Assessment 3 Networked Media 2016

Jordan Williams, Andrea Blake, Hannah Tepoorten, Karl Vitolo

Muggle in Melbourne 

Link to Photo Map (Front Page)-   http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne

Links to All Pages:

Airport-  http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!airport/aar78 

Bar-  http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!bar/qzkzu

Cafes- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!cafe/lq5lj

Laneways- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!laneways/idqq4

Shopping Malls- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!shopping/qwqf4

Swanston Street- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!swanston-st/ot7dq

Zoo- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!zoo/ji904

Trams- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!trams/z1w0l

Myki- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!myki/y80j8

Kebab Stops-  http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!kebab/k0vru

Trains- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!train-station/k6ceu

Buskers- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!buskers/n1smg

ACMI- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!acmi/fmes3

State Library- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!library/gfydk

Food Court- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!foodcourt/cbo6l

Cinema- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!cinema/tqxi0

Botanical Gardens- http://s3583984.wix.com/muggleinmelbourne#!botanical-gardens/mpasc

Academic Reflection: 

For our final hypermedia story, our group titled Lemonade decided to explore the idea of building an image and text based website targeted at young people between the ages of 7 and 19. Our idea is basically summarised by the title ‘Muggles in Melbourne’, a comedic yet informative guide to Melbourne city, which targets those who aren’t necessarily familiar with human life.

Given that we wanted to target and younger audience, we decided to use humour as a device to engage and entertain the. Our research dictated that audience expectation is very important, and in order to maintain attention and receive positive feedback, the viewer must experience what they intended to. This is a concept explored by Gene Perret and Judy Carter in their educational books on comedy writing. Jay Oatway further confirms this theory by stating that in order to develop a strong online following, content must be consistent and accessed via relevant platforms where the expectation of what the content is has already been developed. Wix allowed us to create a story with engaging and immersive content for young people with shorter attention spans than adults, and a need for constant stimulation. We found it easy to drop in pictures and sounds onto the relevant page and to code image maps for added interactivity.

Our second point of consideration was to figure out how best to create our site in order for it to engage the audience. Since we knew our audience was young, we decided to go with large popping images as these would be easier to navigate and more intuitive. Mark Bernstein states that “muddled writing was more likely to be the source of confusion than hypertextual complexity” therefore, our writing was kept simple and concise, and where possible we used a clickable image map.

The image map was created to engage the viewer at more of a story level, allowing them to select what exactly they are exposed to. This is what is known as an interactive narrative, For example, from the homepage one could choose to look at public transport or at zoos, they are not forced to read through in order like a book. “The medium lends itself to circumstances where readers can play out alternative scenarios” (Douglas, J. Yellowlees). If considered at a deeper level, this effectively means that the audience can create their own expectation, resulting in them being more likely to maintain engagement.

Given time and work, the ideal outcome of a location-based website like the one we built would be to fit into an app format like MONA’s ‘O’ (https://www.mona.net.au/theo) but on a city-wide scale. It allows users to wander around a gallery at their will and reacts to the artworks the user is looking at by popping up useful information and interactive material on the screen, effectively letting the user wander around and determine their own path through the gallery.

Furthermore, the image based website is something that young people are becoming more and more familiar with, as image content grows on websites like Facebook and Tumblr. Adrian Miles refers to this as ‘network literacy’, or an understanding of textual spaces, such as an operating system or a social media website. Given more time, Google analytics could have been employed to allow for readjustments and feedback from viewers.

References:

Bernstein, Mark. “Delightful Vistas: Revisiting the Hypertext Garden.” Travels in Intermediality. Lebanon, US: Dartmouth, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 February 2016. 142-146

Carter, J. (2001). The comedy bible. New York: Fireside.

Douglas, J. Yellowlees. “Books without Pages—Novels without Endings.” The end of books or books without end? : reading interactive narratives. University of Michigan Press ; University Presses Marketing, 1999. 11-36

Guadagno, Rosanna E. et al. ‘What Makes A Video Go Viral? An Analysis Of Emotional Contagion And Internet Memes’. Computers in Human Behavior 29.6 (2013): 2312-2319. Web.

Miles, Adrian. Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge [online]. Screen Education, No. 45, 2007: 24-30.

Mona.net.au. (2016). Mona » The O. [online] Available at: https://www.mona.net.au/theo [Accessed 1 Jun. 2016].

Oatway, J. (2012). Mastering story, community and influence. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley.

Perret, G. (2007). The new comedy writing step by step. Sanger, CA: Quill Driver Books/Word Dancer Press.

We are now in the swing of the final project for Networked Media. We have completed the planning stages and nutted out what it is we really want to do. We have come up with the idea Melbourne for Muggle’s. Essentially it is a click through photo map that links to different parts of Melbourne. It is a way for people not of this Muggle world to see the different places in Melbourne. Each page/link will have a comical creative writing piece about the place and what the ‘normal’ actions/happenings and ways of life are in those individual places. I believe it will be strongly based on the technical elements of the project because if the user can not navigate the webpage effectively then they will become disinterested in the story/writing. The second element I think is a huge part of the project is the creative writing to keep people interested and to link different pages to each other to allow the audience to create a story in their own minds. Why are these two elements linked? Why are they relevant to each other? These are the questions we want the audience to be asking themselves when they go through the page. It allows them to create their own ideas and story conclusions. For now I need to start writing.

This week we began our final assessment for Networked Media. It is now time for us to implement what we have learned through the course from the workshops, lectures and readings and create our own interactive, inclusive and original hypermedia story. I was excited about this idea as I have found that a lot of the course I am doing is applicable to this project. Particularly the content I am learning in Story Lab about transmedia and we are now creating our own transmedia stories.

I think this project will need to focus most of its energy on making a story that lends itself to different mediums and final outcomes to truly make it enjoyable. Also I feel the experience needs to be fluid and without fault as an audience will become disinterested if they are experiencing problems with the technicalities. We then had to form our groups and I am quite happy with my group as we all have different abilities that we can contribute to make the project the best it can be. For example Andrea has a strong ability in writing and she likes to write and Hannah has the ability to understand the technical side of it. Jordan is a video developer and can help interject the different platforms the assessment requires. I hope to bring to the group help in all of these fields from text and story to mixed media and even helping the technical side of things along.

 

This weeks reading was by Jay Oatway and was called Mastering Story, Community and Influence : How to Use Social Media to Become a Socialeader. I found this quite useful and helpful especially with the project I am doing for this class now. As I have written I have started an Instagram about travel and photos of travel. In it I link the travel category of my blog. The reason I found the reading useful is because it helped in identifying the people and communities you need to be aware of and use to further your involvement in your community and gain traction. He lists the big five as:

• Bloggers- “the new newsmakers”
• Professional Groups- “group of experts who often derive some sort of livelihood from that expertise”
• Topic Chats- “live, public online conversations”
• Aggregators- “giant beast of curation”
• Midfluencers- online presence who “hold a disproportionate amount of online influence” – Oatway

These major players are the aim of who to target when building your online presence. He goes into detail about how you can interact with the above so you can exchange “social currency” (Oatway, p99) However, he does emphasise that you shouldn’t always aim for he highest and utilise people who’s content is quality and specific to what you are trying to achieve. This is something I have really resinated with and have tried to implement this into my Instagram. I have tried to follow people with 1000’s of subscribers instead of tens of thousands to actually be able to communicate with them and interact.

References:

Oatway, Jay, Apr 26, 2012, Mastering Story, Community and Influence : How to Use Social Media to Become a Socialeader Wiley, Hoboken. 97-109.

This past week I have been quite allusive of my blog and uni in general but I am back and ready to go (mostly). Networked Media is proving to be quite an interesting and complex idea. The online community is more than just being on the web. The next part of the course is to do with community and interacting with community. We have to delve in and immerse ourselves in a particular community. After a few days of actually deciding what I wanted to be apart of, I started to think well what is the best way to get across my ideas and words to a community. Then I thought well I have photos on my blog accompanying my posts so why not start an Instagram. It allows me to post many photos that I have and add comments to them.

So I did. I created an Instagram with the username @just_go_there. I set it to public and I was so surprised at the reception I have been getting. I only have two photos on there but through the use of hashtags and following similar subject accounts I have been getting some good likes and comments. I have been able to interact with the people viewing my content. I suppose the prospect of what I want to do with this Instagram account is actually interact with people who comment on my photos and also comment and communicate with people on their pictures. But for now I am fairly excited.

Blogging so far has been a journey of self discovery and trying new things for me. Throughout the past weeks I have seen my writing style change and I am writing with more confidence and distinction than I have recently. The interjection of our personal ideas into the blog is something that has given me confidence and a voice on the online community. I decided to write about my travelling experiences in my life not on a superficial level but in a way that I describe how they made me feel and really accentuate the identities of the places I have been. Examples of this are London Part One and London Part Two.

I have been able to implement the workshops from class into these posts. Particularly the idea of adding media to excite the reader and give them a visual tool. This all has to do with my online identity. This idea of identity in todays society is more prevalent as we deal with such a large medium of the digital world. We no longer are given work to consume then forget and move on. Today through the use of platforms such as the blog we are able to continuously update and reignite the things we write about. It has become more apparent to me the idea Adrian Miles talks about, that we have to give back to the community. The more we take the more we give back, which is essentially the foundation of the networked space. I explain this more in my post Print to Network.

The other major thing I have learned from my experience so far is just how much goes into creating and maintaining a blog. You need determination, organisation and you have to be creative and new all the time. Although we have prompts and readings to write on, starting a blog from scratch is hard work. The most fragile aspect of it though is ensuring that you are careful when it comes to copyright. I have learnt a lot about what it is to copyright and also that you need to protect your own content through the use of creative commons licensing. In a way it is a catch twenty two that you want your content out there for people to read but you don’t want it to be left unmonitored and leave yourself open to being copyrighted illegally. The challenge I face is that I need to use picture as aids for some of my posts but I have come to the conclusion to use my own pictures and ensure that brand names and copyrighted material are not shown in those pictures. I reference the idea of copyrighting in my post Copyright and Creative Commons.

Overall, the experience I have had so far has been a positive one. I could see this as a good creative outlet and a way to keep in touch with the ever-changing online landscape. With the idea of Hypertext and Hypermedia being accessed by the click of a button it is important that we keep up to date for personal and also professional reasons.

Ideas Referenced

Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. 69-71, 77-85

Miles, Adrian. Network Literacy: The New Path to Knowledge [online]. Screen Education, No. 45, 2007: 24-30.

http://www.artslaw.com.au/info-sheets/info-sheet/legal-issues-for-bloggers/

Today we explored the site Hootsuite. The site allows you to link multiple social media and blog streams into one account. From the dashboard you are able to control and time posts on all of the social media platforms. Not only can you time posts and uploads you are able to navigate and the different platform from this one site. If anything it promotes organisation and professional continuity between your different social media and other media platforms. It allows a continuous and ever-growing online identity. Personally this type of program I believe is catered for businesses and people trying to get there image out there due to it being a simple and user friendly site to manage all their social and promotional events. Personally not being a huge social media contributor I find it simple to navigate my way through the different individual apps. Ultimately, I can understand the benefit of the site but would probably use it in a more professional environment rather than for myself personally.

Also this week we were asked to look through articles and stories that have an interactive element to it. I found the easiest way to relate this task to travel was to do a rather simple and straightforward quiz. I completed the “Whats your travel personality?” quiz (Take the quiz yourself , Buzzfeed). The purpose of why I chose this is because it highlights the elements of the interactive way of connecting with a subject. It gets you thinking of yourself as a person and how that relates to who you are as a traveller. I am happy to report to you I am ‘The Wanderer’. The thing I found most interesting is that once you complete one quiz it doesn’t finish but it suggests other travel quizzes and you get stuck in an endless cycle of finding out everything about the type of travel you do.

This weeks reading, lecture and workshop was largely based around hypertext and hypermedia. The idea of hypertext from what I can fully understand is that is is text that is always consumed electronically that guides us to other text and or information by the click of a button. The importance of Hypertext in today’s media landscape is huge if not the most important idea. It is the concept that we can easily navigate, construct and consume online and digital media through the use of carefully thought out links, ideas and algorithms. Hypermedia is essentially the same construct except this involves more than just text. It includes images, videos and sounds that work the same way. To inform, further and clarify the ideas present in the digital space.

I believe that our blogs are great examples of the Hypertext and Hypermedia ideas. They are a continuous flow of text, images, sounds and videos that act as a stream of conciseness for the author. However, this really comes into play as we can add to our blogs links and external resources which lead instantaneously to other parts of the web that have their own texts and media. It is a continuous cycle of ideas and information.

As part of the Workshop we were asked to explore different sites that focused on particular media. The site I explored was Instagram as pictures are a large part of the blog I am creating. I chose this because it allows people to share experiences instantly with other members. It gives options to edit and have your photos seen by large volumes of people through the use of ‘Hypertext ‘ hashtags. This creating a category for your photos. Although I didn’t add my Instagram to my blog I believe in future, once I build up the courage, it could be useful in furthuring what I am saying about the places I visit. Also it is quite simple to embed an Instagram feed using widgets.

This is a back dated blog to last week in Week 3 of Networked Media where we spoke about the issue of copyright and the importance of monitoring your activity and the content you use online. As the readings informed there is a lot more to copyright than just not using others peoples work. Ideas themselves are copyrighted the second they are conceived and the web in my opinion has made it harder for us to monitor copyright. There is so much unreferenced content on the web and the ability to share it with a click of a button blurs the lines of what is right and wrong. I hope to aim my blog away from using other peoples work and focus more on text I have thought of and media I have captured. Also the thing I found was the huge importance of referencing others people work, and what you need to be careful of. Particularly, using the referenced work purely for the sake of using it, not using it to benefit your point, critic or conversation.

In addition, not only do we have to worry about using others work illegally we need to worry about our work and how we won’t it to be treated. This is the importance of the creative commons license. It allows other people to understand what they can use of yours and what they need to do when they do use your content. The creative commons license I have allows people to use my content as long as they attribute me and don’t use it in a commercial platform, which I think as a repetitive consumer of internet content is me giving back to the online community. Overall, the subject of copyright, although dry, is one of high importance when you build an online identity.

Adrian Miles was the author of this weeks text and he discussed the difference or contrast between the way we consume print media in relation to network media. He highlights the difference between the two and gives us a profound description of the way we should be treating both platforms and how we are to move with this new networked style.

The highlight of this reading for me would have to had been the reiteration that if we consume content created online we should in the same token give back to or contribute to the platform. As mediums such as blogs, websites and online content allow us to interact instantaneously with them, it is almost a given that we provide feedback to them and further them along, whether it be on an involved or subtle level. By doing this we are contributing and revolving the way we consume media. It’s like a continuous cycle. This differs largely from print media in that although we are able to interact with the authors on some level letters, emails or start a fan club, what is written is final and we are unable to add to that. We can comment on it but not further it.

Miles then talks about the different types of ways of sharing and the way we weild options such as RSS to combine all the content we consume in one place. This in itself is contributing back, we are creating something new by combing or cohesively weaving different content and platforms together.