P2 Vocast - Internet Me vs. Real Me

Team Name: Unidentified

Team Members:

Annabel Yoon: Research

Bo-Mee Song: Research and Interviewer (Blog)
Maria Rizvi: Chief Writer and editing (Blog)
Pearl Desa: Art, writing and editing (Blog)
Therese D'Souza: Filming and final editing (Blog)







P2 Context:

The Internet, being multi-faceted and ever-changing, provides an unstable environment to our identity growth, thereby confusing us about who we really are. Our video dealt with this thesis by focusing on the confusion of identity and perception caused by the web. Our research was based on the looking glass self theory which states that a self-image is developed on the basis of the message we get from others, as we understand them. This theory states that “we imagine how we appear to others, we imagine their judgment of that appearance and we then develop some self-feeling, such as pride or mortification, as a result of our imagining others’ judgment”. Our main aim was to see how the web interfered with the development of individual identity. People act differently on the web as opposed to reality and their image is dependent on that behavior. Different sides of a person come out on the web as opposed to reality.
Therefore the development of identity in this digital age is highly dependent on the web in various ways especially for the new generation who do the majority of their social networking on the web. The web is becoming a signifier of identity and self perception. The web is used as a technological tool to express the different sides of our personality and at times maybe even confuse them.




Reference:

1) Looking glass self theory
Cooley, C. H. (1902). Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner’s. Pp. 179-185.

2) Yoon, S. (2001). Culture, Computer Literacy, and the Media in Creating Public Attitudes toward CMC in Japan and Korea in Community informatics: shaping computer-mediated social relations (Eds.) Keeble, L. and Loader D. B. New York : Routledge, 2002

Week 6: Project 2 Proposal

1. Concept
Our area of investigation is going to be identity, and how technology has affected it negatively. Our video will include statistics, reviews, and interviews on this topic.

2. Working Hypothesis
The inevitable development of the network society, has demanded in its core, constant innovation and development of communicative methods. Communication had a different meaning before globalization. Communication meant a phone call from a home line or a letter which reached a person 4-8 weeks depending on their location. Since communicative methods were different, it is safe to assume that relationships carried with them a different meaning as well. This has caused isolation of personal identities. Communication has changed individuality. The way we see and represent ourselves has changed vastly. Since there are more methods of expressing yourself, making friends and networks, learning, and engaging in activities with strangers; there is a misconception that communication has reached its peak. Yes communication has reached its peak, but with the loss of personal identity. According to Freud, we all have many different “persona(s)” hidden within us which only come out when a situation requires it. Persona, according to Wikipedia means “A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor”. The World Wide Web has given people more opportunities to communicate, but in return develop more personas within themselves. Hence, the network society has brought a loss of identity and isolation of individuals. This global culture is anonymous to personal feelings and the true identities of individuals. In our podcast we would like to target those people who feel that the wireless borders of the internet have caused them to lose the true essence of face to face, emotional, empathetic, emoticon-less communication, which are requirements of human nature and comfort. The computer has removed the true ways of communication, which have taken place for centuries. We would like to say in this podcast, through various points of views of people who have truly lost/hidden their true identity due to the developments of communicative technologies. We would like to ask people of different ages on how they feel the internet has brought about a loss of personal identity and true human communication.

3. Research Approach
We will be conducting field research as well as scholarly journals and articles which include recent statistics. We will be referring to journal articles, and citing them. Using statistics and research done previously by scholars and psychologists/sociologists we can back up our claim: loss of identity is perpendicular to enhancement of communication.

4. Treatment
For our video we plan to use a lot of real life, unscripted footage like interviews with people from different walks of life. The interviews will be broken down into segments that overlap each other and will be an informal questioning about how people act on the web and how they portray themselves on the internet. The concentration will be on how they willingly change themselves when they go on the internet. And if we find willing participants we might even get people to show us their personal pages and their online ‘personas’ on social networking sites like Facebook. In order to add some diversity to our video we plan to have a few animated sequences or at least a few original cartoon images like thought clouds or speech bubbles at certain points. For instance a possible opening sequence that we’ve thought about includes having a picture of a person divided with one side remaining ‘real’ while the other side is made into a cartoon with different speech and thought bubbles, that show the various identities the person has on the internet and in their daily lives. As for the sound, since our video is going to be interview based, any background music we add will be kept to a minimum so that the voices can be heard clearly. And to make sure that people understand the words spoken we even plan to add sub-titles for better accessibility. If we do have animated sequences, we will definitely add the required sound effects but we don’t intend to use much in that category as we don’t want to pull away from the interviews.

Week 5: My Team

Team Name: Unidentified


Team Members and their roles:
Annabel Yoon: Research
Bo-Mee Song: Research and interviewer
Maria Rizvi: Writing and editing
Pearl Desa: Research, writing and editing
Therese D'Souza: Filming and final editing



Initial Concept:
The loss of identity and the development of multiple persona's in the essence of individuality. The global culture has brought about many different sides of a person, but has hidden what truly lies within them. We would like to research the way in which people have been able to manipulate their true identity into multiple clashing personalities that lay within the cover of one person. The internet has become a playing field of identities through various communication networks and platforms.

Week 4: What makes a good video podcast? A Review of My Fav.

Geek Woo Podcast 001 - Chocolate Dipped Strawberries
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FrqpDR__3k

This video podcast was about the process of making the chocolate dipped strawberries. At the first part, it showed the title of the podcast, and explained what they are going to tell us about. This podcast was different than other cooking podcast. Before they show us about the title, I could hear them talking each other in blank background without showing anything. It also attracted me and I got more interested about this podcast. I could see the words that describe about time, cost, and what we will need to make chocolate dipped strawberries, which helped me to understand quickly, and I thought it was simple way to explain it. While they were showing the words, I could also hear the sound of them having a joke each other. I found out several things that make good video podcast while I was watching “Chocolate Dipped Strawberries”.
In this case, the lighting and silent background sounds were great, and especially music was fitted well. Although it was not professionally well explained, the story was interested to me, because I was curious about how to make chocolate dipped strawberries from the first, and the reason I picked this podcast is I wanted to try it later. It had appropriate time, which was not too long or not too short, and they spoke clearly, so I understood everything what they talked about. However I though there were some problems in this podcast, because first of all it did not have professional quality, and also ability to filming skill was not that great. There was one part that was totally out of topic, because while they were waiting for chocolate to freeze, it showed one of them playing game. I think it was just for fun, but it might be confusing to other people who watch podcast.
In conclusion, some important points that make a good podcast are interesting topic and make people to be interest. A good podcast need to have creative style, focus on one topic, lighting and no sound clutter, good filming skill, professional quality, and speaking clearly.

Week 3: Web 2.0 and Podcasting where is this heading?

Both Web 2.0 and Podcasting are developing so fast these days, and getting more popular. At first time, I did not really have any knowledge about the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. And also a word ‘Podcasting’ was not familiar to me.
As I keep researching about these two, I found out a key Web 2.0 principle which is the service automatically gets better the more people use it. Web 2.0 is based on human interactions which hosts many different kinds of services. “It is the design patterns and business models for the next generation of software” (2007, O'Reilly Media). One important name was mentioned when I research about Web 2.0, and it was Tim O'Reilly. He was the one who described Web 2.0 as business embracing the web as a platform. Some examples of Web 2.0 include Wikipedia, Google map, eBay, and so on. Although I was not familiar with a word Web 2.0, I already knew most of examples of it, and used it. In my opinion, Web 2.0 will be developing more and people will use it more in the future. The reason is, for example, we use eBay to buy and sell products. This is really convenient way, and people like to use it more often. I think Web 2.0 is mostly lead by people, and this is another reason that it will be develop even faster. Everyone can access and use it with even little knowledge about the web.
Podcasting is “a new type of online media delivery. We publish selected audio files via the internet and allow the users to subscribe via an RSS feed to automatically receive new files”(2005, O’Reilly Media-Podcasting). I also think Podcasting has potential of more development and will be used in a variety way, those can be communication, education, entertainment, and so on. In conclusion, as technology develops and more people started to use World Wide Web, these Web 2.0 and Podcasting will also diffuse more in the future.




Reference:

What Is Web 2.0, 2007, http://www.oreilly.de/artikel/web20.html
What Is Podcasting, 2005, http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/07/20/WhatIsPodcasting.html

week3 podcast

Week 2: Seeking a best of…

Humor blog- http://thesneeze.com/

I think there are some important points that make the good blogs, and one of them is making people to get more interests about that blog. Another one is that the information in a blog is easy to understand and read. While I was searching for many different kinds of blog website, I discovered interesting humor blog called ‘The Sneeze’. The blog grabbed my attention with its unique design and many interesting colorful images. I highly evaluated this blog because of two reasons. First of all, as I looked inside of the blog deeply, I discovered interesting fact about this blog. Unlike the other humor blogs or websites, ‘The Sneeze’ did not contain any typical joke stories. However, ‘The Sneeze’ used daily and normal facts as its main interesting topic. Second one is that it contained many audio and video files that describe the information, and it helped the blog looks better. As I go on, I’ll make some important points of my evaluation.
In this blog, every explanation includes an image or video clips that support it. And “The Raisins 2007”, which is in a main page, has a sub describe about downloading mp3 file if the video clip does not work. It says, “If it won’t play, here’s an mp3 File”. Although this does not look big deal, I can see the consideration towards the viewers. This blog also has background music, and this music made me to stay more in this blog. It has so many different topics, from cereal characters to Macdonald slogan. However, each topic well described with interesting images and words. For example, when they were describing about the cereal characters, the title of it is “The Cheap-Ass Cereals”, and of course I clicked this title because this title attracted me. This blog’s strength is affecting my point of view, because it makes me to think about the subject in different way. In conclusion, I think this blog is really creative and well explained.

Week 1: What is the biggest issue facing blogging, citizenship and the future of media?

Blogs are not that hard to make and it became really popular today. It is still developing which is in progress. So people like mainstream journalists make their own blogs, however they are not the only one who make the blogs, anyone can make it about any subject. Many blogs provide personal information or online diaries, and commentary on particular subject. The question is about the biggest issue facing blogging, citizenship and the future of media. There are several issues about it, and some of them are easy to realize. One is that the blog does not really include privacy, because anyone can access to the particular blog and read what they have in that blog.
However, I think the biggest issue is that as the number of personal blog increases and develops, many people can easily see others’ personal online diaries or information. This leads to the effect of less privacy. In the personal blogs, people write more about their own thoughts and opinions rather than the certain accurate information. And other people may reply about their opinion, so mostly it is filled with information plus their opinions. One important thing is that there is no guarantee that the information is hundred percent accurate or true, however we tend to believe most information there. For example, I read about some commentary on a particular celebrity, and it totally changed my point of view about that celebrity. Thus sometimes wrong information flows and people get confuses.
By looking at this issue, I am pretty sure that we will have bigger problem in the future, in terms of digital innovation and development of media. This does not mean that digital innovation is bad for the future, but we have to think about some of these negative effects as the media develops. Blogging became more than a way to communicate now, and getting popular and popular. This is why we have to study more about it, and think about the way to prevent these issues.