Weds Feb 19

Social Media (3)

the various means by which people seek to turn social media into a kind of (imaginary or real) game.

• http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/f52e0/you_are_all_missing_the_point_of_ karma_upvotes/
• http://www.fireoneout.com/ post/33083303474/2-7-million-total-views-after-reddit- content
• https://medium.com/cyber-security/24eb09e026dd (story of how @N lost his Twitter account)
• http://buzzoid.com/buy-instagram-likes/
• http://world.time.com/2014/02/10/nobody-liked-my-selfie-and-now-the-country-is-going-to- hell/

Mon Feb 24

Social Media (1)

The topic for today concerns social media's role in finding freedom through revolution, and historical roles of technology roles in the pursuit of freedom. The material today is closer to 90 minutes or two hours worth--the documentary is almost an hour long--so please set aside some extra time for preparation.

• The main item for today is the second part of Adam Curtis's amazing 3-part documentary, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (2011). The second part is called "The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts." All 3 parts are presented here, along with a brief description of all three parts of the film: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-loving-grace/
  • additional background about Curtis: the Wikipedia page about him, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis, and his blog on the BBC's website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/
    
• An excerpt from the Stanford communications professor Fred Turner's book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, (University of Chicago Press, 2006) which explores the unexpected connections between 1960s progressive radicalism and later business-oriented technological utopianism: http://www.edge.org/3rd_ culture/turner06/turner06_ index.htm
  • background on Fred Turner: http://fredturner.stanford.edu/
• Finally, we have two pieces of journalism about technology in the Arab Spring.
  • The first is a Guardian piece by the reporter Peter Beaumont, "The truth about Twitter, Facebook and the uprisings in the Arab world": http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2011/feb/25/twitter- facebook-uprisings-arab-libya
  • The second is also from the Guardian, by the important digital critic Evgeny Morozov, whose work I hope we'll encounter again later in the term: "Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go: Cyber-utopians who believe the Arab spring has been driven by social networks ignore the real-world activism underpinning them" 
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopians
    • Background on Morozov: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Morozov

Read

• Exploring Web 2.0: The Impact of Digital Communications Technologies on Youth Relationships and Sociability by Sarah M. Long
  http://scholar.oxy.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=sociology_student
  This is an academic article showing both sides of digital communication; how it is decreasing face-to-face interaction but also allows for a more diverse network of people to communication. It also includes face-to-face interviews conducted with college-aged students. Attached at the end are the questions used for the interview. Take a look at the questions and answer them if you can.
• The Subtle Benefits of Face-to-Face Communication by Brad Hunter
  http://www.stanford.edu/class/symbsys205/facetoface.html
  This article how face-to-face communications is better for humans both biologically and psychologically. It uses various literary works to support the author’s stance. Do you agree or not agree with what he is saying.
• The Problem with The “I Forgot My Phone” Video by nathanjurgenson
  http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/08/26/the-problem-with-the-i-forgot-my-phone-video/
  This blog post is a criticism of the “I Forgot My Phone” Video. The author calls out the negative factors of the video. Read through it and if you can also read the comments. To me, the author seems a bit condescending, however, you might have a different take on it. What arguments, if any, do you have with this article, or do you agree with what he is saying?
• How Social Media Woke Up Bhutan
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25314578
  I discovered this article while scrolling through my twitter timeline! Of all places! In this article, it talks about how this small country was isolated from the rest of the world until 1999 with the arrival of television and the internet. It’s interesting to see how digital communications has impacted a country outside of the US. Take a look!
• Technology Can Have Positive and Negative Impact on Social Interactions
  http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/technology-can-have-positive-and-negative-impact-on-social-interactions
  This articles provides the positive and negative effects of digital communication on social interactions. It also provides statistics and graphs to show evidence.

• This first article was posted to BBC and is a good introduction to this topic, I think. It dives into how digital photography expedited the process of making photography accessible, and some interesting points about how digital photography has changed some of our behaviors: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ magazine-16483509
• The next is a news article that was a huge deal in my workplace. I am a photojournalist at The Progress-Index in Petersburg. Last year, the Chicago Sun Times made the decision to lay off their entire photography staff in lieu of letting their reporters do the work: http://www.cultofmac.com/ 229512/chicago-sun-times-lays- off-entire-photo-staff-will- give-reporters-iphoneography- training/
• You don't need to spend much time on this tumblr, but it is a comparison of the Sun Times' design and photography work since this decision compared to that of their competitor the Chicago Tribune: http://suntimesdarktimes. tumblr.com/
• This next article gives some examples of the differences between amateur and professional photography, and how those can be seen even in this new digital age of the medium: http://openapphoto.blogspot. com/2013/08/examples-of- professional-vs-amateur.html
• This is an interesting article that compares the attitudes towards instagram as an artform (that it is essentially 'fake photography') to the attitudes towards photography in general when it was first introduced as an artform. It is interesting how the same issues in photography keep repeating themselves as technology progresses: http://petapixel.com/2013/10/ 07/instagram-anxiety- photographer-part/
• This is an interesting reddit thread where you can see two different reactions to the digitization of photography. One being that it is an advance in technology that should be embraced, another that it has brought photography down in quality. Basically it's an interesting conversation about digital vs film. You don't need to read all of the comments, just a few to get an idea: www.reddit.com/r/photography/ comments/ca45l/photography_my_ uni_lecturer_no_novice_in/ 
• Next, we will begin to look at how the digitization of photography has furthered the disbelief of it as evidence of truth. This article talks about the history of photo manipulation, and how as it has gotten more and more advanced, people are less inclined to believe photographs as truth: http://www.astropix.com/HTML/ J_DIGIT/ETHICS.HTM
• Obviously, Photoshop has created standards of beauty that are physically impossible. Often, people talk about celebrities being thinned down or having curves added. This article examines the opposite but just as problematic phenomenon of Photoshop as a tool to make extreme thinness appear healthy, and the effect this has on photographers: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ lisa-wade/youd-be-shocked-at- what-these-fashion-editors- are-editing-out-of-their- photos_b_4542067.html
• This Dove campaign is a response to our obsessive Photoshop treatment of everyone in media. I don't want to say much about Photoshop, I'd like to hear what everyone has to say about it first. http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=iYhCn0jf46U

This is an overview of gamification by a game designer who does consulting for businesses. He focuses on what he thinks is wrong with most gamification strategies and what actually works.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=1dLK9MW-9sY

Penny Arcade's Extra Credit discusses the positives and negatives of the ever popular aspect of gameification

 Here is a link that pertains to gamification in education.