Overall thoughts

I have really enjoyed that module. It was an interesting experience, both during the lectures and seminars on first term and practical workshops on the second term. I developed my skills in a different area and expand my networking knowledge so now I can reflect on things like sites/posts/social networks and try to make my own opinion on things based on the academic theoretical knowledge. I can say that I am proud of some of the things/projects that I have done, especially video but, also I know that some things I could do much better. Life is not always goes the way we want. There is a time when you want to focus on your work but something unexpected happened and you can’t.

Overall I am happy about my work. I would like to thank all, the
people who gave me all inspirations, energy and help during all the projects.

I think that even when I submitted this blog, I won’t stop add new posts, because I started to like it.

                             

Why Facebook?

In this post I would like to ask myself a question why did Facebook became a world phenomenon and what was the main difference from Friendster, etc. that contribute to its today’s popularity? I will also focus on convergence of different form of communication and people interaction.

Nowadays, more and more people are using Social networks at least once a day. If I have to be reflective I can admit that I am checking up Facebook every time I am using any computer, no matter where I am and what I am doing. I can even say that I became addicted of using it and checking up newest posts, pictures and all others ‘social activities’.

 

Facebook launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg. First was invented just for Harvard students but very quickly expanded to other universities.

Facebook by the numbers: 1.06 billion monthly active users

To analyse a phenomenon of the Facebook I need to define the critical difference of social network from the other communications interactions such as using phone. There is a three basics features that can be similar to all interactions:

-creating profile

-adding contacts

-interact with those contacts

All of the above can easily regard telephone interactions but for the social communication the critical difference is that our activity can be more or less visible to others.

The first reason why Facebook was different from other social networks was the option for user to create ‘groups’. This function allowed users to gather around different topics of shared interests. The network itself is structured around individual users, with each ‘at the centre of their own community ’ (Boyd and Ellisions)

The next reason is that Facebook administrators allows creating music pages, celebrities, commercial profiles, fake user profiles and so on, while Friendster which community grew very quickly was aggressively deleting profiles.

Facebook extraordinary growth is an illustration of Metcalfe’s Law (observation) that:

The value of communication network increases proportionately to the square of the number of people that are connected to it.

Explanation for that is easy, for example is only one person has a phone is not very useful but when ¾ people around me has phone too, it becomes much more useful. And if everybody has a phone, it changes to be essential. 

This can be the best explanation why Facebook became so dominant in a world of social media. 

More information and data about Facebook number you can find here:
 http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57566550-93/facebook-by-the-numbers-1.06-billion-monthly-active-users/

Reference:

Meikle, G. & Young, S. (2012) Media Convergence: Networked Media in Everyday Life. London: Palgrave Macmillian. Chapter 3, 'From Broadcast to Social Media'.  

[WWW] Available From:   http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57566550-93/facebook-by-the-numbers-1.06-billion-monthly-active-users/ 
[Accessed 20/03/2013]

ANTI-SMOKING CAMPAIGN

Anti nicotine campaign 1 from Natalia zi on Vimeo.


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Campaign Project

 We were required to produce a camping video whose purpose was to rise awareness of particular cause. Our group (Me and Melina Ioannou) decided to do anti-smoking campaign.

The reason why we have done it is because a lot of people around us is smoking, and sometimes I smoke as well. 

While we were searching for appropriate information about smoking we found a lot of pictures that showed how much damage smoking causes. At this point I started to think more, what I am doing to myself. I am a healthy person at the moment but everything can change anytime. So I am asking myself: why? Why you want to die earlier then other people/ your friends?

To make this video we used the Kodak video camera, which was really helpful and easy to manage it. To edit the clip we used iMovie, it was my second time that I have been using it, (first project was psychogeography) and each time I feel more confident using different tools that I have never used before. I have uploaded it on Vimeo. At first I had a problem to post this video as it is, but I found a tutorials online how do it, and quickly sorted it out.  

Storyboard:

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The story is about two students, one is the 'cool one' and she is smoking, the other one wants to be 'that cool' so she is too shy to refused the proposition of the cigarette. At first we can see that whatever physical activity they are doing, they feel sick and have a breathing problem. The video is forcing the audience to ask themselves a question ‘do you know what is wrong?’ That part is a key point for smokers because more or less they are facing breathing problem and that they can find similarities with theirs real life.

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Then the light changed to be brighter and you finally can see in colours, which symbolise the new life/freedom.

This project was inspiring and for me as well as a great opportunity to  develop my editing skills. I appreciated this task. We had to think of the plot, scenery, the idea and message which we want to sent to the others. 

We shared it on our Facebook page, and a lot of our friends liked it. Which in my opinion is a great thing! 

We can share our work and do something good about it! We can push somebody to quit smoking!

'Spotify' -my newest favourite social network

Last month I saw on Facebook that my friends started to use 'Spotify' application. At first I was not really interested to open it, not even thinking to download it.

After few days I have thought that- 'hello, I am a media student!', it is my obligation to focus on everything, what is going on around all the networked world!

I decided to log on just to see why it is becoming so popular among my friends. The downloading process was very easy and I did not have to use any special tools or applications. I was surprised that I could find there every artist or band, even those from my country(Poland).

The benefits of using 'SPOTIFY' is that is legal (which is important these days), that you can find all of discography of any artists, (even the newest albums), you are able to make your own playlist mixing all the songs, albums of your favourite music. It is connected with all other social networks, so every song or artist you are actual listen to, your friends can see it or even just play it.
The other advantages of using it is that you are able to follow your favourite artists and your friends who has the same music taste as you.

The 'catch' is that about every 30 minutes you can hear commercial, if you would like to use this app without any disturbers you can pay monthly and use it as much as you like.

Why Spotify became my favourite application at the moment?

It is my fav. because- It is easy, the streaming is perfect comparing to youtube, when sometimes it just stops, so If I am at home and I want to listen to one album I can just do it!

I dont mind commercial due to my understanding of the 'legalization' of that application. The company has to   pay for the songs to the artists and some how they need to pay for the server, that is way commercial are active every time.


While I was doing a research I found articles which are helpful to make a critical overview:

'Behind the music: The real reason why the major labels love Spotify'

Spotify has been accused of failing to compensate artists fairly. Helienne Lindvall of The Guardian reported that for "artists who 'signed up to a label' there's a tangible risk that revenue which comes from a possible sale of shares by the label would end up in the proverbial 'blackbox' (non-attributable revenue that remains with the label)." and that "indie labels... as opposed to the majors and Merlin members, receive no advance, receive no minimum per stream and only get a 50% share of ad revenue on a pro-rata basis."

To find out more click on link below:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/aug/17/major-labels-spotify

Is Spotify unfair to musicians?

Spotify may offer a spectacular selection of tunes, but producer/engineer Allen Farmelo thinks Spotify's music for almost nothing model devalues music.

To find out more click on link below:

 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57540964-47/is-spotify-unfair-to-musicians/

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY PROJECT

psychogeography from Natalia zi on Vimeo.

...The situationists' desire to become psychogeographers, with an understanding of the 'precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals', was intended to cultivate an awareness of the ways in which everyday life is presently conditioned and controlled, the ways in which this manipulation can be exposed and subverted, and the possibilities for chosen forms of constructed situations in the post-spectacular world. Only an awareness of the influences of the existing environment can encourage the critique of the present conditions of daily life, and yet it is precisely this concern with the environment which we live which is ignored. (Plant,1992)


This is my psychogeography project, made in Croatia during my holiday trip. It was a great opportunity to do it in a different place rather than Leicester.

 place: ZADAR, old town. during the day 

 scope of my journey: long walk around the city

mapping: relation between people around us.
During editing this video I realised how many interesting people pass me by and I did not really notice that.

record: to document my video I used the phone camera, but I was not a good idea due to the bad quality in some shoots.

rule: my algorithms that I used in this project was a flipping coin, to decide which way I should go. Right/Left Heads/Tails

Reference:

Plant, S.  (1992) 'The most radical gesture: The Situationist International in a postmodern age', Routledge.
 [WWW] Available from: http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.evans/psychogeog.html [Accessed 20/03/2013]

Debate: File Sharing & Piracy

Internet transactions are more apt to commit a copyright offense than their offline equivalents. That's because every transaction on the Internet involves copies. The Internet is a system for efficiently making copies between computers. Whereas a conversation in your kitchen involves mere perturbations of air by noise, the same conversation on the net involves making thousands of copies. Every time you press a key, the keypress is copied several times on your computer, then copied into your modem, then copied onto a series of routers, thence (often) to a server, which may make hundreds of copies both ephemeral and long-term, and then to the other party(ies) to the conversation, where dozens more copies might be made.

Copyright law valorizes copying as a rare and noteworthy event. On the Internet, copying is automatic, massive, instantaneous, free, and constant. Clip a Dilbert cartoon and stick it on your office door and you're not violating copyright. Take a picture of your office door and put it on your homepage so that the same co-workers can see it, and you've violated copyright law, and since copyright law treats copying as such a rarified activity, it assesses penalties that run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars for each act of infringement.

There's a word for all the stuff we do with creative works — all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out, drawing, and thinking: we call it culture. (Doctorow, 2008)

Today on my networked media workshops we had a debate: File Sharing & Piracy.

The motion under discussion was:

This house believes that File Sharing should be legal and culture on the internet should be free.

My group was pro-motion – For file sharing

The benefits of file sharing are:

"In a file sharing environment, a large number of users can access a program as though it were on their local machines, when actually the program resides on a single file server. This is a great benefit to small workstations, where disk space is at a premium. A user can have access to a much larger program repertoire than could fit on a private disk.
By having a resource reside physically on a single server, then distributed throughout the network, you can greatly simplify administration. First, you reduce the number of copies of various programs that need to be maintained on the network. Second, you reduce the problems involved in performing backups for a number of machines dispersed over a wide geographical area. By keeping files in a single location, this task becomes comparable to backing up a single machine."


Reference:

Doctorow, C. (2008) [WWW] http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2008/11/cory-doctorow-why-i-copyfight.html [Accessed 23/04/13]

[WWW] Available from: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_advantages_and_disadvantages_of_file_sharing [Accessed 23/04.13]

Mapping the self - Pecha Kucha Presentation

PechaKucha 20x20 is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and you talk along to the images. The presentation format was devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture. The first PechaKucha Night was held in Tokyo in their gallery/lounge/bar/club/creative kitchen, SuperDeluxe, in February, 2003. Klein Dytham architecture still organize and support the global PechaKucha Night network and organize PechaKucha Night Tokyo. 


Pecha Kucha Calendar: http://www.pechakucha.org/calendar

Preparing  the Pecha Kucha presentation was a good expierience, espacially due to the fact that I have never done it before. The construction of the presentation and timing was essential, not only because it helped my presentation flow but also to organize the information that i have prepared in a clear stucture.


I have not only developed my presenting skills, but also I have done a proper research to get to know my subject as best as I can. My self confidence was bulit on my reasearch knowledge and my own expierience. It was really interesting to become a part od this social network and see how other people leave, react and deal with their problems.  I became a user because I wanted to see from inside how this application works, that is why from the very beginning I was scepticall.
I realize that for some people, being supported by other annonymous user is extremly helpful and they treat MoodPanda as some kind of psychotherapy.

For some reasons I think that a lonley people can find themselfs in a society where they can strip out of theirs problems without getting judged by anybody from 'outside'.

My presentation was a co-operation with my friend Melina Ioannou, so her part of the presentation you can find on her blog.

Reference:

[WWW] Available from: http://www.pechakucha.org/