Troughout the class, I have learned new ways to interpret new media. This class helped me understand the meanings behind new media such as blogs, social networking websites, computers, virtual communities, YouTube videos, etc. I learned that depending on what perspective/lens you take, there are different ways to interpret things. For example, McLuhan thought that the medium is the message and that technology created a new society and new social conditions. From the viewpoint of Williams, however, technology shouldn't be viewed as a cause-effect situation. Instead he argues that new needs/possibilities led to the development of certain technologies. Another example good example of the whole lens thing is the Kaycee Nicole Swenson article about skeptics and optimists in virtual communities. It's all a matter of perspective!!
My favorite thing about the class was probably the two major projects. It was a lot of work (O__o) BUT, I ended up learning a lot of interesting facts. I especially enjoyed the Facebook Project since it made me do a whole self reflection process. I am glad I can do a Facebook Cleanse now and be more cautious of what I post rather than find in out in the future that a company didn't hire me because of a stupid picture or updateI posted on my wall.
My least favorite thing was probably finding an interesting new media article to write about. It always took me awhile to find an article that I liked and I thought was relevant somehow to our class. It's not that I didn't like the assignment it just was really time consuming for me! It was hard to find an article that wasn't about Facebook or the Iphone!
Hi! I also found the Social Media Representation Project really enjoyable and also found that I went through a whole reevaluation of how I represent myself online. It was a valuable lesson to learn the inconsistencies between myself in the ‘real’ world and myself online. As young people this is a really important lesson to learn before we embark on our careers. I actually enjoyed finding a new media article to read each week – this ensured I kept up to date with the latest in media communication, something I always endeavor to do but sometimes fail as school work becomes too much. As this was part of my school work I found that it was hitting two birds with one stone. Great post, it was a great semester
ReplyDeleteI also like the two projects that we did in this class especially the second one because we were given the opportunity to write about what we were interested in. So I liked doing the research for my paper because I wanted to know more about my topic. I do agree that a lot of the readings for the blog were about Facebook and the I phone but I did not really mind. The articles were still interesting to me. I also liked a few of the readings that were assigned because I got to read about somethings I would not usually read on my own.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with you that the two projects, while very time consuming and a lot of work, were probably the most fulfilling part of the class. I think I enjoyed the second project more than the first one though because of being able to choose a topic that interested me since there was so much research to do for the topic. The Facebook project was pretty interesting too, though. I did mine based on a friend's page, so I think it was easier since I was a little bit more removed from what I was analyzing and writing about.
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