Week Eleven: Intellectual Property and New Media

If I was going to post a passage to show that I wasn't merely ripping off someone else's work, I would incorporate the source into the text. For example,

'According to the Margaret River Chocolate Company website, the factories in Margaret River and West Swan provide a "fascinating insight into the world of chocolate, with free chocolate tastings, interactive displays, viewing windows to watch the chocolate products being made and a family friendly atmosphere." '

This way, the original source is attributed and the borrowed material is quoted. I would also post the address from which I got the material, but not make it to a link, because you also need permission from the copyright owner to link to their site.

The task we have been asked to do is ‘sample’ bits of information from different sources.
I would need copyright permission to publish this ‘sampling’ online, meaning I would have to seek out the copyright owner and gain express permission to use their material. Only then could I post the material.

One thing I have noticed throughout this course and especially from this week’s topic, is that even when attributing to the source from which we got the information from, how do we know it is the original? When looking up the different websites that included the Margaret River Chocolate Company, almost every website had identical passages—but they were all copyrighted sites! How is this possible? And since it is also an infringement of copyright to link to or attribute a source which is not the original producer of the text-- how can we not breach copyright? Tricky.

Week Nine: Collaborative Writing

As this week's topic was collaborative writing, and since I love cooking, I decided I would post a recipe on Cookbookwiki. I spent quite some time perfecting my greek salad recipe, and when it came to saving and submitting, I was told the creation of new sites was restricted, and my page was wiped out. Not happy!

So anyway in the end I edited the famous mojito cocktail recipe that was already an entry. I highly recommend the addition of berries! Mmm.

http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Mojito

Week Six: Convergence of Image and Text.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to


walk down allyways?"



On the long and torturous midnight journey


to one of Melbourne’s hidden treasures,


we


finally


saw


the


light.

Week Four: Hypertexts and non-linear narratives.

Hi guys,
What can I say? It was pretty difficult to force my very linear way of writing into it's exact opposite! But here is my attempt at a fiction non-linear narrative anyway.

http://kristy-contemplations.wikispaces.com/

Kristy.

Week Three exercise: Who Am I? Uhhh...Just look at my Facebook page.

Although I am nowhere near knowing who I am, I know this – there is no, and can be no, true fixed definition of myself – not truly, not right now. I am who I am supposed to be in any given situation. I can even be a different person in the same situations.

When I’m at home I’m lazy, but also helpful. When I’m with friends I’m loud and obnoxious, but also quiet and withdrawn. At Uni I’m stimulated and thoughtful, but can be bored, annoyed and frustrated. At work, the child in me comes out one day and the disciplinarian the next. In reality, I am a mixed bag of emotions, impulses and personalities, and it can be hard to keep up with myself most of the time. The person I will be on any given day is anyone’s guess. So where can people, friends and colleagues go to get assurance of the person they think I am, or the person I want to be? Enter Facebook. Besides chewing up all of my spare time and productivity, it allows me to create a profile of who, or what, I would like people to know me as. Am I a confident well grounded young woman with a good taste in music, movies, books? Am I smart/funny/addicted to shoes because a FB application created by some bored Uni student tells me I am? The real answer is probably not (except for the shoe addiction), but to the rest of the world, that is how I will be seen, that’s who I am, and that’s how they will treat me. Amazingly this is the kind of analysis people use as true insight into your being. A Facebook profile is like a first impression. If it presents you as something, anything – that’s what you are to the people viewing. Ultimately at this point, it doesn’t bother me if people see me as being one type of person, because I still don’t know who that person is. I’m in the same lost boat.

Opinion: Too much, too young?

Is the effect of sexualised advertising in magazines, television and 'tween' magazines having more of an impact on young children than we realise? After reading Melinda Tankard Reist's opinion piece "Pin-up children" on The OnLine Opinion, and seeing the behaviours of children where I work, the answer to that question? Definately.

A friend and I were in a homewares store recently and the famous Pussycat Dolls song Loosen Up My Buttons came on over the sound system. At this point a woman had walked in with her small daughter standing up in the trolley. The little girl obviously watched her Saturday morning music video shows because she knew all the dance moves to this song. It could have been cute, a little girl dancing away to her favourite tune. But it wasn’t – instead I felt sorry for her because we all know that the Pussycat Dolls dance like strippers. Not a good look for a six year old girl. Her mother didn’t seem to care, but the rest of the store, including me, was a little disturbed.

So with images such as those of the Pussycat Dolls in music videos, billboards glamorising sex and sexuality and children’s clothing with slogans like “Sexy Girl” splashed across the front, is it any wonder girls are growing up too quickly? And whose fault is it – the parents for allowing their children to consume these sexualised representations in the media of women and girls? Or is it the fault of the Advertising Standards Board, publications, and manufacturers who allow these representations to perpetuate through their products?

Sure, parents can refuse to buy these magazines and inappropriate clothing, and ban their kids from watching music videos, but you cannot protect them from everything. With advertisers pushing the envelope beyond the limits, they will encounter these sexualised and sexist attitudes and images, whether it is at a friend’s house, walking through a shopping centre, listening to the radio or watching television. As Reist points out, the increasing hospitalised cases of eating disorders, depression and body image issues are cause for alarm. The overriding attitudes of media and advertising authorities is to disregard just how influential an advertisement, especially a sexualised one, can be on young minds. Having worked in childcare, I know all too well the effects media and advertising have on young kids. At this age, children’s brains are like sponges – they soak up everything. I have heard three and four year olds singing the sexual lyrics to Nelly Furtado’s Promiscuous Girl and who refuse to eat lunch because it might make them fat. They talk about how they want to be like Paris Hilton so they can shop and carry out around a dog in a purse all day. Whatever happened to every little girl's dream of becoming a ballerina or a vet?

No wonder these are the aspirations of young girls - have a look at their role models. Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears were once squeaky clean at the start of their careers – virginities in tact and ethanol free. Now with the next generation of girls watching, sex, drugs, eating disorders and alcohol are glamorised and all that these young girls have to look up to is incarcerated, intoxicated and unintelligent ‘celebrities.’ It’s no wonder there has been a jump in teenage pregnancies and teenage binge drinking in recent years – our youth, especially our girls, are not being sent the right messages through the media. If self regulated advertising firms continue to neglect the need for positive youth marketing as they have been doing for so long, the ABS need to step up. Young girls need to cope with and enjoy their youth and adolescence – not be rushed through it.