5: Lecture Notes

The world is changing, it's always changing. Not just the world with things like climate change, but the way in which we live is evolving from society being merely consumers to becoming a hybrid of a consumer and producer through the introduction of new communication technologies and the rise of the internet.

Traditionally information and entertainment has been consumed on the big screens of:

• Cinema
  
• Television
  
• Computers

With the introduction and growing trend towards nanotechnology, the screens we consume media on are becoming smaller and more personal:

• Portable media players
  
• Mobile phones (smart phones)

The news corporations of the world have always been able to decide what they wanted the news to be by censoring certain stories and giving prominence to those that they had a vested interest in, but the internet has given a medium to those who want to be heard (E.g. the beheading of American Nick Berg in 2004).

This idea behind this is known as Citizen Journalism, when individuals act as journalists in news gathering and reporting. Mobile phones (and more recently smart phones) allow individuals to capture the news as it is happening via video, audio, photo or a combination of all three. A professional journalist will never be present at the scene of every breaking news story, so today they rely, to some extent, on citizen journalists to capture the critical images of the events unfolding with the immediacy they'll never have (E.g. Boxing Day Tsunami).

Consumers are also utilising the benefits of the small screens by changing the way they consume information from passive to actively seeking out news and entertainment that pertains to their particular interests (E.g. searching for information about NFL football that wouldn't normally get high coverage in the Australian media).

CNN has a dedicated section on their website solely for citizen journalism. iReport.com encourages citizen journalists to "Tell a story, offer an opinion, say what's important to you".

It is not only news that gets to utilise the small screen and new communication technologies. Entertainment throws its hat into the ring in a big way. The video posted below was showed in the lecture and I must admit, it brought a tear to my eye. "Mankind Is No Island" by Jason Van Genderen was shot entirely on mobile phone in the cities of Sydney and New York. It is simplistic in nature but packs a mighty big punch and just shows that with the development of these communication technologies, and the move towards smaller screens, everyone is able to have their say and be heard even if they don't own a newspaper or television station.


The internet makes it easier for all types of content to be distributed. It has also seen an increase and development of:

• Fan videos
  
• Short films
  
• Mash-ups
  
• Re-cuts
  
• Re-genres

It is these sorts of short films that mix and match content that the idea for the culture jam is looked at. The term was mentioned briefly in the lecture but has been explored further in the accompanying blog entries for week 5.