AP

Reading my first post again, I agree on basically everything I have written. From this seminar I learned plenty of informations and facts about communication. At first, I thought the classes would be boring, but after a few days, I realized that instead they were really interesting and educational and I got really into them. The assignments were different from the other classes, posting papers on Tumblr, was a completely different experience, I enjoyed it. I have to say that I came here in Boston mainly for three things: to improve my English, to learn and to have a good time. This Summer Challenge, has satisfied all of my needs and I'm really sad of going back home. During these two weeks I had some ups and downs, that's normal; I had difficulties with the language at first, because I was a bit rusty. After the first week, since I knew many of the people of the course I had a wonderful time, but unfortunately it didn't last too long, it's already time to go home. I learnt, grew up and had fun, things that don't have price. This experience will be very useful for me in the future, when I will eventually go and study abroad, since Italy doesn't offer me the opportunity to study as well as I would like. Don't get me wrong, the Italian school is still a good public school, offering the study of Latin and ancient Greek, which isn't studied anywhere else in the world and it's a pretty unique experience. I'll wrap this paper thanking everyone for this opportunity

I voted for the "On the Edge" agency for MBTA. This group started talking about the issues that mostly hit this company, and it came to the conclusion that MBTA was dying due to its financial related problems, not having sufficient money to fix it and losing millions of dollars every year. Then they started talking about the strategy, and that's the reason I chose this group. They exposed in a clear, efficient and original way, giving the impression that they knew exactly what they were doing. The idea was really original: having different trains sponsoring different brands (Dunkin' Doughnuts ect.) so that the company could gain more money and fix all of its problems. At first it seemed a bit stupid, but meditating over it, I think that in the future, something like that could happen, since our modern society is so close and stuck to advertising and sponsors. Finally another reason why I chose this group, was for its originality: a different, new and modern idea.

Recently, after the women's soccer World Cup played at home, the Canadian goalkeeper Erin McLeod crowned a great dream, to marry her girlfriend, Ella Masar. I found the article on an Italian online newspaper website "La Repubblica" which I was browsing. Actually some friends of mine told me about this story. I don't like soccer very much, so I am not that up-to-date. http://www.repubblica.it/sport/2015/07/13/foto/canada_le_calciatrici_si_sposano_e_mettono_a_tacere_gli_omofobi_con_una_preghiera-119011708/1/?ref=HRESS-17#1 I decided to start researching, and tracking the article, I was brought to a Huffington Post article, which was a bit more in-depth, descriptive paper, rather than a couple of sentences with many pictures. This article was of four days ago. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ella-masar-erin-mcleod-marry_55a0126ce4b09672915615f5 I continued my research, and at the end I realized that maybe, the first article came from another one from "Independent", dating yesterday. The paper presented many Instagram pictures as well as captions, quotes and many informations related to the case. http://www.independent.ie/style/weddings/womens-soccer-stars-and-teammates-erin-mcleod-and-ella-masar-share-beautiful-wedding-photos-31372680.html I think that the articles had more or less the same information, only said in different words. Obviously the photos were the same, but I noticed that the articles got way much shorter at the end, summing up some captions and comments, using only necessary information to fully understand the story in a fast and efficient way.

The project is based on a format by Ridley Scott made for the first time by Google (then, as RAI did for Italy, BBC also did in the United Kingdom). Today, many tv programs are based on facebook and twitter communities with exchanges of materials, comments, feature etc. In the age of constant visual dictatorship, the little miracle of this social project, is to have spurred active creativity, and not plaintive one. The image of Italy that these videos give, is that of a suffering but dignified Country, which hopes for a better future. If you like to give a historical context to the crowdsourcing and to “participation” it should be mentioned that before the internet there were famous examples in Italy: “Radio Alice”, radio of the student movement in Bologna, in 1976/77, it put the listeners’ calls directly on air (called from home or coin-operated booths, there were no cell phones!) They gave indications about the clashes in the city and the movements of anti riot police departments. Also why the radio was closed and the irruption of the police broadcast live.

This episode of “Happy Family” is very different from other ones I have watched. I’ll start by saying that I do not watch television very often and prefer watching videos on YouTube that teach me even more lessons and which are more fun. I didn’t really like this episode, but it’s a personal comment. Nice idea, but I would not have carried it ahead throughout the episode. It’s not the first time a story has been told through a computer screen, so it’s not at the end so surprising . It seemed like a long commercial for Apple products and a lesser extent for the series it self. What I didn’t like is not so much the commercial aspect (it is a giant product placement for Apple) as the communication mode. In fact, with the exaggeration, typical of the transposition in comedy, it’s a good representation of our lives. Multitasking, sharing, very little “span of attention” I think the episode would have worked, for what it wanted to say, even as a stand alone. In the sense that there aren’t too many references to the series. Like I have already said, I don’t watch TV very much, so I really don’t know what I would like and want from it. Television is slowly dying, there are other services that people prefer (Netflix, YouTube etc.), and they have to pay less or nothing and actually pay for what they want to watch and not for loads of other channels that they are not going to watch. I’m really curious, but in the same time afraid and shocked of what will happen to television and advertising in the future, which isn’t very far.

At first I hesitated a bit about what course to take during the afternoon session, since I generally have a broad interest in engineering, but also life sciences and quite different areas such as communications and business. I am enthusiastic about life and about learning. Academically, I have a passion for sciences but also for the humanities. So after choosing abnormal psychology, which was something that immediately aroused me interest, for the morning seminar, I decided to throw myself into something I had never experienced before. Therefore, taken by curiosity, I decided to take mass communication. So getting to the objective of this post: WHY did I choose this course? I took this seminar because I wanted to try something new, that I had never done before, but in the same time I wanted to see if maybe this topic could be one of my future studying subjects or a more in depth study by my own. What do I want to get out of it? I hope that at the end of this seminary I will know general and more in depth stuff about mass communication. Understanding the needs for communication, the various categories of communication and perceiving how this act can change and influence our life and the lives of others.