Uncommon nonsense

Hi.  As the address says, this is the Uniblog, err, blog for Jane Felstead.

I am a media and communications honours student, which means THESIS (it’s taken on the sort of dreadful quality which gives the writer uninhibited use of caps lock).  The THESIS is titled “All’s Fair In Love and GTA IV: Social Capital In Online Game Communities”, the title probably being the cleverest thing about the thesis itself at this point.  True to the name, it is an exploration of how video game communities work, shamelessly wielding sociological theory to back my basic premise that Gamers Are People Too And Therefore Act As Such In Groups (again, I get to use capitals).  Interestingly, I apparently don’t look like a gamer, though to be completely honest I’m not entirely sure what a gamer is meant to look like.  The thesis sort of owns me at the moment.  I’m not sure which of us I feel sorrier for, it or me.

Truth be told, joystick-fiddling, pithy-title writing and sociology dabbling aside, I don’t have that many practical media skills apart perhaps for a working understanding of HTML, Dreamweaver and some Adobe products that I occasionally fiddle with.  Give me a few bars and I can usually hum along though, or something.

I’m looking forward to this class as perhaps the only piece of coursework I have that isn’t somehow related to the wonderful virtual maps in video games.  I’m sort of dreading it for the same reason, being sort of narrowly focused at the moment.