Campaign project

For our last practical project we had to create a promotional campaign. The internet is being used more and more to market and advertise products, it also becoming home to online campaigns. We chose to do ours on contraception and STD’s as it is something that is very relevant to people of our age group, however this was not our original idea. Our original idea was on abortions and unwanted pregnancies. We chose not to go with our original idea because we realised that this topic was very sensitive and might be a sore subject for people to talk about. We aimed our campaign at the age group of 16-21, as this is the age where people are just becoming sexually active and exploring their sexuality; but may not know much about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases and their dangers.

For this campaign we decided to do a powerpoint presentation and a video. The presentation would provide key information on what forms of contraception are available and some statistics on how effective they are. It would also include information on STDs and some statistics. The video would consist of actual student interviews where we would ask them questions about contraception and STDs. It would also include some statistics about our target age group.
Below is the powerpoint presentation:

The contraceptive campaign

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The aim for our video was to film an equal amount of boys and girls that attended the uni. We used a method of random selection; we just approached students outside the student union and library. We thought that it would be a good idea to keep people that participated anonymous because then they wouldn’t feel ashamed to talk about their sexual experiences. In order to do this we jus filmed the ground while our interviewee’s spoke. We asked all of the people that participated the same questions. These were:
-do you use contraception?
-what forms of contraception do you use?
-what do you know about STD’s?
-do you go for regular check-ups?
We also asked the boys:
-do you prefer for the person your sleeping to be using another type of contraception?

Public Sphere

The public sphere is the idea that in the realm of our social life we can share ideas and form public opinions. In the public sphere we should be able to find out about what is happening in the world and take part in democracy. The public sphere is there to inform the public by using the media; this could be through newspaper, TV or the internet. The public sphere began to emerge in the eighteenth century in Britain where the first newspapers were not only supplying its readers with information but also with opinions, comment and criticism. The sphere was created because to give the public a voice that the government could not ignore. The government attempts to maintain the public sphere; success of the public depends on:
-the extent of access
-the degree of autonomy
-the rejection of hierarchy
-the rule of law
-the quality of participation
For Habermas, the success of the public sphere was founded on rational-critical discourse. This is where everyone has the ability for equal participation and the best communication skill is the power of argument.

According to McNair there are five functions of the communication media in democratic societies. These are:
-Firstly to inform citizens of what is happening around them
-Secondly to educate as to the meaning and significance of the facts
-Thirdly the media must provide a platform for public political discourse
-Fourthly to give publicity to governmental and political institutions
-Finally the media must serve as a channel for the advocacy of political viewpoints.

New media such as the internet can facilitate and disrupt these functions. The internet has the power to aid democracy because it provides a platform where people are able to have their own voice through blogs, social network sites and youtube. They are also able to discuss these opinions in a group; I was able to discuss my views on the general elections last year and who I was thinking of voting for with my peers on Facebook. Newspaper websites are also able to inform the public, with their online articles sometimes having more detail than those in the actual paper. The internet is also a way for people to upload their own evidence of ‘newsworthy’ events; this could be images or videos. However the internet is not always a good source as not all information is correct, which leads to misinformed opinions. Authenticity and credibility are too big problems of using the internet as a sort of ‘public sphere’ as you can never be sure of where the exact origin of the information you are getting is from or how credible it is. So although the internet provides a space where like minded people can group together and discuss newsworthy events and a space for opinionated people to air their views the question is, is it the right place for them to do it?

I think today that the internet is the biggest provider of a public sphere as so many people have access to it, but that there should be some other place where we have a strong sense of a public sphere as the internet cannot always be trusted.

Maintaining Friendships Online

So this week we were introduced to the term social capital. Social capital ‘refers to features of social organisation such as networks, norms and social trust that facilitate co-ordination and co-operation for mutual benefit’ (Putnam 1999); so in other words its resources gathered through the relationships between people. Social capital can be used to analyse social relations and help researchers understand how they work on and offline.

Social capital is closely associated with social networking website such as Facebook. There are two types of ties that social network websites provide; these are ‘loose’ ties and ‘strong’ ties. These are social ties that are from people’s relationships and that form different connections. Weak ties are ‘loose connections between individuals who may provide useful information or new perspectives for one another but typically not emotional support’ (Granovetter 1982). On Facebook I have over 600 friends, most of whom are weak ties; they are people I have met once through a friend or met on a day trip. I would not share anything personal with these people however they may be useful for other things like finding out information on an event. Weak ties can also occur offline; during my time at uni I have made quite a few acquaintances. They are people I might say hello to because I was introduced to them through a friend, but our conversation would not be of any depth. Weak ties lead onto the term ‘bridging’ social capital. Bridging social capital are friends through a friend, which is something social networks advocate. Bridging social capital and loose ties can be maintained because websites like Facebook allow ‘users to create and maintain larger, diffuse networks of relationships from which they could potentially draw resources’ (Donath & boyd, 2004; Resnick, 2001; Wellman et al., 2001).

Unlike weak ties, strong ties provide the emotional support that weak ties are missing. Strong ties refer to family members and close friends who can provide the support causal friends couldn’t. On Facebook I have numerous family members as friend and all of my close friends; I would turn to one of these people if I had a problem over anyone else. Bonding social capital is found between individuals in tightly knit, emotionally close relationships and links with strong ties. These types of ties are said to increase social capital.

The internet is said to have a big effect on social capital as it can strengthen or weaken them. Some people also think that the internet may have problems maintaining these ties. The internet can strengthen ties as old friendships can be maintained on social networking sites, but on the other hand it can weaken individual’s social capital because it takes people away from face-to-face time with others.

Facebook is something that I use quite a lot because it helps me communicate and stay close to my family abroad as well as here in the UK, but who don’t live near me. I also use it to contact my friends at uni especially if we’re going to meet up to do work, as the website is quick and easy to use. The website has also provided me with a lot of useful opportunities and information which I got from ‘loose ties’, that without facebook I would not have.
I think that social capital is a good way to analyse social relations online. However it is hard to say whether social capital is increasing or decreasing because social network websites are not the only way that people connect with one another; there is the matter of how they connect offline.

Reading
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue4/ellison.html

Copyright & Me

When talking about copyright you have to remember that it is an ongoing debate with various people against copyright laws and others in defence of copyright laws. Copyright is defined as a form of intellectual property which gives the creator of an original work or copyright owner exclusive rights for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation; after which time the work is said to enter the public domain.

Some of the reasons why people may be against copyright laws is that a lot of people feel that copyright poses problems for online culture. Cory Doctrow looks at issues with copyright and why it shouldn’t be a problem. He makes an argument for the inappropriate application of copyright to the internet. His definition of culture is shared information; all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out, drawing and thinking is culture. Doctrow says ‘On the Internet, copying is automatic, massive, instantaneous, free, and constant’. The reason for this is because we live in a culture where we share information and the reason why copyright is valuable is because culture exists. ‘If there was no market for creative works, there'd be no reason to care about copyright’. (Doctrow)
Another point people against copyright would make is that there is no difference between lending out a CD or a DVD to a friend and sharing a file with them. It is not copyright to lend someone a CD but as soon as a computer and the internet is involved it is; why is this? A lot of people would also agree with Doctorow’s ideas that copyright doesn’t actually work in practice because ‘No matter how hard you adhere to them, you're probably breaking the law’, so why not just do it anyway?

People for copyright are mostly those who are publishers or creators of content. They are for copyright as they feel these laws will protect people from their work and also protect their wallets, as they do no get paid for work that is copied. Some companies and organisations use the term ‘fair use’, which means using someone else’s documents or work without making it useful for money or making a profit unless you’ve required the permission from the rights holders. The only problem with this term is that most people that download do it for personal and social reasons; it only applies to people who do not intend to make copies to sell them, which means that publishers and creators still loose out on money as their product is still being circulated. However Doctrow would argue that fair use is something positive for producers as ‘it would become more popular the more people share it’.

I personally think that file sharing shouldn’t be a problem as long as people aren’t doing it to make a profit. I agree with Doctrow when he says that culture is shared information and that if file sharing was banned and taken off the internet, culture would die with it as the internet is how people communicate and express ideas to one another. I personally know that my friends and I are always sharing music files, and why shouldn’t we? We aren’t harming anyone by sharing the music we love between one another. When I copy a movie from a friend’s pc it’s not because I have an ulterior motive but simply because I want to see a film. I will copyfight till the end because I don’t want the internet to loose its culture.

Psychogeography Project

Psychogeography is the idea about finding out how the environment we live in shapes our behaviour. "The Study of specific affects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals" (Guy Debord, 1958). Pychogeography shows how humans shape the environment they live in and also how the environment shapes them. Whilst travelling, we see many things which we would either class as every day things we see or there are things that we would never notice. Considering these things can gives us a sense of feeling of the area or place we are in. The derive which means 'drifting' in French is a term which means going to places unplanned. When we take a different route to our normal ones it allows us to explore the area around us and discover new places. If you pay more attention while on your everyday routes, you will notice more things about the place where you are. These could be small things like a sign or a poster or larger things like a person that travels at exactly the sae time as you everyday. There are many different Psychogeography techniques that can be explored, however I didn't really understand how it all worked until we did our own.

At first we didnt know how to start our journey, but then we came up with the idea of covering more than one route as we realised that in Leicester all routes to town ended up at the Clocktower. We chose to focus on the four main routes that led to the clocktower. As we walked the routes we decided that we would take pictures or make sketches of interesting things that we hadn't noticed on our journey before. We also decided to take pictures of iconic buildings that would help people recognise where they are in town.

We presented our route to the class in the form of a map on a board where we highlighted our chosen routes. We then stuck our images around the board and used pins to locate their exact point on the map. We also produced a video of one of the routes that was taken. Below is an image of our map.

We also put the pictures we took into a slideshow for each route. Below are all four of them.

Route 1


Route 2


Route 3


Route 4

Web 2.0: Pecha Kucha Presentation

We recently had a lecture on what is web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web
1.0 to deliver rich user experiences (Tim O’reilly). He explained that there are 7 principles of web 2.0, these are:
1. The Web As Platform
2. Harnessing collective intelligence
3. Data is the next Intel inside
4. End of the software release cycle
5. Light weight programming models
6. Software above the level of a single device
7. Rich user experiences

Before web 2.0 there was the web 1.0 which was created by Tim Burton. The problems of the early web were:
- Copyright (However it is still a problem with web 2.0)
- Searching and indexing page contents
- Technical skills to publish online
- Lack of social involvement

After learning about web 2.0 in lectures we were given the task of creating a presentation in the style of pecha kucha about one aspect of web 2.0. Pecha kucha is a way of structuring a presentation so that it is economical and to the point; no one wants to sit and listen to something that’s going to run on forever. Typically a pecha kucha presentation would consist of 20 slides and each would be shown for 20 seconds. However our presentation will be 5 minutes long and contains 15 slides. Each slide will still be shown for 20 seconds and the aspect of web 2.0 which we chose to present to the class was Network Effects. As there was four of us in the group we decided that everyone would have 3 dedicated slides each and that we would discuss the first two slides as a group.

Network effects refer to an environment where an increase in adoption and/or usage creates more value for all participants in a social community or network. In relation to web 2.0 an example would be social network sites, as the more people that sign up and use the website the more valuable it is to each person. There are different types of network effects, these are:
-direct: when the product or service value increases the more people use it
-indirect: when an increase in the use of a product or service creates increased value for complimentary products resulting in added value for the original product or service.
-social: when an increase in use by one group of users increases the value of a complementary product or service in a completely different set of users
-Two-sided: when groups of people come together in the online world

Network effects

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