Last Class

Well, I just finished my last Mass Communication class. We didn't do much today. We handed in our Last Word letters to Mark. I think I did I good job on it. Everything in the letter his true. I wrote everything from my heart.
Then Mark gave us all, well atleast me, a heart attack when he announced that we were having an impromptu exam. I was thinking, What? How can we have an exam? I never studied? He said we weren't having one. Im going to fail. But, it turns out they were personal questions like how we think we did, what marks we deserve for the projects, and how he was as a proffessor. So, it was pretty easy. And after we did that, we filled out our marking sheets for our blogs. We wrote down how we thought we did on them and what mark we think we deserve.
It was a good ending to a great class. And again, Thank you Mark and Ian for everything. You really made this class something special. =)

1 Day Left

So, tomorrow is my last mass communication class and im both sad and excited for it to be done. I will miss the interesting class discussions and lectures, but at the same time I am going to be so releived. I'll be free of homework from this class, which has really worked me hard, harder than I had ever expected.
Taking this class was a great experience for me and I learnt a lot over the past three months. I look forward for our last class tomorrow afternoon and I would just like to thank Mark and Ian for making this class a great learning experience for me.

Mapping Who Owns What? Media Hegemonies

After researching different corporations, my group decided to choose Viacom to focus on. Using the book, We the Media, we were able to find all the different companies that Viacom owns. Viacom owns four different groups, Viacom Entertainment Group, Blockbuster Entertainment group, Spelling Entertainment, Republic Entertainment, Laurel Entertainment, Home Video and Paramount Communications, Inc. All of these groups consist of many different companies.
The following are a few of the companies that the 4 biggest groups own...

Viacom Entertainment Group:

• Nickelodeon
• The Movie Channel
• All News Channels
• 15 Radio Stations
• Famous Players
• The Free Press

Blockbuster Entertainment Group:

• Blockbuster Music
• Super Club Music
• Sound Warehouse Music
• Blockbuster Video

Spelling Entertainment:

• Spelling Films International
• Spelling Television
• Spelling Satellite Networks

Paramount Communications, Inc.

• 5 Paramount parks in the U.S. and Canada
• Paramount Home Video
• UPN Network

As a group we each researched Viacom individually and then combined all of our information together. We then all made a poster, which consisted of a web map. We put Viacom in the middle and then all around it were the groups that they own. Then attached to the groups were the companies that they owned.

I learnt a lot from this assignment. I learnt that a lot of big corporations own hundreds of smaller ones and that they all in some way can be connected to each other.

Media ownership is happening all over the world and in some countries that's OK, but in others it is a problem. "A number of other countries do already allow cross-media ownership, that is to say, one owner can run both TV and newspapers in the same country. One of those countries is Canada, but the way the system operates there has caused disquiet. One company, Canwest Global, owns one of the biggest commercial TV stations in Canada, reaching 94 per cent of the population. Canwest also owns nine local TV stations, a national newspaper and 14 metropolitan dailies. The company is controlled by one family, the Aspers, who, by the way, also have a majority share in Australia's Channel Ten" (Murray, Brenda).

Sources:

Murray, Brenda. Cross-media ownership causes disquiet in Canada. May 21, 2002. October, 13 2007.

<http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/stories/s560762.htm>

Class Today....

Today in Mass Comm Mark set up a 20 minute examination to help Ian get his doctorial. Ian talked to us for 20 minutes about his fake news investigation and then we had to come up with questions for him. These questions were to help him so that he is prepared to answer any question that his examiners give him.
At the begining of class Mark talked to us about our Last Word Letter. He answered any questions and discussed what should be in the letter.
And to end the class off, we got our papers back. I got 63% on mine. Mark told us that if we got 60% or higher that we should be proud of ourselves.Im not totally proud of myself because I know I can do better. But, I will take it and learn from it. And I will make sure I do better on my next essay. Atleast I improved from my first essay in this class.

Timeline of Media History

For our timeline of media history my group chose to include cinema, the radio, the telegraph and the printing press. The following is some of the information that we found.

Cinema: "The Frenchman Louis Lumiere is often credited as inventing the first motion picture camera in 1895. But in truth, several others had made similar inventions around the same time as Lumiere. What Lumiere invented was a portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit and projector called the Cinematographe, three functions covered in one invention.
The Cinematographe made motion pictures very popular, and it could be better be said that Lumiere's invention began the motion picture era. In 1895, Lumiere and his brother were the first to present projected, moving, photographic, pictures to a paying audience of more that one person" (About.Com*)

Radio:

• it is closely related to the telegraph and telephone
• began as "wireless telegraphy"
• started with the discovery of "radio waves"
• Many devices work by using electromagnetic waves including: radio, microwaves, cordless phones, remote control toys, television broadcasts
• Radio-telegraphy is the sending by radio-waves the same dot-dash message used in a telegraph
• Was developed at the time mainly for ship-shore communication
• Wireless signals proved effective in communication for rescue work when a sea disaster occurred
• 1899, the U.S. army established wireless system
• 1901, radio telegraph service was instituted between 5 Hawaiian Islands
• By 1903, a Marconi station located in Wellfleet Massachusetts carried an exchange or greeting between President Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VΙΙ
• 1905, the naval battle of Port Arthur in the Russo- Japanese was reported by wireless
• 1906, the US weather Bureau experimented with radio telegraphy to speed notice of weather conditions
• 1909, Robert E. Peary, artic explorer, radio telegraphed “I found the pole”
• 1910, Marconi opened regular American – European radio telegraph

Telegraph: "Together with his partner Alfred Vail, Morse developed in 1838 the simple operator key, which when depressed completed an electric circuit and sent a signal to a distant receiver which was an electromagnet that moved a marker that embossed a series of dots and dashes (the morse code) on a paper roll. About 1856 a sounding key was developed that enabled operators to hear the message clicks and write or type it directly down in plain language. Telegraph systems quickly spread across Europe and the United States. With the growing telegraph traffic many improvements followed. Like the duplex circuit, in Germany, that made it possible for messages to travel simultaneously in opposite directions on the same line. Thomas Edison devised a quadruplex in 1874 that enabled four messages to travel at once. The most revolutionary invention was that of Jean-Maurice-Emile Baudot, his time division multiplex invented in 1872" (Rubin, Julian).

Printing Press: "The impact of printing in Europe was comparable to the development of writing and the invention of the alphabet or the internet as far as its effects on the society. Just as writing did not replace speaking, printing did not achieve a position of total dominance. The different graphic modes of communication continued to influence each other. Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful and profitable. It was suddenly important who had said or written what, and what the precise formulation and time of composition was. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, "One Author, one work (title), one piece of information" (Giesecke, 1989; 325). Before, the author was less important, since a copy of Artisole made in Paris would not be exactly identical to one made in Bologna. For many works prior to the printing press, the name of the author was entirely lost"(Wikipedia).

For the collabortive process each of us chose one of the inventions and researched it and the fourth one we all researched. Then we got together and shared our research with each other and chose which stuff to keep and which stuff to get rid of. Then we put our findings in a timeline on a poster.
From this assignment I learnt about the inventions and the impact that the cinema, radio, telegraph and printing press had on our society. They were all big inventions and without them the world would be completely different. Without the cinema and radio we couldn't watch TV and movies or listen to music. Without the Printing press we wouldn't have the Toronto Star. This world as it is now, would not be the same without these four inventions.
Marshal McLuhan said that media ecology "means arranging various media to help each other so they won't cancel each other out, to buttress one medium with another. You might say, for example, that radio is a bigger help to literacy than television, but television might be a very wonderful aid to teaching languages. And so you can do some things on some media that you cannot do on others. And, therefore, if you watch the whole field, you can prevent this waste that comes by one canceling the other out" (Wikipedia*).

Sources:
Wikipedia. Printing Press. November 13, 2007. November 16, 2007.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press>

About.Com. The Invention of radio. 2007. November 16, 2007.
<http://inventors.about.com/od/rstartinventions/a/radio.htm>

About.Com*. The History of the Motion Picture. 2007. November 16, 2007.
<http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmotionpictures.htm>

Rubin, Julian. Samuel Morse: The Invention of the Telegraph. September 2007. November 16, 2007
<http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/morsetelegraph.html>

Wikipedia*. Media Ecology. November 16, 2007. November 16, 2007.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_ecology>

Huge Win for Leafs

So I just thought I'd share with you all my extreme excitement that the Leafs beat the Sens 3-0 last night! I am absolutely delighted that they defeated the Sens. This is a HUGE win for them. The biggest win of the season. The fact that they beat their arch rivals, 3-0, is awesome. But to beat the number 1 team, 3-0, when your team is struggling is just FANTASTIC!!! So, put both of those points together and now you know why it's they're biggest win of the season.
And, if you didn't know before, now you defintley know that I huge Leafs fan, and I can get excited about the smallest things, if is has something to do with the Leafs. So, don't make fun of me or try to make me hate the Leafs. Because it won't work, and you'll have just wasted you time. I take great pride in being a part of LEAFS NATION!

Activist Project

For our activist project, my group decided to do it on Darfur. Genocide is happening in Darfur and thousands of innocent people are being killed for no reason. No one seems to be doing anything about this, and one reason may be because most people aren't aware of what is happening.
So to create awareness of Darfur, we held an event at Humber residence. We invited all of our friends and posted flyers. Overall, we had a pretty good turnout. We made a 10 minute presentation about Darfur, accompanied by a Powerpoint presentation using video clips and pictures. We created a comprehensible brochure and made green ribbons to give to the people that came out. We gave each person a few ribbons in hope that they would share what we told them with others. We wanted to collaborate with Humber’s STAND group, but unfortunately, our schedules conflicted.
From this assignment and the documentary that we watched I have learnt what is happening in Darfur. I know that innocent people, even children are being tortured and murdered and that know one really is doing anything about it. I think that what is happening is absolutely horrible and that more people should be aware of what is going on. Together we can all make a difference in these peoples lives.