Introduction

socialmedia

Hello! You’ve reached the homepage for Media 6 Group Six’s research paper on Social Media!

After reading this post beneath the read more marker, please navigate to the following pages in this order: Storytelling on Social Media, Snapchat, Methods, Analysis, Conclusion.

And for more fun and entertainment, be sure to visit our Snapchat Video Interviews!

There is no denying the rise of social media in the contemporary world. Since the early 2000’s, digital natives have been encouraged to join all of the social networking sites they possibly could, building and fostering relationships in ways that humans have never been allowed to before. The ways to share real life experiences, stories, and photographs have grown exponentially since 2002, when Friendster was first launched in the United States. Digital Trends (2014) describes the early 2000’s as when “social networking hit really it’s stride”, allowing users to explore their preexisting, real life networks to create new bonds and share information with their family and friends online.  

In the last ten years, social media has grown beyond what any scholars could have predicted, with a wide range of different platforms producing different content (varying from text, images and video) for global audiences. Similarly, with the rise of mobile media, users have more agency to create content then they ever had before. The ability to share personal and corporate stories grew exponentially, with YouTube producing 300 hours of video content every minute (Smith, 2015).  With the addition of mobile capabilities, users have had more capabilities to create and consume content than ever before, no longer tied down to their computers to upload or view content.

With the shift in how content was being produced, the content began to change based on consumer demands. No longer restricted by length, production values or networks, users have been more free to create their own content then ever before. Video content, while originally created for film and television formats, had to adapt in order to suit popular consumer demands.

This research project looks specifically at the user habits and experiences of Australian consumers in relation to the social networking mobile application Snapchat. Similarly, we are exploring how users use this application as a form of self expression and to create and further their personal relationships (Vivienne and Burgess, 2013, p.279).

Due to the unpredictable growth and changing nature of social media applications, contemporary and applicable academic research is increasingly hard to find. Drawing together three distinct resources, we have been able to illustrate what we believe to  be an accurate representation of the social networking environment in Australia. 

Alexander and Levine (2008) propose that users create “small chunks of content” called ‘microcontent’ which can take the form of any medium (video, text, images etc.) and these can be used to bring together “different users with a shared interest” (p.42). Alexander and Levine’s research looks specifically at how these chunks of microcontent can be linked together to create stories which encompass a larger story, and how this can bring together a large number of people from a number of diverse areas.

Van House, Davis et al (2004) consider the social uses of personal photography, and how it can be used to create and foster social relationships. Specifically considering the technology surrounding camera phones, they consider the benefits of social photography to be threefold (pg. 1);

  • constructing personal and group memory
  • creating and maintaining social relationships
  • self-expression and self-presentation

Van House, Davis et al consider the history of photography as an ongoing process, with camera phones and social networking to be the next step.

Vivienne and Burgess (2013) research investigates how personal photography has been remediated as part of the process of the developments in social media, “[engendering] changes in how we capture, remember and communicate personal images of everyday and family life” (pg. 280). Vivienne and Burgess also consider how self produced content, specifically photos is manipulated and altered to maintain a public image. They consider how users “frame memories and identities in their digital stories” (pg. 296), to further social relationships.

These three articles, joined together with our independent research survey, will provide an accurate representation of the contemporary Australian social media landscape. Our survey will be investigating the personal uses and experiences of Australians in relation to the applications of primarily Snapchat, but also Vine. Our target audience for our research is people living in Australia primarily between the ages of 18-25, with a variety of audience sizes, ranging from zero to up to four hundred. Our survey aims to investigate how people are creating stories within the social media constraints, and how this differs from the traditional story telling method. We are also investigating user experience within these applications, exploring the perceived positives and negatives they have experienced.

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