Why am I bothering?

According to The Age, all this going to classes and doing work is a waste of time...!
http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/pumping-out-diplomas/2008/04/24/1208743225063.html

Progress being made

I have been relieved to discover in the past few weeks that I'm enjoying researching my Hons project topic! That may sound strange, but I can sometimes get excited about the idea as a whole but get bored with the details of how to achieve it. Thankfully, it seems that won't be the case this year. Although it's only April. Still months to go...

The concept for my public awareness campaign will come together more clearly in the next month, after I have visited Christine in London and (hopefully) received Ethics approval.

In terms of the exegesis, my plan is to structure it in three parts: the theory/research on social marketing and how it works, an analysis of three different Australian public awareness campaigns and the impact that they've had on society, and an explanation of my process and the problems I had to overcome in order to make the campaign for AFR UK.

Ironically, AFR in Australia officially wound up on the weekend. I have been involved with the organisation for 7 years (since its inception) and I think we have achieved some amazing results (no more Pacific Solution, for example!) However, the organisation was starting to feel tired and less relevant than it had be when it started, so we agreed it was best to let it go. The website will remain (www.actorsforrefugees.org.au) because it offers a number of useful resources, but we will no longer take bookings and perform shows as a group. Sad, but also a relief in many ways.

Faces of Facebook

I really like this bog post from Tessa about how online spaces can mean your public and private worlds collide.

Check it out: 

http://tessatessa.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/why-im-opening-up-the-space-and-not-censoring-the-face/

I agree with Tessa that we all have different sides of our personality that we show to different people at different times: "I would argue that we all have multiple personalities, or perhaps more accurately one mulifaceited personality. Different social situations act as forums to express different elements of our personalities. I am a different person around my friends to what I am when I visit my grandparents or when I am at work. I use different language, discuss different topics and wear different clothes. I think what social media is doing is making it possible for these different personalities to cross over."

I like the idea that social media allows a person's various personalities to interact and cross over, although at the same time this is part of the reason why I think I have never wanted to join Facebook or MySpace! I'm a very private person, even this blogging that we have had to do for uni has been a struggle for me in some respects, and I have always been cautious about sharing all my personalities with the world. The idea of old school "friends" (who are not friends at all, and never really were) getting in contact with me now and finding out what I'm doing irks me. If someone is a genuine friend then we would have kept in touch, or they will find a way to track me down without Facebook. I consider myself to be such a different person than I was at high school (although that's probably not true!) that I don't like the idea of my present and my past colliding.

I was surprised to read in Tessa's post that she had a potential employer check her Facebook profile. I would find that invasive but, then again, as Tessa points out, if you want to share all your personalities with the world then you should be proud and comfortable to do so.

Perhaps one day I'll lose out on employment because I don't have a Facebook/MySpace site!

I still feel uncomfortable with the amount of information people put about themselves on the internet. It's like Big Brother is always watching and I feel I get chastised sometimes for not joining in, as though it's some kind of political rebellion I'm engaging in.

I should start a Facebook group, for people who have no intention of ever joining Facebook!

ABC - The Average, Boring Channel?

In The Australian today, ABC Director Mark Scott (who recently announced that the ABC's TV department will soon suffer major job losses) says he believes the ABC is an "incubator of Australian art and culture":

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23551193-7582,00.html

I beg to differ.

I am flabbergasted by how little drama the ABC invests in these days. I know they are short on money, but in 2007 they commissioned just over 20 hours of new Australian drama. 20 HOURS! That's not even one day's worth, back-to-back!

What's more, the drama they do commission is very rarely innovative or pushes the boundaries, the way the ABC could and should. The advantage the ABC is supposed to have over the commercial networks is that they don't have to worry about ratings or other commercial concerns but, as part of the corporatisation of everything these days, ABC management is more worried about ratings than quality or innovation.

Take East of Everything. I must confess to having only watched one episode, the first, but it gave me no inclination to return. It was almost exactly the same as SeaChange... but without the humour or the charm! So what's the point? The ABC are stuck in a constant rut trying to repeat their previous successes, not acknowledging that their highest-rating shows SeaChange, The Chaser, Pride & Prejudice, Choir of Hard Knocks) came out of the blue, and were different and new when they attracted those audiences.

Other examples of how the ABC is failing to encourage new talent and produce interesting drama shows is a story I heard about a friend who put his (really great) drama series into the ABC and was told his scripts were fantastic, "This is the kind of drama we should be making..." but they won't. Because it didn't match their target audience (ie: old people).

Perhaps Australia should reintroduce the TV license fee, as they have in the UK. The BBC is constantly innovative and takes risks on new writers/directors with interesting projects. They can afford to, however, as the TV license fees (which go straight into the BBC's pocket) mean that one network's drama budget is larger than all drama production in Australia combined (all the TV networks at the Film Finance Corporation).

Rather than just whinge about it, I plan on moving overseas! Along with many of my peers.

It's official, I'm a nerd!

I have become the stereotypical "mature age" student... I've finished my Comm Revs essay early! Wow. I would never have done that in my undergrad degree. Actually, I think I did once, and the essay got lost when I submitted it and I almost failed! So perhaps I should hold off submitting the essay too early!

Big business bytes

It's amazing that, although online media specifically, and the internet generally, has the potential to be such a democratising force, it is still big business that runs the show.

Reading this article in today's Age, 

www.theage.com.au/news/biztech/murdoch-could-join-microsoft-bid-for-yahoo/2008/04/11/1207856776806.html, I couldn't help but be struck by the massive amount of money that gets thrown around as part of these high-end corporate takeovers. These are two of the world's biggest companies who are trying to control another huge company, Yahoo, which holds the key to information about consumers (through their internet searches and email) and controls much of cyberspace. The internet offers opportunities for anyone who has access to a computer and a modem to contribute their thoughts and views, and yet it still gets taken over by the big boys every time.

I'm reminded of Orwell's 1984. The way everyone was constantly surveyed. We have to deal with consistent surveillance when we are outside our homes, on most streets and in most shops nowadays, and although we don't have video camera surveillance necessarily in our homes these days (like the Telescreens in 1984) we do inadvertently tell Big Brother what we are doing and what we are thinking about by using the internet. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are watching us! Scary stuff.

Online Gaming

Reading the article by Jakobsson and Taylor in the Transient Spaces reading, I was struck by a few things. Firstly, how similar the game they described (EverQuest) is to World of Warcraft (is it, in fact, an older version of the same game? I've never heard of EQ) and also how different their experience of online gaming was to the experience that is usually described in the media.

I have played some WOW. Over the summer holidays my boyfriend signed me up. I would only login once a week/fortnight but it can be a fun time-waster if that's what I need. Too busy nowadays to be looking for time-wasters!

Although I can see how people find the game addictive, I find that I get bored quite easily now, as compared to when I first started. The addictive quality comes mostly from the endless nature of the game: you are constantly offered new quests, and numerous quests at the same time, so you never "finish" or "win". But this starts to get frustrating, you can feel that you're going around in circles.

What starts to suck players in further, I think, is the formation of online relationships/bonds with other players, as described in the Jakobsson/Taylor article. Guilds and less official groups are formed, loyalties are created and regular meeting dates might be established, which gives the players an emotional connection to the game and therefore adds to their experience. I have probably never committed enough time to form these bonds. Except for my "RL" bond with my boyfriend!

MMORPGs are often given flack in the media, however, for alienating people and further disconnecting our society, which is already splintered by communication forms that don't encourage face-to-face interaction. However, I don't think that most people would ever want to replace online friendships with live ones, unless they are already prone to loneliness or are in some other way antisocial and struggle to communicate one-on-one. So it could be seen as offering an opportunity and hope to people who otherwise wouldn't form relationships or communicate with humans.

Your thoughts? Are we further alienating people by giving them the opportunity to not mix in society?

While you think, have a look at the trailer for "Make Love Not Warcraft", a Southpark episode from Series 10. Highly recommended you watch the ep!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_VwonZxuFM

Bad habits

I know, I know... I've been a bad blogger. I haven't posted for almost a week. I've failed in my duties. I won't go into too much detail, but this week has been crazy busy. It has involved: extra work (at the ADF), a major relationship decision, stress and worry about a major film project, hurried organisation for a brief overseas jaunt happening next month, the discovery of more uni work that I wasn't aware of, and attempts to see all my friends who are performing in the comedy festival! So I hope you'll forgive me.

As a peace offering, those of you who enjoy a good old Mac vs PC debate will no doubt love this Danny Katz article from The Age today:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/danny-katz/praise-be-to-the-lord-our-jobs/2008/04/09/1207420476347.html

I'll write more on Friday. No more excuses, I promise...

Dark side of online spaces

There is always a lot of media when something goes "wrong" with one of the big online community sites, such as MySpace or Facebook. This article was in The Age yesterday:  http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/craigslist-hoaxers-arrested/2008/04/03/1206851064915.html

There have also been stories about bullying, murder and suicide pacts. The temptation always seems to be to blame the media form itself for provoking or invoking these incidents, but that is an over-simplified and unhelpful assumption to make. 

Online bullying, for example, is a terrible trend that seems to be growing, but bullying has always occurred and I can't see how online/mobile phone bullying could be worse than old forms of bullying. Receiving a threatening note (or "poke"!) via Facebook is no less scary than getting a nasty note left in your locker, which is the traditional form of girl bullying.

The argument is that online bullying follows the kids home, but psychologically, bullying always follows the victim wherever they go, it's part of the psychology of being bullied.

I'd be interested in other points of view on this issue, if you have any insights?

Global Security

From our Comm Revs tute yesterday, one issue that we didn't discuss, in terms of globalisation and how new communication technologies have changed humanity's world view, is the issue of security.

Before the printing press, people would have been only concerned with the security of their family and of their own village, having little access to knowledge or information about villages in other parts of the country. However, with the creation of print and therefore the solidification of the concept of the nation state (according to many of our readings), the public would have become concerned about national security, having a geographical US vs THEM mentality. The next step, with the advent of televisiona and then the internet, has been a focus on global security. This has less to do with geographical borders and more to do with political ideologies and/or culture clashes. It is the logic behind the War on Terror; it is not America's war, it is a global war, or so we are told.

I would argue that even the previous World Wars were halfway between a national security issue and the global focus we have today.

Anyone care to comment?

New media - its implications for old media

Having recently sat through two very different but equally awful (in my view) pieces of theatre (I won't be naming names, but they were major theatre companies!) I started to reflect on what theatre needs to do in order to remain relevant.

The problem that theatre has, as a medium, is that we now have conflicting expectations of what we want from live drama. On the one hand, being as film and television literate as we are, we expect realistic performances and a certain degree of "drama", or conflict/tension in the script. On the other hand, realism in theatre is in many ways a dead medium, because so many other mediums do it better (espeically television). With the advent of online docos and videos, this has shifted even further, as we now have a medium that emphasises the "voyeuristic", thus making the realism seem even more real.

What theatre can offer, as opposed to newer mediums, is a greater suspension of disbelief, as well as an added tension to the audience's experience because they are watching the drama unfold live. Thus, absurdism and surrealism work, arguably, better in a live theatrical space than they do on the cinema screen, where people's expectations for believability are higher. The other genre (for want of a better word) that theatre excels at is the live thriller. Not necessarily in a conventional murder mystery kind of way, but when you see events unfold live on stage, there are great opportunities to build up tension, and the audience starts to emit tension, as well as feeling it, so it loops back on itself and makes for an exciting evening.

One of the best examples of the latter genre of theatre that I've ever seen was Pillowman, by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, which was presented by the MTC last year. I usually dislike the MTC's work, but this piece was utterly compelling. It combined elements of surrealism and absurdism into a show about murder, torture and childrens' stories. Apparently many of the MTC subscribers (read, the Blue Rinse Set) walked out. That is my definition of great theatre!