Below is a recorded version of the letter.

The media world is full of different components and media ecology is the study of how they are all interconnected and much like an ecosystem as the media environment is much like a real ecosystem in which a chain of species all live together and without one element/component it would all crumble.

Everything in media is interdependent and split into 8 main components:

• Audience
• Creators
• Institutions
• Money
• Distribution
• Social Media
• Government
• Technology

These components all come together to allow for media to be succesful and function well within our society for example, without money then the creators would be unable to fund any of their work and without distribution they would be unable to have their work reach anyone.

Media ecology also shows impacts on society’s understanding and how it can shape the average persons perception, feelings and personal values. Media can also misshape people’s perception of events for example, fake news can cause people to have drastic opinions on current events. By learning about media ecology I have learned how interconnected all of these elements are and how all of them must work in unison to create a good piece of media. This will be very useful when I create my music magazine as I can use this knowledge to ensure that all of the elements work well together to create a good and entertaining magazine.

Throughout our daily lives we interact with many different forms of media that all come together and collectively make a media diet. This is a collection of different forms of media such as tv shows, video games and music and everyone both consumes and produces media by watching tv and listening to music and we produce media by messaging our friends, leaving comments and filming videos, I personally consume a lot more media than I produce. The main type of media that I produce is entertainment in the form of video games and tv shows as shown by my collage.

The collage is labled in 4 categories;

• ENTERTAINMENT – E
• PERSONAL IDENTITY – PI
• SOCIAL INTERACTION – SI
• EDUCATION AND INFORMATION – I

I consume a lot of media for entertainment such as playing video games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Dying Light whilst consuming little media for my personal identity. Most of my media that I use for social interaction is done on Instagram and Snapchat where I talk to my friends and family and produce media through messages and images that we send to each other. Finally my main source of information is IslandFM which I listen to so I can learn about important news and events happening on the island. IslandFM is very important because of this as it shapes my perception of different events by how it presents the news that I listen to this has helped me realize media’s impact on society’s perception of current events.

By creating a media diet I now understand that for future media I create that a lot of media, for it to be good and loved by it’s consumers should be able to fit into multiple categories For example a I love Instagram because it helps reinforce my personal identity, but it also helps me keep in touch with my friends and relatives which allows it to fit into both personal identity, social interaction and entertainment, knowing this will allow me to also let my future work fit into multiple categories to please as many different types of consumers as I can.