Assignment 1- Annotated Bibliography
Name: Natalie Aarons s3601713

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration – https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/support-and-facilities/student-support/equitable-learning-services

Blog reflections

These blog entry titles would have links to each weekly post in your blog.

WEEK 1: Introduction
WEEK 2: Affordances
WEEK 3: Networks 
WEEK 4: New Media and Social Media 

Annotated Bibliography

Use consistent RMIT Harvard referencing – http://www.lib.rmit.edu.au/easy-cite/

Selected Text 1 – Affordances (word count 500)

Norman, D 1999, ‘Affordance, conventions and design (Part 2)’, Nielsen Norman Group, viewed 29 March 2019, http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordance_conv.html

In this extract taken from the May 1999 Issue, “Interactions”, author Donald Norman offers a rather colloquial discussion juxtaposed to his scholarly work, pinpointing the original purpose of writing his publication “The Psychology of Everyday Things”. In the article Norman compiles the fundamental points he wants his audience to gage with, these include: the origin of affordances, perceived affordances and constraints and conventions. Throughout the article Norman appraises his original novel and questions the feedback it has made since its publication. Concerned with how affordances and perceived affordances are received by his readers, Norman wants them to see how different they are. At the conclusion of the article Norman summarises his key points in order for readers to have full understanding of his work.

During the course of the article Norman explains the challenge to understanding the concept affordances and informs readers that it was originally difficult for him to grasp as well. In discussing affordances, perceived affordances, constraints and conventions Norman is able to touch on the misinterpretations related to these concepts. Through this he intends to re-educate the reader prompting them to understand the original meaning and purpose of them. Norman utilises the example of “screen-based interfaces” throughout his article, this consistency aids clarity for readers and helps to keep Norman’s concepts concise. Norman challenges “graphical and industrial designers”, on how they have embraced his ideas and “not always with complete understanding”, He works to help designers understand the “underlying conceptual model” of design. Consciously aware of the confusion his original publication caused, Norman attempts to revise his concepts within the article, making it clearer for designers to understand the notion of affordances and its difference to perceived affordances. Whilst Norman takes blame for the misconception of his ideas he also makes a point that his work is the most fundamental. For those finding it difficult to grasp the notion of affordances, more research would need to be needed to comprehend the brief nature of this article.

As a student studying networked media, in focus how the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network; this article assisted my comprehension of the complexity of affordances and was a well matched article for my particular area of study. Norman concentrated on the example of “touch screen” and ‘interface” appliances throughout his text, this example relates directly to the prompt of the course Networked Media which focuses on Instagram, thus this text did well in aiding my understanding of the affordances of Instagram. Instagram is social media service which works only on devices with screens thus making his examples within the text perfect to analyse in terms of my own studies. However, whilst this article does well examining the notions of affordances in a succinct way, it does not offer enough explanation to enable an adequate understanding of affordances for someone new to such a complicated concept.

Selected Text 2 – Networks (word count 570)

Niederer, S 2018, Networked images: visual methodologies for the digital age. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam. (read pp.1-20)

This text authored by Dr. Sabine Niederer is a publication by the programme ‘Visual Methodologies Collective’, a group of researchers devoted to the study of visual elements for applied and cumulative analysis. The programme suggests in this text that online images become “networked” when users like, share, comment, tag and suggests other platforms. Subsequently, meaning that researchers must consider the various ways of “demarcating content that go beyond the single image and take into account the entire network to related content, actors, platforms and websites that surrounds that content and its images”. Throughout the text the core idea Niederer focuses on is visual methodologies for the digital age, this giving readers an understanding of visuals online how they are networked what they mean. Furthermore, Niederer explains that the first chapter of the work focuses on “research practices that treat images as data and moves on to propose those that treat images as content”. To discuss this idea Niederer divides the Chapter into two concepts; Images as data and Images as content.

In the first portion of this chapter labelled “Images as Data”, Niederer focuses on a 2007 lecture by Manovich, he provoked media and art theory/theorists to begin looking at the scale of contemporary culture and use this to collect, display and analyse images. By doing this he speculated that “software tools could be developed based on theoretical concepts rather than on market needs”. Through touching on this case Neiderer suggests to readers that collecting data out of these images and creating information from them would create a major research opportunity to gage genres and establish patterns in comparing images over time and in different countries. Niederer then goes beyond this in her work and adds her own approach “network content analysis”. She introduces this concept to her readers in order to develop tools than can more effectively “adapt to the specificities of a particular platform or engine and how they network”. She further suggests to her readers that this approach asks different questions than before. In the second part to her chapter Neiderer explores the concept of “images as content”; here she outlines that traditionally content analysis used existing information. She explores the idea that new digital media content however can be designed online and bears new opportunity for navigation and communication. Neiderer utilises the example of wikipedia, as the site never allows for its articles to be “un-networked”. Exclusive to wikipedia is its public article editing, thus lending to the notion that all pieces in the site guide readers to other texts or topics that are related.

As a reader the article was fast paced and sometimes hard to follow, the way Neiderer jumps from one example to another without delving so deep into her own thoughts made it hard to understand the concept networks in its entirety. Although there was limitations in regards to her own option in the work the author works to effectively explain the concept visual methodologies for the digital age. Niederer conclusively had a great amount of research on her academic findings and backed it up with many case studies. In regards to approaching my analysis of Instagram and understanding how it authors, distributes and publishes content, this text was efficient as I gained an understanding on images being used to collate data and further was able to gage a comprehension of images as content and the was they are networked.

Selected Text 3- Social Media (word count 580)

Siapera, E. 2013, Understanding New Media. SAGE Publications, London (Section:1-16).

This publication “Understanding New Media”, authored by Eugenia Siapera targets the phrase “new media’ and aims to address its meaning. Siapera does this by going further than just pointing out its attributes, instead discussing what the term embodies in the world. Throughout the chapter the core purpose of the text is distinctly defined as it always comes back to the objective; in order to understand new media it is imperative to understand society. From the very start of the text these points are clearly outlined to summarise for the reader, these being; “to understand the relevant terminology,” grasp the “different approaches to the study of new media”, further to “critically apprehend the relationship between technology, new media and society” and finally learn the ‘main positions of important theorists”. Siapera intends to make it simple for her readers by always reiterating that new media is linked to society, moreover that new media evolves with the progression of humanity. It is clear to readers that the purpose of Siapera’s publication is to introduce the idea of new media. During the chapter a large portion of her work is dedicated to four media theorists; Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler, Bernard Stiegler and Manuel Castells. These theorists bring to light their differing views on the concept of new media. Thus the article gives readers an understanding that there are different and sometimes conflicting rationals that can be made on the the theory of new media.

Throughout the publication Siapera works to define the term new media and does this through consistently offering various approaches of new media, either discussing terminology or the theorists. Siapera aims to provide a rationale for why the word “new” is the best word to study, rather than just calling it digital or online media. Her argument for this is that new media is a more strategic term for studying all the different types of media because it allows people to look beyond the narrow market of online and digital media. In other words it enables a broader study of the concept. Siapera proposes in her publication that new media is a more complex study of the intersection of technology and society. By also comparing the terms “online” and “digital”, the author constructs a plausible case as to why new media is defined as “new”.  In the next section of the publication Siapera utilises a similar approach in analysing new media by looking at and including the four theorists. Siapera’s consideration and observation of each theorist welcomes readers to acknowledge the various approaches in discussing new media and its connection to society. Although some of the theories oppose each other Siapera does not disregard them, suggesting to readers that each point made by the theorists are credible. For readers this can be seen as a constraint of this text as it does not conclude on one particular point, making it hard for readers to digest or come to an understanding of the concept themselves with so many different ways of looking at the concept.

In regards to the course prompt; to grasp Instagram as a social media platform its important to first understand new media. This publication has lots of information and adds well to my own understanding. The article adequately discusses how new media is linked to society and the media progression within society, as this is the point of the article. The only limitation of this work is that it can be confusing with so many views to digest.