On this page you will find the posts I have written for my university degree. They are mostly concerned with the research and media projects I have done.
opinion: the student experience is more fragile than what is popularly perceived
The student experience is bursting at the seams with responsibility: university classes, study, work, clubs, societies, volunteering… more. It’s the life that was sold to teens straight out of high school in brochures plastered with smiling faces, and it may be their downfall according to a recent student study*. When entering the terms ‘university students’…
provider brings moral-cavalry to the future of Aged Care
This feature article is part of my PR Writing portfolio for QPS Benchmarking, an assessment partner for my MARK221 class of 2019. QPS Benchmarking is a data science and technology company located in Wollongong, NSW. QPS Benchmarking’s reporting is more effective than ‘gaming the system’ under new quality indicators, recent enquiry demonstrates. The Aged Care…
media release for QPS Benchmarking
This media release is part of my PR Writing portfolio for QPS Benchmarking, an assessment partner for my MARK221 class of 2019. QPS Benchmarking is a data science and technology company located in Wollongong, NSW.
internal reports failing? QPS Benchmarking can help!
This blog post is part of my PR Writing portfolio for QPS Benchmarking, an assessment partner for my MARK221 class of 2019. QPS Benchmarking is a data science and technology company located in Wollongong, NSW. Please disregard the aesthetic of the infographic, I was not trained in graphic design at the time of its creation.…
exposed: QPS Benchmarking is secret weapon for healthcare industry success
This corporate blog post is part of my PR Writing portfolio for QPS Benchmarking, an assessment partner for my MARK221 class of 2019. QPS Benchmarking is a data science and technology company located in Wollongong, NSW. To lead the market, you need to be able to beat the market. Benchmarking—provided by our Wollongong-based company, QPS…
factsheet for QPS Benchmarking
This factsheet is part of my PR Writing portfolio for QPS Benchmarking, an assessment partner for my MARK221 class of 2019. QPS Benchmarking is a data science and technology company located in Wollongong, NSW. To be clear, this task was about writing a lot of information in a clear and succinct manner. I was not…
an examination of redundancy in the student experience
The world has descended into crisis; pandemic has a choke-hold on the lives of billions. Leaders must decide the fate of nations—how to save a dying economy, a dying population, and a dying way of life. As Australia shuts down, a generation of university students must begin to tread unknown waters. The shift to online…
the second pitch
I have previously established that I am to conduct an ethnographic case study of the Sydney restaurant, the Grounds of Alexandria. I will be looking at the symbiotic relationship between tangible, constructed spaces and the intangible mediascapes which they shape. The ethnography I am to be a participant-observer and experiencer both in the physical restaurant…
the first pitch
The Grounds of Alexandria is popularly known for its design not as a restaurant, but as a social media backdrop. Word of mouth suggests that its atmosphere is abuzz with the chattering of lens shutters more so than the clanking of cutlery. As a food-lover, I find this situation to be highly intriguing. My purpose…
immersed in understanding
BCM241 class of 2019, we are an odd bunch. We all, it seems, are very particular about our cinema tastes. We have a favourite seat. A favourite snack. And a devotion to whatever it is we’re watching. We hate talkers. We’re afraid to crunch on food out loud. And we have no qualms with getting…
a friendship across the ages
I vividly remember my dance teacher, Miss T, telling our class not to worry about going to high school. Not because it would be okay, or anything that was actually comforting. But because we wouldn’t have to be concerned about staying in touch with our primary school friends. She told us that we would find…
alone, together
The term ‘networked home’ elicits two-dimensional images of an entranced someone, their face awash in cold light generated by 0s and 1s. We imagine a person whose first hello every morning is their lock-screen, and last goodnight is their social-media-night-cap of choice. This person ignores the “real world”, and is always grafted in some way…
in times of broken-hearted trouble, the television comes to me
As a child, TV was more than just convenient leisure. I felt like more than just a consumer. I find it strange that Nick Couldry in his ethnographic article ‘Theorising media as practice’ (2004) identifies these as some of the key qualities of a child’s television watching. As a more-lonely-than-not child, I survived on a steady…
i’m good, thanks for asking
I’ve been replaced. By, of all things, the not-so-humble smartphone. Maybe not in the literal sense. Nonetheless, it is hard to grasp the fact that as a sales assistant I was once trusted with dishing out sage fashion advice. Now, I am merely the grunt that greets customers and scans shoes with a sweet-as-candy smile.…
ritual cinema
Twenty films in, seeing a new Marvel movie at the cinema has become a ritual. Everything is planned out like clockwork and done with the same feeling of fevered excitement. Every action is unconsciously molded by Hagerstand’s theory of space and time in geography. The constraints of capability, coupling, and authority guide its logistics. Each…
next stop: media ethnography
We all know that one obnoxious person who at some point has said, “I wish we could go back to the good old days where people actually spoke to each other on the train. It’s really sad to see everyone just on their phones and ignoring the real world these days.” *Cue eye roll* I’m…
Making
Fresh out of our (Maddie Johnston and I’s) prototyping phase we had one goal for Finders Keepers: find our audience and get them engaged. The question was… how? We knew we needed to reach more people who fit within our starter pack, and somehow stimulate them to like and importantly, comment, on our content. And…
Prototyping
A refresher Lets just take a moment to throw it back to a wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, younger and less wise version of myself who had just finished her ideating process. The plan was: Establish a platform where we (Madeleine Johnston and myself) can share our experiences at the markets in the Wollongong and Sydney areas…
Ideating
The concept I started this semester knowing that I wanted to continue with my digital artefact (DA) from BCM112. I was a content creator for the Makerspace Club Facebook Page, during which I founded the weekly Makerspace Mondays posts. I knew for sure that it was a solid idea with many opportunities for those all-important…
Harry Potter, but make it… fashion?
Find where I posted it on Imgur Robert Entman suggests that “to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text.” That means, to choose key parts of something’s identity and piece them together to create a story which highlights those particular desired aspects. This process…
if ‘sex sells’, why should advertisers avoid the sexual objectification of women?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gRblfAQKbI In 2017, this Ultra Tune advertisement was aired Australia-wide. It racked up no less than 357 complaints, one of which described it as a “disgusting portrayal of women pandering to a supposed male sexual fantasy about dumb sexy women having a water fight.” The advertisement was found by the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) not…
A New Reality
Find my .gif on Giphy Academics like Henry Jenkins tend to highlight the logistical elements of transmedia narratives. Generally, this includes things like “creating different points of entry for different audience segments” and the creation of “complex fictional worlds which can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories”. Admittedly, many popular franchises come to mind…
You Wouldn’t Steal a Hedwig
Copyright aims to control the spread of memes because the industry wants to control content and ideas. My remediation this week is an example of how this model of highly restrictive copyright is incompatible with the internet. The internet is open source, no matter how much big businesses try to create control and scarcity. Produsers,…
The Digital Public Sphere
The digital age has given Habermas’ classic idea of the ‘public sphere’ a face lift. No longer do we learn about and discuss the news, current events, and social/cultural/political issues of the moment solely from physical sources (legacy media) and face-to-face interactions. Digital and social media have heralded a new age of discourse, allowing us…
The Internet: Connective, Collective
In 2018, the internet dominates over legacy media. Its network configuration affords dialogic conversation from many people to many other people. Media can now be consumed, produced and remixed by anyone, due to its inherent ubiquitous connectivity (i.e. it is cheap, participatory and immediate). Social networks allow for a new mode of participation where we…
Puppets and Our Masters
GIPHY made by me, images: Stokes , Murdoch , Singleton , Gordon Bruce Gordon, Rupert Murdoch (and Lachlan Murdoch), John Singleton, Kerry Stokes and CBS. They’re the purple circle of puppeteers who manipulate our legacy media. They’re Australia’s media industry owners, and by extension, they own our thoughts, our actions and our attitudes, all in alignment…
Technicolour DreamGIF
Lets point out the obvious. The GIF I made is reflective of both the ‘aesthetics of remediation’ and ‘object animation’ tropes. It embodies the convergence of the hyper-kawaii / glitch aesthetic whilst also referencing the word ‘aesthetic’ used in its new form as an adjective (recommended viewing: ‘What is ~A E S T H E…
Kardashian is the Message
https://youtu.be/C2JvuM6EsuY The concept—the medium is the message—is best understood not through its literal meaning, but through the visible impacts it has on society. Take the ‘Kardashian effect’ for example. The use of reality television and social media (medium) to portray the luxurious lives of the Kardashians, has had the effect of audiences wanting to be…
Of Masks and Men
Brace yourself for an eye-opening journey into the world of semiotics… A woman sits, holding up a book as she reads it (presumably). The cover of the book is dominated by the face of a man with an unnerving stare. The scene is dressed to look like a library of sorts, with messy shelves of…
Christina Di Meglio 
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