Author: tegansereno

This week’s topic ‘The Civilisation Of The Mind: Understanding the Network Society Paradigm’ took me a while to figure out but when I did, it really put everything into perspective for me. A quote that really resonated with me was that “cyberspace is a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators” (Gibson, 1984). The universality of cyberspace was made obvious following on from last week’s lecture with the ever-growing, fast paced nature of technology allowing everyone to feel connected and always technologically active. 

This week, I’d love to touch on the free-flow aspect of information on the web and how this affects human beings today. There are many amazing aspects of the evolution of the web such as the formation of new aesthetics e.g. cyberpunk hackers and transhumanism, however, there also has been a debate on whether this information should be freely given. Whilst Tim Berners-Lee has stated that the web was “designed for a social effect- to help people work together” (1999) there is also the possibility of hacking and cyber-attacks.

Despite the pros and cons of the evolutionary cyberspace frontier, we can’t deny that it holds a strategic space in peoples minds. 

#BCM206 Pitch!

When I was thinking about what I wanted to create for my BCM206 pitch I knew I wanted it to be something meaningful towards women in the media whilst also contributing to my portfolio and encouraging my writing passions. This is how the idea for the ‘The Femme Edition’ came about. Although I started this concept last semester, I realised that my first attempt was unsuccessful due to my lack of motivation wards the project so after researching the hole in the market for women on the web, I was ready to start again! As shown in this quote by the Harvard Business Review “women are far less likely than men to be seen in the media with women making up a mere 19% of experts in news stories” (Rattan 2019) so let’s make a change! The concept is to create a WordPress blog for women, encouraging their voices and discussing all things literature and women in the media. This blog will have weekly posts regarding female authors of the moment and their thoughts on the current state of literature. When creating my blog, I had to think about my audience and why they would want to look at my blog in particular over the thousands of other mediums out there. I specifically targeted 18-25-year-olds and surveyed them through interviews, receiving 100% positive responses. The most popular answer to my question “would you read a blog designed for women in the media” was “yes” and when asked why Ally* stated, “because it would inspire me and make me feel more confident”. Taking this fast, inexpensive, simple and tiny method, I turned this into an easy and no-cost WordPress blog in order to reach a larger audience and engage specifically with university girls with simple, engaging posts.

Harvard Business Review 2019, Tackling the Underrepresentation of Women in the Media , Rattan A, viewed 18th March 2020

True Crime and Social Media

After discussing my niche of true crime online, it was time to narrow this down further and really grasp what I wanted to get out of this project at an ethnographical standpoint. Defining my general media niche was easy. I enjoy true crime podcasts and want to investigate this further. The next step is the creation of a specialisation and thus, a field site for my investigation process. 

My Project

True crime has always existed. However, due to the increase of platforms such as Youtube, TikTok and Instagram, we as users are more tuned in to it that ever. We are now provided with a whole media niche related to the discussion and investigation surrounding true crime topics. Whilst discussion around this can span from a TikTok on a disappearance to a Youtuber discussing a murder case, the most popular form of this seems to be podcast formation due to the ease and price effective way of spreading information globally. The carefully composed set of information is particularly found in Hedley Thomas’ true crime podcast, ‘The Teacher’s Pet‘, as discussed in last week’s podcast.

Field Sites

According to Jenna Burrell in ‘The Field Site as a Network: A Strategy for Locating Ethnographic Research’ the term field site refers to the “spatial characteristics of a field-based research project, the stage on which the social processes under study take place”. Basically, in simpler terms, A field site is not a physical or virtual space, it is a term for the lived experience of a network of relations. 

When working to narrow down my media niche, the network of connections and relations seemed clear. The relaying of true fact to an audience on a platform such as ‘The Teacher’s Pet’ creates an online connection amongst its audience. In order to further reinforce this field site notion within true crime podcasts Baruah’s states “Internet is the place where people connect with friends, build a sense of togetherness and a computer with an Internet connection is the locus of a range of interactions in a variety of media and a gateway to an array of social spaces for work and play”. The digital aspect of podcasts top relay true crime means that anyone around the globe can connect and this may open up the discussion of whether true crime on social media influences the way people act, think and feel about what has occurred. These podcasts open up discussion surrounding crimes and influence everyday people as well as authorities within cases. 

As someone who is deeply interested in criminology and how it interacts on social media, I believe how true crime is displayed online is an incredibly valuable topic to pursue as there are so many ways it could be perceived. I wish to narrow this down further. I have consequently found several topics worth pursuing, including whether true crime discussions at any level besides being an authority figure is helpful or destructive. This could further be shown in the ‘Teacher’s Pet’ podcast, Hedley Thomas’s research and findings leading to more sexual assault communication and the possible arrest of perpetrator Chris Dawson. There is also valuable discussion around social media crime fan bases and what this means in terms of in-depth discussion about triggering crimes to susceptible youths. 

A global nervous system: from the telegraph to cyberspace

The universe has many strings and chords that are connected. Just like us humans we have many wires and chords in our brain that allow us to feel emotion and to make us feel alive with movement. Technologies such as the telephone, the internet and the mobile phone also help us feel connected with the world and were an incredibly innovate and magical thing to strike the European nation when it first emerged in the 1800s.

Living in world today its hard to believe a time where mobiles and the internet didn’t exist. In 1837, Samuel Morse changed everything. He invented the first dot-dash telegraph that enabled communication to be accessed globally through long distance. It developed from just lines and dots to letters and numbers that make sense! This first step in electric communication technology mystified people, individuals struggling to understand how one could send the written or spoken word across the sea but not a physical entity such as a meal.

“A net-work of nerves of iron wire, strung with lightning, will ramify from the brain, New York, to the distant limbs and member”- The New York Tribune, 1895

I would like to touch on a quote by Nathaniel Hawthorne which really cements this phenomenon that sparked in the 1800s. Hawthorne states in ‘The House of Seven Gables’ (1851) that “the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence! Or, shall we say, it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we deemed it”. Before this innovative period off invention, one couldn’t t possibly understand how we could communicate across the globe as fast speeds with something that couldn’t be touched. This description of the world as a brain or. system of nerves and thought is incredibly interesting as it puts a mans invention a the centre of all communication development from 1851 onwards. How cool!

My Digital Artefact

Background

In order to outline what ‘The Femme Edit’ entails, it’s vital that we break down what it is, the social utility and the iteration process through the lens of Marshall McLuhan’s ideology in ‘The Medium is the Message’. The Femme Edition is an online website made for women, by women. It is built with ideas surrounding literature, travel and university and was made with the intent of providing young women (aged 16-25) with a safe, fast, inexpensive and simple online space to chat, discuss and debate all things femme related without feeling judged in any way.

I wanted to make this website because women only appear in a quarter of television, radio, and print news (Rattan, 2019). My website will benefit women because there is a severe lack of representation for women online. In a 2015 report, women made up a mere 19% of experts featured in news stories and 37% of reporters telling stories globally. The website was built utilising the platform ‘Wix’ and was promoted through the likes of Twitter, WordPress and Discord.

The progress of my DA involved several iteration processes outlined in both my Pitch and Beta. For example, one feedback loop that I received through twitter was that audiences didn’t feel attracted to my online presence and weren’t interacting enough. In order to fix this, I narrowed my audience to young women and started producing content based on my feedback and research about the misrepresentation of women in the media. Below there are extracts and examples taken from primary and secondary research as well as my Beta process.Take a look at my Beta video below to see my exact process broken down.

Data Comparisons

I really focused in on what my audience wanted. As you can see above, I received a comment asking for more regular posts so I introduced the book of the month posts!

The Medium Is The Message

A major part of my process was incorporating secondary research regarding inspiration from other similar blogs and ideas but utilising them in a unique way to suit my artefact. I researched colour palettes and literature blogs, as shown below.

Marshall McLuhan’s Ideology ‘The Medium is the Message’ is quite an obscure and different idea. When we’re talking about mediums, the content is what we usually focus on rather than the actually form of the medium itself. McLuhan is trying to reiterate that while the message may be important, it is the medium that makes the message in the end… Let’s try to break it down a bit further in regards to our digital artefact and how it assisted along the way.

When we look at my digital artefact, we can see many different elements that all relate back to this one concept of ‘The Medium is the Message’. We can see elements such as old fashioned trajectories such as the written word shifting to an online platform, displaying this idea of a ‘global village’. Our medium’s main goal is to extend out into the world and interconnect us all. The technology that the message is transferred through is said to shift us as individuals and societies. It is the technology that holds the power. When discussing this concept, it is also valuable to state that “the medium is an extensions of ourselves” (McLuhan 1964). So how does this help our digital artefact’s process?

By incorporating McLuhan’s ideologies into our project we can create our own global village for young women that tackles our issue of misrepresentation of women in the media whilst showing a clear growth and progression from pitch to beta. By shifting using these technological platforms in order to spread our message, we can successfully interconnect our users by using this technology. This progression was made with thoughts to primary and secondary research as shown above as well as the critical insight of Marshall McLuhan’s ‘The Medium is the Message’.

Have you ever thought about whose watching you? The first thing I did after viewing this week’s lecture was google my name. The amount that came up surprised me; instagram pictures, pint rest tags and even twitter pictures from 10 years ago appeared. This made me think. What does this say about the privacy and surveillance of online users today? 

One of my favourite shows at the moment is ‘Black Mirror’. This dystopian show displays different scenarios, somewhat exaggerated but relevant, regarding our society and where it is leaing. Specifically, the episode ‘NoseDive’ resonates well with this topic.  Basically the episode exaggerates the notion of social media. Everyone has a social rating and if it gets too low, citizens are locked out of things like basic public transport services, the upper end of real-estate and the latest versions of cars.

For further chat on surveillance and control of the media, check out my remediation for the week below! My remediation actually links in with our task of creating a digital artefact. Check out my original creation and see how this is displayed on different platforms, accessible to the public.

Now compare this with what i’ve found on the internet!

This ties in really well with Tfekci’s idea that “the Internet offers expansive possibilities for horizontal communication among citizens, while drastically lowering the costs of organizing and access to information”.(2013)

This week, we discussed the ideology of hardware platforms, convergence and the connection of devices e.g. smartphones as a default device for surfing the web.

Let’s discuss a new idea, introduced by Jonathan Zittrain. This is the difference between as PC and an information appliance. The fundamental difference between a PC and an information appliance is that “the PC can run code from anywhere while the information appliance remains tethered to its maker’s desires, offering a more consistent and focused user experience” (Zittrain, 2008). Miles into the future when Steve Jobs released the iPhone, it’s selling point was the blending of the iPod, a phone, and a computer all in one (Zittrain 2008). These ‘pocket computers’ are so accessible and very available to the public. 

Apple vs Android is also a valuable debate to be considered. What Apple vs Android suggests is open and close technology. Henry Jenkins discusses convergence as the flow of content across media platforms. This sees mutations such as the ‘@’ and ‘#’ sign as Twitter and Facebook evolved based on audiences iterations. Well in Androids case this is a mirror image as android is a generative appliance in which anyone can write script, relating back to Zittrain’s ideologies. There is an open garden of apps in which any independent market can upload to. In a polarising effect, Apple tries to control the convergent nature of the internet to control mutations. The walled apps restricts creators to wait for approval, with cases of denied applications (Mitew 2019).

This week we focused on the way content producing industries package digital information as property, and on the role of copyright regimes in controlling user interaction with content. SO what is copyright in particular? 

In Australia, Copyright is defined as “a bunch of rights in certain creative works” (SmartCopy). These rights are granted exclusively to the copyright owner, who can prevent others from reproducing their work without their permission.  In a world where new internet platforms are constantly arising such as FaceBook and TikTok, problems arising stolen content and the works of others also arise alongside with it. 

Let’s specifically look at Disney. I know, weird, but bear with me. Lessig linked this example really well to our topic and I found it incredibly easy to base my remediation off this idea. Creators like Walt Disney were able to remediate the gore and morbid stories from the Brother’s Grimm to rebirth them in a new age (Lessig, 2005) . An example of this is displayed in my remediation, Cinderella originally having to cut her feet to fit into the slipper. Disney ripped culture from the landscape of literature around him, creating many defining films. As Lessig states, “quite often, Disney’s great genius, his spark of creativity, was built upon the work of others” (2004, p 21).

More recently, copyright has a amor role, especially in the platform ‘TikTok’. Users cannot interact through the use of certain songs as there are copyright restrictions. Does this limit our freedom as creators? Why do we even keep creating in this user-controlled social world? 

Hyperreality, is a term coined by Jean Baudrillard, defined as “the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably through another, reproductive medium, such as photography”. This idea basically revolves around the fact that reality is mediated by images, which I decided to explore through my remediation of ‘Deep Fakes’. This means that the real is perceived by audiences as a string of images – a form of spectacle and media images “slowly but surely start forming a reality of their own, independent from any underlying reality” (Mitew, 2020). The 4 phases are defined as 

1 Reflection: represents a basic reality [a copy]

2 Mask: covers up a basic reality [perverted copy]

3 Illusion: substitutes the absence of a basic reality [pretending to be a copy]

4 Simulacrum: bears no relation to any reality 

I’d like to home in on the idea of a ‘mask’. This means that there is an absence or cover up of basic reality, which is where deep fakes come in. Deep fakes are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else’s likeness (Sample, 2020). You can see how this easily links in to our topic of hyperreality. Deep fakes can be used to mediate the way we see media, especially if its used in a dangerous way. E.g. using Donald Trumps head to start wars or conflicts in other countries.