Week 8 - Big Politics

Media technologies have an abundance of uses, and are used to connect us to more accessible ideas while simultaneously exposing us to more information about the world we live in. This exchange of ideas is most noticeable in the areas of media, social and political change as these technologies allow us to exchange data that transform communications and the way we perceive something. The idea fits in with what we previously had discussed about framing; as a framework for how we understand facts and how they are exposed to us through how we perceive things. These media technologies help us to connect to complex relations of power involving politics and how through the media cycle the effects of media on state politics is evident as an influential tool within society.

Although, the hierarchy of media changes through the use of different technologies. Borders are broken and unrestricted, rather there is a freer flow of information and a higher degree of accessibility, through increased interactivity. This is visible through online websites that not only provide conclusive news stories but also have a designated area for user comments that are instant and give an oppourtunity for feedback and comments from users. These platforms of communication act as a way of opening up feedback loops for free speech from users, although only in the framework in which they have already set out. This is made possible through the use of tagging posts that are relevant to each other, by keeping content thorough while at the same time keeping posts relatable.

While media technologies allow an abundance of data flowing through different areas around the world and by doing this to keep informed, they can also provide new power to users and voters while maintaining a thorough framework for their content.

Week 7 - Framing versus Transversality - music, journalism and other ecologies of practice

The concept of "I've been framed" has become foundational in how we perceive things and how they come together in our view of the world. Through this framing, both inhibiting qualities of being complex and useful, it highlights the power that media assemblages have in framing our views like never before. Through the use of aggregated content that is available through the internet, it is more likely that certain disciplines such as music and journalism would be thriving as opposed to dying.

Firstly, this is evident through the use of tags as a device from framing through creating a cluster of similar searches, made possible by describing music or texts in short descriptive words that can be easily aggregated. So how can we say that these industries are dying or decreasing wh

en really, we now have more access to actual music and written ontent than ever before? Websites that offer this are available for a multitude of disciplines - particularly last.fm that compares musical tastes with other users to recommend new artists and songs. Although, an online platform that is framing a large amount of written text, audio, visual and photographs is tumblr; which as a blogging website allows all the disciplines to be posted, searched for through tags (and later tracked) as well as reblog off eachother to create a collaboration blogging platform. Websites like this highlight the importance of transversality, in that they transform as they connect things together creating a different interpretation or experience of the event. And through this, we perceive and have a different impression of texts, music, art, etc. Events can only be partially captured, and this highlights the ongoing dynamic formation that is evident in framing; relying on our own interpretations and connections with media to understand these things in a certain way, and highlight what they mean to us.

Image via tumblr.com

It is through these media technologies that we are able to connect and share information from a variety of sources, that is leading to our collaborative nature. Framing in media creates powerful assemblages that provide interactivity between different frameworks and leads to an overall sharing of information from a variety of sources instantenously.

Week 6 - Data and Media - An unrequited love?

There is an undeniable link between data and media. They co-exist and through each other raise ideas about information and the meaning that they try to get across. Although through this, there seems to be an ongoing transfer between natural data and data that is existent within technical systems, that can be comparable to last weeks idea of the World Clock. There is constant relationship evident between things that are natural, with things that are not, and it is dependant on us and our bodies (and through the media that we posses) to adapt to this change or to reject it.

The exchange of data that we receive and send off exemplifies this relationship and how through this media comes between and in a way mediates and changes our perception of how to live in conjunction to these events and processes. Think of how we interpret meteorological data in a daily way. Usually, we arrange ourselves around the day (if it's planned to rain then we leave earlier, if it's hot and sunny we wear something cooler) and in the middle of this experience is the media; informing us of these changes through news reports and channel's dedicated to the weather. The way in which we perceive these events and relationships which differs from one another, although doesn't deny that data and media are a numbers game, depending on the past to see how it will affect the future. We argue about how to interpret the evidence, finding flaws in earlier interpretations. And we keeping changing... know about the past, depends on who we are now (Edwards 2010: 17) Through this we know that data has enabled us to draw these conclusions and re-arrange our lives around the natural but also around figures of data that arrange our lives.

Our media ecologies have certain characteristics that we introduce into our lives, but also that influence us to re-arranging ourselves in a particular order around them; co-existing, in a way. They help to create a notion of a new reality in which we live through and has contributed in making our experience, in which media plays a foundational part in; acting as a relationship between our experience and the world. Data and media complement each other in supporting not only facts but also in that they share the same qualities in how we as humans arrange ourselves and our lives around them.

References

Edwards, P.N. (2010). Introduction. In: A Vast Machine. Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming. Massachusetts:: The MIT Press. p17.