Sunday, April 12, 2009
Blog Assignment Topic 5:
Obscenity, pornography and indecency: What are the differences between these terms?
Definitions of obscenity
- obscene - Offensive to the current standards of decency or morality; Lewd or lustful; Disgusting or repulsive; Beyond all reason; Liable to deprave or corrupt
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Obscene
Definitions of pornography
- Pornography or porn is the explicit depiction of sexual subject matter with the sole intention of sexually exciting the viewer. It is to a certain extent similar to erotica, which is the use of sexually arousing imagery. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography
Definitions of indecency
- lack of decency; the property or degree of being indecent; something showing lack of decency; something such as a word that is indecent
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/indecency
Even though obscenity, pornography, and indecency carried their own different definition, but they all related to each other under one meaning which is about offensive sexual behavior. For pornography, the media that being use for sexual satisfication such as magazine, website, writing, picture, and many more. While obscenity mean word or act that describe sex. Indecency mean display certain part of body and action that symbolize sexual.
Reflection of Media culture class:
The class was only a briefing about the second assignment on the human needs that the Media help satisfy in term of the News and Entertainment.
SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 2009
Blog Assignment Topic 6
Using McLuhan's "Tetrad of Media" (see diagram below), choose a medium or media application or tool (e.g. newspaper, books, radio, tv, film, internet, computer games, handphone, instant messaging, blogging, online advertising, youtube, facebook etc.) and explain its media effects? Please refer to Week 9's lecture notes plus your own research to discuss this topic.
Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real time communication between two or more people based on typed text. The text is conveyed via devices connected over a network such as the Internet. From the enhance, you can send instant message anytime anywhere as long as there is an available network using laptop or mobile phone. Information can be delivered in a split second without delay and contain no mistakes. From the reverse, many people misused the convenience of the instant messaging. Many spamming happens and this irritates the public. A lot of sensitive and critical messages are send because the senders do not need to be responsible and this makes things worse. From the retrieves, instant messaging evolves from letters. Nowadays, instant messaging has already became the mainstream in communication because it is free and convenience. From the obsolesce, instant messaging obsolesce the traditional way in delivering information which is writing letters. Letters need to be deliver using few days causing the message being delayed but instant messaging does not has this problem.
SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 2009
Blog Assignment - Topic 7 : Media Imperialism
The documentary entitled "The Power of Nightmares (Part 3 - Shadow in the Cave)" by Adam Curtis was shown in class on Monday. How do you relate the information given to you in the documentary to the theory of Media Imperialism that we talked about in lecture?
Definition of Media Imperialism is the idea that powerful and wealthy countries can exercise economic, cultural and social control over others through control of media industries. It is also a theory stating that smaller countries are losing their identity due to the force-feeding of media from larger nations. it can be equated to small community shops closing down due to large superstores moving in, taking over and having a monopoly. As the larger media corporations begin to take over, smaller media companies are either being forced out or swallowed up.
We can take the Us government as an example, the most powerful country is spreading their thought about terrorism through media. They are trying to make everybody follow their footsteps and think how they want everybody to think. This brainwashing treatment is working extremely well because mostly every country rely heavily on Western news sources. The most obvious incident is when 2 planes crashed the World Trade Center, they broadcast the news repetitively trying to instil the thought that Al-Qaeda did it and Muslims are terrorist into viewers' mind. Then President Bush declare a war towards Iraq and Afghanistan as a revenge for the terrorist attack against US and he did it. This is what media imperialism is all about the person in charge decides what information he wanted to deliver and what not because the media is fully under his control.
SUNDAY, APRIL 26, 2009
Blog Assignment - Topic 8
It’s typical for a new technology to be adapted within a culture and used to support existing patterns of behavior. With your own relevant examples, answer these questions.
1) What kind of culture influences through technology can you see from today’s world?
It is obvious that the culture influence technology. For example, the TV culture. In the old days, watching TV is one of the most major entertainment but now, the TV culture is already over. Nobody sits all day in front of the TV just to make sure they don't miss their favorite TV program. We can just go online and either watch it streaming or just download it. It is possible for you to download the any episode or any season which has being aired years ago.
2) Is there a possibility to reshape the (new) culture today via new technology, How?
Culture would always change if a new technology is invented. For example, portable cassette player (i.e walkman) evolved to cd player (discman) then evolved to small mp3 player, today to mp4 player which can play video as well. That is how fast and easy technology has changed and keeps on changing. After one technology to another, old one is forgotten and everyone is looking for the latest, and the trendiest gadget there is. This is possible because it is in our trait to like new stuff and thus forgot the old ones. Another example is how cell phones have evolved. From all you can do is calling to an iPhone which promotes almost all functions possible. Therefore, it is most likely that new culture will be reshaped through new technology.
