Hunter's Opinions

You're probably here to mark my MDIA104, if you aren't I'm not quite sure how you got here and why you'd wanna stay.

[hunter-chapman]

Assignment 3 Pt. 2

The aim of my interactive story is to present Joan Stevens Hall in a more realistic and positive light than what was perceived by many viewers after 1 News published a story about alcohol related incidents that occurred at the hostel. The way I will address the situation is by discussing how and where the news story was flawed, as well as discussing how repeated stories discussing alcohol related incidents around many New Zealand universities can lead to situations across social media where manufactured outrage can create and portray a clear difference in culture across age generations.

To me this space has importance in the material and digital world. I myself lived there over 2017 which is why it is physically a significant space for me personally. And digitally I want people to perceive my location in a positive light, something that has become harder due to the incidents that occurred at the back end of May this year.

While I don’t like using the term ‘fake news’ it seems somewhat appropriate for this news piece as the story seemed to misrepresent and misinform its consumers about the lifestyle of Joan Stevens Hall. Viewers got a small glimpse into one weekend of bad decisions that happened which now hold more importance on people’s opinions of the hall than anything positive to come from living in Joan Stevens. To understand the positives of life there one would have to listen to its current residents.

This is the important aspect I want to focus on for my story, the opinions of the residents. It was an aspect that seemed to be glossed over on the news and forgotten when older viewers and consumers of media expressed their outrage over social media.

A secondary aspect I wish to address is the seemingly scheduled nature of articles that bring attention to alcohol related incidents at New Zealand universities. With the term ‘feral zoo’ being one commonly used to address these facilities.

[hunter-chapman]

Assignment 3

[hunter-chapman]

Joan of Rark

Home <3

As a resident of Joan Stevens, the exposure from outlets like One News and stuff.co.nz was a very unique experience for me as I had never experienced an article or news piece from the other side. Quickly I realised just how different it felt when the tables were and what stood out was the moral outrage that occurred over Facebook, particularly from people who I and many others here at Joan Stevens felt had been presented with a grossly misinformed piece of Journalism. So four months on from this incident I felt it was time to try and represent the true picture, by getting insight from the people who lived here and experienced the events that occurred first hand. My digital storytelling essay will analyse the underrepresentation of students in the virtual and material space of Joan Stevens Hall.

It’s now been around 4 months since the incident that lead to Joan Stevens Hall being labelled as a ‘feral zoo’. Excessive damages and alcohol-fuelled antics meant that a hall-wide alcohol ban was enforced for all residents. What some may have seen as an issue for residents and administration to overcome quickly became a nationwide talking point.

See ya later TV...

The 6 o’clock news is something ingrained in the brains of many New Zealander’s. For generations to come though I feel like televised news coverage will be something that is viewed less frequently, due to the rise of social media. However, from my knowledge I could easily say that 6 o’clock news is still a daily routine for older viewers and further reports and studies suggest there is a significant correlation between an individual’s age and the medium they get the majority of their news from (Gottfried and Shearer). Personal experiences with comments under articles of national outlets such as stuff.co.nz and The New Zealand Herald suggest the same demographic that get their news from TV also contribute most to discourse on social media. This portrayal seems to distinguish the material space that is Joan Stevens Hall and create a different interpretation for the virtual space, which is their online presence and reputation which has been damaged because of these news pieces.

[hunter-chapman]

MDIA 104: Social and Interactive Media – Assignment 2

The interactive affordances on YouTube lead to negative discussion and interactivity, especially when the content creator has a lot of Social Capital. This essay will look into how consumers and producers interact with popular content creators on the website of YouTube and how certain affordances that are provided by the site allow for constructive discussion. However these same affordances can lead to negative interaction and trolling, something that becomes more common when a channel develops a large following of subscribers. Features on YouTube such as the subscription button afford consumers the opportunity to be updated when a certain producer uploads a new video and the comment section affords consumers of uploaded content to leave a message below the video, aimed at the producer and/or other consumers. These comments can be voted on by other viewers with the most popular comments being propelled higher up the comment section. The producer has the chance to also pin certain comments so they appear at the top of the comments section.

For this essay I have chosen to examine three channels, all run by the same individual. Anthony Fantano is most recognisable from his channel The Needle Drop where he reviews newly released music from a multitude of genres in a way of sharing his thoughts to other consumers interested in the latest releases. While these reviews are not 100% formally produced, one of his secondary channels Fantano offers a more personal insight into certain issues based around music and other popular culture news. Videos on the Fantano channel are not professionally recorded or edited, as well as not relying heavily on scripts as opposed to The Needle Drop where scripts are written for all videos uploaded to this channel, recording quality is much higher as recording is done with a professional camera instead of a web cam. Fantano’s other channel That Is The Plan is incomparable to either The Needle Drop or Fantano in terms of professionalism, with the majority of videos taking a sarcastic approach to non-serious issues and large focus being on ridiculously over-edited videos or mocking certain individuals or groups of people.

Anthony Fantano: Self Proclaimed Best Teeth In The Game.

From Fantano’s three channels he currently has a following of approximately 1.7 million subscribers across his 3 channels (Social Blade), a following large enough to draw in viewers that may intentionally or unintentionally be looking to cause a discourse in the comment sections of videos that Anthony Fantano chooses to upload. With The Needle Drop being Fantano’s most popular channel by a substantial margin it becomes the most vulnerable for the comment section. The societal norms of YouTube as a platform often are based around what is deemed acceptable across numerous other social media platforms as well as how society interacts in real life. Through the feature of subscribing to a content creator’s channel the users of YouTube are afforded the opportunity to be notified when said content creator uploads a new video, it can also afford the content creator to be given more attention as the algorithms of the website recognise their popularity and are able to expose more popular content creators and channels to new users of the website, and existing users that are unaware of channels they are not subscribed to. Users have the option to unsubscribe if they become uninterested in the content the channel uploads. Social norms of YouTube can be broken with the subscription feature as certain people may take the opportunity and affordance of being notified of when a content creator uploads a new video as a means of co-opting the features provided by the website to create discourse among the comment sections of videos. This may be due to the viewer being unhappy with another channel’s content or the user purposely looking to troll for reasons of enjoyment. These problems are starting to overcome initial social norms set by the website as they seek to draw out and multiply interaction or reaction and extract responses (McCosker 215). Although myself not a viewer since the channels inception, going back to watch older reviews means you can see a clear distinction in the quality of comments left under the videos Anthony Fantano has uploaded. This is an issue that he has addressed himself in a video that analyses the comment section of a recent video (fantano 1 Aug) as he is well aware of the nature of these comment sections. One must wonder where this issue begins however.

The Needle Drop channel description vs. That Is The Plan channel description.

This is where we take a look at the meme culture that surrounds Fantano’s channels, most specifically That Is The Plan. Many memes have come from Fantano’s growing success. Some may originate from the board /mu/ hosted on 4chan, such as memes surrounding some artists who have consistently had highly ranked albums by Fantano, such as Death Grips, Swans and Kendrick Lamar as well as albums that have claimed meme status due to notorious reviews such as Kid Cudi’s Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven and Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Many memes however have originated from Fantano’s music reviews as he mentions himself (thatistheplan 20 July), such as calling himself a melon, the ‘best teeth in the fuckin’ game’ or altering his name for comedic effect e.g. Memethony Memetano, Thomthony Yorketano, Nasally Falsetto. Certain memes however are pushed more by the viewers including “real n***as check the score then dip” or “you gave ___ a 7 but ___ a 10??” with these memes themselves becoming ‘meta’ where they mock the original comments that would mention something resembling these in a genuine and serious manner. The channel That Is The Plan furthers the idea that satirical remixing may be regarded as a new form of participation (da Silva & Garcia 109) and it creates a separate set of online societal norms that occur on Fantano’s other channels. As the nature of the channel’s content is very light-hearted so is the comment section, with nothing serious to discuss the comment section is free to run wild with memes and other forms of ‘shitposting’. While it would be ideal to keep this contained to That Is The Plan such a large majority of viewers are also subscribed to both The Needle Drop and Fantano, meaning it is likely comments of this nature can leak to these channels that are more professionally run and upset the social norms that have been set and over time the perceived social norms, which are what the user believes the social norms of a website are (Carpenter and Amaravadi 3), become widely believed my many new subscribers to Anthony Fantano’s channels. It is important when considering the changes in how channels run by Fantano interact in their comment sections to factor in the change that Google made to how comment sections on YouTube videos were formatted. Before the implementation of a proper upvote/downvote system in late 2013, comments sections of the most popular content creators such as Smosh and Ray William Johnson were filled with numerous amounts of spam comments (Dredge). If The Needle Drop was as popular in 2013 as it is now it may have been easier to see a comments section lacking proper and constructive discussion, but funnily enough Google’s changes occurred around a similar time as perceived norms on Fantano’s channels changed, meaning less serious and meme focused discussion would remain relevant as other consumers also agreed with these comments and allowed discussion to devolve.

In conclusion, this essay argued that the interactive affordances on YouTube lead to negative discussion and interactivity, especially when the content creator has a lot of Social Capital. This thesis has been backed up by producing evidence of ongoing social norms that appear on the social media platform of YouTube through the channels The Needle Drop, Fantano and That Is The Plan. Through the channels The Needle Drop and Fantano we see how large amounts of social capital for Anthony Fantano on YouTube impacts interactions between consumers and content creators, as well as consumers with other consumers. As the number of regular viewers increases we also see a change in the trend of what is contained in the comment section, with older videos showing more civil discussion about music that Fantano has reviewed in the relevant video and videos since rising to a considerable amount of popularity consisting of comments that revolve around certain memes, deconstructive arguing and more ‘shitposting’. This translated over to his recently created channel Fantano where comments of the same variety as on The Needle Drop are occurring, without going through the phase of normal and civilised discussion. This essay however examined That Is The Plan in a different manner as the content uploaded on the channel is wildly different and less professional in comparison to any of Fantano’s other two channels. What comes with this is different social norms. This essay theorises that the norms created by the content uploaded on That Is The Plan leaks into Fantano’s other channels due to its sarcastic nature and focus on memes. Resulting in the possibility of being another factor in the change in nature of what is considered normal on The Needle Drop and Fantano.

 Works Cited

“Are My Comments Cancerous?” YouTube, uploaded by fantano, 1 Aug. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0FDEaSH0kQ. Accessed 28 Sept. 2017.

Carpenter, Christopher J., and Chandra S. Amaravadi. “A Big Data Approach to Assessing the Impact of Social Norms: Reporting Ones Exercise to a Social Media Audience.” Communication Research, 5 July 2016, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0093650216657776. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.

Da Silva, Patricia Dias, and José Luis Garcia. “YouTubers as satirists: Humour and remix in online video.” eJournal of eDemocracy & Open Government, vol. 4, no. 1, 2012, pp. 89–114., http://jedem.org/index.php/jedem/article/view/95. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.

Dredge, Stuart. “YouTube aims to tame the trolls with changes to its comments section” The Guardian, 7 Nov. 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/07/youtube-comments-trolls-moderation-google. Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.

"fantano – User Profile." YouTube, created 18 May 2017, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnxQ8o9RpqxGF2oLHcCn9VQ/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.

“Featured Box for theneedledrop.” Social Blade, http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/theneedledrop/otherchans/sbrank. Accessed 1 Oct. 2017.

McCosker, Anthony. “Trolling as provocation: YouTube’s agonistic publics.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol. 20, no. 2, Dec. 2013, pp. 201–217., http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1354856513501413. Accessed 2 Oct. 2017.

"thatistheplan – User Profile." YouTube, created 9 Sept. 2007, https://www.youtube.com/user/thatistheplan. Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.

"theneedledrop – User Profile." YouTube, created 20 Jan. 2009, https://www.youtube.com/user/theneedledrop. Accessed 20 Sept. 2017.

“TOP 10 FANTANO MEMES” YouTube, uploaded by thatistheplan, 20 July 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkHre04K4TM. Accessed 27 Sept. 2017.

[hunter-chapman]

Stroking My Privacy

Facebook is a strange monster, isn’t it? For some people it allows them to share with their friends, others simply want to share memes or maybe just stay in contact with family and friends. Some may even use it to discuss their favourite conspiracies amongst other curious, but ultimately stupid users.

Are you a concerned Christian mother who believes vaccinations will turn your children into abortion having, autistic, transgender and someone who doesn’t believe the earth is flat??? Look no further than a meme with your favourite wacky tic-tacs! DISCLAIMER: THIS IS SARCASM IF YOU DIDN’T REALISE

Since the introduction of Facebook, users have been given the affordance of sharing either some, or all of their life to the people of their choice, or whoever stumbles across their timeline with the concept of Privacy Settings. As John Edwards puts it “Some overshare, and maybe regret it later. Some overshare and don’t. And some are very thoughtful about what they choose to put out there.” (qtd. In Whelan).

For the record I don’t genuinely believe the earth is flat its more of an inside joke with friends.

Privacy settings are not specific to Facebook (e.g. Instagram’s Public/Private profiles) but it may be seen as the most personal form of Social Media and the most likely destination someone goes to in order to find another person. These settings can make or break you, especially when going for job interviews. You don’t wanna have what could be your future employer seeing the photo of you passed out sleeping next to vomit because it already shows to them there might be someone better suited for the job. Before this post I believed my settings were very limited to people outside of my friends list and that would be somewhat proven.

As I expected really...

My personal settings show that my timeline may not show everything to people who aren’t friends with me on Facebook, but at the time of writing my settings show that anyone in the world is able to send me a friend request. By viewing my profile through the ‘View as’ setting I can see exactly what my timeline would show to someone who isn’t my friend on facebook. I would expect myself to be fairly safe given these settings as no one can see anything embarrassing that certain friends have posted on my timeline (no you don’t get to see it). I am overall happy with my Privacy Settings but I will be changing who has the ability to send me a friend request, the least it can do is stop fake accounts from even trying to spam me.

[hunter-chapman]

Call Mr. Rental!!

In the age of social media, it is vital for a company to make sure their marketing campaign is successful. Mess it up and you have a barrage of backlash, earlier seen this year when Pepsi launched their campaign starring Kendall Jenner. Due to the rise of Facebook and many other websites over the past 10 years we see much more interaction between companies/stores and their consumers. A notable example of successful marketing and interaction over Facebook I have witnessed is the way the Mr Rental page is operated.

Many business’ Facebook pages have taken to using memes in order to attract an audience. Like I mentioned earlier, some fail to do this successfully and are ridiculed. If anyone has witnessed what occurs on the Mr Rental Facebook page hopefully they will understand me when I say they have received an overwhelmingly positive reaction for what they share. Whoever is running that page has managed to keep their meme game fresh and avoid being seen as out of touch, an issue some major companies can't seem to solve.

Parody of Death Grips' Debut Mixtape Ex Military

But so what?? Just because they can make some humorous content how does it further the brand of Mr Rental? Successful brand strategies in computer mediated environments involve building relationships and enabling interactivity with customers (Christodoulides) making it important for the brand to gain as much possible exposure to users on the social media platform. Websites like Facebook allow this content to spread around much easier these days due to the fact your friends list can see pretty much anytime you like, comment on or share a post it becomes visible to people who follow you or are you friends with. If one person likes a post that can open it up to possibly hundreds of more people reached. The content from the Mr Rental page connects with users that are unaware of their services through the use of these sharing methods, ultimately furthering their brand name.

Mr Rental successfully use methods on social media to further their brand name that would have been impossible to use before the social media explosion that occurred around 10 years ago, which is achieved through providing humorous and relatable content surrounding internet culture with nods to the services they provide which spreads quickly throughout websites by users and consumers sharing to other possible consumers.

[hunter-chapman]

Social Media Norm Breaching

The Challenge: Using only Facebook Messenger to communicate with friends and family. This was one of many experiments I had the option of performing and looking back these may have wielded more outrageous results than what I got, but I did not wish to involve strangers against their will.

I decided to limit myself to my laptop which meant I had to lie about breaking my phone. My most important rule was I could only tell someone my phone was broken if they asked about my lack of a reply and I also chose to ask a friend to help maintain my streaks, which I think is fair when you have a streak of over 400 days to keep up.

Mum was a bit annoyed seeing I had only bought a replacement screen during the mid-trimester break at (my phone refuses to work with a cracked screen) and my friend laughed at me for breaking my phone again but overall he was sympathetic and willing to do my Snapchat streaks for me, an issue I would hope enough university students would understand.

I kept my phone with me however, mainly due to the slight chance of an emergency. This however led to friends being aware that I was connected to Wi-Fi and appearing “active” and I was made clear that certain friends thought I was ignoring them.

Friday Night in Courtenay Place proved to be another factor I didn’t initially consider as messaging in town was crucial to seeing whether someone would be going to Siglo or (god forbid) The Establishment. Basically meaning that if I were to lose anyone I was pretty much forced to concede defeat, head to Chicken Palace and off back home.

But I survived, as expected. Reactions from my friends ranged from confusion all the way to laughing at the fact I’m studying a BA, but mum was relieved that my phone was OK.