I will argue that identity is one thing every person has. Even if one does not have a name, his identity can be considered as nameless.

If people have a choice to choose all the identities they want, they will definitely make full use of it. As we look at ourselves in the mirror everyday, we think of how we want to portray ourselves, how people should see us and hence identify us. Isn’t that how we struggle to choose our hair-cut, our clothes or even the way we speak? It is a matter of self-promotion.

However, not everything turns out the way we want it to because of different perceptions. Personally, I have seen some different ways people identify because of perception. When I wore a pink shirt to work, my male colleague spent the whole day identifying me a as a gay but my female colleague walked up to me and told me that I exuberated confidence just by simply wearing that shirt. So in one day, I was identified as a gay and a confident person.

These identities can be changed over time but identities based on biology will not change as easily. If you are born a black, you will never be a white. If you are born an Arab, you can never change that fact. In recent times we have seen how Arabs are unjustifiably considered to be terrorist. An identity that they do not like but face trouble shaking off.

What I am trying to point out is that even if we try to project our own identity, it is never up to us to decide if it will really be.

After completing this weeks readings, and watching the online lecture from Scott, I’m feeling much more prepared for the final assignment. Like Tom, I’m also using a semi-structured style to conduct my second section of research. As the subject is my brother, I want to further understand his media habits from his subjective experience. By using open-ended questions, I’m hoping his answers will lead my research to theories and concepts, and not the other way around.

I was set on doing two of the earlier topic we learnt in the semester, but now I’m sure that will change based off the answers I was given when I interviewed my brother. His reasoning behind his media habits showed an emphasis on social media, using applications such as Facebook to network. So the concepts I identified in my proposal may no longer be relevant to my final assignment.

By using a qualitative research report, rather than quantitative, we can research a subject’s subjective experience with media. If we limited our research to a structured interview, there is no room to consider the subject’s unique characteristics at depth. This rigid format restrictions the information available to the researcher. However, on the other end of the scale, an unstructured interview provides no scaffold to direct the subject’s answers. Without some mapped out questions and directions, the subject may not provide the information that is needed. This leaves a semi-structured interview style, leaving room for additional questions and depth, while providing a scaffold for information.

When interviewing my brother, I used an ethnographic setting specifically seeking a casual environment. The environment was so casual, that I was granted 45 minutes before the football started, in which to interview my brother. Not ideal, but it was enough. When told this, I couldn’t help but think of temporality and how Adam uses media such as TV to mark time in his day. Even the setting of our interview reflected the concepts and effect of media in everyday life.

For this class, we are getting to the end of the work. 1 more week of lectures, 2 more of tutorials and no finals, means that all that there is to do is the final essay this weeks readings are there to help with this final essay; taking into account the last few steps of the final interviews and the actual writing of the beast.

For my study, with knowing my participant quite well, I decided to take the line of a semi-structured ethnographic conversation. I chose to follow the semi-structured style as I pretty much know my focus areas, and what I needed to gather more information on – however I still wanted the participant to be an active part, I wanted to keep the interview balanced with input coming in from both sides. The subject (for some strange reason) wanted some input from me, to see as to why I was asking these questions, and what it all meant in the big picture. The structured interview process I felt limited the openness, the flow of the interaction; while the unstructured interview I felt would not provide any of the scaffolding I needed to get to the meat of the information.

The ethnographic interview provided me with the time to ask questions, and it also allowed me to conduct most of my interviews in a casual, working setting, which even helped to remind my subject about some things that they had forgotten, and tap into their previous feelings. It also benefited the subject and myself, as it worked alongside the information I had already gathered from previous interviews and the diary that had been taken.

I am still going though the writing stages of the essay. Like the chapter says, the writing process has changed my original intentions almost completely. writing the draft, developing the ideas – not much of the first plan that I had sketched out has stayed the same. Not that I had expected it to. However, with writing the section headings, I can work on different parts at roughly the same time. It is true that each part leads into each other in many ways, but it is helpful to change between the parts quickly and refresh what I am doing. It also serves as a reminder for me to stay to the point. Looking up, seeing what the main aim is, surprisingly, helps.

So, is this essay going to work out? One way to find out….

We often think in terms of products that the advantage of quality far outweighs the advantages of quantity. However, where surveying is concerned, more companies are more interested in quantitative research as compared to qualitative research. And it is mostly these companies that fund the research.

Issues that arise are often related to the reliability of the research. Quantitative research represents the mass and a small margin of error in the research does not change the results totally. The qualitative research may not allow such an error. The list of disadvantages can go on when questioning the reliability of the group chosen for research or even the professionalism of the interviewer. However, qualitative research still has advantages.

Qualitative research brings out certain issues arising from the quantitative research that the later will not be able to explore. A semi-structured interview will be able to research issues relating to the answer provided by the quantitative research. Such issues can even relate to other underlying problems. Therefore, the funding body might be more aware of underlying social, economic or political issues concerned.

Some issues arising from the reliability of research can also be addressed in the following ways. The researcher can look more into the interviewee’s background information, making sure that he/she is in a proper demographic, while also familiarizing himself with the interviewee’s cultural background. At the same time, the researcher can also constantly cross-check information to make sure the statements made by the interviewee is reliable and coherent.

In summary, while the qualitative researcher can have means of making the research more reliable, issues still remain with the possibility of biasness and error on part of the researched subjects. However, what remains certain is that quantitative research will not be able to dig in underlying issues. Both research remains equally important and with its own flaws.

When thinking about the relationship between a signifier and the signified, one image came to mind, the golden arches of Mc Donald’s. In Australia, you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t recognise the golden arches on billboards and signs throughout the majority of the country. Whether you eat from the fast food restaurants or not, you will still recognise the symbol, and most likely still be able to list several of the burgers they sell.

As someone who frequently road trips from Sydney to Melbourne and back, Mc Donald’s has come to represent certain things to me. The signs that say ‘Mc Donald’s: 100km’ signifies to me a break from the car and time for lunch. I can probably name every item on the menu, because I grew up eaten Mc Donald’s every other week.

However, the meaning behinds signs can change between cultures, taking on new values and meaning. Mc Donald’s all over the world uses the same sign of the golden arches, however different cultures associate different meanings to the symbol. For instance, go into a Mc Donald’s in India and you will not find a cheeseburger or a Big Mac. For religious reasons, their culture does not eat beef, and so they have a different menu. This shows how the same symbol can change between cultures, taking on different meanings under the same sign. This change is a result of the different values and lifestyles that different cultures lead, and in turn, the meaning and representation of those symbols.

A good way to illustrate the meaning of signs is brand logos. When we think of prominent brands such as Nike, whenever we look at the ‘swoosh’, we think of the quality the goods possess and sports celebrities associated with it. In this case, the images of Roger Federer wearing that Nike headband and Tiger Woods putting on his golf cap all come to mind. Lury (20004 P.91) noted from Warner, “This graphic sign has no (or very little) individualism and is not an index, but is rather an abstract personification – in this case, first of desire, the desire of success, and then of its realization, success itself.” However, brand logos along with words can be subjective due to certain considerations.

One of the considerations is contextual relation. When speaking to another from a different culture, the meaning of the signifier might not be similar to what the other person is thinking, because of different dominant values. Shirato(2000,P.26) notes an example, “there is an important relationship between the dominant value or meaning of the signifier ‘woman’ and the way women are treated in a culture . If ‘woman’ is associated with emotionality, lack of reason, unprofessionalism and domesticity, then it is very difficult to change the material conditions in which women find themselves”. In this case, it is clear that certain cultures picture the word ‘woman’ differently. While in most developed countries, women are treated as equals, less develop countries view them differently. This leads us to the question of power.

If a country’s leader is a female, I will believe that it will have significant change on how women are viewed. Which is why in most cases, power depicts the meaning of words. Since the history of mankind, the people that held the most power controlled how things are perceived. If a new word is to be constructed, it has to be done by one holding power, not by anyone. Even in recent times, where younger tech savvy people create new words or short forms of words on the internet, it is never actually formal until it is adopted and seen by academics or in some cases, the dictionary publishers. How that word is interpreted then, is up to those who hold power.

Reference:

Schirato, T. and Yell, S. 2000
Communication and Cultural Literacy: An Introduction Sydney : Allen and Unwin

Lury, C, “Logos” In Brands: The logos of the Global Economy. London Routledge 2004

As Annabelle Lukin alludes to, language involves choice. A person can lay down the facts in different ways, and even though these facts remain the same no matter how it is put, what they mean can be polar opposite. Take the title of this blog. Outside can mean externally of the dog, or it can be taking the dog out of the account. It depends on how the words are presented, the context that it is presented it, the other signifiers (physical i.e. written or spoken) that surround the word. Words do not have natural meanings.

In one of my jobs, I work as a cellar door hand, and one of the roles is to describe the tastes that each wine should display.  Wine is made out of grapes. It is 100% grapes; nothing else can legally be added. Most customers I serve know this about wine, and know this. The cellar location is on a vineyard covered in just grapes, just to set people towards this pretty basic principle. To describe a wine, i may say “the cherry flavours you can taste…” It is really gobsmacking t be asked after this, “how many cherries do you add?”. The meaning that i have assigned to the word flavour, as well as the context of being in the cellar, to me would mean that the grapes have assumed the taste of cherries. Meaning is affected by the context of how and where it is produced, as well as prior knowledge. Hopefully after my exasperated sigh and the rolling of my eyes, my customers should now take a new meaning for the word flavour when travelling throughout wine regions. The signifier, the physically spoken word, should now be reshaped.

Meaning has also been transcribed over to the media. Not just words but different phrases have different connotations for different people, different communities, and different cultures. An example of this is last Sunday I was watching TV with my roommate who is from China. An ad came on saying “available for this week only!” My roommate got up and when we asked what he was doing, he said that the sale was finishing today and that he must go! The other nationalities in the room knew that it did not finish for another week, but in China, he week begins on a Monday and finished on a Sunday. If we were talking on a Saturday, and an Australian said “next Friday”, we would assume they are referring to the next week. In China, this Friday would mean yesterday, the Friday in their week. So, when my roommate leaves Australia, he may leave with a different meaning linked to ‘this week”. Unfortunately for him, besides ‘this week’ he WILL leave with the most ridiculous amount of real and made up Australian slang….

Both articles this week point out how media production and communication technologies are getting stuck into our everyday life, becoming an integral part of the daily social and public grind. It is very easy to see this in our world – look at the i-pad release. Just today, I have gotten over 5 e-mails and facebook messages about the impending release, and the “Win a free i-pad!” deals, and that is on a normal working day. It is pretty amazing to see how something like the i-pad, an over-sized i-phone or i-pod, can be so needed in our society already, but it does emphasise how much technology and new media play a role in our day to day living.

A problem that is being faced by the media production companies is keeping ahead of the trends, but not so much ahead as to lose touch with the average consumer. These companies need to go to great length the measure and research audience participation, and it seems that the older methods are not keeping up. Researchers can no longer cover everything just by watching, recording and interviewing their subjects, as this does not seem to show them how a person gets meaning from their media use. It also points out how media is playing such a central role in our lives, as we can no longer ask a person what they do use and expect a reasonable answer.

What it can show us however, is how media production and audience participation intersect; each one just adds to the other. The audience determines the media being produced, as the media producers determines what comes into the audience’s world. Before the i-phone, I did not care at all about what phone I used, if I could message and make/receive phone calls, I was content. Then came the i-phone and I do not know how I could get around without it. It shows me bus and train times, I can find places on a map as I walk. Before apple said I needed one, I thought I had everything I could want in a black and white brick of a phone. The i-phone also shows how audience participation is changing the media with the use of applications. Manufacturers could not have predicted what we wanted before we made our mark and created the myriad of applications now available.

A final point in the interaction of media production and audiences, is the idea o the diffused media. Media, thanks to audience interaction changing production, is now available anywhere at any time. This means that audience participation is now available everywhere as well – pushing media production to new limits, and meaning we can not completely research uses.

I can proudly say that I am a media performer. The first time was when I was interviewed on the Channel Nine news in 2001, regarding the September 11 attacks. Then in 2008, I was interviewed by Channel 10 news, about the pressure on teens leading to eating disorders. Despite being a dedicated media consumer, my experience on the other side of the fence was defiantly thrilling. So much so, that I have both performances on tape, able to relive my minutes of fame as I’d like.

Abercrombie and Longhurst’s theory of a diffused audience applies perfectly to my media habits in everyday life. Living in a “media drenched society,” I know how heavily I’m connected to media throughout my day. So much so that even now I’m typing on my laptop, listening to my iPod, and have my phone within an arms length of me. Media is inseparable from me. The lines between public and private are blurring as mobility increases, letting me constantly stay connected to my media. For instance, my computer is no longer in the study at home, plugged into the wall by a hundred different power cords. I replaced it with my laptop, taking it from the private home and into the public.

However, despite the modern and diffused audience whom controls the media they consume, I liked Couldry’s (2005) idea that new media is being developed to follow the new, mobile consumer. He mentioned neon signs, that advertise with us as we drive home, but that seems to be just the surface. On my way home I pass billboards, neon signs, bus’s and bus stops covered in advertising, car’s promoting their small businesses on the back window, and more.  It’s overwhelming. Yesterday I spent 20 minutes behind a bus in traffic that was advertising chocolate milk. The advert was so good that I went and brought one later on. The advert was so good that I brought chocolate milk, even though I don’t normally like it.

As the lines between public and private life blurs, so does the distinction between media consumer and media performer. We may have more control over our media experience today, but we are still the audience, sitting in front of a hundred different advertisements at any one time.

As we look into our everyday lives, we tend to realize that we use media in different ways because of social and economic constraints. We might deny that our decision-making is largely influenced by such factors, but in reality, it happens to us all time.

Let us take purchasing a phone for an example, will you choose an iPhone or a Blackberry? We tend to look at the functions of the phone after assessing if we have the budget for it.

We take a closer look at how the functions matter to us. What might matter the most to a consumer is the current social norms in the social network he/she is in currently, for example if most of one’s peers’ own a Blackberry, it will be a sensible decision to purchase a Blackberry because of the messenger function which can connect the users. This is largely because one must take into consideration how the device can be adapted to everyday media use.

The list of social factors goes on and on when choosing how to make use of a medium. The mobile phone may have many different functions (such as video call, voice calls, text messaging, internet chat etc.) but one cannot say for sure what is the best way to communicate because factors such as purpose or urgency of the communication all play a part.

Similarly, the usage of other media cannot be easily determined because of the different factors involved. (For example, TV with audience Viewing preferences, Time constraints etc.) It is common knowledge that preferences change over time but in this age of interactivity, it is indeed becoming more and more complex to study the audience involved.

Media companies can no longer take audiences or consumers to be passive. They must understand how the audiences react emotionally. Only then, can companies progress and produce what the audiences want. However, this may only lead to another shift social factors, there is a certain complexity to this. The audiences and their demands are ever-changing.