2nd

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Day One!!!!

A condition that I have set for myself is that I cannot use the snooze alarm setting during this period.

It’s almost a quarter past 9 now. Heard the alarm at 8 but lazed around for almost half an hour, drifting in and out of sleep and browsing through my social media at the same time. Decided to get off my bed, was about to enter the master bedroom toilet to take a shower but ended up nuaing on the bed in the master bedroom for a few moments.

Putting everything into words just makes me sound like such a weakass sloth. Yea but truth be told there were thoughts of just sleeping in and nullifying day one but glad I didn't succumb to them wooohooo. Already had breakfast and now I shall start with some work :)

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Change Project

I decided to keep this blog and use it as a means to document school-related work/writings/etc.

This semester, I have been tasked to create an individual change project for a module called Organisational Change & Design. And so I have decided to try one that may require a lot of willpower on my part. I'm not sure how challenging it will get but my goal is to wake up at 8am every single day for the next 25 days, ending on the day of my submission. 

During this journey, I will try, to the best of my ability, to record down my thoughts, feelings, and emotions as I keep up with this new routine. Sleep has always always always been one of my weaknesses; unless I have a compelling reason to wake up, I can sleep in till past 11 on the weekends, and wake up with my morning essentially gone. On the weekdays, I usually only start my day at around 9-10am and prepare to go for my noon class, resulting in me not getting anyth done in the morning as well. 

Hence this idea to start my day early stems from my desire to fit in some work in the morning and be more productive during the day. 

Day 1 will start tomorrow, wish me luck :) 

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Lecture Twelve

Self-Affirmation Underlies Facebook Use by Catalina L. Toma and Jeffrey T. Hancock (2012)

This week's article revealed one of the reasons for the ubiquitous use of social networking sites like Facebook. According to self-affirmation theory, people have an inherent need to see themselves in a positive light - “good, worthy and valuable”. They tend to brush off or distort negative information about themselves, so as to preserve their sense of self-worth. Interestingly and unsurprisingly, people seek to augment their self-worth by moving towards information that reinforces it. 

The paper then went on to describe 2 studies. The first showed that Facebook profiles provide self-affirmation to users by satisfying their need for self-worth and self-integrity. 

Study 1 shows that Facebook profiles are self-affirming as it presents a self that is appealing and well put together. Hence, spending time on Facebook and viewing one’s profile actually gives an ego boost. Study 2 then went on to show that people will unconsciously gravitate towards their Facebook profiles when they receive information that undermines their sense of self-worth in order to restore it.

I believe these findings can be readily applied to other social media platforms, and especially so to social media platforms that support asynchronous interaction with low warranting value ( for instance, Instagram). Social media outlets that enable users to share posts with low warranting value enable people to present a profile that is curated and puts themselves in a highly positive light. 

This led me to think if social media feeds the narcissism of today’s generation. And is the internet breeding superficiality as many people are always striving to present a glamorous side of themselves to others? 

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Lecture Eleven

Privacy no longer a social norm, says Facebook founder by Bobbie Johnson (2012), The Guardian 

According to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, privacy is no longer a "social norm". I hate to agree but it definitely seems like the case on the interweb right now. Social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat store tons of user information in their databases in order to configure. Facebook even feeds us with information that they deem suitable for us by curating our newsfeed- this actually brings another whole level of debate on ethicality. Furthermore, a significant number of apps, add-ons and other sites require us to connect them to our Facebook profile in order to use them. When everything is linked to our Facebook profiles, I wonder how all these external apps and websites make use of our profiles or how they stand to gain.  But we somehow are unable to much about the situation because not “accepting” the “terms and conditions” of these websites to have access to our information would indeed disrupt their usability.

In addition, Microsoft researcher and social networking expert Danah Boyd feels that "As adults, by and large, we think of the home as a very private space … for young people it's not a private space. They have no control over who comes in and out of their room, or who comes in and out of their house. As a result, the online world feels more private because it feels like it has more control." Regarding this, my thoughts are that besides feeling in control of our information, we need to be aware of what information we are in control of and what we cannot control so that we can discern what can be revealed and what should not be revealed on the internet.

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Campaign Analysis: Nike Football

As the world’s largest producer and one of the most popular brands of athletic apparel and equipment (See: Statista), Nike’s success could be attributed to its marketing and advertising campaigns. In 2013, it spent more than 1bil USD on advertising in the US. The company spends a massive amount of money each year on marketing and advertising in order to maintain its brand image and popularity among young adults and athletes and has been successful in doing so thus far. 

Among its many categories, we have chosen to focus on Nike Football (or soccer). 

A campaign that we would like to highlight is titled “No Maybes”, launched last year by ad agency Thousands Creative  (See: Source). The campaign was in line with the Women’s World Cup and featured the US Women’s National Team. It showcases the “No Maybes” mentality by showing the team going through harsh and strenuous training even before they step foot on the pitch.

The social media platforms that the campaign utilised includes Youtube (See: Link), Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Ultimately, Nike wishes to promote its football gear and equipment to football athletes, thereby increasing its sales. By making use of the various popular social media platforms, it aims to increase its reach in the most effective manner; in particular, I believe Nike’s intended audience is young female athletes/football players who frequent social media sites, espcially those in America. A unique aspect about the campaign’s video is that it solely features female football players, hence this likely increases the campaign’s appeal towards young female athletes who are able to relate to the players featured. 

An unintended group of audience could possibly be people who support the athletes (fans) but who do not partake in the sport itself. This would not reach its intended consequence of increasing sales as this group of people would not be consumers of Nike’s football-specific products.

Whether or not a campaign will become viral, which is what advertisers hope to achieve when releasing a campaign, depends on the social influence it is able to wield. As the campaign promotes a positive and desirable trait of not doubting oneself, the audience would want to identify with it and appear to have identified with it- this increases the possibility of people sharing the video with their social circle.

As with all campaigns, there could be the potential of inducing unintended effects. A possible unintended consequence could be promoting the interest towards the sport itself, or the sports team/players featured, rather than towards Nike’s products themselves. Hype may be generated with regards to the people seen in the advertisements, but this may not translate to an increase in sales of Nike producs, thus defeating the purpose of the marketing campaign.

Overall, this campaign did not generate enormous hype; we can see that the Youtube view counts for the campaign vid comes up to around 300,000 as of now, which is pretty mediocre in today’s standards. Nike has always been at the forefront in its marketing and advertising strategies. It understands its young target audience and heavily utilises social media platforms, which is the most fitting approach to reach out to its target group. However, it is always important for organisations to constantly reevaluate its marketing/campaign appraoches in order to achieve its end goals.

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Lecture Ten

Conversational Voice, Communicated Commitment, and Public Relations Outcomes in Interactive Online Communication by Tom Kelleher (2009)

According to Kelleher, it is desirable for an organisation to communicate with its publics/ stakeholders using a conversational voice. He describes organisations as having a conversational voice when they are able to engage individuals within the publics using a natural style (and it is crucial for the individuals to perceive it as so too).

Although the paper acknowledges the presence of other platforms, it largely speaks about blogs as a platform for contingency interactivity and to communicate human voice. It also mentioned that people perceive crises in a better light when organisations use blogs to handle them. 

Most of the points raised were fair and valid, albeit possibly outdated, looking at the fact that the paper was written in the year 2009. The use of blogs grew exponentially in the early 2000s, and was seen as a novel way for organisations to publish information and news. Fast forward to 2016, many other social media platforms have taken over the domain of providing contigency interactivity. Facebook, Twitter, etc. can be said to be even more “social” of a social media platform than blogs are as they provide more features for interaction. Simply from observation, most organisations now use Facebook to provide updates to their stakeholders. This makes it an even trickier affair for organisations to manage public perception and brand image. Blogs were relatively easier to manage and manipulate impressions as information is conveyed more on a one-way basis.However, brand image is now a two-way curation by both the organisation and the public, as new media like Facebook and Twitter allows us to make our thoughts known to the world within milliseconds.

Regardless of the platform used, I believe that the general public ultimately seeks to experience authenticity from the brand/ organisation. Like what the paper puts forward, an authentic voice promotes trust and satisfaction among stakeholders; these are key ingredients to a healthy business reputation. 

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Nike’s use of Social Media

Nike has a visibly strong presence on Facebook (See: Nike’s Facebook), with a whopping 26.9 million ‘likes’ on its main corporate account. Besides the main account, it has several sub-accounts that cater to a particular category of the brand, such as NikeWoman (Women’s apparel and shoes), NikeCourt (Tennis), Nike Skateboarding, etc. Each account easily boasts at least a million ‘likes’. The look and feel of the pages of the different accounts are consistent. They comprise of videos that share stories of great athletes, accompanied by “inspirational” captions.

“The only person that’s going to have power over me, is me.”

“The court is calling. Always answer.”

Their brand slogan “Just Do It.” is echoed, implicitly and explicitly, over and over through its posts, thus conveying a consistent brand story and image. 

From Nike’s Facebook profile, it is evident that the company emphasizes on the use of social media marketing, and is doing a fantastic job at it. A look at the various accounts shows that they have been fairly active, their latest updates being early this month.

However, for the purpose of this assignment and my subsequent analysis, I would focus on Nike’s main corporate account. The last post was dated 1st September this year, and there has been minimal activity since then. The months of June, July and August seem to be the most active in posts. There were 6 posts in June, 7 posts in July, peaking in August with 15 posts. Every other month only sees around 2 to 3 posts each month. A likely reason for the spike in the number of posts towards August could be due to the 2016 Rio Olympics; Nike featured several Olympic athletes, such as Simon Biles and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, in its videos.

Pertaining to the Facebook page, Nike uses a lot of visuals in the form of videos. The captions are kept short and succinct; this allows the videos to fill the audience’s visual field, greater grasping the audience’s attention. There is a use of “conversational voice”, with the use of contractions and simple, short sentences. I believe the way it crafts its posts is to cater to its target audience, them being mainly young athletes. The attention span of the younger crowd is relatively short, and visual aids appeal more compared to wordy posts. Nike is also fond of including quotes in its captions, which are often the words spoken by the people featured in its videos. It increases the emotional appeal of the message because it is as if the characters in the videos are speaking to the audience.

Comparing Nike’s Facebook account to Adidas (See: Adidas’ Facebook), a close competitor in the sports apparel industry, they are very similar in that they mainly cosist of compelling visuals and videos.

I would say, though, that Nike has a stronger ability in its branding on Facebook as there is strong consistency in expressing its brand story and essence of the company (“Just Do It”) through its Facebook posts. Adidas, on the other hand, has a congruent image on Facebook, but its Facebook posts speak nothing of its slogan (“Impossible is nothing”), and does not convey a consistent message.

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Lecture Nine

Unintended Effects of Health Communication Campaigns by Hyunyi Cho Charles T. Salmon (2007)

It was interesting to read an analysis on the effects of health campaigns, as a layman would not have considered the subject matter in such depth.

I feel that the findings of this paper are highly applicable to not only health campaigns, but to all campaigns in general. Besides applying the findings to merely health-related campaigns, organisations could also consider intended and unintended consequences of policies/systems and processes that they roll out.

Unintended effects should be conjectured and taken into consideration when crafting a campaign. However, even when campaign blueprints incorporate all possible intended and unintended scenarios, things may just go off tangent in ways we cannot fathom. 

Even though the paper spelt out a non-exhaustive list of possible unintended effects (including analysing the time frame, valence, etc.), it, however, does not provide suggestions or methods to combat them. Therefore the reader is left clueless on how to react to those undesirable unintended effects.

A qualm that I had while reading the paper is that whether an effect is desirable or undesirable is audience-specific, For example, when an anti-meat eating campaign successfully convinces a substantial proportion of people a community to be vegetarian, the campaign achieves its desirable intended consequence. However, the businesses of butchers and farm owners may suffer, causing people to lose their livelihoods. Every “positive” action could have a flip side. Hence when rolling out a campaign, we may want to consider from whose angle are we evaluating the pros and cons from. 

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Lecture Eight

Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square by Zeynep Tufekci & Christopher Wilson (2012)

The paper elaborates about the impact of social media towards the behaviour and reactions of Egyptians towards the political situation in their country. It also speaks about the prevalence of citizen-journalism as a result of the ubiquity of smartphones, which supports the flourishing of social media usage. 

In the realm of politics and governance, the internet and social media have indeed been increasingly important for sense-making. They are not only used by political parties to express their agenda to the people but also used by those concerned to scour for public sentiments towards social and political issues. As in the case of citizen-journalism, many websites have surfaced in recent years to allow everyday people to contribute material for public consumption. Examples are CNN’s iReport, and STOMP, a Singapore-based citizen-journalism website.

Benefits of citizen-journalism include providing an avenue for people to highlight things happening on the ground which authorities may have missed out or chose to close an eye on. When people join forces to point out an issue and create a hoo-ha on the online sphere, it makes things more difficult for authorities to sit back and not rectify the problem. It also helps to breed a collectivistic culture whereby people look out for each other.

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Lecture Seven

A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization

 As always, the relevance of the weekly readings prompts me to reflect on my own tendencies when using Facebook or other social media platforms. It's interesting to read that seeing the faces of friends influence people’s behaviour (and I would believe attitude too) towards something. Personally, I have noticed that others’ preferences rub off on my own too. For instance, I may base my decision on whether to like a page or join a group on Facebook on whether or not anyone in my friend list has done so (”how many?” and “who?” are also important considerations).

We can see how powerful social media is in shaping our beliefs and attitudes; ideas, facts, propaganda spread at an unprecedented rate, infiltrating groups, organisations, nations. It is also noticeable how easy it is to kickstart a movement, to champion a cause or to rally people together through mere “shares” and “likes” on Facebook. An intended effect or not, but I cannot help but think if we are unknowingly manipulated by the happenings on social media. 

It is frightening when ill-informed people get exposed to biased and bigoted information. Their inability to discern the truth colours their judgement. Sometimes, the effects of this phenomenon could have significant consequences towards our global political and social landscape, to put it generically.

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Self- presentation

 I am someone who manages my social media accounts with care as I (consciously or unconsciously) tend to picture my actions/behaviour/ how I portray myself as seen through the eyes of others (although definitely in a measured manner or else it would be known as having an inferiority complex).

I am not extremely open with sharing too much of myself with others, and I don’t feel the need to. Posting on Facebook pushes information to a large number of people (I have 1,019 “friends” on Facebook) (See: my Facebook profile). More often than not, I passively scroll through my news feed to receive updates on the people I’m acquainted with instead of sharing content on my profile (unless I chance upon something compelling that begs for sharing). Same goes for my Instagram profile, I would update it every now and then, although visibly more often than my Facebook profile. My behaviour seems in line with what was brought up in one of last lecture’s readings “Show me your friends and I will tell you what type of person you are: How one’s profile, number of friends, and type of friends influence impression formation on social network sites” by Dr. Sonja Utz (2010); it was mentioned that introverted people display less information than their extroverted counterparts (See: article). I’m definitely more of an introvert than an extrovert, but I do not think that one’s social media usage could be defined by stereotypes. It’s way more complex; human behaviour is complicated. (Sudden thought: Could our moods affect our social media usage as well?)

My typical daily social media usage comprises of habitually scrolling through my Facebook and Instagram feed, sending and receiving Snapchats, as well as instant messaging friends and family via Telegram (my favourite messaging app!) and WhatsApp. In the past 24 hours, I have indeed intermittently browsed Facebook on my laptop (possibly increased bridging social capital), scrolled through the Instagram app to view pictures of my friends (possibly increased bridging social capital), posted a photo on Instagram (which elicited comments from acquaintances and thus increased bridging social capital), sent an image to my close friends on Snapchat (increased bonding social capital), and called my mum over WhatsApp (increased bonding social capital). 

Just yesterday, I posted a picture on Instagram. As I had made a trip to Manchester over the weekends to meet a close friend of mine, I posted a picture of the both of us with Old Trafford in the background. Considering that my Instagram followers are my friends and family in Singapore, I believe the impression “given” was that I was having fun here in Europe. Following the post, my friend (who was in the picture with me) commented “ “who is this sir alex ferguson?” (siah, 2016)”, suggesting that I had asked that question and had no clue who Sir Alex Ferguson was. It probably "gave off" the impression that I was completely ignorant about football (which I admitted in my reply to her comment) and probably visited Old Trafford because it was a tourist destination, not because I was interested in football.

Just recently, I posted a video about a volunteer trip that I took part in last December on my Facebook profile. The video made by the marketing team of the project showed footages taken by our photographer. The footages featured my teammates and I and showed the authentic interactions we had with the kids at the orphanage. As the video was made by a third party, it possesses high warranting value ( I could not have manipulated the content). In contrast, a post with low warranting value would be the Instagram post that I made of myself at Old Trafford as I could add filters to my picture as well as craft the caption as I deemed fit.

I hope to portray myself as someone who is curious- interested in the goings-on of the world, interested in the people around me. I’d like to be seen as someone sincere, fun-loving and witty too. But these are audience-specific traits that are difficult to appeal to everyone in the same way. Regardless, I believe in authenticity in our relationships on and offline. As much as possible, I try to present a consistent impression of myself on my social media accounts, and as close as who I am as a person.

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Lecture Six

Social capital on Facebook: Differentiating uses and users by Moira Burke, Robert Kraut & Cameron Marlow (2011)

The article speaks largely about Facebook usage and two types of social capital- bridging and bonding.

There were few points raised which I felt were debatable:

Firstly, It posits that Facebook likely does not strengthen already-strong relationships, but could do so for relationships in their early stages. I do not deny Facebook’s effectiveness in strengthening new, budding relationships. However, it is difficult to agree entirely that it does not help in strengthening already-strong relationships. I feel that its effectiveness is highly subjective as it depends on the user’s way of utilising Facebook. If one makes use of Facebook Messenger, akin to text messaging, to communicate with a close friend on a regular basis, I would think the constant stream of updates and interaction would help to reinforce the relationship. This applies especially to people communicating with their loved ones from abroad, such as a couple in a long-distance relationship (LDR). The paper assumes “media multiplexity” in the exchanges between people in close/intimate relationships where several channels, including face-to-face communication, are employed. It disregards the complexity of relationships that rely on computer-mediated communication because of the geographical proximity/physical constraints of the parties involved. In such a scenario (in the case of an LDR), my conjecture would be if Facebook is one of the main media for communication, it will likely increase bonding social capital between people with strong relationships.

Secondly, the paper mentions that life changes such as marriage, divorce, death, etc do not have a relationship to bridging social capital, which sounded quite unusual to me. Surely such life changing events, which will affect one’s emotional state or current frame of mind, should have some correlation to one’s ability/ capacity to maintain his/her wider social circle? 

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Diffusion Timeline

Today’s assignment was a good first exercise with my group mates as it allowed me to get to know them better through discussing our use of social networking sites, learning our similarities and sifting out the differences.

(Click for enlarged image: Link)

It was interesting to find out that my groupmates and I use exactly the same social media platforms even though we come from vastly different cultures and background. I believe most of us in the developed world congregate on the same online platforms- Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc; the underlying reason could simply be globalization, which is supported by the ubiquitous use of the Internet.

Comparing my group members’ and my use of social media, we are able to see that Facebook is the one and only platform everyone still makes use of at present. Other platforms were adopted and subsequently rejected after a period of time. It seems like Facebook, the number one social networking site (See: Statista), has features that are sufficient and all encompassing; my group agreed that other social networking sites are sometimes unnecessary and do not value add to the interactions within our social circles.

I noticed that I was never an early adopter in the use of social networking sites, and often times was either part of the early or late majority. My reasons for adopting a new technology or social media platform often stemmed from the people around me. For instance, I started using Facebook because everyone around me was using it. I used to post regular status updates on my profile and followed my peers’ updates at the same time; it was THE way for my peers and myself to chat and keep abreast on each other on our daily happenings, especially around the year 2010 when the use of Facebook picked up exponentially. Similarly, I began using Instagram in Junior College due to a friend’s recommendation and got hooked. I became more active on Instagram than Facebook because I was fond of its clean interface and its ease of use. I also felt that Instagram was a richer medium. Images do indeed tell a fuller story when pure words don’t suffice.

However, it has come to a point where I feel saturated with everything that is going on on the various social media platforms. As “friends” and “followers” gradually increase, I got increasingly bombarded with “selfies”, “we-fies”, photos of people’s food and (insert other trivial details of one’s life), things of little significance I could not care less. Hence I’m starting to wean off my social media usage bit by bit.

In recent years, social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube have been integral sources of news and entertainment for me; they are no longer as important a means for me to keep in contact with friends (I prefer having real conversations with them face-to-face), but a way of gathering information as well as sensemaking.

I had previously chanced upon an article where it posited that social media is actually making us dumber (see: Times.com). Due to our heavy reliance on social networking sites to feed us with information, our brains become less analytical, only ever ready to absorb whatever insights that social media exposes us to. This could be true. But I have seen many instances when compelling articles were shared on social networking sites, and they invited healthy and constructive debate. I believe that social media, when utilised optimally, definitely aids in teaching and learning as well. I would like to see social media being used for meaningful pursuits, rather than just channels for people to hurl complaints and rants, or to show off their next photogenic meal.

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Lecture Five

Show me your friends and I will tell you what type of person you are: How one’s profile, number of friends, and type of friends influence impression formation on social network sites by Dr. Sonja Utz (2010)

This has been my favourite read out of the papers I have read for the course thus far. The literature presented was highly applicable and relevant; our day-to-day social activities are highly intertwined with our activities on social media. 

A takeaway that I had was learning about the different types of attractiveness. However, I believe it can be extremely difficult to test, and draw definite conclusions, for social attractiveness which the paper attempted to do. It is also possibly the reason why hypotheses 6 and 7 were unable to be established. In my opinion, social attractiveness could be multifactorial; there could be many considerations for one to decide on whether or not he would like to forge a friendship with another. I would think one’s looks and individual capabilities have a role to play in determining one’s social attractiveness; hence shouldn’t physical attractiveness and task attractiveness be contributing factors to social attractiveness? This was a question that was lingering in my head.

The paper also reminded me of a controversial method that student groups in certain educational institutions in my home country used to employ to recruit members to join their student camps. After students applied for the camps, facilitators of the camps scrutinised their Facebook profiles and selected those they deemed as more “attractive”. Hence those who got chosen to attend the camps underwent a “background check” by their facilitators. This sparked public outcry and was discussed fervently in local new before it was subsequently corrected by school authorities.

All in all, I believe having a well-managed social media profile is highly necessary because our world today is being digitalised at a rapid pace. Over the internet, we could do our shopping, play games, find employment, carry out business transactions, make friends, and even find our soulmate- almost everything could be done online. A profile that provides an authentic and positive representation of ourselves is highly vital for us to build genuine connections with the world around us.

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Lecture Four

The presentation of self in the age of social media: Distinguishing performances and exhibitions online by Bernie Hogan (2010)

The paper provided a review of Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, explaining how an individual seeks to present an “idealised” version of himself through a process known as “impression management”.

There were several points raised which I enjoyed ruminating on.

Firstly, it was mentioned that out of 13 possibilities for teens to befriend someone, only one reason was to be a friend (boyd, 2006). The other reasons included concerns for popularity, interest in gaining access control and difficulty in rejecting others.

 It prompted me to reflect on the reasons for myself (as well as my peers’ motivations) in getting to know others and forging friendships; the term “friend” is thrown around so lightly these days that everyone seems to be “friends” with everyone else. Another thought also sprung up, that making “friends” (be it in reality or virtually) could also be part of “impression management”- selecting the people we become friends with in order to curate an image of ourselves, by associating ourselves with the characteristics of these groups or individuals (as the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together).

A second interesting point concerns how people consider what to display on their online profiles.

“The answer is that one need not consider everyone when submitting content but only two groups: those for whom we seek to present an idealized front and those who may find this front problematic.” (Hogan, 2010, p. 383)

The paper coins the latter group as the “lowest common denominator” when we consider the appropriateness of the content we would like to post online. I found this extremely relevant to my train of thoughts whenever I am deciding whether or not to post something on my Facebook or Instagram account (As I have my mum on both accounts, I definitely have to think twice about speaking my mind about certain issues). I love how papers like these lay out such human tendencies that tend to sit unknowingly in one’s subconscious.

However, there were certain ideas I was not clear with while reading the paper, for example on page 380 where it speaks about artifacts as representations and not performances. Said “artifacts” which are our online posts are by and large a result of our own online activities, and hence isn’t the act of managing our social media accounts already a performance, where we orchestrate what goes onto our online profiles? How exactly does the author classify what is a "performance" or a "representation"?

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Lecture Three

Designing Interactivity in Media Interfaces: A Communications Perspective by S. Shyam Sundar, Qian Xu, Saraswathi Bellur (2010)

The paper introduces three components of interactivity corresponding to three key elements of communication:

1) Medium (or Mode) 2) Source 3) Message

The paper proposes a model which illustrates the relationship of the interactivity of each of the three elements with user engagement and ultimately, with one’s cognition, attitude, and behaviour.

The model suggests that varying ‘perceptual bandwidth’, ‘customisation’ and ‘contigency’ would change the interactivity of modality, source and message respectively.

The paper accurately pulls out a concern which I fully agreed with: A limitation of the model is that it does not mention under which circumstances would interactivity and engagement with content lead to positive or negative changes in cognition, attitude and behaviour of the user.

Furthermore, the model assumes that interactivity with the tools automatically translates to engagement with content, which may or may not always be the case. Users need to perceive the features as interactive and make use of them in order for the model to be relevant; the paper recognises this. Since the extent of the effects of these variables on user interactivity is highly prone to the user’s perception towards the features of the interface, and could be highly subjective, how do developers curate the optimum complexity of interactive features (be it to create perceptual bandwidth, provide customisation or promote contingent responses) to induce the optimum level of cognitive response/attitude?

How sites like Facebook and Youtube are able to determine this seemingly ideal level of interactivity and engagement to draw and retain their millions of users fascinates me.

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The Start

Today is my third day in VU (I have recently learnt that it’s pronounced as ‘vew’), and my seventh day in Amsterdam.

My name is Xin Ying (pronounced ‘singing’. Yes, like singing a song) and I’m from Singapore, a tiny red dot on the other end of the globe, a country a little more than thrice the size of Amsterdam.

Before arriving in Amsterdam, I spent almost 20 days travelling to 10 cities in Europe. It was an amazing and truly eye-opening 20 days; my friends and I walked along cobbled streets in Bruges, took a boat ride down the canals of Ghent, sped across the Adriatic Sea from Split to visit the Blue Cave and to swim in the Blue Lagoon, had our first taste of a one Michelin star meal, climbed/ crawled/ contorted our bodies through 0.5m narrow caves in Budapest (where its lowest point reached 50m below sea level), explored palaces in Vienna, among many other incredible experiences that will be etched in my memory for a very long time.

It’s my first time in Europe, and my experiences thus far have never failed to surpass my expectations.

A little more about myself- I’m a born and bred Singaporean, and I’m Chinese in ethnicity (Singapore is a melting pot of diverse cultures and races, where the Chinese, Malays and Indians make up majority of our population. See: wiki); My home university is Singapore Management University, and I’m a final year Business Student pursuing a double major in Organisational Behaviour & Human Resources and Corporate Communications. I play a little bit of badminton, and I love ruminating and discussing ideas and theories with regards to the field of Psychology and Organisational Behavior- simply put, I love learning about people and discovering what makes people tick.

Amsterdam, this quaint and lovely city, will be my home for the next four months as I embark on my journey as an exchange student. Despite being more than 10, 000 km away from Singapore and my loved ones, I have settled in and am adjusting (pretty) well to the new environment- from taking note of the 6-hour time difference when I communicate with my friends and family back in Singapore, getting slightly stressed about signs in Dutch (I should indeed start learning some basic Dutch!) and maneuvering my way around the city with Google Translate in my hands, to doing my own laundry (learning to operate a washing machine with its labels printed in Dutch !!) and cooking my meals because it’s way cheaper than eating out. The past few days spent setting up my room, cooking and doing things for myself, by myself, have been therapeutic and rejuvenating; I thoroughly love the personal space and freedom of living in a hostel with a room all to myself.

Above all, I am excited to be inspired by new knowledge and experiences (good or bad), and looking forward to growing as an individual (be it in small ways) over the next four months.

Regarding my social media attempts, I have been an active user of Facebook for years. I do keep a blog (a tumblr) where I infrequently post about my musings on life and day to day affairs. My top two favourite social media platforms are Instagram and Snapchat as both are predominantly visual platforms (they say a picture speaks a thousand words), and I like the transient nature of Snapchat posts/stories. I’m quite glad for the opportunity to create and contribute to a blog for the purpose of this course, being an individual who likes to express myself through writing. Although I’m definitely not the best writer around, I hope to be able to translate my thoughts into words sincerely and thoughtfully, and with the practice, see improvements in my writing ability.