somewhere I belong

03.31.09

2009-03-31T17:00:00.000-07:00

As the media becomes essential to our daily life, the merit and demerit are both appearing. Obviously, we get a lot of benefit from the media society, such as entertainment and cultivation. We rely on media industry too much so that forget maybe we are violated by it also.

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.

women's role

2009-03-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, the social roles of women have changed a lot. Women come out to work instead of staying home to care for baby and the family only contains members of mother and children has also been normal and accepted by public. In a word, women become stronger and tougher without continuing play the role of victim in our society anymore.

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.

the reliablity of media

2009-03-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

There is a so sad reality for me, and my fellow classmates in China, to major in journalism and communication, that is, the more we learn of how about the operation of media industry, the less we believe in the media. Considering the complicated operation of the media and the money-driving structure, the media become more and more unreliable.

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!

03.26.2009

2009-03-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

I always believe that different people have different characters and these different characters were caused by many factors such as growing background, cultural background and education level and so on.

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.

2009-03-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

This is a long trip for me, from San Diego to Watsonville, to San Francisco, then to San Jose. From this trip, I saw not only more cities of America, but also more aspects of American people and their lives. As a student majoring in communication and journalism, the understanding of the social culture is indispensable from my view point. This is also the trouble which bothers me most because I feel isolated in laramie, in this country and never actually involved in the life here.
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.

sdsu

2009-03-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

Yestoday, I went to San Diego State University with Becky, the friend of mine , who is a teacher in the department of journalism and media studies in SDSU. She is pursuing her phd degree at the same time in another university.
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.

San Diego!!

2009-03-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

San Diego is really a lovely place. I fall in love with it when the plane was landing in the night. I looked through out the window and found the tall buildings, they reminds me China. But when I went out in the daytime, the sunshine and the hills and sweety cars in the street made me realize that this is what I saw in the movies, and this is America.
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...

2009/3/13

2009-03-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

China and United States share the totally different cultural background, ideology and social system, so the media of the two countries would have a lot of differences. I am interested in what are the differences and how can they be shaped. However, I am still a stranger to American culture and there is a long way for me to go.
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

2009-03-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

Last night I called my advisor in China and talked about the study of media convergence I learned here. I talked about the technological convergence, journalistic practice and the changing role of audiences which I learned from this course. After listening this, he told me that the study of this area is also very popular in china now and the level is very close to America.
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.

personality shaped by media

2009-03-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

As media can be easily public accessed, vast information can be easily spread and received. When facing so much information, people’s attitude towards the certain things, the society, even the world will suffer unexpectable change. That’s why the researchers said the media can shape people’s personality.
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.

media world

2009-03-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

“If we live in a world of media, it is still important to remember that we do not live in a 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.

print reading?

2009-03-03T14:02:00.000-08:00

Recently, when I was shopping on the Amazon.com, there is always a reminder and a big ads on the front page said that "Kindle 2 has arrived!". According to the introduction from the Amazon.com, this Kindle 2 is the latest generation of new wireless reading device which can lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere and Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds. Ok, it still reads like real paper with 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images. What a wonderful reading device! You got intreseted? I am! If it costs no so expensive, $359.
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.

convergence in teaching creativey

2009-03-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

On the panel discussion on this Thursday, the professors talked about applying the new technology to the teaching creativity. Nowadays, the development of new technologies not only makes the communication way between people changed, but also inspires the teacher to seek the new way to improve the teaching method.
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~

2009-03-01T10:38:00.000-08:00

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....

Podcast: the challenge of radio?

2009-02-25T20:22:00.000-08:00

Since Podcast becomes an assignment for us in the media convergence class, I have to get to know about it even if I never heard about it before.
I read a paper today which talks about the emergence of podcast makes the traditional radio industry face the big challenge since everyone can easily subscribe the content from podcast with easy -get sofeware. I have to say, this is the similar question about whether the newspaper will disappear, both the survival discussion about the traditional media.
However, I still believe that everything exists to some reasons and the traditional radio station will not disappear sooner, at least in China, due to its special characters. In the city where I was living in China, the radio is the main and most important medium for a special group of people – taxi drivers.The taxi drivers drive the cars all day and they can hardly spend too much time on the other media. When they drive the cars, listening to the radio is the only way for entertaining and getting the news. Besides, there are several radio stations particularly prepared for the taxi drivers, called communication radio stations. In other words, the taxi drivers are the target audience of these radio stations. They provides the traffic information for the taxi drivers such as which block is in jam, the entertaining programmes such as talk show which closely related to the taxi drivers lives and the interactive programmes such as the drivers can call in to do some little competitive games. Besides, the radio stations also hold the parties which the radiobroadcasters and the taxi drivers can communicate. This makes the taxi drivers to feel like they have another family.
In short, some particular media will exist until the day when there is no need for it to exist. But before that, it can exert its particular effect which cannot be replaced by others.

"super girl"

2009-02-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

Jenkins talked about the "survior" and "American Idol" in his book to demostrate the participatory culture in the media convergence time. This reminds me the other very popular TV program in China called "Super Girl" which is also a singing competition like the "American Idol".The “super girl” lasts for 3 seasons, attracts millions of audience and evokes many controversial discussions on the internet. The champion of the show will get the contract with the music company and being figured as the new super star.
There are several characters for "Super Girl" to be an example of participatory culture. First, all the candidates who attend the competition are the normal people in our daily life and every one can go and have a try. Second, the champion of this TV show was decided by the audience who can vote by sending texts through the cellphone. These charaters made this TV show so popular because the audience think that they can extend their power and control the fate of the candidates.
Although the reality is not so optimistic since the media company is the biggest winner by winning the money and audience, there is an illusion for audience to celebrate.

Media person

2009-02-19T14:06:00.000-08:00

Just now, I was talking to my friend who is in Europe on the MSN. He told me that he was on the coach from Bristol to London and using his blackberry to talk to me! Oh, why am I so surprised! This is a time of media convergence, isn't it? People should do anything on anytime with a media tool.
Ok, I just want to say that it sounds ridiculous and ironic that I am taking the media convergence class while I am becoming a non-media person here. No newspaper, no television, the only thing I have is an out-dated laptop and a cellphone which can only make calls. Ok, I just want to make some tiny complaint about this kind of life. See, it is the power of the media, I feel so bad without it.

exist or disappear? Newspapers!

2009-02-17T15:17:00.001-08:00

After reading the article "How to save your newspaper", I realized that the prospect of newspaper is really on the edge of cliff and I am also astonished that the newspaper will really disappear in some major cities.
This article reminds me that a popular issue we talked in China -- whether the newspaper will disappear. Generally speaking, our teachers would like to convice us that the newspaper will never disappear which it may change to other form so that we can have a sweet fantasy for our future career. Moreover, there are indeed some reasons to demonstrates the future of newspaper such as the old people's preference for traditional form of newspaper and the high reliability of information of newspaper. These factors made the future of newspaper still prosperous.
However, we should realized that the excessive attention on attracting advertisement and the neglect of content making will bring disaster to the newspaper industry since there are so many competitors in present life, even the audience can be content creators.
But, I don't believe that the future of newspaper in China will disappear since the existing of political newspaper which do not depend on the advertisement income. As long as it can resist to the change, there is still a long way for it to go.

I suddenly remember what my father said when I decided to choose journalism as my major. When I talked about this issue to him, he told me the newspaer will definitely not disappear within 50 years (in China). But what will be the reality? No one knows.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2009-02-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentines's Day!

Ok...No valentine, No happy, No day...

So many Chinese youngsters are high on the Western Festivals nowadays. They go out for fun on Christmas Eve, Halloween Nightand even Thanksgiving Day. Many old people in China critized this in afraid that the Chinese traditional festical will be ignored and forgotten several generations later. However, I don't think there is any need for the old people to worry about. By lacking of cultural background and knowledge, the Western festivals doom to be the reason of entertaining for Chinese youngsters. If you don't believe, you can check the people they go out with and the activities they do. Eventually, you will find no matter what the festival is, they will do the similar entertainment with the same person.

Blog generation

2009-02-12T15:49:00.000-08:00

Actually, I never thought that managing a blog will be an assignment for me, even though I owned another blog for a long time. I opened that blog about two years ago when I began to majored in journalism & communication in China. I remembered that during that period, several friends asked me if I have a blog, then I realized how popular and important the blog is in our life. But I don't know whether this popularity comes from the special condition that we are journalism major students or from the whole social environment. Until one day I saw a programme on TV which is a talk show about an eighty years old grandma keeps her blog for her grandchild who is about to born, I finally realized how popular does blog in people's lives.

Nowadays, various kinds people use blogs with different purposed. The movie stars keep their blog to communicate with their fans and annoucce the latest news of them, the bussiness men use blogs to propagada their products. However, as far as I know, most people keep their blogs to describe their daily lives which is like a diary in old days. The difference is that they can share this publicly with their friends and family members. From my point of view, blog is a good way to share experience and life with people, espcially the friends who are far from us. Since a sister of mine who is eight years old and the eighty years old grandma have their blog, may be we can call all of us "blog generation".