2732 AUDIENCES & INSTITUTIONS – New Media Technologies
There are 2 sections (A& B)
- You only do Section A. Ignore Section B altogether.
- You have one hour and you must make sure that you are writing for the full hour.
- It is worth 30% of your AS.
Section A is NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIESYou have a passage to read on a particular technological development related to media. You should read through this calmly for about 5 mins before attempting any answers.
- Questions 1a, 1b, 1c, 2a will be based entirely on the passage itself. You do not need to draw on your own knowledge for these. You should spend no more than 15 mins on these first 4 questions.
- You can answer these questions in note (bullet form) and the answers are often simpler than you think.
- Question 2b will be about the text but you must draw on some of your own knowledge in answering this question. You should spend 10 mins on this question.
- Question 3 or 4
- You have a choice for the essay style question between 3 & 4. My recommendation is that you should opt for 3 which tends to focus on ‘Audience’ rather than 4 which focuses on ‘Industry’.
- This is worth 45 marks so you should spend about 30 minutes on the essay.
The exam paper will refer to your ‘Case Study’. Don’t panic and think ‘I don’t know what a Case Study is’. Basically, it just means the work that you done in preparation for the exam. It used to be that you could focus on discreet case studies, but in the age of convergence it is very difficult to separate one ‘case study’ from another. How do I prepare for this exam?Exam technique is all important. It is a horribly short exam and if you don’t organise your time properly, you will have real problems.You should therefore make sure that you have picked up a whole batch of past papers from me (I have collated them into one big handout). Practise as many as you can, and I promise, I will mark them! What about preparing my ‘Case Studies’?
You should already have collected quite a lot of material on a ‘case study’ for your own blog. You can see examples of other students blogs on the blogroll (right hand sidebar) of my blog. To supplement this, there are two ways of building some up some ‘case studies’:1. You could focus on a few small subjects, and make sure that you know 3 or 4 of say…Digital TVDigital RadioGames ConsolesMobile PhonesYouTubeMP3 players and online musicMyspace etcBloggingEtc… 2. You could focus on learning about some of the key themes. You could then try to find examples of ‘case studies’ that relate to these themes. You could pick a couple of these themes:
Interactivity
Convergence
Portability & Size
Participatory Culture
Miniaturisation
Personalisation
Leisure Patterns
Political Concerns – Digital Divide & Freedom
Yes, but what am I really supposed to find out about them?
Here’s an example case study: http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/main/new-media-technologies-gaming/
And here’s a few documents to help you:
This is the handout for preparing your own blogs. It has all the main possible case studies, with a list of the sort of questions you could/should consider: new-media-technology-blogs.doc
If you are focusing on themes, here’s a brief guide to the sorts of questions you could ask yourself: new-media-themes.doc
If you are not sure what some of the themes mean, here’s quite a useful web page: http://rssmedia.blogspot.com/2005/01/key-concepts.html
Here’s something on Personalisation: http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/main/personalisation-and-nmts/
and something on Convergence: http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/main/why-convergence-matters/
I have also drawn up a basic list of the sorts of things you should be considering when considering the impact of new media technologies. Remember, we are looking at the effects of the technologies on inidividuals and societies rather than at the technologies themselves: new-medi1.doc
Still Confused?
Here’s another school’s explanation of the exam/case study etc: http://www.rssmediastudies.co.uk/main/unit-2732-explained/
What terminology do I need to know?
Convergence, minituarisation, portability, participatory culture, social networking etc etc. Take a look at this glossary: new-media-term.doc, and also this note on the difference between convergence and synergy: 2732-conv-synergy.doc.
How detailed does my knowledge need to be?
The honest answer is ‘not very’. You only have half an hour for your essay. When preparing for the exam, it is important not to get carried away with your research. The key is to always have half an eye on the type of questions that keep cropping up in exams. There are three types of question that keep recurring and while I can’t guarantee that one of them will crop up again, you would be crazy not to be ready for them:
1. How important is size and portability?
2. How important is interactivity?
3. How have leisure patterns changed?
To see how the actual wording of the questions, here’s a list of all the past essay questions:new-media-qs.doc
I am happy to mark any practice essays that you send my way.
How else can I test my own knowledge?
If you are feeling pretty cocky about the whole thing, you can read through my questions in the following documents and test your knowledge and understanding.
new-media-technology-blogs.doc
reviewing-progress-on-new-media-technologies.doc
Where can I go to get more information for my case studies.
1. Try the student blogs on my blogroll.
2. Try some blogs run by other schools:
http://longroadnewmedia.blogspot.com/
http://meadiator.blogspot.com/
3. Also, you should be spending a lot of time checking the latest developments in your chosen area at:
www.mediaguardian.co.uk (you need to register but it’s free)
Also worth a look is: