Why is it important for media practitioners to develop software literacies?
‘Software literacies’ refers to the understanding of digital means of communication. It is “the awareness, attitude, and ability of individuals to appropriately use digital tools to identify, access, and manage digital resources and communicate with others in order to enable constructive social action and to reflect upon this process.” (Khoo, Hight, Torrens and Cowie, 2017)
As mentioned in ‘Introduction: Software and Other Literacies (Khoo, Hight, Torrens and Cowie, 2017)’, software is surrounding us all daily in many aspects. Examples provided include the GPS in a car and ATM machines. Other examples of software in everyday society includes public transport (Myki) machines, self-serve checkout screens at supermarkets and digital menu ordering screens at fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s.
When applying the term ‘software literacies’ to everyday society, we can say that we are living in a “software dominant culture”. The reading mentions that software culture is “fundamentally reshaping all areas of modern life”. This is due to the increase of software being used daily, in the examples mentioned above. It is likely that even more new means of software culture will develop over time. Currently, we can already see new developments of software culture such as ‘telehealth’. This includes using methods of video calls instead of face-to-face consultations between a medical practitioner and patient. (Department of Health | Telehealth, 2020) It is important for both parties to be software literate to allow this method of consultation to be effective.
Media practitioners are often involved with the curation, publication, and distribution of news and information. As society is becoming “software dominant”, these media practitioners must adhere to the ways software allows them to carry out their practices. This will allow the news and information to reach its intended audience in a society where software is dominantly being used. Media practitioners must be software literate; meaning they must understand how to use digital communication technologies to their advantage to portray news, stories, narratives and information they are telling. Digital communication technologies can be social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. As well as television, online news sites such as The Herald Sun and The Age.
What is your understanding of the concept of ‘affordances’?
My understanding of the concept of ‘affordances’ involves the design of a product allowing the user to be able to determine how to use the product. This is due to the design of the product “providing strong clues to the operation.” (Norman, 1998). Therefore, according to the concept of affordances, if the user of a product is unable to determine how to use the product, the designer is ultimately at fault. Fault in affordances can become blurred in products such as computer programs and software. This can occur when a coincidence occurs when it appears the user caused the program to fail although it is in fact an issue with the software. This is often unknown, as is the cause of the issue. This is discussed in the reading as “false coincidences”. Softwares such as CAD (Computer-aided-design), can incur this phenomenon of ‘false coincidences’ due to the nature of the program being conducted between the software and the user.
We can apply the concept of affordances to modern media such as social media. This can refer to users of social media being able to navigate through the application almost intuitively due to the design of the application. Social media software goes through many updates, keeping the software relevant and current. As a result of this, the designers of the updates have taken affordances into consideration to allow users to be able to navigate through social media, despite any updates and changes. An interesting example of this is when Twitter changed their star-shaped ‘favourite’ button to a heart shaped button in 2015. However, Twitter users quickly noticed this change and voiced their opinions “Wait! What? When did they replace the favourite star with a heart?” (ForresterRobet, Nov 3, 2015), (Butcher and Helmond, 2018). Despite this change in the platform, current users of the app were aware of the change and still able to use this feature. Twitter released a statement regarding the change “We want to make Twitter easier and more rewarding to use, and we know that at times the star could be confusing, especially to newcomers.” (Kumar, 2015), (Butcher and Helmond, 2018). The brains behind the brand determined that the previously used ‘star’ symbol may be unclear to new users that the symbol communicated a ‘like’. Therefore, the change was made to enforce the concept of ‘affordances’, ultimately providing Twitter users with even more ease and “providing strong clues to the operation.” (Butcher and Helmond, 2018)
How would you define ‘Instagram’?
I would define Instagram as a social media platform used for the purpose of communication. The means of communication used is focussed on visual communication although written communication is also involved. However, in addition to this, the book ‘Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures’ (Leaver, 2020) also defines Instagram as “an icon and avatar for understanding and mapping visual social media cultures.” When defining Instagram, it encompasses a “series of programs and algorithms; it is a gigantic database of images, videos, captions, comments, geolocative tags, location tags, likes, emoji.”
Instagram as an app and digital platform can be difficult to define as users have many different purposes for use of the platform. The many different elements of the platform include photography, video, written communication (e.g. captions, comments). Instagrams can have many different purposes such as personal and business accounts.
Apart from the physical elements and purposes of the app, Instagram can also be defined as a ‘culture’. This includes individuals living a lifestyle in which they are able to maintain Instagram content that they want to publish and distribute. Ideas of aesthetics fall under Instagram culture. Instagram influencers often live a life of Instagram culture where they find opportunities and make time to create content of a particular style to engage an audience through the platform. As mentioned in ‘Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures’ (Leaver, 2020), this idea of Instagram culture allows for expression in particular niches. These are mentioned in the book as art and photography and social awareness. Other niches on Instagram can include food, fashion, and music.
How would you define online video in this context?
In this context of Instagram, I would define online video as a mode of visual communication that is able to be shared worldwide through a digital platform. Online video context published on Instagram often provides ‘aesthetic visual communication’ through the way the video is authored and published. Online video on Instagram can be created in many different ways, including directly through the Instagram app. The affordances of digital platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, allow users to engage in such online content. These affordances can include visible ‘play/pause’ buttons, as well as the videos automatically beginning to play when they appear in a user’s feed.
Online video in this digital context often presents itself as a very aesthetic and produced piece. “The aesthetics developed into a digital vernacular.” (Spielmann, 2007) Platforms such as Youtube, require a certain video format to be able to upload and publish the video. These affordances by the software make up an aesthetic aspect of the technical form of the video. Apart from technical aspects impacting digital video aesthetic, users publishing videos are able to allow their creativity to flourish, adding an element of aesthetic quality from the authoring and production of the video itself.
References:
Butcher, T. and Helmond, A., 2018. The Affordances Of Social Media Platforms. [ebook] Amsterdam. Available at: <https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/9115828/BucherHelmond%7B_%7DSocialMediaAffordances%7B_%7Dpreprint.pdf> [Accessed 2 August 2020].
Www1.health.gov.au. 2020. Department Of Health | Telehealth. [online] Available at: <https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/e-health-telehealth> [Accessed 1 August 2020].
Khoo, E., Hight, C., Torrens, R. and Cowie, B., 2017. Software Literacy. Singapore: Springer Singapore.
Leaver, T., 2020. Instagram : Visual Social Media Cultures. Polity Press.
Manovich, L. 2016, Instagram and the Contemporary Image, University of San Diego, USA
Norman, D., 1998. The Design Of Everyday Things. New York.
Spielmann, Y., 2007. Video: The Reflexive Medium. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.