Month: March 2019

#4 New media

We often hear people talk about new media and how they have affected our way of living and become an important part of everyday life. But what is “new media”? I find that the term is very vague and is interpreted very differently by different people. For how long can media be new? And what about in twenty years? Will new media be old media then?

I think that Siapera is very right that terminology is highly important. I also agree that the terms “online media” and “digital media” are perhaps too excluding and literal. But if terminology is so important why has Siapera chosen such an indefinite word to describe it? My point is that if someone talks about “new media” I will not be able to distinguish if it is Siapera’s definition or just a common saying. However, by using the term “new” Siapera emphasises her most important characteristic – that new media is always evolving. I can’t help but wonder; why not just call them “evolving media” instead? Then again, perhaps this leads to the same issues as the term “new” – first of all that it can be applied to everything and secondly: isn’t all media evolving? I think this exemplifies just how difficult it is to define “new” media.

Because it is so hard to create a suitable definition, I like the way that Hinton & Hjorth views the terms web 1.0 and 2.0 as a practice and not a technology. By doing this they also define web by how it is actually used – and not just which practices it affords. I like this way of thinking about it because it puts the users and their behaviour in focus instead of the technology. By looking at the changed behaviour and practice of people’s media usage we also often see that just because a media affords specific technological options we often don not make use of them all.

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The Capitol // Assignment 1

What is your interpretation of the term ‘oral history’?

I understand oral history as a research method that collects, documents and interprets testimonies and memories through oral interviews. It is about documenting history retrospect. The advantages of oral history are that it can give us a different and more personal perspective on historic events. By actually listening to real, individual people and not only looking at historic documents you get a more nuanced look into history.
But when utilizing oral history there are many things to be aware of. Something that Shopes mentions in ‘What Is Oral History?’ from 2002 is that it is important to consider the terms reliability and veracity when engaging with oral history (p. 2). In my opinion these terms can be very hard to judge when it comes to oral history. If more people confirm the same story you can with some certainty rely on it. But what about the personal stories? Isn’t it the whole point to get their individual story as they experienced it?

The interviewer plays a big part in the outcome of the interview that are conducted and eventually considered as oral history. Shopes claims that “There is no doubt that the single most important factor in the constitution of an interview is the questions posed by the interviewer” (p. 8) which underlines the great influence the interviewer has on the output of the interview. Therefore, the interviewer should ask open and unbiased questions which allows the narrator to tell their version of the truth. But this is not as easy as it sounds. Both the interviewer as well as the narrator’s knowledge and statements derive from their prior experiences and are influenced by their respective interests. Furthermore, the interview will always be influenced by the context and the environment it is conducted within. This I think is very imported to know. Therefore, you should always be critical toward the source.
This understanding goes hand in hand with Shopes’ understanding of oral history interviews as texts that can be interpreted (Shopes, 2014, p. 260). I also think the text/interview should be the center of the work and the theory around that as support – and not the other way around.

What examples of oral history do you find inspirational? Explain why they inspire you.
I recently watched the docuseries “Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle” from 2018. It is about the priest Jim Jones who founded the People’s Temple in 1955, a church or sect that built on a mixture of Marxism and Christianity. In the mid-1970’s the sect moved into Guyana’s jungle to create a paradise on land, the agricultural community of Jonestown. But it wasn’t a utopia. In November 1978, 900 members committed collective suicide. The series investigates the tragedy by interviewing survivors and former members of the sect. What I noticed while watching it was that they interviewed a lot of different people who in each had their own individual story to tell. I thought that was very interesting how the documentary let all of them tell their individual story while simultaneously telling the story about the Jonestown massacre. It was very inspiring how these interviewees viewed the event in retrospect and how they you could see that they have had a lot of time to reflect on the events. Even though this documentary is about a tragic part of history, I still find inspiration in the way it lets the interviewees tell their own story and how these are put together to see the event in a bigger picture. I imagine the same method can be used to dig deeper into the past of the Capitol Theatre.

What I hope to uncover about the Capitol Theatre is both small and big stories told by ordinary people. As Linda Shopes emphasizes, these ordinary people are a great source when it comes to oral history. For me, it is not necessarily about finding facts about a particular event, but more about finding out the feelings and memories associated with the Capitol.

Another thing from “Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle” that inspired me was the how the spoken word and the archive pictures and videos worked so well together in telling the story. What I especially found interesting about this was the big focus on using photos if the interviewees. That underlined that it was their stories being told.

How will your own work in this studio be informed by your understandings of oral history and the examples mentioned above?
In my understanding of oral history, I’d like to emphasize that what I find most important about the research method is that it allows the interviewees to tell their own version of the story. This aspect I find greatly important and I think that is why documentaries can be very interesting – because they often offer to view the case from different perspectives. I hope we can do the same in our project regarding to the Capitol Theatre. Even though I hope that we can interview people who have experienced the theatre in the olden days I still think that interesting interviews can come out of talking to people who have not witnessed the theatre, but instead have some kind of expert knowledge about it. It could for example be interesting to talk to an expert of architecture and hear their perspective on the Capitol’s architectural features and Marion Mahony Griffins’ influence of it.

Even though my example of oral history is about a completely different and much darker topic, I still find inspiration in the way the documentary utilizes interviews and oral history to tell a story. I will attempt to interview the narrators in a such way and environment that they feel free and comfortable telling their very own version of the story. I will also try get make an ask questions that makes the narrator talk about the atmosphere of the Capitol theatre, so that the audience will be able to imagine the old Capitol as vividly as possible. By using photos, videos and perhaps background music I hope we will be able to underline the atmosphere the narrators will describe in the interviews.

Literature
Shopes, L. (2002). “What Is Oral History?” In Making Sense of Oral History (pp. 1-18). History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web.

Shopes, L. (2014). ““Insights and Oversights”: Reflections on the Documentary Tradition and the Theoretical Turn in Oral History.” Oral History Review (vol. 41 no. 2), pp. 257-268.

Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle (2018) [Documentary]. https://www.amc.com/shows/jonestown-terror-in-the-jungle/full-episodes

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#3 Affordances

The term ‘affordances’ seems like a simple concept. It explains what you literally and physically do with an object. It explains the object’s physically possible functionalities. In our everyday life we do not usually wonder about the affordances of different objects because most things nowadays are designed in a way that we intuitively know what to do with them. The other day I went to buy a chain lock for my new bicycle. There are probably hundreds of different kinds of chain locks but I immediately recognized it and was able to use it straight away. If I wanted to, I could have used it as a necklace to spice up my outfit. But I didn’t – because I knew it wasn’t meant for that. This exemplifies the term perceived affordances. Perceived affordances are about what the object signals you should to do with it. How it is supposed to be used. To understand these perceived affordances, it is required that you have a certain frame of understanding.

When discussing social medias such as Instagram it becomes more difficult to talk about affordances as these becomes metaphorical. In class we had an interesting discussion about why Instagram is so popular compared to other photo sharing app’s and websites. Looking at Instagram’s technical affordances, they allow you to shoot, edit and publish one or more photos. But almost everybody takes photos with their camera app and not directly through Instagram. Many also use different apps for editing. But why is that? I think it has a lot to do with the habits and norms. A lot of times when you take a photo, you do not immediately post it to Instagram. That could be a big factor here. But when making an Instagram story you would be more likely to actually shoot the photo or video through the app. Perhaps this is because there are different expectations and norms for posts compared to stories. A post is supposed to polished, aesthetic and finished off with a witty, thoughtful or descriptive caption. A story shows what you are doing at this instant and is not expected to be as well thought out as a post. There is a big difference between these two though – one is permanent and the other will disappear after 24 hours.
What I think is interesting here is that you can analyze different features of Instagram in regard to affordances and see how almost the same affordances can have two different outcomes when it comes to how we use them.

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#2 Networks

When the American military and universities developed what we now know as the internet, they probably didn’t realize just how much impact this invention would come to have. By connecting a few computers into a network, they laid the groundwork of the most important invention of the 20th century. But in the beginning, the internet was not for everybody. We should all give a big thanks to Tim Berners-Lee, who not only invented the World Wide Web, but also chose to make it free for the public to use. The internet would not be the same without web.

The term “network” can be interpreted in many ways and it is a key word when discussing internet, web and social media. A network involves a kind of interconnectedness between different elements. When talking about the internet, network refers to a physical network, connecting multiple computers to minimize the risk of crashes as well as sharing information. Via the web, networks became more personalized with the popularity of social sites like MySpace, where you could create your own profile and promote yourself through it as well as connecting with other people e.g. through mutual interests. These social networks were wildly popular in the early 2000’s and they still are. Today we just call them social media. One big thing that has changed since MySpace’s days of glory is that everybody has smartphones now a days. As some told me recently: “why are they called smartphones when they only make us more stupid?”. I would argue that smartphones has had a great impact on web 2.0 and especially in relation to social media, which many use mainly on their smartphone.

Although the web seems open and free for most people to use we are now experiencing a much bigger focus on the fact that we are giving out a lot of data about ourselves when using the web. Web giants like Google and Facebook may very well know more about you than you think. They know where you live, what music you like, your political orientation and so much more. As users, we might not pay to use the sites with money, but we sure do pay with our data. But is that really so bad? Sure, they sell our data to third parties, but that means we get a customized experience when we use Google and Facebook. All search results, advertisements and posts are directed to you – you see what you want to se. Or do you?
It’s a known fact, that we surround ourselves with people, who are similar to us. Facebook and Google are trying to do the same with the material they show us. In my opinion this is very dangerous. By only being shown what you already like or agree with, you will never be challenged on your opinions or seeing things from a different perspective. What Google and Facebook contributes to is a kind of echo-chamber, where you are always supported in your ways and opinions. The algorithms of Google and Facebook has taken over the choices of what we should see – a choice that was previously made by first of all ourselves but also e.g. journalists when deciding what stories to bring in the newspaper. It is hard to say just how much influence these algorithms have but thinking about them in context to the postfactual society where fake news and radical opinions are becoming a norm they could potentially become a democratic challenge.

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The Capitol // Assessment 0

The relaunch of the Capitol Theatre has created a great chance for us to dive into the history of the iconic theatre and the stories of the people affected by it.

One of my ideas for the oral history project is to compare the theatres original use and purpose in the 1920’s to its purpose nowadays. I think we will find big differences here. From the original theatre that included a lounge just for men to drink whiskey and smoke cigars, to the open, inclusive environment it is going to be when relaunched. By doing a comparison, we can tell a lot about the society and how it has evolved. Practically, this would be done by interviewing different people, who in some ways has a knowledge about this. It could be a historic expert, a person who has visited or worked the theatre in ‘the olden days’ or some of the people in charge of the relaunch.

By using interviews, we can learn more about the Capitol Theatre through oral history. Oral history can be both small and big stories, but something very important, I think, is that it is told by an individual, who is telling their version of the story. Even though oral history should probably be about factual events, it does not have to be objective. By people telling their subjective story, we can get a more complex look into history.

Our visit to Screenworld taught me that there are a lot of different and creative ways to present history to an audience – something I will try get inspired by especially when creating material for the launch. When visiting the Capitol Theatre I was particularly interested in the architecture and the different spaces of the theatre and their respective purposes – and how it has changed.

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#1 Blog vs. Instagram

As a media student, I have learned that most media are just a variation or enhancement of already existing media types or platforms. Theatre becomes cinema. Radio turns into television. This happens almost always because of the technological development. In that way, the technology can change our needs and habits. But some of these types of media stay relevant – and why is that? I believe it has a lot to do with the uses and gratifications of the people. Different medias serve different purposes.
All of these thoughts came from a discussion in class about the differences between blogs and social media platforms like Instagram. It is commonly believed that social media descend from blogs, which I agree with. Although there are great differences too. I thought. Because thinking about it, maybe the difference is not that big after all.

Niederer claims that images are changing from being used as data to being used as content – this I will argue is also the case with blogs Instagram and. Where the blogs main ingredient is the creative, well written text the images often functions as visual support. The opposite goes for Instagram. Here the image is indisputably the most important part of the post, as many of the followers do not even read the caption – and very few would click on the “show more”-button if a user has dared to write that much.

Reading about Coralie Vogelaar’s installation “Gaze Plots” made me think about what our eyes focus on when looking at Instagram compared to blogs. I think there is a big difference. On Instagram we tend to focus in the esthetically beautiful and polished look. We use Instagram to please the eye, to entertain us and to get inspired. When reading blogs, there is a greater tendency to immerse ourselves more into the written. Blogs can give us a deeper understanding or another perspective on different topics and make us wonder about everything from veganism to architecture.

 

// Laura

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