The Importance of Social Media

Part of my job at The New School involves creating strategic presences for the university on a variety of social media sites. This work involves a great deal of consideration for the nature and importance of social media, and the ways it has influenced how we think, feel, and interact.

The unique importance of social media in broadcasting information will play a large role in this project. The fact that social media sites are free, immediate, and far-reaching makes them an important platform for the quick and easy dissemination of important information. The regular daily news cycle has been replaced by up-to-the-minute man on scene coverage of important events, including protests. These observations color the public perception of events (for those technologically invested follow them) in more concrete ways than we might like to admit. The ease with which a story can be spread through a note posted on Facebook, a status update, a series of images or video, or a tweet, means that people have access to far more information (most of it unfiltered by the press) than in the past. How this changes the way we view certain events, and whether it makes the "truth" any clearer, is something I'd like to explore in this project.

A Note on the Blog

With the refocusing of my project, the significance of this blog has now changed. The project is now both a consideration and illustration of technology and social media as tools of communication. As such, this blog is no longer just a storehouse for information but an exercise in transparency—a web 2.0 picture of academic process. I'll be posting regular updates on what I've been working on, ideas for sites and technologies to use, etc. The blog is now part of the project instead of a tool for creating it. It is a constant work in progress. I look forward to being both the scientist and subject in this web experiment.

Thesis... Round 1

I've been doing some thinking on my thesis statement, and I think the best way to figure it out is the jump right in. So here's my first attempt at focusing my paper:

The democratization and ubiquity of internet technology has changed the way we protest—allowing protesters to act as their own publications and blurring the lines between journalist and participant, reporting and propaganda.

Reset

So I met with Dawnja and I'm going to go in a different direction with the project, one that seems better suited to both my timeframe and my experience. Instead of doing a single video documentary, I'm going to do a sort of digital design packet: an interactive pdf paper detailing the way activism has been changed by digital media—with live links to photography, videos, newspaper articles, web pages, etc—embedded within. The project will simultaneously discuss how these new technologies have changed the nature of activism and illustrate those changes by utilizing those technologies. Now all I need is a thesis...

Interview Subjects

Two ideas I have to getting in other voices in the film: 

Man-on-the-street style interviews (audio only) asking: 1) what is an activist? 2) what does it mean to be an activist? and 3) what do activists do?

And interviews with digital media experts who can put the effect of media on grassroots organizing and demonstration into context. Right now, the person I'm thinking would be best is the New School's own Ken Wark. I'm going to write him an email this week introducing the project and seeing if he'd be willing to sit down and talk to me once the project takes a bit more shape, and I have a concrete set of questions to ask him.

Hardware/Software

This new computer I bought is really saving me. It has the most recent version of Final Cut Pro, CS3, Mac the Ripper, Soundtrack (although I'm looking into a cheap or trial version of a better audio editing software, or just scheduling time in the lab on Pro Tools). I'm also going to spend the weekend looking for some upgraded audio equipment to invest in (at least a basic lav mic and a good shotgun). One of the main reasons for wanting to do a final project rather than just finishing with a class is that it gives me a chance to boost my equipment collection and ensure I have a good handle on how to use all the software and equipment I do own.

Production Plan

In an effort to move this process forward, I'm putting forth this production plan with tangible deadlines to meet. Here's the first draft:

March 15- Finish simple trailer cut (with audio) and post to site
March 18- Finish first mockup of cover art and post to site
March 22- Develop shooting plan for BRoll and supplementary footage/images
March 25- Digitize and create graphics from relevant web coverage, newspaper articles, statements and any other media
April 2- Collect and digitize any new media from anticipated April 1 New School demonstration
April 9- Develop basic web presence for project (establish URL and post trailer)
April 15- Rough Cut
April 29- Refined Cut and developed web page (with bios, synopsis, background into, etc)
May 6- Final cut and deliverable packet to Dawnja

Since I've been working on the project a bit each day, these seem to be completely manageable deadlines (and build in a little more time since the real end of the semester is not until May 18. On the deadlines, any material that I am able to post will be posted to the site for review.

Title and Graphic Treatment

I'm stuck on trying to title this project, and its making it difficult for me to develop a graphic/type treatment. I want to get in the idea that the piece is looking at the ways digital media has changed activism, and the ways it has made the reporting of "facts" both more clear and more confusing. I tried to write out a list of words that I wanted to stress, sort of like a vocabulary mood board, and the best I came up with out of that is Digital Revolution, which I'm ok with if it sticks but I'd like to do one better. I think I'm going to work with that title for now, so at least I can design a quick cover graphic and choose a title card font. Since I'm stressing the digital/tech aspect of activism over activist history/legacy, I'm going to go with a simple, slick, sans-serif font like Helvetica, Vedana, or Klavika (the Facebook font). Graphically, I'm thinking solid lines, bold colors, not much of a color range— black, white, and greens. I'll mock up something soon and post a jpeg.

progress update

My new computer has the ability to capture youtube videos as flv files, so I've been able to pull a handful of raw video footage from the New School's December occupation. I'm now looking into free programs to convert flash video into quicktime movie format, since my version of Final Cut isn't recognizing the files as videos. The first program I installed put a watermark over all the converted video unless I paid and registered, so I have now installed ReelBean 3.93 from the Apple downloads page. So far, I haven't been able to get it to work with these particular flv files either. I'll discuss it with my advisor when we meet soon.

In the meantime, I've been putting together a basic score in soundtrack and cutting together a very basic trailer which should be completed in the next week or so. I'll post it here when I've got it to a point where its shareable.