In my final development post for this assignment (and subject :'( ) I will write about both weeks 11 and 12 because nothing major happened in just one week.
Week 11 began on a lonely note as I was the only one from the group in class. I discussed our project with Hannah and we began to digress about patterns of participating in online platforms, and how much we upload ourselves. I think its interesting because over the past year (as this topic was also relevant in my previous studio) I have ranted quite a bit about how the internet is such a lawless land in terms of regulation (in Australia at least), in that anyone can put anything on the internet, and that has resulted in an unfathomable abyss of content. However… I so rarely contribute to the abyss myself! Hannah said that maybe people are slowing down on putting content on the internet because the more there is, the harder it is to find and the more difficult it is to give it significant meaning (in a sea of almost identical content).
But I really don’t think people are slowing down. I know multiple people who just recently started YouTube vlogging, despite my own reaction of Who On Earth Cares? But genuinely, I am only seeing an increase in uploaded content, but in terms of myself, I rarely upload content. I am a constant lurker, engaging with content by liking, but the only comments I make are tagging my friends, and I almost never upload my own content (to facebook or youtube for example).
The most frequent type of content I contribute to the abyss is what I would call useful but simple content- namely reviews. I am a huge internet review reader- of cultural products (films, books, etc), of restaurants, of nail salons, of recipes, of prescription skin care, of clothes, you name it! If its a product I am paying money for I will find a review for it before buying, and if I have had a particularly successful or unsuccessful experience, you can bet the internet will hear about it.
Quite a digression indeed, but it is actually relevant to our project. We have spent the last few weeks working out what our Crash Course Facebook page will be used for. I came to realise if I ~experienced~ our project (without knowing what it was), I would be happy to ‘like’ the Facebook page, and like posts it shares, but I would almost never post on the page myself. Now, this can’t be generalised to the rest of the internet world, but it does show that you cannot force people to contribute or even participate, and you shouldn’t let yourself rely on it.
For this reason, the Facebook page will exist as a promotional page for the project, and also a place for discussion about travel, but the discussion will be mainly facilitated by the page, i.e. we will not rely on people to generate conversation. In our class feedback session, someone suggested having a monthly theme (about travel and the like) on the facebook page, that we post about and users can also engage with (if they wish). I really like this idea as it does not rely on contribution but also allows for user-contribution and two-way communication.
My strong realisation that you cannot force people to contribute also came around due to my difficulties in getting my friends to contribute to the project after I asked them specifically. I totally understand the situation- someone asks you to do something which you aren’t invested in, you’re happy to do it but forget about it because it is not a priority and you have to make the effort yourself to complete the task. It took many messages reminding my friends to do it, and even then they were apprehensive about recording their voice. For this reason, I have concluded these projects either need to clearly offer something to contributors, or the content should be collected directly by the producers, i.e. vox pops where people have to answer on the spot.
Luckily by now, we have actually increased our content numbers a lot. It definitely wasn’t as much as we had initially wanted, but it still looks really good. As of right now, we have 31 markers, and a range of both sound/image and text. The great thing about this project is that it will never end (as I have mentioned previously). Sure, people might stop contributing, but the fact that people will always be able to contribute means it is still an evolving project. In an ideal world, it would just keep expanding. But I’m still quite happy with how far we’ve gotten in this time.