. Also, I'm so crazy lazy with my diary, so doing weekly personal blogs and actually being made accountable for them is so beneficial! I can now look back at my first semester and remember all the good times I had, as not only a uni student but as a proud Duchie! :)
As for the actual course, I feel I can now look at news and the media as a whole with a much more critical eye. Although I don’t believe I’ll be going further with my journalism studies, I feel good that I explored this course and gained so many benefits from the content. Examples of this are things liiiiiiike, me knowing about news agenda, understanding how media companies pick what is 'newsworthy' (ie, news values), how to tell factual stories in a couple of different mediums, how changing technology is going to impact on journalism and really, so much more.
I was fortunate enough to be trusted by a friend to hear and retell a frightening tale of her overseas journey for my Factual Story Assessment. It's crazy how much more I cared about that assignment over others I've been given throughout my education and schooling career. Once you know the person, you are so concentrated on telling the story right and doing it justice. I didn't want to waste her trust.
Another bonus of doing this course was that we were able to have such a free choice with our annotated bibliography assessment piece. I took full use of this freedom and felt justified in spending time looking through journal articles and academic pieces on fashion journalism. It's funny that the one thing that is threatening fashion journalism the most is what I'm doing right now. Blogging, blogging, blogging.
As I said earlier, I doubt I'll be going further into studying journalism. I just don't feel that it's where I should be and there are so many others who are more passionate. Besides, you are supposed to follow your passions, right?
Ok, ok. I know I said I wouldn't have much to say this week because it was SWOTVAC. You know, no time for activities, just time for study. But turns out I love SWOTVAC! There was no classes to go to and I only have two exams coming up next week. :) I have had plenty of SWOTVAC adventurinos.
To start with, every day during this week Leo's boys go out to play touch at about 4o'clock, and anyone who drops the ball during that session has to do a nudie run past our college while their third years attack them. So everyday, at about 5pm, the whole of Duch heads to a window and takes in the sight of 30 to 40 Leo's boys doing their run. It's a nice bonding experience for us girls, and also a great study break. Ha.
ALSO, on Wednesday was my closest college friend's 18th. So we sent out the invite for all the first years to join us in hitting up the classy RE. Being SWOTVAC however, there was an...underwhelming response to say the least. So Wednesday night came, and all of us (by that I mean, the two of us) went for our first visit to the Royal Exchange! Luckily she had some friends from home that came to show us the ropes, otherwise we wouldn't have known what we were doing! I mean, the first thing we did when we got there was go to the toilet and wonder what to do next! Pretty sad haha. But it ended up being a very fun night and we were glad we ditched the study for it. :)
This brings us to Thursday. You see, Duchesne thought we were being sneaky when we planned an attack on the Leo's boys after their touch session. We had buckets of water, juice, beans, water balloons and so much more! We were perched and ready for the 5pm ambush when we realised there didn't seem to be any boys on their way back...
It was when we saw a rather suspicious group of boys jog past the college that we knew, that they knew. Aww no. They sent in some boys in the beginning to get us to use up all our water balloons and then we were screwed. Their boys came out in full force after we'd gone through our ammo and boy was it one messy occasion. They showed us no mercy and we were obliterated haha. But it was the best fun! However, our heads of colleges sure were not pleased. :(
Last night surpasses all others! As I was avoiding study during the day and finding new Lisa Mitchell songs, I realised she was playing in Brisbane that very night! The venue was St John's cathedral in the city, but all her tickets were sold out. :( Me being a little desperate to watch her, asked a friend if he would accompany me to sit outside to see if I could hear just a smidgen of her talent. They agreed, weow! So off we set, to sit outside the venue, in the cold, in hope that I could maybe hear something. When we arrived I felt SO eyed off by the security man. I think it was because you could actually hear really well outside and that the doors were open, so every now and then I went to have a little peak inside. I did eventually get intimidated and my friend thought it was about time we left when the seccy started approaching us. "Aw no," I thought, "we're gonna cop it now." "You guys wanna come in?" :0 I was so so soooo happy! He was the nicest guy ever and gave us two tickets (worth $55 each) for free!!!! We sat right at the back, but the lighting and sound in the cathedral was pretty amazing so we didn't suffer any loss by bad seats. I mean, anything is better that sitting outside.
That's about all I have time to write for today! I'd better actually do some solid study for my exams.
My, oh my! It has been a bit more time between my personal posts because I have just been that busy! Right now, I'm taking time out of studying for my exams to have this little spiel of my day to day happenings. If I wind my memory back to not last weekend but the weekend before, this is what has gone on. :)
The girl across the hall from me had her 18th. So as a nice celebration we went out for dinner to Aroma Garden (I recommend the chickpea curry), hit up a private d-floor and spent hours wasting money in an arcade! Wild 18th...I know. Haha, but it was such a good little catch up and a great opportunity to wind down before the stress of end of semester exams start to kick in.
The next day was a massive college event, the annual ICC Regatta. We head down to the rowing sheds and all the colleges battle it out for the top gong. To be honest though, not that much attention is given to the rowers and a lot of the day actually revolves around the 18+ area. Which I was unable to to join in on considering my birthday was two days after this event. Waaaaah. There was also an after party on at the college next door, but luckily my Mum was down for a visit so I didn't have to sit in my room listening to the fun times next door like so many of my underage friends had to do.
I had plain old uni on during the day on Monday, but Monday night had in store for us yet another college comp! This time, it was Choralfest. A group of us went to watch Duchesne, not really expecting to enjoy other acts and merely offering some moral support for our fellow Duchies. But woah woah woah. It was actually one of the more fun things this year! And the winning college was the biggest surprise of the night. St Leo's usually takes everything as a massive joke and last year they came in at last place and were told not to participate this year. However, after much persuasion, they were allowed to once again enter a choir. And man, did they show everyone else up. Here is the comparison of last year and this year:
LAST YEAR: (aaaaall drunk)
THIS YEAR:
And it was so funny when they won, as it was actually the exact same judges as last year!
Anyway, onto the biggest day of the week! My birthday on the Tuesday! I actually had classes all day... BUT my boyfo brought me lunch and gave me a pandora charm. :) And I went out for dinner with him, my family, and two of my close friends. Location was left up to me, so of course I chose the upper class restauranto of Toowong Sizzler. But not really much else happened on my birthday so I'll move on to my first outing as a bona fide 18 year old!
It was an all college exchange to the fancy (by college student standards) Fridays. I've never even been a big drinker so this night was pretty exciting! I don't really know what much else I can say about it...it was actually pretty relaxed, did a bit of dancing, talked to people I hadn't seen in ages aaaand realised that my little frame does not take too well to the drink. Haha. But enough about that, I'll just post a quick few pictures :)
And that's about all I have to update! I guess this week won't be all that exciting because it's SWOTVAC and all my exams are in first week, but oh well. I'm surprisingly not too stressed and am just looking forward to this semester being done, done, done. :)
NEWS: Uh ohhh. The economy is not looking too good again as the Australian market has slid below 4000 points. But if we actually look at our markets relative to overseas markets, we're still going preeeetty good. When I went to the front page of the ABC website, I wondered why this was the main focus of the page... It's not like we've been thrown into a dire situation but I think the news values that have made it so important are 'follow up' and 'relevance'. It really does affect every Australian even though most would not be interested in it.
Bye byeeee x
PS. I thought this vid goes nicely with my 'college life' theme!
Hello for
the last time. Well, for the last compulsory time. Yesterday was our last JOUR1111 lecture and
we had a guest by the name of Steve Molks, I couldn’t actually quite hear his
full name so I think that will have to do. Haha. Molko started at uni studying Chemistry
and figured that it wasn’t for him after about 2 and half years. That’s not to
say he went straight into media, he actually went into IT, and that’s still his
full-time job to date. I’m hoping I stick it out in Commerce and I think that I will, even though it’s
very early days!
I feel a little
weird writing about everything Steve said about developing our brand as a
writer as I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be heading into the field of
journalism. I spent the lecture trying to relate it to what I’m going to head
in to. I think it is important that I watch what I say on my blog as it may be
read by future employers after a quick Google search. Buuuut, more importantly I
see the need to develop my brand early also in my field. These might be through
slightly different means such as internships and mingling at events but
nonetheless I gained some benefits from Steve’s talk.
He touched
on several aspects that we’ve covered throughout the semester, but nothing was
delved into with too much detail. There was the concept of; your news bulletin of
choice (and their news agenda) will shape your view of the story at hand. He
also believes that traditional media will continue to exist, a belief of which
I agree. And finally, a slight touch on citizen
journalism. He commented on the fact that mobile phone camera footage is used
regularly in news and the media. This is definitely the case and the thing I
thought of first was the footage from the Boxing Day Tsunami. I looked for a
fair while around Youtube but couldn’t find what I was after. Grr. Instead I
got this pretty average quality vid I want to share!
It pretty much just sums up the basics of what it is that makes up citizen journalism. And it has the added entertainment value of Lego men!
Apart from
some chat about morning television and a quick look around his blog, that was about the
extent to which the lecture went.
Rocamora, A. (2012).
Hypertextuality and Remediation in the Fashion Media. Journalism Practice, 6(1), 92-106. doi:
10.1080/17512786.2011.622914
The author of this article, Agnes Rocamora, is a Senior Lecturer
in Cultural and Historical Studies and a Senior Research Fellow at the London
College of Fashion, University of the Arts. She has written many other journal
articles and was a contributor to two fashion books. This academic and
practical experience, along with the extensive use of sources throughout the
article demonstrate that she is in a position to comment and pass judgement on
issues that come under her expertise and that she has found many examples to
corroborate her view. The article itself discusses the fashion blogosphere and
its impacts on old media, whilst also investigating how traditional media is
affecting this new form of fashion journalism. Two particular aspects are
examined, hypertextualisation and remediation. She discovered that the rise of
blogs has caused fashion magazines (traditional media) to include pieces of
journalism that seem highly blog-influenced and, that blogs themselves have
risen in popularity due to the idea of the ‘semantic’ web, with users having a
great degree of control when searching through posts. The only point lacking in
this article is that ‘traditional fashion media’ are discussed only as fashion
magazines and as text; no strong mention of photography/illustration can be
found. Overall, the discoveries discussed in this article (hypertextualisation
and remediation) can be seen, to a certain extent, in the following three news
media pieces.
This online article discusses Vogue’s decision to stop using models
under the age of 16 and those who appear to have an eating disorder. The
beginning of this piece seems extremely biased towards Vogue, focussing strongly on quotes from Vogue magazinethemself.
Towards the end of the article however, there are some questions raised as to
whether Vogue will actually commit to
their stated goals, and there is a small amount of criticism of the magazine.
These negative comments seem weak compared to the heavy praise contained at the
start of the piece. There is reference to the fact that Anna Wintour’s biggest
competitor is now a blogger by the name of Tavi. This is strongly in line with
Agnes Rocamora’s piece on the fashion blogosphere. Weiss hints that the
statement about models by Vogue is a
strategy to gain more readers and perhaps gain an advantage over bloggers. The
author is an editor of Yahoo! Shine, and is heavily involved in fashion writing
and photography which would lend her to be quite informed on fashion issues.
Yahoo, however, is a commercial form of media and scattered throughout the page
and in the story itself are links to other stories that are only loosely
related to the main point. This may frustrate readers and it seems like a
deliberate attempt to make readers more exposed to advertisements. This causes
a lack of credibility to the site.
This source is in the simple form of a radio
interview (archived as a podcast) and in contrast to the Yahoo! Shine piece,
there is heavy questioning on Vogue from
the beginning. Similar points are discussed in this piece, such as the timing
of the decision and the questioning of how it will be policed, but the ABC
version seems to address them in much more substance. The ABC is generally held
in high rapport with the public and they are trusted to deliver news that is
factual and truthful, which they seem to have done by going direct to an
Australian source on the issue. Although they questioned Clements quite
thoroughly, there can be no guarantees to the truth of her statements and it
would be a stronger piece overall if the presenter did more research on the
topic or interviewed an opposing source in addition to the Australian Vogue editor. This would have given a
wider view on the topic. It was aired on the ABC radio show The World Today which prides itself on
analysing, interpreting and encouraging debate on events and issues that are
important to Australians. This is a respected news program and Australians
would, due to historical reputation, place more faith in this source than in
Yahoo! Shine.
This
video provides an extremely crude angle to the story and it should not be
considered a credible news piece. To begin with, they provide only one source
to back up their story, which was the press release itself. There is nothing to
back up other claims stated throughout the video, unlike the two previous
reports on the topic. They do question Vogue’s
ability to police the topic and comment on the history of the industry but
the hosts, who go by the names of Jen-Jen and Vanessa, have no credentials and
their only aims for news-reporting are that it is ‘sexy, eye-popping and fun’.
This would leave the viewer to be extremely critical of whatever they hear from
this source. In contrast to the previous two sources, visuals are included in
this medium. However, this only detracts even more credibility from the news
piece; it is animated and grossly exaggerated in order to shock the audience.
The author’s heavy bias is displayed in the visual content. An example of this
is: when underweight models are not being used, the only alternative appears to
be plus size models that are deemed by the authors to be ‘wide-loads’.
Hopefully traditional fashion media will not follow Rocamora’s prediction of
remediation with Next Media Animation
in mind.
I believe the last time I updated you on my day to day life was last Tuesday. :) So here we go again!
On Wednesday night I went and watched King's vs Leo's in a fresher rugby game. And in case you're unaware, those two colleges have some INTENSE rivalry. It's because they're the only two all boys colleges on campus and traditionally Nudgee boys go to Leo's and Churchy boys hit up King's. Of course I go for Leo's, Duchesne's brother college. BUT they were annihilated by Kings's...didn't even get a score on the board. Poooor Leo's. Oh, and they lost AFL on Friday night as well. Good work boiz.
On Thursday night, I missed out on another College exchange. I watched people get ready for it and then hung out with a pal from another college while our (slightly older) peers were out having some good times.
Saturday, YAY! I went to the Gold Coast with one of my best mates to visit our friend from back home. For some reason he decided the Gold Coast was where he wanted to go to uni and our 'crew' has been broken up since then. Not to worry though as the three of us were reunited once again as we hit up Dreamworld for some crazy fun times. I think we went on every single ride (the Claw twice), saw the tigers, avoided overpriced food and overall it just felt like we'd never been apart. :)
The other college kid and I headed back home to Brisbane that night, and after a cute lil catch up with my boyf I had to have a bit of a sleep before starting on another hectic day on Sunday.
I met my brother and his girlfriend for breakfast at the Regatta. SO YUM. Watched a delightful little guitar concert at Customs House, which also happens to be the location my brother is thinking of for his wedding reception. Ooh la la, I know. Queen Street Mall was our next port of call. ;) A couple of hours there and I was sooo ready to head home for a sleep but then in comes a text message oooof: "Guess who's in hospital?" Yay, good one boyfie. He got his head split open while he was playing hockey. Person in the other team swung their stick, decided they didn't want to hold on anymore and bam. Stick to la face. (As a note: my boyfriend isn't even in the hockey team, but he decided to play?) haha.
So instead of sleeping, I went and saw that he was alright, he got let out of hospital and now has seven lovely stitches right across his forehead.
Mum and Dad came down yesterday! Dad had to work so they got put up in the very nifty Stamford Plaza, so I went along for the night and stayed for the delicious buffet breakfast. We payed for my extra though, don't worry. We are not scammers! Haha. And that pretty much updates you to today. :)
OKIE DOKIE. My news story for you. Darned Facebook was so cocky with their IPO and now it's not looking to flash. Classic Commerce student update, huh. Haha. I actually read this while on the CityCat back to UQ this morning, but got the full story, here, from the ABC. I think Facebook could have been extremely successful in the stock market, and I guess there's still hope that things will improve.The shares started decreasing in value because of the simple fact - there was just too many shares. I think the ABC decided to include this story on the front of their online news page because it holds the news values of unexpectedness and continuity. People are actually interested in this topic because Facebook was supposed to be such a Wall Street hit.
Anyway. I think I'm gonna head off and grab my lunch. :) x.
I must
admit, I was happy that this week’s lecture changed to Investigative
Journalism. As exciting as Political Economy sounded, I think it was pretty
worthwhile learning stuff that will be useful to people in the class next
semester. Maybe not me directly, but for others I’m sure it will help. J
It
does sound like a bit of a double up when you say ‘Investigative Journalism’.
At its very core is journalism not meant to be investigation? But, I do
understand how it is just the term for a single type of, perhaps, further
investigative journalism work. Going above and beyond the straight daily news! Once again we were introduced with some
thought-provoking quotes by the Red Man himself (my new name for Dr Redman). My
favourite of the first three was the one by Hugo de Burgh:
"An investigative journalist is a man
or woman whose profession it is to discover the truth and to identify lapses
from it in whatever media may be available.”
This
is spoken so directly and clearly that even me, a relatively new face to the
journalism scene, can feel a confident grasp on what is meant by the term
investigative. Simply, you must seek the truth and you must work hard to get
it.
Funnily
enough you can define and break down INvestigative journalism into 5 IN words.
As you can see below!
Intelligent
Informed
Intuitive
Inside
Invest
I’ll
discuss and analyse each of these individually as well.
Intelligent – Some topics
that might be considered for an investigative piece will most likely
revolve around either money, sex or power. You can’t just be writing
willy-nilly about this stuff! Every investigative journalist must consider
carefully and INTELLIGENTLY everything they write.
Informed – Before beginning
an investigative journalistic piece you would want to ensure you were as
well-read on the topic as possible. If you plan on covering a topic at
great depth, not doing the early base work could actually be of great
detriment to you later down the track as you could miss the whole point or
‘main story’ of your investigation.
Intuitive – This will likely
come with experience. Intuition about story angles, story ideas and even
situations you find yourself in because of your job as a journalist will be
honed through years of practice in the field.
Inside – This refers to the
idea that, in order to get a good/worthwhile story you must be given
access to the truth and to the necessary information. The person you are
interviewing must have complete trust in you and this can only be built
through rapport and your historical reputation as a journalist.
Invest – Investigative journalism
is heavy business. You must realise the impact of accepting a task that
may take years to complete, cost lots of money, consume a crazy amount of
resources and could affect your relationships.
Another aspect
of Investigative Journalism that was discussed in today’s lecture was its
deeper meaning and purpose in society. These can be described by the following:
Critical and Thorough Journalism: This
is all about ‘active intervention’. The journalist has to actually be an active
participant in the story and contribute substantial effort. I would imagine
that being involved in such a project would consume a massive chunk of your
life. It is a lot to sacrifice.
Custodians of Conscience: Think ‘exposure’. It allows public scrutiny of morals and norms that would
never normally be questioned. Once a really critical piece breaks, it can and
most likely, will, change the world
Provides a voice for those without and holds the
powerful to account: In
the ‘public interest’. Without investigative journalism so many social justice
stories would still be kept under wraps. An example of this being “Syria
Exposed”. An investigative piece that discloses the mistreatment of Syrian
people.
Fourth Estate/Fourth Branch of Govt/Watchdog: Represents
the interest of those without power to balance the authority that the
government has, makes public figures accountable and hopefully exposes
corruption wherever it is involved in a public organisation
An example
that always springs to my mind for some reason is the Four Corners
investigation on ADFA. I can’t actually imbed the video here, but it can be
viewed from this link. I can’t imagine the defence force would be too pleased about being
investigated in this manner, but that is where the beauty lies in in the investigative
journalism process.
An extra
note that was given to us by the Red Man was to have the attitude of scepticism
but not cynicism. I thought that this was actually an extremely interesting
point to raise. A quick comparison of the definition of the two shows:
Sceptic – a
person who questions opinions generally accepted.
Cynic – a morose,
surly, or sarcastic person.
Wow, I didn’t
actually think that would clear it up so well for me. I understood for the most
part the difference between the two. But when you compare those definitions to
the possible mindsets (cynical or sceptical) you could have when beginning a
journalistic venture, it is clear how being sceptical is actually so important
to the task of investigative journalism.
Later in
the lecture, Red Man told us that if “your mum says she loves you, check it
out.” I checked that out! It’s true J. Haha. In addition to that he told
us that the point of that statement is that when it comes to investigative
journalism you have to check EVERY fact, you assume NOTHING aaand maybe expect
your whistleblowers to be a little crazy. I’d say the first two are definite important
ones to keep in mind. Imagine the hit a journalist’s reputation would take if
it’s discovered they have used the wrong information for even a small part of
their story? The whole report would be undermined.
As usual
the lecture was ended with the potential threats to the topic, this week
clearly being Investigative Journalism. Many of these seemed familiar because I
believe we discussed similar topics earlier in the semester. Once again, online
news seems to be an evil force to the future of quality journalism. People want
their news quick, and news companies have the facilities to provide that. The resource
they don’t have, however, is the cash to pay for lengthy investigations that
could actually get them in some legal hot water at the end of their investment.
It is difficult to see commercial news companies fully sinking their teeth into
investigative journalism in the future as they are all about the economic
profits and the amount of eyes they have on their screen.
The other
threat is Public Relations. With PR statements coming out so regularly, it is
the quick, cheap and easy way for news companies to fill up their content. None
of this investment of time, investment of money or investment of journalists is
necessary when words are delivered to you. Herein comes the dreaded churnalism.
No substance, no fact checking, no investigation.
But check
this out. Hopefully it raises your hopes like it did mine for the continuation
of investigative journalism.
x.
PS. Are you
as sick of the word investigative as I am right now?
Here I am again. Weow. This will simply be a top up yet again of what has happened in my week and what I have watched and read in the news! I'm feeling pretty darn sleepy actually so watch out for some sway to sway of topics y'all.
Since last speaking to you, I have seen a friend from home that I haven't caught up with in ages! It really was just the best sitting down and chatting for hours on end about gossip from not only here in Brisbane but back home as well. I may now mention that the friend was a boy, and yes, he indeed did have his fair share of gossip to offload. Boys are just like gals, they just don't show it as often!
This paragraph I have debated about whether I should include it or not. It's just so shameful! There was a sick party on Thursday night. For over 18s. As I have not found myself a fake I.D myself and a friend were left here at college with very few others around us. We began talking and soon discovered we both shared a dark childhood secret. Our love and passion for the internet world of Neopets. There's games, lands to explore, shops, even a stock market! Everything you could ever ever ask for!!! And in looking at the massive array of games, it was so creepy how the games we remembered playing the most reflected what we're studying at Uni. My friend for example is studying Pharmacy and luuuurved playing the games with mixing stuff and all science orientated games. I, on the other hand, was all up in the Stock Market and money/numbers games. This finance interest has crazily followed me through to my Commerce degree here at UQ!
I went late night shopping at Queen Street on Friday night and boy was that a big one for fresher spread. I ate dinner before I left, right...yet still downed half a pizza from Vapiano and a German sausage from the stalls that were set up. I am still hanging my head in shame for that one. On the other hand though, I should have earned some good karma! I bought my mumma's mother's day present, my friend's 18th birthday present and my boyf's 19th birthday present. And I can proudly say, nothing for myself. Except for the extensive filling of my gut region. Wow, that was a terrible way to word it. Haha.
My printer broke. :(
BUT my brother took me to Officeworks on Saturday morning and no questions asked they just gave me a new one! It was siiiiick. And they had a delicious sausage sizzle on. AND I got to spend the whole morning with my brother who would have to be one of my bestest friends! It's crazy because he is 25 years old but as soon as we get together we're just turn instantly stupid and immature. That sounds so corny, but it's so true! Another positive to my printer breaking is that my brother revealed the goodness of this video to me:
Hopefully, you will find it as appealing as I did. :)
I haven't done much else up until today. I had 7 hours and 20 minutes of uni today! So, so tired. But I do have the capacity to talk about one more thing. My news story of ze week.
I personally am happy with the decision the courts made. Bringing in what I've learnt from journalism this semester so far, what News of the World did under Rebekah Brooks' guidance was so crazy unethical! Tapping people's phones and concealing evidence is not the journalistic practice we have been taught at all. It just shows the extremes that news companies are now going to in order to get ahead on news topics. And that is so sad.
Also, just to be a little clever clogs. I think the news values that the ABC considered when deciding this was worthwhile news was stuff like: follow-up, magnitude, perhaps even the 'elite'. All I can say is that I think it is a very newsworthy topic, but is this only due to the agenda setting theory...? I mean, this issue has been broadcasted over and over and over again. Is that why it seems like such an important issue to me? That is certainly some food for thought. I'm heading off for the night.
Lecture 10
has come upon us, and confusingly it’s Week 11 due to that pesky holiday last
Monday…darn! But we delved straight on in to this week’s topic, Agenda Setting!
Before today’s lecture I had my own conception of what agenda setting was; it
was when news companies had a certain ideology they wanted to portray and their
news followed that ‘agenda’. I guess I was wrong. Haha. Luckily I learnt
differently today and this blog post will summarise the enlightenment that I now
feel!
To begin
with, agenda setting is a theory. It is all about the idea of mass media having
an influence on what and how the public feel about news stories and current affairs.
Have a think about reality. The way people look at certain events is unique to
each individual due to past experiences and the way they’ve been raised, right?
Well the media is just an extra ‘mediator’ of reality. They (the media) have to
make a decision into what goes into the day’s news and what doesn’t and how they portray it. Even if
the public don’t realise, this affects the way citizens perceive reality.
There are
four different types of agendas:
1)Public
agenda
2)Policy
agenda
3)Corporate
agenda
4)Media
Agenda
The names
relate to who it is that thinks the news is important. For example, if someone
was following a corporate agenda it would include news that big businesses
and corporate companies find important. Of course, these four different types
of agendas are not exclusive and overlap within each other. This topic is actually
in extremely close ties with last week's topic of news values; news that is
important to a certain target will only be deemed to be so using news values.
Seeing topics tie together like this really gives a better overall feel for the
journalism industry, and makes it much easier to understand as a whole.
There are
two assumptions made by the theory and these are that:
Mass media do not merely reflect and report
reality, they filter and shape it.
My thoughts: It would
be pretty much impossible for the media to simply reflect and report, which I
believe a large section of the public actually thinks the media does. I mean A
LOT of people generally just use one source as their daily shot of news and
they would have it subconsciously in their mind that, that is the be all and
end all of the day’s news. The truth is though, that every single media
organisation is leaving out a certain news story/is telling a story with a
different angle.
Media concentration on a few issues causes the
public to perceive those issues as more important.
My thoughts: I think I’ve
seen evidence of this one occurring also. Consider the issue of refugees and
boat people. All of a sudden this issue sky-rocketed in the amount of press it
received and suddenly it seemed like this massive, scary situation that sent
many Australians into a moral panic. In reality though there was really no
giant increase between the day before the issue was reported and the first day
the story hit the headlines.
There are
two levels of agenda setting theory:
First level
– Suggests what the public should
focus on.
Second
level – Suggests how the public
should think about a certain issue.
So the
second level is pretty much just narrowing down, and ‘framing’ the issue for
the audience. It is up to the audience to critically think about what they are
viewing and this being done by a viewer is rarely the case.
Time for
the big topic that was covered in the leccy! The ‘family’ of agenda setting.
Gatekeeping
-This
is how much, if anything, of an issue is exposed to the public. When you think
about it, the media are actually, liiiiike, totally in control of what we get to
hear and see. Pretty scary!
Advocacy
-This
is the promotion of a message that has a purpose. This includes stuff like
anti-smoking and other health topics! This actually sounds like a pretty decent
family member if you ask me. J
Cutting
-This
is where most of the truth or reality isn’t represented. This happens EVERY
day. Because really, all the news stations in the world could not report
everything that happened in a day. And the sad thing is that, some of the most
obscure and unimportant topics like…oh, the Kardashians, get more press time
than issues that could actually have a massive impact on people’s lives!
Surfing or the ‘bandwagon’
-A
news item is mentioned in an opinion leading media and BAM, hello everybody. It’s
just when the wider media follows others and certain trends to fill up their
news time. And it isn’t just when major media organisations comment on a story,
the same goes for something that has gone viral on the internet. Take our good
pal, Kony, for example…
Diffusion
-This
is the process through which an event is communicated to the public. This
includes how, where and when news is released. To sneakily snatch Dr Redman’s
example from class:
Sensitive topics such as this must have a carefully timed release
date to confirm that the risk of backlash in minimised and/or that the safety
of those involved in the story is
ensured.
Portrayal of an Issue
-Alrighty,
say there is a certain group of people or there is an issue at hand. There will
be MANY different ways to approach the topic or even many different sub-topics
within it. How the issue is portrayed will greatly influence how it is
perceived by the public. This could be considered a bad thing, but the upside
is that if people are exposed to many different portrayals by a variety of
outlets they will begin to think for themselves and form their own
perspectives.
And
I can actually use my own example here! Here is a report about Anh Do and his
book the Happiest Refugee in contrast with a report shedding bad light on
asylum seekers:
Well, I can’t actually find the contrasting video, but click here to see Media Watch’s
analysis of it.
Media Dependence
-This one is pretty simple, it’s just that the more dependent you
are on the media, the more susceptible you are to their agenda setting!
Coming
to a wind down now and getting near the end of the lecture, Bruce
discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the Agenda Setting Theory and as always
I will outline them below. J
Pros
- Explanatory
power
- Predictive
power
- Organising
power
- Can be
proven false (not everyone is under the complete control of the media, we have
our own minds you know!)
Cons
- People
may not be well informed, engaged, thoughtful and sceptical (apparently some of
us don’t have our own minds…Awks).
- The
effect weakens when people have made up their mind previous to watching the
news (sorry, but I don’t get how this is a weakness if a strength to Agenda
Setting Theory is that it can be proven wrong?).
- Cannot
create or conceal, only alter (agenda setting doesn’t mean you can make stuff
up just that you adjust the way you present or don’t present DA NEWZ, yo).
Oh dear,
you can see my mind slipping away. But hold up, I’m going to pull it all back
together for the final mini topic!
The 24 hour
news cycle. Da da dum! Okay, I promise I’ll write normal again.
This is all
caused by convergence of media. The internet, mobile devices and digital channels
with 24 hour news is putting massive pressure on news companies to constantly
pump out the new content. How is this related to agenda setting you may ask?
Well, in the past, newspapers would set the ‘agenda’ for the day and TV and
radio stations would follow suit. Now though, who is the first to break a
story? Who is setting the agenda for the day? It’s all very mysterious and
confusing when it’s muddled up into a constant turnover, isn’t it. Decisions
for stories have to be made quick smart and whether this has an effect on the
type of agendas we’ll see in the future, will only be told by the test of time.
So another week has passed me by...It was a great week though.
Last Tuesday night, myself, a gal pal and two BOOOOOIZ saw The Avengers at South Bank. I thought it was actually really good! Despite the fact I didn't know the guy who was turning green was the Hulk...Trust me, the people I went with are never going to let me live that down. All the references about, "don't make him angry" and "how do you stay calm?", went COMPLETELY over my head. After grasping that fact about 3/4 of the way into the film though, I thoroughly enjoyed it!
To further reinforce my stupidity over the past week, a friend and I bought tickets to what we thought was a very general 'First Year Dinner'. Turns out it was for the Law Society. Once we discovered this fact on the day of the dinner (last Thursday), we rang to check if it was alright if we still came despite not being Law students.
Man on the phone's response: Oh, but you would have friends that do Law?
Us: No...
Man on the phone: ...Well, if you bought tickets feel free to attend.
We knew it was going to be a great night.
Turns out it really wasn't that terrible. We owned up to the rest of our table that we weren't actually studying law when they began questioning us on whether we're enjoying it so far. Hahah. The food turned out to be awesome and we actually made some friends! :)
Sucked to be our table when Trivia time came around though, the law portion of the questions really hammered us and it was no surprise our table came a sad and sorry last place.
And Friday night, oh Friday night. That was a great one. We had the annual college event, Bandfest! So how this works is, each college forms a band (vocal, guitar, bass, drums and any other crazy addition they please), they rehearse and rehearse and rehearse THEN COMPETE. It's pretty much just Battle of the Bands. The winner was our brother college and they were actually really friggen awesome. They literally had everyone supporting them, whereas other colleges only got their own crowd interested. Worthy winners, I'd say.
Nothing amazing has sparked my interest in the news over the past week, but perhaps I'll keep a much keener eye out over the next few days.
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