This month the Medienblick Bonn is featuring a very unique group with a special topic: as part of a class on media convergence, students from 17 different countries – ranging from China to Portugal, from Brazil to Germany, from Russia to Kenia produced this month’s edition on “Mediated Culture.”
Students from the International Media Studies Degree Program (offered by the Deutsche Welle, The Bonn-Rhine-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, and The University of Bonn) teamed up with students from the Medienwissenschaft/Media Studies Master’s Degree Program (The University of Bonn) to write texts, produce jingles and conduct interviews and journalistic research for their podcasts and articles that you can find on this website.
The students selected “Intercultural Media” to be this issue’s main theme. While quite appropriate for the group itself, that topic also picks up on a very important trend in online media.
Media have shaped global communication like no other single force in the last decade. In particular, increased media exposure, the possibility to present oneself on a website, and interpersonal contact via computer-mediated communication have influenced human communication dramatically.
It is the social web or – as Tim O’Reilly phrased it in 2001 – the “Web 2.0” that is now turning the Internet in one big meeting place for people all around the world. The media have become the means by which globalisation is constructed, cultural exchange is framed, and perhaps even a “global village” – the likes of which Marshal McLuhan had envisioned in his time – is being fostered.
Although we focussed upon mediated interaction in our research, it was still refreshing to exchange views and opinions in an personal setting – a joint class gave us the opportunity to do so. Therefore, this issue is the result of personal interchange, multiple studio hours, and text discussions online and offline. In this sense, this class indeed lived up to the name, “Media Convergence”!
Contributions of the special edition:
Sabine Lorenz: “Ein Leben unter Beobachtung – Ein Leben mit der Internetzensur Chinas”
Mary Irani: “Weblogestan – Keine Macht den Repressionen”
Madalena Sampaio: “Portugal goes Facebook”
Mantegaftot Sileshi Siyoum: “Ethiopians Bypass Censorship Online”
Natalia Karbasova: “Russische Studenten: Der Drang nach Westen”
Emmy Chirchir: “Is Social Media Really Social?”
Svenja Schumacher: “Wo man ‘Du’ zum Lehrer sagt: Lernen in Schweden”
Rodrigo Rodembusch: “Clash of the Social Media Titans”
Lina Hartwieg: “The Streets as a Medium: ‘Operation Tirana’ – Art Tour to Albania”
Marit Stracke: “How To Get In – Studieren an Eliteunis”
[...] Your Bell? Von brian louis ramirez, am Dienstag, 13. Juli 2010, 10:22 Uhr Taking their class on media convergence literally, a group of international students cut, mixed and served up these jingles for Medienblick [...]