Summary - The age of information overload.

Title of article: The age of information overload
Author: Alex Hudson
Publisher: BBC
Date published: August 2012

Theme: Online life
Consumption

Summary of text:

The article draws a concern on people spending a considerable amount of time on the Internet and the information they are receiving. It focuses on the amount of information that people can soon and whether or not it is overloadings society and that there is a disjointed effect between digital self and the real physical life.

The article points out that as we sleep for seven hours a day one third of the time that we are awake is spent consuming information the majority of that is digital. Article also illustrates that because there are multiple devices at all freezers information you can receive an concerned more than 24 hours of information day with multiple devices.

Where the concerns of this overload of information is that people are becoming addicted to the online environment and forgetting their place within the real physical world and rather spending time online socialising. Company and app creators are not helping the situation because applications and devices to reinforce and develop the online environment that one lives in.

The article concludes by saying that the Internet is only 23 years old and Tim Berners-Lee describes the Internet as being as important to human rights as water.

Key Quote 2-3:

"Take for example, the tweets passing through Twitter at a rate of around 100,000 a minute. Research commissioned by The Harvard Business Review says that only 36% of tweets from a user’s feeds are worth reading."

"By 2016 there may be the data equivalent of every movie ever made hurtling across the internet every three minutes."

"An academic study by the University of California, San Diego, suggests that current data levels are the equivalent of each US citizen consuming 12 hours of information - or media - each day."


“Things are designed to really grab your attention. When you get a text message, your phone vibrates, it dings, you have to respond to it. It’s like if I wanted to have a conversation with you and I zapped you with a taser and held a stop sign in front of your face." Nick Bilton a New York Times journalist.

Summary - Hacking book: the difference between telling the truth and telling a story.

Title of article: Hacking book: the difference between telling the truth and telling a story.
Posted by: Roy Greenslade
Author: Richard Peppiatt
Publisher: Guardian News and Media Limited
Date published: March 2012

Theme: Truth
Fiction
Newspapers

Summary of text:

Richard Peppiatt comments on his time as a journalist and the behaviour and reception of the audience as well as the journalists themselves. He states that he wrote articles that were concerned more about the emotional fracture on the audience and actually having any substantial information or real contents of the relevant to their lives.

He states that as soon as an individual and the story that companies them enters the media they leave their assumptions of being an individual behind and automatically become a caricature of themselves. This caricature is emphasised and exacerbated by more and more median notice and attention being drawn onto the subject.

He argues that journalists think themselves of a higher credibility than the rest of society, knowing and seeing all. Yet by the very nature of this the journalists lie and then create their own reality that then themselves become the spectacle of. He argues that this sensibility and disregard for social and moral issues is disregarded for the newspapers a gender to be fulfilled.

He draws light upon society and the journalistic behaviour by saying and concluding that "But until a distinction between the two is recognised I fear the truth-seeking impulse of journalism proper will always be tainted by the excesses of its entertainment-driven cousin, and in doing so public trust will remain in the gutter."

Key points of the text:

• Journalism favours entertainment over truth seeking and informing.
• Once people enter into the newspapers and the journalistic stories they become caricatures.
• Journalists leave moral and social issues and beliefs when writing for a newspaper and adopt the newspapers agenda.

Key Quote 2-3:

"Everything I wrote was designed to appeal to the emotional over the rational, the knee-jerk over the considered, assumptions reinforced rather than challenged and all presented in an easily digestible style that celebrated its own triviality…"

"Entertainment has to some degree always formed part of a newspaper’s output. Crudely, news informed, comment entertained. But today the prerogative to entertain has superseded that to inform, with comment indistinguishable from news, fact indistinguishable from conjecture."

"‘Celebrities are fair game. They make millions off their image, so they can’t just turn it off and claim privacy when it suits them.’ This argument is constructed around the premise that the simulacra and the real are one and the same. The underlying assumption is that the celebrity of the red carpets and chat shows exists beyond a media construct."

Summary - The Dark Sides of Our Digital Self.

Title of article: The Dark Sides of Our Digital Self
Author: Steven Handel
Publisher: The Emotion Machine
Date published: September 2011

Theme: Digital Self
Stages of online life.

Key points of the text:


The author identifies several negative personality traits that tend to manifest in our e-personality or digital self:
- Delusions of Grandeur - To many, the internet holds great promises of freedom, wealth, power, and opportunity.
- Narcissism - Narcissism is a kind of excessive self-love, and another common byproduct of developing our e-personality or digital self.
- Aggression - This formation of a “digital self” often doesn’t just harm our own self-perception, but also the people we choose to treat while inhabiting this self.
- Impulsivity - The ease of accessibility – and “instant gratification”.
- Infantile Regression and the Tyranny of the Emoticon
- Love and Sex Recalibrated
- Illusion of Knowledge
- Internet Addiction



Key Quote 2-3:


“In fact, it can cause a kind of “digital divide” between our digital self, how we often think and behave online, and our offline self, how we often think and behave in face-to-face, “real world” interactions.”

“Aboujaoude shares a lot of compelling research inpsychology, neuroscience, economics, and sociology that seems to indicate that in many ways the internet is a unique kind of environment that creates a very different kind of self-perception (one which can affect both our online and offline behavior).”

“Why be old, short, fat, and bald when you can create a young, tall, dark, handsome version of yourself in a virtual world, like in Second Life? And instead of having to find a real girlfriend, you can just create an avatar of your ideal girlfriend? Many people are becoming increasingly infatuated with the freedom and customization of virtual worlds, and they are willing to neglect their offline lives in order to dedicate more and more time to their fantasies.”

Summary - "Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life"

Title of article: "Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life"
Author: Danah Boyd
Publisher: O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
Date published: March 2007

Theme: Social Media
Interaction
Mediation

Key points of the text:
There are muggles who dont engage with their technology and wizards that do.
There are four different states that in life that we chage how we use social media:
1) Identity formation and role-seeking (aka youth)
2) Integration and coupling (aka 20somethings)
3) Societal contribution (aka "adults")
4) Reflection and storytelling (aka retirees)

We use Social Media to engage with:

• Family
• Friends
• Religion
• Play/leisure
• Health
• Property
• Education
• Politics
• Labor
• Hobbies
• Money
• Power
• Attention
• Sex
• Consumption

Mediated publics have four properties that are not present in unmediated publics:
- Persistence - What you say sticks around. 
- Searchability -  If you hang out in networked publics, you're searchable.
- Replicability - You can copy and paste a conversation from one space to the other but can you tell what is the copy and what is the original?
- Invisible Audiences - In mediated public spaces, there's no way to accurately gauge who is present or who will be present as the conversation spirals along.

Key Quote 2-3:

“As we Twitter our way to friendship, scoring ourselves based on the numbers of 'friends' we can convince to subscribe to our existence, perhaps we lose track of what friendship and connection mean.” 

“Perhaps our technologies are nothing more than pitiful efforts to replicate the magic that we do not fully understand.”

“Technologies become ubiquitous when people stop thinking them as a technology and simply use them as a regular part of everyday life.”

Summary - Drones backed by Hampshire chief constable.

Title of article: Drones backed by Hampshire chief constable.
Author: -
Publisher: BBC News (Online)
Date published: October 2012

Theme: Big Brother
Surveillance
Drones
Control

Summary of text:

Chief Constable Alex Marshall of Hampshire Constabulary, wants to create a debate on whether Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or Drones, should given extra support of the police. His reason for using the drones are because they can stay in air longer and are cheaper than conventional aircraft.

Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said: “Nothing will be approved unless safe mechanisms are in place to avoid mid-air collisions.” However Marshall's concern is that the "public need to have a debate and the police need to make sure we understand peoples’ concerns about security and about privacy".

A member of the Home Office (Damian Green) said "Drones are like any other piece of kit - where it’s appropriate or proportionate to use them then we will look at using them."

Key points of the text:

• Chief Constable wants drones because they are cheeper and stay in the air for longer.
• Police want to make should they understand people's concern about security and about privacy.

Key Quote 2-3:

"…the police need to make sure we understand peoples’ concerns about security and about privacy…"

"The use of UAVs in UK airspace has increased with the CAA approving applications from five police forces since 2010."

"Chief Constable Alex Marshall of Hampshire Constabulary said drones stay in the air longer and are cheaper than conventional aircraft."

My Response:

I don't understand why the Chief Constable of the Hampshire Constabulary wants to roll out this idea of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, when the United Kingdom is already one of the most surveyed and watched countrie and society, in the world. In some parts of the UK (borough of Wandsworth) there are four cameras per 1,000 people. Its total number of cameras - 1,113 - is more than the police departments of Boston [USA], Johannesburg and Dublin City Council combined. [1] So when we already have this incredibly high rate of the state monitoring it's citizens, I don't understand why there is a need for drones to be patrolling the air when all they can do is monitor the citizens, they won't be able to arrest or punish them but observe and monitor.

To me this is just another way for the state to control and survey their citizens, and has an ominous presence of the state depicted in 1984.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8159141.stm

Summary - Icons in the hood - how working-class youths became chavs

Title of article: Icons in the hood - how working-class youths became chavs
Author: Pete Turner
Publisher: MediaMagazine
Date published: September 2012

Theme: Representation
Society

Summary of text:

Turner describes the term chav as a symbolic representation of David Cameron's "broken Britain". This icon represents young people as being hooded, tattooed; wearing trainers and tracksuits with gold jewellery, all of them are uneducated, poor but all in labels and logos and above all, aggressive with their hands down the front of their trousers waving guns and gangs signs around.

Turner argues that the representation of youth in the media can definitely have an impact on people's attitudes in real life. A group of school students when asked to describe a chav classified them as "causing trouble, hanging round the streets, drinking and taking drugs’ (they are) working class, they live in council houses’. Their parents' don’t care, and they don’t work." Turner questions to what extent this attitude comes from the students observing and interpreting what they see around them, and how much of it is a result of iconic representations created and perpetuated by the media?

Little Britain's Vicky Pollard and Catherine Tate's Lauren Cooper are characters that have become symbols of the laddette-ish teenage girls who are perceived to be mouthy, stupid, working class and often pregnant, Turner argues. He argues that a positive representation of young people in society did not arrive until Shameless into 2004 and Misfits in 2009, though this might represent a selfish and stupid group of people, it also shows they love and care for each other, Channel 4 describes their character Kelly (Misfits) as having "a heart of gold and is fiercely loyal."

Turner argues that this representation of young people in society may have already done its damage and audiences are getting confused between reality and fiction.  He discusses that the word "chav" has lost its mainstream media position since December 2004 when a story about a chav reached its peak with 114 stories being published in December alone. However, negative representation of young people in society has not declined, with 71% of articles from a range of tabloids, broadsheets and local papers involving young people in negative tones.

This negative representation, Turner states, has only been made worse since the London riots and with artists like Plan B creating music videos entitled "ill manors" Featuring footage from the London riots appearing to celebrate the stereotype that media portrays about council estate youths.

Turner concludes by saying "what all this current interest in the iconic chav indicates is an interesting polarisation in attitude towards the youthful members of society’s underclass. One writer suggests ‘the C-word actually denotes the mind-boggling revival of privileged people revelling in looking down their noses at the white working class’ (Harris, 2006)"

Key points of the text:

• The representations in the media can impact the lives of real people.
• This representation has already done its damage to audiences as they are now getting confused between reality and fiction.
• 71% of articles within tabloids, broadsheets and local papers involved young people being represented in a negative tone.
• This stereotype is also represented in other forms of media such as music videos and films -  portraying a negative picture of young people in society and perpetuating the stereotype created by the news.
• It can be argued that privilege people are using the word chav to look down their noses at the white working classes.

Key Quote 2-3:

"The representation of young people in the British media can definitely have an impact
on people’s attitudes in real life."

"However, there are concerns that the damage has already been done, and that audiences are getting reality and fiction confused."

"The C-word actually denotes the mind-boggling revival of privileged people revelling in looking down their noses at the white working class"


My Response:
I would argue that this representation of young people in society was once an exaggeration and construction. This can be in the form of Little Britain's Vicky Pollard to entertain society and for privileged people to laugh at the unprivileged (the haves and the have-nots). However, due to its constant representation within the media, especially the news, this representation has become the norm within reality for society and young people in society.

Therefore, as this representation has been taken from the media, who construct and manipulate the truth, and our society is using this on which to base their behaviour and attitudes, then they have become a simulation of the fictional representation, thus entering into a state of hyperreality. However, this simulation has developed and modified itself into becoming a simulacrum of the young people of society as there was no original to copy. Thus it has entered into an uninterrupted circuit without reference or exchanges with the real, but can only reference or exchange with itself. Therefore, the representation of chav for young people in society will remain until another representation takes its place.

Summary - Yes He Can – Barack Obama's Campaign Speech Analysed

Title of article: Yes. He. Can. How a speech and a video helped change the american presidency
Author: Adam Oliver
Publisher: MediaMagazine
Date published: February 2009

Theme: Hyperreality
Politics
Remixing

Summary of text:

The article explores and analyses Barack Obama's famous "Yes We Can" speech and the accompanying video by Will.I.Am, that supported and funded much of the Obama campaign for Presidentship in the USA.

Obama delivered the speech after losing the New Hampshire Primary election to Hillary Clinton in January 2008. Obama's speech was watched by many of the American citizens and the words that Barack Obama and his speech writers wrote were delivered with Obama's famous charisma and deliverance. However it was not the original speech or the original video that made internet sensations but a remix of the famous "Yes We Can" speech by Will.I.Am and accompanying artists that grew to Internet fame.

In February 2008 the musical artist Will.I.Am released a version of Barack Obama's speech onto the Internet through the use of Youtube and Dipdive. Will.I.Am put this speech to music and with the help from accompanying artists, spoke and sang the words for the speech, while Jesse Dylan directed the accompanying video. This video was not a direct production for the Barack Obama's official campaign. However, by the end of March the video reached over 17 billion hits from around the world. People were not just watching the video but also donating to Obama's campaign which lead to Obama's campaign being the richest to stand the for office that the USA has ever seen.

This video was nothing special, it was a very simple piece of work shot entirely with black-and-white, with limited range of shot types and notably lacking any special effects-driven glamour. The choice of black and white, for example, suggests a rejection of the glossy, sophisticated nature of most mainstream political broadcasts; conversely, the limited palette also cleverly implies this video, in contrast, is something rawer, with greater veracity: that this is the word on the street.

Will.I.Am is the first artist to appear in the video singing along with soft playing non-diegetic guitar music. Barack Obama is represented next in the video and he is featured alongside when I am with the use of a split screen. Obama is presented in this way through out the entire video. Oliver argues that this is a method in which to represent Obama as being equal to everyone and create unison with the audience. Oliver reinforces his argument by the fact that all the artists in the video look directly at the camera and thus engaging and connecting with the audience.

The phrase "Yes We Can" become chorus as well as core message and is repeated over and over again, Oliver argued that this is a method in which the message is shared to the audience and the sense of unison is created. Oliver also argues that Obama’s plurality is apparent in the cast: black, white, hispanic; men and women and a child as well asoOne segment of the montage is signed for the deaf, appealing to another potentially marginalised group, whilst the catchphrase Yes. We. Can is also rendered in Spanish: Si se puede.

Text is also used in the video to emphasise key elements such as "Change", "Yes We Can" & "Hope". The latter of which dissolves into the word vote, the change colour for white to red, the only colout that is use in the video. Oliver argues that this is used to emphasise the key action for the American electorate to take away from the viewing.


Key points of the text:

• Obama lost the New Hampshire Primary election.
• Obama's speech yes we can was watched by thousands.
• This speech was taken up by Will.I.Am who remix it and created an online sensation.
• This video was watched by 17 million people around the world and made Obama the richest campaign to ever stand for office.
• Oliver argues that the clever use of camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene were used to manipulate and influence the American citizens to vote for Obama.

Key Quote 2-3:

"The memorable sound-bite, with its concise sense of positive affirmation (‘Yes’), its message of unity (‘We’) and the implied possibility of achieving change (‘Can’) is already acquiring a legendary status."

"The choice of black and white, for example, suggests a rejection of the glossy, sophisticated nature of most mainstream political broadcasts; conversely, the limited palette also cleverly implies this video, in contrast, is something rawer, with greater veracity: that this is the word on the street."


"Change, the central election message, also appears in this way, as does Hope. This latter is also repeated as the video finishes, the verbal noun Hope melting into the imperative verb Vote. That word slowly colour-shifts from white to red: the only colour in the entire sequence being used to emphasise the key action for the American electorate to take away from the viewing."

My Response:
I found this article very interesting as Oliver's interpretation of these events are similar to my own. I do believe the presentation within the media of a series of events can affect an audience in a passive or active manner. However I would argue that as Will.I.Am's video is a remix between his own creation of artists preforming and Obama's original speech therefor blurring the line between the real and the copied. This presents a hyperreal representation of Obama and his position as Obama's words were cut and reposition in the manner in which they were not spoken in the original video. This means that the message and meaning is changed along with the value and impact that it had on the audience. Also artists who are famous and in the eye of the public are presenting Obama's view, which are taken out of context and therefore do not played the original state in which they were delivered.

Therefore this leads the audience and the public into a false sense of representation and thus their decisions cannot be self decided, as other factors have introduced themselves to the audience to influence their decision. Therefore we are entering into a state in which control is taken away from the public and then are entering into a state which is similar to that of George Orwell's 1984.

Summary - Surveillance Society

Title of article: Surveillance Society
Author: David Lyon
Publisher: festivaldeldiritto.it
Date published: September 2008

Theme:Society Control
Influence
Government

Summary of text:
David Lyon transcript's on surveillance with in society discusses; What is the surveillance society?, What is wrong with surveillance society? and Defining surveillance; tracing surveillance society.

Lyon argues that a "Surveillance Society" can no longer be discussed in a further tense, as surveillance place a key role in everyones life, with and without there knowledge. Lyon considers surveillance as a method of seeing the modern day world for what it is. However society view surveillance as an outcome of modern organisation trends in workplaces, businesses and the military than as a covert conspiracy.

Surveillance has all ways existed, Lyon proposes saying that people have all ways watched over one and another for mutual care and for moral caution. However modern citizens can expect that rights would be respected because they were protected by accurate records (obtained by surveillance) as well as by law.

The growth of the military, police departments and new technologies in the twentieth century, improved intelligence-gathering, identification and tracking techniques, meaning that surveillance grows as a part of just being modern. However it is the Impersonal and rule-centred practices that leads to a growth in surveillance. Surveillance is the outcome of bureaucratic organizational practices and the desire for efficiency, speed, control and coordination, Lyon proposes.

Lyon considers that, surveillance expansion in the twenty-first century are producing situations where distinctions of class, race, gender, geography and citizenship are currently being exacerbated and institutionalized. For example, Muslim Americans are branded as unfit for travel using no-fly lists or are otherwise subject to racial profiling. This surveillance is a direct result to the 'war on terror' showing that political, social, religious, and scientific events have an impact of how surveillance is carried out.

Where purposeful, routine, systematic and focused attention paid to personal details for the sake of control, entitlement, management, influence or protection, surveillance can be found.

In the twenty first century surveillance as according to Roger Clarke has change to dataveilance, the collection of data referring to transactions, exchanges, statuses and accounts. However modern surveillance (or dataveilance) has only existed since the 1970's due to the rise of computers , which were to make for a massive expansion in the ways in which surveillance occurs.

Key points of the text:

• Surveillance is a part of the twenty-first century and could no longer be referred to in the future tense.
• The growth of the military, police departments and technologies has led to a improvements in intelligence-gathering, identification and tracking techniques.
• Distinctions of class, race, gender, geography and citizenship are currently being exacerbated and institutionalized due to surveillance. 
• Surveillance can be found where purposeful, routine, systematic and focused attention paid to personal details, for the sake of control, entitlement, management, influence or protection.
• Dataveilance, the collection of data referring to transactions, exchanges, statuses and accounts.
• Computers led to an expansion in the ways in which surveillance occurs.
• Surveillance is bound up with what we call ‘governance.’ Governance controls access, opportunities, chances and even helps to channel choices, often using personal data to determine who gets what

Key Quote 2-3:
"Impersonal and rule-centred practices spawned surveillance."

"Interestingly, our image of state surveillance is often shaped by novels and films."

(Max Weber) "He saw this surveillance, keeping detailed records, collating information, limiting access to certain eligible persons, not only as evidence of ‘progress,’ but as deeply ambiguous. At worst, he predicted that the efficient but soulless world of new organizational methods in every sphere would become an 'iron cage'."

My Response:

After reading David Lyon's transcript, I can say that I have been opened up to some new ideas about surveillance and some old ideas, and for both I can say that I agree and disagree with each. I agree that the introduce of computer has lead to a rise is online or digital surveillance and also the idea that profiling people as a result of the growth of surveillance, widening the gap of class, race, gender, geography and citizenship for the lager powerful conglomerates. However in even day life I do not feel the a gap between people is getting wider in fact I believer that the gap between people is gapping smaller, people of different background are mixing more. I also disagree with the statement that we can no longer referred to surveillance in the future tense as we can not defiantly define the pinnacle of surveillance until we as a society have pact the era and can look back on it. 

Summary - There's a Riot Going On

Title of article: There's a Riot Going On
Author: David Buckingham
Publisher: EMC Publications (MediaMagazine)
Date published: December 2011

Theme:
Media Control / Influence  
Misreporting
A Change in media power

Summary of text:
David Buckingham argues in his article how the media uses words to construct meaning and interpretation. He said "To talk about 'riots' rather than for example, 'civil disturbances' or 'unrest' - immediately defines the meaning of the event in particular ways." Buckingham also commented on how images complemented the wording of news story but also how the same images was used for the first day after the story break and for many days after. "The iconic image of one black, hooded young man which appeared on at least five front pages."

Buckingham also draw on other key point about the "riot" such as the media focused the reports of young people and there act rather than the demographic of the riot. The people convicted for crime during the rioting were middle aged. Also, few weeks after the riot young people achieved record passes in their GCSE and A Level exam, Buckingham further support his view by draw light on how this record about of passes was not report by the media and how this leaves there read with a one sided view on young people. 

Furthermore, Buckingham go on to information the reader how many people have come to see the riots as an issues of race. A topic that was desired my the black press, however the mainstream media's coverage, over look this fact as if it were somehow too awkward to discuss. Therefore again leaving their audience with an incomplete understand of events. The media, as Buckingham put's it, "did not simply misrepresent what happened, and 'moral panics' are not just irrational responses. Media stereotypes are never simply inaccurate: they always contain a 'grain of truth'."

Key points of the text:

• The media did not simply misrepresent what happened but media stereotypes always contain a 'grain of truth'.
• The media speak to anxieties that many people already have.
• By putting a frame around a particular issue, the media draws it to our attention; but while the frame Includes some things, it always excludes others.  
• The media may or may not help us to understand what is going on.
• Most commentators are more than ready to rush to publication well before the facts have been established.
• On all sides of the media debate, there was a rush to instant judgment - or at least instant opinion.
• The coverage hardly heard anything from the people who were involved, or who were closest to what was happening.

Key Quote 2-3:

"Women In Journalism analysed 7,000+ stories involving teenage boys, published in on line, national and regional newspapers during 2008. 72% were negative- more than twenty times the number of positive stories (3.4%). Over 75% were about crime, drugs, or police: the great majority of these were negative (81.5%) while only a handful were positive (0.3%)."

"The age of 'Big Media'-of powerful, centralised corporations controlling media - is now finished: hierarchical, top-down communications have been replaced by a more egalitarian approach."

"The media did not simply misrepresent what happened, and 'moral panics' are not just irrational responses. Media stereotypes are never simply inaccurate: they always contain a 'grain of truth'."

My Response:

From this article I have take the understand that it is as much about what the media does report as what the media does not report that influence their audience understand and belief on a topic. I am beginning to understand that, thought the media can control the information that the audience receives, there is a limit to the extent that the media can do to manipulate the truth or to misreporting the event that the audience are socially acceptable of, and when the boundary is crossed society uprises.

There's a Riot Going On

First draft of notes on the David Buckingham article "There's a riot going on"

- A peaceful demonstration.

- Newspapers, TV screens and the Internet where flooded with reports and images of crowds rampaging.

Doublethink

My notes on the Wikipedia article "Doublethink"

- Act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts.

Origin and concepts 

- Know and not to know

- Complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.

- To use logic against logic.

- Consciously to induce unconsciousness.

- To become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.

- To understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.

- To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.

- Objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality.

- Word one admits that one is tampering with reality.

- Protect its iron power without degrading its people with constant propaganda.

- Lead to the implosion of the State.

- Could be controlled and manipulated merely through the alteration of everyday thought and language.

- Doublethink is the method of directly controlling thought.

- This is demonstrated by O'Brien, during the time when Winston Smith is being tortured toward the end of the book.

- Especially true of fundamentally important words such as good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and justice and injustice.

- Means being able to falsify public records, and then believe in the new history that they themselves have just rewritten.

- The Ministry's name is itself an example of doublethink: the Ministry of Truth is really concerned with lies.

- Self-deception allows the Party to maintain huge goals and realistic expectations.

- If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality.

- Doublethink would avoid a "killing the messenger" attitude that could disturb the Command structure.

- Key tool of self-discipline for the Party.

- Without the confusion and misinformation associated with primitive totalitarian regimes.

- To let himself become consciously a loyal party member while letting his hatred of the party remain an unconscious presence deep in his mind and let it surface again at the very moment of his execution so that "the bullet would enter a free mind" which the Thought Police would not have a chance to tamper with again.

- With relieving cognitive dissonance by ignoring the contradiction between two world views.

This article has again helped me to define what doublethink really means and how it could be used in reality to manipulate the truth.  For further investigate I would like to find another article that explains doublethink in the practice of the real world and also the phase that was mentioned in the article "the bullet would enter a free mind" and if Winston died he would have a free mind. 

Newspeak

My notes on the Wikipedia article "Newspeak"

- Deliberately impoverished language promoted by the state.

- A greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. 

- This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party.

- To make any alternative thinking "thoughtcrime", or "crime think".

- Impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion.

- Citing examples of dying metaphors, pretentious diction or rhetoric, and meaningless words.

To remove synonyms and antonyms

- Remove all shades of meaning from language, leaving simple dichotomies.

- Which reinforce the total dominance of the State.

- Words served as both nouns and verbs.

- A staccato rhythm of short syllables.

- Words with negative meanings were removed as redundant.

- Comparative and superlative meanings were also simplified.

- Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix "-ful".

- An obedient word with which everyone answered affirmatively to what was asked of them.

- All definitions and words that can be used to argue against Big Brother would be eradicated from the language.

- Newspeak on Esperanto.

To control thought

- Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be.

- There will be no thought, as we understand it now.

- Generically, Newspeak has come to mean any attempt to restrict disapproved language by agovernment or other powerful entity.

Vocabulary

- "A" group: simple concepts entirely made up words 

- "B" group: convey more complicated ideas political implications "goodthink" roughly means "orthodoxy". 

- "C" group: technical vocabulary. Party does not want its people to be intelligent in multiple fields.

This article has helped me to understand and define Newspeak in a clear and understandable way, giving me better knowledge of Orwell's message and purpose of the novel. I would like to further investigate Esperanto, as from what the article has told me Esperanto is the real world equivalent of Newspeak.

Articles and Notes for Further Reading

From last week to this week I have finished reading the Wikipedia and have also finished reading the London Riot articles by Daivd Buckingham. The Wikipedia articles have reenforced my understand of "Doublethink" and "Newspeak". However the London Riot has introduced me to a new way of looking at the media and how thay constructed information to persuade society. Mr Michie and I have had another discussion on what I have just read and how some on that will help me to understand to ideas for my essay.

For next week I need to write my notes up for each article and say how my thoughts have changed from reading the article and if there is any further articles to read based on the article. I also need to find three new articles that have something to do with Nineteen Eighty-Four or the media today. My starting place for this would be Baudrillard and 9/11, from the discussion with Mr Michie who directed me into the area.

During next week's meeting I will present my findings and notes from all the articles and discuss how they have effected my understanding and direction of investigation. We will also sit down and consider what I need to do next to progress my project and broaden my understanding.

Key areas of Identification for Further Investigation

To progress from two weeks ago, I have finished reading the novel and also have written up my initial findings and response to Nineteen Eighty-Four. As well as considering areas of interest for further investigation. (See Below) Mr Michie has checked over this and has also sent it out to other people who he knows might have some other elements or ideas for me to consider.

In our meeting this week me and Mr Michie have discuss George Orwell's theories on society and how they are ill-conceived. As his argument is not based on reality as people can not practice doublethink in the way he is arguing. Citizens are not passive to government or media influence, in fact they are active, they will "rise up" against the state.  An example of this is the uprising in egypt against the government, where as in Orwell's novel this is ignored to focus of the idea of control. 

We also identify the areas that I will focus my essay on and also carry out further investigation as well. These areas are:

- Doublethink

- "War in Peace"

- Alliances

For next week I am to read two wikipedia articles one about "Doublethink" and the other about "Newspeak". I am also going to read an article that is about the London Riot by David Buckingham and how the media constructed the publics opinion. This will help me to start to understand different ideas and other arguments for my essay. I can begin to use these as evidence either for or against the argument that world we live in if a reflection of the world depicted by Orwell. I also need to find the defintion of the word "Hyperreality", which will help me to investigate postmodernism.

During next weeks meeting I am to discuss my findings as from the wikipedia articles and how thay has help me to better understand some of the ideas the George Orwell presents in Nineteen Eighty-Four.