CONTEXUAL REPORT + VISUAL ESSAY

For My BCM112 DigitalArtefact, I wanted to touch upon some research I started a few years ago for Global Media. The research was based on the presumption that there could be a growing appeal towards viewership of graphic content online. With the expansion of technology in the last ten to fifteen years, the ability for viewers to access violent or graphic content online has become easier than ever, add to this world events like the war in Ukraine and various natural disasters, is this content more accessible now than ever?

There has been a clear change in my project from a content regulation standpoint, to now, a matter of perceptual framing and audience interactivity. It seems that after analysing the correlation between graphic content that reaches the masses and content that only reaches a very specific group of people, the way videos have been framed plays a direct role as to how the audience will react to these videos containing unsettling content. On one hand, and this is where the framing of these videos really plays a part in how the audience will react, we have videos that are purely showing destruction and on the other we have videos posted from accounts with a clear frame in mind. The way the video is framed has a clear impact on the types of people commenting and what they are commenting on.

Here is where the key takeaways from my audience have been explored and key learning moments have furthered the development of my final project. Analysing these audiences has highlighted a distinct pattern in which different content creates different audiences and varying opinions on the material being shown and creates a platform in which open discussion can take place. To what extent this conversation remains civil or argumentative, seems to rely solely on the content being shown and which audiences this content is reaching, whether being sought out or searched for. This has led me to try and sort through this information and come to a conclusion as to who MY audience is for this project and why this information could be resourceful to the public. 

Throughout the course of this project I had struggled to identify whether this information could be useful to a certain audience but through my Beta feedback have come to realise this analysis of the community could be beneficial to a few particular groups. I was urged to think about this project’s social utility for not just the consumer open internet but more clearly defined groups. One being to create reports that get used inside the government for regulatory purposes, perhaps in military and intelligence. This could greatly benefit government understanding as to how the public perceives graphic content that relates specifically to conflicts that country is involved in and can also help to mitigate the risks of negative connotations associated with the military. This research could also be used to help further research into cognitive infatuation with graphic content and the effects continued exposure to it can have on the brain. In my previous research the main argument was determining if this content was simply easier to access due to technological advance or if it takes a certain mindset to want to discover this content online. Although I have backed away from this aim, there is still valuable research yet to be conducted into this topic.

So to recap, there has been a clear change in my project from a content regulation standpoint, to now, a matter of perceptual framing and audience interactivity.  The way that videos have been framed plays a direct role as to how the audience will react to these videos containing unsettling content. I believe I have broken some ground as to better understanding the attraction to this material on platforms like TikTok, but there is still more to be done in terms of figuring out how this information is useful and the audience best suited to view my work. The end result is far from what I intended, but I have gained some valuable insight into this complex community through my interactions and observations for this project. 

In the Internet Paradigm module we looked at various topics ranging from social media to Meme Warfare and decentralized networks. Throughout the module I was very interested in exploring the topic of Meme Warfare more in depth. Meme warfare more often refers to using memes as individual weapons of information warfare. It’s a form of disinformation that can be used to secure strategic goals”(Ascott, 2020).  In this blog post, I am going to analyse the rise of Meme Warfare and look to the future to discuss the possible implications of this trend.

“Through the internet, the idea of memes has moved from the conceptual sphere into the viscous reality of data and pixels, transforming it into something more traceable: a segment of media that is copied rapidly” (The Guardian, 2016). This statement has become increasingly relevant if you’ve maintained even the smallest of online presence’ in the last five to 10  years. The birth of meme warfare however, has been a staple of political warfare and media revolutions for much longer, though this took the shape of disinformation campaigning. It only takes a brief look at the Soviet Union in the 1920’s to realise that this sort of campaigning can be extremely effective and increasingly detrimental: Russia had an office dedicated to the spread of “disinformation,” a term coined by Joseph Stalin to describe false information carefully constructed – “Dezinformatsiya campaigns” (Salon, 2018). 

Looking into the future, I feel this will only get worse. The last ten years have been a precursor for what is truly capable if there was a real concerted effort by a person, party or platform to inflict damage. With that being said, there is also no real means of combating the spread of misinformation through the use of memetic warfare. Strategies need to be implemented to ensure that facts matter, to everyone, and there are avenues in which the government and public can take to ensure disinformation is never an ethical strategy to achieve goals; ”It’s time to drive towards a more expansive view of Strategic Communications on the social media battlefield. It’s time to adopt a more aggressive, proactive, and agile mindset and approach. It’s time to embrace memetic warfare” (Gisea, n.d). 

Defence from this new form of warfare is going to be the best offence in terms of going forward. Governing bodies are going to need to develop greater strategies to not only combat cyber warfare, but the toxic traits misinformation can bring out in their populations. With all this being said, this memetic warfare may have brought out a thought process in the world that cannot be combatted, leaving two sides, two truths and a divide incomparable to anything the world has ever seen.

Reference List

Ascott, T., 2020. How memes are becoming the new frontier of information warfare | The Strategist. [online] The Strategist. Available at: <https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/how-memes-are-becoming-the-new-frontier-of-information-warfare/&gt;

Ellis, A., n.d. The Meme of Voter Fraud. Catholic University Law Review, [online] pp.889-895. Available at: <https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3286&context=lawreview&gt;

Giesea, J., 2016. It’s Time To Embrace Memetic Warfare. Defence Strategic Communications, 1(1), pp.68-76.

Olsen, D., 2018. How memes are being weaponized for political propaganda. [online] Salon. Available at: <https://www.salon.com/2018/02/24/how-memes-are-being-weaponized-for-political-propaganda/&gt;

In the Algorithmic control module we looked at a variety of topics from Privacy to Digital Rights and sovereignty, as well as intellectual property. The crux of this module was looking at these ideas and discussing how the flow of information passes through the web and affects both industry and users across the internet. What interested me specifically about this module was the topic of Privacy and Deception in relation to the infrastructure of the online world. 

As Tristan Harris stated in his testimony; “The responsibility is being put on the consumer, when in fact if it’s the infrastructure, the emphasis should be placed on those creating the infrastructure.” This idea really resonated with me as we are learning that the system of data collection and information is inherently broken and designed to engineer the public. It is no surprise anymore that data is constantly being collected about our wants, needs and personal information, only to be spat back right into our feed to keep our attention. What I want to talk about is the potential for a DA that can help track this information entirely and help us choose what information is being directed back at us.

I’m an avid user of Adblock, which means I don’t watch any ads anywhere on the internet. Nothing gets promoted to me, facebook pixel doesn’t work and I don’t have to sit through fifteen second ads on Youtube just to watch a thirty second video. I enjoy this aspect of Adblock. But, what about the data about me that gets collected that I wish to see in terms of marketing? Web advertisements, an integral part of today’s web browsing experience, financially support countless websites. Meaningful advertisements, however, require behavioral targeting, user tracking and profile fingerprinting that raise serious privacy concerns. To counter privacy issues and enhance usability, ad blockers emerged as a popular way to filter web requests that do not serve the website’s main content. Despite their popularity, little work has focused on quantifying the privacy provisions of ad blockers(). 

This is where I feel improvements could be made to the way our data is collected and advertised back to us. A Digital Artefact concept would be a system similar to an ad blocker in which the user can constantly see what data is being collected from us and from where, how it is being used to market back to us and then make decisions about what data we wish to be collected and which data we don’t. This would allow for more freedom with how we share our information on the web and more consistent and reliable marketing towards us.

References

Gervais, A., 2017. Quantifying Web Adblocker Privacy. Computer Security – ESORICS 2017, [online] pp.21–42. Available at: <https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-66399-9_2&gt; [Accessed 26 May 2022].

Contextual Report

Reflecting on some of the movies we have been watching and discussing in class, I wanted to explore the idea of what portrayals of the future will look like…in the future. 

We can see through the observation of movies the wonders that the future may hold or what was once believed the future would definitely be like. What I wanted to explore was how accurate these portrayals have been and what portrayals of the future will look like knowing what we know now. The whole idea here with this idea was to reflect upon the differences between what people believed the future would be like and what the future actually turned out to be like as we are living in it. 

My plan was to make an Instagram page in which I would post clips and screen grabs from movies we have watched in class as well as others and relate them accordingly to the present. The aim here was to contextualise what directors imagined the future to be with the present, and then discuss if they were on the right track or way off. This would help to analyse how movie depictions in our present visualise the future and ultimately provide insight into where society is headed as a whole. The hope here was to get an idea of how perceptions of the future in film have changed over the years and, would better allow myself and my audience to raise our own questions about what the future would look like and how it will be addressed in present day filmography.

But… as Digital Artefacts go, this idea fell through in the middle of my project’s life span and a new idea was formed. After making various edits and trying to gain some recognition from anyone on Instagram, I realised that it may be best to change my project entirely. From here my project changed to instead of creating content, posting on instagram and asking questions to seek out communities already doing such activities and instead, seeking answers from those already engaged. This process was more so an observational and conversational process as opposed to my intended plan of originality and content creation. My new DA changed to a critique and character study of particular audiences across the internet and their thoughts on how the future has been presented in film. Engaging with these communities and gaining an understanding of what makes particular films about the future so vital in the development of future film as well as the impact on audience’s perception of the past and future seemed infinitely more rewarding.
Therefore, my idea changed into a short podcast examining the impact that these films have had on viewers and their perceptions of the future based on films that had a large part in shaping the meaning of the future to them. Looking at Ideas like nostalgia, framing the past and future through film and lastly how the development of these futuristic worlds provided audiences with an escape from everyday life; I present to you The Impact of The Films From The Future.

References

BELL, W., 1998. Making People Responsible. American Behavioral Scientist, 42(3), pp.323-339.

Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski, 2010. Liberation vs. Control: The Future of Cyberspace. Journal of Democracy, [online] 21(4), pp.43-57. Available at: <https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Rohozinski-21-4.pdf&gt;.

Today’s post will be a critical reflection of the live tweeting process of our in class screenings from weeks 6-12. I have never been much of a tweeter in general but the act of live tweeting with a particular theme in mind has helped to push me towards more engaging content and feeding off of others’ critical analysis of the movies we have been watching.

We definitely use social media to make our lives seem a lot more ideal than they actually are – creating the illusion of authenticity. #BCM325 https://t.co/NrgflI0exv

— Michael Black (@MichaelBlack54) May 12, 2022

Each week we were exposed to different interpretations of what the future may look like through the lens of past and present films. The themes of these movies varied quite a bit but tended to engage with ideas such as Artificial Intelligence, Robots, Aliens and even Time Travel. When viewing each movie it was important to try and relate the concepts discussed in the lecture for that week, while engaging with Twitter and other classmates’ perceptions of what they were gaining from these films.

Such a good quote #BCM325 https://t.co/ZopDC1FV9V

— Michael Black (@MichaelBlack54) May 5, 2022

I’d like to say that I had clear structure for when and how I engaged with these movies and the tweeting process but that’s not true. Each movie’s initial tweet was something completely different from the last; an initial observation, a quick synopsis or even just something that I really liked about the movie from a previous viewing or this viewing (my first).

Knew I recognised it from somewhere, a beautiful piece of music. #BCM325 https://t.co/qukWQsaiUz

— Michael Black (@MichaelBlack54) April 28, 2022

Today, we are watching… 'Alita: Battle Angel' (2019). I'm super excited for this one because I've yet to see it. Being produced by James Cameron, I know we are in for a good one! #BCM325

— Michael Black (@MichaelBlack54) May 5, 2022

An aspect of my live tweeting tended to also incorporate some form of quotes, sources, articles and elaborating upon other live tweeter’s comments made about specific films. This feature of my tweeting helped to better elaborate upon my feelings towards the particular movie and analze certain themes the film addressed. Although I do think that live tweeting gets more of the creative juices flowing, sometimes I could get caught up in other’s tweets or repeat something many others have already said, so incorporating professional’s opinions about the film helped to keep my tweets on track and unique. 

Look Below for a summary of my favourite movies and more!

Arrival is about more than talking to one another. It’s about the roadmaps we use to navigate the world.https://t.co/RHzc3lmWLg#BCM325

— Michael Black (@MichaelBlack54) April 28, 2022

"The Shining" scene upends our expectations of a pop-culture phenomenon rather than simply regurgitating something we know and love back to us. It comments on why “The Shining” matters while also giving us the opportunity to see it unexpectedly from a fresh perspective. #bcm325

— Michael Black (@MichaelBlack54) May 12, 2022

With slight changes to my overall project I thought it was important to share some of the interactions I have had with the audience of my DA. Now that the direction of my project has changed from a content regulation point of view to something that deals with the communities surrounding this type of content, it was important to try and discuss why similar content can garner different reactions depending on how the videos have been framed on TikTok. 

Analysing some of the screen-grabs below we can see that there is a mix of potentially graphic content making it onto TikTok. We can see that there is various community reactions to these videos. On one hand, and this is where the framing of these videos really plays a part in how the audience will react, we have videos that are purely showing destruction and on the other we have videos posted from accounts with a clear frame in mind. The way the video is framed has a clear impact on the types of people commenting and what they are commenting.

On the popular videos, there are a range of comments, from showing support for Ukraine to arguing about whether or not these videos go against the community guidelines. These videos have gone viral and reached a number of people with valid views and concern for not only the people of Ukraine, but the viewers on TikTok who may not wish to be exposed to this content.

Here we can see that on quite an unpopular video, conflict arises due to the mention of politics, brutality of the video and the need for this footage to be shown, rather than stricter community guidelines on the more popular videos. Could it be that because the really viral videos are spread around so much, we don’t get a clearer understanding of varying audience opinion, and if so, what does that mean for videos that are specifically posted for people’s “For you” page?

It seems that after analysing the correlation between graphic content that reaches the masses and content that only reaches a very specific group of people, the way videos have been framed plays a direct role as to how the audience will react to these videos containing unsettling content.

More to come in the final DA.

In BCM 325, each week we have the chance to live tweet while watching a variety of movies that ultimately encompass some form of a Future Culture. As a group, the cohort is able to interact with each other and point out interesting facts about the movie, opinions about the movies’ futuristic setting and even cinematography choices. So, below are some of my most prominent tweets and retweets from the movies we have watched so far. 

Week 1: 2001: A Space Odyssey

One of my favorite movies of all time and I really enjoyed watching it again with others who may not have seen it. The cinematography in this movie is fantastic and whenever I watch the film I still believe some of the shots look like they could have been filmed today. Was still getting the hang of live tweeting here, but overall a solid effort.

Week 2: Westworld

Westworld was a movie I had not seen before but I thoroughly enjoyed it! One of my tweets turned out to be scarily true which is always a good thing and it also got a bit of love which is great. There were also some really great conversations about robots and humans which highlighted the interesting theme of the film.

Week 3: Bladerunner 

Blade Runner is another one of my favorite movies and was a joy to watch in class and live tweet. I thought many people tweeted out some super interesting and even things that I’ve missed after multiple viewings. 

Week 4: Ghost In The Shell

This was a tricky one to watch for me and trying to live tweet during the film was hard. I ended up finishing the movie quite confused but tried my best to stay with it for as long as I could. That being said, it seemed like many had seen this before and grown to love it which was great.

Here are the feedback comments I have put under three different pitches. What I wanted to do here was make sure that I always started on a positive note and picked out something from their pitch video or blog that I genuinely enjoyed. This was followed by trying to find similarities between all projects and my own. Lastly, I tried to conclude my comments with a link that would hopefully help those students in the future and also get them thinking differently about the direction of their DA.

Aimee’s project was very similar to mine so it was great to see how she had organized her project and what her timeline looked like. Aimee also chose great media to analyze, while I had not done that yet. The only real criticism I had of Aimee was the quality of sound in her pitch video, though this didn’t get in the way of my understanding of her pitch.

I really enjoyed Lily’s idea as it covered the use of TikTok which I think people always try to tie into DA’s in their own way. It’s always refreshing to see so many people talk about TikTok, but in a completely new way. I find her idea to cover a wide range of social media effects on audiences, like attention spans, to be really critical to her when discussing the future of social media and she most certainly has the background research to back it up. I did slightly criticise her though, as did other comments, in that the scope of the project may be a little too broad here and she should potentially try and focus solely on the idea of TikTok and its effect on our attention spans as opposed to how TikTok can be used to for a variety of other things.

Lastly, Cait’s idea touched upon the Fashion Industry and how it will develop in the future in terms of trends and fast fashion. I noted that it’s definitely something interesting to investigate as the fashion in some of the films we have been watching is quite out there and something that most people first take note of. I also noted how fashion tends to come full circle and trends disappear and reappear. Just like the other two pitches, the timeline of her DA is quite well planned out and it seems that she is on the right track.

#bcm112 pic.twitter.com/FXEsvQztXy

— Michael Black (@MichaelBlack54) March 20, 2022

Marshall McLuhan’s concept, ‘The Medium is the Message’ is one that can be tricky to grasp. The concept’s wording in itself is oxymoronic, in which the ability for the concept to be grasped can present challenges when understanding what the ‘medium’ is and what the ‘message’ is. Once the concept is analysed and applied, and it is very much applicable in our online universe, things start to become much clearer.

Understanding the ‘Medium is the Message‘

In essence, the value of ‘The Medium is The Message’ is understanding that there is a deliberate emphasis placed on the importance of the medium as opposed to the importance of the message. Realising that choosing the right medium to convey a message, is key to reaching those whom you wish to have an impact on. 

This week in #bcm112 we discussed Marshall McLuhan's idea of "The Medium is the message" – which highlights the importance of how the methods used to communicate information have a significant impact on the messages they deliver.
A video outlining it: https://t.co/ty5RbyFjSg

— Michael Black (@MichaelBlack54) March 20, 2022

When all is said and done, it is important to remember two things about McLuhan and his teachings. First, the medium through which a message is experienced shapes the user’s perception of the message. Secondly, a medium can be the message itself if it is delivering content that would otherwise be impossible to access (Gross, 2011).

What is our society’s medium?

Today, the internet has become society’s medium. While the vast expanse of the internet may not have a direct message, it takes our society to utilise the internet for the message they want to convey.  It was not until the COVID-19 pandemic that the internet contained a message in the world of education when its use became widespread through online classes. Of course, the internet has always been a tool of academic research but it was only with the advent of online classes that the internet became an educational necessity (Quitain, 2020). As of late, the internet has provided us with a clear message; one which outlines the necessity and accessibility of remote productivity and sociality. With these attributes highlighted now more than ever, it is clear that we may never fully return to the strict culture of work and education models  that society has grown accustomed to over the last seventy years. 

A Digital Artefact Idea

With the internet potentially changing the way we work and study for many years to come, an interesting idea would be to explore how other messages can be changed due to the medium of the internet.

An obvious medium to discuss here would be TikTok (as I’m sure many others have mentioned) and the way it has effectively changed the way a large percentage of Generation Z is fed their news. It’s obvious now that most Gen Z’s get their news from social media as opposed to the nightly news. A digital artefact idea could involve analysing just how much of the full picture this audience gets from news circulating around TikTok and if it has ultimately created a platform in which viewers are more attracted to quick news over the full, long and drawn out story. Does this affect the way information spreads? Does it increase the chance of disinformation/propaganda? And, is this the death knell for the  medium of week nightly news amongst the younger generation?

Sources:

Elvir Quitain, M., 2020. The Internet Age: A Commentary on Mcluhan’s “The Medium is the Message”. [online] Research Gate. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345197312_The_Internet_Age_A_Commentary_on_Mcluhan’s_The_Medium_is_the_Message&gt; [Accessed 27 March 2022].

Gross, J., 2011. The Medium Is The Message — Smashing Magazine. [online] Smashing Magazine. Available at: <https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/07/the-medium-is-the-message/&gt; [Accessed 27th March 2022].

Having done a few Digital Artefacts, I really wanted to continue a project from a previous subject that didn’t come full circle. There were many I could have chosen, but I feel something that I was interested in and didn’t do a lot of firsthand analysis of was my topic of Graphic Content online.

The premise of the research was to effectively understand why people watch this content, has it become more accessible due to technology and the potential negative effects of being shown the content. In this assignment I wanted to get more hands on and dive into a platform, like TikTok, in which this graphic content is being shown to an audience which may not be looking for it. 

Why is this happening? Why is the content not being better censored? And, is access to this material having a negative impact on the population of these social media sites? Answers to these questions can hopefully turn just one aspect of my research into something with a lot more depth.