Category: Graduate Work

I sat down at my computer Friday night watching tutorials about how to use Unity3D for beginners. I messed around with it a bit and thought, hey, this won’t be so bad. I sat down Saturday morning and began crafting my own world. The next time I looked at the clock it was 2 PM. I had to have found a worm hole. There in the corner of my bedroom, by my desk, was a time-sucking worm hole. However, to my dismay, it was just my complete lack of ability to operate this new program. Eventually, I got the hang of doing some of the simpler tasks. I had to restart so many times because I would get so far and then I’d come across some error that I could not resolve. My biggest tip for other beginners would be to check your console frequently for compiler errors, almost after each change or addition you make to your scene or project. This way if you come across something you can’t fix, you could just delete the element and try to find a different way to achieve what you were going for.

While I was working on my own world I thought of how useful this program could be for really fleshing out news stories. There have been many times where there are complex crime scenes that you can’t quite visualize or the story takes place in an unfamiliar place. Once I got a better grip on the controls of the program I was able to create my world pretty quickly, so I can’t imagine how much faster someone with more knowledge and experience could create something.

This experience brought me back to the digital divide, or the gap between people with the proper tools/access/knowledge of digital technology and those without. There are many factors to this idea, but it basically boils down to that. I thought this concept was relevant because I feel like it contributes to the changing news-consuming audience. Generally speaking the news is intended for everyone, but when journalists are thinking about how they can tell their long form stories to a generation of people that aren’t reading long form journalism, it felt like virtual reality could be a part of the solution.

The newer generations are more likely to be in the part of the digital divide that knows how to use the technology. They will have grown up on more and more technology. If there is speculation that attention spans have gotten shorter across much of our population, who is to say that won’t continue to get worse? I foresee a problem with written journalism being able to be sustained. I sense that since there is so much video being consumed, no matter how good a video is, it is still just a drop in the ocean. After using Unity3D I had the sense that immersive journalism could be one answer.

Check out my Unity3D World!

When I was a kid I remember on Sunday nights my family would sit down after dinner, watch whatever Disney movie was playing on television that night and help my mom fold the laundry. Although, I was only good for matching the socks together back then. On Friday nights we would order pizza and rent movies from a Video Gallery in town. As time went on, we had more and more choices of what to watch. More and more channels became available in various cable packages and we started collecting DVDs. Then there were On-Demand channels with catalogues of free or low-cost rentals. Deciding on something to watch grew much more difficult as time went on. It became less spontaneous and more of a choice. 

Let’s rewind to the beginning of at-home television viewing and set up our sustaining innovation first: the television. If you were lucky to live in a home with a television, people and maybe neighbors would gather around it for particular programs and share in that experience. That is, when there were programs to watch. Eventually, it became a regular household object and programming grew. It started with broadcast channels and antennas. There was only so much space available in the airwaves and the content therefore could be regulated quite a bit. Technology developed and cables were introduced to help viewers receive the content better, thus sustaining this technological innovation. Pay-TV and cable programming kept sustaining the television’s development.

The disruptive innovation began much like a drop of water in a pond. It started so small but it rippled right across the industry. Networks began posting their shows on their websites and then there were other sites that would post the shows as well. The latter usually being a little dicey in ethics but people didn’t care. They were just excited they could watch their show before one of their co-workers ruined it for them. This brought television viewing to your computer. With the concurrent development in technology in digital devices and the internet, television wasn’t only for TVs anymore. You could watch on any device with an internet connection. 

The sustaining innovation was kind of able to continue growth with the aforementioned On-demand channels. The cable providers could get you to subscribe to certain networks which then granted you access to the catalogue of their shows but at your viewing leisure. As the companies and their technology became more sophisticated they were able to offer recording services with your cable box, like DVR or the service TiVo, with the ability to pause, rewind and fast-forward your live-programming. People could also pay into extra services that fit their television viewing tastes. 

The disruptive innovation answers with streaming services that had cross-network catalogues as well as movies. The big one that comes to mind, was Netflix. This one in particular is a stand-out because while there are others like it, you do not need to watch commercials. I also enjoy Hulu especially in the rare case when I have caught up to the show in real time. After successfully binge watching the six seasons that are available on Netflix, and you’re dying to know what happens next, if you are lucky, it is on Hulu. Even though there are still a few commercials, you don’t have to be in front of the TV at the specific time on the specific day that your favorite show airs on.

I know for a family like mine, it no longer made sense to pay for these crazy large cable packages. Eventually we cancelled it altogether. With the exception of sports, we had everything we needed between Netflix and Hulu.

It is hard to say at this point what exactly I expect my career to look like. For the first time ever I have not constructed a plan for my immediate future. I wanted to be mentally open to seize a variety of opportunities within this broad and expansive field of Communications. With that being said, I am on the Journalism Innovations track so that gives some degree of direction as to what I’d like to do with my new knowledge and skill set.

This week in class we covered some technologies that I had never heard of and a few that I had. As we were introduced to these innovations we were asked to consider what aspects came true, what became out-dated, or what missed the mark.

Some were innovations that I missed from the past such as the 1983 VideoTex; the Viewtron System and Scepter Videotex Terminal from AT&T. This allowed customers to do a variety of tasks such as banking, games and checking the weather from their televisions using a keypad.

Another example was the SixthSense technology developed by Pranav Mistry in the years leading up to 2009. With his wearable gear you could take pictures without a camera, annotate objects, and bring the digital to “life” and bring life to digital.

In a TED Talk we watched George Bloom describe his Meta-verse of virtual reality. He discussed the potential for a smaller carbon foot print if film-makers were able to use virtual sets for their movies instead of finding actual locations.

If you are listening to developers today you hear about the use of AR and VR (Augmented reality and Virtual reality). There were recently a few articles surrounding Elon Musk’s comments surround AR/VR, warning about the potential dangers of these technologies as well as a video created of “Barack Obama” made by an arsenal of audio and video files stitched together to make a new video– something never wholely spoken by former President Obama. In a day and age where we are already facing severe problems with news sources, fake videos could only make matters worse.

I see people on Facebook still sharing articles from The Onion not realizing it is satire. I think one of the things to come in conjunction with technological innovations are labels. Perhaps not in their original settings, but once they appear on social media they will have some indication. Just like with nutrition, people will have to label their content. If it is satire, they will need to label it as such. If it is a blog, it will need to be clearly labeled. People will need to know an articles’ ingredients and if none are present it is a certainly a good way to rule it out as a reliable source. As new teams come into play within different social groups, like those just beginning their partnership in journalism for Facebook, there will be more regulations on social networks towards news articles.

People will begin to walk the fine line between virtual reality news stories and augmented reality news stories and given their realistic components it may be even harder to differentiate real from fiction. 360 degree images and Virtual Reality video could lend incredible authenticity and immersion to news-readers but due to that real-factor it could also lead to a larger margin for misleading your audience and a larger margin for affecting your audience. Studies have shown that Virtual Reality media tends to be a bit more impacting, which means that in the hands of someone with a specific mission,  they could more easily achieve their goal of persuasion.

This is off the mark with journalism though. Maybe there is some small point that a journalist is trying to get across but ultimately the goal is to inform. People can make their own decisions after reading or watching a journalist’s piece but straight persuasion is too close to propaganda for our Democratic Republic.

The equipment necessary for VR or AR right now is too directive for journalism at this point. The subjects are too aware of the people present. The gear is not easy to ignore. People behave differently when they know they are being watched. Until less bulky or more integrative equipment can be used it is problematic for journalistic story-telling.

So as people have an easier time creating alternate realties whether it is VR or AR, or through technologies like the meta-verse I think news-consumers will have a harder time assessing the truth from fake news by themselves. There is a potential for an incredible up-hill battle for journalists and story tellers. I see the divide between believers and skeptics getting bigger. If the internet continues down this path of complete disillusion and unsystematic news-telling then there will continue to be a serious “fake news” problem for countries. The “sources” people could include might be harder to discredit upon initial viewing, especially with the AR/VR capabilities.

As a potential content creator or manager the technology excites me. You can tell immersive and engaging stories like never before. However this means that if the technology was being used by people with specific motives they could be very successful in deceiving their audience as well.
I think if our media companies and government were cognizant of the potential for damage, they would be creating some guidelines or laws for publishers and writers, both the large and small players, along with establishing clear and easy ways for people to perform online “citizen’s arrests” against people they find in violation of the law. There is just too much to cover online and people need to be better equipped against what they might find online.

There have been many studies regarding color and the way we interpret them. While it does depend on each person and how much they like the color, there are general patterns that emerge. 

Experiments have revealed that certain colors make respective parts of the brain increase activity, or “light up.” In addition to this, people have collected associations for each color that are common among those that like those colors and those that dislike the colors. Following the link below will bring you to a longer more inclusive list of associations. Red tends to be a very striking and stimulating color as well as yellow. However, red can seem aggressive to those who aren’t a fan of red.  

http://snip.ly/ife24#http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/color-psychology-branding-industry-colors-explained-infographic

Even further, colors can mean different things within different contexts. This is why choosing colors very carefully for your brand and your messages can be so important. Towergate Insurance analyzed 520 company logos and separated them appropriately by their industry. 
The visual allows you to see which colors are predominantly used by industry. The infographic then applies what we know about colors and the emotional responses they typically evoke to describe the message company logos send to consumers. For example, within the context of the food industry seeing red can stimulate a persons hunger while green is connected to being healthy. See the link below for more examples of color associations within different industries or the image at the bottom of this post (which is the infographic from the article). 

http://snip.ly/ife24#http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-business/color-psychology-branding-industry-colors-explained-infographic

This logic can and should be considered outside of just a brand’s logo. Advertisers have been using this information to articulate certain ideas about brands. 

Whether you’re developing an ad series, a campaign, a social post, revamping the company website and/or logo, carefully consider what message you’re trying to send. We have seen social media soar in relevance and effectiveness as a business-means and that has had a lot to do with story telling. Social media has been a very effective way to communicate with consumers and to tell them your story. There are more chances at striking emotional connections with consumers through that social presence which in turn has an effect on consumer feelings toward your brand. 

Let your color conscience help you demonstrate the exact emotions you’re trying to convey to consumers. 

The image posted with this article is not mine and can be found by following the second link from the top.

It does not feel like that long ago that a young man I knew as Lil’ Bow Wow was getting me amped to play basketball because “I like the way they dribble up and down the court.” Now, I am reading headlines about how the rapper posted a picture of a private airplane with a caption leading his followers to believe that he was flying to New York City in style.

However, social media serendipity had another plan for him. A snapchat screenshot surfaced on Twitter calling Shad Moss, AKA Bow Wow, out for flying a commercial flight to New York City. A new internet challenge was born: Bow Wow challenge. People began sharing images of forced perspective that gave the appearance of a life more glamorous.

Emma Haak wrote an article called “What the Bow Wow Challenge Says About the Pressures of Social Media” in which she discussed the overarching pressures that everyone faces on these platforms. In it she says, “But the sad truth is that most of us use social media the same way, even if we’re not fibbing about something as seemingly highbrow as flying private instead of commercial.”

I think what brands should be taking away from Moss’s blunder here, is that people are watching and paying attention. Instead of trying to stretch the truth to maintain an image, social media provides a platform that could be being used for transparency. We are living in a time when comparing yourself to people has never been easier and harder. Easier in the sense that for many, there is a constant connection to images of other peoples’ best lives. Occasionally there are stories that show incredible honestly and vulnerability but they are sparse in comparison to the beach shot or the drinks-with-friends shot.

It is harder because as social media consumers, we typically see results. The fitness fiend or body builder in a pose. The entrepreneur enjoying their compensation. The favorite celebrities in beautiful clothing with beautiful hair and make-up. The master chef’s gorgeous meal. Instead of only comparing ourselves to those that we see around us, our eyes are wide open to the multitude of social media posts headed to our feeds.

Too often we don’t see the journey that brought them to that one snap shot. I scroll through my Twitter feed and every few tweets I see photos captioned “#goals.” People yearn for what they see in these photographs but I often wonder if they knew what was out of shot, or the path that lead to that shot, if it would still be something they wanted.

Brands with a presence on social media have an opportunity to push the honesty posts along and participate in solidarity with the human experience. People that push that boundary often end up scrutinized for “just wanting attention” or some apathetic derivative. Companies have the potential for larger follower bases and therefore what they post can influence what people find acceptable to see and post on social.  Letting followers get a glimpse now and then of the hard work that goes into some of the big productions or even in the daily functioning of the business could help bring back perspective. With transparency comes trust and trust builds brand loyalty.

There is a reason that Snapchat has been such a powerful media player. Snapchat users go throughout the day with their favorite celebrities. Users see images of pre-glam stars and seeing the arduous process they actually go through before a red carpet event. You can see just how demanding their schedule is. Kevin Hart shows just how early he gets up to get in his work out, and he takes his followers to his meetings, and to his sets. It makes them more relatable or for me, in Kevin Hart’s case, inspired because I currently cannot relate to his fitness drive or his energy level. It gives me a whole other level of appreciation for him and his work. As he saw great success during his last tour selling out at massive venues, I do not think I am alone in my admiration for him.

Its time for social media efforts to get real and use any of their tools to let your followers in. People like feeling like they are apart of something. They become so much more invested than they would if they were detached from your brand. Don’t let the pressures that resulted in the Bow Wow challenge hold you back from creating transparency.

Asynch prompt:

1) Based on your experience with WordPress, what are your impressions with working with WordPress – the pros and cons? It started as a blogging platform but has evolved – should it still be relegated for small blogs, or do you see enterprise use?

In my brief experiences working with WordPress, I would say that I feel there are more pros than cons. It is pretty straightforward to use. I have managed a blog before without using WordPress and I have to say, it is much more user-friendly to use WordPress. This does not come at the cost of user-individuality either because customizing the themes, backgrounds, etc, was not at all what I had imagined. The presentation of my posts was up to me and there were quite a few options. Usually what turns me off from a blog is the idea that is is this winding composite of posts with little organization but you can set up your site so that there are easy navigating functions. This makes it much less overwhelming.

The analytics are also incredibly easy to decipher. I will use the term straightforward again. I can see how easily an enterprise could adapt a WordPress into much more than a small blog. The APIs that are available to integrate would elevate the visitor experience. The site layout options also differ quite a bit and a creator could chose to distance their website from appearing like or functioning like a blog. I think as more people are online with little having any education in website building WordPress seems to have really streamlined the process and allowed for people to create their own page. In my mind this opens up the opportunity for smaller businesses to compete without having to hire people/agencies to create and/or manage their website, which in this time has become expected of businesses to have.

Fabletics is the athletic line by Kate Hudson. The following images are screenshots I took because I was really excited about the ad I had seen quite some time ago. The bottom right screenshot was the first one I had seen and then one day I went back and was checking out their Instagram feed to see if there were more like I had seen.

What really caught my attention was the body variety that had been chosen and included in the advertisement. I thought in comparison to the fitness images that normally come across my Instagram, I was caught off guard and I just stared at it for a moment. I think this kind of inclusivity is so important, especially in fitness, because the goal is for people to be healthy and not just a specific body type. I liked it because it made me feel incredibly happy to see Hudson’s company take this route in its advertising.

I think it is incredibly engaging, from getting a wider variety of women being represented, to asking for actual engagement. The top left screenshot was the result of contest, and I loved how the company put up their picture to put some every-day women in the spotlight. I think if I were actually participating with the hashtags and sharing content along with the others, I would probably feel part of the brand. But I will not lie, I felt more connected with the brand the moment I saw the girls in the ad.

If you read the captions of the photos you’ll notice until they get to #FableticsSquad they didn’t have any consistent message or hashtags the users could use. I think their ads and this campaign would have been more powerful if they used one continuous hashtag with all of them. Even though these visuals are very strong, I think the message needs to be there in the text. Hashtags are a great way for your brands fans and followers to come together and see each others content. It builds community. I have seen other fitness accounts be very effective in building brand relations and community through the use of a good message via a hashtag.

I don’t live in a terribly unpopulated area. It is a mix of being a suburb but stretches into rural. People think we are off the beaten path but a major route goes right through our little town and there are more humans than cows. Our options for internet access are limited. Some people can’t even have wired connections. They pay for those devices from their cellular network that provide wireless access. I couldn’t live that count-the-used-gigs life. They reach out to the big names and ask what it would take for them to extend to their area but they don’t have pockets $10,000+ deep. 

Begrudgingly, we use Time Warner Cable, or apparently Spectrum now. At every bump in the road their solution was to uprgrade our package. We’ve used their devices, tried our own devices (modems and routers) and yet it hasn’t made a difference in their service. It’s incredibly mediocre. The internet connectivity isn’t continuous. How do you lose connection when you’re hard wired with an HDMI cable? When the internet is considered a utility, it makes me wonder how people would react if other utility services functioned as poorly as my service from TWC/Spectrum. 

What if you were sitting in your house and it was normal for you to experience a blackout? What if you went to take a shower but your water wasn’t running? What if it was the dead of winter and your heat wouldn’t turn on? 

When you are trying to go back to school by taking online courses that fit around your schedule, it’s important that a utility, a service that you PAY FOR, that it works. It’s important that you aren’t paying for nothing. Even when the internet works it fades in and out, that is not what you pay for. Streaming speeds, and download time aside, its main purpose is to provide access and they cannot even do that. 

So we pay for the higher packages, it fixes the problem for a while. Shortly after that, the problem always returns and we are left paying higher rates. All I can do is challenge the company and hope that they are actually concerned with customer satisfaction and not just their bottom line, but I’m not holding my breath. 

I recently kept a diary of sorts, for one day only, to log my personal digital consumption.  I didn’t need the exercise to know that digital devices are a large part of my life or that I spend a fair amount of time engaging with digital technology throughout my day. However, the task was a good way to check in on the balance (or maybe lack thereof) I try to achieve between using digital devices for efficiency and for entertainment.

Over the course of any day, there are a great number of apps that I use. I love using social media. For someone who is not as good at continuous texting conversations as the rest of her generation, using different social media is just one way I stay connected to my friends and family. The reason that Facebook tends to be the social media of choice for me, is that it seems to be the most universally used amongst the people that I care about keeping in touch with. It has my family spanning across the age divides up to my 80 year old grandma  and reaches all the way across the ocean to my friends in Europe from my semester abroad.

Some of the other apps that I love and use aren’t as inclusive. Snapchat was not that big at the time of my traveling experience and only one of the friends I made, had already had the app. By the time I left, I had definitely brow-beated them into downloading the app knowing that it would be a great way to see their faces everyday long after our time at Uni was over. Snapchat is an app where I go to for a pretty limited group of people. I am not connected with very much family at all, and even when I consider the people from my age group that I’ve ended up connected with there is really an eclectic mix.

I love Instagram but I use that in bursts, when I’m feeling inspired by the things around me, or when I have something aesthetically pleasing to share. But frankly, my current state is not that glamorous as I lay in bed, in my pajamas still, just working on all of my homework. My Fitbit keeps jingling and telling me to move but little does it know I am being very productive.

I find Twitter at its most exciting during award shows or other times when you know people will be on to live-tweet events. Being able to engage in the conversation with so many people, and with the potential to reach celebrities (thanks for the tweet, Nick Carter) or other people that would normally seem out of reach, is what keeps Twitter relevant to me.

I think Facebook has been a remarkable company to watch and ultimately has provided a great service throughout its time. The people that run it have been very conscious to listen to their users. Their site and app are constantly being refreshed. They aren’t afraid to experiment with new ideas and I think its been a tremendous part of their success. Facebook is smart to include innovations that other companies have put out there, keeping them relevant.

For people like me, the mildly lazy communicator, why would I go to so many different apps to achieve all of these individual purposes/goals when I could do all or most of them on Facebook?

In an article published on WIRED by Chris Anderson, he discusses a pool of potential waiting to be tapped by businesses referred to as the “long tail.” The long tail is essentially all of these products that are on the fringe of what is popular with the masses. In order to successfully utilize the long tail, your business takes advantage of all the data available about its customers. Consumers come to your site looking for the the book that everyone has been talking about, and based on their browsing history your site can guide them to similar titles that may not be quite as popular as what they had originally been shopping for. In the article, Anderson describes how retailers like Amazon opened up the availability to the fringe products to their consumers and the sales of those books that are not their top sellers account for more than half of their book sales. When a book seller is restricted to a store with a certain amount of physical shelf space it makes sense to limit the options for consumers to the titles that are best sellers. But when the internet makes it possible to endlessly shelve titles for consumers to peruse, the sales can obviously have a significant increase.

I thought it was an important distinction to make between a success story like Amazon and other companies that have tried only operating with the long tail spectrum of products and those that strictly stick with the popular products. Without the draw of the popular products, its hard to sell only long tail items. Why or how would a consumer even find you? On the other end, if you only sell best-sellers, you’re missing out on a wealth of opportunity.

In another article discussing the long tail found in The Economist, they too discussed the benefits of the long tail. This was focused primarily on the positives consumers will experience as more businesses employ this new business model. Both articles come to the same conclusion: the long tail is connecting people with products that they likely would not have had access to before. Shopping in this sense then becomes more about the individual. Sure, they lure you in with the trends but ultimately shoppers will flourish in the products that appeal to their individual tastes. There’s something so democratic about a business model that plays to individual tastes in this matter and it really resonates with me that it promotes this idea for people to choose products so much more specifically to their taste.

https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21638142-consumers-reap-benefits-e-commerce-surprising-ways-hidden-long