Assignment 1- Annotated Bibliography
Name: Alexandra Ziamos s3720526

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration – https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/support-and-facilities/student-support/equitable-learning-services

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Week 1
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Annotated Bibliography

Selected text 1 – Affordances (word count 538)

Norman, D 1999, ‘Affordance, conventions and design (Part 2)’, Nielsen Norman Group, viewed 25 March 2019, http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordance_conv.html

Donald A. Norman, author of The Psychology Of Everyday Things (POET) aims in this webpage article to clarify the misconceptions surrounding conceptual models, affordances, constraints, and conventions he introduces in his 1988 book. Norman makes a fundamental revision to his approach to affordances to include both those that are real and perceived, and critiques the reception to the ideas in his novel. He summarises several key ideas for the audience, one being that the required information is in the world to dictate how we encounter and interact with objects, stating that “the appearance of the device could provide the critical clues required for its proper operation”. This is where he differentiates between real and perceived affordances. Norman refers to perceived affordances as those actions that the user perceives to be possible rather than what is true; for example, it is the smart-phone you use to browse Instagram with that has physical affordances, as opposed to the application itself, which merely displays graphical feedback to the user.

The article itself is based on Norman’s theoretical beliefs on user-centred design, and he discusses processing mechanisms at length in an informal, yet authoritative tone. Using the anecdote of a touch screen display, Norman expands on the concept of affordances in interface and product design. His ideas are laid out in a logical manner in summaries, in addition, his straightforward expression makes the article easy to follow. However, while this style of writing is useful for those with prior knowledge of these concepts (such as web designers), it suggests that the audience is already well informed of the field and/or his research. This could be challenging for those with difficulty grasping the notion of affordances to follow. The article is also quite limiting in its brief explanations of some concepts, which diminishes its value as a standalone piece of research.

The article is relevant to my own research surrounding the course prompt, as it redefines ‘affordances’ for the reader. Norman’s anecdote of the design of a touchscreen device/a computer helps to understand how the perceived affordances of Instagram impact the way a user interacts with the platform. His explanation of constraints and conventions is very relevant to how we use applications such as Instagram. He reinforces that conventions have a larger impact on screen-based products, as they are cultural constraints that have evolved over time through a community of practice. This is interesting when looking at posting and browsing activity on Instagram, as we are often encouraged to post content to cater to our audience in order to gain likes. When authoring, publishing and distributing photos and videos on the platform, we subconsciously recognise that users with more followers and likes have a higher level of success.  This reinforces that how the user interacts with Instagram is influenced by cultural constraints that are slow to be adopted and slow to go away once established. However, this source is not as useful for my research purposes as Instagram was not launched until 2010, making Norman’s examination somewhat outdated when applied to networked media. Given the article was written in 2008 it focuses more on the screen design of web pages, rather than the specific concept of smartphone apps.

Selected text 2- Social Media (word count 588)

Siapera, E. 2013, Understanding New Media. SAGE Publications, London (Section: pp.1-16).

Digital and social media scholar Eugene Siapera states in her 2013 book Understanding New Media that “understanding new media is expected to lead to an understanding of changes and transformations in social process, norms, ideals and practises.” This illustrates the aim of her writing: to reinforce the idea that understanding media means understanding humanity and to highlight the relationship between new media and society in specific and broader contexts. Her book is an introduction to new media studies in which she analyses several approaches from academics to study this concept. These are based on the perspectives of four media and technology theorists; McLuhan, Kittler, Stiegler, and Castells. In particular, Siapera wishes to evaluate ‘new media’ and its implications behind the use of this term, rather than the use of ‘online’ or ‘digital’ media.

The key distinction Siapera makes is that ‘digital’ media means that “all of the information or data in the media is encoded in numbers”, and is reliant on new modes of technology. In contrast, ‘online’ media prioritises the concept of connectivity with the world and focuses on the way in which communication between countries happens almost instantaneously in today’s society, with the sharing of information and content. However, Siapera emphasises that these terms are problematic as they are too exclusive when used to describe our current media landscape. While this media is sometimes digital and sometimes online, they are not its defining characteristics and do not acknowledge how they are interrelated. The term ‘new media’, as Siapera outlines, allows us to include the attributes of digital and online media as well as others, without limiting or prioritising a single one. The author does acknowledge that there are some issues with the use of the term ‘new’. She explains that this may appear to disregard the ways in which more mature media forms have evolved in recent years. Therefore, Siapera reinforces that the word “new” is in reference to the “novel, innovative and dynamic” changes observed in media over time. In addition, She argues that new media is always evolving, and changes in response to other things (such as new technologies).

Siapera provides in her inquisitive tone a thorough perspective of what constitutes ‘new media’ and utilises a large amount of past scholarly research to substantiate her ideas. This use of multiple sources and well-researched approach to writing helps her examine the relationship that societies have with technology in a discussion of new media that is still relevant today. However, due to its heavy examination of past theories and terminology, the text does not specifically give an insight into new media such as video and photo content. Therefore it is not as useful for exploring the complexity of current new media that exists; this can be attributed to the date of its publishing (2013) which is a long time given new media’s constantly evolving nature. Despite this, the book is useful in examining the course prompt of how content on Instagram is authored, published and distributed in the network. As social media and Instagram co-exist within the context of new media, Siapera’s perspective supports how the capacity of new media allows Instagram to thrive with every update and change to its interface. Therefore, our habits as users of the platform are influenced by the shift in the software’s affordances. Instagram’s steady evolution as a new media application allows us to examine its impact on our growing network as well as its implications for society, such as changes in the way we communicate.

Selected text 3 – Networks (word count 676)

Lister, Martin et al 2009, New Media: A Critical Introduction. (Networks, Users and Economics pp 163-169; Wiki Worlds and Web 2.0 pp 204-209; The Long Tail pp 197-200; User-generated content, we are all users now pp 221-232.)

This book aims to introduce the reader to new media, in addition to the factors that contribute to what we now refer to as the Internet. It examines the idea of the Internet as an open architecture that is always evolving, and how the world wide web was established as the result of “numerous factors, accidents, passions, collisions and tensions”. Its main argument: that a large amount of its ongoing development can be attributed to the tension between culture and commerce, and that this is fundamental to understanding networked media. The book contains a number of discussions that reinforce this claim such as Tim O’Reilly’s theory of Web 2.0, Chris Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’ theory and the concept of user-generated content.

Lister draws on David Gauntlett’s 2004 review to outline the study of Computer Mediated Communications (CMC), and explain how mass media communication such as newspapers and TV have shifted into hybridised forms of new media by the new distribution technologies that we have online. In its next section, the authors review the fundamental shift from Web 1.0 to 2.0 in the 21st century, an idea introduced in 2003 that today’s web is qualitatively different in its software, hardware, and sociality. They reinforce that a characteristic of Web 2.0 is the idea that ‘users add value’ or data by leaving traces of themselves that enhance the service. Additionally, The Long Tail explores the notion that online advertising and sponsorships have provided opportunities to make web media a reliable advertising market, and that due to the highly networked nature of the web, it is in the best interest of advertisers to target niche groups of people, or to ‘reach out to the entire web, to the edges’. This shapes our own media experiences as we must submit to actions such as registering, rating and reviewing which contribute to our profiles as consumers. Linked to this idea is the suggestion that user-generated content in the network is impacted by the commerciality of networking sites- with platforms such as YouTube and Instagram remediating the way we communicate and generate income at a rapid pace.

The book uses mostly formal language and structured arguments to explore complex ideas, giving an insight into the history of the Internet and how it has become networked. It utilises case studies and scholarly studies, to highlight the desire for communication and the pressures of commercialisation on social networking sites in our current media landscape. The book is also self-aware that some areas are beyond its scope; rather, it wishes to focus on the impact of psychological or sociological ramifications of the net on media practices.

The book argues that in today’s society, “understanding the self as a networked presence has almost become a commonplace”. This is highly relevant to my research on the course prompt, as we are now more present online than ever on social networking sites such as Instagram. The followers and reputation we have as users influence the posts that we author, publish and distribute in the network for others to see. Additionally, we are more aware that our user information is being collected to learn more about our interests, with highly targeted advertisements appearing on our news feeds. This spread of long tail marketing to the platform of Instagram and increasingly commercialised online networks is indicative of the ever-present tensions between commerce and culture. A weakness of this source for my research purposes is that it is fairly dated, published in 2009 prior to the establishment of Instagram in (2010) and the popularity of social media influencers. However, the book does give a fair amount of insight into the shift to digital media with the establishment of Web 2.0 and the rise of major applications such as YouTube and Facebook, which afford similar opportunities for sharing as the platform of Instagram.