World's Youngest Professor

Maybe this is an old story. But, she's my inspiration to study hard, and havin lots experiences. She was incredible. I'm proud of her. The most impossible thing I couldn't believe is that she started talking and reading when she was 8 months old! For further information, check this link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24273418/

Learn Without Studying

7 Ways to Learn More Without More Study
"How would you like to learn more without having to study more?"
Here's the article: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-parenting/2008/9/2/7-ways-to-learn-more-without-more-study.ht

Questions reading 2.4

This reading passage tells us about structures and of which they are divided into two groups, first is syntagmatic and the second is paradigmatic. As i read through the chapter, i found that it only refers to the 3 general types of the syntagmatic structure. (argument, montage, and narrative) my question is, what about the paradigmatic structure? is it not catagorized into various types aswell?

Question and Comments: Reading 2.2 and Reading 2.3

This is my first post. After I read two reading parts of Media Studies, I have different comments on both reading. On reading 2.2, it is about how to read the media and analyzing it. Everybody sure have their own interpretation. There is no right or wrong interpretation in media according to individuals. The "key-term boxes" helps me to understand more about the things for analyzing the media image. However, I still have question on "anchorage". From the key-term box, what I understand about anchorage is that people have limited analysis to an image. But, what does it really mean? I don't fully understand, because on Reading 2.4 which about structures, the word anchorage appears again. can you give a more specific example of anchorage? On Reading 2.3, it is fun to work and read how the frequencies and percentage goes. I am quite similar on how to read the percentage because it is related to my work on entertainment. However, it is not easy to understand the Reading 2.3. From the reading so far, I realize that every media has meanings on it in every single parts.

Fallacies

Please read the following sites. Knowing about fallacies is also very useful in all your academic writing. Watch for examples in advertising and from politicians."Fallacies are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim. Avoid these common fallacies in your own arguments and watch for them in the arguments of others." A good website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/03/
Here are some other good resources for understanding logical fallacies:
http://www.onegoodmove.org/fallacy/toc.htm
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/argument/fallacies.html
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/fallacies.html

Question: structuralism

Personally, I haven't fully understand the concept of 'structuralism'. I can only explain it as 'a way to make sense of the (media) text through its structure'. But what does it really mean? What is the example of a structuralist approach in a certain media text analysis?

Questions or comments

M, G, A,
Please let me know what your thoughts are on the readings. I know you're busy & so am I. But I'm not sure what you understand unless you ask questions.
It doesn't take too much time, especially since you spend at least some of your time online researching, chatting or emailing, correct?
Remember part of your grade depends on this Blog. Questions or comments or anything else are very welcome and strongly encouraged.
See you soon...

Comments on Reading 4.1 & Reading 4.2

I find the readings are quite hard to understand, particularly the first one, but I'll try my best to explain the main concept.

The reading discusses the relationship between the technology and the society, whether the technology is seen as the cause and the society as the effect or vice versa. There are two main opinions about the relationship between technology and society: technological determinism and symptomatic technology.

Technological determinism basically points technology as the cause and society as the effect. A change in technology triggers change in society. In other words, technology determines the society. Symptomatic technology, on the other hand, points society as the cause and technology as the effect. A change in technology is merely a result of control by the society.

However, I would like to think the ideal way to see the relationship is the balance between the two opposing views. It is a cyclic relationship that continuously affect one another. Without doubt, the development of technology has altered the society greatly. Although technology is accidental, radio and television are not invented coincidentally in the same time when the society is in need of a new form of communication that is more effective and more efficient; the development took place to suit the society's growing need.

Summary reading p 86 -92

Pre-modern communities were based on the the social relations that predicated sharing, the modern community is based on the social relations that bind independent individuals together. In the begining the phone was accepted as a mean of practical impersonal use for business. People used to have a phone as community property. They often gathered around the phone as a social meeting point while waiting for a phone call. Later as more people had the phones in their homes, the phone’s use has changed into social personal use for keeping in touch with family and friends. The phone had some how changed the way they interacted. Although it seemed on the surface that they no longer interacted face to face, however it didn’t mean that the interaction had stopped. In fact, communication since the introduction of the private telephone had changed form into non- constricted time space limitation.
Later as the society evolved, telephone had develop into a form of mass communication. The telephone has a new kind of public use. The development of the radio and television phone-in or chat show has serve to highlight the use of the telephone for public broadcasting. Chat shows enable the audience to speak, and the receiver to become the sender of the message, allowing for the roles of audience and broadcaster to be interchangeable. Audience participation brings the private into the public as well as taking the public into the private. The traditional, space-bound narrative interaction declines, but narrative does not disappear. It too, like time and space, is renegotiated. As sociability enters the public domain, linguistic practises also changed in the local situation. Telecommunications and broadcasting transform both how people communicate, who they communicate with and what they communicate about in the real world of their daily lives.

Comments on Reading 3.3

The reading discusses how mobile technologies transform the concept of everyday time and space.

Firstly, mobile technologies promotes the idea of "anytime, anywhere" connection. It eliminates the limitations of geographical distance. The ever-growing society constantly needs new forms of communication, and mobile technologies provide it.

It also discusses how various type of age group use mobile phones. Teenagers also uses mobile phones for coordination purposes, just like adults. Sometimes just for a simple "where are you?" messages, whether they send it to their parents or their friends. However useful mobile technologies can be, some people also think mobile phones can cause inevitable interruptions. Marshall McLuhan even states "The telephone is an irresistible intruder in time and space".

I think the development of mobile technologies are extraordinary because the radical change to the "anytime, anywhere" concept grows extremely fast. One can only imagine how it may still develop rapidly in a way we can never imagine. Perhaps, one day we will develop a tool to communicate with aliens?

summary of reading 3.2

This article is based on three periods of ethnographic reasearch between 1989 and 1991 on a small island situated off the coast of south west ireland. whiddy island lies in Bantry bay, country cork Eire. It is but three miles long and one and a half miles wide.
the purpose of the research was to calculate for the role of technology in changing social relationships on the island. It also discusses how whiddy island's 40 remaining inhabitants use the telephone and how the use has changed over time. the whiddy island population had declined from 259 to a mere of 40 in 1990. 34 of them were born on that island while the remaining six married an islander and settled there. when the research started, the island didnt have much facilities, and was hardly connected to the main island. even running water was introduced in 1982. suprisingly, like so many writers on the media, whiddy islanders priviliged television above all of the other modern items when the technologies simply arrived. television did not displace another media, that is one of the reasons why it is accepted uncritically. Unlike other technologies, its ancestors did not fall into disuse when it arrived. In the other hand, telephone, like other technologies was seen as a part of a progression by islanders. but yet it was much more efficient compared to postal systems. until the television arrived, the written and aural massages were received by the islanders as despictions of semi-strangers. but the telephone, was, however the first means of electronic communication.

summary of reading 3.1

The focused theme of my reading is about the saturation of space and time caused by the modern electronic media. Television, radio, and telephone turn once private places into more public ones by making them more accesible to the outside world. and car stereos, wristwatch televisions, and personal sound systems such as the Sony 'Walkman' make public spaces private. Through such media, what is happening almost anywhere can be happening wherever we are.those entering many places no longer find them informationally special. Places visited for the first time now look familiar if they (or places like them) have already been seen on television. with electronic media, now have a strong common denominator. Those aspects of group identity, socialization, and hierarchy that were once dependent on particular physical locations and the special experiences available in them have been altered by electronic media.

Summary of Reading 3.1 (p.72-79)

Generally, my reading discusses the impact of vast development of electronic media on its consequences to the relationship between physical place context and social experience.

The latest communication technology literally vanishes the distance between the 'sender' and the 'receiver'. In the old days, the physical place context is a vital element that influences the process of communication. People can only communicate synchronously through face-to-face interaction. Nowadays, people don't need to be on a certain given-place to be able to communicate with others directly. The most common example is probably the introduction of handphones, and even chatting applications now can be accessed through mobile phones.

Another point that the reading discusses is para-social relationship. Para-social relationship is formed through the interaction one experiences when watching television, movies, or plays, with the performer. Although it is not a face-to-face interaction, but psychologically it resembles one. That's why fans usually feel like they actually know their favorite actor or singer and consider them as an actual friend. Because while watching them performing, people get to see and understand their character or personality. One of the most famous example of this kind of relationship is the murderer of John Lennon, Mark David Chapman, who knew John Lennon so well, eventually at one point he actually thought that he was John Lennon.

Comments on Reading 2.1 & 2.2

I find the history of the 'audience' concept is very interesting. Amazing how it has changed in a relatively short period of time. How the 'theatre-audience' concept lasted for several hundred years in the age of Greek and Roman empire, and how it's definition has changed because the audience no longer has to be on a specific place to 'receive the message' due to the vast development of mass media in the 19th-20th century.

I'm just wondering, does the concept of audience has room to change yet again? Let's say, from the ways of information recording or storage, that maybe sometime in the future there will be a technology that can enable people to access TV or internet by mind? In that way, the concept of audience where "no one will be obliged to accept the same package of information at the same time as anyone else" can exist, which is the exact opposite of the earliest concept of audience. I guess it's fair to say that as long technology can develop, so does the media.

I'm also wondering wether audience-as-public paradigm can survive, because apparently it seems that the primary purpose of mass media has shifted from education/culture transmission to profit.

1. Reading 1.1 discusses the linear or process model of communication, sometimes known as the Sender/Message/Receiver. What are the limitations of this model?
2. 2. How does Thompson (Reading 1.2) distinguish the term 'mass communication' from face-to-face communication?
3. 3. What are the three objects domains of analysis proposed by Thompson (Reading 1.2) in the analysis of mass communication?

Comments:

1. The limitations of this model can be illustrated through reference to an example that often appears in process model text. In this example, the communication is almost completely decontextualised. In other words, most bacground or relevant information, most contextualising detail, is left out.

2. He suggests that the growth of 'mass communication' in the modern period has seen several distinctive and important developments which distinguish it from face-to-face.

3. The three aspects are closely interconnected in the process of producing and transmitting media messages, but by distinguishing between them we can delineate three object domain of analysis.

a) The first aspect is the process of production and diffusion, that is, the process of producing the material of mass communicatin and transmitting or ditributing it via channels of selective diffusion.
b) The second aspect is the construction of the media message. The materialtransmitted by the mass communication is a produck which is structured in various ways: it is a complex symbolic construction which displays an articulated structure.
c) The third aspect of nass communication is the reception and appropiation of media messages. these messages are recieved by individuals, and groups of individuals, who are situated within specific social historical circumstances, and who employ the recources available to them in order to make sense of the messages received and to incorporate them into their everyday lives.

Study Questions and Comments on Reading 1.1 & 1.2

Study Questions:

1. Reading 1.1 discusses the linear or process model of communication, sometimes known as the Sender/Message/Receiver. What are the limitations of this model?

2. How does Thompson (Reading 1.2) distinguish the term 'mass communication' from face-to-face communication?

3. What are the three objects domains of analysis proposed by Thompson (Reading 1.2) in the analysis of mass communication?

Comments:

1. The limitation of the process model of communication is that it only works if the differences between the sender and receiver are ruled out. It concludes an analogy that compares communication with the system of postal service. It is an over-simplifying statement because in reality the process of communication is much more complicated than that. There are a number of factors to be considered that influence the process of communication, such as cultural literacy and the relationship between communication and culture.

2. Thompson distinguishes mass communication from face-to-face communication by highlighting these following four differences:

- Mass communication offers no direct and immediate audience response, whereas direct and immediate response or feedback occurs in face-to-face communication.
- In mass communication, messages are encoded in a certain medium that persists. On the other hand, the exchange of messages in daily interaction is impermanent.
- The encoded messages in mass communication are commodified and reproducible. They can be treated as objects which are exchanged in a market.
- Because the messages in mass communication are encoded in a permanent medium, they can be circulated and further spread among an extended audience.

3. The three objects domains of analysis proposed by Thompson in the analysis of mass communication are the process of production and diffusion, construction, and the reception and appropriation of media messages.

Introduction and Welcome

Welcome, Ghian, Miriam & Anisa:
Please send questions and comments about your readings or anything else that relates to Communications. Please remember to keep up with the readings and check the course outline for important assignments and deadlines. Don't forget to watch TV critically and go to films as often as possible. You will also need to read books, newspapers and magazines as part of this course. You need to keep communicating and consider the nature of the transmission-reception model that we discussed. Be aware of yourselves as communicators; how this has changed in the past and how it is continually changing for you and everyone. I hope you enjoy this course and learn something about the nature of Communications. Welcome!