Week 5 Integrated Media 2 Lecture

–       The internet is all about short attention spans, so short riveting videos work better: 4-5 Minutes

–       People can watch an interactive documentary at their own pace

–       GOA Documentary

• Long relaxed shots
• Focused on interviews dynamic
• Portraiture

–       Releasing interviews on Facebook helped generate interest

–       Built up the audience to eventually direct them to the final SBS documentary

–       Interactive elements of the site have contributed highly to the success

–       The SBS version feels toyish as opposed to authentic

–       The head designer for the website was an in house designer for SBS. There was a strong style guide imposed on him

–       Don’t lock yourself into a model that can’t grow

How much was driven by the director and how much was directed?

–       The reunion wasn’t his idea, it was their thing and he was coming along as a witness. The real directing came down to the interviews and getting their stories. Asking other people what to ask them to get to the good information. He had to be well researched. A strong point of his directing was being a good listener. He prompted them to tell their story.

How did you use your platforms and make them most effective?

–       Don’t go platform crazy

–       Only use the ones that will facilitate the best connection

–       Find the platform that conveys the story the best

–       Maybe only use one platform that you’re really developing to help reach the public.

How does this documentary alter your understanding of Internet?

Instead of each of us being an individual on our own computers, doing only things which service ourselves, we could potentially all unite and work together on the internet to achieve certain things. E.g. I thought the swimming pool attack on Habbo was genius, and I literally never would have thought of that – because who has the time and would make the effort to organise that many people to do the same thing on a website which seems so insignificant, not really achieving anything that benefits society.

I never knew where memes came from, or all the weird shit on the internet. I now know most of it originated from 4Chan. The more you know.

How is social media used to create a community of people who share a similar interest and politics?

Social media unites together people who have similar interests and care about the same things. Through social media, you are able to express your opinion and what matters to you, and those around you are able to display their support to the same cause as well.

What ideas does this documentary raise in regards to designing an event that asks people to participate and become part of a community?

One of the events in the documentary which encouraged people to form together for a common cause was bringing down Hal Turner. By hearing the evidence presented about Hal Turner throughout the documentary, I was disgusted at his racism and immediately sided with Anonymous and their cause to take him off the internet. Turner’s quotes evoked a sense of rage in the ‘trolls’ and so they all joined forces in order to ruin him. The emotions Anonymous felt in relation to Hal and what he said about certain races united them on their plight, making them out to be a community of people. Therefore, it can be said that in order to get people to participate in an event, there needs to be something that they get out of it. It could be the simple joy of seeing others frustrated and annoyed (as with the Habbo swimming pool prank) or taking down a ‘source of evil’ which is believed to be no good for society.

Even the war against scientology:

“It resonated a feeling of disgust within us.”

“And I started thinking: this is actually for a decent cause. I think I’ll do this.”

“It felt like you were making a difference and you didn’t even have to leave your home.”

“Even after watching the video, you’re left wondering ‘well who’s actually gonna do it? Who’s actually gonna step up? Are people gonna actually get out of their house?'”

Integrated Media Week 2 Flip Lecture

This weeks lecture required us to watch an episode of ABC’s show Four Corners called ‘Generation Like’. The episode can be found here.

 How does this documentary alter your understanding of the way you use social media? 

I never really thought about the advertising and marketing relationships with Facebook or any other social media site. I guess you could say that that is pretty ignorant of me. I have always been using Facebook as simply a social media site (the intended use) and never really thought beyond the basic interactions I had with the site. In watching the episode of Four Corners, I could relate with the group of teenagers on Facebook.

“The more likes you have the better you feel. Instant gratification. Everyone knows how much you got.”

Getting and giving likes is one of the main actions in Facebook. Its a way of gaining and demonstrating approval. What I did not consider was how these ‘likes’ work on a higher level than just our social interactions. This episode of four corners uncovered how the likes and retweets across all social media is now an invaluable tool for creating a profile of what people are interested in.

“…Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have become the ultimate sampling or marketing tool.”

“There is a huge commercial push to collect as much data as possible.When you hit like. when you retweet , when you make any expression online, you’re creating data. You’re creating a demographic profile of yourself… This is where the currency of likes turns into actual currency.”

Where I have liked the page of a certain band or product on Facebook, companies know how to take that information and ‘turn it into money’. This is a disturbing realisation, as this is information which I have willingly given up, for free, that companies are taking and using to benefit themselves. Whilst liking something seems like a really easy and expense free way of showing my friends what I am interested in, I never considered before watching this documentary, how valuable this information is to other third parties and how it increases the value of the social media platform that is being used.

Companies need us to stay online and like things to provide them with information. We want to go online and like things so that we can promote ourselves and create an image of how we want to be perceived by our friends. Without us, companies don’t receive their information. But it doesn’t look like they will have a shortage any time soon, as there are millions online sharing and liking. It’s a cycle. And knowing that the information I provide is being used to generate money (and I am not being paid), I don’t think it will change my online habits. Up till now I have been sharing my information online, ignorant to how it is being used. But as long as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter provide the services they promise, then I will continue to use them. If companies are creative enough to create online media which inspires or makes me laugh, I will still ‘like’ it.

What connections can you make with the role of a Social Media Producer?

“You are your own media company.”

A Social Media Producer deals with content across all social media platforms. There was a section of the documentary which focused on a company promoting a movie. They wanted the content they produced to gain traction and be popular online which would advertise the movie for them. Where they get paid to do this, we don’t. I share posts, photos, and videos online because they interest me and I like them enough to want to share them with my friends. This isn’t a bad thing.

What ideas does this documentary raise in regards to the event your group is planning and the task of achieving participatory engagement?

The documentary highlighted the importance of networking. In particular, it focused on how YouTubers collaborate with one another to help introduce new talent in the hope of spreading the web of subscribers. If someone who is a ‘millionaire in the currency of likes’ features an up and coming YouTuber, this helps attract an audience without employing the ‘corporate suspects’.

“…tonnes of people are competing for attention, so it’s harder to get”

“…soon all those little likes turned into Youtube gold: corporate sponsorship.”

Online, without connections, everyone is just trying to make something of themselves and step up on the social media ladder. In order to have engagement with our idea and to get attention around it, it really needs to be unique. In needs to be engaging. People need to have that desire to spread it around. Basically, there are millions online, so we need to do something that is hopefully not gonna get lost in the sea of people trying to get everyone else’s attention.

“It’s way easier to get famous by being outrageous.”

That’s not to say that our groups work will attempt to be outrageous, but in order to have people engage with it, it definitely needs to stand out, or we need to have the right people promoting it.

• Tyranny of representation
• Software is an instrument
• Representation: ever since the linguistic tern (1940) in humanities theory. Linguistic tern: how we understand the world around is – semiotics. This would account for what the world means. Meaning became more important than anything else.
• Language is inadequate to account for the world. And if we think it can, then it means we are putting ourselves at the centre of the world.
• We are not the centre of the universe, nor top of the food chain. The world exceeds us in every possibility.
• For every claim we have made about why we are special, science has come along and disproved us.
• If we only think the world makes sense according to our immediate world, then that is linguistic imperialism
• Things in the world have their own agency and capacity to act – we can’t control them nor are we in charged of them.
• 50 years ago we thought we were in charged of the environment. We thought that the planet existed for us and its resources were there for us to use. Now we realise that that was a silly way of viewing the world. Today it might be something else i.e. farming animals to butcher them. Maybe in 50 years time, we will look back and think that we acted barbaric.
• Television is headed in the direction of opera. It will become more expensive to produce, will be funded from different areas etc.
• Our media use is becoming more and more niche.

• It is the telling  of the story that matters. Not the story.
• The Beatles: we can make a nursery rhyme a top ten hit.

• When considering non-linear narrative, how important is Ryan’s sixth criteria for identifying narrative; the notion of ‘closure’?
• Closure links to cause and effect
• In Korsakow we can have an end SNU, but if we are working with non-linear narrative then there really shouldn’t be an ending
• We can get non-linear films which still imply a start, middle and end structure
• The person making the work may want to create their own sense of closure by providing an ending
• Closure is essentially a fundamentally idea to ending. Only when somethings ends do we understand something. When we get the ending, we can look back through what we have seen and try to understand why certain things happen
• Films can break in Korsakow 2 thirds through, and we should be able to assume that it is the end
• Personally, I don’t think I would like no closure in a K film. I think it would feel undone and it is almost as if you can hand in what ever you have done up to that point and you can get away with saying ‘I didn’t want an ending’.
• The audience controls and defines when closure happens depending on what we put in our work.

Questions from Symposium 03

1. Whey has reality TV become so popular? Why is it that we are so interested in seeing ‘real’ lives on TB as well as stories?

• we are voyeuristic
• we like to witness a struggle
• media has become so hybridized that we are going to do our heads in if we think it is going to stay the same
• Big Brother – combination of all different types of media: SMS texting, websites, television etc
• Reality TV is a hybrid… computer games meet television. Most reality TV shows are a quest.
• We live and die by our constraints

2. Have we lost Habermas’ notion of the ‘public sphere’ with the widespread use of mobile technologies?

• Conversations on trains aren’t private
• Authenticity
• The desire to see always trumps the technical quality. If we want the content, we want to see it.
• We move through public spaces listening to our own individual soundtracks
• The use of ‘i’ in Apple is individualized. It has changed the idea of the public space
• Amateur aesthetic… out of focus shots… skewered angles = has shaped some sort of cinema in a way (mock-umentary).

3. Is there a chance that the accessibility of media nowadays ruins film making instead of liberating it from the old?

• If you know how to film and you know good composition, it shouldn’t matter if you’re filming on your phone or the best camera ever, you should still be able to create a good shot. It shouldn’t ruin film making.

DIDN’T GET TO THE REST OF THE QUESTIONS BUT WE MIGHT GET HIT BY A BUS TONIGHT AND DIE.

4. Most of the content uploaded online is never, or rarely, viewed, and receives little recognition. How effective are online sharing sites such as YouTube as a distribution network?

5. What does Sorenssen mean by the ‘democratic potential of these media? How can media be democratised?

6. What is the key factor for emerging media to become as monetised or popular in that it will become the norm for all society? What is its appeal?

7. Why does the corporate dollar constantly contribute to the swaying of new media towards the ‘elite’?

8. Why does Astruc matter to interactive documentary?

9. What does Sorenssen mean by partial public spheres? How does the public sphere fall victim to a dominating media structure?