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Showing posts from September, 2025

Influencers and celebrity culture

  1) Media Magazine reading 1) How has YouTube "democratised media creativity"? The YouTube platform  has democratised media creativity,  with ordinary users uploading their  own content: they are ‘produsers’  (producer-users) and ‘prosumers’  (producer-consumers). 2) How does YouTube and social media culture act as a form of cultural imperialism or 'Americanisation'?  We could argue  that YouTube influencers encourage  the spread of US cultural references,  language and attitudes. This form of  globalisation implies a dominance of  Western cultural attitudes 3) How do influencers reinforce capitalist ideologies?  YouTube stars are often sponsored by  commercial companies and become  endorsers of products. 4) How can YouTube and social media celebrity content be read as postmodern, an example of hyperreality?  They use techniques such as handheld  camera, cartoon-like captions and  sounds, crash zo...

Clay Shirky: End of audience blog tasks

  Media Magazine reading Media Magazine 55 has an overview of technology journalist Bill Thompson’s conference presentation on ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ It’s an excellent summary of the internet’s brief history and its impact on society. Go to  our Media Magazine archive , click on MM55 and scroll to page 13 to read the article ‘What has the internet ever done for me?’ Answer the following questions: 1) Looking over the article as a whole, what are some of the positive developments due to the internet highlighted by Bill Thompson? discovered we could email and exchange files with people at other universities,  that I realised that we had access to a way to talk to hundreds of thousands of other computer users around the world. 2) What are the negatives or dangers linked to the development of the internet? network is becoming invisible, as connectivity becomes seamless, pervasive and fast enough to just work most of the time. We stop seeing it – we only see...