Understanding the Media Ch1 - Part 2

In the later half of the chapter on understanding the media I found some key points that really helped me understand more of how we can look at the media to try to follow it better. First, I never really thought much about what sort of questions we should be asking when looking at the media. The eight that are listed in the book are very useful to helping me look deeper at what I know and what I want to learn from observing the media. A second point the readings touched on, which I thought was funny, is talking about social context with blogging. The fact that we are blogging about blogging seems just crazy but then again so are many things in the media. It is like how TV covers other TV stories, such as the news covering the Emmys, informing us about how a story was covered and not the story itself. Now going back to the beginning of the chapter is where my favorite parts of the chapter are and that is using a camera to help us understand what the importance of theory is. I like how Devereux describes this by saying, “One useful way to think about the use of theory in this context is to imagine that your overall subject area, discipline or approach is a camera. As a student of the media, you have a range of lenses that you may place on the camera. These will allow you look at something in a variety of ways and perhaps result in your coming to a multiplicity of conclusions, depending upon your chosen lens or lenses. Theories work like a camera lens in this regard: they help to illuminate different aspects of the same phenomena.” This helped me understand the importance of theory so much better probably because I also love taking photographs so using that example really touched on something I understand and like doing.