ALICE WASS
Exploring Media
180MC - Living in the Digital World 1: Putting Theory into Practice
Group Work:
For the group coursework we had to do two things. Firstly, was to make a video essay, the video essay could be about any subject that we would like. My group decided to do one about how audiences are subliminally influenced by the colour red in films, which can be watched below. The second part of the coursework involved giving a presentation about the video essay we have produced and completing a question and answer section about it.
Individual Work:
Reading Response Five – Myth of Celeb Culture in digital space
All four readings this week helped to broaden my understanding on how the digital world works. For example, the readings focusing on online privacy and on the power that hashtags have brought to the feminist movement. The readings about fandoms and about public engagement with celebrities have helped my understanding of how celebrity culture affects audience. From this range of readings, I have decided to focus on ‘Celebrity advocacy and public engagement: The divergent uses of celebrity’ by Tim Markham, as I found this one of the most interesting readings and it challenged my views about celebrity culture in digital space the most.
This reading explored the usefulness of celebrities and how audiences can make use of them. Celebrity recognition is of huge importance in the idea of celebrity culture, as it seems that interest in celebrities are exclusive to economists and internal politics. However, it is actually the case that celebrities cannot easily be used to instrumentally further a particular cause. Instead, it seems that audiences mainly use celebrities as a source of pleasure, used to start off basic conversations. This suggests that audiences do not take celebrities seriously enough for them to be recognised as authorities or gateways into public deliberation, which limits their actual influence on people.
Audiences are alerted to the question of the relative social importance and influence of an individual celebrity, meaning that any thought of authenticity is potentially undermined. However, it could be argued that it overstates the power that audiences have. Markham suggests that there is an element of power in the pleasure audiences achieve from celebrities, though the enjoyment derived from seeing celebrities bare their souls. Yet, when it comes to serious issues, such as climate change or wars, the majority of celebrities are derided for presuming that anyone would be interested in their views, however there are moments where potential seriousness is seen as a step in the right direction. An example given of celebrities being used to influence audiences on real world issues was Ewan McGregor in the UNICEF appeal for survivors of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
When reading this journal, it brought to mind a more recent example of the 2016 US Elections, where Hillary Clinton used celebrity endorsement to try and boost her popularity among audiences. However, as she lost the election, this could support the theory that people do not necessarily trust celebrities’ opinions on serious issues and also provide evidence that celebrities cannot be used to influence a cause. I previously believed I could clearly see the effect that celebrity influence had on society, however this reading has made me question how much celebrities are influencing the real world. Digital space allows the illusion that celebrity culture seems to influence the world, as people are constantly following what they are doing. However, this reading suggests that things are much more complicated and that what the audience actually takes from celebrities might be completely different.
For the individual coursework every week we needed to keep a 'response journal' which discussed the set readings and set viewings we were given every week. In total we needed to complete at least four responses, however I decided to complete one for every week as I believed it aided my understanding of what we were learning in the lecture for the week, as well as giving the options about what to submit. All entries had to be between 400-500 words, and be submitted onto a Moodle Forum the day before we had the lecture. The readings needed to included: thesis of the reading, evidence, and a personal response. It was hard to achieve all of this with such a small amount of words especially when we needed to discuss more than one reading.
Due to problems during the course one of the weeks subjects was changed last minute, therefore the reading response I wrote in relation to, the myth of celebrity culture in digital space, was never uploaded or needing to be submitted. Therefore, I will post it to give an example of what the reading responses I submitted looked like.
Reflection on 180MC:
I really enjoyed this module, especially because it had such a range of subject areas expired it meant that each week we learnt about something new which made it extremely interesting. My personal favourite lectures and readings were media intimacies and the infrastructures of surveillance. For the individual coursework some of the readings were rather difficult for example early histories of digital and moving image I struggled a lot with. However, I do believe that after completing the reading and having the lecture not only did I understand the subject but I also enjoyed learning about something completely different from what I had previously learnt about. Another challenge with the individual coursework was keeping the writings within the small word limit, however, every week I succeeded to and I believe this ability to cut down my work to keep it as concise as possible is a skill that is going to be extremely important in the future when I am able to write longer essays. For the group coursework I was very lucky as I had a wonderful group who I loved working with and would like to work with again in the future. I believe we chose an extremely interesting subject and executed it will to make an effective video essay. Another reason I enjoyed the group work was because I had never produce work like a video essay before, but now not only do I enjoy watching them, but I found it a fun creative way to tell people about a subject you are passionate about, and I would like to make more video essays in the future.
Critical Reflection of Module Feedback:
For 180MC we were awarded an individual mark for the written Reading Responses and then a group mark for the Video Essay. For both my individual mark and the group mark I achieved 72, which is a First. I am extremely happy about this mark as I put in a lot of time to my personal work and also because my group for 180MC worked so hard to produce the best work we could therefore I feel the high mark was deserved.
The group Video Essay also received a lot of positive comments, with the marker commentating that it did a thoroughly good job exploring the various meanings and implications of the colour red. The marker agreed that red is an intriguing symbol, as we apty presented in the video, which I was glad was picked up on, as it was a subject we wanted to convey our interest and enthusiasm about, to the audience. The marker found our discourse, use of visuals and the exploration of the deeper meanings of red to be very engaging. The use of a very clear, coherent presentation helped to engage the audience and also engages with digital media and media and cultural theories and conventions, which we aimed to include to create further links to the course content. However, to improve the video it was suggested that we slightly slowed down the pace. This was something we could have done as we had just over a minute spare on our time limit. This would have probably helped the audience to take in more of the information, but we were so focused on not going over the time limit that we failed to take this into consideration. Therefore, to achieve this in the future, it might be best to have a detailed storyboard including all the timings so that we know the pace we should go for each section, to make sure the video does not seem rushed.
My individual Reading Responses received a lot of positive feedback, stating that the analysis I gave was apt, especially liking the simplicity of the presentation, as the marker believed it eloquently aids comprehension, which demonstrated my grasp of the author’s theses. My ability to use relevant examples the marker believed, helped to smoothen the meaning-making process in no small way. I was very pleased with these positive comments and what made it better was that my work was moderated and the moderator said that it was excellent work and that they agreed with the comments and the mark. I am glad that I managed to do so well, as I had never attempted to convey such difficult ideas in such a limited word count. I am glad that the markers approved of the simplistic presentation style of my work as a way to keep my writing concise.