Reflection-period 2

Time goes so fast! Period two will end in one week. This blogpost is a reflection on this period.

In this period, we have two courses — Machines of Knowledge and Design Thinking and Maker Culture. The two courses are both interesting and give me a new perspective about media and some new ways of thinking.

In the Machines of Knowledge course, we talked a lot about the Internet using different theories, and what interested me most is the public sphere. Since we all participate in online society with social media give us more opportunities to express our opinions, the public sphere is also affected by the new social environment. What are the changes and what happened in this new online public sphere? I think I can put them in my further research. Besides, we learned a new method in this course, text analysis. Though it is totally new and a little bit hard for me to use proficiently, I have to say it is really a helpful method to deal with a huge number of data and analyze it objectively, such as the date of social media.

The other course, Design Thinking and Maker Culture is different from other courses we learned before. It doesn’t give us too many specific examples or case studies, rather it performs like a tool and brings us some ideas that we can use in a real project. The topic I am most interested in is multimodality, also it is the theme of our group project. Everybody uses different modes not only in daily life but also in academic research even does not realize them. As for me, I want to know more about the use of multimodality in our life, which can improve the efficiency of study and work. Otherwise, I think the podcast that we are asked to make is also interesting, except for creating the content of it, I learned some skills about recording and editing the sound, which is very useful.

2 Responses

  1. Leti says:

    This reflection presents quite interesting topics to develop in the future of the Masters academic year. You give a summary of the course and then stretch about the methodologies learnt to be used in future research.
    I think you are quite clear on how to use the text analysis and would be interesting to see how you will apply it in future contexts. Since it was your first time using this tool, I think your analysis will be even more proficient in future work as you get more and more familiar with the methodology.
    Regarding the podcast, I think it was interesting how you point out the multimodality part. Indeed different ways to present/introduce a topic can help the reader to focus more and be engaged with your content. The production and editing of the podcast will also be useful for the future and another tool you will be able to perfection as you practice more and more.
    Good luck!

  2. Mark says:

    Dear Mengxin,

    I think public spheres are a very interesting topic. Even though they exist since forever the digitalization has changed our understanding of them so much. Therefore I think it would be nice to see your take on it in your thesis. Maybe you could pick a specific public sphere, like let’s say YouTube and analyze what kind of public sphere can be found in the comment sections of K-pop videos for example.
    I can also see you doing a more project based work, like you did in Design Thinking and Maker Culture. Maybe the Double Diamond we learned about in last week’s class could be of help for structuring your future project.
    Best of luck for your thesis!

    Mark

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