Assessment: Storytelling exercise

For this assessment, I present a photo-journal of my recent trip down to the NSW Far North Coast. I travelled with my band mates Thomas Schultz, Joseph Kennedy and Ben Drew.

Leaving home: the view from inside my Festiva. 

Pictured: a broken mirror and a driver hoping his car doesn't get defected.

The fog descends on the back of my sister's house in Goonellabah. 

My friend (an Austrian exchange student) feels the sea breeze at the lookout over Lighthouse Beach in Ballina. 

A smog-less sunset on the North Coast. 

Refueling, as it were.

Tom destroys a burger as if it had wronged him personally. 

The skin of our band's kick drum (more duct tape than skin, really). 

Bass guitar pedals before the show. The large one in the middle is (allegedly) made from recycled Soviet tanks.

NSW band, Swamp Rat, tears it up at the Bangalow RSL. 

 And the crowd goes wild!

Byron two-piece Wilde Child (who organised the show) pay tribute to Lizzy. 

The last band, Idylls, make some incredible noise.

Great music and scenery and no run-ins with law enforcement. All-in-all, a successful trip!

Week 7 Lecture: The Media Oligarchs

This week's lecture dealt with commercial media. We learned about the diversity (and lack thereof) in corporate ownership of commercial media and the various methods in which the state and other bodies intervene to ensure that the commercial media meets (at least some of) the social responsibilities of being a mass media organisation. Dr. Redman quoted his colleague Prof. Michael Bromley:

"In this regard, one thing stands out above all others - the view that the very nature of the commercial equates to a corruption of the social. In other words, as media become more commercial, they do so at the expense of their social function. This is seen as a zero-sum game. Profits come before quality."

We talked about the challenges that commercial media faces (eg. tabloidisation).

The Guardian is pretty much the only good one, guys.

Week 6 Lecture: The Tubes

This week's lecture was all about Journalism in the online environment (or perhaps 'arena' is a more apt term.) We looked at the development of the web through a filter that is becoming increasingly useful: the concept of 'web iterations'. With this tool, we can view the development of the web in distinct stages throughout recent history.

We are all pretty familiar with the first two iterations. Web 1.0 was the network that most of us first connected to; an 'information' web where there were producers of data (companies, etc.) and consumers of data (you and I). Web 2.0 catalogued the phenomena surrounding user-generated content. In the tradition of academics relying on puns, the buzz word for Web 2.0 is 'prod-users'. Prod-users both consume and produce media; if you have ever commented on something, or used a social network, you are a prod-user.

We also had a look at potential future iteration of the web. Web 3.0 is predicted by many to be the web of meta-tags. Meta-tags are part of the source code of a webpage, and they enable search engine spiders (among others) to assign 'meaning' (or context-specific data) to the information on a particular webpage.

This means that all of the information on the web, previously only indexed cursorily by search engines and other sites, can be utilised as a massive database of information. In Web 3.0, some say, rather than you searching the web, your computer will surf it for you, relegating the boring stuff to them and letting you receive the information you need in record time.

(This pcmag.com article by Cade Metz is an interesting look at other theories of Web 3.0 and even more advanced possible iterations.)

Finally, we talked about what current and future technologies mean for journalism in the twenty-first century. And to be honest, most of it wasn't good. There is hope for hyperlocalised journalism servies such as wotnews.com.au, though.