750 words

A journal question will continue to be introduced each week during the lectures. You must choose one of the questions listed for weeks 3-9 and answer it in 750 words (NB: you cannot choose the question you answered for Entry 1, leaving six options). In this entry you will be expected to incorporate engagement with one or two of the required or recommended tutorial reading(s) for the week you have chosen as well as to engage with one specific media examples – pay careful attention to what is required by the question. A complete bibliography is required, for which it is assumed that you know how to produce a correct entry. Entry 2 is worth 30% of your journal mark.

Choose ONE of the following questions, noting that for the Week 3-5 questions you must now incorporate close reference to one of the required or recommended readings from that specific week’s materials into your answer:

Week 3: Choose one of the Week 3 lecture examples (as listed in the Syllabus/Outline) and unpack what seem to you to be the public debates, or matters of public concern, raised by that film for its contemporary audience and for an audience today. How exactly are these debates/concerns raised by the film, and what position does it take in relation to them? What are the limitations of thinking about film as an arena for public debate? (You may, alternatively, adapt this question to one of the Week 2 lecture examples, as listed in the Syllabus/Outline, changing ‘film’ to ‘videogame/s’ or selecting two episodes of the TV series or two music videos by the popular music artist and changing ‘film’ to ‘series’ or ‘popular music’ respectively.)

Week 4: Select a successful television program made for free-to-air broadcast (you can choose from the five examples listed for the Week 4 lecture, or Bluey from Week 2, or another example of your own), and use it as a focus to discuss the following proposition: “We learned what the modern family was from television, even when television mocked that family or showed it falling apart, and television is still the media form from which we most clearly learn what “normal life” is supposed to be.”

Week 5: Popular discourse represents ‘gamers’ as an identity in ways that are not paralleled in most other media forms – for example we don’t discuss tv-ers, or movie-ers, in the same way. Why do you think this is the case, and what seem to you to be the connotations of the term ‘gamer’ in practice? You should choose a specific videogame example to focus your discussion of the relation between gaming and ‘gamer’. (You can choose one of the five games listed as examples for the Week 5 lecture, or either of those listed for Week 2, or you can find your own example.)

Week 6: Debate the following proposition, making sure to consider what you think are the best arguments for and against it: “Online culture reduces people, human relationships, and social communication to shallow images.” In answering this question you must incorporate two of the required or recommended readings for listed for week 6 and you must closely reference a single specific social media site to focus your answer.

Week 7: Choose one of the six Week 7 film examples (as listed in the Syllabus/Outline), or Boogie Nights from Week 6, and discuss the extent to which, and in what ways, this selected film self-reflexively represents its own intervention in a history of cinematic gender norms. In answering this question you must incorporate one or two of the required or recommended readings for listed for week 7.

Week 8: How has the internet changed television? You should consider how television is watched today, including where and when it is watched. You should also choose a specific successful television series produced for cable, streaming, online, or other non-broadcast mode of distribution, and consider how this mode of distribution affects the series (you can choose one of the three examples listed for Week 8, or The Circle from Week 6, or select your own example as long as you did not write about that series for JE1). In answering this question you must incorporate two of the required or recommended readings for listed for week 8.

Week 9: Discuss how gender impacts on media fan practices, focusing on a single media fandom as an example to structure your answer (you can choose from the four fandoms listed for the Week 9 lecture, or the fandom of any other film, television series, videogame, or popular music example listed as an example on this unit as long as you have not written about that media object for JE2). In answering this question you must incorporate two of the required or recommended readings for listed for week 9.

Choose topic 8 because the attached materials are fur week 8