What is Social Media?
To put it simply, social media platforms were ultimately created in order to establish a form of community within the broad and crazy network that is the Internet. As Jan Kietzmann states, “Traditionally consumers used the Internet to simply expend content: they read it, they watched it, and they used it to buy products and services” (Kietzmann et al, 2011, pg. 241). Upon the invention of social media, individuals can now interact, create, share and discuss content. News sites can hear from their viewers; brands can interact more closely with consumers. Social media has given all of us a voice without having to show our face. For us Australians, being on these platforms is primarily for catching up with friends and family. To be exact that’s 82.6% of us, according to the 2020 Social Media Sensis report. This is why Facebook is so important and is still incredibly popular, even in this day and age. Although younger generations have switched to sites such as Tik Tok which is founded on content creation, older generations care more for staying connected to loved ones. 89.6% of respondents between 40-64 years old claimed they used Facebook compared to other social media networks. However, social media is no longer fundamentally about creating a community.
Overtime, businesses and brands have discovered the power that social media holds in terms of advertising opportunity and brand movement. Social media “influencers” now exist and Facebook earns billions of dollars a year on advertising revenue. Facebook acknowledges that they have a strong older demographic and uses this to their advantage. 83.3% of older respondents in the Sensis report claimed they follow a brand or business on Facebook, leaving them very impressionable to advertising. For younger generations, social media platforms such as Instagram now incorporate advertising. Influencers are extremely popular on this page where brands use individuals with a high following to promote their products or services. Serra Celebi from Yasar University produced a study in 2015 which involved understanding motives that affected attitudes towards advertising on Facebook. This mainly involved younger recipients and Celebi was able to conclude that individuals who longed for a sense of community and belonging were ultimately more open to advertising (Celebi, 2015, pg.323). I personally, as a young person, can understand this. I have a strong dislike to advertisements popping up on my screen, however, I still continue to follow a lot of brands and businesses online.
Essentially, social media in itself is an extremely powerful tool to both unite in and profit from (business wise). It can be used for good and used for evil, and its progression and evolvement through time is extremely interesting. This is why it is important for it be studied.
REFERENCES:
Celebi, S 2015, “How Do Motives Affect Attitudes and Behaviors Toward Internet Advertising and Facebook Advertising?”, Computers in Human Behavior, vol 51, pp. 312-324.
Kietzmann, J, Hermkens, K, Mccarthy, I, & Silvestre, B 2011, “Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media,” Business Horizons, 54(3), pp. 241-251.
Sensis 2020, Have your say Australia – Social Media 2020 Data Report, Glow, viewed 19 March 2020, <https://portal.glowfeed.com/shared-report/f98c499e-2cfd-4c17-8432-12fa1d4734b6?token=ed8973833e9b454eaf8e6f1babb1464e&emailVerifyToken=5m3vlbjvb>.
INSPIRATIONS AND CHALLENGES
Social media has an enormous capacity to do good; to be used for good. Over the years, companies and brands have utilised the reach of social media in order to spread a message. If this message is positive and uplifting, it commonly will go viral throughout the Internet. With one click of a button, a Facebook user can share a post to all of their friends. Those friends see the post and also decide to share it. Through this process, inspirational videos are able to achieve what they intend to do: Inspire. Something which I have found inspiring on social media is an Instagram account called ‘We’re Not Really 
Strangers.’ This account was created by a woman named Koreen who developed a card game with this same title. The card game focuses on bringing people together and breaking down walls. To engage with someone you hardly know anything about and to surrender to your feelings. With 1.5 million followers, Koreen has a huge audience to interact with. I find her posts incredibly inspiring as it invites strangers to come together on a social network and realise we are more alike than we think.
Here is a video which shows strangers playing her card game:
http://www.instagram.com/tv/B81-0HRAlvK/?hl=en
This video was incredibly inspiring as it reminded me that it is so important to discuss deep questions with other people; to understand our own feelings and how others may deal with them. I always suggest this account to others and it has become my favourite account to view when I’m feeling down and want to find comfort in Koreen’s positivity.
On the contrary, social media also has the capacity to be extremely toxic. I am constantly challenged whilst on social media platforms. Challenged, angered, disappointed, disturbed… the list goes on. A huge comment of social media and what makes it “social” is the involvement of users. To allow for comment sections where individuals can share their opinions, discuss content or even just to support someone. But with support there’s always someone who “hates.” Celebrity News accounts on Instagram are very popular including well known news channel E!News. E! specialises in celebrity news and updates and while their posts are usually positive, their comment sections are notorious for being just the opposite. Here is an example:
If you take a look at the comment section to the right, the FIRST 3 comments which are displayed are all negative. What makes me feel uneasy is that these are all women commenting these negative things. I am constantly challenged by how often I see other women tear each other down on social media. My question is, how do we prevent this? CAN we prevent this?
How will my work be influenced by my own understandings of social media?
I have always been fascinated with social media from a business perspective. I have been using social media since a very young age and from this experience have grown a real interest in how we can use such a tool to push out a message. Since completing the ‘Networked Media’ course at RMIT last year, I have learned a lot about the app Instagram and how its affordances work together to reach and engage with an audience. What I really hope to achieve within this studio is working more hand in hand with Instagram and other social networks through a business lens. This will be extremely beneficial to me as I want to work within a brand’s social media team when I graduate. Instagram has HEAPS of analytics which can help out brand’s towards finding out what their demographic is, what they are doing well at and what they need to improve. All of this information is free, I already use it for my own personal account because the data is quite interesting.
With Sensis, I hope to use their data to help influence how I might adapt my social media for a certain demographic and reach a broader audience. Who am I appealing towards? What are their user habits? How might they find my content? These are the questions I will be asking myself during the process.
With the examples shown in my last post, I will push myself to follow the footsteps of Koreen. Koreen’s account is a business; it’s her brand. But you honestly wouldn’t realise it due to her posts being focused more on positivity. Through her uplifting messages, her card game sells out and she has become extremely successfully without overly pushing her product onto consumers. She has also achieved this without pushing advertising which is quite impressive. I would love to achieve even a fraction of what Koreen has done and although that is impossible in the context of this class, I hope to keep in mind her values when approaching my own work.
WEEK THREE REFLECTION: ONLINE AUTHENTICITY & BRANDING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJst1XaqF1k
What does it mean to be authentic whilst growing up in a digital world which encapsulates brand culture?
Sarah Banet-Weiser refers brand cultures to “the way in which…brand relationships have increasingly become cultural contexts for everyday living, individual identity, and affective relationships” (2012, pg. 4). Whether we are conscious of it or not, our personalities, thoughts and ideas are heavily constructed by the online world of branding and trends. Bo Burnham’s film, Eight Grade (2016) visualises this concept for us. Not only was I taken back to the horror days of middle school, but I was forced to discover how impressionable young children can be in regard to their attitudes and personalities being shaped by what they are exposed to online. So much so that all of those younger kids seem to already own mobile phones at this age, where 10 years it was a different story. But why do all of these children have mobile phones in middle school? Branding. If you were to not have a mobile device, you were part of the minority and as this film discusses, being apart of the minority can seem like the end of the world at 14. But it gets deeper than just owning mobile phones.
It has been an on-going trend and debate on which brand of phone is better: Apple or Samsung? Apple devices are shown as being trendier while those who own Android devices are often ridiculed. Apple has branded their products so well, that we as consumers no longer care so much about the quality of the phones but instead the ideology that comes with owning them.
Banet-Weiser, S (2012), ‘Introduction: Branding the Authentic’ and ‘Conclusion: The Politics of Ambivalence’ from AuthenticTM: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture, NYU, page 4.
WEEK TWO REFLECTION: VIDCON PREP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxDx311Zei0
This week was extremely versatile in regard to what we learnt.
I was super grateful to work with Paul again and be reminded of his expertise. Something as simple as learning how to use a tripod (while looking cool) and working with pro-cameras such as the Sony Ex3 can be really valuable. It makes us as students reflect on which equipment we are comfortable with and how the final product can vary depending on what camera we use. This will be important for us to consider as we get closer to attending Vidcon.
I enjoyed the different style of vlogging this week, also. For someone who isn’t the most comfortable just speaking to a camera, it was fun to experiment with trying to make a simple task appear more beautiful. In my opinion, creating something cinematic doesn’t mean every shot has to be perfected or super still and flawless. A shaky shot can still be beautiful. If more consideration is taken into account while framing or colour grading in post, something super boring can suddenly become interesting. A challenge I had was working with the lighting in my apartment’s bedroom. The lighting would go from super sunny to super not so sunny; most of my shots appeared super blue. I was able to fix this in post with a quick colour grade, however, some shots I couldn’t match due to being filmed 20 minutes apart and the sun was going down. Other than that, I am happy with my result.
PRODUCTION SET-UP:
WEEK ONE REFLECTION: VLOGGING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0-r8-vqUR4
Online media is a forever growing and adaptive form. Through changes in viewer trends and progression in technology, online media platforms and the content we see on them can change significantly in a short period of time.
This week in class, we focused on the creation of ‘vlogging’ and how this term has led to a different art style of filming content. In particular, this piece-to-piece style of filming led to a spark of interest within consumers on YouTube. In class we watched a documentary called Vlogumentary, which focused on vlogging and YouTubers who specialised in this style. Creators such as ShayCarl (Shaytards) and Charles Trippy (CTFxC) were the main subjects of this film and showcase their love for not just vlogging, but creating and distributing vlogs DAILY. Unlike most of the people in the class, I knew of those YouTubers; I watched ShayCarl years ago and enjoyed watching his content. What surprised me was how most of the YouTuber’s shown in this film have either stopped creating videos or have become insignificant. The ‘top dogs’ of YouTube back when this film was created (2016) are now so irrelevant that most young people in 2019 don’t have the slightest clue who they are.
Why is this so? Of course the ShayTards lost traction when they went on a year long break and Shay’s affair got exposed, but not all of these vloggers had scandals. Has vlogging become an overdone concept through online media? I am prompted to learn more about the trend of ‘vlogging’ and how the style has changed from 2016 to now.
PRODUCTION SET UP:
REAL TO REEL – ASSIGNMENT THREE
Post One – Two Sequences
Post Two – Collaboration
Post Three – Final Work
Post Four – Reflection
Post Five – Final Work Embedded
THE ATTENTION SEEKERS: LIVE AT THE PLASTIC JUNGLE
Nursing hangovers that would kill lesser men, six musicians rally to put together a
performance worth listening to. After a night of partying, ‘Hyperactive grunge punk’, outfit
The Attention Seekers head into Laneway Studios to record the band’s first live session.
Filmed on Easter Sunday, THE ATTENTION SEEKERS – LIVE IN THE PLASTIC JUNGLE is
a 5 minute live music video that showcases an emerging band’s music – lively as it is raw –
and captures the atmosphere of working in a recording studio.
Jamie Marcetic: Performer & Editor
Jonah Ahearn: Camera Op
Emily Conlin: Camera Op
Ziggy Cross: Camera Op & Colour grader.
THE FINAL EDIT
How exactly does a live-session tell a story?
This was the question I aimed to answer through producing our final piece: The Attention Seekers Live in the Plastic Jungle. Unlike a documentary, the viewer isn’t hearing the subject express themselves through a conversation. The subjects here, The Attention Seekers, are telling a story through their music and lyrics. Yet, like a documentary, there can be other factors which assist this such as the location or b-roll. Our main intention was to express the personality of the band while showcasing their music and I believe this was achieved. It was extremely beneficial hearing from industry professionals in class and the feedback they had in regard to our work. What stood out for me was the comments made on how well we had showcased the personality of the band; the story they told. With that being our aim, we knew that viewers were following what we wanted to express.
I am really proud of the shot-construction we were able to deliver for this assignment and how that paid off in the final edit. Having three people on camera duty meant that we could generate a lot of footage from a variety of different angles; inspiring experimentation. We didn’t go in without a plan, each one of us figured out a spot to stick to and worked with the subjects in that spot. That way, our footage and time wasn’t wasted on sloppy framing or irrelevant shots. The shot I was able to create from sitting in the middle of the band’s circle particularly paid off in the end and is one I’m really proud of.
In term’s of media-production skills, in the future it would be beneficial for myself if I learn to play around with lighting more. Ziggy was a professional when setting up our lights, and although last year I did learn how to create a good lighting space, I do need a good refresher. I also didn’t get to work on the edit of this piece, meaning my editing skills have become a little shabby. Hopefully next semester I get to work more on the editing side of things rather than just on the production.
REFLECTING ON THIS SEMESTER
Looking back on my goals for this semester which I outlined in week one, I had the major goal of experi
menting with photo-journalism. I remember expressing this in class and being excited when Rohan told me we were in fact going to work with photography. I loved working with a different style of camera and creating an alternative style of non-fiction content. In the first assignment, I walked around the streets of Melbourne City and Fitzroy and captured street art and graffiti. I had never been a professional at taking photos, especially considering I don’t have much experience with a proper DSLR. I am happy I had the opportunity to gain photography experience within this studio and properly investigate this interest of mine.
Although I expressed my love for documentaries in this blog post, I was quick to realise that they may not be my topic of interest in regard to creation. Most of the groups in our studio made a documentary style non-fiction piece. My group and I made a live session piece, quite different to a documentary. I don’t regret not choosing a documentary as my piece of work. I knew from the start that I would much rather enjoy telling the story of a band through music as opposed to sitting down with a stranger and asking them questions. However, it would have been a good experience to know what it was like telling the story of a stranger in this format; beneficial to myself in regard to my media practice.
I never experienced many challenges in this studio! I was blessed to be put into a great group and work with other creative individuals. I found that the work I created was of a high standard and I was never disappointed with what I had made. If anything, taking the course ‘True Lies’ alongside this studio was the only challenging aspect. This was due to the fact that True Lies works on exposing the unethical aspects of documentaries. In this studio, we also had to ensure we were being ethical at all times. Having this in the back of my head made me view the way we filmed documentary style content very differently. It was also quite the overload at times having to partake in two non-fiction focused courses. Other than that minor aspect, this studio was extremely rewarding and overall helped me achieve my goals in advancing my practice as a media student.
