Analystical Essay Group Six

Introduction

Over the course of the twelve weeks, our group has been exposed to the implications and advantages of the online media world. Through our group assignment, presented to us in week seven, we have been asked to analyse and choose content from a specific platform to examine, discuss and elaborate on. In turn, this helped us not only develop our analytical skills about content creation in different mediums but allowed us to develop and create our own content to be distributed online. Networking Media is closely tied to the Media course, experimenting with online platforms and how individuals can use these platforms to connect online, whether this be for personal or for business ventures and learning about content distribution through action has allowed us to tie in the coursework with practical elements.

Through discussing the media sphere, the relationships between an object and their environment are highly crucial. Affordances in the media world are used in the context of social technology — software, connections and the interaction between application and user respectively as shown in the Week Nine Reading “Technology Affordances”. The line “designs based primarily on the user’s articulated needs and tasks can overlook potential innovations suggested by new technologies” highlights the statement made above, the social construction of technology has now been based on the needs of the individuals using the products. We have discussed this relationship between media and ‘affordances’ and how these are used in online video, both through the course itself and through our case study task.

Evidence

Through the last month, we have discussed media creation and why it is significant, specifically in the twenty-first century. As a group, we came to the conclusion that media creation is something that is inevitable as a consumer, even through liking, sharing and commenting on content, we are still engaging with the information presented to us. We also concluded that although distributing content may be easy, there is many factors in making sure individuals can access the content easily, wether this be through muted sound and subtitles like Facebook, or different ‘reacts’ so you can express your opinion easily on the video.

Facebook can also be closely linked to affordances and the relationship with the user. The platform as a whole allows an author to publish and distribute their video content through their own personal site or a public page, thus, allowing a wide range of circulation and unlimited hosting time as well as contributing to the other member’s published content. Facebook also allows one to one interaction through likes, comments and shares, meaning the video (or person) can not only go ‘viral’ but individuals can both positively and negatively share their views on the video itself. From the publishers’ perspective (for example, Aaron Gocs, the example we have chosen for our group case study), the issuer can track and view their online statistics such as the number of views, the audience reached and the countries where his viewers are mostly located, thus, in turn this allows specific tailoring to fit your demographic. From there, Facebook also allows you to create sponsored posts to push your page across the platform for a small fee — showing that it is no longer the strictly ‘messaging site’ it was originally created as. Facebook video streaming services can be both a ‘native’ (meaning directly onto the site itself) and an ‘live’ (streaming/livestream) circumstance. Our case study example, Aaron Gocs uses Facebook natively, although many other users of Facebook for video creation also use the live stream feature — allowing them to directly chat with their fans and answer questions in real time. They usually obtain an auto-play feature that mutes the sound until you click on the video itself, this feature is specifically made for the mobile device for when you are on-the-go (for example, public transport). Although there are many positive attributes to the platform, this, in our unanimous opinion is the only downfall of the platform because you have to open the video on full-screen mode to hear the content. The distribution of video content on Facebook is highly functional, allowing individuals to not only produced highly edited and fine tuned professional videos but also raw and candid ones, like Gocs’ “Stitched Up at Work Today”. The platform is created to encourage individuals to interact with the content they are given online with not only the ‘likes’, comments and sharing from both the publisher and the receiver, but also the use of tags and public pages. Thus, this highlights not only the ease of distribution for those using Facebook, but emphasises the importance of affordances in distributing content online.

Evaluation

From the ideas presented above, we decided to focus on Aaron Goc’s satirical Facebook video “Stitched Up at Work Today”. This natively uploaded video focused a middle-class individual’s regular day at work, the mindless tasks and how one of his mates was ‘stitched up’ (meaning to falsely charge someone by manufacturing evidence). His satirical sense of humour and ‘lo-fi’ filming is what attracted our group to his work, due to it’s non-stereotypical nature of video uploading style (typically high quality, edited content) which we thought would contrast those works typically found on Facebook. Goc’s work is set in a short time frame (a minute and thirty seconds), which allows the viewer to remain captivated on the story without diverting their attention elsewhere, which can happen in longer videos of the same nature. The video is recorded with a laptop camera or webcam in a single shot frame, making it contain a sense of realism and uniqueness for the platform. As Aaron is facing the camera, he remains the centre point of the attention in the video and gives a sense that he is talking to the viewer directly, thus, his satirical, comedic act allows the individual to connect with the content being produced, something we have highlighted throughout Networked Media, specifically in the last number of weeks.

Furthermore, our group concluded that Facebook is an effective source for not only distributing but developing content online as seen through our evaluation blogpost. Through developing and filming a representation of Aaron Goc’s video, one of our group members, Michael took inspiration from his video and developed a similar ‘low-resolution’ ‘Aaron Goc’s Style’ video for our representation of the work. We then published this work on Facebook itself, under a public page to understand the workings of not only distributing on Facebook, but uploading natively. We decided to make our work a little bit longer than Goc’s (two minutes rather than a minute and a half) to capture the maximum amount of the attention span of an individual when watching videos on Facebook. We decided to replicate not only the satirical humour, but also Goc’s choice of uniform — the high visibility vest. We chose to take inspiration from this as we thought it would appeal to individuals of all backgrounds, but targeting the middle class as Aaron did in his video.

Through developing our own work, based on Goc’s satirical and dry sense of humour, it allowed us not only to connect with the work, but have a greater understanding of how distribution and development on Facebook is so important. Through publishing on this platform, we have now collectively understood how important engagement is with your audience, through likes and tags. We have also understood the importance of a single-shot video and the implications it can have for distributing content, through this process we have learnt that shorter and concise is usually better for capturing the audience’s attention. We discussed the length of the video and decided that a video below two minutes will not only capture the audience’s attention for an appropriate amount of time, but also will be enough to talk about out the topic of our story without it becoming monotonous and repetitive, similar to Goc’s video. We also chose to shoot the video on a smartphone, to keep not only the symbolisation of the text, but also to create a sense of realism within the work.

From reflecting further parts of our process in alignment with Goc’s practice, we had some interesting thoughts, particularly in regards to the way the media is recorded on a smartphone (or maybe webcam). It could be contended that a further reason these videos are so successful and applicable in the Facebook sphere is that not only are they recorded on a smartphone, they are also largely consumed on a smartphone device. These ‘lo-fi’ videos often partake a relatable form, thus, why Goc’s focused on this style of shooting to keep his target audience entertained. The subtle capture techniques specific to using a smartphone create a sense of familiarity between consumers and bridge a gap often created by more polished, highly produced media, there is no doubt Goc’s lo-fi production has tapped into something specific within his audience.

Thus, undertaking this task has not only critically analysing the use of affordances within the media sphere but developing and producing our own work to distribute on our chosen platform (Facebook) as we developed in our reflection, it has allowed us to truly understand distributing virtual content thorough practice. We have learnt the tribulations of publishing online; engagement not being met, often hard to start out and be unique once there are many people on a platform, however, these are also met with positive consequences about publishing and distributing.

REFERENCES

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Fox, J. and Moreland, J. (2015). The dark side of social networking sites: An exploration of the relational and psychological stressors associated with Facebook use and affordances. Computers in Human Behavior, 45, pp.168–176.

Halpern, D. and Gibbs, J. (2013). Social media as a catalyst for online deliberation? Exploring the affordances of Facebook and YouTube for political expression. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), pp.1159–1168.

Srauy, S. (2015). The Limits of Social Media: What Social Media Can Be, and What We Should Hope They Never Become. Social Media + Society, 1(1), p.205630511557867.

Schivinski, B. and Dabrowski, D. (2015). The impact of brand communication on brand equity through Facebook. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 9(1), pp.31–53.