The Role of the Newspapers

The newspapers used to dominate the media industry; being the only source of international news. However now, newspapers have taken a back seat because of the dominance of... well every other industry in the media.

If you were to walk into your local newsagents and pick up today's paper, you may not find what you expect. About half of the papers published these days are known as tabloids; sources of gossip about people no one actually really cares about. The other half actually talk about news, and they are known as broadsheets, or as I like to call them: the good newspapers.

As is much like their styles represent, newspapers are clearly for two types of people. Now I don't like to stereotype, but here it is necessary. People who read broadsheets like the Guardian are often considered to be of the upper middle class, and of quite good education. They most likely go to work in a suit and get paid handsomely. The people who pick up a tabloid are often not that much different, but clearly care more about the front side of Katie, 23 from Essex rather than the current situation in the Leveson Inquiry or North Korea.

This does not mean that tabloids ignore actual news and look only to supplement the desires of their audience by providing a scripture of the phone conversation between John Terry and Katie, 23 from Essex. Usually, the Daily Mail will have an actual news story on the front page, so long as it is covered by a massive picture of Katie Price. However, the way that they will deal with the story is different.

Take the death of Kim Jong Il for example. The Guardian gave us all the details, with the facts about the new ruler of the Galactic Empire North Korea displayed in a tasteful way. The Daily Mail will have had an entire story dedicated to talking about Kim Jong Un, and probably slating him for his dress sense or something.

Either way, the purpose of newspapers is clearly to give people information. They remain publishing because of their freedom. Ofcom watch over the television and radio, which means that they cannot show bias or try to sway the public's opinion one way or another. However, the newspapers are absolutely allowed to do that. Everything that broadcasters want to say on air goes into the newspapers. They can pick sides in a political debate, or even through elections, and can voice their opinions about anything so long as they remain factual and to-the-point. This can often mean that not all of the information is presented fairly, but that's not likely to happen in any of the media.

However, like the rest of the media, the freedom newspapers is under threat. I've discussed previously how the PCC were looking to reform their guidelines, well recently the PCC disbanded and is looking to reform. However, broadcasting watchdog Ofcom could oversee the Press Complaints Commission reform if the press can't agree on their terms.

This would surely see the end of bias newspapers, and therefore eliminating the need for newspapers altogether. Aside from the internet where every word spoken is a free word, newspapers are the only medium that can truly voice opinion unregulated, so long as it's within reason.

It was not a reporter from Sky News, or the producer of BBC News 24 who were involved in the phone hacking scandals, no, it was a newspaper. This firstly shows the lengths that newspapers will go these days to gain information, methods that broadcast media would never even think of, but also how free the newspapers are to do these things.

That said, while I agree the newspapers are an advocate of free speech, I also think that they're going about it the wrong way. Okay, if they'd hacked Colonel Gadaffi's phone and therefore figured out his movements, that would have been fine, but Katie, 23 from Essex? No one wants to know about Katie, 23 from Essex. Oh, unless of course you read the Sun. No offence.

But yes, "public interest" is always how the newspapers agree on how and what they publish, but sometimes I think they've got it wrong. Or at least the tabloids have.

Pete out.

Blogging and Vlogging

As an advocate of both forms of logging things on the internet, I thought it only appropriate to make a post about both of them.

Blogging is an amazing tool used by thousands of people to update the world about their pathetic little lives. I myself update the world constantly on my pathetic little life through my main blog, which is www.clichelifestuff.blogspot.com.

I also update the world through the medium of video, and now I have several YouTube channels, as well as two vlog channels. My first and main one is www.youtube.com/user/ThePeterHutch and my second, collaborative channel is called Electric Teapots, which you can find at www.youtube.com/user/ElectricTeapots.

I started vlogging because of YouTube user Toby Turner, who adds a new video literally every day by filming a video on his iPhone and then immediately uploading it to YouTube.

I find that absolutely amazing though. The fact that in today's society someone who barely has any money can pick up a camera and tell the world how they feel, and upload it without even going home. Although of course Toby Turner (also known as Tobuscus) has in fact made a fortune through posting videos on the internet.

And while we're talking about my inspirations, I decided to start blogging partly because my friends were and also because I was a fan of www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com. I have been blogging for about two years now, and it has certainly helped with my ability to just talk about nothing and make it last for five minutes (or in retrospect 500 words or more).

My main blog is now quite popular now, sporting dozens of views every day. Okay, it's not exactly internationally acclaimed, and it's certainly an acquired taste, but it's a good start.

Writing is what I feel most comfortable with though, and that is why I have only used this format for the OIPP and not videos, although I would have liked to if my talking-to-myself skills develop to the point where I can jabber on about topics that aren't completely pointless, although the links are there if you want to check out how I video. Oh, but the watershed warning is there. It's not for the faint-hearted.

So that's how I mainly use social media. Blogs and vlogs. And I love how I can share them through Facebook as well. It's pretty damn amazing.

Pete out.

The Role of Social Networking

Social networking is a concept made entirely on the internet. Today it is centred around Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, but is covered by many other sites as well.

In the early days forums were used for discussion, which involved a 'topic' being started and people responding to an opening statement with 'threads'. This opened up a new market, since users were attempting to have conversation, but it involved having to refresh the page every few seconds to keep up. Instant Messaging soon became a reality, reshaping how people communicated online.

Forums did not die though, and are still very popular today for large discussions involving hundreds of people. In fact, currently it is the only way that hundreds of morons idiots regular people can talk about nonsense topics.

However, as for social networking, the first massive site introduced was MySpace, which enabled users to create and customise their own "space", and they could also upload pictures, tell people what their current mood was and share posts about what they are doing at that moment in time. It was very much like making emails publicly viewable, your scrapbook publicly viewable, as well as your music tastes and holiday snaps.

Internet stalking could finally become a reality.

MySpace was soon dominated by the much simpler Facebook, and probably because of its more simplistic layout. Facebook enabled all of the same things as MySpace, except for the customisable user-page. This made internet stalking even easier, since everything you did on Facebook was instantly shared to the world. If you upload photos, the front page of Facebook would be updated with this information. With Facebook also came an amazing feature known as "tagging" in which you can tell Facebook which face belongs to which friend.

However, while this all may sound like a massive "I'm giving out my details to the world" you can actually only show this information to your friends. That's amazing. So if you want to have a private conversation with someone or a group of people (something you couldn't do on forums), then you can!

Twitter is an even simpler version of Facebook, although not as popular. It limits your updates to 140 characters to create a new form of "microblogging" that is even more micro than Tumblr, which is a micro version of Blogger, which is the best one. I personally can't comment much about Twitter, aside from its involvement in many-a-scandal of recent years. The biggest scandal, which started the "Twitter row", which in-turn nearly forced hand to have new privacy laws set on the internet, was the super-injunction scandal of 2011. Virtually everyone who had taken out a super-injunction was revealed on Twitter, as part of a campaign to make press free and to not let the rich buy their privacy.

So each of these different sites plays a different role in society, it seems. I think the best way to describe this is by representing how an update would look on each site.

Facebook status update: I have just eaten a ham sandwich. It was delicious. *Three of your friends like this*
Twitter Tweet: I'm eating a ham sandwich. *Retweeted several times*
Tumblr post: I just ate the most glorious ham sandwich, here is a picture of a ham sandwich from the internet.
Blogger post: Let me tell you about the ham sandwich that I just ate. It all started when I woke up this morning and ate a bowl of cereal. I then took the dog for a walk and saw a man dressed like a lemon. I asked this man why he was dressed like a lemon and he gave me a sour look. That was a pun. I then went home and thought long and hard about what I would have for lunch. The answer then struck me: a simple, humble ham sandwich ... (and so on, and so forth)

So social networking is not only a tool to update the world, but also to challenge the privacy laws set down by society. Oh, and of course it's also the biggest advertising medium in the world now. It's just massive, and dominates many people's lives. And it will continue to get bigger until everyone in the world has the notification icon appear literally in front of their eyes as a holographic image.

I think it's almost safe to say that the world is revolving around social media.

Pete out.

The Evolution of the Moving Image

The first moment that man realised that the could create pictures without paint was with the camera obscura, which is essentially a blacked-out room with a tiny hole on one side. An image of the outside world is then projected upside down onto the opposite wall.

Since then we have strived to capture living moments and project them to people all over the world. The earliest way of doing this was by producing images on revolving drums and disks in the 1830s with independent invention by Simon von Stampfer (Stroboscope) in Austria, Joseph Plateau (Phenakistoscope) in Belgium and William Horner (zoetrope) in Britain.

The next big thing in moving images was with the invention of the kinetoscope, which allowed one viewer to watch a repeated piece of film which was 10 frames per second. Due to the way in which these were viewed, the films were often called "peep shows" and showed scantily-clad (or at least for the time) women showing their ankles and dancing around. The adult movie industry, thus, was born.

Projectors were then invented by the Edison Group and other inventors, which in-turn gave birth to the cinema era. Silent movies were played on screens to the public, accompanied by live music or commentary. Soon though, music could be recorded and added to these silent movies, which was slated by theatre musicians whose jobs would surely be lost in years to come.

In 1910, on-screen credits were introduced, which meant that actors were more likely to be recognised from the films that they had done, and in-turn giving birth to the creation of film stars. This made film much more of a social thing, giving way to the idea of gaining celebrity status simply by appearing on a screen.

After this, common film techniques began to take shape. Techniques as simple as continuity shots (which we just assume to be a natural part of filming now) were introduced. Reverse angle shots for conversations between people and cross-cutting between two or more action scenes happening at the same time saw movie producers being more ambitious with their filming, since rivalry in the film industry was starting to heat up.

It was only in 1927, though, that synchronised dialogue was introduced into film. The very first film to do this was The Jazz Singer and only two years later many of the films that Hollywood produced were mainly talk-based.

As it did with all industries, the Second World War created a boom in film productions. Both propaganda and morale-boosting films were made in the dozens. This also saw the rapid advancement of film technology,  as well as setting about the popularisation of Film Noir, and in 1941, Citizen Kane was released, which is argued to be the best film ever made. I mean, I would argue that because I grew up when HD was being developed, but it did revolutionise storytelling within films, and certainly set the stage for modern motion pictures.

During the post-war era the cinema industry was threatened by the widespread release of the television, which also sought the release of short dramas that would eventually be known as "soaps". Many cinemas close down during this time, but 20th Century Fox introduced the cinemascope, bringing on the marketing strategy that "bigger is better" and introducing widescreen to cinemas.

The introduction of colour to moving images was a massive breakthrough, making the film industry even more popular since it would be a few years before colour was introduced to broadcasting.

In the 60's, Mary Poppins was released, which was the first film to include cartoon animation and live action on screen at once, proving that moving image technology was still advancing.

CGI then became a reality in the 70s, and Star Wars became the first film to include 3D wire framing, which was used in the epic trench-run scene. In the 80s, Tron became the first film to use more than 15 minutes of CGI on-screen.

The use of 3D in motion picture has been around for a very long while, but was seen as a gimmick due to the poor colour quality you receive from the red/blue glasses. However, with the release of Avatar, 3D suddenly became the new hit thing for films, surpassing HD. It is now also being introduced into television, and some popular channels are introducing 3D channels (such as Sky Sports 3D), as well as the gaming industry sticking their fair share in now.

All of the technologies that we see in today's television, film and games were developed originally for film and then adapted. And now with the popularisation of the internet and YouTube, the average person is now able to create and share movies of their own.

If that's not cracking, I don't know what is.

Pete out.

The Evolution of Music

Since the dawn of civilisation, nay the dawn of life itself, music has been a form of communicating or entertainment. Music began as a form of communication between animals of the same species, or to ward off predators, or to attract mates, but once humans started to evolve, music evolved with them.

It soon became almost a language to the human race, the beating of sticks or rhythmic songs creating the most efficient form of communication before speech. But when humans did learn how to talk and form language, music did not die. In fact, it soon served a new purpose.

In 325AD Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and with that came the development of European music. This led to many different movements of music, often relating to the styles of paintings.

In 1430, the Renaissance began, which saw the simplistic values of Greek and Roman Classic styles, and after this in 1562, Pope Pius IV restored church music to pure vocal form. Of course, women were not allowed to sing on stage or in churches, so castration emerged as a way of preserving high-pitched male voices.

So at this point, it is clear that music had become absolutely defined as a form of entertainment, rather than communication, to the point where it was necessary for men to be pitch-perfect to please those of higher power.

The 1600s potentially saw the most important time for musical development, with the Baroque period. During this time, music became much more social, but was still mainly for the upper classes. It was also during this time that some of the most influential musicians of all time were born, including Bach, Handel and Vivaldi.

In 1756, Mozart was born, who is arguably the most important figure in musical history. In his very early years he composed Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which is now taught as a simple rhyme to millions of children every day. In his life he composed over 600 musical pieces, and inspired other great composers like Beethoven, whose Symphony No. 5 is considered the most popular classical work ever written.

A hundred years later, the slave trade began, which introduced West African rhythms as well as work songs and chants to America. This is arguably when music became truly accessible to common people, with songs being used to create unison rather than to entertain. These chants and work songs strongly influenced Blues and Jazz, which were musics composed by the lower classes and played to the lower classes, and still have strong links today.

In 1877, Thomas Edison invented sound recording, and a year later he patented the phonograph. The evolution of music had now reached its peak, and soon the listening of music would become accessible to everyone, and not only something to be viewed live as an audience at a show.

It was quite a few years before recorded music actually became accessible though. Many of the famous works of this time, including Ragtime and Swan Lake were still only available to those who had the money and means to go and see it live. However, the phonograph was taking off and being sold, making recorded music accessible to those with the money to buy it i.e. the upper classes.

However, by 1942, it was clear that records had become available to many other people. The song Chattanooga Choo Choo became the first "gold record" and therefore the first record to have one million copies sold.

During the 60's, the Beatles and The Rolling Stones became immensely popular, proving that music had truly become absolutely accessible to all people of every creed. During this time, the Beatles released their album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hears Club Band, taking full advantage of the 72 minute record released only a few years before.

A massive breakthrough came about when Sony introduced the Walkman in 1978, which was the first portable stereo. Music had once again evolved in its purpose, for now people could listen to their favourite bands while jogging or if a passenger in a car on a long journey. Music had now become something that you could constantly listen to, with radio being easily accessible, TV on the rise with MTV going live in 1981, and music videos becoming more popular.

CDs were then invented, but did not overtake vinyl records (which were still the dominant medium despite tapes being released) until 1988. It could hold the same number of songs as a vinyl, but could be copied many times without affecting the quality of the audio, making music much easier to spread. And of course, this made the illegal sharing of music much easier.

In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod, which completely revolutionised the music industry and the way music is sold. Music could be bought and downloaded from the internet as opposed to buying them in-store, and this was also much cheaper.

Due to all of this though, ironically enough the best way to listen to music still is to buy a ticket, and go and see a band live, and that is also how many of today's bands get their money, due to the rise of illegal music sharing.

It just comes to show, really, that with all of this technology around us, we still absolutely prefer the classic method of enjoying our music.

Reference: http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0151192.html

Pete out.

Studentship Review

Okay, so this week's task was to review the style of the studentship tasks done in that presentation style, and then usually tested on it with an online test.

Overall, I liked this style of studentship task. I felt like I was learning, but at the same time not putting hours of my time into it. The online test was a good way to reinforce this knowledge, and made me feel like I had actually taken the information in, which doesn't generally happen very well when trying to skim large books.

I do like the layout of it; it gives a clear manner in which to view the important information and is usually bullet-pointed. What I occasionally dislike about this layout is when text is included as pictures. Unless used as part of a diagram (and therefore necessary) this text is sometimes hard to read and doesn't suit the flow of the page.

I also dislike when the presentation tries to engage the reader by asking questions, but lists the answer beneath the question so there's no room for thinking. And by having multiple answers listed on the page, the wrong answer can become embedded in a reader's mind. For example (this hasn't been included in one of these presentations, but details my point) a question could ask:

What does the term 'DVD' stand for?
 - Digital Versatile Disc
 - Digital Video Disc

Logically, the answer would be the second one because DVDs were released onto the market as a new way to play back videos, but yet the first answer is the correct one. It can leave the reader second-guessing themselves, whereas if the second answer were not included on the page at all, and instead the words "The term 'DVD' stands for Digital Versatile Disc" then there is no confusion.

Either way, I do like the style of these studentship tasks and I definitely do think they should continue for the future years, so long as those annoying in-presentation-questions are sorted out.

I do hope this has been informative.

Pete out.

 - THIS IS NOT MY VIDEO -

Before you read this blog entry, please check out the video above. The idea of this campaign is to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise enough awareness for his arrest. He has no agenda for his war, and seeks only to make himself more powerful. He kidnaps children, turns the young women into sex slaves and makes the boys fight for his army.

Over the last few years, the governments of the western world have fought against and destroyed the empires of Sadam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden and more recently Colonel Gadaffi, because of the threats that they posed to the entire world. However, Joseph Kony has remained under the radar because his efforts are of no concern to anyone outside Africa.

That's where the public has stepped in.

We have seen the power of social networking before. Groups on Facebook brought people together to start the riots in Egypt, which led to the eventual downfall of Colonel Gadaffi. And for the last 8 years, the group Invisible Children have been gathering as much information as they can, and campaigning to the American government to step in. However, it was only in October of 2011 that Obama sent a small group of soldiers into Uganda to help stop Kony.

This year the Invisible Children group have put together this half-hour documentary and are willing people to share it in any way they can. Thousands of people on YouTube, Vimeo and other streaming sites have shared this video on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. There are more people on Facebook now than there were people on Earth 200 years ago, and this campaign is using that to their full advantage. What's more promising is that this video was posted two days ago (05/03/2012) and has already had an overwhelming response.

Slowly but surely, Joseph Kony is making himself a household name because of social networking. Proving that today, it does not take one man in a government to make a difference to the world, it is now the people who are making the changes. Everyday social networking makes the world more and more democratic, because it gives people the opportunity to have a voice.

So sign the pledge that this video talks about, buy the action kit and donate money to the cause.

Don't let me try and sway you though. All the convincing I needed was in that video.

Reference: The KONY 2012 video on YouTube. http://youtu.be/Y4MnpzG5Sqc
HOW TO HELP:
Join TRI or Donate to Invisible Children: http://bit.ly/yp5Ffv
Purchase KONY 2012 products: http://invisiblechildrenstore.myshopify.com/
Sign the Pledge: http://www.causes.com/causes/227-invisible-children

Thank you.

Pete out.