Media and the online age - Definitions

Web 2.0 - The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of web 2.0 sites include social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, blogging sites like blogger.com, and hosting services.

Participatory Culture - Participatory culture is a neologism in reference of, but opposite to a Consumer culture — in other words a culture in which the public do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers. The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media.

Peering - Peering is the arrangement of traffic exchange between internet service providers (ISP's). Larger ISPs with their own backbone networks agree to allow traffic from other large ISPs in exchange for traffic on their backbones.

Digital Natives - A digital native is a young person who was born in or during the general introduction of digital technology, and by interacting with this technology at an early age, they stand a greater chance of understanding its concepts.

Democratisation - The action taken by a person or group of people to make something Democratic.


We - Think - Explores how the web is changing are world creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and colaborate, ideas and information.

Interactivity - In computers, interactivity is the dialog that occurs between a human being (or possibly another live creature) and a computer program. On the World Wide Web, you not only interact with the browser (the Web application program) but also with the pages that the browser brings to you.


The Long Tail - This refers to the statistcal property than a larger share of population rests within the tail of the probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' distribution.

Wikinomics - Explores how some companys in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration and open source techonology to be successful.

Unemployment rates:

1970 - Total jobless = 1,023,583

2009 - Total jobless =2.5 million

Crime rates:

1970 - 

2009 - 4.4 million

Political Situation:

1970 - Conservatives were in power.
               "The Tory Party consists of an upper class leadership seeking to implement capitalist policies with a middle class voting base reinforced by large numbers of backward workers."

2009 - Labour were in power.

Misfits, gives us the idea that crime rates are higher in modern day life. especially in rural areas, such as the location for the series. we get this impression because all of the characters are taking part in community service. The diversity between the characters gender and race implies that the group are part of a collective identity. The mix in characters from nationality, race, gender and ethnicity shows the diversity (I'm pretty smart but not as smart as usual)

Minder on the other hand gives us a negative perception on race and gender. This is because of the political climate at the time, which had a poor impression on black people. This clip represents black people in the 1970's. It shows that black people were dangerous and troublesome.

The diversity within the collective in Minder represents the clean contrast between the white hostages and the black terrorists.

An Education

1. What kind of Britain is represented? How does it compare to the Britain represented in Passport to Pimlico?

• Upper class Britain, shows a better society, more sophisticated outlook on life. 
• Old fashioned England 1950's, where as Pimlico was more of a relaxed lifestyle.

2. Describe the character of Jenny? How far do you think she is a typical British teenager? What might be different about her, if anything?

• She is a typical middle class student, but has inspirations if upper class people, i.e wants to go to Oxford. She shows signs of a typical teenager as she tries to rebel against her parents.

3. What impression does the film give of Britain if you are a woman? Describe Helen, Jenny's Mother, Jenny's teacher and Jenny in terms of representations of women.

• Women are represented as inferior to men and the inequality between men and women.  

4. What representation of British women do they give and can you think of any contemporary examples of similar women in film?

• They represent women as being suppressed compared to men, for example in the mother and father's relationship he makes all the decisions and she will follow. Also when looking at the 

5. Conduct some research into the film, who made it, how was it funded, who directed it? 

• An Education is a 2009 British drama film based on British journalist Lynn Barbers memoir of the same name. It was directed by Lone Scherfig. The budget was $7.5 million.

Collective Identitiy

1. Collective Identity is where a group takes on the same values.

2.  Britishness be defined as 'patriotism and nationalism', Stereotypical Britishness appeals to us by values, food, community, humanity and morals.

3. Britishness is represented in these three clips. For example in the first scene where by everyone in the court seems in chaos and confusion due to finding out who they actually were. They feel they have to treat the Burgandy people different after finding out they are not the same as them.
In the second clip, britishness is represented by the women shouting out of the window, shows her will power and self esteem to being British.
In third clip we see the children throwing the Burgandy people food which represents our Britishness to help out people and to stand in what they believe in. in the final clip we see how as soon as they go back to being British, it starts to rain representing the general expected weather from Britian.