Final Task- The Internet Monster

The Internet Monster

I created a Power Point presentation and I don't think converting it into a text would be a good idea, so I give you a link where you can find the presentation: CLICK HERE

Media Diary- Series- addiction?

 I watch a lot of series. One might say the amount of tv shoes/series I watch at the same time is unhealthy. Maybe they're right. But I can't help it. I just love watching them. It's always a pleasure but in the winter, when it's cold and dark outside - and it's even worse in Finland-it's the best way of surviving. I often find myself spending the whole day watching my series. Yes, sometimes I watch them instead of studying for my exams or writing assignments. Yes, I'm addicted to them.

I watch 5 series now, and waiting for new seasons of 3 other series. One of the shows I watch is a Hungarian daily soap opera and I'm so happy that I can watch it from here.The other series I watch are either British or American. I started watching Marvel's Jessica Jones a few days ago, and I'm already finished with half of the first season.

I like the world of my series more than real life. It feels so good to be at  so many places without leaving my couch. I can travel through time and space, I can be a superhero, a rich, independent business woman in a big city or a beautiful mistress in the middle ages. Real life bores and depresses me and stress me out, so I just turn on my laptop and forget about everything and just enjoy my series.

Media Diary

I found a good article on a Hungarian site and I decided to translate it. And I added some personal comments as well.


The 7 rules that civilized people should follow when something terrible happens in the world and everyone is talking about it on social media sites:

1. It's okay if you change your facebook profile pic to the tricolor to show solidarity and support. But it's okay if you don't.

2. Don't read the comments below the articles about the tragedy, and especially don't comment on them. You won't change anyone's opinion, but you'll read a lot of terrible things and in the end you'll lose hope in humanity.

3. Be very very careful about what you share. Sometimes even reliable pages share false information, not to mention the hoax-sites.

4. Don't mock people who make stupid jokes about the tragedy. People sometimes act stupidly. If the person is not completely stupid, he's already regretted it, if he is, then you shouldn't bother.

5. Don't tell others that they're stupid for only caring about one current tragedy and not the other terrible things that happened in the past. It's not worth it.

6. Don't mock people because of they share the French flag or a Pray for Paris sign or a hashtag. Of course it won't make the word a better place but it won't hurt anyone. Of people want to show support, who are we to stop them?

7. Generally, try to be positive and a nice person. There are enough terrible things happening don't let other people annoy you with their stupidity and you don't annoy others, either.

Time travel - Let me be Orwell (Post-task)

Diary of Victoria Minn

2nd of November, 2025, Lonton, Europe

This morning my mom told me that I should leave my phone at home. She says it's getting less safe to keep my phone with me and take it to school. I don't think she's right. Yes, last time I got in trouble because of my phone. I posted something on Eyebook that I shouldn't have. My dad made me deactive my Eyebook account after that. He was really angry, he told me that I should have known that I shouldn't share pictures about my personal life. "It's not 2015. anymore, son, social media's never been totally free but now it's worse than ever"- he told me. I deactivated my account, but I'm on Twotter now, I'm pretty sure I can use it safely. I took my phone with me today.


3rd of November, 2025, Lonton, Europe

Today we learnt about Twitter, a social networking site. It's basically he old version of Twotter but on Twitter you were allowed to post "tweet" anything you want, you could even criticize the government Must have been really great. It was before the time of Social-police. Back than your posts immediately appeared on the timeline, without the double check the Social-police does.

4th of November, 2025, Lonton, Europe

Today I had to go to the headmaster's office. I was really nervous. He took out his Collector (it's a special tablet where he can check the students' social network accounts, he can even see the posts that are failed on the social-police check) and showed me something I wanted to twoot. It was a selfie that I took in the school.But there was an other student visible in the background. The headmaster looked really angry, saying I should know that posting a photo of anyother person is illegal. Of course I know that but it was a picture of ME not someone else, it's not my fault he was standing there, I didn't see him. He showed me another twoot that  also failed the SPC: I twooted about my dog, Leo, that he is the cutest thing in the world. The headmaster told me that I shouldn't call my dog a thing and writing false statements is also a crime, because my dog is obviously not cutest.

5th of November, 2025, Lonton, Europe

Sometimes I wonder what's the point of using social media. It mush ave been fun in the old days, but now I don't like it, ot at all. Sadly, I have to use at least one of them, because I have to post about my life. Everyone has to do it, I don't know why. But I remember my mom told me that it wasn't like this when she was younger. But then the government realized that these channels are bad for them. So they started to control it. I remeber when I was little, in 2020, there was the big Social Media  Revolution. People wanted their free social media back, where they could post and comment everything they wanted. But, of course, the government won and now they control the social media.

6th of November, 2025, Lonton, Europe

Today I talked with my friend, Laura on ChatW. She is from the U.S. She told me that she and her friend are planning a new S.M.  revolution. In the U.S the control over S.M. only started a frew years ago. The people there were fighting like crazy against the control. But eventually they lost, too.

Famous person's Twitter (Week- 8 - post task)

I chose Tatiana Maslany, and I'm going to talk about her Twitter account.

Tatiana is an actress and  she's famous for her multiple roles (she plays several clones) in a TV series called Orphan Black.

She uses her Twitter quite a lot, she tweets something every 2nd day. Around half of her tweets are retweets both from fans and from other famous people. She usually retweets pictures which she is tagged in and tweets about the show she's in.

She likes tweeting thank you.: She thanked her hair and makeup artist for making her such a good hair and makeup, she thanked a friend who made her try a special hamburger, and she thanked a fan for making a cute birthday video for her.

She is from Canada so she tweeted about the elections a few times and soemtimes she shares soe personal things but that's not very common.

All in all, I think she cares about her fans a lot. The show has a quite big fanbase and it's quite a new show, so the fans are very very enthuisiastic and so is Tatiana. Most of her tweets about the show. Fans of the show, interviews she had about the show and her characters. She interacts a lot with her fans, se replies to and retweet their tweets. I really like her attitude. She doesn't share too much personal information or too many pictures and, for the most important, she doesn't advertise (that much) Some famous people do it all the time and I can't stand that.

Week 7- Pre-Task

I can't attend the class, so I am answering the questions now.

- How do you understand the term "social artist"?

A social artist is an artist that use different social networks to connect with their fans. In my opinion it can both be direct or indirect. Indirect means that the artist hire someone to connect with the fans. It is not as cool as being direc. When you are a direct social artist, you have to connect with the fans without any mediator.

Twitter is a great platform to be a social artist. Sharing information AND PHOTOS of your own personal life and opinion will satisfy the fans, because they want to know about the artist as much as they can. You can also be interactive like that. Organize A&Q-s so the fans can ask their questions. 


- How important do you think it is for an artist (musician, film maker, comic drawer, writer etc.) to know who their fans are and to communicate with them?

I think it is very important. Without audience there is no point of creating art. Audience is essential. And so is getting feedback. An artist can get feedback from experts but it's much more imprtant to get it from the audience. And the easiest way to get it is to communicate with them. But sometimes artist make the mistake that they try to serve their fans. It is, in my opinion, very wrong, because an artist isn't create things to serve the wishes of the audience but to create something that they like. 


I?

Speechless - Reality show

Speechless.  It will leave you speechless....

12 people:

 6 men, 6 women. None of them speak the same language. They're unable  talk to each other, they can only use non-verbal signs.

An island:

They are on an island in the middle of the Pacific Sea. No way out!

Teams:

Random teams (colours). At the half of the competition, the teams will be split up so the people will fight as individuals.

Tasks: 

They have to do tasks. Sometimes different tasks are given people in the same group, causing chaos. They reciive the description of the tasks by mail.

Hidden Cameras:

No staff, only automatic cameras all around the island. Some of them are hidden.

Who wins?

The teams gain points when they win a battle.The audience can vote for the one who they liked the best that week. Mixing these points together, we get the one who got the least points. That one must leave and never come back. And it goes like this till the end.

Prize:

Something big and precious.

Series: American Horror Story

In my free time I like watching series. I watch a few of them now, but there is one which had a season premier last night.

I'm going to write about the series American Horror Story

The 5th season of American Horror Story (Hotel) is on! I'm really happy about it, I've been waiting for a really long time.

The series have a really unique concept. Every season has a verey different story with different character, at diferent place and time. However the actors are mostly the same.

The first two season of the series were absolutely awesome. They had a lot of cery scary scenes, stories and characters in it. I was addicted to the show. I just like being terrified, I guess. 

The third and fourth season were disappoitments for me. They had a few scary features, but sometimes the whole story was just ridicolous or boring.

I'm really hopeful now, because the season premier of this new season was great, just like the premier episodes of the first 2 seasons. Lots of blood, death and....vampires? I'm not sure that they were actual vampires but they seemed to enjoy feeding on blood.

PS: Gaga is a vampire!

Post-task C: Music vide of my choosing

 I chose a music video of Miley Cyrus, because last Thursday I was the only one who liked her. I chose a music video that was made in 2010, many years before Wrecking ball and her big scandals. She started to act 'not-that-disney-like' in these years but she hasn't started to show that much skin yet. So let's watch the video:

I really like the title of this video. She's the animal,  the beast who can not be tamed. I think she wanted to show she's not that innocent girl anymore, she is wild as a beast and she is uncontrollable.

Genre:

The genre is electro-pop, it is pop music with a hint of electronic music. I can identify it not only by the sound -which is obviously a catchy pop-song and we can also easily hear the electronic hint- but the dance movements of Miley and the background dancers are representing pop-culture. It is not the common popular music though, for me it is a bit close to rock but I might be wrong. All in all, it is not that easy to identify the genre if you are not an expert.

World view:

"They try to change me but they realize they can't"

This song and music video is about a big wild bird who is captured in a big cage but it is no longer controllable. It wants to, has to escape, because it is a rebel, it is wild and it can not be tamed. The world view is about the need of freedom, about rebellion. The bird is a metaphor for her, Miley, because she is the bird that wants to be free.

Post-task B- Two music videos

- How does gender influence the representation of these artists?

In Madonna's music video the ephasis is obviously on her gender, her faminity. She is trying to look and act as sexy as possible. All her moves are full of sex. And the dancers are very hot topless men, but they are in thights and high heels which make the whole video a bit odd, in my opinion. 
Even the title of the  music video contains the word girl, so it is obvious that gender plays a big part of the video.
As for David Bowie's video, I don't think gender really matters there.


- Is genre playing a part in that representation?

Yes, definitely. While Madonna's music is a really modern kind of pop music, Bowie's song is rather slow and melancholic. And the video nicely shows the huge contrast between the type, genre of of the music: While Madonna is dancing in a club-like place, David's music video is about the past, it has a much deeper meaning.

- Are we likely to discuss these artists in the same terms?

No, I don't think it would be a smart thing to do. They are really different singers, with different type of music, comparing them makes no sense. But the common thing is that they both have been famous for many decades and they still try to make new music which a good thing but can have drawbacks

Post-task A : How Older Viewers Are Rescuing Cinema

We had to read an article about the older audience of movie theatres:

How does the article charachterise the link between audience, film production, distribution and exhibition?

Are there more seniors in the movies because they make more deep, meaningful movies OR are there more quality movies with deep meaning because older people are starting to returning to the cinemas? Both are likely to be true. The link is really strong. Film makers make the films for the auduence, and they have to define the target audience. It makes no sense to make a movie without target audience. 

As older people are now the fastest growing age group in the western world, film makers have to focus on them, too. In addition, young poeple who used to go to the cinemas more often, nowadays rather opt for downloading movies, or watching them online.

- Do the films enjoyed by older audiences reinforce or challenge traditional stereotypes about this group?

It is reinforceing the stereotypes. They are not so keen on with movies with special visual effects, for example 3D. They don't usually like movies about vampires or aliens or anything fantasy related. They are more don to earth.

"Data like this shows that, as might be expected, older people enjoy films about maturity and the past. They are also keen on reality-based material such as documentaries and biopics. Above all, they warm to good stories with rounded characters."

I don't think it challenges the tradition stereotypes about this age group. But the fact that they go to cinema sort of does.

Let me share a video:

The topic of the article reminded me of the youttube channel in which we cann see older people's react to different things, for example movie trailers. In this video there are a couple of seniors talking about the movie: Fifty Shades of Grey. It's really funny to see how those people react to a film that was created for a younger audience. Actually, as many would think, this movie's target audience isn't the 18-35 age group, irt was more common among women in their 30s, 40s. But, and that's for sure, it was not targeting  the older generation. The shock on their faces is priceless. Some of them had already read the books, though and some of them would like to see the movie. There are many other really funny videos on this channel.

Mindtrek- Day 2

How Digital Experiences Can Heal People. Using virtual Reality in Health Care

After breakfast and the opening lecture, I went to Harri Lammi's presentation.

 At  the beginning, he showed us a couple of fascinating pictures Pictures, images that an trick our minds, we think that they are real but they just give the impression of reality. It is the virtual reality, that also can be used in Health Care.
He talked about soldiers that have PTSD after wars. They can be treated by the virtual reality-based therapies. They already use it in some ountries, and soldiers become much better after the 10th session of treatment, which is much faster than the traditional therapies.

It is also can be used in case of amputation. In the virtual reality the patiant can have both their limbs, and by that they can get rid of the phantom pain. Traditionally they use(d) mirrors for this. Also, when someone has a stroke and they become paralyzed, this treatment can be used, too. He showed a picture about a virtual reality treatment, where a guy who couldn't move his arm had to make tea for the tea party in Alice In Wonderland. It was not only useful but entertaining.
It's also really useful for medical students, They can get used to the surgery situations before trying it, and by that making it much more safer for the actual patiants.


Gamifying Smart City & Healthy Cities














After lunchbreak I went to another lecture. It started with a picture of the lecturer, Arto Holopainen, having fun. We are all Homo Ludens- playing men, who like games, that's why we need gamification. Then, we got some definitions:

Healthy city: A healthy city is concious of health and striving to improve it
Smart city: A city where services are made more efficient with the use of digital technologies, for the benefit of the inhabitants and business. Smart cities are self-aware, able to reconfigure themselves based on what's happening.

He talked about why gamification of technologies are imortant. It has a goal- sense of purpose, it's challange-simulate creativity, it has interaction-feedbac system, and there is the gameplay-the rules.
Gamification can improve behavioral health change procedures.
Usability->User-Centered Design-> User Experience Design ---These are the methods of the procedure

We can never be dure that our game will be good. That's why uncertainty is a big part of the design. It is just like ice fishing.....->
He is from Kuopio, Finland, where once they had the idea of summertime ice fishing. They wanted to build an ice fishing place on the market place, replace the parking lot with a huge fish tank, from which fish can be cought.

The slogan of the presentation is "Make health fun", I think it's a really good sentence.
We use technology all through our lives: Womb to Tomb, well-being is part of us everywhere.

Robotics will Transform Healthcare

When I arrived at this presentation, the lecturer Cristina Andersson was making the audience stand up. We have to dance -I still don't really know why, but it was very funny. After that she showed us Zora, an intelligent robot (picture on the left). After that she presented a lot of kind of robots, all different shapes (kangaroo, dragonfly, cat) that helps people get better- are used in healthcare.


I learnt I new expression: cobot- which is a robot that can collaborate with people.
Robots can: teach, help the old the weak, the sick, do the work of the highly educated, clean seas, save lives and the environment, they can be used in surgery, medical operations.
Roborts can feel, make decisions, develop, make more robots, sense, recognize, and they are tireless.
They can shorten hospital stays, can decrease postsurgery pain.
There are also threats: they can be hacked by cyber hackers and they can get dangerous, there is a chance they lose the connection with the cloud, that's why it needs to have a an offline mode.

City Hall conference

At the evening we went to the city hall. It is a beautiful building and I'm so glad I got the chance to go there. The mayor of Tampere had a speech and then we got some food and drink. Here are some photos I took:

Mindtrek - Day 1

Thanks to the Media Channels and Platforms course, we had the great opportunity to attend the 2015- Mindtrek Openmind event. To be absolutely honest,  I wasn't too excited when I was told I had to go to this event, I didn't really have a lot of expectations. But now that it's over, I can tell, it was really really good, I'm really happy that I got the chance to attend such an interesting, academic event.

I feel like I was been invited to the 22nd century. I mean ROBOTS!! They are not in the sci-fi films anymore, they are real, they are the present.

<-- Isn't it cool? 

Iron Sky

The first presentation I attended after the opening, was about the Finnish- German-Australian sci-fi movie, Iron Sky (you can watch the trailer above) Sadly, I haven't seen the movie yet, I have only heard about it a few times, but now I would like to watch it. The presenter was Jarmo Puskala, one of the makers  social strategist of the movie.
The title of this panel was- How to work with Internet Audience-Herding cats, so the presentation was about the social media side of the filmmaking process, which, in the
21st century is a very big part of the process.


At first we saw a video about herding cats:

It's a very funny video, and it symbolises the procedure of herding the audience.
He was talking about crowdsourcing, ( the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers) and how it worked for them. He compared the online crowd to snowflakes, all very different, but if the amount is hude, then they can't be distinguished from one another.


He also talked about the noise on the internet. After sharing the trailers and broadcasting the movie, there are going to be a lot of noise (comments, judgements, theroies, etc.) around the movie, about the whole topic. For example the video in which Putin danced. It got a lot of judgement but also a lot of positive comments. It depends on the colture and on each person as well.
I think it was a really good presentation, it was interesting and he used a lot of visual media (videos, pictures) so it made the whole thing even more enjoyable. Plus, he used Prezi which was invented by a Hungarian guy (or a group of guys).


Code Fellows as Change agents


I went to another panel. To be honest I'm not really interested in this topic, nor I know anything about it, I wanted to go to the another presentation about music streaming, but it was cancelled, and I stayed in the room. But it was still interesting. Something very new for me. Many people had a few minutes lecture. They are all code fellows from different countris: Finland, Netherlands. They talked about how code fellows can improve our lives. They talked about different applications that can be very helpful in our everyday life: parking-information apps, biking-routes-apps, and the one I really liked was the Tampere Public Transport website, that I use often. And it has a real-time map, that shows ehere the different buses are. Code for America was the first organization then Code for Europe made it international.
All in all, I'm glad I went to this panel because even though I din't understand everything I got to something very new


Open Badges

Eric Rouselle was the performer of the next lecture I went to. It was about the website openbadgefactory.com. 

It is part of eLearning, which is very important in this century. The user can learn many thing on this website, and then get badges for it, collect them and share them on their personal profiles. For more information about it, watch the Video above or the webpage I linked. He talked about the value of badges: "It is more than a digital badge, it is a verified proof of learning."
I think it is a very good thing, and I would like to try it. Actually, I signed up while making this blog post.

Just some random stuff

I'm pretty sure I should read the news more often. Sometimes when I skype with my family, they talk about the shitty stuff going on in my home-coutry, And I'm like oh really, I haven't read the news for a while, sorry.
I kinda miss watching the TV-news on our bigscreen TV at home. Yes, I could watch it online as well, but I rather watch my series instead of it.
I have a flu so I'm staying in my room and I have a lot of time. I'm on facebook way too often. I'm addicted like most people. And also on twitter. I used to be on tumblr a lot but not anymore. And I read a lot, too. I just love reading.

Introduction video

Sorry for  the poor quility and  my accent :D

My media habbits

It is a bit different here, living in a dormitory without TV. At home I usually watch the news in the TV, here I only read the online newspapers. To be honest most of the time I just go to Facebook and there I can read some of the shared articles.
I don't read printed newspapers, because I don't like spending money on that.
I like reading about many topics, celebrities, political issues, global problems, fun-interesting articles and especially news about my favourite series, etc.

Current media issues- Refugee crisis

Hello Everyone!

I would like to talk about the refugee-issue in my country, as it is  the biggest media topic locally and globally as well.

As I mentioned in my video, I'm from Budapest,Hungary. I'm sure you have heard of my country in the last few weeks when you were reading/listening to the news. In my home country all media channels have been filled with the refugee/migrant issue. All the online newspapers that I read daily are about this terrible problem. I won't go into details, because I don't want to write about political issues, I just have to write about this, because that's the main thing I've been reading about lately. There are many contradictory articles, reports about this whole subject, one can never know what or in which article to believe.



And if only it was only in our national newspapers/Tv-news/etc! But no, you can read and hear about the way our government and people in general handle the issue in almost every big international and very famous media channels such as the guardian or BBC.

Here is an article about the refugee situation in Hungary:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/06/the-guardian-view-on-hungaryand-the-refugee-crisis-orban-the-awful