Intro…

Hi Everyone,

Lovely to meet you all on Tuesday, except Tanya who I also hope to put a face and voice to the name soon đŸ™‚

I am currently undertaking the MA Creative Media now in full time mode, the other modules I am taking this semester are the core module ‘Professional Media Practice’, and elective ‘Mediating the Environment’.

My personal research interests include discourses of ‘health’, focusing specifically on the shift from the welfare state, to the current neoliberal, individualised, privatisation of health practices and responsibilities. More recently my research interests have focused more upon the media’s representation and misinformation of environmental issues, particularly climate change. More generally I am interested in exploring how we can better use media to inform and educate the wider public in social issues, such as health education and climate change, rather than misleading, misinforming and disempowering.

I am not what you would call technologically or media/digital ‘savvy’, and am often asked by my peers why I choose an academic path in media studies. Quite simply, I love learning about, critiquing and questioning our media consumption practices. Currently I am particularly interested in the the impact of mobile media technologies on our information gathering and education practices; knowledge building and sharing blurring and dissolving traditional media hierarchies, the significance and rise of the ‘citizen journalist’, and what this means for our future communications and interactions privately and publicly, the impact on our perception of local and global spheres, and more generally our daily routines.

Multitasking

(Photo by phenomena.nationalgeographic.com)

The weeks topics I am most intrigued by are Week 10 ‘Sustainability’ (an obvious choice!), Week 7, ‘Locative, Mobile and Public Sound’ (I’ve read some of Bull’s work previously on the concept of the ‘bubble’ (2004), and am fascinated by this private existence, detached ‘sonsorous envelopes’ moving through the public space, and how this impacts on our private sphere, and public interactions), and finally Week 4 ‘Public, Media, Urban Spaces’.

Last semester I took ‘Politics and Ethics’, and ‘Media ICTs in Everyday Life’, and can see initially how both will provide a good contextual base to start Digital Cities, which I chose to further develop my understanding of the digital environment we currently inhabit and are ever more engaged.

Overall, ‘Digital Cities’ is quite a diversion from my current knowledge, but I am extremely excited and looking forward to the challenge. Similarly, I have not undertaken a practical project since year 2 of undergrad, so I am considering undertaking a photographic, possibly auto-ethnographic project of some kind ‘recording’ and capturing our daily digital ‘footprint’, whilst considering how our daily routines are mediated through the digital, and our personal mobile media (thinking aloud here).

Really looking forward to getting fully stuck in, and reading everyone’s blogs.

Have a wonderful weekend all đŸ™‚

Rachael