Monday 22 February 2016

Collective identity

1) Read the article and summarise each section in one sentence, starting with the section 'Who are you?'
Who are you- This section is about how we constructing our identity through social media such as things like fashion, cultural values etc, it talks about how we want to be seen.

I think therefore I am- there was a time we our identity was pre determined due to social culture, class, age, gender and religion. Now we are in a time period where more and more identities are socially acceptable and we have more freedom.

The rise of the individual- identities became more of an individual factor rather than collective where people were able to form their own identities and uniqueness.

From citizen to consumer- This talks about how media and advertising has allowed for people to buy more of what they want and not what they need.

Branding and lifestyle- This links to the idea that branding and the brands you use and associate with play a role in forming your personality/identity.

Who will be?- A persons identity can be determined through their social media profile, this shows how they portray themselves publicly.

2) List five brands you are happy to be associated with and explain how they reflect your sense of identity?
Apple
North Face
Nike
Sony
Canon

These brands may suggest that I am into technology and into sports clothing, it may suggest that I am young and/or middle class.
3) Do you agree with the view that modern media is all about 'style over substance'? What does this expression mean?
In a way I do believe this because when someone represents themselves onto social media there is a level of how much choice and consideration goes in to someone's mind when publishing display pictures or images of themselves onto social media, also within what they tend to write or express on their page. Although if you do follow them and start "to get to know them" they're may be a different side to what they appear to be.

4) Explain Baudrillard's theory of 'media saturation' in one paragraph. You may need to research it online to find out more.

'External superficial value exceeds all that is substantial under the veneer of glitter and pretty garlands of flowers.'

5) Is your presence on social media an accurate reflection of who you are? Have you ever added or removed a picture from a social media site purely because of what it says about the type of person you are?

I believe that there is a high level of deception that is going on with how people represent themselves on social media, many people think of it as social media is a different world to what they live in everyday but it inst, therefore they tend to have much different personalities online as oppose to real life. In terms of myself, I once removed all of my images from instagram as they were old and were much different to how i am now, they showed a much more different representation of me.

6) What is your opinion on 'data mining'? Are you happy for companies to sell you products based on your social media presence and online search terms? Is this an invasion of privacy?
I feel that is okay as its a good form of advertising, its advertising that may not waste our time and may actual be useful for us as it keeps us interested in new products that we may genuinely care about.

Why are YouTube stars so popular?

Zoella’s girl-next-door status is a key part of her appeal to fans.

"British vlogger Zoella has just reached the milestone of 10m subscribers to her main YouTube channel, but she has a long way to go to catch its most popular creator PewDiePie, who is about to pass 42m."
"They’re just two of the most prominent YouTube stars. In October 2015, online-video tracking firm Tubular Labs reported that there were more than 17,000 YouTube channels with more than 100,000 subscribers, and nearly 1,500 with more than 1m."


Sunday 21 February 2016

MEST3 NDM/Identity:



NDM STORIES INDEX

  1. 17/09/2015: Social Media Is Harming The Mental Health Of Teenagers.
  2. 17/09/2015: Is It Safe To Turn Your Children Into YouTube Stars?
  3. 27/09/2015: It’s time the media treated Muslims fairly
  4. 27/09/2015: BBC apologises after suggesting partially deaf Tory MP had fallen asleep
  5. 1/10/15: Netflix Create The "Netflix & Chill Button"
  6. 1/10/15: UK mobile ad spend 'to overtake print and TV'
  7. 8/10/15: The Great British Bake Off final gets biggest TV audience of the year
  8. 8/10/15: Rupert Murdoch sorry for suggesting Obama isn't a ‘real black president’
  9. 16/10/15: Sun website traffic slips by 14%
  10. 16/10/15: Harrowing film recorded from inside the car reveals the last minutes of drug-drive friends who sped through the countryside at 90mph before crashing into a church and dying
  11. 06/11/15: Ofcom is not currently equipped to regulate BBC, says trust director
  12. 06/11/15: Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 campaign verdict – is Call of Duty devouring itself?
  13. 06/11/15 Facebook ads are about to get even more personal
  14. 06/11/15 Playing video games doesn’t make you a better person. But that’s not the point
  15. 06/11/15 Newspapers go on the hunt for a safe place to pay
  16. 06/11/15 Can dropping the paywall and upping the story count boost Sun’s website?
  17. 13/11/15 Sun website traffic recovers as Mirror slips back
  18. 13/11/15 Why the Daily Mirror pulled its exclusive story on The Voice
  19. 03/12/15 Is mobile making media all the same?
  20. 07/12/15 Daily News: The News Says He's A Terrorist, But So Are These Guys...
  21. 07/12/15 BBC3 TV channel to be switched off by February, BBC Trust confirms
  22. 11/12/15 Just how big is Apple?
  23. 11/12/15 Can broadcast TV match streaming’s big budget shows?
  24. 14/12/15 Thinking machines: the skilled jobs that could be taken over by robots
  25. 14/12/15 Why the Paris attacks got larger UK coverage than other tragedies
  26. 14/12/15 YouTube tipped to strike licensing deals for TV shows and films
  27. 14/12/15 Rise in UK web users blocking ads, research finds
  28. 14/12/15 BBC to confirm it will extend 10pm news by 10 minutes
  29. 14/12/15 What are Facebook and other social media doing about Donald Trump?
  30. 14/12/15 Facebook rolls out live streaming video service
  31. 29/01/15 Google says Isis must be locked out of the open web
  32. 29/01/15 This was the year social networks turned into news organizations
  33. 08/02/15 Vice has its virtues and Sky its limits: where does BBC News Channel fit?
  34. 08/02/15 Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is suffering from a 'recession'

Monday 8 February 2016

Vice has its virtues and Sky its limits: where does BBC News Channel fit?

Sophie Raworth in the BBC News Channel studio.

"Vice (with increasing TV ambitions) thinks of itself as a news channel, producing distinctive feature coverage of stories young people devour. Sky is a news channel, replaying an assemblage of news and weather around the clock, refreshing at regular intervals and breaking apart at the double if anything actually happens. And the BBC, with more programme formats and transfers from other schedules, is something different again."

"Vice you turn on to watch interesting features you won’t see elsewhere: dip in and out. Sky tells you, in short order, what you’ve missed while you were dozing or jogging: no extended viewing necessary. "

This article discusses how new and digital media has also found new ways to publish news, such as online "news company" Vice. The article discusses the differences between a news channel like Vice & also Sky News, showing the major difference between online and braodcast.


Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is suffering from a 'recession'

Robert Thomson: ‘Cost cutting has a short-term cost and a long-term benefit’.

"News Corp’s revenue has fallen for the fourth successive quarter, illustrating both its own problems and those besetting newspaper industries in advanced economies. That has the hallmarks of a recession, does it not?
Now it would appear that cuts are inevitable at the company’s major titles in Britain and Australia following worse-than-expected second quarter results.
Chief executive Robert Thomson hinted at the need to consider cutbacks in saying: “Cost cutting has a short-term cost and a long-term benefit.”
That sounds ominous for staffs at the Times, Sunday Times and the Sun as well major titles in Australia and, quite possibly, in New York too.
Ever since Rupert Murdoch agreed to split the old News Corporation into two, placing the lucrative entertainments division into a separate entity, 21st Century Fox, the publishing group, new News Corp, has found things tough."

This article shows how News Corp may be suffering from a  recession, this shows how new and digital media may have effected news corp as theyre were times where they introduced a pay wall and also got rid of it, illustrating the struggles that news companies face when trying to generate profits from the news they create.

Identities: Feminism and new/digital media

1) Ched Evans: petition to prevent convicted rapist playing



This example is about a radical feminist that created a petition to stop a former footballer Chad Evans from returning to his club due to him being convicted for rape charges.
The incident that sparked this example is that clubs are still looking to sign him, this is damaging to feminism and that it affects how rape culture is being accepted which it certainly shouldn't be.
In my opinion this is a valid campaign and i believe that Chad Evans should not be able to play football again, its disrespectful to females and to society as a whole.

3) Caitlin Moran: Twitter silence
This movement is a twitter trend called #TwitterSilence , it was a movement that involved a day of quiet protests for women as they believe that theu are unable to speak out on twitter. This started from a contriversial feminist called Caitlin Moran.
Other women have responded on Twitter with more pro-active tags: #shoutback,#inspiringwomen, and #nosilence—while others dubbed the day #Trolliday, spent as a break from a social network filled with men who mock the women who—on every other day—just won't shut up.
I do not believe that this is a valid campaign as i believe that women do have the right to speak out on twitter, if they have a high following then they should understand that there always will be a case of trolls and abuse on-line, but they have to understand its coming from people they don't know and should be able to understand and not care.

4) Emma Watson: HeForShe gender equality campaign
Emma Watson created a campaign in order to fight for equal rights of women, she believes that when females fight for this right they are always being ignored and seriously hated on by men, this is something she believes has to stop and her campaign is aimed at this.
"Emma Watson faced experiences which made her feel unequal to men such as, ''at 14 she started being sexualised by certain elements of the press, at 15 her girlfriends started dropping out of their sports teams because they didn’t want to appear “muscly” and at 18 her male friends were unable to express their feelings.'' At this moment, she decided she was a Feminist."
I believe that this is a valid campaign as feminists are always ignored and hated on by women, i do believe in the equal rights of women and they should be able to do as they please without being pressured by the media and press. They are also equal to all of the same careers and pay that men have.

Sunday 7 February 2016

Identities and Film: blog task

In 1954, the researchers Manfred Kuhn and Thomas McPartland conducted an experiment, known as the TST (Twenty Statements Test) in which they asked the participants to answer the question “Who am I?” twenty times. People would be encouraged to think of all the different roles they have in their lives. The test reveals that people don’t have one single identity, but many identities that they move in and out of depending on the situation they find themselves in.

I Am A Male (Social groups and classifications)
I Am A Teenager (Social groups and classifications)
I Am A Student (Social groups and classifications)
I Am A Videographer (Interests)
I Am A Photographer (Interests)
I Am Creative (Self-evaluations)
I Am Interested In Music (Interests)
I Am A Gamer (Interests)
I Am Friendly (Self-evaluations)
I Am Funny (Self-evaluations)
I Am Ambitious (Ambitions)
I Am Full Of Life (Self-evaluations)
I Am Fun (Self-evaluations)
I Am Generous (Self-evaluations)
I Am Relaxed (Self-evaluations)
I Am Someone Who Thinks Out The Box
I Am Not Religious (Ideological beliefs)
I Am Helpful (Self-evaluations)
I Am Appreciative (Self-evaluations)
I Am Loyal (Self-evaluations)


Gone Girl is one of my favourite films due to the cinematography and great dramatic narrative, i am someone who loves stories that are highly creative, unique and gripping. A story that has a great twist is what can make it my favourite film. Although the biggest reason why it is my favourite film is due to the actual filmmaking and look of the film, it is my favourite type of cinematography which is simply but stunning, it helps give the story a vision in its most accurate way.

LGBT Films:
Wilde (1997, dir. Brian Gilbert)
Philadelphia (1993, dir. Jonathan Demme) 
The Wedding Banquet (1993, dir. Ang Lee) 
The Kids are Alright (2010, dir. Lisa Cholodenko) 
Pride (2014, dir. Matthew Warchus)










Wednesday 3 February 2016

Identities and the Media: Feminism

Identities and the Media: Feminism

Are we living in a post-feminist state? Do you agree there is still a need for feminism? To what extent does the media contribute to the identity created for women in popular culture? These are some of the questions we need to consider in this next section of our Identities and the Media unit.


Complete the following tasks on your blog:

Media Magazine reading

1) Read Playing With The Past: Post-feminism and the Media (MM40, page 64 - our Media Magazine archive is here).

2) What are the two texts the article focuses on?

HBO’s Pan Am and Beyoncé’s music video for ‘Why Don’t You Love Me’,

3) What examples are provided from the two texts of the 'male gaze' (Mulvey)?

  • This first image of the Pan Am stewardesses is one which is highly constructed and mediated, an image whose purpose is to be admired and aspired to by women, and visually enjoyed by men.
  • A constructed version of femininity, self-consciously acknowledging that this is simply a ‘glossy’ image, a fantasy not based on reality.
  • series the women use their appearance to empower themselves, frequently donning their uniforms to gain access to places they want to be, using their looks to their own advantage, and allowing us, the audience, to enjoy appreciating their bodies.
  • In her music video for the song ‘Why Don’t you Love Me’ Beyoncé parodies the stereotype of the 1950s housewife, clearly inter textually referencing the iconic 1950s pin up girl Betty Paige.
  • The dresscodes are highly sexualised; the costumes include tight high-waisted knickers, a vintage style bra, Fifties pedal pushers with cats-eye-shaped glasses, suspenders and stockings which all allow the audiences to not only appreciate Beyoncé’s ‘credentials’ but also the vintage fashion on offer.

4) Do texts such as these show there is no longer a need for feminism or are they simply sexism in a different form?
I believe that these texts show a new form of sexism as in more and more new media texts females are shown to be sex objects and are heavily sexualised.
5) Choose three words/phrases from the glossary of the article and write their definitions on your blog.

Feminism – A movement aimed at defining, establishing, and defending women’s rights and equality to men.
Post-feminism – An ideology in culture and society that society is somehow past needing feminism and that the attitudes and arguments of feminism are no longer needed.
Male Gaze – The gaze referring to Laura Mulvey’s seminal article ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ which argues that main stream Hollywood films subject female characters to the ‘male gaze’ of the camera, fragmenting and objectifying their bodies.

No More Page 3

1) Research the No More Page 3 campaign. Who started it and why?
Lucy Anne Holmes, August 2012.

2) What are the six reasons the campaign gives for why Page 3 has to go?

3) Read this debate in the Guardian regarding whether the campaign should be dropped. What are Barbara Ellen and Susan Boniface's contrasting opinions in the debate?
Susan belives that page 3 isnt much of a big issue to be worried at as there are a lot of more larger issues wrong with news, also she believes that this campaign started too late and the entertainment that page 3 offers can easily be found online with hardly any issues, so why is it different to have it in page 3.

Barbara is the opposite, she believes that Susan is wrong and it doesn't matter whether there are nigger issues, the sexualisation of a women is wrong and shouldn't be accounted for in public newspapers.

4) How can the No More Page 3 campaign be linked to the idea of post-feminism?
As females have been listened to and have caused the removal of page 3, removing sexualisation of women within newspapers.

5) What are your OWN views on the No More Page 3 campaign. Do you agree with the campaign's aims? Should the campaign continue?
I believe that the campaign makes sense and should've happened, this is because newspapers should only be for news and news only. Having a feature of naked women doesn't make any sense and is purely there just for male gaze and in order to gain more sales by men. It enforces the theory of sex sells and this is a discrimination of females as it dehumanises them as sex objects.

6) Do you agree that we are in a post-feminist state or is there still a need for feminism?
I believe that there is still a need for feminism as they're is still a lot of sexualisation and inequality of females in the world and media at the moment. A big issue would be the video game industry as females are shown to be no key element to the story lines and are also sexualised.

Identities: Feminism and new/digital media

Identities: Feminism and new/digital media

Watch this TEDx talk by Everyday Sexism founder Laura Bates:



Class research task
Feminism online: recent examples
In your pair, research one of the following cases - it will be assigned by your teacher. 

1) Ched Evans: petition to prevent convicted rapist playing

2) Caroline Criado-Perez: female presence on banknotes

3) Caitlin Moran: Twitter silence

4) Emma Watson: HeForShe gender equality campaign

5) Emma Barnett: female journalists targeted

Use the links provided AND other sources to ensure you have a balanced view of the example in question. Remember, you need to be able to explore the issue from a variety of perspectives to achieve an A/A* grade.

Complete the following tasks in your pair and prepare to feed back to the class:

1) Summarise this example for the rest of the class in one paragraph

2) What was the initial incident or situation that sparked this example?

3) In your opinion, is this an example of a valid campaign or something of a witchhunt against people who are not doing any serious harm?

Why Don't You Love Me?

Watch the Beyonce video for ‘Why Don’t You Love Me?’ 

 

1) How might this video contribute to Butler’s idea that gender roles are a ‘performance’?
This video shows how Beyonce is seen to be a typical housewife as she is doing tasks like washing, cleaning and cooking. Although she is wearing hardly anything and is seen to be clumsy and dumb, this shows that these gender roles may be a performance and she is seen to be a sex object for males, also the tasks she is doing can easily be done by men.

2) Would McRobbie view Beyonce as an empowering role model for women?
McRobbie would view Beyonce as an empowering role model for women as she has a high following and is very glamorised in this music video. She is also styled in western traditions such as blonde straight her. Also, she is hardly wearing any clothing and her clothes are skin tight showing a lot of her body, she is able to promote this to teenage girls and empower others minds.

3) What are your OWN views on this debate – does Beyonce empower women or reinforce the traditional ‘male gaze’ (Mulvey)?
I believe that beyonce reinforces the traiditonal male gaze as in this video she is dressed in hardly anything showing off legs and skin. Her acting and movement also links to Mulveys male gaze and she is just seen to be a sex object.