Readings
Hinton, S & Hjorth L 2013, Understanding Social Media. Sage Publications, London 2013. (Section: pp. 1-31).

This week marks our first full week of online classes. As said before, with the rising cases of Covid-19 in Victoria and the state on lockdown, this was an inevitable result. While I do think online classes are the best solution, I’ll admit it can be a struggle due to a lack of focus. This is something I just need to work on and adapt to make the most of this unfortunate situation.

This week we delved further into the web itself, breaking down the concepts of ‘New Media’ and ‘Social Media’ as well as the main differences between new Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. I particularly like Elaine’s analogy for New Media and social media as a jar containing a plant. While some sources describe new media as strictly online or digital, the words of Eugenia Siapera enforce a different idea. That New Media is both online and digital (but not always) and most importantly, Evolving. (Leong 2020) It can continuously grow and change, pushing for media within its capacity, including social media, to change and adapt as well. Like a plant growing within a jar.

When discussing Social media as well, we looked at a reading by Sam Hinton and Larissa Hjorth. Practically everyone with access to the internet uses social media in some form or another from youtube to Facebook to tinder. What was especially interesting was when we began to look at social media from a marketing angle. It was surprising looking at Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 from the perspective that the terms were coined to distinguish business models from their failures to their successes. (Leong 2020) As the web grew, businesses naturally attempted to expand marketing tactics into the scene as based on their own experience with more traditional forms of media like television. (Hinton 2013, 12) However, with Web 1.0 initially being challenging to publish and market to audiences due to the technical skills needed. When the web eventually grew to become more user friendly and engaging, it gave rise to a new wave of marketing tactics to reach a wide range of audiences. The name itself “doesn’t refer to any changes in the internet’s architecture. Rather… the types of software employed and the changes at the level of user practice.” (Hinton 2013, 16) Once these changes occurred and marketing to the public became easier as well as being able to collect information about their target audiences, the name for the Web 2.0 was born.

It was all a scary reminder to me just how much of my social media use, and even use of the web in general, is monitored so to provide me with more content I am more likely to view. It’s scary to think that, while Web 2.0 is more user friendly and engaging due to lack of expertise in its usage, it is far easier for marketing companies to gain insight into my own personal interests. I remember learning a few years back how ‘agreeing’ to the ‘cookies’ of a website allowed it to track your movements through it. I became paranoid by the thought of this and actively avoided accepting this option whenever I could. To be honest learning even more about this has strengthened my resolve to prevent this. Of course in this day and age I know it is unavoidable, but if I can control it to a degree, it at least can help put myself at ease, I suppose.

Readings
Lister, M et al 2009, New Media: A Critical Introduction. Routledge, New York. (Sections: Networks, Users and Economics pp 163-169; Wiki Worlds and Web 2.0 pp 204-209; The Long Tail pp 197-200; User-generated content, we are all users now pp 221-232.)

While being only our second tutorial, this was unknowingly our last face to face to face session for what could potentially be the semester. With the state of the country slowly beginning to go into lockdown and RMIT pushing for classes to be shifting online, this was an inevitable result. Nevertheless, I will still persevere through this course, it is merely a matter of remaining focused and on task. Ironically, as the university begins to transfer to an online platform, it serves as the perfect time to start discussing the matter of the internet. These are things that, contrary to popular belief, including my own, are not the same thing.

As we discovered from the book ‘New Media’, the simplest way of explaining it is that the Web is where all information that we seek is stored. The internet is just a path to access this information. ‘A highway to our destination, that being information’ as our lecturer for the week, Elaine phrased it. A means to an endpoint. With the world now entirely dependant on technologies like the internet and the Web for communication, we have given rise to ‘Web 2.0, and it’s expression in the form of social networking sites (SNS)’ (Lister 2009, 163). Learning how the information initially came from one centralised source was fascinating as the Web grew and began to decentralise information. No longer do people have to rely on one source for their knowledge, they can seek various sources practically instantaneously to confirm information. Even if one node of data was taken down, the data could still be found somewhere else across the Web.

The idea of Web 2.0 (as coined by Tim O’Reilly) comes from the concept of a new era of the Web (from 1.0 to 2.0). This era started as the internet became more wildly accessible and user-generated content (UGC) flourished as the need to know coding no longer became necessary. Admittedly I can’t really remember much about when I first started really using the internet. I do remember how it took me a long time to really get into various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to name a few. Even then they were platforms I would simply take information from, rarely generating user-generated content myself. However learning more about how the Web started out and is now so widely accessible, it gives me a newfound appreciation of it.

Readings:
Norman, D 1998, The design of everyday things, Basic Book, New York (Sections: Preface vii-xv; Chapter one pp 1-13; Chapter 4 (constraints) pp 81-87; (computers) pp 177-186).

Week 2 was admittedly a challenge at first. Due to the public holiday, there was no lecture for the week, and in my own case, no class either. Because of this, I needed to read the texts alone and simply discuss them here. I usually prefer the face to face courses for this reason as I find being able to talk about the readings for the class increases my understanding of them, letting me reflect on my own knowledge of them and others. Fortunately, the passages were engaging and interesting to understand.

The topic of this week was all about ‘affordances’ in general and with Instagram as the software of focus. One of the readings we were given included sections from Donald A. Norman’s book, ‘The Design of Everyday Things’. In the simplest way possible, affordances are the design of objects and how they relate to the user. They are the properties of objects that are useful to a user. When an object is well designed “it is easy to interpret and understand [with] visible cues to their operation.” (2) They will contain a multitude of affordances that make an object easy to use. This is primarily displayed through vision as the human mind can use the affordances of an object to understand what to do.

The texts suggest various examples of affordances and poor design, including, doors, a kettle, telephones, etc. A good example I can find from personal experience is light switches. Usually when you see a switch, flipping it downwards turns a light on, and the reverse turns it off. However, I also come across light switches that, in the attempt to upgrade the design for more comfortable use I imagine, require other protocols. These could include; tapping/holding/ pressing down on a switch (either pushing a button in, which is an affordance or giving no indication at all unless the light turns on) swiping left or right on a pad, having to select the room, some may not even have the switch in the affiliated room or too hidden. Such designs like these can overly complicate or confuse what is meant to be a simple task of turning on a light, which already has a simple affordance that anyone can understand.

Additionally, the example of the text provided on page 12 with scissors was an effective method in describing a conceptual model and the affordances, constraints and mappings that make them up. Along with the discussions, it was insightful to learn more about these ideas with our focus on Instagram. The example of a lego motorcycle helped to break down the various types of constraints and use them with Instagram, taking on the knowledge of other successful platforms to create a software that is easy to use and understand. While this is a principle most people already apply to their work subconsciously, I’m happy to be aware of this and hopefully apply it better to my future practices.

Text: Text: Khoo E, Hight C, Torrens R, Cowie B 2017, ‘Introduction: Software and other Literacies’ in Software Literacy: Education and Beyond, Springer, Singapore. (pp.1-12)

In my three years at RMIT, I have grown to strongly dislike any classes I have before its related lecture. Things would often feel disjointed as tutors would be expecting you to be familiar with topics discussed in a lecture that hadn’t even occurred yet. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the class and how this was handled. We had issues in both the course and lecture with the screens not responding at first. I personally found in some odd form of irony that it served as a reminder of how even our own education in the subject was semi-dependent on technology.

I found it surprising to learn the central social media platform we will be examining is Instagram. With our focus question being “How do the affordances of Instagram affect the way photos and videos are authored, published and distributed in the network?”
This admittedly gave me concerns as of all the social media I have, I am least familiar with Instagram.

In the tutorial, we were able to divide into groups and discuss the pros and cons Instagram provides to its user and begin to delve into the reading of the week, discussing it’s key qualities and how it ties into the focus questions of the course. We additionally discussed our media factory blogs and how they will tie into our assessment tasks, including our first assignment, several annotated bibliographies. I have a strong dislike of annotated bibliographies, but with the guides provided and plenty of references to follow along with, I have faith this will not be too much of a challenge.

The reading for this week was the introduction of the book ‘Software Literacy: Education and beyond.’ We were told that this reading was the final reading of the previous year, yet is considered the critical text to our course. I found this to be accurate as the text discussed how software has become ‘the engine of contemporary information society’ (E. Khoo et al. 2017, p.1) and is an integral asset of our ever-advancing society. While largely a ‘neglected part of the digital revolution,’ (E. Khoo et al. 2017, p.3) all forms of devices and programs function on different software. Through society steadily growing more interconnected than ever, more and more software also grow and develop to become more intertwined, such as businesses owning software like Facebook, going to buy and hold other software like Instagram. These developments come with their own benefits and disadvantages that we will further explore through the course.

I look forward to learning these as the course progresses.