dayjon

[dayjon]

Overview of blog

On this blog page, I will be talking about my time taking the digital cultures module at Middlesex university and talk about 3 of lessons in blog entries. In the blog entries I will be quickly summarising the topics covered in the lessons, say what I found most interesting about them and also give my opinion on questions asked in the lessons. References to pictures, papers and videos placed in this blog will be listed below.

[dayjon]

The Networked self

During my first lesson taking the digital cultures module, the first topic we went over was the networked self. The networked self can be described as the way someone presents themselves in the digital world. A brief summary of this topic’s areas would be that we went over what networked publics are, talked about how the flow of media has changed over time, talked about why code is so important in the digital landscape and talked about how online profiles change the behaviour of a user. One of the areas I found the most interesting was when comparing how much media has developed over the years. Traditional media, also known as old media consists of items such as physical newspapers, television and books. New media can be described as updated versions of the old media and consists of items such as blogs, social networking and online newspapers. Unlike old media, new media allows a user to gain information from many areas which are constantly updated in real time.

(Chrisos, M. 2018)

A question that was asked during the lecture was if we are over reliant on technology in the age we live in. Personally, I would argue we are not. I feel technology is just an extension of ourselves, allowing us to do things more effectively and access more information than we would normally be able to. That doesn’t mean we should forget how to do fundamental tasks like using a book to find information, however, it just makes life easier for the user. An example of this could be using google maps, an application that allows the user to navigate the world easier by knowing what kind of roads and places are around them at anytime.

Chrisos, M. (2018). Branding Your Business: New Media vs Traditional Media Advertising. [online] Techfunnel. Available at: https://www.techfunnel.com/martech/branding-business-new-media-vs-traditional-media-advertising/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2019].

[dayjon]

Digital Branding

Another lesson we had during the digital culture’s module was on digital branding. A brand can be described as the personality of something that makes someone think a certain way as soon as they see whatever the thing is. A brief summary of this topic’s areas would be that we went over the key elements of a brand, talked about why customer reviews are important, talked about how a user’s opinion of a brand can change after controversies and talked about what brand communities and publics are. One of the areas I found the most interesting is when we watched a video of a recorded conversation showing a comcast employee repeatedly refusing to cancel a customer’s internet service over the phone. The release of this video on Youtube would have painted a bad picture of the comcast company as a whole which means fewer people would be likely to subscribe to their service if they viewed this video.

(Conversation, T. 2014)

A question asked during the lesson was if Donald trump is an authentic brand. I would say he is mainly because of the way he interacts on twitter. Instead of having someone else run his twitter, trump is seen to write everything himself which allows users to see what’s going on with his thoughts and feelings towards situations happening in the real world. A quote which shows a brand isn’t just about logos comes from Daniel Rowles in ‘Digital branding in perspective’ where they write “What digital branding is really about is the sum of our online experiences. These online experiences may be influenced and impacted by logos and sponsorship, but we need to understand branding to be something much more than visual identity (Rowles, 2017) ”. As a result of this, I would say he is an authentic brand.

Conversation, T. (2014). Comcast's 'Embarrasing' Customer Service Phone Call. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYUvpYE99vg [Accessed 12 Apr. 2019]. 

Rowles, D. (2017). Digital branding in perspective. Kogan Page, p.3. Available at: https://mdx.mrooms.net/pluginfile.php/1459058/mod_resource/content/1/Digital_Branding_A_Complete_Step-By-Step_Guide_to_..._----_%28PART_ONE_Digital_branding_in_perspective%29.pdf [Accessed 29Apr. 2019]

[dayjon]

Liveness

Another lesson we had during the digital culture’s module was on liveness. Liveness can be described as something being recorded and being broadcasted to a viewer’s device in real time. A brief summary of this topic’s areas would be that we went over examples of live real world events such as New Year’s Day and talked about mediatization being the cause of liveness. One of the areas I found the most interesting is when we went on a public camera broadcasting website called EarthCam. This site allowed the user to see what was happening at a place in the world such as New York and see what people were getting up to while they walked around in the public streets.  

Link to EarthCam website - https://www.earthcam.com/  (Earthcam.com. 2019)

A question that was asked during the lecture was if the class room we were in was currently live. Personally, I didn’t think it was live mainly because the class room wasn’t being recorded and broadcasted somewhere else for someone to view it. A quote which defines liveness like this comes from Philip Auslander in ‘LIVENESS Performance in a mediatized culture’  where they write “Live performance now often incorporates mediatization to the degree that the live event itself is a product of media technologies. This has been the case to some degree for a long time, of course: as soon as electric amplification is used, one might say that an event is mediatized. What we actually hear is the vibration of a speaker, a reproduction by technological means of a sound picked up by a microphone, not the original (live) acoustic event. Recently, however, this effect has been intensified across a very wide range of performance genres and cultural contexts, from the giant television screens at sports arenas to the video apparatus used in much performance art (Auslander, 1999)”. As a result of that, I would class the room we were in to just being real life passing through time.

Auslander, P. (1999). LIVENESS Performance in a mediatized culture. [online] Is.muni.cz, page 25, Available at: https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/podzim2016/FAVz060/um/65774158/Phillip_Auslander_Liveness__Performance_in_a_Mediatized_Culture.pdf [Accessed 29 Apr. 2019].

Earthcam.com. (2019). EarthCam - Webcam Network. [online] Available at: https://www.earthcam.com/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2019].