1 hour timed essay on whether local papers fulfill a more important social fuction than national papers.

The local press is at the grassroots and closer to the people it's reporting about. The content is much more relevant to the audience. The social value of locally relevant news is higher than that of national, generally relevant news. This is because people need to know what's happening around them. The events occurring nationally or overseas may not be as important.

The power of the press release and two-tier social media.

Our lesson on Thursday was about local and national newspapers. I made the point that local newspapers are (I'm making a huge generalisation here based upon no evidence) underfunded, and have underpaid journalists. These journalists have little time to check sources and tend towards just re-writing press releases. This bad journalism actually can work in the favour of certain groups.
For example, in December last year I was involved in a movement which sought publicity about an event, to achieve this they sent a press release to the Oxford Times and the Oxford Mail. The Oxford Times dutifully printed the main details about the event in their following edition.
On Thursday evening I went to another meeting with a different group who also proposed using this tactic. I've now recognised that press releases are a powerful tool and when combined with a lazy journalist can be used to achieve free publicity.

Lola Rennt

Last night I watched run Lola run, it's a German film, and it's significant because it blends perfectly the hermeneutic and proairetic codes (from Roland Barthes's book S/Z). The base story is a fairly simple one: a girl called Lola must deliver 100,000 marks to her boyfriend Manni before 12:00. From there it branches out before the eyes of the audience into the events which occur as Lola tries to procure this money and cross town to reach her boyfriend in time. Each of these events has their own sub-plot, sometimes they're completely unrelated to the base story, sometimes they return later in bizarre twists. Some of the pivotal characters involved in these events are hinted at in the opening 4 minutes.

YouTube account launched.

Before the winter holidays I set up a YouTube account knowing that it would come in handy. Well it has, and I've put up 2 videos:

• A vlog on Piracy.
• A 2 minute montage of Dave Ward announcing the postal worker's strike along with footage of Postman Pat. It juxtaposes two very different images of the same postal service. The first clip subverts the meaning of the second and makes it ironic.

I also got presents, my parents supplied funding for a HD capture card. And gifted me this book all about Twitter.

I spent about an hour this afternoon 'acting out' a machinima in the Halo theater with my brother. Hopefully I'll have finished editing it by the time school starts again.

To what extent is the dual narative in Atonement used to give us different versions of the story?

Explore how this is created by analysing technical details.

Briony and Cecilia's both have different experiences of the first scene where Cecilia gets into the pond. The disparity between the points of view is made clear by Briony's point-of-view shot and the physical gap between the two observers. The scene plays into Tsetsam Totorov's theory of equilibrium by disturbing the balance of Briony's life. Admittedly the 'point of conflict' does come very early on in the film but that's because it's the starting trigger which sets the events of the film in motion.
Briony's character is explained very quickly at the beginning of the film. One of the techniques for this is to associate her with a typewriter sound which denotes writing, and sometimes has a hurried pace to it to make the film seem exciting. This sound is used to great effect in a scene at a hospital where only the sound is heard and Briony is not seen but the link is made and the audience knows she will appear. She's also portrayed throughout the film as an observer, and one of the techniques used was to include lots of close-ups. Extreme close-ups of the eyes also denote an observer.

How is ethnicity represented in 2 episodes of Spooks? Compare them.

The two episodes of spooks I've decided to compare are Spooks series 8, episode 3 and episode 2. To summarise briefly episode 3 features a stunt by a group of Marxist revolutionaries who capture some businessmen and hold them on trial. Episode 2 was about diplomatic struggles as a central asian nation wants to assassinate a dissident in London.
The stereotypical representations of ep 3 are that the 'bad guys' consist of a russian woman and a french man. The american diplomat is heavy handed and represents a 'gung-ho' style of intervention. He dominates the english home secretary and gets his way. The representation of russian and french people as the bad guys is right out of the history of english spy thrillers - look to the villains of the James Bond films for examples. There's also a scene where an english businessman is being tried and he sticks to the attitude of keeping a stiff upper lip and dying with as much dignity as he can muster. This is a stereotypical representation of the english people.

the 10 news values

Here in no particular order are the 10 news values:

1. Unexpectedness - highly unpredictable events.
2. Unambiguity - events whose implications & meanings are clear.
3. Personalisation - events portrayed as the actions of individuals with human interest.
4. Continuity - events that are part of a running story.
5. Reference to elite nations - the cultural proximity of events to the audience.