We were given a bag of resources related to the social media site, Twitter. Inside the bag were examples of Twitter Usernames, Profile Pictures or Avatars, Biographies, and sample Tweets. We had to match them together. 

We were trying to see how the infrastructure of Twitter worked. These key elements, along with the power of the #hashtag, should enable anyone to publish thoughts and ideas, something that is a far cry from the "closed" media industry with limited plurality of voices for reasons discussed throughout the unit so far.

The activity was fun, and there were some key learning moments in there. For example, everyone in the class correctly placed the picture of Amol Rajan with the name, and then felt awkward when asked how that was possible when no one knew who he was! Such ethnic stereotyping was made even more prevalant when all-but-one of the groups also gave him the Tweet about cricket (it wasn't his!).

Overall, it seems that while anyone can Tweet about anything, whether people read you, follow you, or retweet you seems just as dependent on power and fame as before. In this way, the internet doesn't seem to be the great liberator of free and open speech as we'd hoped it might be.

I intend to do my Extended Essay on Twitter and the ways in which it has changed sports journalism (and the ways it hasn't). I find the concept of the #hashtag very interesting, and have read many stories about trending, about things that have gone viral, and some the consequences of Twitter. I am also concerned with the power of big tech, in particular the different scandals associated with algorithm-censorship, AI bot-farms and fake news. I believe reading more about this with a specific lens will give me greater insight into how the information system is working in the internet age.

We were asked to take a scene from the novel - in this case, the moment in which the baby Hareton is dropped from the top of the stairs by his drunken father, Hindley, only for Heathcliff to instinctively catch the baby and save its life. Nelly recounts the story, and explains the moment of horror Heathcliff experiences when he realises he has inadvertently been the architect of his enemy's reprieve.

In the first picture, we took a character each (Catherine, Nelly, Hindley, Heathcliff), and were asked to present a tableau of how the scene appears. The second picture asked us to consider levels (who is higher than whom) to represent power, and proximity to represent allegiances. The third picture - the one you see here - added Emily Bronte to the scene, to invite us to consider where her allegiances lie.

Trying to consider the different characters' perspectives led to a deeper understanding of the complex characterisation at play, but also invited us to develop empathy with the different characters (itself a transferable life skill and one of the reasons why we study literature). The movement from picture #1 to picture #2 certainly forced a more symbolic understanding of how ideas are presented. We started off really just presenting the image in the way our strongest group member described it. However, it changed dramatically when we considered levels and proximity as symbols. The most interesting one was the third picture, since it allowed some of us to shift from considering only that the author's perspective is the one of the narrative voice (in this case, Nelly), and got us thinking that instead a narrator can really be an unreliable voice, while the author is actually saying something very different through giving them the narrative.

Here is our description of the image:

In this final frame, we see Emily Brontë herself. She directs the scene from the balcony, separated from the players, and observes her characters’ distress dispassionately. Apparently removed from the depth of the story, Brontë  manipulates her characters at will... She is ruthless.

Finding scenes fit for such a series of tableaux activity is actually a great way to identify a suitable extract from a literary work. Such an extract can be used as a scene to discuss in detail in Paper 2 essays, as well as being a perfect length of extract to use in the Individual Oral. This scene, for example, told us a lot about the different characters and their sympathies, as well as identifying a key moment in the novel in which Heathcliff's plan for revenge is engendered and forged. 

I intend to identify one more scene from this novel, Wuthering Heights, in order to test my understanding on my peers, and then invite my friends to find one each for each 50-page section of the next novel. This may give us suitable extracts for the Individual Oral, but will also be excellente revision for Paper 2.

We received a text all chopped up. Each person in the group only received one or, at most, two sections of the text. Each piece together would make the whole text, but we weren't allowed to show anyone the text or put them on the table. The idea was to get an understanding of the whole text and its order - though it didn't have to be perfectly ordered - so that we got the gist of the main development and conclusion of the text, and then to collectively draw a representation of the text (four people drawing simultaneously) using only symbols and images. We were allowed four separate key words, but not used together as a phrase. The four remaining members would then present our image and our understanding of the text to the other group.

The activity helped us to read with purpose and for meaning, as well as developing communicative and collaborative / social skills. We had to listen to each and every member of the group, as everyone had key information for the whole. 

Our text was entitled, 'Consent of the Surveilled', and it discussed George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four and its implications for the 21st Century. In particular, it discussed the notion of a surveillance state - something we learned about in 2013 from the revelations by Edward Snowden - and compared Orwell's 'telescreens' to modern social media (such as Twitter and Facebook) in that they communicate in both directions. 

My main take-away was the idea that if we're not paying for the product, then we are the product! With social media in particular, our data is what is being sold. To be honest, this connected to my understanding of traditional print media, since as Noam Chomsky argues in Manufacturing Consent newspapers have always sold audiences from one business (the newspaper) to others (the advertisers). However, it seems on a different scale in the internet age.

I've not read Orwell's novel, so will do that next. Then I will watch 'The Social Dilemma', the new film on Netflix about how the social media industry works. 

My global issue for the Individual Oral will be looking at the concepts of privacy and communication in the digital age. I would like to find a photographer who explores these ideas - those explained in the 'Consent of the Surveilled' - in picture essays. I think this would be an effective body of work from which to take my non-literary text for the Individual Oral.

We were given an extract of the novel with words taken out. Unlike cloze passages in Primary School, though, there wasn't a box of words at the bottom with the answers to put in the correct gaps!

FILL IN THE 12 MISSING WORDS

She was Rahel’s baby grand aunt, her grandfather’s younger sister. Her name was really Navomi, Navomi Ipe, but everybody called her Baby. She became Baby Kochamma when she was old enough to be an aunt. Rahel hadn’t come to see her, though. Neither niece, nor baby grand aunt laboured under any illusions on that account. Rahel had come to see her brother, Estha. They were two-egg twins. ‘Dizygotic’ doctors called them. Born from separate but simultaneously fertilized eggs. Estha – Esthappen – was the older by eighteen minutes.

They never did look much like each other, Estha and Rahel, and even when they were thin-armed children, flat-chested, worm-ridden and Elvis Presley-puffed, there was none of the usual ‘Who is who?’ and ‘Which is which?’ from oversmiling relatives or the Syrian Orthodox Bishops who frequently visited the Ayemenem house for donations.

The confusion lay in a deeper, more secret place.

In those early amorphous years when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was For Ever, Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually, as We or Us. As though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities.

Now, these years later, Rahel had a memory of waking up one night giggling at Estha’s funny dream.

She has other memories too that she has no right to have.

She remembers, for instance (though she hadn’t been there), what the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man did to Estha in Abhilash Talkies. She remembers the taste of the tomato sandwiches – Estha’s sandwiches, that Estha ate – on the Madras Mail to Madras.

And these are only the small things.

Anyway, now she thinks of Estha and Rahel as Them, because separately, the two of them are no longer what They were or ever thought They’d be.

Ever.

Their lives have a size and shape now. Estha has his and Rahel hers.

Edges, Borders, Boundaries, Brinks and Limits have appeared like a team of trolls on their separate horizons. Short creatures with long shadows, patrolling the Blurry End. Gentle half-moons have gathered under their eyes and they are as old as Ammu was when she died. Thirty-one. 

Not old.

Not young.

But a viable die-able age.

[Roy, A. (1997). The God of Small Things. London: Flamingo. p.2]

The activity was extremely difficult but, on reflection, it was no different to a "normal" text reading in English class, in which we read a couple of pages around the class and then the teacher asks us about a number of different words, what they mean, and why the author chose to use that image. This way was easier, because we had a chance to think and engage with the missing words first.

For example, I didn't know the word 'amorphous' and now do. The idea of the relatives being 'oversmiling' - a word that kept coming up as a misspelling on Word and, later, I realised is a key motif of Roy's, to create compound nouns that suggest ideas beneath the surface - was interesting and said something about what the relatives thought of Ammu and her children. 'Secret' is a key motif of the novel, as are 'Boundaries' - capitalising key symbols and concepts also being a repeated idea, this one being related to the Love Laws (that decide who can be loved by whom and how much). In a novel essentially about the remnants of the caste-system in rural India, it is effective to put this across in this way so early in the novel.

Interestingly, most people could identify 'viable' at the end, even despite its complexity, because they'd pre-read the novel once and it is a phrase that is repeated a few times and that rhymes.

Selecting such extracts - ones that are signficant when looking at the novel as a whole and contain many key conceptual and thematic ideas as well as elements of the author's style - is crucial preparation and revision for Paper 2. This will ensure that responses are sharply focused and don't just re-tell the narrative of the novel.

Doing this for this novel - selecting an extract for each 50-page section of the novel, dividing the workload between friends, and producing a shared document or presenting to each other - will not only be good preparation of this novel, but also could give us an extract of the Individual Oral.

Regarding Roy's novel, I would like to read not only some more history about the Indian caste-system, but also her second novel, published in 2017 - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.