Week 5 Task:

Who owns the newspapers and TV stations in your country? Do you think this has an effect on the news that you hear?

I am from Saudi Arabia and in my country plenty of newspaper and TV stations, the newspaper are all commercial companies, but some of the TV stations are owned by the government, and the rest are commercial companies, so first I would talk about the TV stations as they have the most effect on people in my country, the ones that my government owned usually they don’t have that appeal that would capture you, in fact most of my country’s people don’t watch these stations, and these channel don’t give that much of information because their freedom is limited, there is a line they can’t cross it, on the other hand the TV stations that owned by commercial companies, have the highest number of watchers, due to the way they chose their programs, they usually trying to please the audience by showing them whatever they want, so now these stations when they show something new, most of the audience will accept that show even if that show is out of our culture, and that what is happening in my country these days, even sometimes the show some shows which completely against our religion and still made the people to accept these shows, they usually got attacked from the audience at the begging but with repeating the same program or show, the people will start to accept it.

Week 4 Task:

How often do you read the paper or watch the news on TV? How important is it for you to keep up with current events?

Since the technology has developed in the recent years, and there are plenty of an electronic news websites, and there is a YouTube, I actually started to go more into internet more than the classic way like TV and paper, but still the TV and the newspaper have a place in my life, especially TV because when I sit with my family the TV is a part of that gathering, we watch news, movies, series or anything could be interesting to us, so for me to keep up with the world current events I usually use the internet more, getting the news from TV and paper became rare in my life, and if I would be more specific about the paper, sometime I last for a month without reading a paper, and if I did, it because to change the daily routine not more than that, it obvious nowadays that the news spread on internet faster than the paper, because the paper needs to wait until the next morning to write about new event happened, and if there is any development in that event the paper needs also to wait for one more day to write about the development as will, so no doubt the digital news websites are more efficient than the paper, and even if I watched the TV, I don’t actually look for news, even though the TVs news as fast as the internet ones, but I started to feel like keeping the TV to watch other entertaining programs, so in conclusion I would say that I prefer catching up with the news and events in the digital way more than the old ones such as TV and paper.

Week 3 Task:

Week 2 Task:

1. Photography

American bald eagle
By: Michael Rumiz

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2. Painting

The melody of the night
By: Leonid Afremov

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3. Newspaper

The New York Times
American newspaper

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4. Magazine

Time
American magazine

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5. TV Show

The Ellen Show is a television sitcom
Starring: Ellen DeGeneres

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6. Movie

The Indian Runner (1991)

Director, Writer: Sean Penn

Stars: David Morse

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7. Website

A free online encyclopedia

Founder: Jimmy Donal Wales

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8. Mobile Phone

Model: Galaxy S3
Company: SAMSUNG

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9. Mail

mail envelope

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10. Bus Stop Advertisement

Mcdonald's advert

Week 2 Entry:

Group of people waiting for a shop to open:

Usually at early morning when popular shop is going to open especially when it has a promotion, you will see a group of people are waiting, during their time of waiting they usually use interactive communication to contact between each other, sending and receiving information verbally is the media that been used between them.

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Flight crew:

In an airplane flight, usually there are crew who their job is to take care of the flight and serve the guests, so in order to complete their job they need to communicate between each other, so in any airplane there are phones in each section for the flight attendant to contact with the pilot and his assistant, and also the pilot has microphone to give information to the guests or to ask the crew to do anything needs to be done.

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WhatsApp group:

With the new media world there are a lot more options for people to contact, communicate and share between them whatever they want, one of the recent ways of communication is a famous phone app called “WhatsApp”, this app allows people to contact individually or in group through messages, and they can share photos, videos, audios, and information. With this app people now are closer than anytime with the ability to create groups in a handy devise like mobile phone.

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Military battalion:

In any army around the world, there are units and usually these units called “Military battalion”, it’s a group of soldiers who have to carried out what they told to do in a battle field, so in order to complete their job, they have to be super carful of sending and receiving information, otherwise their lives are the price, so they usually use “Portable Radio” to contact each other or to contact with their commander, and they also use some kind of non verbal messages and gestures during their fights.

Week 1 Entry:

Media Use:

As media keeps developing every day in our live and keeps in changing, it hard for us not to notice the impact of its usage in our daily life, through new forms of media or classic developed media we can get anything we need, nowadays we could say that the use of media has covered almost all the human being needs, except the physical needs of course.


In the other hand the mass spread of media has an effect in our lives, it shapes our believes, thinking, acting and reacting towards our daily challenges, we can’t denied that many people became victims of the new media. But also this effect may help in changing the live of many people which was impossible to e changed just like what we have seen in the Arab countries which later called “Arab Spring”, the new social media were the only way that the people used in their Revolution against the government, and it was a massive weapon that they used, it united their demands to change their live and at the end they succeeded.


So the use of media didn't stop at getting information or sending information only, it keeps devolving as I said to control our live, in a way of what we want as long as we used it properly, otherwise it would become a bad master.

Media now became easy to be reached; it’s only a matter of click, now the mobile phone is an easy tool to call send messages and to access internet which I think they consider as the ultimate forms of media, so we live in media and media lives in us, especially with the new social media as YouTube, Facebook, Tweeter … etc, we could use them to see the world and get full knowledge of everything happening around us.


At the end I would mention that our use of media became something we can’t get rid of it, in fact nowadays we can’t live without media, it became the live of ours, and if you notice you would see that now the most of the jobs has something to do with media, that means most people means nothing without media.

Week 1 Task:

Cross-Disciplinary
   : of, relating to, or involving two or more disciplines.

(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cross-disciplinary) (2nd November 2012)



Inter-Disciplinary
   : involving two or more academic, scientific, or artistic disciplines.

 (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interdisciplinary) (2nd November 2012)



Trans-Disciplinary
 :Describing a study which runs across traditional subject boundaries such as arts and science. Geography is often portrayed as a transdisciplinary subject since it has been concerned with the interplay between environment and humans, but many geographers argue that, with increasing specialization, the gulf between physical and human geographers has become very wide.

  (http://www.answers.com/topic/transdisciplinary) (2nd November 2012)




Qualitative Research
 :Qualitative research is aimed at gaining a deep understanding of a specific organization or event, rather a than surface description of a large sample of a population. It aims to provide an explicit rendering of the structure, order, and broad patterns found among a group of participants. It is also called ethnomethodology or field research. It generates data about human groups in social settings.

(http://www.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa696/696quali.htm) (2nd November 2012)



Ethnographic Studies/Research
 :Ethnography means "portrait of a people." This social science research method, closely associated with the fields of anthropology and sociology, though not exclusive to them, provides a detailed description of a culture from the viewpoint of a researcher who brings both inside and outside perspectives.

 (http://www.ehow.com/facts_5519812_meaning-ethnographic-studies.html) (2nd November 2012)