Campaign

There are many different types of campaigns and they are made for all different reasons. They can be made to show a point to something in particular or to get a point across to certain people and some can even be made to just spread the word.

Sometimes it takes a lot to be noticed or to get something noticed. A campaign that I have seen that stood out to me was the free hugs campaign. It has reached over 72 million views on YouTube. The video came from Juan Mann who was just a ordinary guy whose mission It was to put himself forward to hug a stranger and make them smile.

He walks around a town center with a sign saying free hugs and when you watch it you see the reaction of many people. Some of them avoid him some stop and stare and some actually go over for a hug.

Its funny how the simplest of things can make someone happy.

When we were set the task t create our campaign we had no specific boundaries and had the option to make our campaign on anything that we want. From seeing the free hugs campaign my group and I decided that we would like to do something that reached out to a lot of people.

We went to our town with a large piece of plain paper and a box of colouring pens. We asked the question ‘How are you feeling today?’ we asked a number of strangers the question and asked if they would write a word that described how they were feeling or to draw a picture. It was a shock on how people reacted. Most people would stare or just walk past but there were a number of people who came over and were willing to help.

We filmed this all on our camera and in the end all the footage that we were able to gather meant that you could really see how people were feeling and what sort of age group were more willing to take part.

From working on this campaign I have learned that there is a lot you can do to reach out to people, whether it be with free hugs or whether it be just asking general questions and see how people answer them.

Also we were able to use the flip camera and editing software that helped us create a campaign that was as good as we could make it.

From working on this project it has made me look at how people are with each other whether you know each other or not. There are some people out there who maybe do just need a hug. It is campaigns that get the point across about certain things.

Campaigns can be about anything so this has shown me a way of getting something across in a creative and interesting way.

Psychogeography

One of the things we looked at in our workshop was Psychogeography. We talked in class about it and discussed where it may be used.

Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."

Another definition that was create was "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."

We had to get into group and use Psychogeography as a way of getting somewhere.

I was in a group with two other girls, Katie and Beth. We discussed the different ways that we could creatively guide ourselves around somewhere and see where we ended up in a certain time.

We decided that the method we would use to get around would by doing rock, paper scissors between the three of us. We started off walking down a street and when we got to a cross roads or two new turnings we would each stand with our back to a road, do rock paper scissors and whoever won, we would go down their road. We did this continuously for about 25 minutes and recorded as we went. We also got shots of when we were making the decision on what way we would go.

We went through Leicester town and ended up on the outskirts of the town center. It was a fun assignment to do as I had never done anything like that before and never thought to have rock, paper, scissors in charge of what direction I went in and where I ended up.

This has helped with what we may do in the future as it has introduced to me that this is part of media in a way where it has been studied and used within media.

I had never heard of Psychogeography before this class so when we were told about what it was and when I had researched it a bit more. I found it really interesting and really enjoyed going out and using rock, paper, scissors to decide where to go as I had never had thought about using something like the decide where I would go and what direction I would travel in.

This activity is something that I would enjoy carrying out again as I did find it very interesting.

I learnt that using rock, paper, scissors or even a method such as rolling a dice can be a good way to direct you around although it would be a very good idea as you may end up lost.

Copyright

Copyright is used on thousands of products. Copyright is given to the original creator of a product so that they make all the decision on how the product is used and they then can make any profit from it if it is used. It protects the product in a way as it shows who is the soul owner of the product.

Anything from music to films to plays can have copyright on it. I helps stop people taking ideas and using them as their own and making money from it and also gives someone ownership of something they have created.

Every day people create something that is then given copyright but also every day people breach copyright.

Piracy has become one of the main problems with copyright. People nowadays are not listening to the rules of breaching copyright and are illegally downloading products and sharing them through downloading websites and file sharing.

Even Cory Doctorow talks in his piece about how much people rely on media now and says, “Why does all this copyright reform stuff matter, anyway? What's at stake?” and his answer to that is – Everything.

In a workshop we split into two groups and had one group who were for copyright and one group who were against copyright. We then prepared for a debate that we were going to have in class. We researched all the information we could about copyright to make sure that we had good information to share in the debate and also use examples of things that have been copyrighted in the past.

Through preparing and having this debate it helped widen my knowledge of the way that copyright works and the difficulties it brings with piracy and the amount of people who illegally download these days. There have even been file sharing websites that have been made in different countries were it is not illegal to download different things so the owner cannot do anything about it.

If I am completely honest I am one to have downloaded music though downloading websites such as LimeWire and YouTube converters. I also know a lot of other people who use these sites and many other different ones.

Through doing this research we were also able to find out how long copyright on a product lasts for a the fines and things that people may have to pay for breaching copyright or having illegally downloaded things on their computers.

When organizing our debate (my group were for copyright) we looked into things such as piracy but also how copyright is meant to protect an artist or creators work.

When debating, a lot of good points were raised from both sides about being for copyright and against it. I don’t think there was one person in the room who hadn’t copyrighted in their life or who didn’t know someone who did it.

Through learning about copyright and the debate and doing all the research I have learnt a lot about the effects that breaching copyright can have and I have also learnt a lot about piracy which all in all has enabled me to learn a lot.

Why does all this copyright reform stuff matter, anyway? What's at stake?

Collective Intelligence

Internet sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Amazon are all websites that I use on a daily basis and so do many of my friends. These websites are all types of collective intelligence. It is not something that they are well known as because no one thinks of what they are underneath their name and what is actually happening. I use websites like amazon to search for products to buy but never think about what is going on to create this website. Amazon has thousands of different online stores selling things on it, so if you were so search for one product you would be shown a huge list of different online stores that you can purchase that product from.

Something that I found that amazon also offers is the Amazon Turk. The Amazon Turk is a crowd surfing marketplace, which could be seen as a bit like Wikipedia. Amazon Turk has a computer programmers known as requesters who co-ordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks. This is something that I found very interesting and in my workshop time I looked more into what happens.

I found that the requesters post HTI’s (human intelligence tasks). These tasks could be things as simple as picking the best photo out of several.

One of the most popular tasks I found that has been posted was the sheep market. It is collection of 10.000 sheep. They were all collected over a period of 40 days. He people who drew the sheep were just random people on the Internet. You can see on the sheep market website information about how much the workers were paid and what the average time spent on creating a sheep was.

This is a type of collective intelligence because people from all over the world have come to one website and created something incredibly random.

When finding information about this I found that I was able to relate this to other websites such as Facebook and MySpace as they are also a type of collective intelligence. When I log into my Facebook account I can immediately connect with people all over the world and this is the same for everyone. People use these websites to share photos and videos and all sorts of information. They also use it for arranging things and just generally keeping in contact with people.

From learning about collective intelligence it has made me open my eyes and realize how easy it is to connect with people in the simplest of ways. I have also been able to find out that there are hundreds more websites like the amazon mechanical turk when you can complete the simplest of tasks. Even though you may only be paid a small amount it just shows how people can come together and create something amazing.

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Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape - Henry Jenkins

 At the very beginning of university in one of my very first sessions of networked media we looked at Henry Jenkins eight traits.

Looking through what he has written looks very long and very confusing but once you get started it is actually really interesting.

The section that stood out to me was number three – Everyday. It explains how people are so used to technology improving and new things coming out every week that we have stopped noticing the change all together.

We now have facilities like home cinemas and every gadget going in our homes. People are now able to find reasons not to communicate because of the pile of technology that there is. It is a way that you isolate yourself from everybody.

Henry Jenkins says ‘the iPod is like the soundtrack to our lives.” Which is true as you find that most people listen to music everyday and everywhere that they go so no matter what you have listened to that day it all has been like a soundtrack to your day.

Henry also points out that now we can take our technology with us wherever we go. We now have laptops, mobile phones, iPods and even portable books. You can find out information at the click of a button. If you want to know what’s happening in the news or to log on to Facebook or any other website, you can by just going on to the Internet which you can access wirelessly on your phone or laptop. You can call people and text so nowadays things are way more advance.

From looking further into this I have a better understanding of technology. Before I never really thought about how advanced we all are now and just took for granted the fact that I have a mobile phone and a laptop. Now I know that you definitely don’t need all these things but people have grown so used to having them now that everyone would find it hard to live without them.

Technology is such a big part of our lives now and it is developing every day and know one knows what ideas are flickering around or what is being in the process of being developed but we do know that anything that is going to be made is going to be bigger and better than what is already around and people are definitely going to want to have it. There are a lot of people who can just afford to buy these things but there are a lt of people who want these products just to have them and show off.

I have learnt that technology has its strong points and its weak points but people are always going to see the good points in it just because it is so useful to them. Technology has become very powerful and there is no telling where it will go next.

http://henryjenkins.org/2006/11/eight_traits_of_the_new_media.html