Class 10: Interdisciplinarity.

The concept of being a renaissance man has been around for a while. It is defined as a person with many talents or areas of knowledge. Personally I prefer to refer to my own interdisciplinarity as being a Communications Megazord.

For those that didn't grow up with the trans-cultural phenomena known as The Power Rangers tv series, the megazord was a combination of each Ranger's individual zord to create an entity more powerful than the sum of its parts. And so it is with interdisciplinarity within communications. Having skills in particular disciplines is definitely a boost but being adept in multiple disciplines effectively turns you into a one person communications team. In a workforce which is becoming increasingly casualised it is definitely worthwhile to have the skills to work for yourself in your back pocket.

Throughout this course my definition of a real world interdisciplinary project has expanded. In truth no project is refined to one single communication discipline but instead crosses a spectrum of disciplinary approaches. And so the concept of being disciplinarily agnostic comes into play. Will an interdisciplinary project fare better with a team of specialists from different disciplines, or with a team of interdisciplinary generalists? I am really not sure how to answer that one, probably due to my inexperience within such projects. But I do believe that at this initial stage in our careers it is important to remain open to all disciplines and gain as much experience and expertise within each discipline as possible as your role as a proffesional communicator in the workforce could push you towards any discipline at any given time.

I think that the examples of online storytelling/advertising such as the New York Times' 'Women Inmates' (2014) story written in partnership with Orange is the new black, are an amazing indicator of just how blurred the lines are becoming between advertising, journalism, Public relations and Media.

The BMW (2019) commercial which I refered to in week 5, also an amazing example of interdisciplinarity, was it an ad? was it public relations? a historical renactment based on factual reporting? A dramatised short film? Probably all of the above, and there is an opportunity to work on similar projects within the communications industry, which is so exciting. As the communication industry becomes less and less binary the responsibility will be upon us to adapt. We will need to be dynamic, constantly learning and expanding our expertise in each discipline. Which is why I transferred from Journalism to advertising in the first place, and why I have committed to drawing these little cartoons for each thumbnail, we should never be content with just the skills we have. Every weakness we perceive of ourselves is a chance to develop a new skill. For me I felt I could improve on my ability to make media artefacts, particularly drawings and cartoons, which played such a big role in many many examples of online storytelling throughout this semester.

The end result? Well I can now draw an interdisciplinary team.

And so now at this point it makes a lot of sense why we learned about the growth mindset . It really is key to becoming a communications megazord.

-T.

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BMW, 2019. The small escape. Youtube, Oct 1, BMW, Viewed Dec 11 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkho0RB0zz0

TedxTalks 2012, The Power of belief -- mindset and success | Eduardo Briceno | TEDxManhattanBeach, Youtube, Nov 18, viewed 19/11/19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN34FNbOKXc

Dezial, Melanie 2014. Women Inmates: Why the Male Model Doesn’t Work, The New York Times. Viewed Dec 15 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/paidpost/netflix/women-inmates-separate-but-not-equal.html?_r=0#.VL6szYrF-lJ