Another revision of a past blog post

 Hello, today I am going to be going over how I improved on a blog post that I had done a few weeks ago on the importance of media literacy. Since when I made that blog post I have learned more about proof reading, layout, revision and peer reviewing which has allowed me to become a better writer. 

For the preparation to rewrite this blog post I read 2 articles relating to feedback and revision. In the feedback document I found useful information like in Brilliant Academic Writing, Pearson Education Limited, 2012 in chapter 14 its said: "The simplest form of feedback is the mark itself. If it’s good, you’ll know you’re reaching the required standard; if it’s not, you’ll know you need to do something to improve". (Bill Kirton Brilliant Academic Writing, Pearson Education Limited, 2012).

I found this information to be very useful because by knowing that you are getting a good grading on your work you can  tell that what you are doing is in line with the marking scheme and should stick to the way that you are approaching your work, and if you are not getting good marks then you should probably change your approach.

In the second document I also learned useful information to do with revision. I learned that revision is even more extensive than proof reading because your going through every detail to make sure it is right rather than just skimming over the work.

 When I revised my old blog post I took into account what advice I got from peer reviews in the past. I decided that I would separate larger paragraphs into smaller ones because I had seen other peoples blogs and from a readers perspective I thought it made the blog easier to read. Another change I did was leave links to my sources in the bottom where I had only left author names and names of documents making it easier to access the information. I also had made minor changes to the way I worded sentences.

Sources

- Brilliant Academic Writing, Pearson Education Limited, 2012, Chapter 14 - Bill Kirton - (link)

- Writing a paper: Revising - Walden University - (link)

The importance of media literacy rewrite #2

 Hello, in this blog I will be discussing the importance of media literacy. For discussing this topic I have read 3 articles related to the topics of  digital media companies, misleading information regarding Covid 19 in the UK, News media literacy, perceptions of bias, and interpretation of news.

The first article I read was about how digital media companies are failing to help its users to understand the information that they are seeing online. A survey conducted in Ireland said that 62% of people were concerned about misinformation online. personally I see this as a very important issue that needs to be addressed in a serious manner by all digital media companies because of how much people consume information online. To combat misinformation digital media companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft have all signed up to the EC code of practice on disinformation. 

This code of practice is monitored by the European Regulators Group for Audio-visual Media Services. In my opinion this is a step in the right direction to get these companies to enforce rules on disinformation,  although it is only a small effect on a large issue. Personally I feel that if everyone could enhance their digital literacy it would be easier for everyone to find sources that are reliable and know how to spot misinformation.

The second article I read is regarding misinformation about Covid 19 in the United Kingdom. Ofcom have been researching misinformation being spread on the internet by conducting surveys. In one of their surveys they discovered that half of the people that they surveyed have come across false or misleading information about Covid 19.

 Ofcom have been doing these surveys periodically through the pandemic to monitor what misinformation is being spread and where people are coming across it. One figure which I found concerning was that 4 out of 10 people were getting their Covid 19 information from social media which can easily be misleading. luckily most information regarding Covid 19 came from trusted sources such as the BBC. 

Another concerning figure I have seen in this article is that 35% of Northern Irish participants said they found it hard to know what's true and what's false. This shows how important it is to have good digital literacy in the modern world.

The third article I read was News media literacy, perceptions of bias, and interpretation of news. This article focuses a lot of its content on American politics about political parties, sources of information and media literacy.  A part of this article I found interesting was about the news sources that people were looking at for their information.

 I discovered that certain news channels such as CNN would bias towards the Democratic political party by giving them positive praise while on other channels like Fox News would have a bias towards the Republican party.  An interesting survey in this article showing the age, gender, party ID, opinion on the importance of news and media literacy education can effect their opinions.

 From this survey I discovered that depending on someone having media literacy education greatly effects someone's opinion of the importance of news which was important for nearly everyone that had media literacy education, rather than what political party they vote for.

After reading these articles I have discovered how immensely important it is to have media literacy in todays world where there is so many sources of information which have a possibility of being false or misleading.

Sources

- Digital Media Companies Found Lacking in Helping Users Understand The Online Environment - by  Dr Niamh Kirk - (link)

- Ofcom research: Nearly half of people across the UK nations have come across false or misleading information about Covid-19 - by Rebecca Lennon, Regulatory Affairs Advisor at Ofcom. - (link)

- News media literacy, perceptions of bias, and interpretation of news - by Melissa Tully The University of Iowa, USA Emily K Vraga George Mason University, USA - Anne-Bennett Smithson George Mason University, USA - (link) 

Learning about media compresion

 Hello, in todays blog I am going to be going over the topic of media compression. Media compression is when you lower the size and quality in different areas of a video in order to make the file size of the photo or video smaller so that it can be accessed online much easier and for a wider audience. Before watching these videos I already had a decent knowledge with media compression as I have done photography in the past as well as experience with audio files. I will be talking about some of the ways that compression works and can be used.

First I will talk about compression in relation to video quality. Videos have a wide variety of quality that they can be rendered in each having their own strengths and weaknesses. The most commonly known video qualities that are seen on online websites like YouTube. 

The higher qualities are 2160p 4K which is the highest quality available on the site. Others like 1440p and 1080p are in HD. Once you go lower than 720p on YouTube to for example 480p and below go from 60 frames per second down to 30 frames per second. The downside to high quality videos is that the higher the quality, the more strong of a connection that you need to stop it from buffering and the files are usually quite large. By having the video quality lower you need a less powerful internet connection and file sizes are much lower but compromise the quality of video.

Compression is also present with audio files. The most common file format for audio files like music is MP3. MP3 are a small size file that can retain a high quality with minimal quality loss. However if you drop your MP3 quality from for example 320k down to a lower MP3 quality like 60k you loose a considerable amount of quality and sound can sound distorted and hollow.

Another area where compression is present is in photos. The highest quality file for photos are in raw mode in a camera. These files are very large because of their high detail but can be compressed to much smaller file sizes like JPEG. JPEG images are very small in size but can retain a decent quality but when you zoom into the image you can really see where the quality has been compromised. Although JPEG are no where near as high quality as a raw file, they can be downloaded and uploaded around the internet very easily while raw files can sometimes not be able to be uploaded to websites because the file is too big.

-Sources

- Techquickei - Video Compression as Fast As Possible

- Double A - What You Lose When You Compress Music to MP3, M4A, WMA, etc.

- Qencode - Video Formats, Codecs and Containers (Explained)

- image by Amar Preciado - creative commons zero license - (link)