Questo blog nasce con l'intento di raccogliere le esperienze di tutti quei giovani che, nonostante il periodo non favorevole sotto l'aspetto lavorativo, si impegnano con determinazione e creatività per realizzare i propri obiettivi. Perché è importante sapere che rendere reali i propri sogni è ancora possibile!

sabato 15 marzo 2014

#7 Interactivity

During week seventh we have read an essay of Pierre Levy, where he offers a problematic approach to the concept of interactivity. He also schematizes the different types of interactivity according to the temporal dimension of the mode of interactive communication and the hierarchical relationship between the communicators.
Shown below a summary of his article.

 The term “Interactivity” generally refers to the active participation of the beneficiary of an information transaction but an information receiver could also be ever passive.
Television for example provides only entertainment, meanwhile telephone supplies dialogue, reciprocity, and real communication. Even a classic video game is more interactive than television because the video game reacts to the player’s actions, if we talk about a networked game, that gives the opportunity to let two adversaries play against each other, the similarity between video game and telephone are even more. The massage is a doubled image incorporating the situation and the player: one player transmits to his partner a image of himself that immediately affected the other player.
On the other hand if we analyse a telephone call we know that the message that one speaker send to the other help him to construct an image of his interlocutor and about the situation and the same happen on the contrary. However the information transmitted during the phone call are more limited then in a virtual reality game. The communication through a virtual word in one sense is more interactive than the telephone one because in addition to the message the other person received also the images of the person and the situation. On the other hand the telephone is more interactive because we are put more in touch with the voice of the speaker.

He makes a list of many different criteria that can be used to analyse interactivity:
1)   The ability to appropriate and personalize the received message, regardless of the nature of the message
2)    Reciprocity of the communication
3)     Virtuality, here understood in term of the processing of the message in real time based on a model and input data.
4)    The incorporation of the image of the participants in the message
5)    Telepresence

Each individual communication system be subjected to precise analysis and is becoming more and more necessary a map of the modes of communication as a political, cultural, economic, social and educational issue.

domenica 9 marzo 2014

#6 Consumer society and advertising

On the 6th weeks we talked about “consumer society and advertising”.
To talk about that we should start from the Industrial Revolution, when the technological developments radically altered the organization of production, distribution and consumption of goods. For these reasons the Industrial Revolution had massive effects on politics, economics, culture, educations and society. The exponential increase in non-essential goods and consumption entailed the rise of the professional advertising industry. McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)
The mass advertising industry emerged to notifying consumers about products, developing sophisticated techniques for inducing desires and needs among ordinary people for things that hitherto they did not relies they needed. Its purpose is to persuade people to purchase, subscribe to or consume a particular brand, product, service or organization.McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)
Advertising was and continue to be a key driver for commercial media, facilitating by the grow of press, radio, television, movies and digital media.
I would like to talk about the newest kind of advertisement: the viral marketing.
The first example of viral marketing hail from 4 July 1996 when Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia, Hotmail founder, decided to write at the end of every e-mail this message “PS Get your free e-mail account at http://www.hotmail.com." This message appeared as a suggestion from the sender and the result was that Hotmail reached 8,2 million of users in 18 months. (http://www.nobrandagency.com/articoli-marketing/marketing-virale-nobrand.pdf).

Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networking services and other technologies to try to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer viruses. (Wikipedia)
Thanks to the viral advertising agencies reduced their costs on media by asking consumers to spread their messages for them and gain credibility by getting friends to share their content. Viral messages are typically humorous, original, due to ease a production and dissemination across newer forms of media.
The fact that they are forwarded between peers means that they use advertising to create their online identities.( McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)

There are many different kind of viral marketing, the most common are videos, and some of them have become really popular. I searched online the list of the most popular viral video of the last year, they are very different but the aim of every one is to affect the viewer for something special: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6649/10-Examples-of-Amazing-Viral-Marketing-Videos.aspx

Another very common think is monitoring consumers and their activities in real time as they use media, media companies track your movement online to deliver a more personalized and individual experience. This is called data mining.McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)

This means that I will found in each page I will visit advertisement about some I’ve searched before in another website. Many people thought that online tracking technologies compromise our individual privacy but others affirm that tracking tools help streamline daily life.McStay, A. (2009/2012) “ Consumer Society and Advertising,” in Long, P.; Wall, T; Bakir, V. & McStay, A. Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. London: Pearson Education.)

sabato 22 febbraio 2014

Lesson #4:Imagined communities

Imagined communities: that was the topic of the fourth week of Media Studies lessons. To talk about this topic is necessary to start defining the concept of “Nationalism”. “Nationalism is a belief, creed or political ideology that involves an individual identifying with, or becoming attached to, one's nation” (Wikipedia) Is important to remember that Nationalism is different from other type of attachment such as religions; nationalism is the need to belong to a community where you can share with other people the same values, passions, traditions and the belief system. There are also some symbols representing the national identity considered really important to identify with the national community, for example the national flag. In the first reading, “Imagined communities”, where analysed also the anthropological definition of nation: It is an imagined political community- and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion. (Imagined communities, Chapter 1). We also discussed about another essay about imagined communities, in particular the Welsh one: “Cool Cymru, rugby union and an imagined community”. In this essay is analysed the place of rugby union in contemporary Wales where the game is really important to promote the images of the nation. For centuries the Welsh nation had lived in the shadow of a much bigger neighbour and Wales had always to define itself with reference to England (Cool Cymru, rugby union and an imagined community). The perception of Wales centred upon many stereotypes such as indecipherable place names, sheep, daffodils, mining, rugby ect… However Wales has changed markedly in recent times in particular because of the emergence of popular rock music band such as Catatonia, The Stereophonics and The Manic Street Preachers, these gave Wales an increased visibility and credibility. Another important thing is the improving fortunes of the national rugby team that bring to the constructions of a new stadium in the heart of Cardiff, the capital city; this ultra modern building dominates the skyline in Cardiff. Cardiff itself was also undergoing a massive transformation in order to promote an image of a modern, vibrant nation. Anyway in Wales Rugby is a kind of substitute for nationalism, Jarvie (2003, p.539) suggests, “patriots could show an affinity for the nation on various sporting occasion without necessarily voting for nationalist parties”. Reading this essay I thought about my nation, Italy. Also my nation is victim of many stereotypes that make foreign people think that all Italians are identical. In this video there are some examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKC4XGGlnRI But we are used to define Italy as the nation of “100 bell tower”. The meaning is that Italians doesn’t really feels as a single community but everyone identify himself with is hometown where the bell tower is the most important monument. For this reason in Italy there are very different tradition between region and region, even the typical food is very different from one town to another. This division start in the ancient history but create many difficulties also nowadays. Because of that also in Italy the sense of community is connected to the sport, football in particular. Sport competition such as World Cup or European Cup are the only circumstances wherein we feels to be a part of the same country. In conclusion in a Weberian sense the nation has been positioned as “ a community of sentiment” (Flucher, 2000); that is constructed in the mind bring us together enabling feeling of identity, belonging and solidariety. (Cool Cymru, rugby union and an imagined community)