Dovey and Rose’s 2012 report, “We’re Happy and We Know It: Documentary: Data: Montage”, discusses various ways in which happiness can be recorded and mapped out on a digital scale. They cite mobile applications and interactive documentaries such as I Want You to Want Me (p.g6), We Feel Fine (p.6) and Mappiness (p.7) as examples of expressing emotions in a digital sense. They discuss how these platforms can “produce unexpected new insights” (p.7) into the human condition and how it can be expressed in a digital form.

One of the ideas I found most interesting in this reading was the discussion surrounding the differing and ever changing nature of online documentaries. As Dovey and Rose discuss, “the exact nature of the experience will emerge from the interaction [with] whatever is available online to respond to [it]” (Dovey and Rose 2012, p.18). The main problem I feel most students have been encountering with Korsakow this semester is giving up the control to shape the users experience. Most of the software we work with gives the creator complete control over how the user views the product, and it is strange to work with a program, which leaves the users experience so much up to probability.

Another idea which I found interesting in this reading was when Dovey and Rose discuss how “watching work online is, some might argue, already difficult enough, finding it in the first place is already a challenge.” (Dovey and Rose 2012, p. 12). I think they main problem most students are struggling with this subject is finding the point in Korsakow, as it seems to be a program which very few people use. It is hard to see and understand the audience for interactive and online documentaries when they are such a new phenomenon.