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The Anthropocene defines Earth’s most recent geologic time period as being human-influenced, or anthropogenic, based on overwhelming global evidence that atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes are now altered by humans. The word combines the root “anthropo”, meaning “human” with the root “-cene”, the standard suffix for “epoch” in geologic time. The Anthropocene isContinue reading “Week 8 :Representing the Anthropocene”

Realism is the technical and philosophical basis of Western society. The world exists outside of our concepts of it. Empirical science, for example, is a process of observation of that world. Through the photographic process documentary photography retained an the indexical link to reality through the capturing of light reflected from an actual object inContinue reading “Week 7: Media Interruption”

Realism in the arts is an attempt to represent the world in an objective and truthful way. Realism became prevalent from the mid-1800s in English theatre and French painting, and has reoccurred in various movements such as social realism (kitchen sink drama), documentary film and Italian neo-realism. Realism is also the technical and philosophical basisContinue reading “Week 6 Realism – Platos Cave”

Many critics view selfie-taking as an inward-looking and self-centred act, inhibiting the so-called Millennial / Generation Y / Generation Z from engaging with the events they’re physically attending. This view of selfies as the epitome of a shallow, self- absorbed and narcissistic modern mentality has dominated popular debate and public discourse on the issue. Some psychologists haveContinue reading “Week 5 Semiotics: The Study of Meaning, Language, codes and communication”

Commodity Fetishism Fetish defined as: an inanimate object worshipped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit. Freudianuseofthewordfetishism defines a form of sexual desire is linked to an object. This is not how Marx defined fetishism but Freud’s definition does come into play later! The exchange ofContinue reading “week 4:Media Spectacle”

IDEOLOGY is – A set of theories for thinking about how belief systems in society work – even if the beliefs are not in the interests of the bulk of that society IDEOLOGY is – Generally thought of as a set of beliefs imposed on a society by the most powerful people in that societyContinue reading “week 3: Ideology in Media”

Vladimir Propp: He was a Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot of Russian folk tales, in order to identify their simplest narrative elements. He argued that whatever differences there might be in a story you can group together the characters into 8 character roles. He suggests that there are a limited number ofContinue reading “week 2:Media Narratives”

In his introductory lecture, Representation and the Media, Hall focuses on the concept of “representation”, one of the key ideas of media and cultural studies. He shows how reality is never experienced directly, but always through the symbolic categories made available by society. He examines gender and racial stereotyping in the media. Stuart Hall “RepresentationContinue reading “week 1 Representations”