BCM110 – The Specs

A List, The Bloggies @UOW, and Gratitude

Thank you for making this little page Bloggies’ Best BCM Blog x

bcms@uow Bloggies.jpg — (The Specs is there in the background)

The Specs has won Best BCM Blog at today’s #BCM110 and #BCM112 Bloggies Award at UOW, and I still can’t believe it. Well, not just yet.
I’m not good at delivering award acceptance speeches. I can write on the spot, not speak on the spot…
And no matter how true the above is, I still can’t find the words to thank Sue – my lecturer – and Renee – my awesome tutor, as well as the teaching staff, for this chance. It might be a tiny achievement, it means so much to me.
I started The Specs hoping to find my voice heard. And I received so much more, I got friends supporting me on Twitter and WordPress and Instagram, despite the fact that I’m utterly shy and borderline incompetent in socializing. Thank you for your sweet support and your kind words.
In that clumsy acceptance speech, I said how this little achievement has made me a little more confident. It does, it does. I set out not even dreaming of being a nominee, seeing how I’m not a native speaker and an international student. And now, I’ve been proven wrong. And never have I felt this grateful for being wrong.

Now that I’m quite sure that I’m a decent blogger/writer, I’ll try to make this my “thing”. Just wait and see guys.

Mia

20170531 Bloggies — (artwork by me for the occasion)

Prepare for Trouble and Make It Double

What to do when you’re cornered by public speaking and group work at the same time

What to do when you’re cornered by public speaking and group work at the same time? Continue reading “Prepare for Trouble and Make It Double”

How Son Doong was saved by a public sphere

A virtual public sphere brought about real change in Vietnam

by William Holland — *The 18th-century coffee house*

“The public sphere” is a concept developed by Jurgen Habermas in 1962, referring to a metaphorical “18th-century coffee house”, where the middle-classed gentlemen would meet to discuss popular issues of the day. It was supposed to ideally be an open space separated from the government where citizens can debate about common concerns; however, it did not quite live up to those expectations (Turnbull 2017). Continue reading “How Son Doong was saved by a public sphere”

He Asked for My Hand (Then Broke It)

He gave me a ring when he proposed/He gave me a broken bone for nothing at all

The lines echoed in my head when I was browsing through a list of powerful images raising awareness of domestic violence (DV) and stopped at this picture, a part of the series His Presents by Martin Lever (UAE) (2008) for City of Hope:

This image is a powerful example of Semiotics – the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation – which probably is the backbone for the most efficient social campaigns. Continue reading “He Asked for My Hand (Then Broke It)”

Audience 2.0 in the Wikipedia-UGC Era

From Consumer/User to Producer to both

In one year, from January 1^st 2016 to January 1^st 2017, the English site of Wikipedia has gotten 93,322,823,874 hits from a body of more than 30,604,028 users worldwide, living up to its reputation as the fifth most visited website globally.

What is so significant about Wikipedia is that, in terms of media audience research, it makes an excellent example of what I would like to call the (Media) Audience 2.0, or the audience as “produser[s]” – a term coined by Brun in 2005 (cited in Bird 2011, p. 502), a combination of two words: producer and user. This new “generation” of users was given rise to by the emergence of digital media, particularly Web 2.0 (Bird 2011, p. 502), which introduced, for the first time, user-generated content (UGC). Continue reading “Audience 2.0 in the Wikipedia-UGC Era”