TOURIST ATTRACTION SITE VISIT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

TOURIST ATTRACTION SITE VISIT - Essay Example These hotels provide amazing facilities to tourists. I asked organizing committee about procedures for purchasing tickets for soccer season. They replied, online tickets for complete season can be purchased at cheap rates and it is also possible to select the place of own choice for watching the matches in stadium. I asked organizers that what all facilities are available at the stadium for watching soccer competitions. They replied, they have introduced great facilities like, bathrooms, food, cheerleaders, sound effects and screens for adding all sorts of fun in the events. Who all are tough teams in the event? Mayor said, â€Å"Houston Dynamo† and â€Å"Dallas† are the best teams of the event. I asked how many stadiums are available for hosting the event. Mayor counted four stadiums including a newly constructed state of the art stadium. What is tailgating in Houston? Mayor said that you have snacks and hotdogs before start of the match is tailgating. What are the other tourist destinations in Houston? Mayor replied, space Centre and downtown aquarium are worth visiting places. Organizing committee told me to visit Orange Avenue as well. This avenue provides free souvenirs, food, shirts and a band plays there to entertain people. I am enjoying the opening games 2014 more than my expectations. It is so fascinating and colourful for people of any place in the world. I heard about the Houston and soccer events from my friend and then visited online sources. After coming here, I am not ready to leave this place now. Event is so organized that tourists do not feel any problem in their activities. There is one problem that spectators cannot buy single ticket for a match and they have to buy for complete season. Organizers need to look into this matter. Moreover, stadiums with more capacity should be constructed for accommodating huge crowds. Dynamo started the season against â€Å"New England Revolution† on 8 Mar 2014. There is a long

Dracula and Kenneth Essay Example for Free

Dracula and Kenneth Essay The high angle shot and extreme long shot looking down at Dracula and Harker crossing through the hall. This shot draws attention to Draculas extremely long red cape streaming out behind him like a trail of blood. The low angle shot shows Dracula looming over Harker and makes him look powerful, like he is in control. Many two shots are used to allow the audience to make comparisons between the two characters. The low angle shot is also used to emphasize the shadows movements. The low lighting helps with casting Draculas shadow which is again typical of horror. Draculas eerie shadow moving in the gloom is very effective for scaring the audience as the combination of shadow with candle light works exceptionally well for this scene. This candle light makes the gloomy aspect more present as the castle is immense and there are not very many candles so most of the entrance hallway would be beyond the reach of the light and in darkness, which makes it very scary as you do not know what lurks in the gloom. There is orchestral music played by the strings which go low and slow to create a sinister atmosphere. This music adds to the feeling of tension, the feeling that something is going to happen. The music gets louder and quicker when Harker offends Dracula by laughing and Dracula gets furious and pulls out a sword. This combined with the change of pace and volume of the music makes the audience become afraid, a typical trick of horror. There are many different sound effects in this scene from Dracula. There is the howling of the savage wolves, which scares the audience and makes the element of horror and wildness of the setting more clear. There was the thunder, which is typical of a horror movie. The clanging of the huge, metal gates emphasizes the feeling of the strength and inescapability of the castle and that Harker will not be able to escape and this will be his prison for the rest of his life. Harkers costume is typical of a man of those times. He wears a suit and is very neatly presented. He has his hair combed very carefully. Draculas is very different. He wears a huge red robe which trails out behind him like blood. His hair is curled up high and is white and it mixes with the skin on the back of his neck which makes him look weird and scary. His skin is white and wrinkled like an old man and this creates the effect that he has been drained of all his blood and that helps you to understand his lust for blood and the way he talks about the preciousness of blood. It makes him look very scary and effective, almost dead in a way. It also makes him look exotic and abnormal. He would stand out in a crowd of normal people. There were quite a few similarities between the film extract and the text; both were set in a huge, Gothic castle with a vast courtyard. The stone was massively carved and the door was old and studded. Both had creeping shadows and lanterns. In both the film extract and the text, Dracula is portrayed as having hairy palms (abnormal), profuse hair, an extraordinary pallor as he is very pale, he is portrayed as being an old man in both and he is also similarly portrayed as speaking with a strange intonation (foreign accent). The similarities between the film extract and the text with Harker is that in both they portray his feelings of anxiety and his crossing of the threshold is made significant. The differences are that in the text, Dracula is described as having bushy eyebrows and a moustache whereas in the film extract he has a plain face. In the text, Dracula is dressed in all black while in the film he is dressed in white which emphasizes his paleness with a red cape that is more powerfully visual as looking like blood flowing behind him. Also in the text Dracula is portrayed as having a red mouth with protuberant, pointed teeth while in the film he is shown as having a pale mouth and normal teeth. The director uses this look in order to make Dracula look like a normal human, adding to the feeling of mystery surrounding him, and to make him different from the stereotypic image of Dracula. Summary These two films engage a modern audience in the way the films use clever tricks to give suspense, which can be overlooked in some of the newer horror films that rely on the amount of blood that comes out rather than clever filming and jumpy moments. In short, Dracula and Frankenstein were very similar in the way that they portrayed the typical horror tricks and consisted of similar camera angles to each other point out various bits. I thought that Dracula, both the written extract and the film extract fitted the horror genre a bit better than Frankenstein as it was more believable for me. I also thought that the film extract was much more scary, although Frankenstein wasnt bad and had its moments of fright. My final views were that Dracula was on the whole filmed better than Frankenstein as it used the different camera angles more effectively in my opinion. Andrew Baillie 10ALB Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Mary Shelley section.

Physical and Environmental Effects of a Nuclear War :: science

Physical and Environmental Effects of a Nuclear War Imagine the heat of millions of degrees, the immediate destruction of thousands of acres, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of lives. Now imagine all of that times a thousand. There you have a nuclear war, the explosion of a thousand or more nuclear bombs on the earth. That is what is estimated would be a nuclear war. All of that power packed in relatively small(considering the power they unleash) bombs. The results of a nuclear war would be devastating. It would be devastating to the health and lives of people, and to the environment in which we live. The world wouldn't fully recover for hundreds of years. How a nuclear weapon works In a modern nuclear bomb, commonly called a thermonuclear bomb or a H-bomb, fusion is the power behind the explosion and destruction. Fusion is the fusing of the nuclei of two atoms, which produces an extreme amount of energy(about 40 times that of a fission reaction). For fusion to occur, though, an extremely high temperature and pressure must first be reached, and this is achieved by fission(splitting of the nucleus of an atom). The detonation of a fusion weapon begins with the detonation of a conventional explosive that sets off a fission reaction explosion. Plutonium and uranium are used to create fission. The atoms fused are those of the isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium or tritium. The fusion and fission from a thermonuclear weapon result in large amounts of radiation that can be fatal to humans and animals and can also cause many other effects. Short-term physical effects One short-term effect of a nuclear war would, of course, be the deaths of millions of people. It has been estimated that an attack on U.S. populations centers by 100 one-megaton nuclear weapons would kill up to 20 percent of the population immediately through blast, heat, ground shock, and instant radiation effects. Also, and attack with 1,000 one-megaton nuclear weapons (which many say is more realistic than just 100 weapons) would destroy immediately almost half the U.S. population. Those that do survive the initial explosions would be far from out of the clear. Those estimates above do not include the additional deaths from fires, starvation, or the lethal fallout showering to the ground downwind of the explosion. Skin burns, acute radiation sickness(which includes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and fever), and noticeable blood changes are just a few of the effects of radiation on the body.

Review of a Leader Movie Armageddon Essay

1. Style Of Leadership The style of leadership portrayed by Bruce Willis was decisive and with full conviction, in the best interest of everyone under his care and jurisdiction as shown below. a) As a father, he undertook the sole responsibility of bringing up his daughter from young, after his separation from his wife. He brought her everywhere he went and when she got romantically involved with one of his workers, he showed much concern and took actions in the interest of his daughter’s future. b) As a company boss, he was decisive in terminating the services of his best worker, for taking matters in his own hands and thus jeopardizing the safety of the other workers. He did not tolerate any insubordination and commanded everybody’s respect. c) As a project team leader for NASA, he showed great concern for all humanity and thus, agreed to undertake the assignment. This decision showed his compassion and his willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of others. As he was knowledgeable and showed great leadership skills, even NASA staff listened to him. This emphasize the fact that a good leader is able to influence and guide everyone, through exemplary actions and compassion for others. d) His willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice and switch places with his worker in staying back to detonate the bomb summarizes all his leadership qualities. As a father, he was more concerned for his daughter’s future and happiness and thus switched place with his worker, even though he realized that by doing so, he would die. As a company boss and the project leader, he felt that it was his responsibility to ensure that the job was done well and his compassion for the human race led him to make the ultimate sacrifice. 2. Leadership Communication Strategy The communication skills and strategy showed by Bruce Willis in the movie was very well portrayed. He was strict but fair. He communicated effectively at all levels and strategized it to ensure that it achieved its desired results, as shown below. a) He was initially very upset when he discovered his daughter’s affair with his worker, but later showed his acceptance without even letting them know. This is strategy. by showing his worker his disapproval initially, it makes his worker realize that Bruce Willis was very much concerned and would do anything to protect his daughter’s future. but as depicted at the end of the movie, it showed how Bruce Willis finally admitted his approval and was even willing to sacrifice his life for them. This is effective communications strategy. b) As the project leader, he showed conviction and determination to get the job done, even when faced with extreme situations. He reprimanded his staff accordingly when necessary and allowed them some recreations when needed to. This shows great strategy and very effective communications. When earth lost faith in him, he managed to persuade the commander to disarm the bomb. When he switched places with his worker to detonate the bomb, nobody suspected he would do so. He managed to strategize his communications well and achieved his target, even though he knew that by doing so, he would die. This was the ultimate strategy of a leader, leading by example and good communication skills. 3) Personality Of A Good Leader Through out the movie, Bruce Willis was portrayed as a leader with a good and humble personality, who was intelligent and critical with his words and actions. he was depicted as a very responsible father, a caring company boss and also a convicted project leader as described below. a) As a responsible father, he cared for his daughter all by himself, even with his hectic work schedule and the dangerous nature of his work. He loved his daughter very much and was very protective of her well being and future. b) As a company boss, he was well liked and well respected by all his workers. He did not hesitate to terminate his best worker when he jeopardized the safety of the other staff, thus confirming that he was fair, but strict, and this applied to all. c) As the project leader, he showed great conviction and determination. His ability to make decisive decisions and actions showed his leadership qualities and his ultimate sacrifice showed that he was a leader with great compassion for others without any regards for his own well being. 4) Motivation A good leader is always able to motivate all by his exemplary actions and effective communications. This was well depicted in the movie. It described how a good leader can have appositive effect on others and can turn failures into success, danger into safety and despair into joy as portrayed by Bruce Willis. a) He managed to motivate and convinced his daughter to allow him to undertake the assignment, even though it might cost him his life. Even though the movie does not depict much about his relationship with his daughter, we can imagine how much his motivation affected his daughter’s willingness to follow him everywhere he goes. Even though her role in the project was minimal, it showed how motivated she was, in trying to ensure that the project was successful. This was portrayed in scenes where she had confrontations with the ground crew. b) As a company boss and project leader, he managed to persuade his staff to follow him and inadvertently, put their lives in danger. Even then, they were willing to do so, through his motivations and his communications skills. Throughout the assignment on the asteroid, he played the part of the motivator, never giving up and never despaired, even though he had lost some of his men, who were also his closest friends. How he managed to persuade the commander to defuse the bomb prematurely, was the best example of a good motivator in action. The words he used to convince the commander and how he managed to persuade him was very effective and only a good leader would be able to achieve such a task. To be able to ask someone to put his life on the line and make the ultimate sacrifice for you, requires all the attributes of an exceptional leader. 5. Leadership Management Only a good leader would be able to manage well. There is a danger of a leader becoming a dictator, if he or she is does not have good management skills. These skills needs to be taught and practiced. In the movie, Bruce Willis plays the part of a father, a boss, and later a project leader. As a father and a boss, he had acquired the management skills and experience to be a good father and a caring boss, and applied these management skills as a project leader, as shown below. a) Even though it was not depicted, he managed to bring up his daughter to be a well educated and responsible person, who could contribute his company. Even under stressed situations, he managed to manage his daughter’s personal affairs and ultimately, ensured that she would be well taken care of, even when he was no longer alive. b) He would not be the boss of the company if he was not a good leader with good management skills. Thus, he was able to manage his team and all others in his attempt to ensure that the assignment was successful. As a leader, he managed to control all personnel under any situations. The fact that he managed to save the world in the movie, after going through extreme conditions and situations and even a near failure, shows that through good leadership management, you can achieve every success. In summary, there is no such thing as a born leader. Good leadership qualities needs to be learned and practiced. Anybody can be a leader but not everyone can be a good leader. The movie â€Å"Armageddon† is about a good leader, as described above. It portrayed how 1 man, who possessed all the right attributes, is able to successfully complete a near impossible mission and achieve the desired results and thus saving the world. This movie might seem unreal, but the message behind the movie is very clear. A good leader is able to affect the lives of other people in a positive way. It may be only one life or it could be billions of lives. The fact is, we could apply the message of this movie in our daily lives. We should all try to be good leaders and have good leadership qualities, for the best interests of ourselves, our family, our race, our religion and ultimately, our nation.

“Liquid Life” – Mark Deuze

Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work Mark Deuze Bloomington Indiana – USA (Ph) 1-812-3231699 Email: [email  protected] edu URL: http://deuze. blogspot. com Dated: March 19, 2006 Working Paper Word count (excluding references): 7. 917 Author: Mark Deuze (Indiana University) Keywords: Social Theory, Liquid Modernity, Media Work Biographical information: Mark Deuze (1969) is associate professor at Indiana University’s Department of Telecommunications in Bloomington, the United States, and Professor of Journalism and New Media at Leiden University, The Netherlands.He received his PhD in the social sciences from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Publications of his work include five books, as well as articles in peer-reviewed journals such as New Media & Society, The Information Society, and First Monday, and he publishes an irregular weblog on new media and society at http://deuze. blogspot. com. Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work Abs tract Life today has become analogous with work – and it increasingly displays all the contemporary characteristics of work in what has been described as the ‘new capitalism’: permanent flux, constant change, and structural indeterminacy.Zygmunt Bauman thus argues how we are all living a ‘liquid’ life, which is â€Å"a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty. † In liquid life, the modern categories of production (work) and consumption (life) have converged, which trend is particularly visible in our almost constant and concurrent immersion in media. According to Henry Jenkins, these are the conditions of an emerging convergence culture.In this paper these trends will be explored in detail, coupling insights from contemporary social theory, new media studies and popular culture to show how our modern conceptions of media, culture and society have modernized, and how the emerging media ecosystem can be illuminated by sett ing it against the ways in which those at the forefront of these cultural and technological changes negotiate their professional identity: the mediaworkers. 1 Liquid Life, Convergence Culture, and Media Work In today’s society, argues Zygmunt Bauman, â€Å"work is the normal state of all humans; not working is abnormal† (2005a: 5).Life has become analogous to work. Instead of developing a lifestyle, our everyday efforts and energy go into choosing a work-style: ‘a way of working and a way of being at work’, as one British professional coaching agency describes it. As work becomes a way of life, life increasingly displays all the characteristics of contemporary work, where we have to come to terms with the challenges and opportunities of contingent employment, precarious labour, and a structural sense of real or perceived job insecurity.Ulrich Beck (2000) points at the fundamentally ambivalent prospects of contemporary ‘work-styles’ at all leve ls of society as marked by uncertainty, paradox and risk. The conditions of work at the beginning of the 21st century are in a constant state of flux, brought about by all kinds of job destruction practices in the context of what Richard Sennett (1998) calls ‘workforce flexibility’.This culture of contemporary capitalism manifests itself most directly in the notable change of one’s career from a series of more or less predictable achievements within the context of a lifelong contract to a constant reshuffling of career bits and pieces in the ‘portfolio worklife’, as heralded by Charles Hand as early as 1989 (pp. 183ff). In the portfolio lifestyle, careers are a sequence of stepping stones through life, where workers as individuals and organizations as collectives do not commit to each other for much more than the short-term goal, the project at hand, the talent needed now.The modern categories of life and work at the beginning of ther 21st century ar e thus spilling over, into each other, making each of these key aspects of our human condition contingent on the characteristics of the other. Bauman shows how this increasing fluidity of the everyday, coupled with a prevalent sense of permanent flux, has created the conditions of contemporary ‘liquid’ life as â€Å"a precarious life, lived under conditions of constant uncertainty† (2005b, p. 2).In this paper I will set the sketched developments and discussions on the centrality of work and the convergence of work and life in liquid modernity against a context of the pervasive and ubiquitous nature of media in our everyday lives. I will show how our almost constant and concurrent immersion in media can be seen as both a reflection as well as an amplification of the hybridization of life in culture of new capitalism. This perspective opens up different ways of looking at seemingly contradictory thus deeply unsettling trends in 2 today’s lived experiences at home, at work, and at play.At the heart of this argument stands a selective reading of contemporary social theories on the changing nature of work by Richard Sennett, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck, coupled with the approaches to new media by Lev Manovich and Pierre Levy, and popular culture by Henry Jenkins. By conceptually linking between the centrality of work in today’s risk society, with the omnipresence of new media and the pervasiveness of the genres, discourses and uses of popular culture, we may open up exciting ways of looking at both historical and contemporary phenomena on the intersection between media, culture and society.New Capitalism The constant uncertainty of everyday liquid life today, as sketched by Zygmunt Bauman, is accelerated and amplified at work following the prevailing management mantras of new capitalism, where stability and solidity as one-time hallmarks of a healthy company now have become signs of weakness (Sennett, 2005: 41). The relationshi ps of capital and labour, argues Manuel Castells, are increasingly individualized and organized around the network enterprise form of production, which integrates the work process globally through telecommunications, transportation and client-customer networks.Such worldwide integration introduces a fundamental aspect of unpredictability to the nature of work, as the success or failure of the local production process becomes almost completely contingent on the fluctuations in the global network – and vice versa, as â€Å"any individual capital is submitted to the movements of the global automaton† (Castells, 2000: 18).Here, adaptive behavior, permanent change, casualization of labor, and continual innovation are all expressed in the executive credo of ‘workforce flexibility’ which according to Bauman has turned from something to be avoided into a virtue to be learned and practised daily (2002: 24). This flexibility for many is synonymous with living in fea r of real or perceived job insecurity. Sennett signals how even affluent and highly educated young professionals fear â€Å"they are on the edge of losing control over their lives.This fear is built into their work histories† (Sennett, 1998: 19). Society today, argues Sennett, uses the feverish development of flexible organisations against the ‘evils’ of routine. Unlike Handy, he sees little promise in this re-interpretation of uncertainty as the corporate strategy of choice: â€Å"Revulsion against bureaucratic routine and pursuit of flexibility has produced new structures of power and control, rather than created the conditions which set us free† (ibid. 47). This 3 flexibility stretches out into both work time and non-work time, which distinction has blurred for many, if not most, people. Adapting to changing management practices, new technologies, and cultivating creativity and talent cannot be necessarily tied to a nine-to-five working weekday, especia lly considering the general lack of corporate investment in employee training.With the slow demise of lifelong full-time employment, continuous searching for jobs, preparing for potential future jobs, as well as managing multiple careers more or less simultaneously have become core elements of everyday lifestyle for many. This inevitably must lead to a more inclusive understanding of work as taking place in differing socio-economic settings and as interconnected with many other, often non-work, relationships (Parry et al, 2005).Work comes in many different shapes and sizes – paid and non-paid, voluntary and employed, professional and amateuristic – and we seem to be engulfed in it all of the time. Working increasingly includes (re-) schooling and training, unlearning ‘old’ skills while adapting to changing technologies and management demands, moving from project to project, and navigating one’s career through an at times bewildering sea of loose aff iliations, temporary arrangements, and informal networks.This perception and experience of working has come to define life and modern society. Additionally our understanding of contemporary work-styles by definition includes structural uncertainty and risk, thus framing every aspect of our lives within that particular context. Precarity The key to understanding this ‘brave new world’ of work is its precariousness, characterized by endemic uncertainty and permanent change (Beck, 2000: 22-3). The nature of work is changing rapidly in our runaway world – some even foresee an end of work in the nearby future (Rifkin, 2004).However real or perceived the insecurities experiences in our everyday work-styles are, its precarite bleeds into every understanding we have of ourselves and who we are. As colorfully described on the Britain-based website Precarity. Info: â€Å"WHAT IS PRECARITY? Precarity stretches beyond work. It includes housing, debt, general instability, th e inability to make plans. We can talk about the subjugation of life under capital, not just the subjugation of labour under capital. Precarity is an instrument of control; it is enforced by those with power 4 upon the powerless.We can't choose how we want to live. It engenders competition in social life. It forces us into a Darwinian â€Å"struggle for existence† on a social level. Precarity is the basic condition of individuals in capitalist society. It divides us, and limits opportunities to get together. People are disempowered and social relations break down. †1 If work and life are increasingly indiscernable in the play of the everyday, the key institutions linking their practices to modernity – work (or: occupations) and the family must also be seen as undergoing a fundamental shift.With the increasing precariousness of labor and the exponential entry of women into the workforce both ‘work’ and ‘family’ have not only changed; thes e core institutions of modern life have thus become integrated. Catherine Hakim (2003) signals a shift in preferences towards adaptive or work centered (instead of home centered) lifestyles that cannot be attributed to societies as a whole, but to particular groups within liquid modern societies – especially those who want to keep up with the demands of contemporary consumer culture.The family has become what Anthony Giddens (2003: 58-9) calls a ‘shell’ or, in the words of Beck, ‘zombie’ institution: people and policymakers alike still refer to the family as the primary unit in today’s society, even though in its traditional connotation of the nuclear family – two married parents and children at home – it has all but died. Instead, our families perhaps must be seen as transitory units similar to what Georges Benko describes as ‘non-places’ like shopping malls or airports.In such spaces existing for temporary convenie nce and the more or less anonymous exchange of goods, services and information, no one is really expected to stick around very long. The family as a traditionally celebrated safe haven from the uncertain world outside, seems hto have turned itself against the values of domestication and ‘settling in’ – it has become the place and space for structural coupling and uncoupling (Bauman, 2003).With a divorce rate of roughly 50% in most capitalist economies, a growing recognition of the normalcy of gay and lesbian lifestyles, the exponential increase among city dwellers of predominantly childless peoples like recent immigrants, aging babyboomers, and empty nesters, and with singles forming 40% or more of the total population of countries in North America and Western Europe it must be clear that the meaning of ‘family’ as an institution, like work, has fundamentally changed.In his assessment of the personal consequences of the changing nature of work in our past-paced capitalist economy, Richard Sennett (1998: 21) laments how no one becomes a 5 long-term witness to another person’s life anymore. Indeed, most of us, rich and poor, are constantly on the move – either as economically and politically desperate migratory sanspapiers or as highly-skilled cultural entrepreneurs in an globally networked marketplace, where knowledge and information have become the primary form of capital (Drucker, 1993).We are not just on the move from parttime job to flexible contract, nor just from one city to the next country; in the particular urban settings of flexible capitalism we also move from from ‘pink-slip party’ to yet another social networking event, from rented apartment to leased living space, from fling to affair, and from single-size servings to disposable everything.Our only shared condition increasingly seems to be the lived experience of being â€Å"permanently impermanent† in the context of constant chang e, which in turn disables us to bear witness to anything other but our own plights, to be solely solved deploying our individual skills and personal resources (Bauman, 2002: 18; Bauman, 2000: 72; Bauman, 2005b: 33). In the beginning of the 21st century we are seemingly becoming blind to each other, which social fragmentation is exacerbated by the undeniable primacy yet deeply unsettling nature of work in everyday life.Jonathan Gershuny (2000), after comparing time-use datasets from twenty different countries (including Australia, Finland, The Netherlands and the United States), summarizes the characteristics of modern industrial societies in terms of a continuos growth in the numbers of skilled workers as a proportion of all employment, and a growth of time allocated to the production and consumption of sophisticated products and services.Even though we tend to spend more time consuming products and services of the information age, and technologies increasingly augment and automate human labour, this does not mean we are spending less time working, as Jeremy Rifkin (2004) has argued. Quite the opposite: new forms of work organization in fact entail intensified demands on the work-time of both permanent and temporary employees (Smith, 1997). The trend towards flexible work started in the 1970s, and has accelerated in the late 1990s, coinciding with the rush of an increasingly information-based global economy to the World Wide Web.It is particularly in this sphere of information- and knowledge-based work where the culture of flexible capitalism has taken root as the dominant mode of labour organization – and where researchers have found both employers and employees in fact preferring a condition of so-called ‘boundaryless’ contingent employment (Marler et al, 2002). A boundaryless career reflects a career path that 6 goes beyond the boundaries of single employment settings, and involves a sequence of jobs between different companies and diffe rent segments of the labor market. As job security and promotional opportunities within larger organizations decline, individuals may view multiple employer experiences in a positive light because it supports skill development, increases marketability, shifts career control to the employee, and perhaps results in better matching career and family life-cycle demands. As such, boundarylessness represents a different conception of job security† (ibid. , 430).Whereas for most workers in traditional temporary and contingent settings their employment situation is far from ideal, many in the higher skilled knowledge-based areas of the labor market seem to prefer such precarious working conditions, associating this with greater individual autonomy, the acquisition of a wide variety of skills and experiences, and a reduced dependence on a single employer (Kalleberg, 2000). The portfolio work-style of the self-employed information or ‘cultural’ entrepreneur can thus be char acterized by living in a state of constant anxiety, while at the ame time seemingly enjoying a sense of control over one’s own career. Bauman warns against overtly optimistic readings of the relative freedom these prime beneficiaries of inevitably unequitable globalization claim to enjoy, as â€Å"it is in a horrid and lamentable insecurity that their targeted or collateral victims suspect the major obstacle lies to becoming free† (2005b: 38). Freedom and security, often seen as mutually exclusive, thus become ambigious in the context of how different people from different walks of life deal with, and give meaning to, the consequences of not having either.It is perhaps the perfect paradox of contemporary liquid life: all the trends in today’s work-life quite clearly suggest a rapid destabilization of social bonds corresponding with increasingly disempowering effects of a frickle and uncertain global high-tech information economy, yet those workers caught in the epicenter of this bewildering shift express a sense of mastery over their lives, interpreting their professional identity in this context in terms of indvidual-level control and empowering agency (du Gay, 1996; Storey et al, 2005).Conditions of real or perceived job insecurity thus do not necessarily mean the workers involved are suffering in silence – nor that the anxiety that comes with a boundaryless, largely contingent, and portfolio worklife necessarily must be seen as a blessing in disguise. The convergence of the time and effort we invest in both production (‘work’) and consumption (‘life’) as signaled by Gershuny does suggest that our most common solution to the increasingly anxious and sometimes exciting developments in society is an endless individual and professional mixing of the cultures of working and living, thus indefinitely 7 lurring the boundaries between them. Crucial to this understanding is the realization that not only are we sp ending more and more time producing – information, knowledge, products, ‘things’ – we are also increasingly engaging in acts of consumption. The rate of consumption in society has greatly accelerated over the last few decades. The values, ideals and practices of consumerism tend to be framed in an extremely negative light – focusing for example on the increasing infantilization, mainstreaming and materialism of contemporary consumer cultures.However, consumerism can also be embraced in terms of its transformative potential regarding elitist, top-down, and otherwise non-responsive social institutions such as the political system (cf. the emergence of the ‘citizen-consumer’), the economy (cf. the ‘conquest of cool’ and the marketing of resistance), and the media (Keum et al 2004; Thomas, 1997; Jenkins, 2006). Indeed, the consumptive trend has been particularly visible in the sphere of knowledge and information-related leisure services provided by the cultural industries.We spend more and more time and money on entertainment experiences – which vary from acquiring consumer electronics to attending multimedia shows, from collecting technological toys to participating in social media online, and from navigating between ‘high’ cultural (cf. theater, museums, opera) to ‘low’ cultural (cf. reality TV, videogames, tabloids) forms of expression.Indeed, our collective quest towards increasingly compelling and diversified leisure like media-centric experiences has turned us into cultural omnivores: attending a play one day, renting a couple of Hollywood blockbuster movies the next; reading the latest installment in the Harry Potter (or the Russian Tanya Grotter) book series this week, spending the following weekend building a Website containing links to all the relevant information about global meteorological and ecological trends online.It certainly seems people have a lot of spa re time on their hands if we add up all these activities. However, Gershuny found evidence of what he calls the ‘end of leisure’: â€Å"each year we have to work harder in our free time to consume all those things that we have been working harder to produce in our work time† (2000: 51). Status in society today thus comes with a price: time outside of work (whether at home, on the road or in the office) has become a scarce commodity, even though we seem to spend more of it all the time. Media in Everyday Life The paradox of more time spent simultaneously at production and consumption can be resolved if one takes into active consideration how both spheres of activity have converged in our increased reliance on media in all aspects of life, in turn facilitated by rapid advancements in information and communication technologies. Next to engaging in all kinds of leisure activities to compensate for strains or other drawbacks on occupational work, work and leisure can increasingly be seen as xtensions of each other – especially for professionals in the knowledge and information sectors of the economy (Blekesaune, 2005). One particular effect this spillover effect has had on our everyday lived reality is the ongoing retreat of people into what can be called ‘personal information spaces’ at home and at work (which for a significant number of people occupy the same space), within which we only talk to and with ourselves.These spaces can be seen as particular physical environments such as turning parts of the house or apartment into a ‘home theater’ and ‘home office’ filled with all kinds of consumer electronics used to consume and produce media content (such as a desktop computer with internet access and a printer, one or more game consoles, a television set, digital video recorder, DVD-player, and anywhere between two to seven loudspeakers).Other examples of such personal information spaces include the ensemble of mobile media technologies we carry around us everywhere we go – devices that seem to socially isolate us while at the same time connecting us to the rest of the wired world (using a cellphone, laptop, Personal Digital Assistant, digital camera, walkman, and other more intricate forms of wearable computing that truly put the ‘personal’ in Personal Computer).Yet these spaces can also be experienced as disembodied – as in our ongoing immersion in persistent online environments varying from virtual workspaces (for example through videoconferencing capabilities and company intranets) to massively multiplayer computer games (World of Warcraft, Everquest, Ultima Online), virtual worlds (Second Life, The Sims Online, Active Worlds), and social networking services (Friendster, Orkut, MySpace). The various ways in which the ever-growing numbers of people both young and old engage with each other through these and other media is sometimes taken as new for ms of community.Manuell Castells for example describes our intensifying interactions online as a new form of ‘hypersociability’, where the social consists of networked individualism â€Å"enhancing the capacity of individuals to rebuild structures of sociability from the bottom up† (2001: 131). 9 Sennett’s act of witnessing (or perceived lack thereof) seems to have moved online, where people move in and out of interactive networked environments, managing their multiple virtual selves (cf. avatars) in persistent gaming, chatting, instant messaging and otherwise connective, digital, and online environments.Market reseach suggests the worldwide number of internet users surpassed one billion in 2005, most of whom access the global computer network from the United States, China, and Japan, with other large user groups in India, Germany, Brazil, Russia, and Spain. 2 Internet user penetration is now in the 65% to 75% range for the leading countries. We use intern et overwhelmingly for interpersonal communication, whether it is in the context of play, love, or work. And yes, these distinct domains of everyday life dissolve in our interactions online. A prominent place for people to look for or advertise new jobs is Monster. om, a Website, which launched in 1994. The site, which has affiliates in 21 countries around the world, currently boasts a million+ resumes and has contracts with close to 150. 000 companies. A growing number of singles – quickly becoming the dominant species in liquid modern societies – seeks and sometimes finds love online. A popular online matchmaking service, Match. com, launched in 1995, currently has more than 15 million members in more than 240 territories on six continents, and operates more than 30 online dating sites in 17 local languages. 3 The free online classifieds community at Craigslist. org operates 90 sites in all 50 U.S. states, and 35 countries, reports three billion pageviews per month â €“ the vast majority of which go to job listings. 4 The most successful businesses on the internet – like eBay, Yahoo, Google, and Amazon – share one fundamental characteristic: the product these companies deliver is connectivity, bringing people together to trade, communicate, interact and exchange knowledge, information, goods, and services. However, not just businesses thrive on interaction and connectivity online. The most often used reference guide on the World Wide Web is Wikipedia, a multilingual free-content encyclopedia, which started in 2001.The encyclopedia is based on the so-called ‘wiki–concept, which means it is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by anyone with access to a web browser and an internet connection. Wikipedia contains close to four million articles appearing in over 200 language editions, and gets about one million visitors a day. 5 Weblogs are another excellent example of how witnessi ng has become an increasingly virtual, yet also deeply personal act. Jill Walker provides the following definition: 10 A weblog, or *blog, is a frequently updated website consisting of dated entries arranged in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. Typically, weblogs are published by individuals and their style is personal and informal. Weblogs first appeared in the mid-1990s, becoming popular as simple and free publishing tools became available towards the turn of the century. Since anybody with a net connection can publish their own weblog, there is great variety in the quality, content, and ambition of weblogs, and a weblog may have anywhere from a handful to tens of thousands of daily readers. 6 At current estimates, the total number of weblogs worldwide comes close to the 30 million mark, with more than 50. 000 postings per hour, and over 70. 000 new weblogs created each day. 7 Indexing research by Susan Herring and colleagues shows how the vast maj ority (70%) of weblogs are highly personal vehicles for self-expression and empowerment, written almost exclusively by individuals (Herring et al, 2005). However, this kind of individualism in weblogs is in fact quite connective, as bloggers include comment and feedback options with their posts, put up their blogs for free syndication (cf.RSS-feeds), reference and link to other blogs when creating posts, and cut and paste all kinds of content – including moving and still images, text, and audiofiles – from all over the Web as well as their own original work onto their weblog. The area online where the convergence of connectivity, content, creativity, and commercialism reaches its pinnacle is in the realm of computer games. Worldwide, more than 5 million active subscribers participate in massively multiplayer online games. 8 In a massively multiplayer computer game players connect to game servers via internet and interact in real time with other users worldwide.A signif icant part of this gaming experience consist of ‘meta-gaming’: in-game communication between gamers, using all kinds of devices such as headsets, chat commands, and in-game player signals. The playing of multiplayer games both reproduces and challenges everyday rules of social interaction, as the game environment can be seen both as an extension of real-world experiences and as strictly virtual space (Wright et al, 2002). Yet, meta-gaming is not just about the game: it includes any type of social interaction such as talking, loving, and trading. Ted Castranova (2005) for example has shown how we buy, sell and exchange goods and ervices in online games to the extent that such synthetic economies of scale have come to resemble those in ‘real’, offline worlds – if only because of their sheer size. All of these activities must be seen in terms of their concurrence, as we simultaneously engage in them through for example the windowing of computer screens: pressing ‘alt-tab’ gets you from your job resume on Monster to a post on a weblog, from browsing the information in a 11 Wikipedia entry for a presentation to contributing a book review to Amazon, from a purchase on eBay to an exchange in World of Warcraft.It is important to note how through these interactive, interconnected and networked devices and environments our work- and lifestyles further converge, not only facilitating but rather accelerating the blurring of modern life’s traditional boundaries. Contemporary changes in the economy, politics, society and technology thus get expressed in our increasing concurrent immersion in all kinds of media, which immersion in turn amplifies the convergence of the different spheres of activity in everyday life, blurring the lines between work and non-work, work and leisure, as well as between production and consumption.New Media, Culture and Society At the heart of most if not all of today’s new media technologi es saturating our work-life environments is their networked character, which interconnectivity has woven itself into the fabric of everyday existence among the majority of the population in European, Australasian, and North-American countries.Although this certainly suggests many people do not have access to such technologies, in the world of knowledge and information work the dominant presence of internet and other networked media cannot be ignored. In whatever shape or form, media bring the world to our doorstep – and we bring our world into media. No one is ‘outside’ anymore, whether by choice or necessity.This also means that the precarity of contemporary life through media extends to each and everyone of us, and cannot be said to be beholden to any particular group, race, class or gender – even though life’s current precariousness means different things for different people in different settings. In this context it is both fascinating and indee d hopeful that what characterizes most of the ways we engage with worldwide-networked technologies is the extent to which we seem to be doing so through participatory cooperation.Whether it is the online collaboratively authored encycopedia Wikipedia credible enough to challenge the Brittanica, the open source software movement potent enough to ruffle the feathers of Microsoft, the citizen journalism of Ohmynews powerful enough to influence presidential elections in South Korea, the search engine based on treating links as user recommendations Google, or the free-for-all online classifieds listings of Craigslist succesful enough to eat away the profits of corporate newspapers in the United States: the bottom line of all of these practices is collaboration, a 12 lourishing ‘collective intelligence’ particular of cyberculture (Levy, 1997). When asked to explain the worldwide success of Craigslist, founder Craig Newmark hints at collaboration as the key value embedded in t he way we use, design and give meaning to networked information and communication technologies: â€Å"my experience has shown me that most people are essentially good and trustworthy, and want to help each other out.I have been reminded that the rule about treating others the way you want to be treated is a good one. †9 Similarly, the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, base much of their company’s success on letting individual employees and users co-develop new and existing applications like Google Scholar or Google Video, which are made available in so-called ‘beta’ versions first to sollicit suggestions. 0 Considering the commonly voiced concerns of an increasingly fragmented society and a general decline in traditional social capital as defined by people’s trust and in politics, institutions such as church and state, and to some extent others, it may be counter-intuitive to claim that a more engaged and participatory culture is emerg ing (Putnam, 2004).Considering the interactive, globally networked and increasingly participatory nature of new media, it is inspiring to consider a different kind of social cohesion – a form of community that is not necessarily based on what Sennett (1992) has perceived as a purified absence of difference, but rather on Castells’ earlier mentioned notion of hypersociability particular of the network society. Interestingly, none of this participatory or otherwise collective nature of contemporary media is new.Ever since the mid-20th century so-called ‘alternative’ media have more or less successfully emerged next to, and sometimes in symbiotic relationships with other forms of community media (Atton, 2001). One could think of pirate radio stations, small-scale print magazines, local newspapers and community television stations in the 1960s and 1970s, community-based Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and Usenet newsgroups on Internet in the 1980s, and as from th e 1990s a wide range of genres on the Web such as community portal sites, group weblogs, voluntary news services, and so on.The emerging new media ecosystem inspires and is inspired by networks of more or less collaborative end-users, creating what Eric von Hippel (2005) calls ‘user-innovation communities’, where people increasingly create and share their own products and services. Within the particular context of media organizations and cultural industries, much of this community-oriented and at times participatory content production takes place within the walls of commercial media conglomerates.Henry Jenkins’ (2006) work on the popular television and movie industries shows how media corporations at least in part must be seen 13 as co-conspirators in the emergence of a participatory media culture, from Star Wars’ George Lucas encouraging the production and distribution of fan movies to the producers of reality television show Survivor actively participati ng in so-called ‘spoiler’ discussion forums online.This increasingly participatory media enviroment translates itself in the widespread proliferation of networked computers and Internet connections in the home (and increasingly to handheld mobile devices). Recognition of this culture of participatory authorship has come from software developers where they have introduced the concept of ‘open’ design. An advanced form of this type of design is the Open Source Movement, based on the principle of shared and collaborative access to and control over software, and using (or rather: tweaking) it to improve the product for global use.The videogame industry has – since the early 1990s – long acknowledged the necessity of viral marketing and user control in product development by pre-releasing game source code, offering games versions as shareware, and tapping customer communities for input (Bo Jeppesen & Molin, 2003). Participation, not in the least en abled by the real-time connectedness of Internet and however voluntarist, incoherent, and perhaps solely fuelled by private interests can be seen as a principal component of digital culture (Deuze, 2006). Our media nvironment has thus become a key site of how we give meaning to the changing context of how we live, work, and play. Pierre Levy and Jeremy Rifkin are among those who signal an emerging relational or social economy as a direct result from the mechanization, automation, or augmentation of agriculture, industry, and services. Central to this technodeterminist understanding of the global economy would be what Levy calls ‘the production of the social bond’ through the ongoing development of sophisticated systems of networked intelligence.The centrality of using and making media in everyday life reveals our endless fascination with media – with any and all acts of mediation. In this context Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin (1996) signal a double logic of remed iation, embodied in the recombinant trends of media becoming immediate up to the point they disappear, while at the same becoming increasingly hypermediate, pervasive, and ubiquitous in all aspects of everyday life: â€Å"Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying technologies of mediation. It is through our uses of media the complexities of contemporary culture get articulated, as media have come to dominate every aspect of life. What is relevant to our concerns here is the interrelationship between work-time, leisure14 time, and media-time, making the world certainly a much bigger place than it used to be, while at the same time reducing our lifeworld as we retreat dutifully in our personal information spaces and interact with everyone yet ‘seeing’ no one.It is especially through media that for most of us the world has become glocalized, as Roland Robertson (1995) would have it, where global products, peoples and ideas are re-appropriated locally and vice versa. It must be clear that media have become central to our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. However, as David Croteau and William Hoynes argue, â€Å"in the twenty-first century, we navigate through a vast mass media environment unprecedented in human history.Yet our intimate familiarity with the media often allows us to take them for granted† (2003: 5). The enormous extent to which this is true can be exemplified by looking at how people from all walks of life talk about and give meaning to their media use. Contemporary media usage studies in wired countries like the United States, The Netherlands or Finland tend to reveal how people spend twice as much time with media than they think they do. In the United States for example, people spend on average twelve hours per day using media.Media have become such an integrated part of our lives that most of the time w e are not even aware we are using media. American researchers describe this kind of almost constant immersion with media technologies and content from multiple sources simultaneously available through shared or shifting attention as ‘concurrent media exposure’, rather than popular industryterms such as ‘media multitasking’ or ‘simultaneous media usage’, emphasizing how important it is to avoid implying that our engagement with media is necessarily deliberate or attentive (Papper et al, 2004).We get up in the morning to the sound of the radio-alarm, switch on the television for breakfast, make our first calls using the hand-free set on our way to work, spend most of the day at our desks in front of a computer screen with fax and phone at hand, surf the Web for the latest news, blogposts and shopping deals during lunch hours, watch our favorite sitcoms and sometimes news shows over dinner, and spend the remainder of the day chatting, emailing and instant messaging online.All of this only consists of the kind of media we choose to use, ignoring advertising and marketing messages, simultaneously reading a magazine or newspaper when zapping or zipping past television channels or commercials, reading billboards along the highway, browsing the headlines of a free daily newspaper while in transit, thoughtlessly scanning through radio stations or songs on our walkman, 15 downloading, upgrading, tweaking, installing and uninstalling software, and so on, and so forth.Liquid Life and Media Work Contemporary life thus involves a complex dance between work, play, media, and life in the context of a rapid-changing ‘glocal’ context, the boundaries between which spaces, places and spheres of activity and perception have blurred. In short, the lifeworld today can perhaps best be seen as an ongoing remix of sorts, in terms a new language of how we understand and represent the visible world, our knowledge, human history, and fel low human beings: the language of new media, meta-media, and information culture (Manovich, 2005).As Lev Manovich states, â€Å"today we are in the middle of a new media revolution – the shift of all culture to computer-mediated forms of production, distribution, and communication† (2001: 19). The key to understanding our increasing opportunity, propensity or even necessity to more or less collaboratively remix our ‘glocal’ lived reality is too see this kind of behavior as a way for us to make sense of the growing complexity and uncertainty of the world around us (and in ourselves).Paraphrasing Bauman it is, in other words, a coping mechanism for dealing with the absurdity of life in today’s liquid modernity. â€Å"’Liquid modern’ is a society in which the conditions under which its members act change faster than it takes the ways of acting to consolidate into habits and routines. Liquidity of life and that of society feed and reinvig orate each other. Liquid life, just like liquid modern society, cannot keep its shape or stay on course for long† (Bauman, 2005b: 1).A liquid modern society is one where uncertainty, flux, change, conflict, and revolution are the permanent conditions of everyday life. Bauman makes a compelling argument how this situation is neither modern or post-modern, but rather explains how the categories of existence established and enabled by early, first, or solid modernity are disintegrating, overlapping, and remixing. It is not as if we cannot draw meaningful distinctions between global and local, between work and non-work, between public and private, between conservative and progressive, or between work and life anymore.It is just that these and other key organizing characteristics and categories of modern life have lost their (presumed or perceived) intrinsic, commonly held or consensual meaning. 16 The way we do and understand things is increasingly transformed through and implicat ed by the way we engage the media in our lives. This in turn makes the media as a business, as in those companies that work to create the content of our media, of central importance to any kind of meaningful analysis of contemporary life.Defining the media as cultural industries, Desmond Hesmondhalgh for example shows their prominence for understanding the human condition and our lived reality â€Å"as those institutions (mainly profitmaking companies, but also state organisations and non-profit organisations) which are most directly involved in the production of social meaning† (2002: 11). If the media in the broadest possible sense are the sites of our struggle over meaning and symbolic exchange in society, it ecomes essential to understand the working lives of the people within the cultural industries – if only to understand which values, ideas, circumstances and social contexts define those primarily engaged in the production of of the resources and materials all o f use use to give meaning to our lives. It is in this context that Bauman discusses the typical charactertics of these professional ‘culture creators’, â€Å"who carry the main burden of the transgressive proclivity of culture and make it their conciously embraced vocation, practising critique and transgression as their own mode of being† (2005b: 54-5).Bauman implictly addresses the missing link between the particularities of the human condition in the beginning of the 21st century, our seemingly constant immersion in media, and the centrality of work as the defining principle of contemporary lived reality. The missing link is the changing nature of media work in today’s digital, global and deeply uncertain age, where media workers must be seen as the directors as well as reflectors of liquid modern life, in which life media have become ubiquitous, pervasive, personalized – as well as interactive, participatory, and networked.Media are both the harb ingers of change as well as the self-proclaimed guardians of social order as in the case of for example parliamentary journalists and tabloid reporters: documenting and thus contributing to the maintenance of the status quo while at the same time signaling the disruptive changes wreaking havoc on it from all sides. Indeed, the popular reality of the media gives rise to what Beck has described as the ongoing modernization of modernity, by emphasizing its core characteristics of risk, uncertainty, and paradox.And it is precisely this risk-taking, adventurous yet deeply self-contradictory nature that has come to define the nature of media work, where â€Å"senses of risk are constitutive and often pivotal to the whole economic and social basis of cultural entrepreneurship – risk being central to choices made not only in business but in the lifeworld more generally† (Banks et al, 2000: 453). Mediaworkers are 17 ot only interesting in terms of their contribution to the way we give meaning to our shared reality; who they are, what they do and how they give meaning to their work can also be seen as an indicator of how an increasingly significant part of the global economy organizes itself. Media industries are indeed one of the prime accelerators of a global economy, both in terms of its glocalization and its increased immersion in networked information and communication technologies.Media professionals – those employed in journalism, marketing communications, advertising, public relations, game design, television and the movie industry – embody in their work-styles all the themes of social change in liquid modern times as expressed in this essay, as Simon Cottle for exampe describes how â€Å"a growing army of media professionals, producers and others work in this expanding sector of the economy, many of them in freelance, temporary, subcontracted and underpaid (and sometimes unpaid) positions [†¦] They are also often at the forefro nt of processes of organisational change including new flexible work regimes, reflexive corporate cultures, and the introduction of digital technologies, multimedia production and multiskilled practices† (2003: 3). Indeed, Scott Lash and John Urry (1994) have signaled earlier how the cultural industries have always been post-Fordist avant la lettre, contributing to the culturalization of economic life through a structurating mix of commercially viable yet generic, and innovative, flexible and highly creative production processes.This unique blend of what Bryan Turner (2003: 138) describes as the dialectical process of linearity and liquidity in contemporary consumer cultures turns the media as an industry into the core culprit responsible for cookiecutter-style McDonaldization, as well as the main agent in affecting social, technological and economical change. Convergence Culture In today’s increasingly digital culture, mediawork can be seen as a stomping ground for the forces of increasingly differentiated production and innovation processes, and the complex interaction and integration between work, life, and play, all of which get expressed in, and are facilitated by, the rapid development of new information and communication technologies.Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2000: 291) correspondingly argue how â€Å"the computer and communication revolution of production has transformed laboring practices in such a way that they all tend toward the model of information and communication technologies [†¦] the anthrolopology of cyberspace is really a recognition of the new human condition. † The new human condition, when seen 18 through the lens of those in the forefront of changes in the way work and life are implicated in our increasingly participatory media production and consumption, is convergent. This convergence is not just a technological process, where different types of media forms – audio, video, text – and channe ls – print, radio, television – are integrated into the computer.Following the work of Henry Jenkins (2004), media convergence must also be seen as having a cultural logic of its own, blurring the lines between production and consumption, between making media and using media, and between active or passive spectatorship of mediated culture: â€Å"Convergence is both a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottomup consumer-driven process. Media companies are learning how to accelerate the flow of media content across delivery channels to expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets and reinforce viewer commitments. Consumers are learning how to use these different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact with other users.They are fighting for the right to participate more fully in their culture, to control the flow of media in their lives and to talk back to mass market content. Sometimes, these two forces reinforc e each other, creating closer, more rewarding, relations between media producers and consumers† (Jenkins, 2004: 37). Pertinent to our concerns here is the ways in which mediaworkers are implicated by this convergence culture so typical of today’s media. If convergence is a cultural logic that at its core integrates all of us in the process of producing mediated experiences, how do the professionals involved give meaning to their productivity, creative autonomy, and professional identity?One way of looking at this focuses on the political economy of increasingly conglomerated, transnational media corporations, emphasizing their role in rationalizing and routinizing production for the (glocal) masses: â€Å"Conglomerates have invested heavily in developing synergistic relationships between their various media holdings, integrating their production processes into â€Å"convergence† systems that yield content for different outlets, â€Å"crosspromoting† progr ams in different media, and establishing lines of vertical and horizontal integration in production and distribution† (Klinenberg & Benzecry, 2005: 10). A second approach acknowledges the goals and ideals of contemporary ‘corporate management of global enterprises, but draws our attention more specifically to those people directly involved in the process: the mediaworkers. â€Å"Being environmentally conscious, showing a social conscience and being a good corporate citizen are viewed in modern management theory as benefiting the bottom line. But this management-speak hides the growing focus in the media professions—the cultural boundary spanners—on genuine links between modern 19 organizations and the different individuals and groups in society that deal with them† (Balnaves et al, 2004: 193).Discussion Considering the dominant trends towards cultural convergence of production and consumption both in the way people run their everyday work-lives, and in the way media professionals do their work, it becomes increasingly interesting to observe and understand which values, ideas and ideals get embedded in the globally emerging system of userproducer co-creation. Granted, â€Å"the media business is unusually fluid and superficial† (Sennett, 1998: 80). But as I have shown in this essay, so are life, work, and play. And all of those activities are expressed in the way we use, co-create, and give meaning to media in our everyday lives. The suggested superficiality and invisibility of the media perhaps belittles the valuable, hypersociable and deeply participatory nature of our interactions within and between them.Indeed, the continuous glocal ‘remix’ of liquid modernity’s working and living conditions can be connected to the way we understand the media. The nature of work within an increasingly liquid, collaborative and convergent culture gets meaning in the media industry through product differentiation, wo rkforce flexibilization, and cross-media integration. Yet it also gets expressed in the various ways in which people use and make media all over the world – through ‘prosuming’ (Toffler, 1980) or ‘produsing’ (Bruns, 2004) practices, open source-type applications, wiki-based user co-creation, and other examples of convergence culture. I accept the notion that for most of us, life in liquid modernity is fraught with risk, uncertaintly, anxiety and flux.However, I feel that our analyses should take the next step, and acknowledge how people give meaning to this new human condition: through cultural convergence, participation, and new forms of sociability. It is too simple to argue that the media industries, which are so instrumental in all of these contingencies, either reproduce passive spectators or facilitate active, albeit superficial, engagement. The ways we use and give meaning to media, both as professionals and amateurs, show signs of a more comp lex, or in the words of Jenkins, ‘kludgy’ culture emerging, one that is built on the core elements of the global risk society and thrives on Bauman’s liquid life.I call for further investigation of and among those who bear the brunt of this emergence: the mediaworkers. 20 References Chris Atton (2001), Alternative Media. London: Sage. 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London: Sage. Pierre Levy (1997). Collective intelligence: mankind’s emerging world in cyberspace. Translated by Robert Bononno. Cambridge: Perseus Books. Lev Manovich (2005), Understanding meta-media, CTheory 10/26/2005. URL: http://www. ctheory. net/articles. spx? id=493. Lev Manovich (2001), The language of new media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Janet Marler, Melissa Woodard Barringer, and George Milkovich (2002), Boundaryless and traditional contingent employees: worlds apart, Journal of Organizational Behavior 23, pp. 425-453. Robert Papper, Michael Holmes, Mark Popovich (2004), Middletown Media Studies, The International Digital Media & Digital Arts Association Journal 1 (1), pp. 1-56. Jane Parry, Rebecca Taylor, Lynne Pettinger and Miriam Glucksmann (2005), Confronting the challenges of work today: new horizons and perspectives, The Sociological Review. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Robert Putnam (ed. 2004, Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 22 Jeremy Rifkin (2004), The end of work, 2nd edition. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. Roland Robertson (1995), Glocalization: Time-space and Homogeneity- heterogeneity, in: Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, Roland Robertson (eds. ), Global Modernities, London: Sage. Richard Sennett (1998), The corrosion of character. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Richard Sennett (1992), The uses of disorder: personal identity and city life, New York: W. W. Norton. Richard Sennett (2005), The culture of the new capitalism. New Haven: Yale University Press.Vicki Smith (1997), New forms of work organization, Annual Review of Sociology 23, pp. 315-339. John Storey, Graeme Salaman, and Kerry Platman (2005), Living with enterprise in an enterprise eceonomy: freelance and contract workers in the media, Human Relations 58 (8), pp. 1033-1054. Frank Thomas (1997), The conquest of cool: business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Talmadge Wright, Paul Briedenbach and Eric Boria (2002), Creative Player actions in fps online video games: playing Counter-Strike, Game Studies 2 (2), URL: http://www. gamestudies. org/0202/wright. 23 Endnotes 1 2 URL: http://ourmayday. revolt. org/precarity. info/info. tm (date accessed: 2-12-6). See URL: http://www. c-i-a. com/pr0106. htm. 3 See URL: http://corp. match. com/index/newscenter_press_glance. asp. 4 See URL: http://www. craigslist. com/about/pr/factsheet. html. 5 See URL: http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Wikipedia. 6 See URL: http://huminf. uib. no/~jill/archives/blog_theorising/final_version_of_weblog_definitio n. html. 7 See URL: http://technorati. com/weblog/2006/02/83. html. 8 See URL: http://www. mmogchart. com. 9 Phone interview with Craig Newmark, 1 December 2005. 10 See for example the company profile at CBS ‘60 Minutes’ at URL: http://www. cbsnews. com/stories/2004/12/30/60minutes/main664063. shtml. 24

Elements of a State and Philippine Constitution Essay Essays

Elements of a State and Philippine Constitution Essay Essays Elements of a State and Philippine Constitution Essay Essay Elements of a State and Philippine Constitution Essay Essay State A community of individuals more or less legion. for good busying a definite part of district. independent of external control. and possessing an organized authorities to which the great organic structure of its dwellers render accustomed obeisance ( De Leon. 2000 ) . The Philippines is a province.Elementss of a State The first component of a province is the people. which is known to be the most indispensable and indispensable component of a province. This is the mass of the population. or the figure of people populating within the province. There is no specific figure of people required life within a province so that it could be called a province. The 2nd component is the district. which is the constituted country that justly belongs to the people of the province. This is the aerial ( air ) . tellurian ( land ) . fluvial ( stream/river ) . and maritime ( H2O ) domains of the province. The 3rd component is the authorities. which is the bureau to which the will of the province is expressed. created and administered. This is a group of people or establishments which run and rule the society. The 4th component is the sovereignty. which is known as the supreme power of the province to command and implement obeisance its will from the people. District Harmonizing to Article One. National Territory. of The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines: â€Å"The national district comprises the Philippine archipelago. with all the islands and Waterss embraced therein. and all other districts over which the Philippines has sovereignty or legal power. consisting of its terrestrial. fluvial and aerial spheres. including its territorial sea. the ocean floor. the undersoil. the insular shelves. and other pigboat countries. The Waterss around. between. and linking the islands of the archipelago. regardless of their comprehensiveness and dimensions. organize portion of the internal Waterss of the Philippines. † This means that all the country that is encompassed by 185 kilometres ( 100 maritime stat mis ) from the Philippine shore. under the seabed even. is a district of the Philippines. This is sometimes besides known as the â€Å"Philippine Area of Responsibility† . a term used by PAG-ASA and other conditions bureaus to find for illustration. if a typhoon or a Low Pressure Area has entered our district. Fundamental law of the Philippines The fundamental law of the Philippines is the most of import portion of a province. The national district and all the cardinal laws- the set of regulations and principles- can be found here. The Constitution besides enunciates province rules and policies. Among the rules and policies embodied in the Fundamental law are: ( 1 ) Sovereignty of the people ; ( 2 ) Repudiation of war as an instrument of national policy ; ( 3 ) Domination of civilian authorization over the military ; ( 4 ) Service and protection of the people as the premier responsibility of the Government ; ( 5 ) Separation of Church and State ; ( 6 ) Guarantee of human rights ; ( 7 ) Separation of power among the assorted subdivisions of authoritiess ; and ( 8 ) Autonomy for local authorities units. One of the cardinal constituents of the Constitution is the Bill of Rights. which declares and enumerates the basic rights and autonomies of the people which the authorities ( or any individual ) is out to go against or infringe upon. Among the rights granted by the Fundamental law are: ( 1 ) Due procedure of jurisprudence and equal protection ; ( 2 ) Right against unreasonable hunt and ictus ; ( 3 ) Right of privateness ; ( 4 ) Freedom of address. of look. and of the imperativeness ; ( 5 ) Freedom of faith ; ( 6 ) Autonomy of residence and travel ; ( 7 ) Right to information on affairs of public concern ; ( 8 ) Right to organize associations for intents non contrary to jurisprudence ; ( 9 ) Right to a merely compensation when private belongings is taken for public usage ; ( 10 ) Right against damage of contract ; ( 11 ) Freedom of entree to the tribunals ; ( 12 ) Rights refering to individuals under probe ; ( 13 ) Right against inordinate bond ; ( 14 ) Rights of the accused in condemnable instances ; and ( 15 ) Right to speedy temperament of instances. It has been revised seven times. get downing from The 1899 Malolos Constitution. which was approved by so President Emilio Aguinaldo on December 23. 1898 and promulgated on January 21. 1899. and so the Philippine Organic Act of 1912 enacted into jurisprudence by the United States Congress on July 1. 1902. Next was The Jones Law of 1916. enacted into jurisprudence by the United States Congress on August29. 1916. followed by The 1935 Constitution. which was approved by the 1934 Constitutional Convention on February 8. 1935. certified by the President of the United States on March 25. 1935. and ratified by plebiscite on May 14. 1935. This was amended two times. on June 18 1940 and March 11. 1947. The 1943 Constitution. was approved by the Preparatory Committee on Philippine Independence on September 4. 1943 and ratified by the KALIBAPI convention on September 7. 1943. Following this is The 1973 Constitution. which was proclaimed in force by Proclamation by so President Ferdinand Marcos on January 17. 1973. This was amended three times. on October 16-17. 1976. January 30. 1980 and April 7. 1981. The present fundamental law. which is The 1987 Constitution. was foremost presented to so President Cory C. Aquino as The 1986 Freedom Constitution on October 15. 1986. This was approved by the Constitutional Commission on October 12. 1986. It was ratified by a plebiscite on February 2. 1987 and proclaimed in force by February 11. 1987. Mentions:Pacaway. J. ( 2014. July 4 ) . Filipino authorities with 1987 fundamental law. Retrieved from hypertext transfer protocol: //www. slideshare. net/anjanet2/philippine-government-with-1987-constitution Filipino Constitutions | Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines. ( n. d. ) . Retrieved from hypertext transfer protocol: //www. gov. ph/constitutions/ Salinas. S. ( 2013. December 16 ) . Concepts of province and authorities. Retrieved from hypertext transfer protocol: //www. slideshare. net/sarahsalinascatwoman/concepts-of-state-and-government-29249128 THE 1987 CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES – ARTICLE I | Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines. ( n. d. ) . Retrieved from hypertext transfer protocol: //www. gov. ph/constitutions/the-1987-constitution-of-the-republic-of-the-philippines/the-1987-constitution-of-the-republic-of-the-philippines-article-i/ The History and Evolution of the Philippine Constitution | Law | Jcmiras_03. ( 2014. August ) . Retrieved from hypertext transfer protocol: //www. pinoysites. org/jcm/item/12/ The Constitution of the Philippines: An Overview | Herald Digital Law Philippines. ( 2011. February 1 ) . Retrieved from hypertext transfer protocol: //philippineslaw. wordpress. com/2011/02/01/the-constitution-of-the-philippines-an-overview/

Yugoslavia essays

Yugoslavia essays Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, zone of endless military, cultural, and economic mixing and clashing between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Subject to violent shifts of borders, rulers and belief systems at the hands of the worlds greatest empires- the Balkans are often called Europes tinderbox and a seething cauldron of ethnic and religious resentments. This paper will discuss some of the geographical, ethnic and political influences that caused the geographical boundaries of the former Yugoslavia to change from 1900 to 2003. The first section of this paper discusses some of the geographical features of the Balkan region and the influences they may have had on the history and evolution of Yugoslavia. The second section will discuss the actual evolution and changes of the former Yugoslavia from 1900 through 2003. From this the reader will gain a fuller understanding of some of the factors behind the continued and long-standing unrest in this part of the world. Over the course of history many writers and scholars attributed the almost continuous fighting, bloodshed and ever-shifting borders of the Balkans and more particularly, Yugoslavia, to the deep-rooted ethnic and religious differences that have existed in this region for centuries. As much as these ethnic and religious differences play a key role in the continued violence in this area, one cannot ignore the less than subtle role that the geography of the region has also played. The Balkans could be described as being located at the crossroads or intersection of three major influences: Asia, Europe and Asia Minor. Influenced by the great empires of the Byzantine, Ottoman, Roman, Greek and Austrian-Hungary, this area of the world has truly been the crossroads of many diverse religious, ethnic and political influences. It is no surprise that it is one of the few places in the worl...

PSAT Scoring How Does It Work

PSAT Scoring How Does It Work SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips If you're preparing to take the PSAT, it'simportant you understand everything there is to know aboutPSAT scoring. How is the PSAT scored? And how will this information help you get the score you want on test day? On the SAT? In this article, we go overthePSAT scoring scale and show you how to calculate your PSAT scores using official scoring tables. We also coverSelection Index scores and offer our top four tips on how to utilize PSAT scoringto inform both PSAT and SAT prep! How Is the PSAT Scored Overall? By Section? The PSAT scoring scale is 320-1520 in 10-point increments. On this scale, 320 is the minimum score you can get and 1520 is the maximum. This scale differs just slightly from the SAT scoring scale, which is 400-1600. Like the SAT, your total PSAT score is a combination of your Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) and Math scores. (The EBRW score comprises the Reading and Writing and Language sections.) Both EBRW and Math use a score range of160-760, with each section accounting for halfyour total PSAT score. So a 500 on EBRW and a 600 on Math would equala total PSAT score of 1100. But obviously there aren't1,520 questions on the PSAT! So why is the PSAT scoring scale out of 1520? The reason for this is thatall of these scores are actuallyscaled scores, which areconverted fromraw scores (equivalent to the number of questions you answered correctly) through a specialequating process. The College Board uses this process toaccount for variances in difficulty among PSATs - essentially, to ensure that a scaled PSAT score will always indicate the same level of ability, no matter when you take thetest. Here’s how theCollege Board describes the PSATequating process: â€Å"This conversion process adjusts for slight differences in difficulty among versions of the test and provides a score that is equated, or consistent, across forms. This process ensures that no student receives an advantage or disadvantage from taking a particular form of the test on a particular day;* a score of 400 on one test form is equivalent to a score of 400 on another test form.† *Emphasis mine. Upon completing the PSAT, you’ll earn three raw scoresfor Math, Reading, and Writing and Language (hereafter referred to as â€Å"Writing†). So if you were to answer 40 Math questions correctly, your raw Math score would be 40. Likewise, if you were to answer 26 Writing questions correctly, your raw Writing score would be 26. You do not lose any points for incorrect or blank answers.These raw scores are thenequated into your final (scaled) Math and EBRW scores. Here's the catch, though: theequating formula differs for each PSAT. Andbecause only the College Board knows what these formulas are, we'll never be able to predict exactlyhow a raw score will convert into a scaled score on an upcoming PSAT. Nevertheless, we can use scoring charts from official PSAT practice tests to estimate how raw scores may translate into scaled scores. Thesetables differ foreach practice test but are extremely helpful because they show ushow PSAT scores typically convert into scaled scores. Scoring charts are the handy, dandy notebook for high school students. Below aretwo examples of PSAT scoring charts, both taken from official PSAT practice tests: Practice Test #1PSAT Scoring Chart Raw Score Reading Test Score Writing Test Score Math Section Score Raw Score Reading Test Score Writing Test Score Math Section Score 0 8 8 160 25 26 25 560 1 9 9 190 26 26 26 570 2 10 10 210 27 27 27 580 3 11 11 240 28 27 27 580 4 12 12 270 29 28 28 590 5 14 13 290 30 28 28 600 6 15 14 320 31 29 29 610 7 16 14 340 32 29 29 620 8 16 15 360 33 30 30 630 9 17 15 370 34 30 30 640 10 18 16 390 35 31 31 650 11 18 16 400 36 31 32 670 12 19 17 420 37 32 32 680 13 19 18 430 38 32 33 690 14 20 18 440 39 33 34 710 15 20 19 460 40 34 35 720 16 21 20 470 41 34 36 730 17 21 20 480 42 35 37 730 18 22 21 490 43 36 37 740 19 22 21 500 44 37 38 740 20 23 22 510 45 37 750 21 23 23 520 46 38 750 22 24 24 530 47 38 760 23 24 24 540 48 760 24 25 25 550 Source: Scoring Your PSAT/NMSQT Practice Test #1 Practice Test #2PSAT Scoring Chart Raw Score Reading Test Score Writing Test Score Math Section Score Raw Score Reading Test Score Writing Test Score Math Section Score 0 8 8 160 25 25 26 530 1 9 9 190 26 26 26 540 2 10 10 210 27 26 27 540 3 11 11 240 28 27 27 550 4 12 12 260 29 28 28 560 5 13 13 290 30 28 28 570 6 14 13 310 31 29 29 570 7 15 14 320 32 29 29 580 8 16 14 340 33 30 30 590 9 16 15 350 34 31 31 600 10 17 16 370 35 31 31 610 11 17 16 380 36 32 32 620 12 18 17 400 37 32 33 630 13 18 18 410 38 33 33 640 14 19 18 420 39 34 34 650 15 19 19 430 40 34 35 670 16 20 20 440 41 35 36 680 17 21 20 450 42 35 37 700 18 21 21 460 43 36 38 710 19 22 22 470 44 36 38 730 20 22 23 480 45 37 740 21 23 23 490 46 38 740 22 24 24 500 47 38 750 23 24 24 510 48 760 24 25 25 520 Source: Scoring Your PSAT/NMSQT Practice Test #2 Bycomparing the tables above, we can see that there are small differences in how raw scores convert into scaled scores. For example, a raw Math score of 37 converts into 680 on Test #1but only 630 on Test #2! As I explained previously, these conversions differ because the two tests vary slightly in difficulty. Now that we’ve covered the equating process and how the overall PSAT is scored, let’s take a closer look at PSAT scoringfor Math and EBRW. Prepare to enter the math vortex! Vroooooom! Your PSAT Math Score Math consists of two subsections: a No Calculator section consisting of 17 questions and for which you may not use a calculator, and a Calculator section consisting of 31 questions and for which you may (but don’t need to) use a calculator. Your Math score begins as a total raw score out of 48 (the total number of questions on Math).Here are the steps for calculating your Math section score using your raw score: 1. Calculate your raw Math scores for each subsection. Start by adding up all of your correct answers on the No Calculator and Calculator subsections using the answer key for your test. On official practice tests, your Math answer key will look something like this: 2. Add your rawscores together togeta total raw Mathscore out of 48.So if I got 10 questions right on the No Calculator subsection and 22 questions right on the Calculator subsection, my total raw Math score would be 32. 3. Find your Math section score using your test’s scoring chart. Your test should offer a conversion table for calculating your Math section score. In my example, I’d find 32 on my test’s conversion table and look for itscorresponding scaled score (which, in this case, is 620): If you’re not using an official practice test and/or don't have a PSAT scoring chart for your test, you can use the two conversion tables at the beginning of this articleto estimate how your raw Math score will convert into a scaled score. For example, let's say you have a raw Math score of 40. According to our tables for Practice Tests #1 and #2, 40 on Math converts into either 670 or 720. This means that your Math section score is likely somewhere around the high 600s or low 700s. Time tomove on to Reading and Writing! (Am I dating myself with a pic of actual encyclopedias?) Your PSAT EBRWScore YourEBRW score is a combination of your Reading and Writing scores, which are at first given to you as two separate scores. Your Reading score startsas a raw score out of 47, whereas your Writing score is out of 44. These are then converted into test scores and then finally a combined EBRW section score. In contrast with the relatively simple process for finding your Math score, finding your EBRW score requires a couple of extra steps. Here’s how to calculate it: 1. Calculate your raw Reading and Writing scores.Use your practice test's answer key to add up all of the correct answers you got on Reading and Writing. Be sure you add these scores up separately - you won’t be combining them until later. Here’s an example of an answer key for the Reading and Writing sections: 2. Find your Reading and Writing test scores. Unlike the Math raw score, which immediately converts into a scaled section score out of 760, the Reading and Writing scores will first convert into individual test scores on a scale of 8-38. So if my raw score were 35 for Reading and 38 for Writing, my Reading and Writing test scores would, according to the chart below, convert into 31 and 33, respectively: 3. Combine your Reading and Writing test scores to get a total EBRW test score.In the example I used above, my Reading test score was 31 and my Writing test score was 33; thus, my total EBRW test score would be 64. 4. Multiply your EBRW test score by 10 to get your section score. This final step converts your EBRW test score into a scaled EBRW section score out of 760. This means that my test score of 64 would equal a final EBRW score of 640. Not bad! Disappointed with your PSAT performance? Want to improve your PSAT score by 150 points? We have the industry's leading PSAT prep program. Built by Harvard grads and SAT full scorers, the program learns your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep program to you so you get the most effective prep possible. Check out our 5-day free trial today: Once you’re finished calculating your scaled scores for both Math and EBRW, add the two scores together to get your composite PSAT score out of 1520. If you want, you can compare your score to the current PSAT percentiles to get a feel for where you stand in comparison with other test takers. These next scores are like the cherry on top: some people love them, and some people couldn't care less about them. PSAT Subscores and Cross-Test Scores In addition to Math and EBRW section scores, you’ll also be given separate subscores and cross-test scores (the same ones you’ll get on the SAT). These additional scores break down the three sections into smaller categories in order to highlight your strengths and weaknesses in specific skill areas. Below, I explain how to calculate these subscores andgo over what they mean for you. Your PSAT Subscores On the PSAT, you'll receiveseven subscores: For EBRW Command of Evidence Words in Context Expression of Ideas Standard English Conventions For Math Heart of Algebra Problem Solving and Data Analysis Passport to Advanced Math Each subscore is scored on a scaleof 1-15. These subscores indicate how well you've performed on designated skill areas, such as vocabulary and data analysis. To calculate your subscores, use your practice test’s subscore answer key, taking care to note which questions fall under which subscore categories. Scoring guides for official PSAT practice tests offer detailed descriptionsfor each subscore, explaining what the subscore measures and which questionsit comprises. Here's an example: Once you’ve tallied your correct answers for each subscore, you will then convert this raw score into a scaled subscore using your test’s scoring chart for subscores: Although these subscores are useful for deciphering your own strengths and weaknesses, in the end they’re not especially significant. As it stands, subscores don’t factor into your PSAT section scores or even your overall PSAT score. They also aren’t used to select candidates for the National Merit Scholarship Program (which we’ll get into more in a moment). Your PSAT Cross-Test Scores Cross-test scores indicate how well you've answeredquestions in thedomains of history/social studies and science. Unlike the subscores above, cross-test scores are not section specific; rather, they apply to all sections and use a scoring scale of 8-38. The two types of cross-test scores are: Analysis in History/Social Studies Analysis in Science To calculate your cross-test scores, use your test’s scoring guide to see which Math and EBRW questions comprise these two categories as well as how many questions you answered correctly (i.e., your raw score). Here’s an example of a cross-test score answer key for Analysis in Science: Once you’ve figured out your raw scores, use the cross-test scoring chartthat came with your test to calculate your scaled cross-test scores: Now here's a score that's actually worth something! Your National Merit Selection Index Score The final score you’ll receive on the PSAT is a National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) Selection Index score. The Selection Index score uses a score range of 48-228 and is equivalent to the sum of your Reading, Writing, and Math test scores (that is, the ones on scales of 8-38) multiplied by 2. So if my three test scores were 34, 30, and 27, my Selection Index score would be: 34+30+27=91 91*2=182 The NMSC uses Selection Index scores to determine your eligibility for the National Merit Scholarship Program. This program offers an extremely prestigious distinction and scholarship to students with exceptionally high PSAT scores. Each year, the top 1 percent of PSAT scorers in the 11th grade - equal to about 16,000 students - become Semifinalists. Of those students, 15,000 will become Finalists. And of those students, 8,000 will each win a $2,500 scholarship! The Selection Index score you need in order to be aSemifinalistvaries by state but usually ranges anywhere from 209 to 222.See our guidefor an updated list of Selection Index score cutoffs by state. 4 Tips for Usingthe PSAT Scoring System to Your Advantage So far, we've addressed nearly everything you need to know about the PSAT scoring scale. But what can you actually gain from it? Here are four simple ways you can use PSAT scoring to your advantage. #1: Set a PSAT Goal Score Using Selection Index Cutoffs Ifyou want to try to qualify as a Semifinalist for the National Merit Scholarship Program, you can use the Selection Index score cutoffs to set a PSAT goal score. Remember that the cutoffs vary by state, so it’s important you aim for your state’s cutoff and not a different state’s! According to our estimates, the lowest cutoff is 209 (equivalent to a total PSAT score of about1400) and the highest is 222 (equivalent to about 1480). For a detailed list of Selection Index score cutoffs and their (estimated) corresponding PSAT scores, refer to my article on thePSAT score range (coming soon). Let's look at an example. Jackie lives in Florida, whose Selection Index cutoff score is 217. This gives her a PSAT goal score of about 1450. To get her individual goal scores for Math and EBRW, Jackie divides her total PSAT goal score by 2. This gives her goal scores of 730 (rounded up from 725) for each section. If you’re stronger at Math or Reading/Writing, consider aiming for a higher score on your stronger section and a slightly lower score on your weaker section. So if Jackie were better at Math, she could instead aim for something like 750 on Math and 700-710 on EBRW. #2: Use Tables to Estimate the Number of Correct Answers You'llNeed If you've got a PSAT goal score in mind, you can usescoring chartsfrom official practice tests to estimate how many questions you’ll need to answer correctly in order to hit your goal score on test day. This process is somewhat complicated but extremely helpful to know how to do. Let's say your PSAT goal score is 1400, and you want to aim for 700 on both Math and EBRW. Using the tables above for Practice Tests #1 and #2, we see that 700 on Math comes out to 39-42 correct answers. (Remember, your raw score = the number of questions you answered correctly.) There are more steps for EBRW, however.First, divide your goal score (in this case, 700) by 10 to get your total Reading and Writing test score. This gives us 70. Then, divide this number in half to estimateyour individual Reading and Writing test scores. In our case, 70/2=35. Finally, convert your test scores into raw scores using the conversion tables above. In our example,a 35 Reading test score equals 41-42 correct answers, and a 35 Writing test score equals 40 correct answers. This process of working backward, albeittime-consuming, is useful because it offers a rough idea ofhow many questions you can afford to get wrong on the PSAT. It also lets you estimate what yourfinal PSAT scores will be before they’re released, thereby letting youpredict whether you’ll qualify for National Merit. I prefer estimating how many peeps I can fit in my mouth. Aiming for a National Merit Scholarship but worried your score won't qualify? If you're not sure you can self-study your way to a qualifying PSAT score, you'll love our PSAT prep program, PrepScholar. We designed our program to learn your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics and customize your prep to be as effective as possible for you. When you start with PrepScholar, you’ll take a diagnostic that will determine your weaknesses in over forty PSAT skills. PrepScholar then creates a study program specifically customized for you. To improve each skill, you’ll take focused lessons dedicated to each skill, with over 20 practice questions per skill. This will train you for your specific area weaknesses, so your time is always spent most effectively to raise your score. We also force you to focus on understanding your mistakes and learning from them. If you make the same mistake over and over again, we'll call you out on it. There’s no other prep system out there that does it this way, which is why we get better score results than any other program on the market. Check it out today with a 5-day free trial: #3: Consider Your PSAT Score a Starting Point to SAT Prep Your PSAT scores are important butnot nearly as important as your SAT scores, especially if you’re hoping to get into a top-tier university. Luckily, the PSATwas specifically designed to prepare studentsfor the SAT! We already know that the twotests use different scoring scales, with the PSAT being out of 1520 and the SAT out of 1600. But here's the kicker: each scaled score on the PSAT corresponds directly to the same scaled score on the SAT. This means thatany score you get on any PSAT or SAT will signifythe samelevel of ability. So 1400 on the PSAT equals 1400 on the SAT, 1250 equals 1250, 1000 equals 1000, etc. But if this is the case, why does the PSAT scoring scale only go up to 1520 and not 1600? The reason for this is that the PSATis not as challenging as the SAT. Toaccount for its lower difficulty level, then, the PSATemploys aslightly lower maximum of 1520 (which is not a perfect SAT score but close). Despite these connections, don’t consider your PSAT score a direct indicator of what your SAT score will be. Your PSAT score tells you where you’re currently scoring but not where you’re capable of scoring. In other words, think of your PSAT score as your baseline SAT score (i.e., the score you start off with before you begin anySAT prep). Then, once you have your SAT goal score, too, you can use both of these scores to calculate how many points you’ll need in order to hit your goal score on test day. #4: Use PSAT Scores and Subscores to Target Potential SAT Weaknesses What’s great about the PSAT is that it’s similar to the SAT - so much so that its section scores and subscores are the same ones you’ll get on the SAT. Therefore, you can use your PSAT scores to see what your SAT weaknesses are likely to be. For example, ifyou received a low Heart of Algebra subscore on the PSAT, it's a good idea to dedicate a lot of your SAT prep to mastering the basics of algebra. Or if you didn’t get a high Words in Context subscore, you'll probably want to spend more time improving your reading comprehension skills and fine-tuning your vocabulary knowledge. Knowing what to focus on for your SAT prep will not only help you hone your weaknesses but also help you attain an SAT score farhigher than your PSAT score! Recap:How Is the PSAT Scored? The total PSAT scoring scale is 320-1520, and the Math and EBRW scoring scale is160-760. The Math and EBRW section scores are scaled scores converted from raw scores through a special equating process, which changes slightlywith each test. Raw scores equalthe number of questions you answered correctly.A raw Math score converts directly into a scaled section score, whereas raw Reading and Writing scores are converted into test scores on a scale of 8-38,combined, and then multiplied by 10 to give you a single scaled EBRW score. ThePSAT also offers subscores and cross-test scores to indicate test takers' strengths and weaknesses in various skillareas. Subscores use a scale of1-15, while cross-test scores use a scale of8-38. The final score you'll get is a National Merit Selection Index score, which uses a scale of 48-228. This score determines who is eligible for National Merit consideration. Every year, the top 1 percent of 11th-grade test takers, or approximately 16,000 students, qualify as Semifinalists. Knowing the ins and outs ofPSAT scoring can help you qualify for National Merit as well as predicthow many questions you can afford to miss on test day. It can also offeryou a starting point for yourSAT prep and allow you to see which skills and areasyou'll need to honebefore taking the SAT. All in all, PSAT scoring is a pretty useful tool to have, so use it to your advantage whenever you can! PSAT scoring is a handytool - though not nearly as handy as Colonel Mustard's wrench. What’s Next? Want to learn more about PSAT scoring?Check out my in-depth guide to thePSAT score rangeto learn more about the score ranges for each section as well as the scores you'll need to qualify for National Merit. Got questions about the basics of the PSAT?Learn what exactly the PSAT is and what's considered a good score.If you're asophomore,read our guide to see how "good" scores differ for 10th graders. Ready to move on to SAT prep?Start with our guide to how the SAT is scored and learn about the basic differences between the PSAT and SAT, so you'll have no surpriseson test day. Disappointed with your scores? Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points?We've written a guide about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: