The World of Politics within the Media.

Unfortunately, due to allegations of racism on my blog, specifically towards Chinese people, i have decided to change the topic of my project. My new topic will be Politics and the media. I have been looking at various different topic hypothesis. I want to go something along the lines of "What impact does printed media support have on political party success in Britain". Why not let me know your thoughts about this? I am very open to sensible suggestions without being accused of racism against Chinese people or Politicians now. I think in various different areas i will look at the media images of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and more recently David Cameron of the Conservative party. The specific area of public image through media has always fascinated me and comparing and contrasting the two Labour prime ministers with a new radical Conservative opposition will also be an interesting area of study for me personally. This topic will be aided by the fact that i also study Politics and history for A-Level. I will also be trying to focus on various issues such as regional variation in audience and asking questions such as "how does the media influence different people in different areas?" I will look at Sales figures of papers in different "political hot spot" areas. In all of these areas of study i will be very careful to not dabble in Internet opinion's or other forms of media unless its the online site of a newspaper, such as the Guardian online.

I have done some basic research into my first focus icon, Tony Blair and his influence of the printed media. Tony Blair was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield. I thought about this and wondered if this could have anything to do with the way people viewed him. He seemed to be very popular in his constituency and was viewed by the members of the community to be "a very working class man but with radical ideas" (The Guardian newspaper 1997). However i wondered if coming from such a working class, poor environment this might influence people to ask the question "is this man fit to run the country?" this question seemed, according to conservative voters, particularly prominent.

I also wondered if Tony Blair's close relationship with Rupert Murdoch had anything to do with his so found success in his early years.
"Tony Blair's close relationship with Rupert Murdoch and the reciprocated unprecedented support which he received from Murdoch's globally influential news corporation media empire, has been subject of much criticism" - (The Guardian Online 2005)

More to come soon.

Research into my World Cinema project.

So, this is my first blog looking in depth at World Cinema. Ive got to say before hand, I'm upset at leaving the topic of New Media technology. I really enjoyed this topic. However in the same sort of way i know i will enjoy the A2 level study, i am about to commence. World cinema has always been a very fascinating area to me, as i have always liked Martial Arts and Traditional oriental films. The styles and portrayal of the culture has always been interesting to me. More so, probably now than ever due to the sheer size and boom in the industry. I am even going on a trip to China in February, to discover more about the mysterious culture of oriental china. So it almost seems appropriate that my area of study will be world cinema, more so how the styles of combat reflected in the oriental films have been copied and used by western films. However its not just China that my study will be on, its Also Japan and other oriental areas such as Thai Land too. Martial arts films have become increasingly popular recently especially with the use of special effects in western films. We see such films as "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" and others such as "Curse of the golden flower" have set a benchmark for modern chinese films but i will also be comparing the impact on western film from such films as Thailand's "Ong-Bak" films. Which i also enjoyed mabye even more than Chinese and Japanese films that have huge financial backing. Overall this project for me will be about comparing Western and Oriental film and seeing how one affects the other. Martial Arts such as Karate, Kung-fu, ju-jitsu, Tai-Kwon-do, judo and even to more degree now Muay Thai and how they affect western fight scenes in western movies. Movies like transporter starring Jason Stratham are showing distinctly Chines styles. People such as Mike Leigh in his films with Mike Pope doing cinematography which happens to be distinctly Japanese. Shots showing the whole room and everyone in it are Japanese in origin. How has the different styles of Shots etc also affected the shots used in Western cinema.
More to come soon.
Joe Carbonaro