My education background has largely been more tech focused and my tertiary education was in engineering. Yet, I have been writing online articles for some time now and thought perhaps I could improve myself and my writing further. One aspect could be through education and with the variety of MOOC courses currently, I figured I should attend one such course to pick up some knowledge in this arena.

I browsed through Coursera - and there was nothing much available except for an Introduction to Communication Science. Honestly, it didn’t sound what I wanted but I signed up anyway and thought it might be worth exploring to see what information I can learn from there. Further searching then brought me to Saylor.org and it was a non-profit MOOC repository as well. There were a number of communication courses available and I signed up. First impression, it looked more friendly than Coursera and the entire course material was made available so you can start learning immediately. It is different from the Coursera approach which takes on a more traditional weekly lecture model where there’s a fixed schedule for the cohort to adhere to.

I signed up for two courses, of which the one I am starting with is COMM103: INTRODUCTION TO MASS MEDIA. At the end of the course, I hope to have a better appreciation of the evolution and impact of media and the impact of new media (electronic entertainment, social media, and the Internet). The new media space is where I am at, and well, hopefully, as a consumer and producer of media content, I can be 1) more discerning, 2) add value to my work.

The course is estimated to require approximately 75 hours, and if you are interested to join in my journey, here is the link to the course: http://www.saylor.org/courses/comm103/

“The medium is the message.” - Marshall McLuhan

Day 1 reading saw me learning on the intersection of media and culture, and one interesting takeaway was the above phrase. It was a provocative statement as he challenged that the content is less important than the platform used. Where does culture come in then? Culture can be defined as a particular way of life, set about by past experiences and activities. It is argued that culture and media are intertwined.

To me, culture due to it being an accumulation of past events, would be influenced by consistent barrage of similar media and content that would either desensitize us to the media impact or lead us to internalise it as part of our culture. On the other hand, culture affects media primarily in dictating what the consumers would be interested in. A culture that defines success as academic or financial achievements would see the media gravitate towards such results and focus on them.

Will be back with more.