Reflections on Module 1
So, here is the end of Module 1 ! Four weeks of dynamic introduction into media and the transformations it has undergone so far. I have greatly enjoyed out discussions in class, which I quite honestly found very inspiring, and I often found myself thinking about the issues that we considered long after the end of the class. While, I am not sure that I can comment on each assigment that we have had during these four weeks ( like many of you have done and "hey, well done!"), I do want to mention an interesting tendency that I noticed this week. At a certain point I realized that, as a result of this module, I have not only accumulated a solid mass of information on media but also the way I react on the information that I constantly get from the news on media has changed. What only several weeks ago I would have passed as "curious" but irrelevant or unimportant, now I see as an occurance in a specific context. I see the problem in things (tendencies, practices) and I am able to link it to other problems in media culture. Thus, for example, in the beginning of September I read in Netinfo.bg a short "just to let you know" kind of an article on how the compromising pictures of a girl, found in her lost camera, were disseminated in You Tube. I would have normally approached this information as a tragic accident with highly dramatic consequences. Thinking about it now I approach it from the perspective, for example, of participatory culture (my first association). I think about the "vulnerability" of content, about the issue of authorship in practices such as blogging(which as all of us already know can be so problematic), I think about how participatory applications In Internet allow others to participate with you (you as a content) even without your own knowledge. And then we talk about "democratic potential" but how many texts from our bibliography talk about the right to protect yourself ("you" as an individual, not merely the content one has provided in Internet)?
Oh well, this is just an example illusrating what I mean. I`m curious to see what follows and I hope it will be as challanging as it has been so far! In the meantime you might be interested to read my essay on the Yerrow Arrow project, my last assignment and culmination of the first module :
