Eliysh Toose, is a 2nd yr journalism student at UNSW who bitterly continues to study even though it is not the road she aspires to take.

When asked if she wanted to become a journalist, I expected an answer much like ‘of course, that’s why I’m studying this degree and hope to become a great writer for the something magazine’ but to my surprise, her answer was completely different.

“No indeed, I do not want to be a journalist, everything that I have done so far has pretty much scarred me” She said.

Eliysh is a bright and intelligent young woman who’s field experiences have marked the turning point of her future. In this field, everyone is fighting for real-life writing experience which will help them get motivated and compete later on. But when Eliysh was given the opportunity of her life, she was crushed by it’s very nature.

“The whole experience was so traumatic, day one they forced me out on interview and was like well what are you going to ask them?”

From the first day of her two month work experience, she was thrown into the deep end and was forced to churn out skills she hadn’t yet acquired and was asked questions she didn’t know the answers to.

Confused and pressured, she had no idea what to do.

“I’m real beginner, what am I supposed to know, I don’t really know what I’m doing” she said.

“I think they expect a lot from you these days and it’s such a competitive field that it doesn’t interest me anymore”

As I have questioned here the definition of ‘media’ in an international dictionary, the rise of remix culture has questioned something bigger – copyright.

First of all, some of you may be asking ‘what is remix culture?’

Remix culture is the act of taking something that already exists and changing, mixing, adding, subtracting and in essence giving it your own flavor integrated with the original product. ‘what about copyright laws’ you ask? this is where Lawrence Lessig steps in.

His theory is built on the idea of copyright laws constraining the creativity of young people and making them criminals. I’m sure that at least every second person who reads this blog breaks copyright or cyber laws in some way, shape or form. The most common being downloading music and movies from the Internet. Yet his theory is also presented on a greater scale where he argues that if one was to take an original and tweak it in even the most minute way, that product is now theirs. There is no collaboration in the product, it is not ‘Beat it’ by Michael Jackson and Jennifer Yu, it’s ‘Beat it’ by DJ Jennifer Yu ONLY. And what an extreme claim to make but this is what media culture is racing towards and it wont be long before copyright laws will not make much of an impact on young internet users. When a new law or enforcement is made, the computer programming geeks will always find a way around it – THIS is reality, and if we dont all jump on the wagon, we’ll be left behind with not traditional, but old and outdated ways of thinking.

But where is the line between breaking the laws of copyright and free use of products?

…Is there even a line between the two?

Some opinionated people think that remix culture is a myth, but personally, I think its a new rising phenomenon. “remix is a myth. Talk to the ISPs. 99% of illegal content is downloaded for consumption only. Barely anyone is remixing illegally.” Andrew Keen

Just sit and think about our media exposure today, some remixed songs are making the top of the charts, television commercials are using original songs and themes remixed, parody acts are a form of remixing, even academic articles are forms of remixing! Of course we all quote and reference where our information is from but the end product, the essay, journal or whatever it may be is ultimately our own. What about all those sites with embedded videos and images, isn’t that all remixing? the list goes on, it’s happening all around us, even where we wouldn’t realize at first sight.

People often forget that no product is created from thin air, everything is influenced by something else and this works as a cycle like a food chain. Where is the originality in anything? what or who is at the top of the food chain? When one describes a product as original, often, the case is that the influences are unknown.

section cut from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt0ASo_6Sdg

What about what we can and can not use?

Section cut from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt0ASo_6Sdg

Thus, no-one really owns anything singularly anymore, there is this idea that there is one single author to a product but really, what is happening is an “ongoing, collective experiment”. The death of the author is the postmodern theory that a product should be viewed on its own, without the influence of the author. Minus the knowledge of who created it and just view and experience the product on its own – this is when you can truly understand and interpret what is in front of you. When the author is involved, there is bias involved, Roland Barthes states “To give a text an Author” and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it “is to impose a limit on that text.” In the same way, remix culture is only accepted by some but not all, in essence, it is a good idea but is not realistically able to be carried out at the moment due to these copyright laws.

Let us look into music remixing. Everyone has heard it, everyone knows of it, people like it and a LOT of people do it. To ask the artist for permission every time someone wanted to remix their song would be unrealistic and impossible! an unimaginable amount of people would try contact them every day and which artist would really be bothered to answer everyone’s calls?

At the same time, Jay Bolter presents us with what is called remediation, a constant developing of older forms of media which also leads to the creative collaboration of old and new media forms as well as different types of media forms. This highlights the demand for immediacy in today’s society.

“Older electronic and print media are seeking to reaffirm their

status within our culture, while digital media are challenging that status. Both new and old media are invoking the twin logics of immediacy and hypermediacy in their efforts to remake themselves and each other. To fulfil our apparently insatiable desire for immediacy” (Convergence: The international journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Jay David Bolter 2000, Sage publications)

Speaking of immediacy, music remixing has always been fulfilling out immediate desires. Although music remixing creates problems when it is done illegally, the legal façade of music remixing have been changing to cater for the industry’s money-making needs.

Let us look into how legal remix culture in he music industry has changed over the last decade.

section cut from  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H22JvHF5OM

Up until the 1990′s and early 2000′s songs were remixed artistically and creatively. Most components of the song were re-modeled such as the melody, speed, some lyrics and an addition/subtraction of vocals. This is contrasted to the new form of remixing where the melody is always kept the same due to the commercial factor of how many times that particular song, either the original or remixed, is played on the radio.

Hip-hop and R&B is the most dominant genres of music which are remixed. Many artists in these genres have remixed their music legally usually to cater for dance and club music.

Here is an example of Jagged Edge’s ‘Let’s get married’ original vs remix version, both released in 2000. It was one of the most famous remixes created which in fact, became more popular than the original and most people still believe that the remix version is the original and another music video was made following it’s high demand. Jagged Edge is a popular four man band who collaborated and signed a contract with “so so def Label in the Summer of 2007” (http://www.jaggededge.org/bio.html 2009 JEAH Communications LLC) and topped the music charts with their three albums and various singles.

‘Let’s get Married was originally a slow jam until it was remixed featuring Run DMC (Rap group) to make it a faster, up-beat song including a rap component.

Although the lyrics have remained the same, the melody, speed and beat have changed. This is contrasted to a recent remix of Jason Derulo’s ‘In my head’ released this year.

In this remix, most components are kept the same, and the only difference is the added rap substituted for one of the verses. The melody has been kept the same so that the BDS machine is able to track how many times an artist’s song has been played on the radio in order to determine the popularity.

Now, a decade later, remixing music has become a commodity. The commercial industry has changed music remix culture to suit the need of the industry and now more songs are remixed legally just to have it played more on the radio.

The change we see here is that the first has been artistically remade to add value to the song yet now, barriers are applied. An interesting note to make is that although melodies have been kept the same for commercialism, ironically, most remixed music ten years ago were better known than those created today.

As mentioned beforehand by Just Blaze, it is unfortunate for the creativity of remixing music but for the needs of the industry, it is beneficial especially as record companies’ profit is radically reduced by internet downloading.

In conclusion, remix culture is a growing trend and although thought of as an unrealistic process, it may well be the future! As Jay Garnett mentioned in one of her interviews (can be seen in the ‘walking on eggshells video’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYNrVVbfLxw&feature=related) “Thing that you produce, you put it out into the world and once you put it out into the world, it’s now in the world and other people are going to use it and that is a good thing”.

Lily Allen has stated that “its not alright” in regards to illegal consumption of music… It seems as though she had a problem with illegal downloading of music i.e her music in particular as she was losing a lot of profit from this, and after claiming that she was abused during this dispute, she has stated to give up music.

To be honest, there are billions of people who download illegally off the internet every minute of the day and to take this up in legal hands is just not worth the large scale this issue is on. Many congratulate her for her courage to take this matter into her own hands but many also contradict this and suggest it was just a stupid move as there would be no way that one artist would be able to stop billions of people across the globe. If it was a matter that could be solved in that way than many artists would have done that already, but it is just not that simple.

Allen claimed that “the abuse was getting too much” and this was the reason why she shut down her blog and had taken the next step, deciding not to produce another record. Which can be seen as selfish as it does not seem like she cares about her FANS and is only concerned about the critics and illegal downloaders (who, obviously are not her greatest fans as real fans would purchase her music in her support).

All of this, makes us wonder and leaves us to discuss such things as, how much profit do artists lose when people download illegally off the internet? How many artists are a victim of this? Is it a serious problem? And really, is it alright? Is it alright to download…?

“The days of me making money from recording music has been and gone as far as I’m concerned… Slagging me, my music and my so-called family connections’ off, and calling me a government puppet is not going to get anyone, anywhere, so stop it”

Definition: A special or prominent article in a newspaper or magazine. Feature article writing (writing with style) fascinates me as you are able to write about pretty much anything and everything from clothes to food to people. An example of this can be found on the feature section of Bazaar Magazine website (i.e. http://www.harpersbazaar.com/magazine/feature-articles/). I am particularly interested in personality profiles as you are able to write about a very versatile variety of people such as celebrities, high profile characters (e.g. politicians) and even small people who have done big things such as rising designers and artists. I love meeting people and getting to know them by nature. Currently, I am working as an assistant for a journalist and through this job I am able to gain experience in meeting people and conducting interviews. This is always a pleasure, and every experience is a different one. Recently, I assisted in interviewing the construction manager of UNSW. He was a happy and humble man who enjoyed the interview by letting us know of the current and future plans of UNSW. As a student of UNSW, I was that much more curious and excited about this interview which was a laid back and interesting interview as it gave myself an insight to the future plans of my uni. Another reason why I have a particular interest in personality profiles is that life stories also fascinate me and hearing about the different lifestyles and lives people have lived, personally, provides and broader perspective of the world – knowing that there are many many great people out there. We are always so caught in our own lives that we become selfish and don’t usually stop to think about the lives of others and perhaps what other people around the world are experiencing and in what situations they are in.

“A magazine features editor ensures that their publication is full of entertaining, informative and newsworthy articles. Most opportunities are in large publishing companies that produce a wide range of titles. However, features editors are also employed by trade magazines, specialist publishers, online media and in-house magazines.The responsibilities of the role can include: generating ideas for features, commissioning work by freelance writers, editing and proofreading, managing writing staff and liaising with artists and photographers.Magazine features editors do not always need specialist knowledge of the subject they cover, unless the content is highly technical, although an interest in the subject is usually expected.

overseeing the layout, appearance and content of feature articles; editing and re-writing articles;▪overseeing artwork, design and photography for the features section of the magazine;▪attending photo-shoots;▪organising meetings with writers and artists to discuss ideas for artwork, layout and features;▪selecting feature articles for each issue;▪proofreading all pages before going to press;▪raising the profile of the magazine;▪networking with others at industry events;▪assisting other staff to meet their deadlines” (http://www.prospects.ac.uk/p/types_of_job/magazine_features_editor_job_description.jsp) The highlighted responsibilities are the most interesting and provide me confirmation that this is the direction that I would like to be heading in. Being put in, or rather, choosing this position excites me in the sense that I would like to one day become the woman who buffers and overlooks the popular magazine that people buy each month ritually.

Fashion blogging is a rising trend whereby many people who access the internet are able to create a fashion blog of their own. A friend of my own conducts her own fashion blogging site where she was initially “found” and now, not only is she able to blog about her own fashion recommendations and style, she also takes on a small advertising role as she is sponsored by companies to blog about their products. This shows that fashion blogging and the internet alone have opened a portal for both professionals and non professionals to freely discuss their own perceptions of beauty and style. It has now become a rising FORCE whereby many high companies have invested in the power of the internet and rely on it for further advertising. It can also be seen as the “complimentary resource” for fashion magazines where the audience is able to read the magazine, then refer to the internet for details. I would love to, and had already considered creating my own blog for trends but my high and deep interest of this area can not counter my/ my changing style. Blogs are all about catering for the audience and in order to do this you must be patient and tolerant. I believe that it is inevitable that technology will continue to advance and so the internet will only become a greater force of reference and communication for all those in the journalistic field if it has not already.

In all three areas of interest I believe that the challenges is that of gaining experience in the field and being able to overcome different situations as I also believe that one of the main factors of becoming a journalist or working in this field is that any day will never be that same and everyday will always bring new challenges, new experiences, new people and new situations – this is the greatest challenge in itself. Thus, in this field you are constantly being challenged and constantly being faced with ‘the new’ which may be a reason why it is such an interesting and worthwhile field ( in my own opinion of course). In a continuation of this notion of constantly being challenged, I also believe that you are and will be constantly be faced with opportunities. ‘The new’ will be a daily visitor who brings various challenges and opportunities. If I were to apply this idea to one of these areas of interests – As a feature article writer you will be constantly faced with challenges to write and interesting and engaging article and most importantly ‘new’ article. Bringing the opportunities to meet new people and conduct personal research and always bringing the opportunity to develop and grow as a journalist.

SBS was established during the 1970′s due to the huge influx of migrants. It originally catered for the uneven participation of minorities and although it is funded by the government, it is an independent service.

SBS’s original aim (outlines in the charter) is to cater for australia’s multicultural society, contributing to communication needs of multicultural society. Many argue if this channel is still necessary as there is not a huge demand or audience for their programs and they only cater for minorities. Some say that their original aims arent so important anymore and SBS should start commercializing. Some say SBS is somewhat diverting from its original goals, but merging Australian and American content could be considered being multicultural, but that’s basically all that’s on the other channels. In the beginning, SBS was made because of the huge influx of migrants yet now Australia, even though it is still greatly multicultural, has more generations who have grown up and have been educated in Australia. Thus one example of ideas raised was changing the presentation of programs to make then appeal to a wider audience. 

This SBS style of presentation can be seen in the youtube video shared in class about a SBS special about trying to keep languages surviving through generations

Watched youtube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcQt3mQ7-N8

From watching this video, there were many differences noticed between mainstream media and SBS such as the “shock value”. SBS aims to more inform their audience and raise awareness other than gaining ratings. SBS also focussed on content which is one of the roles of a public service media.

This week’s reading was all about identity. The definition of identity, it’s social standing, it’s politics and value.

From the beginning, this article was engaging as is presented some very interesting points about identity itself. It says;

“Identities then, are not given in terms of what individuals are as a whole, but in terms of more or less arbitrarily selected features what they possess… without an identity there is no such thing as a socially situated individual. Societies, identities and individuals do not exist independently of one another”

This was most interesting as when talking about an identity, or more particularly, someone’s identity it gives connotations of who that person is as a person. We do not usually stop to think that although we say it is who that person is we judge by what traits this person possesses.

From this, it also states that one individual does not have a single identity, they have identities – plural. Simply because identities are made up of (as discussed before) certain traits such as gender, race, profession, religion etc. Furthermore! The value of these traits can change over “time and space”. The most common example which the article has mentioned (and I also strongly agree with) is the value of what it is to be a man in the 21^st century. This value of being a man or even a woman has changed over time significantly and the value is differentiated according to where one is situated.

Another important concept discussed is the politics of identities. It states that “identity politics tends to erase internal differences”. This happened with the feminism movement. Categorising people together and ignoring the fact that every individual is different even though the whole point of the movement was for the sake of identity……….. ?!!

This reading was both complex and interesting. It was engaging and opened my mind to a lot of different perspectives and opinions of identity itself.

-From During, S. Cultural studies.

Routledge, 2005, 145-152

-Australian review of applied linguistics, A publication of the Applied linguistics association of Australia Volume 26 Number 2.

Mary Macken-Horarik.

This week’s reading explored, in-depth, the grammatical tools used in articles (i.e The Children Overboard affair) and how they depict the image of certain characters such as asylum seekers.

Genericisation-Specification:

This concept refers to how certain people are referred as in this article, wether they are depicted specifically or generally. Specification often appears as a definite title, “demonstrative (this) or numerative (one woman). Whereas, Genericisation appears using collective nouns (e.g. the asylum seekers). Generic terms are usually used such as in this article (the navy, boat people) but apparently the trend is to have asylum seekers remain anonymous. The effect of using this tool when refering to certain people in articles is to place them at a distance where they are portrayed as people who the audience do not have relation to in their everyday lives.

Categorisation:

In many articles, people are often categorised into different groups. Functionalisation is when characters are categorised by what they do, i.e. their occupation or position at that particular time. For example, “guardian, celebrant, interviewee”. Otherwise, characters are categorised through identification of social groups such as age, gender, ethnicity, class etc. Another example of categorisation is visual which the writer explains that by introducing a visual image of e.g. headscarf, the reader is instantly able to identify briefly who this character may be.

Role allocation

This is when characters are depicted in a certain event as either the agent or the patient. In writing, the terms “Actor” and “Goal” often appear referring to the person and the act. E.g. “the two boat people are passive (goals) they swim or bob in the water while their naval rescuer (actor) extends her left arm towards them”.

These three grammatical concepts are used to depict characters within a news story. They help shape the news story and were very interesting to read about. I realised that the way in which people are depicted and what they are titled as is very important. Overall, although this particular reading was bland, it was based on an interesting topic and I actually learned quite a bit from it.

-       Lukin A. Education links. 2003, 18-20

This week’s short reading was a compact yet interesting insight to the grammatical influences in journalistic writing.

The Author aims to;

 “demonstrate a functional approach to grammar and linguistic concepts can help students and readers and listeners of media reports adopt a more critical orientation to language, specifically the reporting of war”

With respect to the reportings of war, the abundance of information that is available provides pros and cons. Whilst it gives many perspectives on various events of the war it also complicates the simplicity of the events themselves.

The author provides five different examples of news stories that were published about the same story of an Iraqui boy becoming arm and family-less after te missile attacks. These examples proved how the one story can be written in many different ways, each giving a different light to the event.

Most of them emphasised the fact that this boy, Ali had lost his arms and family during the war yet the last one by Robert Fisk brings the spotlight on the war itself and how it has affected this boy.

As the author explains, there is an ‘actor’ and a ‘goal’ in each of these stories. In all the others, Ali is the actor who acts (i.e. loses his arms and family) whilst in Robert Fisk’s article the war is the actor and Ali is merely the goal.

This reading goes on the highlight the representations of various types of relationships such as the representation of a direct causal relationship by using the conjunction ‘because’.

Generally, the reading was a quick and interesting insight on this particular topic discussing the grammatical influences in journalistic writing. The fact that it included various articles and compared them was the most interesting part of this reading.

Jennifer Yu 

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-Leslie Haddon

- From Ling & Pederson, Eds, Mobile communications, Springer, 2005, 7-22

This week’s reading was focused mainly on the transition of media uses, how different mediums are used and the choices we make in using them. It is divided in four different sections, each, elaborating of different concepts.

1. The boundaries of what we may define as ‘communication practices’

Its asks “how broad a vision should we have of what elements count as communication” discussing different forms of communication and how some are perceived as socially. I feel that there is such a huge versatile variety of communication in the modern-day world that it is hard to draw a fine line between what is and is not considered communication. We are able to communicate via computers, mobiles, telephones, letters, speech and even body language that these boundaries are blurred. Thus making it hard for analysts to evaluate communication related practices.

2. Continuities between media

This section elaborates on the concept of the “continuum of uses” of media, the way in which old uses are replaced by new uses and further developed especially due to the rapid advancements in technology. It also mentions the continuities of more routine practices in everyday life such as integrating personal uses of media with professional life. I not only agree with this concept but also feel that there are pros and cons to this. As media uses continue to advance it would make life easier, definitely, but when taken advantage of the dependence may affect users significantly.

3. Choices made when using media

A few key words I would mention are “new media” “media mix” and “media menus”. These, together, reflect the innovative new medias that increase the media mix furthermore creating media menus. One example I could closely relate to was the personalisation of our own mediums such as wallpapers, caller id’s, alarms etc on mobile phones. Although media creates many more options, at the same time constraints are put in in certain areas due to such things as etiquette.

4. Dynamics of the communication repertoire

The dynamics of the communication repertoire relates closely to the building, or rather, the managing of personal relationships via communication. From this I thought about how I, personally, manage my relationships and agreed that changes, even the small ones, within the media field differentiate the way in which I communicate with people either close or far (both metaphorically and physically).

In conclusion, this week’s reading was actually one that I could closely relate to, helping me understand the concepts more and think more deeply about these particular concepts. It was an overall interesting reading.

In this week’s reading Castells describes the qualities and functions of ‘networks’, discussing their significance in modern-day life as “communicators through time and space” especially due to their flexibility, scalability and survivability.

“Networks constitute the fundamental pattern of life” he says, as he describes networks as “self-reconfigurable, complex structures of communication that ensure, at the same time, unity of purpose and flexibility of its execution by the capacity to adapt to the operating environment”. He explains that networks are made up of interconnected ‘nodes’, which absorb information and then process it. Although nodes are crucial to a network, they are merely components, which can be deleted and added.

One of the most interesting yet debatable concepts in this reading was his point made about time in relation to network societies. He says that “In the network society, the emphasis on sequencing is reversed. The relationship to time in defined by the use of information and communication technologies”. Networks do this by destroying the idea of time by opposing sequencing. Thus all practices and social lifestyles are put out of order. E.g. past, present and future.

He also mentions other ideas in his reading such as the notion of technology and how networks survive through the advancements of technology, which is also a reason, why social networks could not have existed throughout history. Another idea is the culture of network societies which he describes as “a culture of protocols of communication between all cultures in the world”, enabling communication between cultures of varing values of communication.

I believe that his reading was quite interesting and his concepts were clear unlike many of the other readings I had done the previous weeks. I enjoyed reading about networks, their qualities, functions and the mechanism behind large networks. It was surprising to read about the significance of networks in life and their roles. I cannot disagree about too much but the note he makes about time in relation to networks, I believe, is debatable.

Castells, M. Excerpts from “Informationalism, Networks, and the Network Society: A Theoretical Blueprint” From The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective. Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar, pgs. 3-7 & 36-45.