After going through the development and creation of the small-scale project with my partner, Meita, I have most definitely learned various different aspects of online screen production. In order to elaborate my understanding, I will talk about my project and it’s online screen characteristics. I will also relate this to, my thoughts and reflection throughout the process by responding to the reflective questions.
Firstly, my partner and I designed the simulation or this small-scale project with the intention of centralising it upon two major online screen characteristic that is, interactivity and cross-platform. Although this simulation I believe is pretty branched out in terms, of incorporating online screen characteristics, I believe that interactivity and cross-platform were the two main trajectories that I grew to learn more about through several of my research. Me and Meita’s project each responded to interactivity and cross-platform in different ways.
For example, since our project is a simulation and a game, the existence of hypermedia interactive links are not only necessary but, the top crucial part that makes up for our interactivity characteristic. The idea behind making sure that there are hypermedia involved were pivotal when designing a game or simulation. This is because my partner and I wanted to make sure that the user or viewer did not just read boring information about how the Internet customises content, specifically, real-life events or news. But we wanted them to feel this small experience of being in an Internet bubble, be involved whilst being informed and acquire realisation at the same time.
Besides that, the ways in which all of the hypermedia are displayed on our simulation is to encourage the viewer to navigate in a cross-platform manner. The idea is putting up several kinds of news and information from various different platforms such as, other sources, social media, pages, etc. that support the given scenario. Thus, leading them to cross-platform various other resources, in this case, news relevant to their view or as desired.
Through, understanding these two characteristics and platforms by creating my small-scale project, I learned that most of the ways in which, I gather, obtain and share information are through both interactivity and cross-platform navigation. I realised that these two characteristics not only become an important part of any online platforms in this era but also, to myself. This is because I believe that the only intention of the creation of interactivity and cross-platform, is so that users can consume various multimedia content. This includes advertisements, videos, images, music to news and information sourced from other online platforms.
I find that a simple example would be, Facebook. What is Facebook without other platforms or pages posting on it? I would not realise the existence of other apps or news platforms such as Vox, Vice, Buzzfeed, etc. without scrolling through my Facebook page. Therefore without interacting with contents from various forms of platforms, I might not have engaged with any online media artefact.
Through my development posts, I consecutively became more aware that misinformation of acquiring real-life events, information or news relevant to acknowledge for most of my generation today including myself, has become prevalent. This is caused by the content customisation or personalisation that actually, all of my research, have pointed out.
All these little fragments of learning and thinking throughout this small-scale project has broadened my online media production comprehension. Therefore, this knowledge expanded my learning not only, from being able to acknowledge my online behaviour through understanding the importance of interactivity and cross-platform in an online platform, but also, through my realisation of how much of the world is not being shown to me when I participate in the online space.
This made me think:
- How can I change the way information circulates on the Internet?
- What can I do to limit misinformation?
- What can I do to spread the awareness?
- How can we make the Online Space a source of freedom rather than, restrictive?