Tuesday, March 31, 2009
03.31.09
I saw a lot of stuff of surveillance in the movies. Usually, the characters in the movie use the cameras which exist nearly everywhere to get the information they want. In the second version of national treasure, Nicolas Cage was chased by the villains so that he has to throw away the wood with important message on it. Before passing a crossroad, he got an idea. He lets his partner break the traffic rules and at the meantime he holds the wood to meet the camera at the crossroad. By throwing the wood, he escapes from the chasing of villain; also he gets the message by getting into the database. I have to say that it is amazing to see the clever way of using cameras around the crossroad. However, it is a movie. In our real life, the cameras always watch us without notice. We may notice the cameras around the cross road, but we can never know the hidden cameras which will violate our privacy.
There is an event in China recently make me think more about the effect of cameras in public. At the night of October 11th last year, a fight occurred between two groups of people in front of a bar due to some trivial quarrel. However, one of the sides in fight is a group of police and they finally killed one person in the other group. After what happened, there are several descriptions about the issue. At first, the public voice stood in the side of the dead person who is a obviously victim. However, there is a camera outside of the bar recorded the whole fight and the tape was showed on TV. From the tape, we can see that the dead person started to hit the policy several times without hearing his companions’ dissuasion. However, this is not the whole record of the event since it doesn’t show how the man be killed. It is said that the whole tape will be used as evidence in the court. But after the tape showed, the public voice turned to support the policy. Some people even said that the man is a ruffian who should be killed sooner or later. However, since the public can not see the whole record, they will never know what happened in the last few minutes and the discussion will continue. However, I guess it is a positive effect of the camera surveillance in our society. Sometimes, it can provide evidence for the controversial event.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
women's role
At the same time, the feminism is still very popular social issue. The change of the role made women to consider their own identity more thoroughly and conversely they may feel more confident about themselves.
Moreover, in my mind, one extraordinary example of the growing social class is that more and more commercial industries set women as their marketing target. Now we have special magazines designed for women, the special cigarettes for women, and the special advertisement for women and so on.
In china, there are several male competition shows on TV. On these shows, men should strive hardly to survive from the fierce competition such as expressing their male power and the judges are always women. These shows are very popular in China. They drew attention of lots of women audience and made money of that. Although someone argues that all these phenomena shows that the social status of women have increased, I still believe that this is only feint fantasy which covers the reality that the commercial industries set women as their quarry.
Friday, March 27, 2009
the reliablity of media
In the past, I always took the information on the media serious and believed whatever they said. But now, no matter what the media reports, I would suspect first and look for other proof in the different media. Although I can get the same information in different media, I would not believe anything totally.
There is a very famous controversy issue of media in China which lasting from last year to now called “Huanan Tiger Issue”. This issue is originated from that Shanxi local government declared that a farmer photographed some pictures of Huanan Tiger which is a nearly extinct species of animal in the world when he was climbing the mountain and then showed the pictures on the media. This is a very important breakthrough because the experts had not found the Huanan Tiger for many years. However, after a few days, some experts claimed that the pictures are faked while the farmer insisted they are real. At the same time, the local government insisted the pictures were real and argued with the opposite opinion. This argument lasted for a long time with many experts, national forest bureau and national court involved in until a person found the tiger on the picture is highly similar with the tiger on the New Year pictures which published several years before. This evoked big discussion on the internet and the reality nearly came out. Finally, it turned out that the photos are faked and the potential maker is the local government which wants to make a name for it.
Eventually, this becomes a completely farce which destroy the government dignity and a lot of experts’ which have their own secret intentions. However, I don’t want to talk too much about the lack of government obligations and how many famous and common people stimulate the development of the issue. What I want to say is there is nothing can be believed in the world, even if you see it by yourself!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
03.26.2009
Therefore, there will be a thousand of Hamlet in a thousand people’s eyes. The point views which different people watch the same movie would be dramatically different. In the view of cross-cultural communication, especially when the movies travel across the culture, the meaning of them would be dismissed or misunderstood. As soon as there are a lot of Chinese directors who are also famous in Hollywood, some of their works would be controversial, especially the works involve in the ancient Chinese culture. On one hand, they should pay attention to the receive discount of the oversea audience when they come across with the complex and unfamiliar Chinese ancient culture. On the other hand, they should consider the tolerance rate of domestic audience for the change of the gorgeous ancient culture. If they can handle this dilemma, the movie would be extremely successful.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Fortunately, this trip gives me a precious opportunity to learn the social culture of America. My friend Lisa is a nice woman and she introduced me every possible knowledge of American culture during the period I lived in her house. She brought me to her friend's party so that I learned how the family party is in America, we played the card game which taught me a lot of American history and pop culture, and I almost win! Also, the relationship between her and her her children makes me thinging about the different adaptation styles for foreign people in America.
This is really a wonderful trip, and it opens a door for me to get understand the real Americans.
Friday, March 20, 2009
sdsu
She worked as a television journalist in Idaho and now she is very interested in media convergence. She brought me to her classes are talking about the practice of television news report.
Besides this, she talked a lot of the media convergence issues to me, such as the poor situation of the print journalism, the bloggers and the online news. She said she had to learn the new techonolies in advance to adapt to the new media environment so that she can teach her students to do that. Therefore, she bought iMac, kept updated to the new medium.
By talking to her and visiting her class, I really learned a lot, not only the place, but also the media convergence in other parts of America.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
San Diego!!
Now, I really think that being out of wyoming may be a good choice to see the different parts of America and expand my eye view. I really love this place and do not want to leave...
Monday, March 16, 2009
2009/3/13
Although I am a stranger here, I still want to talk about the difference between media in China and America with my limited experience.
I have worked in the newspaper office in China for several months. In my aspect, the operation of media in China should follow certain rules and some rules are very strict. Because most of China’s media are controlled by the government, they should follow the principles which government made for them. For example, when some big events occurs such as the plan of exploring the moon, almost all the newspapers which serve for the party will receive a notice of how to report the news such as using what pictures, focusing on what aspects and even the position of the newspaper for the reports. It sounds crazy, but that is exactly how they work. Although it is a good way for government to control the reporting for big events, it is boring and suffocating for people to read the some articles in nearly all newspaper they get. In my opinion, this kind of control deprives the liberal right of media to present the different visual angles of such same thing and the delight of reading for readers.
Obviously, China’s media is more conservative than American’s due to the system reason. However, with the gradually implement of opening policy in China, the media have got more autonomy in their operation. First, they should work hard for supporting themselves, like the media in America. Government decreases the support on media so that they must find ways to survive in the fierce competition. Second, they have high-level power in deciding the operation, the advertising strategy and the topic selection.
I know in America the environment for liberal speaking is very loose, people can criticize the government, the present or the parties on either TV or newspaper publicly. But today, after I talked to a friend, I realized that there is no extreme liberal either in America or in somewhere else in the world. The liberal is always compared and the conservative forever exists.
merit of traditional medium
Also, he talked about his opinion towards media convergence process. Since my advisor was an newspaper editor and studied the layout of newspaper for many years, he is very worried about the lost of “layout language” of the online version for newspaper. In his eyes, the “layout language” is the core factor for the editors to express their attitudes towards the news since they can put the different important levels of news in different positions. My advisor said he realized that if the print newspapers want to survive form the convergence process, they have to make changes to respond to the needs of audience, but we also have to recognize the merit of traditional medium and adopt them while we embrace the future of the new medium.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
personality shaped by media
Recently, I read a topic published on a very famous BBS called TIANYA COMMUNITY in China. TIANYA COMMUNITY is very famous in China due to the compared open environment and the participation of various kinds of people whose job level can range from inferior workers to the CEO of multinational company. People can post any information on there. The topic I read named “wrench event of male movie stars” in which a woman who declared her former job as a manager in a famous holiday inn revealed several wrench events of famous male stars she met in the hotel during her work. This topic shows high authenticity and draws a lot of attention from other readers, a furious discussion began. Some people came to reveal more events and more people show their astoundment about this. They cannot believe the male movie stars they enthusiastically like are so different in private from the glorious image on the screen. Some people also show the destruction which this topic brought to their world view by saying “oh my god, how can this society be like this? Is there anything I can believe?”
The reason this topic draws my attention is because I think it is a good example of the media shaping people’s personality. Obviously, people can never get such information like this in the past without the developed media. They can live in a world shaped by themselves and the very surroundings and hardly disturbed by external environment almost a life. But in nowadays, various kinds of information are extremely easy to obtain. I can understand the astonishment when people get to know the real characters of the stars they spend money and sentiment for. By receiving such astonishment, it is hard for people, especially for those naïve teenagers, not to doubt everything.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
media world
In my opinion, a world of media means the world we are living is full of media while a media world means the world itself is mediated. In class, we talked about the negative effects which media, especially internet extends to people. However, I think it should depend on the audience when we talking about the media effects.
Even if the internet becomes more popular, the traditional media still plays an important role. In China, newspapers are the main resource of information to families. There are a lot of families subscribe the local newspaper and they considered it as a good way for them to get to be informed. Moreover, the television programs are still developing quickly and diversely and holding a big amount of audience. For the old people who are too fusty to get familiar with the internet, the radio broadcasting is their favorite media.
We should admit that internet is very important in our daily life. For me, I cannot even live without internet for more than one week. If we can use the internet in a right way, the negative effects of internet mean nothing to us. In China, there are many people who are addicted to the internet games, most of them are students. They spent a lot of time on it and became indifferent to other things such as study, their family members and so on. Many teenagers dropped out of school because they lost their interest in study. What even worse is that some teenagers committed to crime in order to get money to pay for the online games and this phenomenon is becoming frequently serious issue. I still read form the newspaper that a man got into the divorce trouble because he is too addicted to games so that his wife cannot bear him any more. There is another special phenomenon related to online games in China. When we play the online game, there is something called “equipment” (I am not sure about this, sorry) in it which includes the coins, the clothing with different power, the weapons and so on. These equipments need player to spend much time and money to gain. If someone wants to obtain the equipment without spend time on it, they can buy it from other players with a higher price. Therefore, this encourages teenagers to spend time on it and sell what they get and then make money of it. During summer vocation, many internet bars hire school students to win the equipment in the games by paying them based on their work. For the students, they can make money and play games at the same time. In my aspect, I think it is a very bad circle. The more people get into the internets, especially the online games, the more they will lose in real world. Since they can and already gained reputations and satisfaction on the internet, why they want to go back to real world?
In conclusion, media is created by human and it should be used by human. What we should do is to use them in the right way and never lost in them.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
print reading?
I have to say that the high technology may really chanllenge the traditional media. At the times when people still arguing whether the internet reading will cause the dysfuctional reading ability in print reading, the rapid speedy development of high technology gives people no time to think about so much. They just dig into our lives, provide us undeniable convenience and attract our attention away from the traditional medium.
I don't want to be such pessimistic, but maybe one day the print books can only stay in the deep space of old libarary.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
convergence in teaching creativey
Since the participatory culture drew a lot of attention from people, the teachers should also pay more attention to it and realize the importance of the participation of the students. Therefore, the teachers should encourage students to interact and participate actively in class as well as encourage their creativity and production. We all should realize that nowadays, the relationship between teachers and students is no longer sender-receiver anymore, but a more active, creative interaction.
Besides, the professors also talked about the use of blog in class. In my idea, asking students to manage a blog is a novel way for the journalism students. When I was a journalism student in China, the teacher asked us to write the news that we interested in and hand in with paper version. But now, if the students can post the news on the blog as an assignment, they can not only promote the writing ability, but also share the news to more people and experience the media convergence process.
Therefore, the convergence process is happening in nearly all aspects in our lives. The high technology should not only provides us the convenience of consuming the information, but also encourage us to think about what we can improve deeply.
Signs~Sigh~
This is a short movie about love story. The man in this movie was living a boring life by tired of working until one day he knew a girl who works in the buliding opposite to his office. He peeped the girl every day to run away from the boring work and one day the girl noticed him. Then, they began to talk by the signs on the paper, not really talking. Finally, the man asked the girl to meet and when they meet face to face, the girl say "hi" with a sign on paper!
Many people think this is a romantic love story, but I don't think so. One scene in this short movie I remembered is that before the man met the girl, he took the bus to his work place and the people in the bus used their "high technology" communication tool with apathy on their face. This scene reminds me another scence in the famous movie WALL-E, which all the people face a litter computer screen and talk through the ear-microphone to the person who is maybe on his/her side. I think it is a tragdy if people lose their normal communication skill and the communication style has to back up to the original one, by the signs....
