Final assignment reflection

Our topic on this interdisciplinary communication project is ‘Ethics of Modern Technology’. We were placed in a group of four to engage in research, problem solving, idea development, and communication strategies in regards to our chosen topic.

We started off by brainstorming specific types of technology and industry to concentrate on. Our first idea was to focus on industrial technologies and its impact on the workforce, however, we wanted something bigger that could apply to multiple industries but with the same model functions. We then all decided on Artificial intelligence as it is one of the biggest controversies in our modern society and we are highly interested in its impact and ethicality.

My teammate Will did a thorough research on the effects of automated products on human’s lifestyle. Majority of the case studies he found portrayed automated technologies in a negative way. We found out that journalists are more likely to report on the damage technology has caused rather than writing on the benefits it provides to society because the public are more attracted to issues as such. We then came up with the idea of changing people’s mindset and behaviours on modern technology as we think that it is actually enhancing our lives.

Boris came up with the campaign idea of distributing robots to the local community with the intention to reduce fear and promote civilized relationship between human and technology. Romy identified key stakeholders and attempt to analyze their needs and demands. I took charge of the creative communication campaign and set out a timeline of the project.

Our team does not flow coherently as some of us have opposing ideas which made it difficult to come to an agreement. We were too creative and ambitious about our project, making it hard for us to stick to a specific idea. Our indecisiveness takes up a lot of our available time to complete the project making us stress the last minute. We could have started off with a plan to make sure we were on track and communicate better. Some of us had more workload than the other and some do not understand the details.

Overall, this project was challenging for us as a group because we did not work collaboratively well together. However, I am satisfied that we managed to get it done on time. I have learned that in order to accomplish a quality group project, stable relationship bond must be established first and the rest will follow. Although the process was rough, I still enjoyed some parts of the assignment such as writing the communication strategies. I am glad to experience this as I plan to avoid making similar mistakes.

Reflective Blog

The Power of Belief: Mindsets and Success

In order to become a great communicator and succeed in the business world, having a growth mindset will give you endless journey of improvement.

People with a fixed mindset sees their talents and qualities as something that puts them above others, making them feel more superior. They tend to do things they are initially good at to seek approvals and validations from people. Their brain is most active when receiving rewards and applause, however, when they fail, they will most likely lose interest immediately and withdraw back leading to the deterioration of self esteem.

Growth mindset people hold values in believing that abilities can be developed overtime through efforts and training. They see their initial talents and qualities as a starting point in enhancing their future development. They learn from their mistakes and see efforts as path to mastery. Their brain is active when they know what to improve on and when they hit setbacks, they find a way back up.

After seeing the difference between the two, I identify myself as having both fixed and growth mindset depending on the situation. On days when I am down and want to boost my self esteem, I use the skills that I know I am capable of to achieve a certain goal that would satisfy my temporary need. For example, I make a mean pasta and so I will serve that food to a person who has not tried my cooking in order to receive compliments. Certain aspects of my life I do have a growth mindset, for instance, my education. When submitting a project I have accomplished and receive feedback from the professor, I utilize those comments to further improve on my work. According to Carol Dweck, everyone has a mixture of both fixed and growth mindset, a pure growth mindset does not exist as one must acknowledge to gain the benefit they seek. This article correlate well with me personally as I mentioned I am both.

Carol Dweck’s Tedtalk, she said “when we acknowledge that abilities are capable of such growth, it becomes a basic human right for children to live in places that create that growth.” and I couldn't agree more. Children are the future of tomorrow, making sure they flourish with a growth mindset would benefit society as a whole. As an individual we should not be chained down to things we know we are good at but we should thrive to learn new skills to better ourselves and the people around us.

From this, I plan to practice the usage of growth mindset and minimize my fixed mindset in order to become a better person. The first step I intend to take would be praising people’s work on their progress instead of the result and hopefully they would feel inspired and praise others the same way.

Reference:

Briceno, E. (2012) TED talk "The Power of belief mindset and success"

Dweck, C. S. (2016) What having a growth mindset actually means. Harvard Business Review.

Carol Dweck’s (2014) TED talk “the power of believing that you can improve”

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Peer profile interview and Photojournalism

I partnered up with Sofia to test through a peer profile interview. I am the interviewer and she is my interviewee. The topic of our discussion is light and breezy with the intention to get to know one another better.

Here are my list of questions:

Who are you and why are you here? (Referring to the professional communication course)

What are your expectations of this course?

What sort of career do you imagine?

What inspires you?

What is something unique about you?

This is what I got:

Sofia Georganas is a professional communication student from RMIT University, she aspires to become an advanced freelance writer after getting her degree. Her biggest inspiration to become a writer is derived from the media literally studies she acquired from previous school year.

Sofia romanticise the idea of having the perfect job as an editor at Penguin, that is her end goal.

The media industry in Australia is growing rapidly, creating more jobs opportunities that falls right into Sofia's interest. However, Sofia does not want to be tied down to a specific company just yet, she wants to explore and express her ideas without restrictions as a freelance journalist.

I asked Sofia, "What is something unique about you?"she responded "I can put whole fist in my mouth"I gasp and we both laugh. She has such a vibrant personality, making it very enjoyable to communicate with her. She will make an excellent writer one day!

After getting to know her a little better, my next task to to capture 3 images from different angles to represent her personality.

From class 3 lecture I have learned that communication through imagery is one of the most accessible ways to get the message out to the audience. Different shot angles convey different meanings. For instance, environmental portrait showcase the subject in their natural habitat, making the audience understand their situation. Action shot exhibit the subject in action to show the audience their experience. Close up shot capture the small details of a subject to emphasis on its existence

This is an environmental shot of Sofia interacting with a friend. The main subject takes up at least 30% of the frame to make sure the audience know what to focus on.

This is my attempt in action shot where Sofia is trying to take professional picture for her friend. The main subject's face is not showing but the emphasis is on her action.

This is a close up shot of Sofia showing off her special talent. The focus here is on her facial expression, making the audience understand that it is not difficult for her to fit a whole fist in her mouth.

To make this shot better I could have use normal function to capture more texture to make it more interesting.

I took those images with an Iphone in portrait mode to give it a more professional appeal. I decided to capture my photos outdoor because natural light gives out the best effect. I could have made those pictures more interesting by incorporating some design elements such as shapes, lines, and texture.

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Online culture and future of media and communication industries (Digital disruption)

In today’s society, many people depend so much on the internet to get their resources and that impact the traditional ways of communication.

The internet is a shared territory that shaped how individuals communicate as well as managing businesses. Content creators and business operators share this territory with hardware devices, service platforms, technical services and protocols to their target audience/s.

Digital disruption is when the advanced technology affect the value of existing goods or services. Browsing the internet is the most efficient way to search for a specific content which lead to the increased amount of online users. Traditional journalism industry fear the major loss of public interest, making them generate skeptics to promote the negative effect of new media.

However, I believe that the death and crisis of those industries are caused by its business model and not the emerging technology. Jeff Jarvis (2015) mentioned in his speech at Ignite talk that traditional journalist that oppose to online journalism still hang on to the idea that they owned the gateway to information and distribution. If people still live in fear of technology taking over their values, society will remain constant. In a blog post about the positive effect of the emerging media, The Hypocrisy Of the Internet Journalist (2015) notes that it is hard living as journalist in 21st century but it has gotten better because they have settle on a new lucrative business model. As a business corporation they must learn to adjust and adapt to the new advancement in order to grow as a whole.

Media and communication industries are growing rapidly and it seems to me that it will boost even more in the near future. As a communication student, I am excited to see what they have to offer and what I could do to contribute to the industry. However, I plan to continue my career back home in Cambodia and as a developing country, I see so many opportunities to expand and enhance the media industry.

Reference:

Jeff Jarvis’s Ignite Talk at Newsgeist (2015) on the death of the mass media business modelNewsgeist 2015 Ignite Talk by Jeff Jarvis

Norton, Q 2015 'The Hypocrisy of the Internet Journalist', <https://medium.com/message/the-hypocrisy-of-the-internet-journalist-587d33f6279e>

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Ghost boat vs Empty chair

The issue of people not having their voice being heard and respected is contributing to the problem of inequality in our society.

An article called 'Ghost Boat' by Eric Reidy talks about refugee in Eritrea trying to escape the brutal lifestyle to a nearby location but resulted in sudden vanishment. Segen, an interviewee from the article talks about her experience as a slave in Eritrea, claiming that she was abused and unable to seek for help but luckily she managed to escape.

'Empty Chair' by Noreen Malone showcase the issues of women being exploited in workplace. The article feature 35 brave women who shared their experience of being sexually harassed with the aim to encourage people to stand up for themselves and fight for justice.

These two articles portray the issues our society is currently facing, minority groups and women have been receiving terrible treatment and when they seek for help, they their voice tend to not be valued and heard.

After analyzing both the article, as a women myself, I feel highly inspired and motivated to stand strong and for myself as well as the people who are not receiving the treatment they deserve. My minor contribution to a major issue might not fix the problem but taking one step at a time could led to better life improvement for myself and the people around me.

Reference:

Reidy, E 2015. '243 People Disappeared. Young People. Women. Children. And No One Cares' Ghost Boat. Viewed 2nd of December 2019 <https://medium.com/ghostboat/243-people-disappeared-young-people-women-children-and-no-one-cares-65a2d5019a74#.vtsuy5q47>

Malone, N 2015. 'I’m No Longer Afraid’: 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen' The Cut. Viewed 2nd of December 2019 <https://www.thecut.com/2015/07/bill-cosbys-accusers-speak-out.html>

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Interesting advertisement campaign

Advertisements in modern days are very difficult to be identified as ads because it is not direct forward, making it harder for the public to notice but advantageous for marketing agency to implement their strategy and achieve their client’s goals.

Marketing and Advertising plays a huge role in shaping our society (Jaffe 2015), this means that the ad have the power to influence our perceptions on certain issues.

Not all ads aim to sell the product, some want to build a strong brand reputation to gain credibility and brand loyalty. I personally think that Nike has the most unique ads campaign every year because their theme usually revolves around raising awareness and selling inspiration. Almost all of Nike campaigns are a success, however, last year 2018 campaign called ‘stand up for something’ raise big controversy around the justice of an NFL player, Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick was banned from participating in the game by the NFL and Nike is taking his side to fight back.

Sarkar and Kotler (2018) call this marketing strategy ‘risky value based branding bet’ where they sacrifice a segment of their customers to gain better brain recognition. Nike risked having their company's values re-evaluated by the political polarization of the market by politicians but they managed to generate over 43 million worth of media exposure and became the brand activist. This campaign work because people want to stand on important societal issues

From this I have learned that sometimes in order to achieve big success, we must have the courage to take risks. Not only in business, but in life in general. However, as a business, we at least must take extra precautions. For example, knowing where you stand in terms of brand value and worth to avoid making big loss. Established brands like Nike have a fair chance of success and it did. At the end of the day it all comes down to your judgement and evaluation of the strategic plan to make sure the campaign runs well.

Reference:

Sarkar, C and Kotler, P 2018. 'Stand for Something: Brand Activism at Nike', The Marketing Journal

Jaffe, C 2015. 'How advertising has become an agent of social change',

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Research and Ethics (CRISP baby scandal)

Science and technology has become very advanced that humans depend highly on it without thinking about the long term effect.

He Jiankui (2018) developed an experiment of creating twin girls with edited genome through engineering mutations into human embryo.This experiment is an applied research where practical application of knowledge is required to gather results in order to provide a solution to a problem.

Cyranoski (2019) stated that in the beginning, people think sees it as a miracle because of the way media portray the creation of the two girls with a HIV positive father. The media implement a hard storytelling method as it aim to future innovation in the science department.

Detailed primary and secondary research must be executed as the experiment involve human lives. However, there is no definite evidence that the girls will grow up to be healthy and have a normal life expectancy. This raises the issue of ethicality as the clinical trial but did not have full ethical clearance and participants did not receive proper informed consent. Applied Ethics for professional case based has been attempted in this project as Jiankui did not look have a solid understanding of knowledge for the twins future development.

As an aspiring communication profession, this taught me to carefully evaluate a potential client with their problem before agreeing to work with them in order to reduce the risk of damaging my own reputation.

Reference:

About Lulu and Nana: Twin Girls Born Healthy After Gene Surgery As Single-Cell Embryos, youtube viewed 3rd of December 2019 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th0vnOmFltc>

Cyranoski, D 2019. 'The CRISPR-baby scandal: what’s next for human gene-editing' The Nature, viewed 3rd of December <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00673-1>

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News and Newsworthy

News is often defined as information that is worth spreading, however, not all news are considered to be newsworthy.

Lamble (2016) mentioned the masterton’s six essential elements to consider before identifying something as newsworthy. The elements includes Significance, Proximity, Conflict, Human interest, Novelty, and Prominence. Significance is related to the number of people affected by an event, such as local community facing natural disaster and many did not survive. Proximity refer to events that are happening close to us geographically, it focuses on emotion, culture, and history. Conflict deal with controversial issues such as politics, environment, and opinion based issues. Human interest piece is associated with knowing what other people are doing such as celebrity gossips. Novelty refers to the unusual thing that happen such as a man biting a dog, this type of situation does not happen often and that is why it is considered to be a novelty. Prominence refer to people who appear on the news frequently and has developed notoriety

Example:

What is considered to be newsworthy really depends on each individual, some might find certain aspect worthy of knowing and some opposed to the idea. The article above emphasis on Australia and Climate refugees, individuals who are associated with those two context would most likely find this piece newsworthy. However, from a person located in the opposite side of the world might understand that this is news but not newsworthy. From people that are affected by this issue's perspective, they will find the significance, proximity, and conflict elements in this article, making it worthy of their attention.

Reference:

Lamble, S. (2016). Chapter 3: News Values. In Lamble, S., News as it happens (3rd ed., pp. 33-47).

Indigenous investigation. 'Too hot for humans? First Nations people fear becoming Australia's first climate refugees', The Guardian. viewed 11th of December 2019 <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/18/too-hot-for-humans-first-nations-people-fear-becoming-australias-first-climate-refugees>

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Public relation campaign #LikeaGirl

The issue of gender equality has become better in the past decades but the stereotype of girls being weak still lingers around.

A campaign called ‘Like a Girl’ by Always, a feminine hygiene product company turned a phrase that has been established as an insult into an empowering message. Always revolves around the theme of confidence and the campaign aligns perfectly with the company’s theme. According to Always, 94% of girls has become more confident as a result of the campaign, leading to receive multiple awards.

Purpose of this campaign is to raise girls self confidence and tackling societal limitations by turning a simple phrase ‘like a girl’ which usually been represented in a negative connotation and flip it to an empowering statement.

The goal of this campaign is to boost the brand’s reputation through raising awareness of gender equality issues.

The main message of ‘Like a Girl’ is making people acknowledge the fact that conforming to stereotypes created by toxic society is wrong. It is everyone’s job to make sure young girls grew up in a safe environment where they do not have to be worried of gender discrimination.

Key stakeholders here are girls hitting puberty and women in general as the brand is selling feminine hygiene product. Boys and men to make them see the issues from female's perspective and start to make a change. Their competitors as the initial objective is to eliminate competition by generating strong unique selling point. School community as they use those areas to physically market their campaign.

Like a Girl communication methods includes releasing an inspiring video on youtube, facebook, and their official website to reach a wide audience. The video feature young girls to create an innocent feel and grasp the audience's emotion and empathy. The storyline of the video is very realistic and authentic, making the audience engage in more. They also implement ads campaign around school areas to boost girl’s self confidence and eliminate inappropriate behaviour from people around. The campaign established a viral hashtag on instagram #likeagirl and it is still being used around from people who want to inspire others.

The campaign started in October 2015 and still continue to grow from that until recently. All the information is still accessible online and Always is still keeping track of the impact the campaign brings.

This campaign is successful because it tackles gender equality issue through a very unique representation perspectives of young girls. Always has clearly identified their target audience and goals to generate this campaign.

Reference:

Always P&G company, 2015. '#likeagirl campaign' Always. viewed 10th of December 2019 <https://always.com/en-us/about-us>

Always #LikeAGirl (2015), streaming video, viewed 10th of December 2019 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs>

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Bootcamp interview

Having the skill to develop something from scratch and building it up one step at a time is essential to enhance our creativity and succeed.

We were given a task in class to interview a classmate to see their thoughts on the course and identify relevant problems to come up with a solution through the process of design thinking. Step 1 is the interviewing part and getting to know my subject (Boris). Step 2 is identifying his need. Boris find people from this course boring as he refers to them as ‘cookie cutter’ people. Step 3 is the insight, I think that Boris is opinionated but I respect his confidence to voice out his opinions. Step 4 is coming up with a problem statement, in this case is As a first year prof comm student at RMIT, Boris needs a way to get the RMIT community, more emphasis on student to be more engaging and interactive in class. Step 5 is to ideate, I came up with some ideas Boris could utilize to solve his problem. The solutions includes writing feedback suggestion to RMIT, create a club to raise awareness of the issue, learn to be more open minded, and switch university to find a better fit. Step 6 is to come up with new idea that Boris is happy with and is willing to work on it. This would be going straight to a staff member of RMIT and develop a plan to raise engagement level in the classroom.

To be completely honest, I am not satisfied with my design thinking because it does not have a uniqueness and creativity. It was quite difficult to come up with ideas in limited time that was given. However, if I were to have more time, I would do more brainstorm to figure out the most effective way to help Boris achieve his goal. Syed (2015) talks about how small projects allow you to make mistakes and how those mistakes will improve your skills in design thinking. The mini bootcamp is a small project that gives me room to make mistakes and with that I aim to practice my creative thinking to find better ways to solve a problem.

Reference:

Newsgeist 2015 Ignite, streaming video. Viewed 17th of December 2019 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=a_VjmaRgB1o&feature=emb_title>

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Overall Reflection

Throughout the course of Contemporary Approach to Media and Communication I have learned new skills including photographic storytelling, internet culture, design thinking, advertising, research and ethics, and public relations. All the topics have its relevance and that allows me to gain a better understanding of how the media culture operates.

My favorite topic would be the media and online storytelling where we explore the methods that are used to tell a story on the internet platform. An interesting thing I have learned that the post mass medium focus on quality over quantity, whereas the traditional medium concentrate on producing quantity to generate more audience. The old traditional business model in terms of communication would not work effectively if they were to be implemented in our modern days because public demand quality and efficiency.

The issue of digital disruption interest me to dig deeper into the topic in order to make better judgement on the context Jeff Jarvis audio book called ‘Geeks bearing Gifts’ talks about how technology has disrupted the news and journalism industry in terms of its business model. Many argue that media and technology is taking away the core value of journalism, however, it is all about being able to identify what is newsworthy and what is not. Jarvis (2015) stated that ‘But we in the field came to define ourselves less by our values and mission and more by our media and tools ’, it is essential to be able to utilize the media tools to better work quality. The need to for traditional medium companies is to adapt and find a way back to the top, they can not blame it on the technological advancement.

This is a mind map of what we have learned throughout the intensive course

Overall, this intensive program is very challenging for me because the workload and the time given to complete put lots of pressure on me. However, I really did enjoyed the course and would definitely do it again.

Reference:

Jarvis, J 2015. Jeff Jarvis Audio Book "Geeks Bearing Gifts, Sound recording. Viewed 12 of December 20190

Jeff Jarvis’s Ignite Talk at Newsgeist (2015) on the death of the mass media business modelNewsgeist 2015 Ignite Talk by Jeff Jarvis

PHOTOJOURNALISM

VISUAL NARRATIVE OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT CAUSED BY SOCIAL MEDIA

Detail shot:

Comparing your realistic life to other's highlights on Instagram hinders you from reaching your full potential.

Action shot:

You start to lose yourself when you conform to societal beauty standards created by the media.

Environmental portrait:

The more screen time you consume the less you are in touch with the real world.