Advertising, Parody and Mainstream Audiences - a tricky triangle.

This may be of interest to those of you who attended the Media Magazine Conference this year.  Director Garth Jenning's ad for Phones4U earned over 500 complaints to the Advertising Standards Agency. However, they weren't upheld, meaning that the ad can continue to be shown.  It goes to show how parody and irony are tricky approaches as not all the audience necessarily "get it" and can end up being offended or, in this case, scared.

All American Muslim - Advertisers and Representation

The American TV market is much more aggressively commercial than in Britain but this story illustrates how advertisers can potentially exert pressure on broadcasters to represent different communities in a particular way.  It also shows the power of the web and social media in both the creation of reaction to this storm.  Read the attached BBC article (link embedded in title of post) and google "All American Muslim" for more.  There's a lot more to this story than I can write here. Explore for yourself.

Product Research - Film Posters

Click on the title above for a great starting point for film poster analysis.

Be a Proper Media Student!

Many of you have given me that blank "what dat man talking 'bout" look whenever I mention certain classic films and directors in class.  If you click on the link in the title of this post, you will be taken to a previous post that contains the titles of some great films, TV drama and comedy.  I strongly recommend you start viewing some or all of this stuff.  It will make you a better Media student and, more importantly, a better person to meet at parties.

A2 Production Work - some useful samples of work

Go to the OCR blog to see some thought provoking examples of student blogs for Advanced Portfolio. I think you should pay close attention to the quality if presentation in the blogs.

Putting It All Together - Social Media and News Reporting

 

Riot Cleaner Flashmob (Photo courtesy Guardian/Matt Dunham/AP)

 Pete Fraser's blog is a great place to start when thinking about the impact of social ("We") media on news reporting and consumption.  He focuses particularly on the events of Summer 2011 but all of the ideas are relevant to most contemporary news story.  Go read now and get a jump on the We Media unit.

EXAM ALERT - Trusting Social Media

I hope to god that some of you actually check this blog out every now and then, especially in the run up to Thursday's exam.  This morning a massive news story broke that is a brilliant example to illustrate issues around trust and authority when it comes to We Media.

With reporting on events in Syria being hampered by banning of foreign journalists from the country, many news organisations have been relying on social media reports from within Syria.  One such source was a blog, alleged to have been written by a Syrian-American lesbian living in Damascus (the capital of Syria).  The traditional media even reported her capture by Syrian authorities last week.



A picture that alleged to be the author of the
blog but turned out to be that of a
London resident



Then what happens?  Turns out the blog is written by an American student studying in Edinburgh.  He claims that while his identity may have been false, what he wrote was fact.  This is reminiscient of when the Daily Mirror published false pictures of Western soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners and the then editor Piers Morgan defended their publication by claiming that while they didn't capture a true event it did represent what truly happens in Iraq.

Click on the title above and here to read more about the Syrian Blog Hoax

Can being 'networked' really change the world?

If you haven't been watching Adam Curtis's excellent new series "All Watched Over by Machine's of Loving Grace" - BBC2 Mondays at 9pm - you should try to catch up on iPlayer (click on title above).  In tonight's episode he questions the thinking that underlies much of the belief that the internet will make us free and change the world for the better. If you can't cope with the whole doc, at least watch the last 20 mins of episode 2 where he looks at what has happened in the post Soviet nations and like Georgia after their 'internet organised' revolutions had promised great change and democracy.

Will our virtual and real selves merge?

Click on the title above to find out more about the possibilities of Web 3.0.  What effect would the merging of our virtual and real selves have on our democratic rights?  Think Minority Report!

Journalism - the internet effect

As promised, click on the title above to read Aleks Krotoski's article on the effect of the internet on journalistic practices.  There are some really useful qoutes and pieces of evidence in here that you could use in your answer.

What motivates Facebook's modesty?

The New York Times has an interesting article about Facebook's reluctance to acknowledge its part in the popular protests in Tunisia and Egypt. It seems that fears that other regimes, like that in Syria, may curtail the service are behind their modesty. It's well worth a read as it raises interesting questions about how a business can help to promote social change. As we were reading today, Marxist critics, like Adorno and Horkeimer, wondered whether the media industry, as part of the capitalist establishment, can really promote change.

Is Social Media Fanning The Flames of Democracy In North Africa?

You may have seen in the news overnight that the popular protests in Tunisia seem to have spilled over to Egypt with an unprecedented number of people taking to the streets of Cairo to protest against the Government.  The Los Angeles Times article (click on link embedded in title of this post) mentions that 80,000 people signed up on Facebook to attend the protest.  The Egyptian government has blocked access to Twitter in an attempt to prevent further organisation and communication - a move that echoes that taken by the Iranian government previously.

Big Four Reach For The Sky

Sony have announced the latest attempt to combat illegal downloading - Music Unlimited.  The UK version launched just before Christmas and it is now being made available across Europe and later in the US.  The service allows users to access music by Sony artists, and those signed to the other big four including EMI, which is stored using Cloud technology.  This means that once you are signed up to the service - which costs a fee (the basic costing £3.99) you can access the music on a variety of devices, from PS3s to mobile phones.  It offers the user the benifits of personalisation and mobility and, what many may see as, affordability. It will be a a rival to serives like Spotify, which also streams music.  It's another example of the big music groups trying to do things in-house, allowing them to have more control over the supply chain, reduce cost and increase profits. 

Read the article from the Guardian (click on the link embedded in the title) and ask yourself how this announcement offers further examples of the synergies created by Sony Music being part of a conglomerate.