Over the past ten weeks of Understanding Communication I have learned a great deal about the different ways we communicate.
This newfound knowledge ranges across the topics of media ethics, the concept of privilege, the representations of indigenous Australians in the media, and gender roles. More importantly, though, the course has taught me about how we define these topics and has helped me to analyse them in a much greater capacity. One example of this is in the changing representation of indigenous Australians in the media, and how this representation is continuing to evolve.
The topics that we have learned about during the course have reflected many of my own interests; having studied a journalism course at TAFE last year, the topic of ethics in the media was one that I found particularly interesting, and this interest helped the group task later in the semester when we had to find an interview subject.
The topic I have found the most interesting was the most recent one: satire. It might have been due to my already-standing interest in the subject but I found the lecture to be funny and engaging, and provided an in-depth look at something that most people dismiss as being fairly uncomplicated – I now know there are two primary types of satire, Horatian and Juvenalian, the difference being that the former is reasonably light-hearted while the latter is quite serious and dark.
But of course, there’s still some more topics to learn about, and I look forward to them…
Bibliography
Carrell, A. ‘Historical views of humor’, (2008, The Primer of Humor Research, pp. 303-332)
Cheng, W. ‘Humor in intercultural conversations’, (2003, Semiotica, vol. 146, pp. 287-306)
The Onion, ‘James Cameron Says Future of Movies Will Be Watching Them Sitting on his Lap’ (2014, web article, http://www.theonion.com/articles/james-cameron-says-future-of-movies-will-be-watchi,35935/)
Jack's UTS Blog 