Question: David Gauntlett makes a good point in his newest book (Making Media Studies: The Creativity Turn in Media and Communications Studies) and that is that traditional forms of media studies are no longer applicable. Gone are the days of massive institutions and production companies, gone are the traditional audiences and simplistic texts. In, is the new age media companies, the everyday media makers, the consistent consumers and the fantastical mess of The WWW. While universities are pumping out the same content areas since the 1980's (e.g. institutions, production, audiences and texts) that are only relevant to a handful of media forms (cinema, television, online broadcasting and publications), the rest of the world is moving on. David Gauntlett so rightly says that creativity in media, should also refer to thinking creatively about the subject. What are the new ways of running media and communication studies? How has the subject itself changed? What approaches and methods can help media and communications studies to become innovative and useful in spheres beyond itself? David Gauntlett encourages a kind of call to arms, an acquiescence of the incapacities of the old system and a redirected gaze to the future needs of media students and media studies programs. Inspired by Tim Ingold's book Making, David believes media studies should have making at it's front and centre. He also believes the ability to do things with media should be embraced over and above the ability to talk about what others do with media, or what media does to us. The notion is that media studies should be hands on, that it should be all about ideas and critical engagement and this should be expressed through actual making. To borrow three key distinctions from the anthropologist Tim Ingold: 1. It's about learning WITH media rather than ABOUT media. 2. There is an intent to move FORWARD rather than looking BACKWARDS at how things are. 3. It's aims are TRANSFORMATIONAL rather than DOCUMENTARY. Question: Who has been pumping out the same content areas since the 1980's? Options: - Tim Ingold - Universities - David Gauntlett - not enough information === The correct answer is
Answer: Universities

Question: I was lost. As I sat parked at the old service station, I pulled out the maps and tried to do a little backtracking. It didn't take me long to figure out where I had made the wrong turn. I had tried following my memory instead of Luna's directions and wound up about eighty miles off course. My gas tank was pushing 'E' but fortunately the service station was open. When I stepped out of my Jeep, I could feel the soles of my boots melt on the asphalt. The heat coming off the cracked and pitted cement peeled off in waves that rolled out in every endless direction. The barren mountains in the distance looked unstable, like I was looking at them through a window pane slicked with olive oil. I slogged my way over to the gas pump and wrapped my shirt around the handle to keep my skin from burning against the desert-baked metal. The heat was so great I worried the fumes would ignite. A dirty round man stood in the shadowy doorway of the ramshackle service station and stared at me while he rubbed his hands inside an oily red rag. The oval name-patch stitched to his coveralls was loose at one end and curled like a leaf in the heat. His name was Jack. I topped off the tank and then walked over to him. "You work here?" I knew it was a stupid question the second it left my mouth. He and I were the only living things for fifty miles in any direction. Who the hell else would be working here? "Who the hell else would be working here?" he said. I shrugged my shoulders and pulled out my wallet. Jack wobbled inside behind a glass counter filled with everything from belt buckles to oil funnels. "That your momma's car?" he asked. It's impossible to tell what kind of psychological impact this heat would have on a man who lived out here alone, but I was sure it wasn't positive. Question: Where will the narrator go next? Options: - He will keep driving in the same direction. - He will backtrack 80 miles. - He will stay with Jack. - not enough information === The correct answer is
Answer: He will backtrack 80 miles.

Question: What is creativity? How de we define creativity? Where does creativity come from? How philosophical is the notion of creativity? Is everyone's 'creativity' different? Or is it an ill conceived, simplified term that is used to describe a very specific series of neuronal & bodily reactions to certain stimuli? These are all the questions I've been thinking (and googling, and youtubing) since beginning this Capturing Creativity studio* and I have found some answers or maybe I've just found more questions: Creativity is generally defined as the ability to make new things, or come up with new ideas, it's an ability to think outside the box, to see unique solutions and employ them in inventive ways. In this sense creativity is not always utilised when being 'creative', as to be creative is simply defined as the ability to make or produce something. However I guess that depends on your definition of creative, how different, unique, special, once off, un-influenced does something have to be, to be classified as creative? This is where creativity get's tricky. It's all well and good to be like oh this is what creativity is, so it's easy to investigate it, but what if you don't define that as being creative, maybe that was just following a formula, a somewhat inspired formula, but maybe it is just a formula. Creativity to most people seems to be a random mix of once off genius combined with solid skill and hard work and for us humans these percentages are unique to us. Maybe creativity to you is 90% unique idea, 5% skill and 5% hard work. Maybe creativity to you is 40% unique idea, 50% skill and 10% hard work. Maybe for you creativity doesn't have to involve any hard work at all. For me when it comes to creativity I'm most interested in that unique idea portion; where does that unique idea come from? Is it simply random? Is it a gift from the gods? Is our unique idea just a product of a lot of subconscious effort, only made aware to us in the sense of a 'random' idea? Have we been influenced by something, processed it... Question: What does creativity seem to be to most people? Options: - Something that doesn't involve any hard work at all - not enough information - A random mix of once off genius combined with solid skill and hard work - The ability to make or produce something === The correct answer is
Answer:
A random mix of once off genius combined with solid skill and hard work