In our contemporary media landscape, the online world of social media is renowned for driving the growth of viral global sensations. Amongst the YouTube propaganda piece, “Kony” (2012), and also Metro commercial, “Dumb Ways to Die” (2012), one of the latest online phenomenon is the controversial “Blue and Black or White and Gold” photograph, otherwise dubbed on social media as, #TheDress.

The image originally posted by Tumblr blogger Swiked, gained world-wide attention on February 26^th 2015 after the influential social news and entertainment website Buzzfeed re-posted the image to their site, it received an enormous 200 million views. The hype of the dress increased due to rapid and constant sharing of the image amongst social media users, particularly by popular celebrity figures such as Taylor Swift. Berger and Milkman (2012) state that, online virality is propelled by physiological stimulation. They consider that information eliciting vastly positive or negative emotional responses is more likely to go viral. The notion that viewers, including the famed, perceived the dress to be contrasting colours created huge publicity due to its inexplicability.

Group identities also formed based on the observation of different colours. Historically, the Internet predominantly functioned as a tool for collecting information. However through this constant process of globalisation and growth in accessibility, we are now able to utilise technology for our own social needs, such as building rapport. Identity and a feeling of belonging can now be perpetuated in not only physical interaction, but also online. Allsop, Basset and Hoskins (2007) report “59% of people report that they frequently share online content with others”. Whilst we know people must have shared the image privately, conversation around the dress can also be seen in public online behaviour such as playful witticism like tweets, hashtags and memes. This viral sensation has functioned to create a sense of belonging for users online. The self titled teams “Blue and Black” and “White and Gold” illustrate this notion.

The virality of the dress stems from two things. The first would be the innocent amusement people gained from it. It was an image that contrasted the horrific images of worldwide news that are reported daily. It formed group conversation and jokes, and not at the expense of a person. Secondly, the image did not discriminate or divide people based on personal characteristics; it merely split people on what colour they saw. Therefore, online users could form a connection with other world-wide users within the online community. It could be viewed from almost any country of the world and could be relatable to the people seeing the image.

We presented our Project Brief #1 to our peers today. It was awesome viewing others interpretations of the task. People came up with such introspective, abstract reflections of self which highlighted the fact that I was in a real sea of creatives. What was I thinking?!?!? That I would be fine to hand in my “no-videos-due-to-copyright’, sloppy-old-photo work…. Thank goodness this one wasn’t being marked. I was plagued by writer’s block and instead of pushing through, I did as all good optimists bad uni students do and hoped for the best whilst completing the bare minimum.

We used also utilised De Bono’s 6 hat system to give feedback to our peers for the project. The system helps to separate thinking into 6 distinct categories, allowing the group to give feedback on someone’s work in a vastly different way. Listed below are the 6, however we only used 4 due to relevance.

Black: is judgement.

Blue: is used to manage the thinking process

White: is information needed

Yellow: is positive feedback

Red: are initial feelings and gut reactions

Green: is the creative or alternative possibilities

I loved being the red hat. It’s how I would usually give feedback anyway, from whatever gut feelings I experienced. Hearing feedback from the green and black hats was also great, as I learn through sharing ideas and therefore need critique/alternate possibilities in order to improve my work. However, it was difficult to be the black hat, aka the bearer of bad news, and risk offending someone. I noticed for myself, and even people in my group it was tempting to do a combination of both red and black or yellow and black (to soften the blow of the critique)

My identity is a big mash of contradictions. My decisions and the things I do are usually guided by my feelings and intuition, and I like to get things done when I feel like it. I think that will be my biggest issue at university- self discipline.

This brief was a profoundly difficult task. After deliberating what characteristics of myself to convey, or people I love (weighing up which were more significant as I was limited to four) I ended up gravitating towards using images of past times that make me feel like a happy, fulfilled human being. Though this may seem like a depthless interpretation of the task, I thought that this reasoning would give the most thorough reflection of my identity. These images are predominantly centred around being outdoors. When my lungs are filled with fresh, crisp air and I am out in nature, I feel my best. Originally, I had written over 500 words describing these pictures. When I write I have a tendency to babble, and just blindly write as I am thinking. However, I have decided to pare it back and let the images speak for themselves. 

Collectively the show my interests in: nature, being in the water, camping, music festivals, friends, markets and even the use of disposable cameras and (not pictured) film to create photos. I enjoy the look of the photos, the challenge of trying to capture an image in one go and also the excitement associated with printing the photos.

Would never have guessed it, but almost a week later… I am still thinking about William Merrin’s thoughts on Me-dia. Yes, it’s true.

You see, for the past 6 weeks I’ve been in quite a pickle with my Apple products. In attempting to update an embarassing email address haunting my iMessage (“elise__love”… we’ve all been there) I’ve managed to find an accidental loop-hole in Apple’s updating procedure. I half deleted an old account whilst half creating a new one, thus somehow merging and locking them both. Skills, I tell you. After having no luck from Apple’s base in Brisbane, the Philippines and their fraud team in solving the issue, I have been trapped for over a month with an unusable Apple ID. It is on all my gadgets, yet cannot be removed, and cannot be logged into. I’ve been left unable to access my iTunes, iPhoto, iMessage, App store or any updates.

Aside from this tragic work in progress that I like to call my technological life, Merrin comes into this about now. At approximately 9.15pm, realising I could no longer get onto iCloud (got it back at 10.37pm yay) I thought about actually losing every photo I’ve ever taken. Essentially this online storage service, and everything it contained was lost into oblivion with my Apple ID account for all I knew. I thought about the ephemeral quality of contemporary media.

Merrin comments on a digital world plagued with fragility. Not only in media’s use, attention and relevance but also a physical sense. In a society so ingrained with online media, when things go wrong… Where can we actually find our stuff? It is a frightening thought…

Today’s media lecture featured a presentation by Annie Lennox on copyright. Her words altered my perspective on the topic as I began to see copyright laws as a way of protecting one’s rights and hard work rather an annoying-bunch-of-rules-that-stop-me-from-using-songs-I-like.

I was also reminded of a blog post and affiliating article I read in 2014, regarding a copyright violation by band, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. Photographer, Rohan Anderson, claimed the band had infringed his rights when they used and edited an image he had taken at one of their gigs. He stated the image was used and edited without his permission, but also without any credit. Supposedly, when he confronted the band, he was met with a very unprofessional response.

If like me, you’re having trouble relating to the importance of copyright laws have a read of the following link. Whether the post be 100% factually correct or not, put yourselves in the shoes of someone who has had their work stolen.

http://www.rohanandersonphotography.com/red-jumpsuit-apparatus-copyright-violation/

I’ve noticed mixed reactions following this trailer release

Merrin’s “Studying Me-dia: The Problem of Method in a Post-Broadcast Age” was an interesting read. I found the combination of new media concepts and dense text a challenging duo, but once I got some thorough notes and paraphrasing going, it was pretty straight forward.

The intriguing issues, such as; the dispersal, accumulation and generalisability of post-broadcast media as preposed by Merrin, inspired me to try and think of some possible solutions. However I don’t have enough knowledge to actually resolve anything yet.

I am looking forward to learning more so that for future, I can actively participate in problem-solving as I’m reading.