week 2 blog

Why Hello,
So onto my second blog...the week 2 lecture was basically the history of communication forms throughout various places-the UK, USA and Europe. The lecture began with a summary of the forms of study of communication and the jobs that have come from them. It basically showed the many avenues that opened up for communication technologies study as new means of communication were born. The lecture continued with the past 100 years of happenings in the field of communication technologies. The first real 'trigger' of what I was reading and hearing in regards to making sense to me, came with the 1940's USA Communications Studies of Minimum Effects. It spoke about Nazi propaganda, something we basically all have a general knowledge of. It also, for me, linked onto the point about McLuhan's starting point being the individual. That's because I thought about what a huge success Nazi propaganda was in Germany, and how effectively it was used, but the lecture included that it had minimal effect on the USA soldiers. So I agree with McLuhan that and how media effects, and effectiveness, start with the individual. Obviously, that's largely circumstantial as well, and depends on other things, but the individual comes into it. I was interested in his references of certain media being 'hot' or 'cool'. Radio and cinema being hot, and telephone and television being cool, due to their effects on the physical senses. Like I said I was interested, but I'm not sure I would class television as cool; I think it has the characteristics of being hot, because I think it has lots of intense information and is consuming of the audience, as McLuhan believes the other hot media means to be. But I'm sure he knows what he's talking about more than I do! The Mixed Effects (1970's) segment was interesting, because of what it said about the public's perception of a crime, due to the ways the media reported it. I did a speech last semester based on that underlying theme, and I definitely agree with the media having a strong amount of persuasion upon the public. In the UK section, the segment I most enjoyed and understood was the Stuart Hall, Birmingham School part. It's about how different audiences interpret media texts in various ways, and again relates to the McLuhan theory of the individual as the starting point. It shows how important each person is to the outcome and different understandings of a certain text. Not sure I really understood the European stuff... it just wasn't as easy to read as everything else! The La Jetee video was...well, I don't really know a word to describe it with. I enjoyed it, but it was confusing, and it took me ages to realise that they had the whole time-travel thing going on. So I really can't say much about it because I didn't really understand it, but I really liked that the man was flitting between the place where the men were transporting him from, and his meetings with the woman, and how he always found her again and went back to her, except at the end. Anyway, that's it for this week, (sigh of relief)
Kirsty