Hey guys,

Sorry about the late introductory post!! Hopefully it still makes the cut. So I’m Laura, but my friends call me Lawz. I’m in my final semester of my Comm Studies degree, also majoring in English. I have absolutely no idea what I want to do next year in terms of work/extra study. But alas, I will make the most of the opportunities I’m given and do what I enjoy the most (well that’s the plan anyway!)

I’m not exactly sure what we’re meant to write so I’m just going to tell you guys a little bit about myself. I guess the most relevant thing right now would be that last semester I was on uni exchange in Canada. The university I went to was bilingual (English and French) which made the whole semester that much MORE interesting! I had the opportunity to not only experience another country/culture/lifestyle for an extended period of time, but also get an education there. Its such a different system to ours, but still so valid. Basically there’s no tutorials/seminars/workshops, and NO webct/lectopia, and 5units instead of 4!! Oh the pain I know! But none the less, I did, for the most part, really enjoy the units I did over there and it definitely gave me a different perspective on education and various concepts that have come up throughout my studies.

On a random note, I have made a blog before! I said no in the tute last week, completely forgetting that for one of my Communication Studies units in Canada, one of our assessments was to make a blog in groups of 4 and explore the various concepts/topics we discussed in lectures each week, much like the purpose of this blog really. So I thought I would use my previous blog as one of the links to contribute for the week. A lot of what was discussed over my groups' blog throughout the semester revolved around the power play between the mass media corporations and individual consumers for ownership of content and participation to the media. This brings us back to what we were discussing in our tute last Tuesday about whether what bloggers have to say, and their overall contributions to the mass media are valid. Personally, I think the validity of bloggers is ever increasing, given their potential to explore various topics without the often strict limitations of the mass media to both produce what ‘sells’ whilst also complying with various ethical/moral guidelines (though this can have negative implications also). Feel free to check out the various blog posts we made on there; I’m sure a lot of what we discussed can be related to this unit and the topics we are going to explore!

http://theglobalvirus.wordpress.com/

Lastly, I would like to share with you all one of my favourite ‘latest artists’. I’m quite the movie and music buff and love watching movie trailers/new songs before they’re released (it’s a little sad, I know haha). I’m sure at least some of you have heard of Mike Posner (the guy who sings ‘cooler than me’), but just incase you haven’t, I really recommend you should check him out on youtube. He basically got signed when he was only in 3^rd year uni because he made a bunch of mixtapes and put them on Youtube. Now that he’s graduated, he’s focusing on his music career, and doing fabulously I might add. It really shows you the power of the internet, hey? Think about all the people who have become famous because of it (Drake, Justin Bieber and Jessica Rose, aka LonelyGirl15, just to name a few!). These people, went from ordinary citizens (much like the average blogger) to global superstars!

Here’s Mike Posner’s ‘Cooler than me’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqKymawhNdg&feature=related

Make sure to check out his other songs too if you get a chance J

See you all in the tute!

Lawz