Tagged Blogs
Week 2: Performing Me: Maintaining Visibility on the Social Stage
05.05.11
Week 5: Connecting/Narrating/Branding Me
As Bec Newman quotes in her blog, “our life is lived in, rather than with, media”.
Unfortunately however, not quite like TRON (Steven Lisberger, 1982).
In recent years, communication via various forms of media has increased considerably - particularly the massive amounts of time spent using them. In doing so, users are carefully (or sometimes not so carefully) creating and affecting their online identity or personal brand. Simply interacting with others on platforms such as Facebook is contributing to an ever-growing record of information being stored all over the web, which for the most part is accessible by almost anyone.
Having personal information so readily available to the public domain tends to blur the line between our online persona and one’s ‘true self’. This merging of our online communication and our personal lives has resulted in such a great effect that media is shaping our everyday interactions, not unlike Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (Deuze, 2011).
Interestingly, this relationship between media and the influence on personal interaction seems to be of little concern to many members of the online population - as Deuze states: “we become blind to what shapes our lives the most” (2011).
References:
Bell, G. (2006). “The Age of the Thumb: a Cultural Reading of Mobile Technologies from Asia”, Volume 19, No. 2, pp. 41-57.
Deuze, M. (2011). “Media Life. In Media, Culture & Society”, Volume 33, Issue 1, pp. 137-148.
Niccol, A. 1998. The Truman Show. Directed by Peter Weir. Produced by Scott Rudin, Andrew Niccol, Adam Schroeder. California: Paramount Pictures. DVD.
Lisberger, S. 1982. TRON. Directed by Steven Lisberger. Produced by Donald Kushner. California: Walt Disney Pictures. Blu-ray.
Tags:
Chosen Blog, New Media, Connecting, Narrating, Branding
04.04.11
Week 4: New Media, Beliefs, Politics & Ethics
The development of New Media has dramatically changed communication and connectivity, developing from what was once restricted to a limited physical location to something of a global scale. Meaning users are able to be heard all around the world through the power of YouTube, Facebook, and many other platforms.
This radical departure from previous systems has meant that users are also able to far easily become involved in important political affairs in almost any country they desire. In fact, the recent Libyan protests could never have been so widely publicised if it weren’t for the massive utilization of Twitter and Facebook, social networking websites that helped closely follow all the major details of the issue (Johnson, 2011).
Similarly, the recent disasters in Japan were all over the internet in a matter of minutes, with dozens of YouTube videos and blogs immediately reflecting the massive effects of the event. Social Media offers people the ability to play an important part in up-to-date political and cultural issues as they happen, contributing to an element of transparency regarding potentially controversial issues: something that, for better or worse, seems to be here to stay.
References:
Hamelink, C. (2006). “The Ethics of the Internet: Can we cope with Lies and Deceit on the Net?” In Ideologies of the Internet, K. Sarikakis & Daya Thussu, pp. 115-130. New Jersey: Hampton Press.
Johnson, K. “Inundated with News” Last accessed March 27, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27overload.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Shirky, C. (2011). “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change” in Foreign Affairs. Volume 90, Issue 1; pg. 28, 15 pgs
Tags:
Chosen Blog, New Media, Beliefs, Politics, Ethics, Internet, Networking
28.03.11
Week 3: The New Media Amusement Arcade – Games, Music & Film
New Media is a technology that is moving at an incredibly rapid rate and, as previously discussed, is providing users with a way of expressing their online identity. Similarly, content creators such as film studios, record labels, and game designers are also provided with a platform to display their own online presence.
The internet has made the process of illegally downloading content far easier than ever before, and is an issue that is forcing many companies to rethink their business models to keep up with the pace or risk substantial financial loss. In fact, in an effort to combat illegal downloads, many films and albums are now packaged with ‘digital copies’ of the product, ready to be loaded onto an iPod or iPad and watched almost-instantly. Bollywood Producer Madhur Singh is openly promoting this method with latest releases, claiming that it “will lower barriers to independent filmmakers” (Singh 2008).
In a similar fashion, independent filmmakers have also found ways to use the power of social networking and New Media to their advantage, such as the production of independent film ‘Born of Hope’ raising approximately £17,000 through online promotion (Actors at Work Productions, 2011).
With gaming even now surpassing the box office gross of most Hollywood films (Schwartz, 2010) the question is raised as to whether hosting studio content online is truly the way of the future, and just how much further things will evolve.
References:
Actors at Work Productions. “Born of Hope” Last accessed March 20, 2011. http://www.bornofhope.com/Community.html
Singh, M. “Bollywood’s Viral Videos” Last modified February 14, 2008. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1713342,00.html
Schwartz, W. “Call of Duty: Black Ops Day One Sales Gross Over $360 Million” Last modified November 11, 2010. http://attackofthefanboy.com/news/black-ops-day-sales/
21.03.11
Week 2: Performing Me: Maintaining Visibility on the Social Stage
The lecture and readings for this week were particularly focused on the idea and presentation of online identity within social media platforms, and the costs of social networking that are often overlooked.
In the past, it has been easy to define identity as something directly related to a real-world person or body, however since the introduction of social networking, identity is no longer a concept limited to a physical self. Boyd and Donath (2004. p73) now describe online identity as drastically different and instead “mutable and unanchored by the body”; an idea of that allows for multiple online identities that brings into question the idea of whether our various social networking profiles are rather controlled performances of identity.
Social networking has gathered millions of members in recent years and has gained enormous popularity, although many still criticise the idea of freely sharing so much information and facing the risk of it being “taken out of a situation and replayed in a completely different context” (Hogan 2010).
Interestingly, Pearson (2009) argues that “the risks of inadvertent disclosure through disrupted performance exchanges are outweighed by the potential to manage networks, ties and social bonds more effectively” offering a more positive look on the benefits that social platforms can provide.
References
Donath, J. Boyd, D. 2004. Public displays of connection. BT Technology Journal 22. (4): 71-82. Accessed March 12, 2011.http://smg.media.mit.edu/papers/Donath/PublicDisplays.pdf
Hogan, B. 2010. The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social Media: Distinguishing Performances and Exhibitions Online. Bulletin of Science Technology Society, Vol 30 no.6. Accessed March 14, 2011.http://bst.sagepub.com/content/30/6/377
Pearson, E. 2009. All the World Wide Web’s a stage: The performance of identity in online social networks. First Monday Peer-reviewed Journal on the Internet 14. (3): 1. Accessed March 13, 2011.http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2162/2127
Tags:
Chosen Blog, New Media, Visibility, Performing, Social, Presentation
14.03.11
