Week 3: What Isn't Text?

This week's "What Is Text" lecture was given by Ms. Skye Doherty an accomplished editor, digital producer and media consultant (yes, I got this straight off her website).

It was really eye-opening to see the amount of thought and work that goes into each headline and each word of every article from which headline they use, to where it is located on a page. I thought that with the little amount of time editors have between each print - especially on online news sites or daily newspapers - that they would not have put as much thought into each thing but I guess that's part of the challenge of the job!

Whilst the lecture was titled; "What Is Text?", as my own headline insinuates, I really learnt "What Isn't Text?" because I now know text is so many things. It is portable, fast, flexible... it's also story content, headlines, captions, etc... It's amazing how much of world revolves around text and what text can do - I had a lot to ponder post-lecture.

I also thought Skye's dedication to learning more things about her field was very impressive. Her research into using games to present news stories was very intriguing. Despite my initial cynicism that games can accurately tell a factual story, the game we played at the end of the lecture called "Cutthroat Capitalism" was actually amazing. It was about somali pirates and the player is cast as a pirate who has captured a boatload of hostages and is demanding a ransom. Through the game you learn how much you can demand for ransom, how to treat the hostages, how to act in negotiations... I actually felt like I knew more about the motivations of pirates after having watched Skye play the game. I like how university, and particularly JOUR1111 in this case, challenges my beliefs and assumptions about what things can or can't do. Never before had I given so much credit to text and everything it can be, nor had I thought that games could be a legitimate way of conveying news to people.

Yay for learning.
That's all for now folks and remember, text is also comments... feel free to leave some.

OH, and in other news, my blog now has 5 followers!!! HEN HAO (that's "very good" in Mandarin Chinese). I am a happy chappy.

You are all awesome for actually having visited my blog and clicked the follow button.