Due tomorrow, do tomorrow

Liv Kerr of Vic University's blog posts for social and interactive media (:

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Te Puni Village - A First Years Dream

First-year halls are almost like a rite of passage when upon moving into the tertiary study portion of your life, whether you stay at home or you move away it is something that most first years in New Zealand do. There is a social construct created around the first-year hall, it sells the study dream. You are given the freedom you crave but are looked after like a bunch of children in one big playpen with a dining hall, beds and a binge drinking culture. Te Puni means a transition to me, it represents the biggest decision I have embarked on in my short life. It represents independence, it represents my dream of moving away for university and why I worked so hard but ultimately it represents growth. Te Puni the building and the first-year experience doesn’t mean much to me, but the feelings and the personal growth I faced this year means everything. 

Te Puni is generally represented by the University, selling the idea of an elite of first-year hall. A purpose built a first choice hall to cater to those students who have an above average academic record and can afford the luxuries Te Puni has to offer. The pictures represented on the university website show a fun community enjoying the top-class facilities in the buildings while ultimately working toward the goal of a successful education, with the hall being built on the foundations of support and success in academic study. 

The story the pictures don’t show what the life of an actual Te Puni resident is like and this is the story I am hoping to tell. First-year halls are a bit of a contradiction, it’s a place where you are constantly surrounded by people but it is probably the most alone you could ever feel. For me, I don’t struggle with meeting new people and being extroverted but for someone who isn’t like me, I can imagine they have not had a very good year. The hall is advertised as something that is for everyone, but in reality, if you are quiet and shy, a hall probably isn’t the place for you. 

Victoria University halls have been under a microscope this year. Earlier in the year, we had Joans Stevens Hall with the title of the feral zoo, recently this title has been given to Te Puni. Stories of wild rampant teenagers drunk out of their minds and trashing their accommodation have been sprawled over the news, a bit of an insight into an everyday weekend at Poon really. A strong, healthy and respectful environment is what Te Puni’s marketing is but, in reality, its nearly uncontrollable first years with a huge thirst for binge drinking plowing their heads and arms through anything that will break, which is a social norm in a first-year halls. A completely unrepresented side told by the university. 

People always tell stories of how their first year of university was the best year of their lives and how they met people they will cherish forever and for some, this may be true. But the whitewashed perfect transition home for first years marketed by the university is a ploy for you to lock yourself into a $15,000 contract you can’t get out of when none of the selling points are really up to standard. The storytelling map I hope would give a bit more of an insight into what first-year life in a hall is like. The less perfect, less marketable side that the university probably does not want to show. 

Te Puni is a great place, don’t get me wrong. The staff dedicates their lives to ensure you have an enjoyable year but the social construct of a first-year hall is nothing like what it really is. 

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=cb7bdad9795b4ccea4e8e7be1a661d81

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https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=825f206c-becb-11e7-b263-0edaf8f81e27

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#Iamanastywoman

If you’re into politics like I am and followed the 2016 American election you might have seen the phrase ‘nasty woman’ floating about the internet, or perhaps you saw it floating straight from the mouth of a cheese supreme Dorito on live television. In the third and final presidential debate, Trump uttered to Clinton through the microphone “Such a nasty woman.”  Within minutes the #nastywoman was the most trending topic on Twitter. 

Trump, unbeknownst to him, began the nasty woman revolution. Initially, the goals of #iamanastywoman was a call to female voters in America to speak out against Trump and his seemingly anti-woman agenda but as the campaign sparked it became a worldwide feminist movement to empower #nastywomen all over the world to reclaim and redefine this idea of nasty. 

Nina Donovan set the campaign on alight with her spoken word poem “I am a Nasty Women”, which was then picked up by actress Ashley Judd. Judd recited the poem at the women’s march on Washington, making waves all around the world. 

Women took to Twitter to share their stories of being nasty women. 

Huffington Post 

The nasty women movement would have never begun if it weren’t for the internet era we are in, this idea comes from Clay Shirky described by Malcolm Gladwell. Word of mouth is a powerful thing and when it has the ability to be shared and traded between millions of people every second, it changes the way we see activism in the 21st century. 

This movement has the power to create real-world change, in fact, it already has. It has been one of the hugest feminist movements of the 21st century. Even now this real-world change is still happening. This week San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz adorned herself in a t-shirt featuring NASTY plastered on the front during a television interview, an undeniable message to Trump from Puerto Rico. 

https://collegecandy.com/2017/10/05/carmen-yulin-cruz-mayor-of-san-juan-puerto-rico-trump-nasty-shirt-photos-details/

The Nasty Woman movement is long yet over, taking an active stance in raising funds for Planned Parenthood after the federal funding was cut by Trump. Nasty woman is a digital protest to be noted in the history books. 

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Short Discussion Paper

YouTube is a social and interactive media website used to share content in the way of visual media, predominantly videos. Social media is defined by Graham Meikle as "...social media are networked database platforms that combine with public and personal communication." (Miekel) , to which YouTube fits into this description. YouTube has climbed the ranks in popularity since its creation in 2005. The website has a total of 1,300,000,000 users and is the third most visited website in the world (Cheng). The traditional user of YouTube would be that of someone who frequents the site to watch music videos or compilations of humour videos but in the last five years YouTube has seen a spark of different content creators. These content creators use the social media site to market themselves to the world and niche market they associate themselves with, these people are called influencers. The most popular group of influencers are the people in the beauty community known firstly as beauty bloggers but are now widely known as beauty influencers. YouTube’s affordance of viewer interactions and the norm of unique and original content allow creators the opportunity to build their own self brand and social capital to then be crowned with the title of a beauty influencer.

Viewer interactions is one of the main affordances of YouTube. The ability for users to comment, like and subscribe to YouTubers and their content allows the influencers social capital to grow. A huge part of YouTube as a social media site is its ‘Trending list’. What decides the trending list is the amount of views a video receives in a certain amount of time, along with the amount of likes and comments it receives so with increased viewer interaction this directly brings influencers greater social capital because from being on the trending list they have the ability to reach people out of their subscriber count and gain more subscribers, likes and comments. It is a norm for influencers to invite more  viewer interactions by asking a question in their videos and saying to answer them in the comment section below. This builds their presence on YouTube through the likes of the trending list but also helps to build their own personal brand. Shannon Harris, known as Shaaanxo on YouTube asks her viewers a question every time she posts a video. This could be something along the likes of “What’s your favourite meal?” Or “What is a holiday place you hated?” This effectively spikes her viewer interaction rates and also allows personal interaction between her as a creator and her subscribers. It allows Shannon opportunities to reply to comments and have one on one interactions with her fans. When a YouTuber is seen to be replying to comments in the comment section, they seem far more personable and approachable than if they didn’t which leads them to be viewed as stuck up and not in the business for the right reasons. George Christodoulides says it best, “Command and control branding simply cannot be tolerated online…” (Christodoulides) and with the affordance of viewer interaction there is no way that the influencers are able to control fully the way their brand develops, but in being an influencer you must learn the art of steering your viewers in the direction of the brand you want to create. Viewer interaction on the site and with the actual creators is crucial to the success of a YouTube channel.

To be able to make it in the beauty community of YouTube it is imperative to have unique and original content. In recent years there has been a huge spike in YouTube channels relating to all things beauty and with so many people trying to claim success from the niche market, it is crucial you have something to set yourself apart from the rest. Most beauty YouTuber’s distinguish themselves from the rest with the content they create. Take Jeffree Star for instance, Star has 5.3 million subscribers on his YouTube channel (YouTube; YouTube; YouTube) with the numbers growing daily. Jeffree posts content that could be seen as risqué and provocative. Urban Decay recently claimed their new mascara was ‘sex proof’ and Jeffree put this claim to the test in recent video, to many this may seem extremely inappropriate but because that is the ‘brand’ Star has created for himself over his time on YouTube it is widely accepted. Alice Marwick expresses in her article on micro-celebrities (A. E. MARWICK) that uniqueness is the key to success and is a norm in the realm of YouTube, to which she is correct. YouTube is one of the very few social media sites where you can go against the grain of society and that is deemed as ‘normal’. In society, today it isn’t exactly the most normal thing to see a male in a full face of glam make up but in the wonderful world of YouTube it is. In fact, in the Forbes top ten beauty influencers list of 2017 (Forbes) three male YouTubers featured, Wayne Goss, Jeffree Star and Mannymua. These three male YouTubers all offer an authentic self and unique content to their followers simply for being men who wear makeup. YouTube has actually become something of a place of refuge for those that are different. Many of the huge players in the YouTube game like Nikkitutorials, Star, Mannymua and Jaclyn Hill all talk of times in there earlier lives where they weren’t accepted by society and that forced them into a place of immense loneliness and YouTube is what gave them the strength to pull out of that place. It’s very much like a rag to riches fairy-tale for many influencers and this adds another level of authenticity to their brand making them more likeable in the eyes of their viewers. It may seem that the narratives of each YouTubers beginning story is the same but due to the unique personalities that present these stories, it is still seen as original and allows another level of depth to the influencer.

Successful beauty influencers amass a social capital that is almost like money in the online world. Social capital in the YouTube world is the influence these beauty bloggers have through their subscriber count and other followings on social media, which means they have a high authority over the beauty industry. Essentially most companies are at the mercy of the bloggers because what they say is taken as bible. If a product is rejected by the beauty bloggers, like we have recently seen with the Anastasia Beverly Hills recent release of their Subculture eyeshadow pallet, its finished before its even started. The pallet was crucified on YouTube by the influencers and hugely embarrassed the brand forcing them to pull it from some stores in America. Due to the influence of these YouTubers and their social following, brands go out of their way to impress the beauty gurus; a recent popular trend is to take a group of influencers away to some exotic island and dazzle them with flash dinners and events. Only the elite of influencers are invited, the ones with the most social capital. Major makeup brand Tarte takes the influencers on the iconic #trippinwithtarte holiday once or twice a year, the cost for the most recent one was $338,640 (Connel). That would seem like an extreme amount of money to spend on a couple YouTubers but because of the social capital that comes with the YouTubers it is essentially saving the brands millions of dollars on individual advertising campaigns when the YouTubers do it all for them. The social capital YouTubers gain allows them a lot more opportunities than the average person. A common thing for influencers to do is create their own brand. The most recent influencer to do this is Laura Lee. Laura Lee has recently begun her brand which sells mostly Laura’s own personal fan merchandise and most recently an eyeshadow pallet. YouTube has afforded Laura with enough social capital to start her own brand and for it to be popular right from the beginning. Due to Laura’s whole career being based on the fact she reviews make-up and beauty products for a living this gives her a really strong authority to then create her own beauty products, because who would know more about how beauty products should preform and be like than someone who has a whole career based around makeup.

Norms and affordances work alongside of each other on YouTube in order to allow the creators to gain social capital from the website. The affordance of viewer interactions boosts the influencers presence on YouTube and allows them to reach to a wider data base. The norm of having unique and original content is prevalent to the success and survival of a YouTube channel, anyone who does not follow this norm is weeded out from the pack and is unlikely their channel will survive for very long. These norms and affordances provide YouTubers with building blocks to begin their careers and one day be crowned a beauty influencer of YouTube.

Bibliography

Cheng, Xu, Cameron Dale, and Jiangchuan Liu. "Statistics and social network of youtube videos." Quality of Service, 2008. IWQoS 2008. 16th International Workshop on. IEEE, 2008. n.d.

Christodoulides, George. Marketing in the post-internet era. Sage Publications, 2003.

Connel, Alle. Here's how much makeup brands pay for those extravagant blogger trips. 22 June 2017. 22 September 2017. <http://www.revelist.com/bloggers/blogger-trips/8188>.

Forbes. Top Influcers: Beauty. n.d. 26th September 2017. <https://www.forbes.com/top-influencers/beauty/#1a5fcc8f3378>.

Huffington Post. 20 03 2013. 20 09 2017. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/youtube-stats_n_2922543.html>.

MARWICK, ALICE E. “THE FABULOUS LIVES OF MICRO-CELEBRITIES.” Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age, Yale University Press, New Haven and pp. 112–162. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkzxr.6. 2013. n.d.

Miekel, Graham. "Social Media: Communication, Sharing and Visability." London: Taylor & Francis Ltd, n.d.

YouTube. Jeffree Star's Youtube Profile. n.d. 20th September 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkvK_5omS-42Ovgah8KRKtg>.

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Are Facebook privacy settings really private?

My privacy settings are set very tight (or at least I really hope they are). You can not view my profile picture past the one that presents itself first, posts can only be seen by my immediate mutual friends and I don’t even think my birthday is able to be shown on my profile. 

I’ve chosen these settings for a huge amount of reasons but the top three would have to be: 

1) I am a control freak, I don’t like not being able to control the narrative of how people see me. I care hugely about how I present myself to the world and I want my private life private. 

2) My job requires privacy. I work for an MP for one of New Zealand’s major political parties and I accept that my opinion to work for this party will not be widely accepted and the last thing I want are other peoples opinions infecting my personal facebook. 

3) We live in the age where identity is everything and it is so unbelievably easy to have your pictures and your details stolen. I don’t want to open myself to even the possibility of that. 

Upon logging out of my facebook and searching for my own profile I found that my privacy settings were exactly how I expected them to be and I don’t plan on changing any of them anytime soon. 

I will continue to use facebook in exactly the same way that I have been for years because thats how I choose to live my life online, privately. 

Whelan talks about lack of control on the internet and how you can you really honestly don’t have much of it so I’d like to hold onto what little privacy and control on my Facebook that I can. 

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Micro-Celebrities: Michael Finch

Michael Finch - Beauty influencer, make up artist, Shani Grimmonds best friend and micro celebrity. 

Michael Finch’s main gram

Michael is mostly known due to his 586k following on Youtube where in which he would be deemed as a #beautyinfluencer. Michael used social media to achieve micro celebrity status by filming videos to post on his youtube channel about all things beauty related. 

Michael Finch’s youtube channel

To your average person, Michael Finch would just be another person you walk past in the street but his demeanour would make you look twice. Michael fits both definitions of a micro-celebrity outlined by author Alice Marwick, he is a celebrity to the niche market but also presents himself as a celebrity through his behaviours; its not often you see someone who uses his social media capital to create a line of merchandise based off his common own sayings if they did not think they were of high enough status to do so. 

Michaels story began with Youtube but ultimately climaxed when he became friends with social media queen Shani Grimmond (featured in Michaels third Instagram post in the photo above). In the two years they have become best friends through similar career paths, significantly boosting Michael’s social media presence. 

Shani Grimmond’s Youtube channel

Apart from his connections in the social media world, his genuine personality is another draw to become one of his followers. There are very few male power players in the beauty youtube world Mannymua, Jeffree Star and Patrick Star just to name a few and they all have one thing in common, authenticity. Males wearing make up is only a recently accepted thing in society and the fact that these Youtuber’s are willing to brave it on such a public stage is something to be admired and something that people are drawn too. Along with the Youtuber’s mentioned above, Michael also has this quality. Marwick refers to this quality as the selling point for most micro celebrities. 

Michael has used the age old term of self writing by sharing his life with the world through social media and thus making himself a #microcelebrity 

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Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing: a fresh new way of marketing that is based on the idea of interaction. 

George Christodoulides says it best, “Command and control branding simply cannot be tolerated online” which is completely true. Any company these days that tries their hand at social media marketing will fail if control is their approach. Social media is used as a fun and innovative platform which relies purely on the interaction of the users to ensure its success, the same works for business who use social media for marking. 

The makeup brand XO Beauty began as a social media brand that expanded due to a full-blown business with large amounts of revenue for the owner Shannon Harris (youtube featured in the picture below), who in fact is a beauty blogger/influencer (in other words, a social media Queen 👑). 

The XO Beauty brand uses their own followers as a form of marketing on their Instagram. The brand reposts photos of people trying out their products and uses them for their own marketing purposes. Using their own followers content and reposting allows the company to save on marketing campaigns and also shows other followers new and innovative ways to use the products. Plus it’s great for followers who are featured on such a prestigious beauty Instagram with 163k followers, a win win for everyone. 

Social media marketing is interesting because used well is a great gain for your company but used poorly, it could ultimately destroy its chances of being successful. As Christodoulides explains, the loss of control when it comes to social media marketing is huge. When upon posting something on social media, a lot of the time the context is in the users hands due to how they interpret the post which is a big leap for a company to take and that’s why you won’t find more traditional companies on the likes of social media who want to control the way their brand is perceived. 

Social media is a hard cookie to crack, but once you do, you’re away laughing!

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MIXED MEDIA??? MIXED EMOTIONS!!!

I chose to do mixed media as my norm breaching experiment, little did I know, I already do it!

I think I am a pretty tech savvy kind of gal, I know the rules of technology (peak Instagram post time: 7:30-8:00, tag friends in minimum two meme a day to let them know that you’re alive and kicking, you know that kind of stuff) but never did I ever think that something I do on a day to day basis was a media crime!

MIXED MEDIA (punishable by death (not really))

Well apparently it is so, hi, Im Liv and I am a mixed mediaholic. 

For three days I replied to my friends via a different platform than the one they had contacted me on. I thought I was being extremely sneaky and was having a laugh to myself every time my friend would reply and I'd do a cheeky bamboozle and smash a reply on Snapchat when they'd mailed me on Messenger. After the three days were up and no one mentioned anything to me at all, I confronted my friends asking why they'd never said anything to me about my lack of cohesive communication. 

Well, turns out, they thought I had done nothing out of normal and this social media crime was something I frequented constantly. In terms of Bourdieu I had not been following ‘the habitus’. In no way was I following cultural rules and contexts and well, I was completely fine with that. My friends probably seriously hate me, but I don’t - always be your own number one fan. 

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Do you recognise the name Danielle Bregoli? No, probably not. Now, do you recognise the saying “Cash me ousside, howbow dah”? I feel like if you don’t you might’ve just been living under a rock for the last year or so. 

September 14th, 2016 Danielle made her big debut on the ‘Dr Phil Show’ sporting her own catch phrase and a fiery attitude that made the ingredients for arguably the most famous viral meme of all time. The phrase then was inspiring songs, dance crazes and ‘remixes’ of Danielle’s meme. 

The message the meme creates is explained by Danielle’s very own mum “Cash me outside means going outside and doing what she has to do..” In other words, lets fight outside (well at least she has the decency to do it outside). 

The “Cash me ousside, howbow dah” meme is a classic example of ‘remixing’ or ‘repackaging’ terms explained by Limor Shifman in his book, “Memes in Digital Culture”, #notevensponsered. Memes are transformed to fit other situations then repackaged and shared to the world.

The idea of “Cash me ousside, howbow dah” isn’t necessarily the most profound statement someone could ever come up with but its not about the information you put out there into the world but the attention that information receives. That attention is then like a currency that can be bought and traded in order for social status on the internet, Shifman explains this as the ‘attention economy’. 

Well anyway, cash me next time, howbow dah (: