Q.3 - Amateurs Vs Professionals - Digital Media

Digital media refers to electronic media working on digital codes. It can range from cell phones, to internet, digital television, video, 2D, 3D, world wide web, web design and many other interactive media. The rise of digital media and networked communications is destroying the conventional boundary between amateur and professional, particularly in the creative fields. The debate has occurred that anyone literally can produce their own field of digital media, blurring the line between amateurs and professionals. The development of websites has drastically changed in the past few years with user-generated content becoming more and more prevalent, making it harder to determine credible sources online.

Web design is simply the arrangement and creation of web pages that in turn make up a web site. It refers to the creative development of websites using a combination of technical, communication, marketing, and graphic design principles. Web design is more than just a form of visual brand communication; it is a multi-layered process where it is necessary to find a balance between competing demands for accessibility, visual appeal, usability, interactivity, functionality and search engine compatibility. The audience approval of the site is the key to a great digital media production. These graphic designs are intended for development and styling of certain material of the internet’s information environment and provide viewers with high-end consumer features and aesthetic virtues. Web design has a significant impact on web marketing efforts, the factors involved could be how visitors find the site, use it and are likely to return or purchase products.

Web design has become a creative field that can be, and is nowadays, adapted by anyone. The production of web design has become so common, simple and a part of everyday life that there are online tutorials available for use buy the general public. Sites such as (w3schools) are perfect examples of these tutorials. People no longer have to attend university for several years to achieve the same result as using simple online tutorials. The ages for when people are introduced to such technologies are becoming younger and younger. An article published in The Future of Children, Children's Media Culture in the New Millennium: Mapping the Digital Landscape, Katherine Montgomery (Online Journal) states “companies are able to integrate advertising and website content to promote "brand awareness" and "brand loyalty" among children, encouraging them to become consumers beginning at a very early age.” This article describes the culture of children’s digital media and how there is now a rich collection of websites targeted at children and teenagers. Many non-profit organizations, such as museums, government agencies and educational institutions, are playing a noteworthy role in developing this online content for children. The goal is to offer them opportunities to explore the world, then form communities with other children, and thus create their own works of art and creative writing. This also assists in advising children of their own safety. What needs to be taken into consideration is the opportunity of what a child's investigation on the internet may lead to, which could be unsuitable content, aggressive advertising, or even dangerous contact with strangers. These companies are on the rise to create safe zones for children, where children can be protected from predators and marketers when exploring cyberspace. If these children are being introduced to technology at such a young age, it is no wonder these creative fields from digital media can, and are, being produced by such amateurs’ everyday.

With the internet being such a major part of today’s society, everybody is able to create their own content and place it online. This then leads to the debate as to how much power has been given to amateurs online and the decreasing recognition of professional, quality content. Professors at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania argue that the power continues to swing between the two: “A tug of war over the future of media may be brewing between so-called user-generated content – including amateurs who produce blogs, video and audio for public consumption – and professional journalists, movie makers and record labels, along with the deep-pocketed companies that back them.” (knowledge.wharton) . User-generated content is a major staple in discussion boards, blogs and social networking outlets such as MySpace or Facebook. These are only the first stages of web designing for amateurs in creating their own digital media. Nowadays, people first encounter these in their early teenage years and are then able to build upon the skills they have acquired. Amateurs are now able to create their own web designs without even having to leave their own house.

In this day and age, having a degree in web design is not a necessity when applying for a job. Some employers are more concerned with the individual’s experience and talent, rather than a piece of paper citing their ability – physical examples speak much louder to the employer. On the other hand, some employers only accept potential employees based on what education they have received. These employers believe that schools teach the latest methods and techniques related to web design and know that students are fully equipped with the understanding of the technology (All Web Design Blog).

From the information provided, it can be clearly understood that the argument between amateurs and professionals within the creation of digital media is valid. Amateurs will still gain more credit than hard working professionals as long as online tutorials are still available for everybody and anybody to use. Unfortunately it is unrealistic that these online mediums will ever be excluded from the internet as the internet itself has become a self learning tool. in the future, amateurs will still get the credit that qualified professionals would have gained also.

References:

Online Journals

Dewan. R, Freimer. M & .A, 2000, Organizing Distribution Channels for Information Goods on the Internet, (online) Informs, (Vol. 46, No. 4). Management Science, Information Technology Industry. Available from http://www.jstor.org.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/stable/2661597.( Accessed on 15 October 2009).

Drèze. X & .F, 1998, A Web-Based Methodology for Product Design Evaluation and Optimization, (online), Operational Research Society, (Vol. 49, No. 10). The Journal of the Operational Research Society. Available from http://www.jstor.org.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/stable/3010527. (Accessed on 14 October 2009).

Hill. J, 2009, Art of the interactive, (online), John Fairfax Publications, (First Edition, Section: Green Guide) http://libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=anh&AN=SYD-5PE2KAC6H845X5QC40V&site=ehost-live&scope=site (Assessed on 12 October 2009)

Montgomery. K, 2000, Children's Media Culture in the New Millennium: Mapping the Digital Landscape, (online), Princeton University, (Vol. 10, No. 2). The Future of Children, children and Computer Technology. Available from http://www.jstor.org.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/stable/1602693. (Accessed on 14 October 2009).

Punt. M, 1998, Digital Media, Artificial Life, and Postclassical Cinema: Condition, Symptom, or a Rhetoric of Funding, (online), Leonardo Type, (Vol. 31, No. 5) Sixth Annual New York Digital Salon. Available from http://www.jstor.org.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/stable/1576594 . (Accessed on 16 October 2009).

Websites

Hayo, Wagenaar, 2003, viewed on 15 October 2009, <http://www.decadeofwebdesign.org/prints/wagen.html>.

Killer sites, 2006, Web Design Degrees: are they essential? Viewed on 14 October 2009, <http://www.killersites.com/blog/2006/web-design-degrees/>.

Knowledge Wharton, 2009, Managing Technology, Pennsylvania, viewed on 12 October 2009
<http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/category.cfm?cid=14>.


The Artful Manner, 2009, Andrew Taylor on the Business of Arts and Culture, Canberra, viewed 13 October 2009, <http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/amateur-vs-professional.php>.

Web Design, 2000-2009, Web design: Degree of No Degree. Viewed on 14 October 2009, <http://www.allwebdesignresources.com/>.

W3Schools, 1999-2009, Full Web building Tutorials, viewed on 12 October 2009, <http://www.w3schools.com/>.

blogging adventure-overall (week 9)

What's this? the end of the world! WHAT! no, the world isn't ending, only this series of mindless blogging will be the one to finish. This wacky blogging adventure overall was pretty interesting and just a little bit on the scary side of not knowing if how you write a blog is really HOW you write a blog. The topics covered throughout the semester have been on the scales of highly interesting and entertaining, to exceedingly mind numbing. You could say, a little bit from column A, and a little bit from column B.

The one thing I really enjoyed was looking at the layout of my blog page and seeing how i had collaborated it altogether. There wee topics that really made you realize how much society has become dependent on technology, it has become out life source, to me, that's pretty embarrassing. I mean come-on, we came from the dark ages where technology rarely existed and we were fine, then new media and devices come out, and this has apparently become our crutch for everyday life. In future we will become even more dependent than previous, it will undoubtedly become ever-growing. Like a vine.. that grows.. and strangles the life out of everything around it! No, not really to that extent, but on the other hand, maybe. Just think about that for a second.What if technology does grow to overrule all of mankind, I think it could be possible.... I think i should start running for the hills now...

Edaj*

what kind of nerd are you? (week 9 lec)

This refers to stock markets in Western nations who saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more recent Internet sector and related fields. A group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as dot-coms. You see, the Companies were seeing their stock prices shoot up if they simply added an "e-" prefix to their name and/or a ".com" to the end, which one author called "prefix investing. The thing is that while the compaines were trying to advance themselves, they were changing a lot of things.

In the Utopian sense, change can be good, but building virtual buildings and tearing them down was not such a success. We got to look on archive.com and just by comparing yahoo ten years back, to now is like. WOW! major success from snooze ville to actual action happening. The site now doesnt put you to sleep. On the other hand, basically the most used search engine 'Google' hasn't really evolved much in terms of appearance of site, in fact, its nearly exactly the same as it was ten years ago. Which isn't a bad thing i might ad.


Our speaker for the day Jason Nelson, a very interesting, slightly abnormal character I'd like to add. I'm not sure if it was just me, but i coudn't really get the gist of his humour, if I was an I.T geek maybe I would have had a better chance. The games he created were pretty obscure in a sense, poetic, and outragiuos. They were to poetry poetry within topics themselves,
I admit, I even had a crack at his games, and maybe the word 'interesting' would be the understatement of the year, they certainly suit his character of insanity.

There is this site that is purely just about cats, nothing else, just cats..weird right? right! unsuccessful? no! not at all. in fact those types of social sites are one of the main sites which get a lot of views, especially if they have comment boxes for poeple to communicate with each other in. Now you might see this as pathetic and typical for I.T to only communicate over the net with their other nerdy nerd friends, but in fact, the people that are socializing out in the real world, are doing the same thing, they just arent doing it through a computer,
In the end, communication and what people live for. No Matter how they get it.
what social nerd are you?

Edaj*

(week 8 tute)

Sign a Petition.


http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/dickhat/#signpetition

What is Barak Obama up to today?

He's apparently still in the UN. How unusual.

Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are.
STATE: Anna Blighe
FEDERAL: Kevin Rudd
However i found it hard to find my Local representative. Sorry.

Read the lecture and the readings, pursue a couple of the topics that you find most interesting and then post your blog with your well-considered thoughts about the theory and practice of politics.

I think bascially what i find so interesting when doing the blogs for topics/readings each week, is that each and everyone of us has the opportunity to write our oppnion on them, and not to mention to speak as freely as we want about them too. By also reading other blogs posted about the same topics gives me even more insight of the different points of views that can be recognized by variuos people. Although there are points that arent considered factual, it doesnt create the feeling of widening your vision on specifc knowledge. The Bloggin life is great!

What do you think of the Government's plans to censor the internet the so called "Clean Feed"?

Here's the scoop. The Australia Federal Government is trying to put forward for the Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for all Australians. Which is clearly going to slow down internet access for a start and going to waste millions and millions of taxpayer money. Smart move guys.

What place does censorship have in a democracy?

It's basically a censor that scans websites and blocks those on a blacklist. They claim its to "prevent child pornography" when a. anyone determined enough to find it, will find it easily. b. more than half the websites blocked don't even have illegal content, they are just either political websites which the government doesn't like or websites which show a general disregard for the social norm such as 4chan. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) maintains a blacklist, since leaked of websites which would form the basis for the mandatory filter. It has threatened fines of $11,000 per day to at least one website hosted in Australia which contained a link to material on this blacklist. In my opinion it is pretty pathetic, they are just men with no idea how the internet actually works, and because they wanna prevent us from accessing information which allows freedom of speech.
They should at least allow the public to either vote on it, or to be able to not censor their own internet if they so choose

Edaj*

cyber..what? (lec week 8)

So what is Cyberpolitics? Well it is a term widely employed across the world, largely by academics interesting in analyzing its breadth and scope, of the use of the Internet for political activity. It embraces all forms of social software. Democracy is a system of government either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed also known as direct democracy, or the power to do so is granted by them known as in representative democracy.

Yeah..so what you say? Well there are several varieties of democracy, some which provide better representation and more freedoms for their citizens than others. Although, if any democracy is not carefully legislated to avoid an uneven distribution of political power with balances, then a branch of the system of rule could accumulate power and become harmful to the democracy itself.

Edaj*

'DING DING DING! CREATIVE COMMONS VS FREE SOFTWARE! (week 7 lec)

You might be wondering what I'm waffling on about, and to put it simply it's all to do with our best friend, the Internet. The internet is basically a source that copies everything, everything you read online, has basically come from somewhere else, and that has come from someone else, and that has come from something else, well, you get the idea right? The thing with information being copied from everything and everyone else is there has to be rights of who has created that orginal work, if not no credit is given to them. There are times when the rights have to be asked for when wanting to copy information etc. P.D (public domain) - free, no rights, which are not owned or controlled by anyone. The term indicates that these materials are therefore "public property", and available for anyone to use for any purpose. C (full copyrights) gives the author of their original work exclusive right for a certain time period in relation to that piece of work, and CC(creative commons) - legally bound contract . These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve. Creative Commons basically saves the world from failed sharing. It has tools to make choices, creativity and connection.

Edaj*

'Fly'... on the wall...? (week 6 addage)

Uploaded on February 26, 2009
by shareatt1

This is a perfect example of accessing the 'Fly'. This technology of accessing such media has become our way of life really, we cannot live without it, I am probably repeating myself as i often say that society needs it, but I can't stress enough about how much, we have become dependant on this technology. IT'S BECOME OUR AIR.

Edaj*