Soliciting engagement from the online community is hard.
Especially when you have to first build the community.
I think that the Integrated Media project is a challenge because we are creating a community, and then asking them to interact with us. Projects like this take effort. They also take a lot more time and money then we have to establish a reputable concept and image of who we are and why we are creating/facilitating discussion.

Darius’ work with the Goa Hippy Tribe worked so well because he was latching on to something that was already bubbling away and he fuelled it a little more.

By and large, a high-brow/low-brow divide between audience proximity and texts still exists. This is changing with the development of Web 2.0 and Quality TV, however it is still seen by many as culturally degrading to have a close relationship with texts. Interactive, transmedia texts are pushing this boundary… but there is still a boundary that exists… what does the audience, the participant gain from the interaction?
With Stranger Photography, they get to see their photo online, curated with other works, but that’s about it. We are asking them to engage further with the work once it is distributed online… but why would they do that?

What makes a movement like Humans of New York so successful? People look to Brandon to have their stories told, but what got people to that page in the first place? And who comments on these photos? Why? What do they gain from it?
Personally, I am happy to stand back, to just read the stories, look at the photos and then take away the meaning and let it sit with me.

In retrospect, if it were possible, that would have been a great way to approach the task. Maybe we were blinkered by this idea of staging an event to consider other possibilities… Like just simply looking at what issues were current and eliciting discussion online (right now, I think it would have been fantastic to do something regarding the Commit to Community TV program…) jump on board a movement and document it rather then construct something totally new…

Hindsight will forever haunt what could be.

THE ICEBUCKET CHALLENGE: Social Media and virility

Trending social media over the past week has been the Ice Bucket/Ice Water Challenge, and it seems to have been a brilliant way to get people on and using social media to raise awareness. How well this aids the cause or shows support I don’t know, but sharing and tagging seems to continually fuel the “movement”. 

The concept is simple: film yourself getting ice cold water tipped over your head, share it and nominate 2 or more people to complete the challenge after. It’s meant to raise awareness for Motor Neuron Disease, whether or not it does I am skeptical, but this kind of idea would be ideal for our projects. It’s a get the ball rolling kind of thing, and publicly tagging people means that they are quite likely to complete the challenge as it is something that others will be able to see. 

This is the perfect kind of concept that enables us as social media producers to look at reach and audience, it would be easy enough to start something ourselves and then other people would get involved as the process moves along.

The LIKING Commodity

The Four Corners Documentary: Generation Like offers a deeper look into what it means when we decide to publicly display our support for brands via social media.

“Likes”, “Retweets”, “Shares”, “Favourites” have become in their own way a currency – not only do people’s interaction with brands via social media both helps to validate themselves as a person in a world where online image matters so much, they also advertise for corporations to a relevant market (peers), building brand awareness and advertising on behalf of a company without requesting anything in return. The value of social media companies is based largely on their potential reach. And now it is not so much about the technology itself, but what is being achieved via it. Our time and emotion becomes the value of advertising. Many corporations have begun to exploit this mash up of culture and commerce where the consumer is equally the marketer. Corporate sponsorship and hidden advertising can be found all over our tv screens and throughout the internet.

 

In seeking out likes companies are playing on a very fundamental human characteristic; the want to feel a part of something. You can feature in Beyonce’s halftime super bowl video if you upload a selfie of yourself drinking Pepsi. It’s something that people want to do, to feel included. However it may not be apparent that they are in fact advertising a product. So how far will we go?  People seek attention, and they seek validation. If they can get this over the internet, where they can be seen by so many people, maybe that makes them feel better about themselves. I think that this new way of marketing – having the consumer promote products – highlights more than just that advertisers have continued to work with an ever more aware audience, it highlights the inherent problem people have with not being comfortable in themselves – that they need to seek validation over the internet rather than just being happy with liking what they like and being who they are.

 

Attention seekers and even just people who want to communicate with their friends are becoming famous through Youtube. This is the case for Tyler Oakley and many similar vloggers – they are in a way their own version of a celebrity, however, the way they are seen by the public is totally different. Not being selected by a big organisation, instead becoming popular in perhaps a more organic way – through growing a fanbase online – has meant that the way Tyler relates to his audience (and vice-versa) is different to that of a Hollywood movie-star, selected for a role by a big shot director, who grew up in Orange County with fast cars and learnt how to act famous from an early age. Tyler’s videos are created in an informal way, he directly addresses his audience  from his living room to yours; it creates such a different dynamic. In the documentary Tyler comments that he does run into fans who hug him and treat him like they would a friend – this is driven by the viewing settings. Watching him at home, on your own, every week makes it so similar to catching up with a friend. And viewers are offered many more ways to interact (more directly) with the one they watch.

This new type of celebrity/audience relationship is something that is fostered by the “LIKE generation”, and both parties contribute to the success.

The Web 2.0 Mentality: I Share… therefore I Am

It is often said that new technology aligns with shifts in behaviour, or, that we create new technologies to suit shifting behaviours – the two are aligned, but one does not necessarily cause the other. We adapt to new technologies, then we adapt them to our own lifestyles.

However with The Innovation of Loneliness, Shimi Cohen suggests that digital media is replacing positive face-to-face conversation with a more isolated way of communicating.
But where does this leave the traveller, or the exchange student, myself, who has to rely solely on exchange with others back home over social media? For me, it is useful, simply because it is not in real time. Replies don’t need to be instant and conversations can continue over a number of days.

It’s true; things can be misread, subtleties lost, and meaning construed, but the new medium paves the way for a new kind of conversation, and a new kind of interaction.

Sharing.

With the phrase “I Share, therefore I Am”,  Cohen makes an interesting point about the way in which we justify our existence, and our online presence. It is through what we choose to share that we establish our identity. Everyone knows it, it is unescapable; your online presence matters. It’s the easiest way for someone to get an idea of who you are – employers, friends, potential partners. So it does matter, that’s for sure. My American friends, wanting to be teachers, cannot even have photos of themselves with alcohol on Facebook. So they share very little. But then others choose to share more then is necessary, more then anyone really ever wants to know. Check out this article on the fem-douches of Instagram.

So where does the happy medium lie? Well that’s up to the individual I guess… How much do they feel the need to show other people that they are alive, and that the life they live is filled with social activities, overseas travels, and cute babies?

Why do we take photos?

Being on exchange has brought about the companionship of my camera, but also an absence of a smartphone, resulting in a new collection of pictures, with a new goal in mind during their creation. You no longer take social photos on a digital compact – it’s not an SLR, so it doesn’t elicit a pose, nor is it an iphone. What I’ve found is that we pose differently depending on what kind of camera we are facing. The quick, quiet, unobtrusive snap of the iphone leaves no-one the wiser and lets us get away quickly with posing – if it didn’t work…too bad so sad, if it did…we can lol about it after.

I don’t have a smartphone here. I miss snapchat, I miss instagram. Or even simply, mobile uploads, where the selfie is validated because of the device it was taken on. We can pull faces, be idiots, because the mobile-phone camera does not hold an underlying history of preparation for a photo, of the one-off, the value of the exposure (and cost!). Mobile photography is designed to be quick, to be multiple, to be unobtrusive.

We don’t mind the SLR at the odd party or event. It gives the occasion some formality, and of course gives the one standing behind it a certain level of credibility.

I don’t quite know where my camera fits, the Powershot G1X. It’s really great, with full manual functions and a DSLR sized sensor, but it still gets in the way of the social photo; it takes it’s time to focus, it is kind of bulky and bigger then your average digital camera.
People have started saying, wow what a great camera, that takes really good photos. Soon I will reply, it’s not all down to the camera…

My photos are only on flickr or on this blog, I don’t want no Facebook owning my work! ha.

Mum asked for photos of my surroundings which has inspired a collection of grunge-type street photography, aimed at capturing spirit and life in Montpellier (yet still not really featuring any true Montpellier-ins ….) we’ll work on that.

The new way to quit…and what happens after

The web2.0 world – where responses sometimes gets just as much attention, or sometimes more then the original  video/article/post themselves!

So, the long and short of it, a woman working for a media company makes a rather entertaining video about her long working hours and her dislike towards her job in order to quit.
It’s gone viral, everyone loves it….power-to-the-people kind of stuff…
…and very good PR…

A facebook friend of mine posted the link,

Show Gen Y viral videos, they’ll spend company time watching them. Teach Gen Y to make viral videos, they’ll publicly shame you on YouTube.#modernwisdom

Parodies have popped up everywhere –

 

But then, what I find even more amusing is the response from her colleagues and boss:

those apps

I want to air my frustrations surrounding the apps available on Android phones (and Windows 8 – but that doesn’t really count).

When looking to buy my smartphone last year I was told a number of times that I should get an Android
“There’s heaps more free apps”
“The market’s not as controlled so there are more, better apps”  … or so they told me….

Unfortunately, for creating videos (and for good image editing), there doesn’t seem to be a comparison.
Apple wins this one. Hands down.

• Vine
• Lightt
• Cinemagram
• Lumify

Some of the great apps available exclusively to iOS users.

WHY?

I don’t know. They are all free yet they are not on Android. Android where they can have ads!

So, I’m almost ready to buy myself my very first iPod.

Reflecting on the Digital Story

OUR DIGITAL STORY:

https://twitter.com/SimoneSimCeleb

For our digital story, we (Caley and I) wanted to explore both machinima and storytelling across multiple digital social media platforms.

Using The Sims3 we created a character (Simone Sim).

SYNOPSIS:

We are aiming to create a digital story which is about a celebrity “Sim” who goes from being a local performer to a popular celebrity. The digital story will cross over three different digital platforms which will include instagram, twitter, YouTube and the Sims 3.

PLATFORMS:

On instagram:
Using Instagram, we are going to make an account for our Sim and upload pictures of herself, concerts, travel destinations, food, and friends. We will do this by taking screenshots of the Sims and then uploading them through the phone. The instagram photos will be linked to the Sim’s twitter account and she will tweet the photos there.

On Twitter:
We are going to create a Twitter account for our Sim where she posts comments about her success, her videos, her concerts, her photos and general thoughts.
NB: the progression of the story will occur in “Sim time”, so 30 minutes in between posts is equivalent to 1 day.

On YouTube:
We are going to post 3 separate short clips (approx 10 seconds) which we will have made by filming the sims game and editing the clips together. The link to these YouTube videos will be tweeted in our celebrity tweets.

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY:
We are going to use hootsuite to control the release of the tweets.

THE NARRATIVE:
Our character’s name is Simone Sim who is a young female singer on her rise to fame.

Episode 1: Simone singing and practicing in her house, see her personality, not yet a star.

Episode 2: Simone’s talent is discovered by an industry professional in a local bar who offers her a contract.

Episode 3: Simone has become famous, the paparazzi follow her everywhere, she performs at a concert.

IMPLEMENTATION:

Recording the in-game videos was an interesting, challenging experience.
I want to point out it was also my first time! and I’m fairly happy with the result, but of course there is always more to learn…
Creating the videos, and I feel I learnt a great deal about camera work, even though I was using a a virtual camera. I learnt  more about how moving even a virtual camera can have a huge effect on the picture (the lesson is static shots are always better) it was a chance to practice cinematography without needing to have an actual camera.

This webpage provided some great insight on ‘filming’ and recording in Sims3.

In the editing phase, we decided to use music sourced from Jamendo and GarageBand. They are always great sources and the track from Fake was exactly what we were after – it was a great addition!

Some Screenshots from the production phase below:

REFLECTION:

Overall, I think we succeeded in creating a narrative that flows over multiple social platforms.

We had difficulties in converting the videos on MPEG Streamclip (here we lost quality and sound), but we were able to make up for that using clever screenshots to illustrate the story.

Regarding the principles outlined int the Guest Lecture, we aimed to utilize “layouts” and order the tweets to aid the flow of the narrative – I feel this could have been done better, but at least we did use Simtime. The progression is important, and the order and times of our tweets are essential to understanding the complete narrative. Simone firstly outlines the aspirations, and then realises them.
We also focused on “information as architecture” in designing a story that would flow across platforms. Effectively the story is one big hypertext (yeah – Editing Media Texts, I used the ‘H-word’).

We worked well collaboratively, generating heaps of ideas and exploring them – ready to critique and turn down possibilities that we felt we could not execute (which I feel is really great). We split the roles evenly (Caley doing the Instagram-ing and I filiming the in-game videos) and came together often to share tips and ideas.

Using Hootesuite allowed us to schedule tweets and structure the narrative all at one time — it would be great if it had this feature for Instagram too!

This task opened my mind to the fact that, by existing, by utilising social media, we ourselves are creating episodes of our own digital stories – we did not really even have to create a character, we already have them. We already have published videos, status updates, photos, and blogs too!

Boy makes Software in College dorm … Boy becomes multi-millionaire

In Episode 4 of Download: The True Story of the Internet John Heilemann suggest that what we, as humans want more then anything else in this day and age is to communicate. I agree with this, but only to a certain degree. Whilst it is true that communication is integral in a successful, happy and fulfilled life, I (establishing my truly anti-internet standpoint) believe that face-to-face communication will be forever of more value then any communication that goes on over the internet. Now, I’m not 100% anti-internet – I am studying media and I am blogging about it – the information we have access to and the way in which we can connect with people across the globe is phenomenal, I simply feel that it cannot replace a face-to-face conversation.

The developments throughout the late nineties and noughties have been astounding. Heilemann outlines the way the average joe can take out the big companies, now,

“the world is changing the web.”

The collaborative nature has seen the rise (and fall) of sites such as Napster, Digg, and Craigslist which essentially undermine the big media moguls and their way of buying up big to control what is out there. They have opened doors to new arguments around internet ethics, intellectual property, the cost of content and who decides what we should be reading, and therefore, thinking about. But the battle continues to forever rage on between the little man and the media mogul.

One clear example was Rupert Murdoch buying out Myspace in 2005 for $580million. This grab for power has been reported as “huge mistake”. It is ironic that Murdoch himself labels it mismanagement “in every possible way” that was inflicted by the big time corporation to a platform that now functions mainly as a launch pad for (small time) music artists (see Matt Lynley’s article in Business Insider, October 21, 2011). One of the original founders, Chris DeWolfe described it as a look into someone’s bedroom or apartment, giving you a “real insight into someone that you wouldn’t ordinarily have” –  somewhat creepy if you ask me. But of course it has its place in the social networking revolution. It was created by college students, just like the majority of successful social networks and web platforms that we have come to know today.

Myspace was sold last year (2011) for $35million, a small fraction of the original cost, to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake. It is now being rebuilt, and I reckon it looks kind of cool. Much more sophisticated then the old days of backgrounds-of-hot-boiz-wishing-you-were-in-that-girl’s-top-friends.
Take a look at the preview video, looking like a mix between Facebook, and Pinterest… with music, I think I’ll be requesting an invite.