Greeting and welcome back to the blog this week topic is social media. The topic this week I will be going over the two readings about new media and social media. The first reading is Understanding New Media by Eugenia Siapera. Siapera is a digital and social media scholar who proved the term new media. The second reading is Understanding Social Media by Sam Hinton and Larissa Hjorth. Hinton is a scholar of digital and the internet related media and Hjorth is a digital ethnography and artist. They both explode the fabric of social media today through the relationship between technology and social media.

New media is thought of as a term new technology thing that is connected to computers and the internet. In this week’s reading, Siapera describes as contemporary media that both are technological and communicative that can change in response to each other. That description split new media into three categories digital media, online media and evolving media. Digital media is the technological side of new media. Some examples of Digital media are compressed media like mp3, WAV, txt, png, mp4 and more. Online media is the communicative side as it is a way to connect to other computers and phones. Example of online media is youtube, Netflix and digital radio. Evolving media is connects technology and communication and changes overtime always updating. An example of evolving media is ITO, laptops, smartphone and more. Personal I agree with Siapera description of new media as I always come across it in my other class and the term has always seemed very vague. The dictionary and Wikipedia means describe too much but Siapera concept that digital media and online media are subcategories make more sense than to just to them all in the same basket.

Now social media is websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. Some social media that we all use are Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Snapchat and the list goes on. In Hinton and Hjorth text, they refer to Web 2.0 as software that changes the level of user participation. Web 1.0 was a more passive form on interacting with web and Web 2.0 is more engaging with the user and they can contribute content. You could publish content on web 1.0 but it required you to know technical coding. Web 2.0 in the authors’ term is a way to engage by publishing/ production/ authoring and accessing. The problem with Web 2.0 is data mining which is big companies buy your metadata for ads. There is a solution that is developing called web 3.0 that making a decentralized version of the internet that stops data mining but let not get into a bit off topic.

 

Hello and welcome to week 3 of my blog. This week’s topic is the concept of affordance in design. Let me explain affordance, affordance is the relationship between an object and a person and what a person can do with that object. An example of this is the affordance of a door it is pushed, pulled or it slides open so that you may walk through it.

The importance of design is that they make objects easy to use as thousands of different objects daily. We want to spend the minimum amount of time trying to figure out how to use something and we don’t want to get stuck using one object. In the cover of Donald Norman’s book, The design of everything is an example of bad design because of not thinking of the affordance

This teapot has the handle and the spout on the same side. There are a few reasons why this teapot is a bad design the main reason is the affordance and constraints I’ll explain the constraints later. The affordance of a handle is to hold it as it shaped for a hand to fit in it but the handle would be hot because the spout is on the same side.

Visibility

Visibility in design is when the object sends a natural signal on how to interact with it. The visibility of a mug is to hold the handle as it is shaped to fit your hand in it. Visibility allows users to easily interact with an object without having to read instructions making it easier for the users.

Mapping

Mapping is the design the feature of the object where it is placed, how many there are, what can fit inside and more. An example is a game controller and a racing game everybody knows that the back right toggle of every controller is accelerating button and the left is the break. Why are the controls of a racing game like this because the right pedal of a car is accurate and the left is brake it is familiar to the player.

Constraints

Constraints are the limitations of how a person can interact with an object. An example is that the affordance of socks allows you to wear the socks on your hands. Some of wearing socks on your hands are the constraints are that you have no holes in the sock so it will be hard to use your hands, people will look at you weird and more.

Physical constraints

Physical constraints refer to the physical limitations of an object. A physical constraint of a 1-liter water bottle is that it can only fit 1 liter of a liquid is in it. Physical constraints have more value in affordance if they are easy to understand because it limits the action the object can do.

Semantic constraints

Semantic constraints use the meaning of the situation to control the possible action. Semantic constraint relies on knowledge of the situation and the world. A Semantic constraint of a car is that you have to sit in the driver’s seat to operate the car as it is the only seat with pedals and a steering wheel.

Logical constraints

The logical constraints are the literal aspects of the object the one way the object should be used. A logical constraint of assembling a table is that the leg must go under the table top for the table to stand upright.

Cultural constraints

A cultural constraint is what is a culturally acceptable use of an object. A cultural constraint of stop signs it that they are always red and everyone understands that it means stop.

Hello, all welcome back to the blog. The topic of the week is the Network. Let’s start off with what is the network. The network has two parts the internet and the web. The Internet is a collection of networks that connect computer and servers together. The Web interlinks document between different computers with the use of hyperlinks and web browsers. I can’t picture a world without the network my whole life revolves around the network. I spend most of my day on the network to talk to my friends, play video games, watch videos, transfer my money and more.

In this week’s tut, we went over the lecture notes and covered over a few different points on the network. One of the points we covered was what is the difference between the internet and the web. Elaine our lecture told the class about the metaphor from the lecture to explain the difference which was that the network is like the Metlink tram line. The internet is the tram track that connects the infrastructure and the web is the traffic that runs through the infrastructure. This metaphor means that system that links every computer in the network and that the web is the content such as music sharing, p2p, social media and more.

The last point segways to the next which is open architecture. Open architecture is the structure of a network. The discussion began by talking about a centralized network. An example of a centralized network would be a book as there is one original copy(the content) which is mass produced and disturbed to the network. The next type of network is a decentralized network. The internet is a decentralized network which means it has multiple sources where content is stored and if one was destroyed it would not affect the network. The final type of disturbed network which we did not talk about in the discussion. A disturbed network would be the new form of web, web 3.0 which use peer to peer and block chaining this means that there are no servers and that the network is connected by computer to computer. Web 3.0 is at its infancy probably why we did not discuss it.

Another thing we discussed in the tut was google analytics. Google analytics are optimized search terms, Google keyword search algorithms and more. Analytics are keywords used to get the highest google search result. A method we discussed in class was using the keywords as the first two words of a news headline. Something else that affects the google search result is geo locations. If I use my VPN to search top news stories like Christchurch shooting when my geolocation is set to Australia the first 3 results are ABC, the Guardian and Sydney Herald. If I do the same search but my geolocation is the US my top search result are the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times. This discussion was to show what hyperlinks you can affect your post from getting more views online when using the network.

The final thing we discussed was the long tail. The long tail to a theory that research the long term effects market and how the market peaks and then to sustains to Neish consumers. An example of the long tail is Facebook started off for the top end users of the network the college student and young adults at its peak and now it main consumers are people over 40.

 

Hi all and welcome to my blog. Before I jump into what we all came here for the network media topic of the week. Let me introduce myself my name is Michel, I’m currently completing my final semester of my Bachelor of design(digital media). The reason why I chose Networked media was to have a greater understanding of social media as a content creator and as a consumer. I use social media to stay connected with all of my friends as we all do and to promote my work which includes VR/AR, app designs and Interactive Installations.

The topic of this week is the reading networked images visual methodologies by Dr. Sabine Niederer. networked Images visual methodologies is the research of networked images(images that have been posted, like,@metioned, tagged and more) on the web used in studies.

The reading begins by talking about visual turn. The visual turn is where the Images became networked images. Imagine how life would be before the visual turn going out and getting drunk and not having to worry about getting tagged in an embarrassing image, instead of @ your friend you would have to show them the video in real life and see what their reaction really is and more. It is not that long ago that these things happened but I think it would feel surreal.

With the rise and popularity of social media, I can understand Dr. Sabine Niederer theory on Visual methodologies for the digital age. One of her arguments are Images can no longer just be studied by researching the context but we need to research the network in which the image exists. I agree with this because Images in the digital age are different than before the visual turn. In the digital age, images are different now because they could become a meme,  on different platforms the audience might have different opinions of the image, an image going viral might change the importance of the image and more.

Sabine also mentions Lev Manovich theory which is about the software studies. Software studies is a study which uses software as a tool that collects, displays and analyzes images for the study. The example in the reading of Manovich uses software studies to collect, displays and analyzes Instagram selfies. Manovich researches this selfies to compare the difference for his study on traditional self-portraits. This method of research that use software studies is a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, it is good as it opens up a lot of possibilities for research. On the other hand software studies can be exploited, look at what Cambridge analytical did with it. Personal I don’t want my Instagram photos to be part of a study. I don’t know what to think of software studies if it is a good thing or a bad thing I guess only time will tell.

What I learned from this reading is that social media platforms can be used for research to have a better understanding of networked images on the web. This method of research is helpful and I will probably be using it in future in my studies.