Assessment 1 - Personal Media use and Production Diary

Advanced media and technology have contributed greatly in daily life. Whether as entertainment or study, media transfers information from and to us. Seeing the importance of knowing media use pattern and analyse the reason of it, for fourteen days, I recorded my media use.

1.       Print media

a.       Books

·         The Joy Luck Club

·         Cooking books, for example: Desserts and a little bit of…Japan

b.      Magazine

·         Readers Digest (a new issue was delivered on 10^th of August 2011)

·         National Geographic (a new issue was delivered on 9^th of August 2011)

c.       Readings (Recommended and required readings)

·         Text books

·         Printed readings

2.       Cell phone

a.       Short Message Service (SMS) or texting

b.      Call

Mostly International Call was made to Indonesia when waiting for bus

3.       Laptop

Laptop is the most used media for entertainment, communication, studying and others. 80.69% of media use is allocated in laptop.

a.       Music

Includes audio and music video. On 14^th and 15^th of August 2011, I listened to 2PM’s Hands Up in loop while doing assignments.

b.      Video

Both online and offline video.

·         Korean dramas

Heartstrings and Scent of a Woman.

·         Korean variety shows

Running Man, Win Win, Happy Together and Family Outing.

·         Movies

Ip Man, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Strangers Tide, Winnie the Pooh and Law Abiding Citizen.

·         Documentaries

Outfoxed and Wikileaks

c.       Social Networking Service (SNS)

They are only opened to check notifications, view and reply posts, post on walls and updating status.

·         Facebook

·         Twitter

d.      Blogging

·         Blogspot

·         Livejournal

e.      E-mail

I check e-mails almost every day to sort messages in inbox, view and reply e-mails and clean spam and trash.

f.        Chat

I chat to keep in contact with family and friends in Indonesia, when they are available I will chat to them.

·         Microsoft Network (MSN) Messenger

·         Yahoo Messenger

·         Skype

g.       Online News

To update myself with the latest world news and celebrity news, mostly I open:

·         Yahoo news, to check world news.

·         Allkpop, to check Korean celebrity news.

·         Good News from Indonesia, to check Indonesian news.

·         Brisbane Times, to check Australian news.

h.      University of Queensland (UQ)

All media used for my subjects, this includes:

·         Power Points

·         Lectopias

·         UQ websites (Si-net, Blackboard, MyUQ and MyMail+)

·         Online readings

·         Other documents (modules and worksheets)

i.         Other browsing

Other internet activities that does not fit in any of above categories.

·         Recipe websites (Tasty Kitchen and Sumo Kitchen)

·         Checking updates for Korean dramas and variety shows

·         Online comics

·         Forums

·         Downloading

In total, I used media for 8047 minutes in two weeks. On average, every day I used 9.58 hours on medias which makes up 39.92% of my day. To think that I rely on media heavily, I do not think that I can survive without the existing media and technology as who I am now is shaped by these media.

Words: 495

15 August 2011 - Week 4 Lecture

This lecture is about telling factual stories with sound (radio). The lecture is posted online and is a recording of an interview with two great presenters from ABC Local News, Richard Fidler (Conversations) and Steve Austing (Evenings). Both of the presenters are interviewed about their experience as a radio host as well as dealing with guests. They share great tips to be a good host. These are some notes I took while listening to the recording.

There are several things to be noted when talking in radio. The first is pronunciation, you have to be clear instead of babbling in broadcast. The second is to keep the listeners involved in conversation, sometimes, when hosts is too excited in conversation they forgot to include listeners in their conversation. A good example to include the listeners is by saying "hello" or "welcome to this show, we are here with our guest, John Smith." The third is to have the guest comfortable. Guests have to feel safe, in trustworthy and comfortable environment to share stories. It is the host's job to make this possible. Throwing a good humour may help the guest to relax and laugh in a while.

In less than 40 minutes recording, I have learned so many things about talking with a guest on radio. It was a very pleasant experience with interesting and interactive media. I hope there will be more like this in the future as well, for example, recording of interviewing on television. :D

8 August 2011 - Week 3 Lecture

This is a good date, well it is a good month after all, but there is an extra 8 in the date (8-8-2011). Good omen for the day. It is quite late to write the blog now, but I decided to write week 3 now.

This week lecture is about reporting with pictures. Using pictures to tell stories has been around for a long time, pictures actually exist long before writing after all. It started from 15000 BC with cave painting to now, the digital manipulation. In 1860's first newspaper with pictures was published, the pictures were made using line drawings. Then, in 1879, "Stinway Hall" became the first published photo in newspaper, but the actual news photo was published in 1880, "Shanty Town". The photos on newspaper during this era were black and white until the breakthrough of colour photo on newspaper in 1936.

There are some aspects which need to be considered to take great photos: framing, focus, angle and point of view (POV), exposure or light, timing and editing, and capturing "the moment". To take great photos requires great practices especially on timing, when taking photo of moving objects, untrained skill can only root on luck, where the photo may come out before or after the moment, this also relate with capturing "the moment" point. Practices will help to know the shutter speed so we know when to press the shutter button.

Another important point is The Rule of Thirds. This rule is often use by photographers and art students. The Rule of Thirds divides a picture into 9 equal area using two horizontal and two vertical lines. The object should line up with these lines to make good composition, To put the focus object in the middle of the picture may overcrowd the people who look at it. While following this rule, will give those who look a room to breathe. An example of rule of thirds is below:

The left picturedoes not follow the rule while the right picture follows the rule

The picture on the right is better to be looked at even though both are the same scenery. Using the rule of thirds helps the picture to look more professional.

1 August 2011 Lecture - JOUR1111

Hello again reader, it seems that I am in the mood of writing today that's why I write a lot :D So now, I am going to write about the lecture on 1 August 2011, the first day of the month. Just a little bit more to November and I will have summer holiday and go back to Indonesia :D My mouth is already watering for Indonesian delicacy...Yummmm~

The lecture on the second week is presented by a guest lecturer, Rodney Chester, who is a graduate of UQ Journalism (that would make him a senior for us) and has worked in Courier Mail for 20 years. The topic for the lecture is "Telling factual stories". Before the lectures it is advisable for the students to read an article Quinn, S. and Filak, V.F. (n.d.) titled Convergent Journalism: An Introduction.

Journalistic writing is a formulaic writing that is shaped like an inverted pyramid. The first level of the pyramid consists of the lead which usually addresses the 5W1H (What, Why, Where, Who, When and How). All the important information is packed in the beginning so that the reader can understand the summary of the issue. Other important details are written below it (the second level of the pyramid). The information in this level are important details that support the previous level. The last level is the least important detail that gives additional information to the readers. When writing an article a journalist should abide to this rule.

(Chandra, A., 2009)

This lecture helped me to understand about writing a journalistic article. Before, I have always thought that journalistic article is similar to writing a narrative story that starts with introduction to climax to resolution. However, after I attended this lecture I learn to write an article in inverted pyramid form.

25 July 2011 Lecture - Introduction to Journalism

This lecture is the very first lecture of JOUR1111 program, the lecturer, Dr Bruce Redman gave us 13 pages course profile which is very useful, especially, the learning activities summary. Dr Redman, then, gave us a presentation that outlines Journalism and JOUR1111. He told us the definition of Journalism, its challenges and its significance in modern world; followed by, the schedule of lectures, assessments' overview, and course outline.

I noted down two important parts of this first lecture. The first one is the definition of Journalism: telling factual stories. Journalism is a media for public and everything presented in media can shape people's thought and behaviour. It is, therefore, very important that journalist tells factual stories with the purpose to avoid confusion or worse, misleading public.

The second important part is current challenges of journalism. In this new era that highly depends on technology, newspaper is rumoured to be dying. Contributed by citizen journalism in which news spread rapidly and freely through Twitter or facebook, newspapers have to face the harsh reality. Moreover, the public believes that journalism has no ethics, by the raging trend of Papparazzi, has put journalist in difficult position. Lastly, despite all those challenges, public demands journalism to be entertaining in presenting the news. It can be said that journalists have to be creative in order to survive or to overcome those challenges.

I was actually a little bit worried when Dr Redman explain about the challenges because in 3 years the technology will be even more advanced. I do not think that I can be creative enough to face the challenges, however, during the next 3 years I believe that I will work something out to survive in this competition.

To the reader of this post,
Thank you for reading this post and have a good day :)

Shierine Wangsa Wibawa

Hello there!

Please let me introduce myself. I am Shierine Wangsa Wibawa, my name is hard isn't it? It is written like 'She-rin' :D I am an international student in University of Queensland St Lucia, majoring in Journalism and am hoping to get a bachelor degree within the next three years. Wow that was not so hard. I was thinking whether it will be better to write this in informal or formal way, but, since it is a blog, I will just write it like I am talking to you.

Anyway, this is such an interesting post to write mainly because I really like to talk :D Nice to meet you, readers!