Week 1: Network Media Blog
I was excited when I found out we would be completing weekly blog posts as part of the module for Networked Media. I enjoy reading other peoples travel and lifestyle blogs as it is a way to inspire a whole audience and personally, they inspired me to come and study abroad here in Melbourne! Reading inspirational texts and nice blogs positively impacts my mood and i hope my blogs will do the same for you! Welcome to my blog and my first post for Week 1!
The lecture focused on some key terms in reference to the prompt we will be focusing on.
How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?
Authoring can be shared with someone, making the content a multiple authored piece of work. In relation to the social networking service Instagram, authoring involves creating photo and video content to share to your followers, or whoever wants to see your posts. The process behind authoring involves using existing software on a mobile device to record a photographic image or video imagery. Then there is an additional, optional service to edit your content using Instagram’s own filters and features provided.
On Instagram, the author prepares the photo or video for upload to the platform via publishing. They may choose to include a location, tag other accounts, hashtags, use emojis and write a small descriptive caption text to their post. However, the lines between publication and distribution become blurred as they run parallel. For example, authors have the option to edit their posts even after publishing. This means they can tag accounts, update and edit their caption text, include a location and even can archive/delete their post.
Being a user myself, i understand that there is a complexity to using it and once you know how to work it, it becomes second nature. As mentioned in the lecture, a smooth accessible process is included in the publishing process as authors have the option to share their posts across other social media platforms, making this function an important part of their experience as it makes it very easy for users to distribute their content widely, for example through Facebook.
Software literacy and update software daily becomes something we forget happens behind the scenes of these demanded apps. It’s become very influential in user’s daily lives without them even knowing or understanding it. I believe software affects what we do and how we do it, with it influencing out critical thinking of the world, creating psychological affects on us unknowingly. This shows how media, specifically software media can be used to create so much power and influence generations, which can be problematic, as seen in election/political campaigns across Western societies i.e. Brexit and Trump. As Manovich states in his book,
“to understand media today we need to understand media software…” (Manovich, 2011, p. 1).
For example, we need to understand how interfaces work and/or the most accessible way to operate an application.
Additionally, the reading of Blogs in Media Education by Adrian Mills provided an insightful view on highlighting the importance of blogs. In a modern, digital age, where blogging is considered less important as other digital platforms, the relevance of it still stands for education. It provides students with a smooth platform to learn in/from and our engagement is as important as it once was when blogging started.
References
Khoo E, Hight C, Torrens R, Cowie B. (2017) ‘Introduction: Software and other Literacies’ in Software Literacy: Education and Beyond. Springer, Singapore. (pp.1-12).
Miles, Adrian. (2006) Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning. Australian Screen Ed 41: 66–9. Print.