Module 11: Endings

One thing I think has changed or expanded for me since taking this course is the telling of fictional stories. I think I see more stories now or look for more stories. When looking for a story before, I'd crack open a book or select a story on my e-reader. Then, of course, there was video games, television, and movies. The two things that really stick out in my mind is Twitter Fiction, and the Inanimate Alice project.

Module 10: Alberta Kickstarter

Kickstarted Projects in Alberta

While sorting through the Kickstarter projects in Alberta, I chose to look at the Top 3 most funded campagins.  All three of these campagins were located in Calgary, with two of them already being closed and successfully funded, moving toward production/delivary.  Two of the projects were  games, and one was a Microhabitat.  The one campaign still open has already raised above and beyond their goal, and still has 21 days to go to receive funding.

Wordle Map and Video Games

I chose the article "Study: Relaxing Video Games Make People Kinder."

Had I not read the article before creating the image, I would have assumed that this was some sort of study on the impacts of students playing video games.  But I would not have assumed that 'kinder' was the focus.  Maybe people play games to relaxed, violent or not.  In this word map "violent" is easier to spot than "nonviolent" in both size and colour.  Red is often associated with war, blood, fire and violence, gray is emotionless and dull, and black with power and death.  In no way would I have assumed this was connected to a study involving calming video games featuring the ocean.

Moore, E. (2011). “Study: Relaxing Video Games Make People Kinder,” CNet,http://www.cnet.com/news/study-relaxing-video-games-make-people-kinder/

Assignment 5, Beauty is in the eye of Photoshop

By the time they’re 17, girls have seen 250,000 TV commercials telling them they should be aspire to be a sex object or have a body size they can never achieve. (Day, 2014)

The use of photoshop on people in advertising and print needs to change.

The link to the petition can be found here.

We're from the internet.

I typically fall firmly on the side of cynical when it comes to slacktivism, or any type of online protest.  I say this having signed many online petitions myself and feeling almost swept up in really popular online campaigns.  The big campaign that still sticks out in my mind is Kony 2012 campaign and the Invisible Children.  I remember when I first saw the video, and having lengthy discussions about Joseph Kony and feeling shocked with myself that I had never heard about him until the video went viral.


Then not long after the video blew up and everyone was talking about Kony, the producer/narrator had a break down and suddenly everyone was talking about that instead, talking about donating or getting involved with  Invisible Children was a scam.

Selfies

With 35.4 million followers on Instagram, 34.6 million on Twitter, 37,846,531 likes on Facebook (numbers always increasing) plus other social media platforms like YouTube and Google+, Demi Lovato has gone from child Disney star, to a young adult who is making serious waves in the music industry.  I really didn't think I would be picking her as a celebrity to focus on for this project, and I was actually surprised by the amount of followers she has on social media.  

Trying to understand the appeal of Pinterest

Out of almost every module so far I have seen change.  Change is scary.  Change brings differences that many people do not like, understand, or even want to understand.  Did a person who typed on a typewriter have the right to call themselves a writer, over those who used more traditional methods?  Are ebooks replacing books?  Are you really an author if you can just self-publish whatever you want, or put a unique spin on publishing through social media? 

When reading “An Open Letter to Everyone Using the Word ‘Curate’ Incorrectly on the Internet” I could see where they were coming from.  The author had a point.  Just because Pinterest allows you do collect information online that’s relevant to a specific subject, doesn’t mean a person is a curator.  Especially when those people who are curators by profession have worked so hard.  After spending years in school, and even more time gaining job experience do become a curator, does someone who jumps on the online curating train have the right to that title as well?  But what are they then?  A social media curator?  Are people holding on to titles and names in a changing world?  People who dedicate time and effort to their Pinterest account definitely do not do the same things as a Curator at a museum, but do changes in technology then require people to loosen the reigns on definitions of words?  Navigating the internet isn’t easy, after all.  With the amount of information in the world expanding as rapidly as it does, someone has to organize it, even if someone can do it sitting at home in front of their computer during their spare time.

I don’t know the answer.  If someone enjoys taking pictures, and they have a high quality camera, I’d probably call them a photographer, even if it’s not their profession or if they haven’t trained for it.  If someone writers stories and puts them online for anyone to read, I’d still call them a writer and an author.  I wouldn’t put them on the same level as people who are published and paid for their work, but I wouldn’t cut them off either.  So while I would not call someone who ‘curates’ online content a professional curator, maybe this is just one more word that needs to expand its definition, understanding that there are different ‘levels’ or ‘classifications.’

“I am all for changes in the English language as long as they are for the positive. What I am not in favor of is the hijacking of words to make something sound more important that it actually is.” (Morin, 2012)

What do we do, then?  Create a new word?  Create sub-definitions?  In the end is the type of work each person does, the amount of time, education, and importance behind the work more important than the label used to define it?  When I look up online content curation, I see a focus on marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) (Mullan, 2011).   When I think of curation for museums or gallery’s, appealing to the masses is part of it, but so is the preservation of history and the sharing of culture.

This entire assignment is content curation, gathering content that is already out there.  But none of it is original content.  Right Mix Marketing suggests that content curation should be used along with original content to better promote your collection and increase search optimization (Treanor, 2011).

In my view, it all comes back to change, and how fast change comes when we may not be ready or willing to accept it.  The internet has created a whole other aspect of life that people have never had to really consider before.  It some ways it’s nice to know that humans are still needed to help the internet improve.  Our ability to organize and sort is still needed along with advancements and technology (Rosenbaum, 2012).

I’ve never really become interested in Pinterest.  I’ve tried, I’ve had an account for years.  I’ve taken multiple cracks at it, but it is not for me.  If I want to find recipes to try, I google it.  If I want DIY projects, I google it.  But the only reason that works is because of content curators.  So special thank you to the people out there who actually have taken an interest in platforms like Pinterest. 

I focused my board on one of my favorite debates, books vs. ebooks, and if one is better than the other, or if one is making the other irrelevant.  I don't think either side will ever render the other obsolete, but I still enjoy the debates around the issue. 

Follow Cara's board New Media Narratives on Pinterest.

References

1.    Hermitage Museum, (May 2012). “An Open Letter to Everyone Using the Word ‘Curate’ Incorrectly on the Internet,” Aboriginal Curator in Residence,http://aboriginalcuratorinresidence.blogspot.ca/2012/05/httphermitagemuseumwordpresscom20111004.html

2.       Mullan, E. (2011) What is content Curation?. Available at: http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Resources/Defining-EContent/What-is-Content-Curation-79167.htm 

3.       Rosenbaum, S. (April 2012). “Content Curators are the New Superheros of the Web, “ Fast Company,http://www.fastcompany.com/1834177/contentcurators-are-new-superheros-web

4.    Treanor, T. (2011) Content Curation: Definition and 6 tool options. Available at: http://www.rightmixmarketing.com/right-mix-blog/definition-and-tools/ 

Facebook

I have unfollowed (but no deleted) a lot of friends who post highly personal, TMI (too much information), or angry rant like posts on Facebook.  I follow a lot of celebrities, companies who sell products I like, and fan based pages.  While going through my Facebook timeline, I noticed that most of the posts I read were not from people, but from these companies I liked.  Those posts that were from people I knew tended to focus on movies, books, food, pets, social & political issues and travelling. 

J is an American friend who posts a lot about politics, her favourite shows/books/movies, her daughter, and cats.  She has a little girl who just recently started school, and is often talking about her frustrations with the educational system.  The video she shared was of University students in the States and how little they knew about their own history.

D is a social media expert and a lover of all things geeky.  Her posts tend to focus around her job as a social media manager, pictures of her pets, and fan videos, fandom memes, gif sets and more.  In this case, she’s posting a ‘spoiler’ about the recently released Star Wars video and saying she’s ‘sorry, not sorry’ because the movie has been out for a long enough time now.  She really, really loves geek culture, is a huge gamer, and often speaks out about sexism in gaming culture.

M was a friend from high school.  She’s posted a photo of herself in an outfit to match the era of “Pride, Prejudice & Zombies.”  With her is someone else who is dressed like a zombie.  M is a huge fan of books and geek culture as well.  She has said she is very excited to see the movie, and I’m assuming she and her friend are headed to watch it in full costume.

L is interested in attending the Silver Millennium Masquerade Ball.  Without clicking on this, I assume it has something to do with Sailor Moon.  I remember that she really loved that show as a kid (and still does now) as she recently posted about a gift she had received from a friend that was Sailor Moon Themed.    

I don’t know J very well anymore, but she keeps showing up on my newsfeed because of the news articles and funny posts she makes.  I could not tell you what she is up to her life, but I know posts a lot about sexism, racism and equality.

The last time I saw J2 was in University.  We were in the same program and worked together, so when we saw each other outside of class or work, it was usually at a party.  These days he is focused on his marriage, his job as a teacher, and his new born daughter, who he is currently trying to find a new carrier for.

I have not seen A since high school, but I know he recently left one job to start a new career, he lives with his girlfriend who he seems to really love, and has an adorable cat who he is constantly posting photos and videos of.

Sometimes, the most random things end up on my timeline.  But that's to be expected when you follow Tumblr.

 The posts I see are all picked out because of the accounts I interact with most often. so they also reflect my own interests.  There are many users I’m ‘Friends’ with who I never see on my timeline anymore, and anyone who starts posting things that are essentially overshare, I end up blocking.

More than updates from my friends, were posts from pages I’ve liked.  Corruption and policy brutality news reports, PSAs against drinking and driving, posts from George Takei, recipes (mostly from Buzzfeed and Tasty), and post that a breaking down the current Republican and Democratic debates. 

Twitter Fiction

The printing press was a bad idea.  Self-publishing was a bad idea.  E-Books are going to be the death of books, and now cellphones or tablets are squashing out both.  Writers are now either getting on the Twitter Train, or condemning it.  Twitter Fiction seems to be another process of story-evolution.  It’s happening.  It doesn’t mean that literature and writing is a dying art, it just means that it is changing.  There are entire website dedicated to twitter fiction.  There is even an annual Twitter Fiction Festival.   

“The concept of Twitter fiction may seem superficial to many because it can literally be done by anyone and, quite frankly, it goes against the established realms of highbrow literary art that dominate most lauded magazines.” (Santully, n.d.)  Santully then points out that the time invested in writers and readers in Twitter Fiction vs. full stories evens out.  It could take about fifteen minutes to write a twitter fiction story, and thirty seconds to read it.  Whereas it takes much longer to write and then read full stories.  Santully also notes that as he was getting started as an author, and on Twitter, he found that submitting Twitter Stories actually promoted stronger feedback from editors, with more detail, because they can easily pinpoint what they do and do not like, or their thoughts on the piece.

The youth of today are programmed to share stories and thoughts in 140 characters or less.  They adapt to saying as much as possible with very little space, in the hopes of validations through favourites and retweets.  Many magazines looking for short stories prefer submissions of 1,500 words or less (Santully, n.d.).  I can’t tell if the medium is influencing the message, or the message is influencing the medium, but the way to deliver stories is evolving, and people are evolving with it.  Melissa Terras, a Digital Humanities professor calls it a different type of art form, with a different experience and new constraints (Goldhill, 2015).

Favourites like choose your own adventures are even going from books, to online websites, to Twitter.  One author has created an online choose your own adventure on Twitter, with many possible outcomes, combined with links to websites.  He states that there are thousands of interactions with fans.

The interview with the author is in the first 8-9 minutes.  If the video is not showing up, a link to the interview is here.

Authors can also use Twitter Fiction to not only help them get published with a full story, but to promote upcoming book releases, like author David Mitchell did with his piece of Twitter Fiction.

Author Robert Swartwood says (Crum, 2015) that a story should do four things:

1.       Tell a story

2.       Be entertaining

3.       Be thought provoking

4.       Invoke an emotional response

If a story can do that in a few tweets of 140 characters (or even less than that, such as ‘Six Word Stories’ examples can be found here) why should it matter?  It forces authors to expanding their writing skills, reevaluate how to deliver something creative and creates very concise forms of writing.  

I still prefer print and ebooks, twitter stories end far too soon for my liking, but I could see how it would be easy to get lost in a website that hosts twitter stories, and comb through dozens of them in one sitting.  

References

274: Twitter fiction, designing a grief app, the dangers of digital metaphor and more(2015) Available at: http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2651112278 

Crum, M. (2015) Here’s how you write A short story on Twitter. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/twitter-fiction_n_7205686.html

Goldhill, O. (2015) Is Twitter fiction the new literary genre?  Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-twitter-fiction/404761/

Santulli, A. (n.d.). Consider Twitter fiction. Available at: http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/consider-twitter-fiction

 Six word stories. Available at: http://www.sixwordstories.net/

Alice & University in America

Alice gets accepted into University in America.  

Why not both?

In The Guardian news article “The writing is on the paywall- but the end of the print is not quite nigh” it is reported that in Christmas 2012, it wasn’t print books that won out, or e-readers that won out.  It was both.  There are those who swear by print, and those who rejoiced at the release of e-readers.  Then there are those who simply like both.  There’s nothing quite like holding a book in your hand, turning the pages, flipping back and forth easily.  But for those of us who like to read, and who would carry multiple books with us where ever we could if they didn’t weigh so much, there’s the convenience of the e-reader, tablets, or even cellphones.  As someone who sees the importance of both, I believe there is something to be said about the results of sales at Christmas time.  Neither one can really replace the other.  There is value in print in cyber space, and there is value in hard copies.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a screen or a book, if something manages to capture my imagination, it’s not likely that I’m going to get distracted by anything else around me, or by anything else I could be doing in my immediate area.

Sheldon says. “It runs on the world’s most powerful graphics chip.  Imagination.”  He does this while playing a 80s text based game on his computer.  Despite being outdated, and long since replaced with newer games, with images, sounds, and characters you can control, he easily gets immersed in the game.  The way I see it, the key is imagination.  From text based games, to crystal clear graphics on Playstation or Xbox, or from books to e-readers, it’s really all about a readers, or participant’s imagination, interests, and how quickly something can pull them in.

The way we print text may have changed and evolved over time, but the concept remained the same.  Words, texts, images on paper, essentially finalized and bound together in our hand.  As Elizabeth Eisenstein states, “Premature obituaries of the death of the sermon and the end of the book are themselves testimony to long-enduring habits of the mind.” It’s not the end, it’s just another way of doing things, and there are those who are always going to circle back around to printed documents. “Yet the views held by previous generations cannot be deleted as easily as can words upon a screen.” There is almost a feeling of security with books. It you hit one wrong mistake, you won’t lose your content, if you throw your book across a room (I’ll fully admit I’ve done this, emotional response to whatever I was reading) the book is still going to be there, likely unharmed. While there are now clouds, and ways to back up the content we read on screens, it’s just not quite the same. Flipping it around, the e-readers offer books at a lower price, they don’t use paper, and you can bring more books with you wherever you go. These debates between the new and traditional can go on and on.

In the end, methods of communication are always evolving and changing, but I really do think there’s always room for more than one method.

References

Eisenstein, E. L. (1995). The end of the book?: Some perspectives on media change. The American Scholar, 541-555.

Preston, Peter, (2012). “The writing is on the paywall – but the end of print is not quite nigh,” The Guardian

Digital Literacy & Me

I’m part of that first generations to grow up with the internet in my own home, where technology and online communities has almost always been a part of my life.  When I was younger I didn't really care what it was that I was joining as long as my friends were doing the same, and privacy was not the concern for me like it is today.  I started my first blog at 13, which is now luckily lost to me (that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it).  I have no idea what content went on there, and I'm fairly certain I stopped updating it pretty quickly.  I had a Myspace account (it's still active, oh the shame).  Now I have a Twitter account (two actually, but only one is public), Facebook, Instagram and a number of other accounts that I do not actively use, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.  

Most of my online community experience has been for social purposes only.  I have, and still do, manage social media accounts and websites for my work, but they are completely separate accounts from me and the work I do is mostly anonymous.  I don't enjoy publishing or creating my own content or sharing with the world past some pictures of my choosing.  I've always been a behind the scenes person when it comes to work, and personally I'm credibly introverted. Trying to follow a script and record something other people will listen to leaves me feeling fairly panicked.  So I need to apologize now for any pauses that took too long, for tripping over my own words or talking too fast.  I recorded this podcast multiple times/tried editing trying to improve, but it wasn't getting any better.

I can say for a fact that podcasts will never be my choice way to create or contribute to an online community.  I like listening to them.  I don't like creating them.  This was an assignment that largely pushed my barriers of comfort.  Even if it's nothing fancy, and the audio probably isn't that great, I'm glad I went through this experience to say I've at least tried.  But it's not something I'll be looking to do again.

I enjoy online communities, social media and different platforms, but I prefer to pick what I share and how I share it.  I’m more likely to use the accounts that are ‘private’ as opposed to open.

This is the first photo I ever posted on Facebook.  High School Graduation, 2005

  

 The most recent photo I posted on Facebook, New Years Eve 2015