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Week Ten: It's a data invasion.. Not really.. But really

Social media plays a big part in our lives today, a facet of which has just started to take off is through our consumption and interaction with our old friend, the television. Increasingly today we see our favourite television shows throwing in references to social media, whether it be prompting you to a page to get a sneak peak of what’s coming up next week, or to ‘join a conversation’ with others, more and more people are getting involved, in ways not previously available or imaginable. So how does this benefit anybody?

The first group of people that this level of audience participation benefits is of course the content creators and television networks who are distributing the content. The Twitter excitement index, introduces the ability to measure the level of discussion on Twitter about a specific show, whether before, during or after the show, this allows those who are distributing the content to see fans reactions directly, good or bad, and see how audiences change week to week, even country to country (Woodford, 2014). This is, when it all boils down to it, a new way to gather data from audiences in a way that is vastly quicker than content distributors have ever had, while the information gathered and analyzed through Neilson SocialGuide and other companies has not yet publically published, statistics can be drawn from sporting events and the like to draw on conclusions as to audience interaction (Woodford, 2014).

I’m sure we’ve all experienced this in some way shape or form, either we have ourselves participated in a shows discussion or gone to their Facebook or Twitter page to see their sneak peak of next weeks show. But what are we actually doing when we do this, besides annoying our friends who couldn’t care less what happened on My Kitchen Rules. We’re, as mentioned above, participating in the data collection for large corporations who can take it, and with a public forum such as Facebook, use it in a way that will build a new series of shows that we surprisingly like! By gathering data corporations have a priceless collection of experiences from many different worlds from which they can learn (Siegel, 2013).

In summing up, while we think we’re just having some fun and talking with people of a like mind, watching the same television shows, there is a much greater purpose to us partaking in the online debate and hashtagging our lives away on social media. Corporations are collecting big data in ways they haven’t before been able to, which can be a scary thought, our lives are able to be accessed by a greater number of people, quicker and easier than ever before and overall we seem pretty happy with that, because we get to watch shows that appeal to us.

Bibliography

Siegel, Eric. 2013. “Introduction – The Prediction Effect.” In Predictive Analytics, 1-16. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Inc.

Woodford, Darryl, Katie Prowd and Axel Bruns. 2013. “Telemetrics: Towards Measuring Social Media Engagement with Television.”

Woodford, Darryl. 2014. Week 9 – New Media, Big Data and Telemetrics (guest lecture by Darryl Woodford). Retrieved from: http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp

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Week Nine: Politics, New Media and a Harnessing a Dinosaur

Media platforms such as newspapers and television have throughout the decades, changed how politics and politicians are viewed throughout the community. This has allowed the general population to stay in touch with our states and countries leaders and in turn, for those in positions of power to get important messages to the people of the states and country. The evolution of new media, in particular, social media, has changed how politicians and politics are viewed, and given us the ability to always be in contact with those who control our country. It has opened up politics to a whole new demographic of people who, stereotypically prior to social media, couldn’t care about politics unless it directly hit them in the face with an issue that they could not ignore.

The internet has grown immensely since its inception in the early 1990’s, it has seen the number of people accessing it from the very low millions, to now a number well in the billions (Shirky, 2011). With the rise of the internet, came the rise of social media along side it (Shirky, 2011). With more people having access to ever evolving technology, peoples want for information is met with the ability to get that information, from social media to other networked platforms.

If we now look back to around 2009, and what has been dubbed the “Twitter Revolution,” Gladwell (2010) writes, is a similar bout of social activism to what was seen in the 1960’s. Gladwell (2010) continues to talk about the people of Iran standing up and fighting for their freedom and democracy, without Twitter they would not have felt the empowerment to do so, even going as far to ask Twitter to suspend scheduled maintenance on the website as it was the key organizational tool of the protests. Former American national security advisor Mark Pfeifle, at one stage post the peoples revolution in Iran called for Twitter to be nominated for a Noble Prize (Gladwell, 2010). There is no better demonstration of the sheer power of social media to get a message to a mass in a short space of time and to organize people.

With many of our politicians now harnessing the power of Twitter and Facebook, they have opened up a whole new demographic that stereotypically didn’t engage with politics, Kevin Rudd is no better example of this. Another great example of people in positions of power harnessing social media and communicating to the masses of the community was Queensland Police in the 2011 floods.

In closing, social media has changed the way we communicate to each other, and the way people in positions of power communicate to the masses. It has become a dinosaur that, when harnessed properly can be an incredibly useful tool.

Bibliography

Gladwell, Malcolm. 2010. “Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” The New Yorker. Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all accessed 3.04.2014.

Shirky, Clay. 2011 “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change..” In Foreign Affairs 90:1. Available at: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media accessed 3.04.2014.

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New Media, New Ways of Life

With the continuous evolution of computers and the consequential technology and software developments that come with it have seen our ways of communication change. From once picking up the telephone to ask somebody a question, now we send them an email, we are sharing our lives with each other in greater detail through networks such as Facebook and Instagram, perhaps too much. As Baron (2008) highlights, even church pastors are relating their sermons back to societies technological evolution, quoting that “conscience is god sending your brain an email.”

Baron (2008) highlights how we as people react to new technology, she uses the example of when the first car was developed, how at first we are bewildered, but then we embrace the technology once it is embedded into everyday technology, Baron refers to this as domestication of technology. Applying this to our life today, we can see how the use of mobile phones, computers and the like has become so domesticated that we almost feel lost without them. As Baron (2008) refers to it, there are a number of people are always “on,” in that they are always attached to their technology, as I mentioned above, this has come about through the technology allowing us to do multiple things.

Looking at the development of new media, and how it has changed our processes surrounding communication, from when we originally communicated face to face, now we will email and text people instead. Baym (2010) examines what happens to communication itself with the evolution of communication and how people react differently in different scenarios, for example through online textual media and the elimination of intimacy and personal quality in most communications with today’s technology. I can relate to this everyday through my own job, while I send hundreds of emails, sometimes to somebody down the other end of the office, if something is actually serious, we will get up and go talk to them, but on most occasions we simply email each other, it limits the personal interaction.

We live in an age where we are constantly surrounded by evolving media that has taken away communication skills that were once common place, we are able to talk to anybody anywhere at anytime, but through many different forms of informal communication. We have become domesticated to new media and its many uses, where a lot of us are always “on” with new media, but for a good proportion of society, they still cannot manage to adapt to the new social cues that have developed through the internet.

Bibliography

Baron, Naomi. 2008. “Ch 1: Email to Your Brain: Language in an Online and Mobile World.” In Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, 3-10. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Baym, Nancy K, (2010). Chapter 3 : Communication in Digital Spaces. In Baym, Nancy K, Personal connections in the digital age, 50 - 71. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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YouTube - Taming the beast

Through this weeks readings we are lead through the intricacies of YouTube, and through this gain a greater understanding of just how much of a strangle hold it has on media distribution and consumption globally. Throughout its emergence in 2006-2007, Burgess and Green (2009) analyzed the mainstream media coverage, a mix between both an outlet for amateur content, and a big new player in the economy. Today, YouTube sees over one billion unique users per month, with over six billion hours of video and one hundred hours being uploaded every minute (YouTube Statistics).

Instantly when I started reading Burgess and Green’s (2009) work, I thought of a video I had seen within the last week, of a good friend of mine that had gone global in a matter of days, the video can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIoYPRfRB34 . This is a prime example of Burgess and Green’s (2009) discussion about YouTube repetitive framing as an amateur haven, with the masses rising up from the bottom, tying in with previous weeks readings, and giving everybody their fifteen minutes of fame. Central to Burgess and Green’s (2009) writing is that struggle that exists in the media’s ever changing framing of YouTube, one day it is the best thing since sliced bread, the next it is the bane of our existence and the center of schoolyard tussles.

This leads into Shefran (2004), although a little before YouTube swept the world well and truly, she still identifies both the internets power, and the socially problematic discourses that may arise from it. Burgess and Green (2009) demonstrate this through television news programs constant battering of YouTube as an outlet for inappropriate, lawless content, because well, nobody ever likes to hear good news do they? I’m sure we all had similar experiences, growing up around the time when camera phones were becoming the rage, and video production was as easy as hitting a button, when the fight chant rang around the school and a couple of hundred boys with their phones out ran towards it to catch a glimpse, no? Alright maybe that was just an all boys school thing.

I guess my point with this is, YouTube is today just like another television channel, it can even be viewed on new TV’s! While some may have a problem with some of the content that is uploaded, is anybody forcing you to watch it? YouTube has consumed the world, and is an amazing part of it, it allows talented people to be found when they otherwise wouldn’t, why should we always focus on the negatives when there are so many positives.

For anybody who views the video, the bloke who gets slaughtered is perfectly fine, just a bruised ego.

Bibliography

Burgess, Jean and Joshua Green. 2009. “You Tube and the Mainstream Media.” InYouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture edited by Jean Burgess, Joshua Green and Henry Jenkins, 15-37. Cambridge, MA: 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.

YouTube. 2014. “Statistics.” Accessed 6 April 2014.

http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

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Are we floating on a cloud? #blog3

The ever-increasing use of cloud technology, while taking away so many dramas with regards to the storage of content, has poised other problems, one of those is through the traditional concept of labour, or work (Fuchs, 2014). Both Fuchs and Zittrain give their respective views of the changing face of labour in today’s more technology savvy economy, with almost any mental act being able to be bought or sold by the proprietor (Zittrain, 2009).

Fuchs talks of internet labour, its adaptation to the workplace and its invasion of our home living rooms, stating that the commodity that is the audience is ever present in these spaces because of social media and mobile internet. Fuchs extends this, he goes so far as saying that the workplace has merged with our home life, our work has come home with us and is ever present with us. Fuchs also explores the exploitation of certain regions in the world who are typically underpaid and overworked for the perks that we, living in Western culture take for granted.

Zittrain provides options that help engage the western world in those less fortunate during his presentation to Harvard University. Zittrain demonstrates how the use of an application on an iPhone can engage the help of Kenyan refugees in doing microwork for companies, a user may log into the application and provide feedback for the refugee on their answer, this is a process commonly referred to as crowd sourcing, where people may or may not get paid for their input into a task. Further, Zittrain gives examples of ‘mumpreneurs’ whereby mothers can work from home, with their young children more freely than they could in the past due to the ever developing cloud technology, in this case known as Live Ops. Furthermore, Zittrain demonstrates how so many people are working for free, without realizing it by playing games online, this is a further example of crowd sourcing.

Zittrains demonstration of the ‘mumpreneurs’ demonstrates that the division between paid and un-paid worked has become incredibly blurred in today’s ever accessible economy where we are always switched on. This has been exacerbated through the development of workplaces, from somewhere you traditionally went purely to work, to somewhere you interact, participate and have fun at work, this cannot be demonstrated anymore clearly through the Google workplace YouTube video (2010).

Both Zittrain and Fuchs demonstrate comprehensively through their respective material how larger companies are making better use of their workforce, and the population and large, through the use of cloud technology and crowd sourcing. Further, companies are blurring the lines in a big way from the traditional concepts of work, to that of a fun environment where you don’t actually have to be doing work related tasks at work, and further allows us to do more work remotely from home.

Bibliography

Google. 2010. “Working at Google.” YouTube video, posted February 12. Accessed March 23, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWlHtvZHbZ8

Zittrain, Jonathan. 2009. “Minds for Sale.” Video. Accessed March 23 2014. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2009/11/berkwest

Fuchs, Christian. 2014. “The Power and Political Economy of Social Media.” In Social Media: An Introduction: 97-125.

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If it doesn't spread it's dead.. #blog2

The changing face of media production and consumption has posed a challenge to the traditional forms of mass media consumption that most of us grew up with, from the newspaper to the television, now we have the internet. Three scholars, each in the last decade, have critically documented the ever changing face of media production and consumption, each in turn giving their own spin on the changing face, which are in many respects quite similar.

Jay Rossen, in his 2006 publication on the online forum, PressThink highlights the changing face of the audience in media consumption. Rossen brings to the fore in his brief article, the ability of all to publish their own content, be it through podcasts, blogs such as this one and other forms of social media to name a few. Furthermore, Rossen highlights how mass media producers, those who traditionally held the power in production, have lost that to those who once were merely consumers, quoting media mogul Rupert Murdoch in saying that they the consumer “want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it.”

The above ties in well with the 2011 publication by Joshua Green and Henry Jenkins, published in Virginia Nightingales Handbook of Media Audiences. The pair highlight use the Susan Boyle phenomenon as their key example to spreadable media, Boyle shot to fame overnight through rapid sharing of her performance on Britain’s Got Talent through social media channels. Green and Jenkins argue that increasingly producers are merging into users, they themselves creating the content that they enjoy, and constructing the networks through which it circulates (Green, Jenkins 2011, 122). They further highlight the struggle commercial producers are having adjusting economic models to the changing media landscape in a bid to best take advantage of it. Green and Jenkins highlight that consumers are no longer just consumers, they are producers, they recommend content to their circle of friends, who in turn pass it on (Green, Jenkins 2011,123), without content engaging and serving the interests of both consumers and producers, its circulation will get blocked.

It follows then that Lawrence Lessig’s work on Hybrid Economics wraps up the summary of the changing face of media production and consumption. Lessig argues that the changing face of the internet will see the hybrid economy control it, that is, an economy that links two simpler economies (commercial and sharing) and producers from something from the combination (Lessig 2008). Lessig however maintains that the definition between the two economies must remain for the hybrid version properly function.

Moving forward to 2014 and it appears that, to succeed in the media landscape, the larger companies must look forward to the hybrid economy that Lessig speaks of, giving their content spread-ability throughout multiple social platforms.

Bibliography

Green, Joshua and Jenkins, Harry. “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.

Lessig, Lawrence, 2008. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin Publishing

Rossen, Jay. 2006. “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” PressThink. Accessed 13 March 2014.

http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html

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We live it, but do we know what we're living? #blog1

As today’s society is more switched on to social media and online content than ever before, it envisages the question, is privacy a thing of the past, will we ever get some time just exclusively to ourselves? This blog will glimpse at how we utilize media in a saturated environment and how this impacts on our privacy. With social media now accounting for the greatest proportion of our online activities, and the ability to be online anywhere at anytime, Papacharissi (2011) writes that it now in fact shapes who we are as a person, and to others, it demonstrates who we are, with or without them actually knowing us personally.

We live in a constantly mediated public space, whereby our brain’s are constantly penetrated by different forms of media that overarch our everyday life (Deuze 2011, 137). Furthermore, Deuze (2011)comments that as media evolves further, it becomes further blurred and invisible in our own eyes as we subconsciously use it in every aspect of our day, as Flew eludes to, the media can now be linked to many transformations in how we function, from work, to lifestyle and culture. I must admit, that I myself have noticed that I have become switched on to media even more, with constantly being online for work reasons, I am always surrounded by it, and I have been blind to it.

Flew (2014) further elaborates on how new media has impacted how we trade economically, with the decline of the shop front and ever thriving online boutique, which can be run simply from Instagram or Facebook, I myself have friends who are doing a roaring trade in selling their second hand clothes on Facebook. The main attraction of the online boutique is that it’s always open, and the market reach is global, not just your local town, this change may be negative for the social aspects of catching up with friends, but positive for the economically challenged university student looking to save a couple of dollars on a new shirt.

I will finish with touching on our online privacy, which is really, not so private, a drunken comment on a friend’s status may land you in a world of grief for something you don’t even remember doing! As Papacharissi and Gibson (2011) raise, we lose control of our privacy when we no longer have the right or ability to decide for ourselves how we will protect ourselves in a public forum. Your drunken comment may be seen by a person who has never met you, and misinterprets the context in which it was meant within your friendships, however this is out of your control and before you know it you’re getting berated by somebody you have never met. Not fun at all.

In wrapping up, we live and breath media subconsciously every second of the day, however sometimes we don’t fully appreciate the gravity of some of our actions in the online forum and just how far they can reach, and how little privacy there is in the online media landscape.

Bibliography

Papacharissi, Zizi and Paige L. Gibson. 2011. “15 minutes of Privacy: Privacy, Sociality, and Publicity on Social Network Sites.” In Privacy Online: Perspectives on Privacy and Self-Disclosure in the Social Web, edited by Sabine Trepte and Leonard Reinecke, 75-89. Heidelberg and New York: Springer.

Deuze, Mark (2011). Media Life., Media, Culture & Society33 (1) pp.137-148.

Flew, Terry, (2014). Chapter 1 : Introduction to New Media. In Flew, Terry, New media, (pp.1 - 17). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

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