Final Blog/ Journal Report
Role:
My role was to analyse as to how media landscape has been affected by rapid changes in the use of the Internet by news aggregators, and the way the Internet link economy that they created in turn has a pernicious influence on society as a whole. Most of the academic articles that I have looked at for a research were written by the scholars based in the U.S. and I had to deal with a scarcely resourced foundation where I could hardly find anything directly relevant to my chosen topic. I first went directly to the Melbourne University in hope of borrowing books on intellectual property law or cyberlaw or contract law, as I couldn’t find none of those relative books at RMIT library. As read in one academic article, it was suggested that intellectual law is fundamentally stemmed from contract law, but that was the American case. It was necessary for my research to prove that copyright law places limitations on the content flow which otherwise be spread out uncontrollably by the Internet users. There was an argument whether this kind of act practiced by legislature can be justified under the democratic system of society. And this sounds, to me, quite utopian model of shaping undeveloped customary practices in online journalism. This utilitarian argument certainly opposes realist argument of which advocates are juries and attorney in particular. This current controversy is main focus of my research.
Progress:
I believe it was overall quite challenge for me as it was the bulkiest project ever I’ve undertaken so far at uni, though I’m content with the fact that I have learned numerous major and minor skills. I tend to stretch my thought to a maximum degree in an attempt not to miss any relevant academic argument as of today, however, this got me lost in the middle of the project a couple of times. Whenever any theories that I know of seemed relevant to my research topic, I, without much consideration, shifted the direction of my attention to see if there’s any possible connection that can be usefully analysed in terms of existing academic arguments. I suppose I learned to be determined in narrowing down the topic and focus on just one issue from which other relevant staples, maxims, theories, implications, etc. might as well stem in thought process.
Connections & intersections:
Since English isn’t my first language, I always struggle to have a profound discussion orally in meetings in a colloquial manner (I guess I tend to use very formal vocabs in every day conversation, simply because I can’t quite distinguish which one’s more formal/informal), so I tried to interact with my team via SNS as I could say something that I really had in mind, not all messed up and spitting out the words. I understand that my team at first had a very low expectation for my ability to do the project well, and I believe that somehow affected my attitude toward the project as such. It is hard, and has always been hard to prove myself that in fact I can do well regardless of low level of language proficiency.
I didn’t just want to become a whining baby who blames for other for its own faults, so I gave it a go as boldly as I could. I’m quite satisfied with what I came out to be after having accomplished the project – a wannabe professional media practitioner equipped with an ability to work with students with different backgrounds. Of course, there are still a raft of things that I should improve, for example, to meet the deadline… But taking up Media Industries certainly has provided me with insights into the rapidly changing media landscape on a global scale, as well as a confidence in surviving from a jungle-like media industry.
<Links to earlier blog entries>
1. http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3209458/blog2/?p=883
2. http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3209458/blog2/?p=885
3. http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3209458/blog2/?p=888
4. http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3209458/blog2/?p=890
5. http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~s3209458/blog2/?p=895
