An explanation of the written portion of the media assignments

Dear Fielding Psychology and Media of Story students-

In this class you are doing two media projects (described in the syllabus). You will produce the following three artifacts for each project:

1. The finished work, in the form of a digital story. Typically this is posted on YouTube, but feel free to post it wherever works for you.
2. The story map you used to create the story (see Part II of my book). If you did this with pencil and paper, simply scan it and upload it to your blog. Feel free to also include storyboards, and other planning materials.
3. A written reflective piece about the project.

One of you has asked how to approach the reflective piece that accompanies your media production. I am sharing my response with all of you here.

Why does a reflective piece need to accompany media production in this KA?

I am trying to keep this KA within the realm of a reflective media psychology course, partly because I think cautious eyes are on us as we expand the program into new areas like this thus we need to make the connection between media development and media psychologist an obvious one, but mostly because the primary value of this course is understanding how to relate media development to audience and our understanding of the emotional and psychological aspects of story, especially when story is translated into media.

An approach: pretend you are being interviewed about your digital story

As an approach to this part of the media piece, pretend you are being interviewed about your digital story, and that you are being asked probing questions about why you created it and why you created it the way you did, how it fits into the mediascape of personalized media development, and how you see your piece from a media psychologist's perspective. What would you say?

In fact, why not have someone interview you?

Your discussion might include the following:

1. discussing the story core upon which the story is based (see Part II of my book), referencing our need for tension-resolution-transformation as a psycho-emotional construct
2. discussing why you developed your story the way you did, why you included the parts you did, why you eliminated the parts you did; all of this can relate to your story core and what it is you are trying to achieve with your media piece
3. discussing your story in terms of an essential question that drove it, and why it was important to you personally to answer it, and how, in addressing it, you address something more universal that others can relate to (an aspect of many great stories)
4. discussing your story, its production, and it purpose in terms of other psychologists, mediasts, philosophers, writers and their work; I know you all read and think about media a good deal, so, make your own production part of your thinking and talk about how it relates to living in a media saturated culture; does it empower you? how? does it just add to the noise? how so?
5. discussing your story in terms of what you learned as a media psychologist and how you can apply it to what you do or want to do.
   

Above all, zoom out

As you can see, there is a wide range of approaches here. Above all, the written portion is your opportunity to "zoom out" and see what you have done within a wider context.

I hope this is helpful. Feel free to ask questions.