Summary

This is a very first time for me to write a blog for academic purpose and I found this idea quite interesting. Everyone has their own ideologies and so after attending the same class, we could still come up with twenty different opinions and feedback about the class. I enjoy writing my blog as it is not like mathematics. There is no right or wrong answers. I could actually learn “language in the digital media” by using language on a digital media! How meaningful is that! I can apply my own experience to the things I learnt in class and discuss it with my classmates on the blog so it’s no longer a one-way receiving learning experience.

I have chosen the blog “Online Cultures and Intercultural Communication online” as my sample post because it is written based on my own experience but not just my opinions. People are always saying that the world has become a global village and Internet has made it a lot easier for people from different cultural backgrounds to communicate. That is true. But first, we have to understand and respect each other’s cultures. I have learnt from this unhappy experience will definitely keep this in mind in order to have a better one next time.

Week 12 ---- Online Cultures and Intercultural Communication Online

When I learn about intercultural communication in class, it seems that it is always being taught as something good and positive and people from different cultural backgrounds can communicate well with each other to form a global village. I agree with that at first. However, when I had a chance to talk with an American that I don’t know online, things started to go wrong.

At that time, I was asked to do an interview about foreign cultural issues. So I found an American on MSN and then I asked him if he could do an interview with me for educational purpose. And then he said yes and asked me what kind of cultural issues I would like to ask him about. I was not so sure what to ask so I asked him if he had any suggestions for me.

Me: I am not sure what to ask at the moment. I don’t know much about American culture. Do you think having an interview about fast food is a good idea?

Him: What?! All you know about American culture is fast food?

Me: No, I didn’t mean that. I was just asking you if it’s a good idea.

I forgot what actually he said afterwards. He argued with me that fast food was not first appeared in America and people in other countries eat far more fast food than American, etc etc. I thought that was very rude and unreasonable for him to be so angry. American is well known for its fast food culture. That’s a truth. What wrong with him getting so angry with that.

I gave up talking to him finally. Intercultural communication doesn’t work every time.

Week 10 ---- The Attention Economy

Rodney said in the lesson that attention is a potential wealth. I am not so sure whether it is true because I was wondering at that time that if someone is getting attention because he/she is extremely ugly, then what kind of potential wealth could he/she get? But when I think again, maybe some companies will approach him/her for inviting him/her for being the spokesperson for their companies to prove that after taking the treatment or plastic surgery from them, they can look good too. That would be more convincing and then they could make money out of their attention.

Here is an example:

This man was a beggar in China. Once a tourist took a picture on the street and posted the picture onto the social networking website. People discovered that there was a cool beggar in the picture! He was getting the world’s attention because he has a really excellent fashion sense as he looks so cool and fashionable. He knows perfectly how to mix and match. What he wore was just like what the model wore on a catwalk show! After he has got the attention, he received help from many people. Finally he was being sent back to his home and no need to be a beggar anymore. Different companies would like to hire him as a model and walk for some catwalk shows since he was such a hot topic. His “value” seems to have based on the amount of attention he has got. Attention has actually turned him from a beggar to a model! Other cool models were being discovered too after this but since they are not original anymore, they are not able to get as much attention as him.

Week 8 ---- Games Learning and Literacy

Below is one of my favourite commericals:

Isn’t that fun?

People are always putting blame on games, for their violence, eroticism, lack of educational purpose…etc. I don’t agree with that all! I think games are actually doing good and helping us!

Ask yourself, “Why do I play games?”

When I think of playing game, I think of these...

Entertainment

Do what I can’t do in real life

In control

Excitement

Challenging

Vent

Die as many times as I can

Fulfill all my wishes

Relax

Kill time

Train my reaction

Brain exercise

Young

Battle with friends

Joy

Shared memories within a generation

They are all positive! Everyone loves playing games!

Games are just games. They are meant to make people happy. Even if people are playing violent games like shooting and robbery, they would become calm again after giving vent in the game world. It helps keep the mental health of players. Otherwise they would have really done some violent actions in the real world. There are games that are eductional too. For example like "Word Challenge" and "Who has the biggest brain" on facebook. People can learn new words and train their reaction time from games like this:

 I deeply believe that games are doing more good than harm. Life is short. Why so serious? Let’s play more!

Week 6 ---- Working Together on the Web

During the lesson…

Christoph asked the class, “Who think that Wikipedia is better?”

I didn’t raise my hand.

Christoph asked the class again, “Who think that printed Encyclopedia Britannica is better?”

I still didn’t raise my hand.

My classmate Natalie asked me, “Why didn’t you raise up your hands to both choices?”

I replied her, “It depends on what kind of information you are looking for.”

But WAIT! Natalie reminded me that actually I have NEVER used a printed Encyclopedia before. I didn’t even know how it is written differently compared with Wikipedia. Whenever I want to search for information, I go to Wikipedia. Wikipedia can always satisfy me with more than sufficient information and data. There is NO NEED for me to turn to a printed Encyclopedia. Wikipedia is up-to-date, user-friendly and richly informative. Why do we need to check out the printed ones when Wikipedia can satisfy all our needs?

The information in Wikipedia is so rich that even the detailed biography of a small character in TVB can be found. You are definitely not able to find any information about her in the printed Encyclopedias.

 

See her biography in wikipedia! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoyo_Chen

The information in Wikipedia covers such a wide variety and is so rich that if it is printed out, it will probably looks like this:

In the era of Internet and technology, Wikipedia has a lot of advantages that the printed Encyclopedias has not. Now, if Christoph or Rodney asks me once again whether Wikipedia or printed Encyclopedia Britannica is better, I will definitely say WIKIPEDIA!

Week 4 ---- More than words: Visual Literacy

Sometimes, pictures are much more powerful than words and could engrave on people's mind profoundly. What picture is differ from words is that it is not that explicit. It requires reader to interpret the underlying meaning themselves based on their intelligence, ideologies and experience. I have found this picture on the Internet recently.

source:

http://www.nownews.com/2011/02/19/91-2690269.htm

This picture was drawn by a Chinese painter who now lives in Canada. Many discussions arose because of this picture as it contains so many underlying meanings. People claim that the girl on the left is Japan, the girl facing us is America, the girl who lies on the floor is Russia, the girl who we cannot see her face is China and the girl standing on the right is Taiwan. Taiwan is not qualified to play this game with the others, she just keep looking at America while America is looking back to her too as if they are giving signals to each other. Russia seems doesn’t care about the game but actually she is changing mahjong with China and her legs are touching America. Japan only focus on her mahjong without noticing what the others are doing. If it’s a game that players have to take off one piece of clothing if they lose, then Japan has already took of all of hers. America looks so noble with her clothes but actually she has her bottom line shown already while China and Russia haven’t. There are still many arguments about the picture since the interpretations are quite subjective.

What I want to point out from this picture is that it really shows the fact that pictures are very powerful at some point especially when it’s about sensitive topics like political issues.

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Other thoughts about photo:

There is a trend in Hong Kong that people love to take high quality photos with DSLR. When you walk around the tourists spots, it is very easy for you to find people taking pictures with a professional DSLR. I have many friends who have bought a DSLR. They are not good at but interested in photography. DSLR is not cheap at all. Many of my friends have to save up money in order to get one. Of course, after they have got one, they have to go out and take good pictures with their gadgets.

But what would happen to the photos then? In the old time, people used to print out their photos, put them carefully into a photo album and then take them out for a look from time to time.

With the advance in technology, people nowadays just save up their photos in folders in “My Pictures”

It is more convenience for them to send them to friends or to post it on the Internet. However, if people didn’t get the backup of the photos (actually I am that stupid person), once the computer is out of order suddenly, and then all the precious photos taken by a high quality camera would be lost forever! Therefore people turn to facebook. It seems safer to upload photos there. Even if the computer is out of order, you can still get the photos back.

It brings out a negative effect that the older generations cannot take out the “photo album” and stroke the faces on the photos anymore. Privacy is another big issue. People can tell what kind of person you are from your photos. You may also be tagged in a photo in which you looked extremely ugly. People will remove tag for sure. Then, can the photos reflect the truth anymore? Or they’re just decorations for people to beautify their personalities online?

My very first post

Every day I am emerged in the digital world.

I watch TV.

I watch videos on YouTube.

I text my friends.

I play mini-games with my Smartphone.

I download songs from the Internet.

And now, I “write”blog.

However, the digital media that I used most is definitely Facebook!

It seems that everyone is addicted to Facebook nowadays. Facebook is believed to be the most popular, widely used and powerful social website in the world. Even a primary school student, a seventy-year-old man or even the Chief Executive has a Facebook account. If I don’t visit the Facebook at least once a day, I will feel like being disconnected with the world.  What’s so good about Facebook is that after adding the person, you don’t even need to have any interaction with the person but you can know everything about him/ her by reading through his/ her profile page. You can find out if he has a girlfriend, what kind of friends does he has, where he has been to last weekend, etc. You can also create an event to invite friends to join or share funny quiz, links, notes and photos with your friends. You can chat with your friends instantly if he is online, you can join a fans group to get the latest information and you can play mini-games with friends. There is far too much information you could find out about a person on Facebook than you can imagine.

People use very casual, informal and spoken discourse on Facebook as if they are just chatting with friends face-to-face. People could give comments on anyone’s status or links freely and these comments do not have to be necessarily related. Correct grammar is not so important at all as long as it is understandable.

Since Facebook is so popular, powerful and I use it every day, I would really love to learn and discover more about different kinds of digital media through this course.

Finally I would like to share with you all a funny video clip about Facebook. 
Hope you enjoy it~