With the industry rapidly evolving it is imperative to recognize that a lot of what a future media professional learns today may be outdated information within 6 months. As content producers we must practice applied knowing and learn through doing; constantly adapting our skills as technology develops. In the last decade content production and distribution has changed immensely. For instance, we now live in a world where there is instantaneous movement of information, making it readily available to all. This is thanks to networks.

‘Networks have emerged as the dominant organisational structures of our time’ (Pegrum, 2010), for this reason it’s vital to be network literate, especially for media professionals. Retaining network literacy is a continuous process of becoming comfortable with different online tools. By the same token, if I am to be network literate I must constantly adapt and update my online skills in order to contend with the progression of technology and software. Notably, it’s recommended to join an online community in order to learn about accounts, privacy protection, network etiquette, online reputation, protecting intellectual property and communication within the chosen network.  Personally, the creation and upkeep of my mediafactory blog has educated me on these points. Provided that I continue to join and operate in online communities, why do I need to gain network literacy? Obtaining such literacy would permit me to operate in professional networks of my interest, gain information quickly, troubleshoot for technical issues, and evaluate the credibility of online sources. Most importantly, I am able to create my own online environment as well as share and teach. ‘Network Literacies are marked by your participation’ (Adrian, 2007) therefore it’s important that I continue to develop my through involvement with online communities.

A recently new element of networked media that is expanding rapidly is the method of collaboratively generating and translating tags to annotate and categorise online content. This folksonomy is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing or social tagging. Tagging services are useful as they allow me to ‘associate freely determined keywords (called tags) with a particular resource’. (Sinclair and Cardew-Hall, 2008). The visual element of such folksonomy is a written tag. I use already use these on a daily basis. For instance, when I upload a photo on Instagram I will tag it appropriately to categorise it, as a result of this users can search for that tag and see my photo. In addition, through RSS tags can have functions as when tag a photo #mediafactory will automatically post to my blog. Identically, I tag the video content I upload to YouTube or Vimeo, assisting users to find my creations. To assist me in tagging my videos efficient I discovered this video on Youtube which discusses how to tag effectively.

It’s important to realise that tagging my content will not directly affect the ranking of my videos.Due to increasing popularity, I will continue to use this social indexing in the future to categorise my uploaded content.

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is not a new technology. However, instead of being replaced by a completely different feed standard it will continue to be built upon. RSS will be ‘the glue to tie together publisher and consumer’. (Moreno, 2013). Simply RSS is a ‘format for delivering regularly changing web content’ (Whatisrss.com, 2014). By using RSS I am easily informed as I automatically retrieve the latest web content from sites I have interest in. Not to mention it saves time which in the industry equals money. Furthermore, I will ensure my own privacy as I will not have to resort to joining sites e-mailing lists. By having RSS on my blog XML code makes it possible for readers to subscribe to my content. That is to say, they do not have to visit the blog itself to receive the content.

Obviously, I would only ever subscribe to sites and information sources that are of value. These are known as trust networks.  The architecture of knowledge production and distribution online relies on subscribing to sources that you regard a valid or legitimate (Miles, 2007).

The distribution of media has changed immensely over the last decade with the internet and mobile devices taking over. Does the change of distribution result in change of the media itself? As a result of the modern distribution system, content can be uploaded and readily accessible to all. As a matter of fact, as an aspiring film maker I could create a short video and upload it for all to see on the same day. Having the ability to share my creations online almost instantly is useful for my future career.

Mediums of the media are regularly transforming, with this in mind, does the medium change the message? McLuhan claimed that ‘the medium is the message. It can change the experience of a specific media. To put it another way, a music fan will nearly always prefer to hear their favourite song live rather than on a recording. If it was recording, many prefer to listen to a vinyl LP then a CD. The distribution media affects the listener not only from the recorded content but by ‘the properties of the medium itself’ (Hasson et al., 2008).

Henceforth, when I create films in the future I must consider the form the distributed media will take. It’s important to realise that an increasingly large amount of people watch screen media on their mobile devices. This means that I can reach people all over the world through the internet by sharing my content online. I will continue to upload videos on YouTube and share them on my blog, Facebook and other online mediums. As a result they are not going to get the same experience if they were for instance viewing a film at the cinema. Personally, watching a film at the cinemas nearly always increases my experience. On the other hand, mobile devices, computers and home theatres are increasingly more popular and constantly increasing in video quality. These low cost video players are advantageous for an amateur media creator like myself, as my shared work can be experienced in high quality by a large audience.

Interestingly, I would suggest that the re-purposing, reproduction and reuse of content is becoming more common than original content production. One simply has to take a look at content on YouTube. There are millions of video’s which spoof, commentate or remix already uploaded content. This Reuse and re purposing is even more common on social media. For instance, when I could not think of something original to write on my blog I would resort to the reuse of content. I would share a video that I had previously created or expand on a Facebook post I had published. By re-purposing my content through various mediums it allows the audience to see the same things in different ways . By reusing old idea’s I can fuel new ones, with doing less overall. ‘Everyone’s a marketer these days’ (Liendgens, in Outbrain 2014) therefore its important for me to collaborate with re-purposing. On my mediafactory blog I would collaborate with other bloggers with sharing each others work as well as commenting on it. This is a great way to get my work seen by more people.

Throughout the year I have contributed to online communities, specifically my blog, and as a result I have increased my network literacy.  I plan to continue my participation in such online activity in the future as to access knowledge, learn through doing and to establish myself as a media professional. I must constantly adapt my skills as new online tools are created. In spite of video production being my main career goal I must continue to work with online networks and social media with the intention of being able to display my content to the public.

How will the online media industry evolve next? I don’t know but I will adapt accordingly.

 

References

Eves, D. (2014). How to Properly Tag you YouTube Videos. [image] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGZOm_dCgMg [Accessed 24 Oct. 2014].

Guides, B. and Events, N. (2014). Blogging and RSS — The “What’s It?” and “How To” of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators. [online] Infotoday.com. Available at: http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan04/richardson.shtml [Accessed 24 Oct. 2014].

Hasson, U., Furman, O., Clark, D., Dudai, Y. and Davachi, L. (2008). Enhanced Intersubject Correlations during Movie Viewing Correlate with Successful Episodic Encoding. Neuron, [online] 57(3), pp.452-462. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2007.12.009 [Accessed 24 Oct. 2014].

Miles, A. (2007). Network literacy: The new path to knowledge. Screen Education, (45), p.24.

Moreno, J. (2014). The Future of RSS. [Blog] Mea Vita: Carpe Diem. Available at: http://blog.joemoreno.com/2013/03/RSS-Future.html [Accessed 24 Oct. 2014].

Outbrain, (2014). 23 Tools for Repurposing Content. [online] Available at: http://www.outbrain.com/blog/2014/07/23-tools-for-repurposing-content.html [Accessed 24 Oct. 2014].

Pegrum, M. (2010). ” I Link, Therefore I Am”: Network Literacy as a Core Digital Literacy. E-learning and Digital Media, 7(4), pp.346–354.

Sharp Sight Centre, (2014). Watching movies on a mobile device. [image] Available at: http://www.sharpsight.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/watching-movies-on-mobile-phones.jpg [Accessed 24 Oct. 2014].

Sinclair, J. and Cardew-Hall, M. (2008). The folksonomy tag cloud: when is it useful?. Journal of Information Science, 34(1), pp.15–29.

Social Business News, (2013). Online Community. [image] Available at: http://www.socialbusinessnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Community.jpg [Accessed 24 Oct. 2014].

Whatisrss.com, (2014). What Is RSS? RSS Explained – www.WhatIsRSS.com. [online] Available at: http://www.whatisrss.com/ [Accessed 24 Oct. 2014].