Social Media Discussion

Social Media & Web 2.0 Discussion

1. Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

We first discussed actual TV shows and advertisements which utilize the "homegrown" practice in current media. Advertisements such as the E-trade Baby Commercials and TV shows such as The Office are examples of this. However, we view the amateurish simulations more as a style and a fad, not necessarily a revolution within the production industry. While some companies and shows choose to revert to the user-generated production techniques, such as personal cam-corders, the remainder of the industry continues to move forward with the high-tech advancements production has made. Also, in producing much of the "homegrown" media, advanced technology is still being applied while trying to simulate user-generated content. It is an approach certain advertisers have decided to take, in an effort to seem relevant to their audience. Over time, user-generated content will most likely progress further as it has since it started. New user-friendly cameras and computer software are becoming readily available to the average person, requiring less professional skills, and so we think that as top production advances, so will the actual homegrown production.

2. Find a news article and write down tags you would use to define what the article is about. Now goto http://delicious.com/ , digg.com or another tagging site and see how others have tagged it. What did you learn from the differences or similarities in tagging?

Does Facebook Deserve the Hell it's Catching from Greenpeace?

Our tags: Social networking, Facebook, Greenpeace, economy, norms, politics, groups, coal, energy, renewable resources
Their tags: coal, Facebook, Greenpeace, social change, social network, social psychology

When comparing our tags with the tags from Digg, we found that the majority of our tags were the same. From these similarities we concluded that the main ideas and most important parts of the article were universal and apparent. However, there were a few tags from Digg that differed from ours. We found that as a group we gave more specific and detail-oriented tags, while Digg focused more on the holistic and general ideas in the article. For example, we tagged "renewable resources" and Digg tagged "social movement" and "social psychology." A possible explanation is that Digg users tagged broader terms, but since we were conscious of doing a good job tagging we were more thorough and specific.

3. Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?

Transparency is such an important concept because it disguises intentions and viewers deserve to be aware of the alternative motives behind what they see and read. Basically transparency regards the loop hole for advertisers and other social media in which they find ways to mask what they are doing or saying in order to make it more appealing to viewers.

Transparency is more important in the online world. It arises moral as well as legal issues. When viewers watch television they more aware of what is and what isn't an advertisement, however the transparency that is heavily present in the online world often fools its users. An example would be if a big corporation has formal plans and intentions of getting their message across the internet, but hires a smaller distant company to disguise its origin. In the online world, it is much easier to remain anonymous from your contributions, such as blogs. When viewers read blogs they are more likely to trust that the blogger is being objective, rather than being paid off to endorse another company or product.

Persuader Questions

Question 2:

The amount of advertising in our world today is an alarming amount. Because of all the mediums and technologies we are exposed to constantly, there are constant places for advertisements and times for us to see them. I don't think it should be considered "too much" advertising, because I'm not particularly sure there is such a thing. As for children there may be overwhelming amounts, but in regards to adults, advertising is what fuels our economy. It creates awareness of products and creates jobs, and when people have more money, they spend more money, and this circle continues because of advertising. 20-30 years ago advertising was different because of the technology. There wasn't as many mediums and places for advertisers to constantly get to people. Internet and super phones didn't exist yet, email wasn't as popular, and computers weren't a common medium to be found everywhere as they are today.

Question 4:
I think the future of advertising will continue to get more and more advanced with technologies, and more and more competitive. Cameras and mediums are being used to study the demographics walking by a bill board to put out an ad best suited for those people. 3D graphics, and more pleasing to the eye technologies will aid in the attatchment and advances to advertising people have. Future persuaders will use all these things to make ads more inviting to the people of the times.

Digital Nation II

When we think of addictions technology rarely is the first thing to comes to mind, however can it be one? Digital Nation takes us to Korea to show video game addicted kids, so bad that people have even died from lack of food and water because they would not stop playing. Can we be addicted to surfing the web in the same way? A mother in South Korea describes her 15 year old son as an addict to the computer when she notices his grades fall completely and his attention lack at home. There are camps now to help internet addicted users. They do outdoor activities and try to recapture childhood fun without computers.
Our being connected all the time, has become a lifestyle in which we don't even notice. Children are taught about computers and internet as soon as they know how to read. In South Korea they now try to teach internet ethics at a young age. Schools now, can even require computers. It seems now but to education new technologies is neccessary because of the jobs the educated are being prepared for. Less remembering things and remembering things, and more knowing how to build and create is expected of them. Perhaps using technology in school makes school make sense to students and easier for them. In a school like this, it has been shown that violence has gone down and test scores have gone up, so can it all be bad?

Digital Nation I

Digital Nation addresses the mass availability of communication today. It starts off with a woman who describes a night in her home where every member of her family is on a different medium as she was getting dinner ready, even her very little ones. She describes this scene as all of her family being in one room, but really being in different places. This starts you thinking about how much media is a part of our lives today, and how we have become multitaskers because of it.
This idea of multitasking carries over into the education part of life with alarming changes. Students now claim to be able to be high multitaskers, especially on college campus. Experiments done on college students who are high multitaskers show that while multitasking he gets work done much slower, and can easily get distracted. These experiments are worrying scientists that we are creating people who are disorganizing their memories.
Digital media has also been completely absorbed by children, exposed at a young age to so many digital media. The time studies are done on new digital medias is almost wasted becauses once something has been discovered, its already old news and a new form has been put out. Research gets out distanced by technology because of the quick rate it advances.

terms to define

User-Generated content is a term referring to any info found on in mediums that is produced by end users, or people just like you and me who surf medias and put their own input or knowledge publicly out there.

Long tail is a concept used mainly for business concentrating on selling mass numbers of items in small quantities.

Folksonomy is this collaboration of "folk" and "taxonomy" that can be found on the web and now its known as a "social tagging system" used to structure knowledge from many different people outside of the web.

Syndication is when web information is found and made available places outside the site it originally came from or in other mediums instead.

Mass collaboration is almost self explanatory. This term refers to situations where many people contribute to one project or idea and a single product is developed from the many different views.

Computer Supported collaboration refers to studies and mass collaborations that support other relationships and group works. The research behind one's work supported by others research gives it more stability and reliability.

Media Collage WiFi

WiFi Collage:

The images used show the different symbols that places use to advertise that they have wireless internet access in their establishments or products (Starbucks, McDonalds, Nintendo systems). The main image is the symbol of wifi internet and the hand holding it symbolizes the use and hold people have on it. The images in the right bottom corner are part of a web of devices that use wireless internet. The main message of the collage is that the medium of WiFi is found everywhere now, and allows people to access the internet at anytime, in any place, without being plugged in, and with the ability to keep mobile.