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Week 10: Big Data and Telemetrics

This week’s readings discuss the ideas and purposes of big data and telemetrics which are ways academics and corporations gather, process, analyse and visualise data. The information we as internet users put into the public domain is part of this process; we human beings ARE data. Big data is used across industries for various purposes such as market research, election and stock market predicting, and predicting behaviours and analysing them. Telemetrics involves the study of the relationship between social media use and the performance of television shows. Firstly this blog will look at the predictive analytics of big data and its corporate value, as discussed in the reading, Predictive analytics: the power to predict who will click, buy, lie or die. Siegel defines predictive analytics as “technology that learns from experience (data) to predict the future behaviour of individuals in order to drive better decisions” (2013, 11). This data is us – the personal information that we share, generally online, that is then collated by corporations to target the right people for the right products and services. Each “incident, event and transaction” that we are involved in, becomes data that is stored; an amount that is growing by around 2.5 quintillion bytes everyday (Siegel 2013, 3). The ability to predict how a consumer is going to act, not specifically but vaguely, is an incredibly powerful tool for organisations to harness. This “machine learning” is a process that “has its roots in statistics and computer science” (Siegel 2013, 4). However, prediction isn’t about knowing for certain which people will act in a certain way, but knowing which people generally behave in particular situations. After all, as Siegel says, “A hazy view of what’s to come outperforms complete darkness by a landslide” (2013, 11). Telemetrics is studying social media, particularly Twitter, and the relation to TV performance. “Social media is increasingly playing an important role in television; playing a key role in the promotion of upcoming shows, being utilised for on-air interactions with the audience” as well as being a gauge in determining the success of particular programmes (Woodfood, Prowd and Bruns, n.d). In Telemetrics: Towards Measuring Social Media Engagement with Television, the authors discuss what they call the “Twitter Excitement Index” which they use to “understand how Twitter users are reacting to the content of particular broadcasts” (Woodfood, Prowd and Bruns, n.d). This is more accurate than traditional ratings, as through Twitter researchers are able to see what audiences think of certain shows, as opposed to ratings that can only show the size of the audience. Using a Seasonal Model, Woodford, Prowd and Bruns have examined the trends in television show performance, noticing that a show’s pilot rates higher than average then drops about mid-season, before continuing to build up towards the final episode. Although analysing Twitter seems to be more of an accurate depiction of a show’s performance throughout a season, as opposed to the traditional ratings system, it is flawed in that it only represents those shows that have an audience segment actively using social media. In conclusion, I am beginning to see how this all relates back to my discipline (film and TV), as predictive analysis is relevant in the film industry, such as predicting which demographic is more likely to watch particular genre films and how to market them accordingly. Also, telemetrics are very useful in the TV industry as what audiences say on social media affects a show’s performance and measures its success with certain audiences. REFERENCES Siegel, Eric. 2013. Predictive analytics: the power to predict who will click, buy, lie or die. Hoboken: Wiley. Woodford, Darryl, Katie Prowd and Axel Bruns. (forthcoming). “Telemetrics: Towards Measuring Social Media Engagement with Television.”

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Week 7: New Media Entertainment

With the flexibility and convenience of new media, entertainment and how audiences consume it has changed considerably. Entertainment these days is online, personalised, mobile and on demand, giving audiences a variety of ways to consume, create and contribute to their choice of content. There are ten propositions of new media entertainment, but the only three will be discussed in this blog: vernacular creativity, participatory fandom and inclusionary vibe. When talking about new media entertainment it is necessary to talk about YouTube and the idea of vernacular creativity. Burgess and Green define vernacular creativity as the wide range of creative activities we practice “outside the cultural value systems of either high culture or commercial creative practice” (Burgess and Green 2009, 25). YouTube has been an avenue for people all over the world to showcase their talents and creativity like filmmaking or singing, as well as being used for commercial advertising. A lot of the most popular content on YouTube is from previously unknown people, individuals who were not celebrities before their contributions to the site. This ties into the idea of audiences as entertainers, which is another proposition of new media entertainment. There are now other websites that appear to be challenging YouTube’s internet dominance, such as Hulu which is more of a video-on-demand service and doesn’t yet have the interactivity and functionality of YouTube. With the advent of new media came the ability for fans to connect with the creators/producers of their favourite films, TV shows and books. Everything from Twitter to Facebook and YouTube again, has enabled people to voice their opinions and connect more directly with those who have created the content. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and George Lucas’s Star Wars are two universes that have enormous and vocal fan bases that have ensured the franchises’ respective successes. Shefrin remarks that these fans have become “participatory” in that they are contributing in some way to the development of content, rather than just consumers (2004, 261). Consulting fans in this process leads to filmmakers producing content that satisfies (for the most part, anyway) the primary target audience. In this day and age it is important for filmmakers to understand the power and influence of their audience and to learn how to interact effectively with fans for a mutually beneficial result. Shefrin notes that Jackson was successful in this but that high expectations have been “detrimental to Lucas’s career” (2004, 262). Participatory fandom incorporates the idea of an inclusionary vibe, which is audiences being involved in the creation of content. In the pre-production process of the Veronica Mars film, audiences/fans were even more involved with actually helping to raise funds via Kickstarter in order for filming to go ahead. In this case the fate of the project really did rely on audience contribution, which is pretty much how any new media entertainment survives. The crowdfunding of Veronica Mars broke records on Kickstarter, being the fastest project in Kickstarter’s history to reach $2 million as well as the being the project with the most backers of any Kickstarter project (Thomas, 2014). So what does the future look like for new media entertainment? Well, that’s really up to us. References: Burgess, Jean and Green, Joshua. 2009. “Chapter Two: YouTube and the Mainstream Media.” In YouTube: Digital Media and Society Series, 15-37. Cambridge: Polity Press. Shefrin, Elana. 2004. “Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and participatory fandom: mapping new congruencies between the internet and media entertainment culture.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 21 (3): 261-281. Accessed April 3, 2014. DOI: 10.1080/0739318042000212729. Thomas, Rob. 2014. “The Veronica Mars Movie Project.” Accessed April 5, 2014. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project

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Week 5: Crowdsourcing

In this digital age the very nature of labour is being redefined with the powerful emergence of crowdsourcing. It can take on different forms such as cloud labour, crowd creativity, crowd funding, distributed knowledge and open innovation. This kind of labour allows workers to be flexible, empowered, participate and is often fun. However, there are negative points of view when it comes to crowdsourcing, such as the exploitation of these workers who usually participate for very little or no pay. All of these aspects will be analysed in this blog. Jennifer Alsever states that crowdsourcing is tapping into “the collective intelligence of the public at large to complete business-related tasks that a company would normally either perform itself or outsource to a third-party provider” (2007). Some of these tasks might be menial, such as colour-coding products for an online shop, or they may require more creativity or intelligence. Fuchs calls this “internet prosumer labour,” as it defines how this digital culture is participatory and consumers are no longer just users, but also contribute in the production stage (Fuchs 2013, 107). Two of the many types of crowdsourcing include cloud labour, which is an “on demand scalable workforce to perform a variety of tasks,” such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and crowd creativity, which refers to appointing creatives in developing content, such as Doodle4Google (Sauter, 2014). As with any aspect of the internet, there are positive and negative factors to be argued. But firstly, we’ll look into the positive aspects that are being promoted in relation to crowdsourcing. To begin with, there are the benefits for the public, the people who participate in these schemes, as these jobs enable workers to be flexible, pick and choose which tasks they’d like to do, and often there is an element of fun. These jobs don’t tend to pay well, often only a few cents at a time, or sometimes there is no payment at all. In the latter cases, these tasks take on more of a game format, whereby the user isn’t always aware they are helping some corporation as they are enjoying themselves. Another particularly positive point is those corporations that are not only profiting themselves, but are having an encouraging social impact, such as Samasource. This organisation’s mission is to connect poverty-stricken women and young people with dignified work in a digital landscape (Samasource, 2013). In ‘Social media: a critical introduction,’ Fuchs asserts that “internet prosumer labour is infinitely exploited by capital” (2013, 111). In many cases this seems to be true, especially as there is no regulation of this kind of labour. Zittrain also mentions how worrying it is that people may not be aware of what exactly they are contributing to, and may actually be helping an employer or corporation they don’t approve of (2009). Furthermore, he lists the concerns from the participant’s point of view of surveillance, alienation and misappropriation and the possibility of addiction, that are very real aspects to consider (Zittrain, 2009). But really, like any activity we conduct online, participating in crowdsourcing is something that should be conducted with discretion and caution, and with consideration of both sides of the argument. References: Alsever, Jennifer. 2007 “What is Crowdsourcing?” Accessed March 29, 2013. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-crowdsourcing/ Fuchs, Christian. 2013. “Chapter 5: The Power and Political Economy of Social Media.” In Social media: a critical introduction, 97-125. London: Sage Publications. Samasource. 2013. “Our Mission.” Accessed March 29, 2014. http://samasource.org/mission/our-mission/ Sauter, Theresa. 2014. “KCB206 Internet, Self and Beyond: Week 4 lecture notes.” Accessed March 29, 2014. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2FcourseMain%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1 Zittrain, Jonathan. 2009. “Minds for Sale.” Harvard University video, posted 16 November. Accessed March 29, 2014. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2009/11/berkwest

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Week 4: Participatory Audiences

With the interactivity and power that Web 2.0 and new media gives the public, we no longer have to silently consume media; now we can be involved. The power of audiences is demonstrated through spreadability and how the public helps marketing by sharing media and spreading it across the internet and effectively, the world. Yet just because the nature of audiences has changed, conventional methods of one-way flow information and entertainment are still accepted and consumed. “The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way” (Rosen, 2006). In his blog, Jay Rosen is referring to the change in today’s media audiences and how we no longer have to pay to listen in silence and isolation while broadcasters compete to speak loudly and capture our attention (2006). Online production and distribution means have enabled “the mute to speak and the invisible to be seen” in this new two-way flow of information (Green and Jenkins 2011, 109). Previously, audiences were just consumers, taking in the information and messages they were injected with. Now we have a user-generated online culture that redistributes power amongst everyday people and gives freedom to audiences to create, to distribute and to choose what they consume, when they consume it and how they consume it. One of the principal ways online audiences interact is through sharing content that is meaningful, important or humorous in some way. What people share online has a significant impact on companies and marketers, as audiences’ choices, investments and actions “determine what gets valued” (Green and Jenkins 2011, 116). Britain’s Got Talent success story Susan Boyle is a prime example of this. In The Handbook of Media Audiences, Green and Jenkins analyse how audiences were instrumental in making Susan Boyle famous worldwide through sharing her performance with others over social media until it was spread all across the internet and the world (2011, 112). This demonstrates how powerful the modern audience is in marketing media content. Even Hollywood is grasping the opportunity to involve audiences in the process of spreading its products and furthering their reach (Lessig 2008, 205). Though the internet and social media has transformed the very nature of audience behaviour and consumer habits, it has not made the old methods obsolete. In an article in The Economist, Andreas Kluth asserts that “people no longer passively ‘consume’ media but actively participate in them, which usually means creating content” (2006). However, that isn’t completely true. While most people now like to participate and have the freedom to, we must acknowledge that audiences still enjoy “big media pleasures” (Rosen, 2006). Entertainment such as going to the cinema, listening to the radio or reading a book isn’t participatory, but it is enjoyable and audiences still respond well to it. What has changed with these conventional forms of entertainment is the way we consume them, and the flexibility that now lies within our control. People are still consuming traditional forms of media, just in different ways. Entertainment and media in today’s society is about the convergence of new and old production, distribution and marketing methods to form a dynamic and diverse media culture. Audiences still consume the same kind of content, but now they have control over how they consume it and how involved they want to be. Rosen puts it this way: “The people formerly known as the audience are simply the public made realer, less fictional, more able, less predictable” (2006). References: Green, Joshua and Jenkins, Henry. 2011. “Chapter 5: Spreadable Media: How Audiences Create Value and Meaning in a Networked Economy.” In The Handbook of Media Audiences, edited by Virginia Nightingale, 109-127. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Kluth, Andreas. 2006. “Among the Audience.” The Economist, April 20. Accessed March 22, 2014. http://www.economist.com/node/6794156 Lessig, Lawrence. 2008. “Chapter 7: Hybrid Economies.” In Remix: Making Art and Culture Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, 177-224. New York: Penguin. Rosen, Jay. 2006. “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” PressThink: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine Blog, June 27. Accessed March 22, 2014. http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html

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Week 3: Privacy in an Age of Sharing

In real world social situations, privacy is always something that we’ve had to monitor and at times discard, with the aim of making connections and forming real relationships. But how has this issue of privacy and sharing altered now that so many of our social interactions are conducted online? This is just one aspect of media life and privacy that will be analysed and discussed in this blog. It will also examine our online lives as a virtual “tattoo” that will live on longer than our physical selves; and the importance of being media and technologically savvy: knowing who, what and when to share. Relationships in general, whether with friends, family or colleagues, have always required a certain amount of disclosure of our personal lives. Papacharissi and Gibson assert that “learning how to share is a central process of being socialized into society, as it enables relationships and presentations of the self” (2011, 80). Therefore you could say that to share personal information is essential at some point. However, in face-to-face social interactions this is done in a natural way, when individuals feel comfortable, only then will they usually be compelled to share. So why are people now sharing intimate details of their lives with “friends” they’ve yet to meet in person? It could be a result of “technological architectures” nurturing a radical change in mindset that individuals feel requires openness in order to be social (Papacharissi and Gibson 2011, 80). In his Ted Talk, Juan Enriquez speaks about our online profile being like an “electronic tattoo,” a further expression of ourselves, much like a physical tattoo. But also like a physical tattoo, there is the risk of regret and the inability to remove what we have imprinted upon ourselves. However hard we try to erase the tattoos we are ashamed or embarrassed of, there will always be a scar of some sort; it will never completely go away. This is the reality of sharing personal information on the web, as Enriquez says, “All of us are very close to immortality because those tattoos will live far longer than our bodies will” (2013). Therefore, it is vitally important for social media users to be savvy, and not just technologically, with what they are sharing. “Networked social environments make it challenging for individuals to be private in spaces that were designed for sharing, not privacy.” (Papacharissi and Gibson 2011, 84) This is why it is important to be aware of the immortality of our posts, comments, photos and the like. For it is not only our online reputations that are at risk, but all of it can spill out into the real world. In Media Life, Mark Deuze stresses the importance of knowing “how the uses and appropriations of media penetrate all aspects of contemporary life” (2011, 137). However, the younger users of Facebook, who make up the largest percentage of users (Bullas, 2014), admit they do little to protect their privacy, due to either concern for their social reputation or a lack of knowledge of privacy settings (Papacharissi and Gibson 2011, 83). “Identity is fundamentally social, and the sense of self is developed through the collaborative, collective experiences of our social interactions” (Papacharissi and Gibson 2011, 80). Therefore, sharing can be deemed a necessary aspect of interaction through social media. References: Bullas, Jeff. 2014. “22 Social Media Facts and Statistics You Should Know in 2014.” Accessed March 15, 2014. http://www.jeffbullas.com/2014/01/17/20-social-media-facts-and-statistics-you-should-know-in-2014/ Deuze, Mark. 2011. “Media Life.” Media, Culture & Society 33 (1): 137-148. Enriquez, Juan. 2013. “Your online life, permanent as a tattoo.” Ted Talks video, posted Feb 2013. Accessed March 15, 2014. https://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_how_to_think_about_digital_tattoos Papacharissi, Zizi and Gibson, Paige L. 2011. “Chapter 7: Fifteen Minutes of Privacy: Privacy, Sociality, and Publicity on Social Network Sites.” In Trepte, Sabine and Reinecke, Leonard, Privacy online: perspectives on privacy and self-disclosure in the social web, 75-89. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.

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