From the feedback that Louise gave us in our workshop on Wednesday about our audio essay I am feeling pretty positive moving forward in constructing our video essay. I think what is most effective about our audio essay is that it is well-structured and textured, while not being overly-complicated or convoluted. This is something that I could have improved upon in previous pieces of work so the ability to integrate a wider variety of tenures and material into the piece without making it too “busy” was a key point of focus and attention.
Going forward into the next stage of planning for our video essay, the source (a prescribed reading for Week 11), Culture and Technology, was really insightful in informing the angle that our group is taking on the “negative effects of our social media inundated culture.” The source had a large volume of perspectives on the implications for our society that technology has had, especially as it’s production and development continues so rapidly. Assisting my understanding in how culture and technology intertwine with one another in our contemporary age, was the source’s explaining of the origins of technology and how it has changed so rapidly over time.
In the context of the research process required our video essay, however, this source was far too broad and provided far too many perspectives on the implications of technology. Because of the time constraints surrounding our video essay, our group needs to identify and execute a clear and specific angle on the effects of our media culture.
This is unfortunate because, initially, I wanted to argue that the effects our engagement with social media depend on how you use the networks. Ideally this would be the best position to take, because it demonstrates our group going beyond a one-dimensional approach to generalise all social media consumption as “good” or “bad.” Anecdotal and academic evidence exists to illustrate the positive correlation between “active” Facebook usage (ie. posting or using the forum to communicate with other members) and “passive” usage (whereby you consume more content than you contribute). This is a pretty important distinction to make and would have been an interesting avenue to explore in a video essay. It’s also a position that the reading supported, lending multiple perspectives on the topic at hand.
However, because of the strict time frame in which we need to produce our video essay I really don’t think that there’s scope to take this sort of an approach and therefore that we need to focus on either a positive or negative implication. So instead our group is taking the position that social media networks facilitating our ability to become constantly connected has created a sub-culture that is, in effect, more disconnected than ever. As per the previous angles that we considered taking, the reading from Week 11 also alluded to this conclusion which was further supported by bulk research that had previously undertaken.
