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In this class I learned a variety of things ranging from social media and technological advancements all the way to memes but I would say the most valuable lesson that I learned in this class was how to work with a group. Most of our major assignments we were able to work with groups and this benefited me a lot. My group and I were able to get our work done efficiently and we all benefited from being able to work together. One of my favorite projects of the semester was the meme week where we were able to pick any meme and give its history and why it is spreadable or viral and this was really informative because when you see memes you dont think about the details of how it grew so fast so it was really interesting to look into our meme and how it spread. An important lesson that I learned in New Communication Technologies is the bell curve of adaptation. I thought that this was really intriguing because of how common this is when it comes to games and new websites where there are early adopters and how growth is accumulated. The most important thing that I learned in this class is how to do a feature story. My feature story taught me how to implement pictures, video, and audio to create a story that will interest an audience. This is one of the most important things I learned in class because of how extensive the project was. This wasn’t a project that you can procrastinate until the last minute because of how huge the workload is. Getting video and audio interviews was a lesson that I will take with me in my future and will always think back about how this class helped me think creatively when it comes to taking pictures from long shots to close ups and how you have to work multimedia into a working story.

Nate Minard

New Communication technologies

5/2/18

 

In this class I learned a variety of things ranging from social media and technological advancements all the way to memes but I would say the most valuable lesson that I learned in this class was how to work with a group. Most of our major assignments we were able to work with groups and this benefited me a lot. My group and I were able to get our work done efficiently and we all benefited from being able to work together. One of my favorite projects of the semester was the meme week where we were able to pick any meme and give its history and why it is spreadable or viral and this was really informative because when you see memes you dont think about the details of how it grew so fast so it was really interesting to look into our meme and how it spread. An important lesson that I learned in New Communication Technologies is the bell curve of adaptation. I thought that this was really intriguing because of how common this is when it comes to games and new websites where there are early adopters and how growth is accumulated. The most important thing that I learned in this class is how to do a feature story. My feature story taught me how to implement pictures, video, and audio to create a story that will interest an audience. This is one of the most important things I learned in class because of how extensive the project was. This wasn’t a project that you can procrastinate until the last minute because of how huge the workload is. Getting video and audio interviews was a lesson that I will take with me in my future and will always think back about how this class helped me think creatively when it comes to taking pictures from long shots to close ups and how you have to work multimedia into a working story.

Our meme project was about the yodeling Walmart boy. I really enjoyed working on this project because of how funny everyone’s ideas were for the meme week. In our meme project we explored spreadable vs viral.

My audio files were really easy for me to get done. I used premiere pro to clip my audio interviews and was a simple process. I recorded my audio interviews on my iPhone which was really easy to transfer the files from my phone onto my computer.

When I was walking around taking my pictures I noticed that the James Connor University center had plenty of tv’s playing but no one was watching them. This struck me odd because as a looked around students are on their phones, iPad’s, and laptops. This is what Inspired me to write about this topic. When I sat down in the University center for an hour I noticed several things. The amount of people on their phones is the biggest one. When I walk from class to class I too am part of this mob mentality of being glued to my device. I began to think about what types of activities I do while filling time between classes and it struck me. Between classes I was browsing new music, watching live streams of video games, reading the news via twitter moments, and aimlessly scrolling Instagram. This drove the question of how has media shifted in the past 10 years? In my opinion media has shifted dramatically in the past 10 years because of how innovative companies are when it comes to getting their media into our hands. With apps free of purchase, it is easy to see how media and news have caught like wildfire. Apps like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Amazon video offer us unlimited streaming at a small cost per month subscription. At about 10-15 dollars you can get your favorite shows like Game of Thrones, Shameless, Orange is the new black, and Westworld all you can watch whenever you want. This is what I feel drove Television prices down the drain. With being able to download these apps on your smartphones, laptops, and tablets I don’t see the Television companies ever bouncing back from this. It’s no secret that television is the old school way of getting information but why? In my research new communication technologies like Apples iPhone series, Roku, Amazon’s fire stick, Hulu, Netflix, and HBO are clearly winning this new media war by a landslide. In the past decade television prices have gone down dramatically. In 2008 the average price for a 50-inch tv was about $1,000 but since then you can find tv’s for around $600 a near 40% decrease! I think that this is mostly because of mobility. You are able to make this shift when you think about back in 2008 with the 1st iPhone being revealed and technology was starting to become more accessible, television was offering more channels to surf, and the internet was vastly growing with excess information you can paint a picture in your head just how mobility is all you ever needed when it comes to your daily routine. With mobility increase and ease of accessibility companies like amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and HBO cashed out on the idea to bring regular scheduled programming to a stop. Amazons firestick lets users choose what they want to watch when they want. Another similar devise is the Roku which uses this same strategy as well. All you need to do is plug it in the HDMI port on the tv and you are good to go. Overall media has had a dramatic shift in mainstream media by being able to access data and live stream video to your hands through technological advancements and increased mobility. What I found interesting while doing my interviews is that the answers were consistent between the interviewees perhaps I would have more of a variation in answers if I decided to interview people older than 30 years old. When it comes to news coverage there was however varying response. I found that with gathering news to inform yourself the people I interviewed looked at several sources before making their stance on a subject. In my pictures I attempted to screen capture ways in which media has shifted from people on their phones and laptops instead of their eyes glued to a tv, I was able to capture today’s twitter moments from my phone and got evidence of snapchats news feature if you even consider it news when its mostly just celebrity drama. This story on how media has shifted in the last decade really challenged me in that we don’t see these dramatic shifts and changes in our everyday lives but slowly over time we stray from our roots of television and main stream media to our fingertips and it has made me hopeful and excited to see what the future has in store for our society.

As far as getting all of my video interviews done I thought that this was one of the easier process’s because I took video production just a semester before so it was really easy to set up my interview shots and center my frame between myself and the person I was interviewing.

For my feature writing I decided to look at the fall of television and rise in streaming services. When I went to take my pictures it was kind of a hard process because I wasn’t sure what to take pictures of until I really sat down and thought about it. I thought that my pictures were becoming repetitive because all of my pictures were about how only a few people were actually watching the tv.

In this weeks readings we were faced with an interesting dynamic. In one reading we were getting all of the reasons why google is making us stupid while the other article claims the opposite question. In is google making us stupid we are faced with claims such as google provides us information within a few seconds and we have grown impatient when it comes to reading articles and blog’s we tend to just skim through it. Another reason why he claims that google is making us stupid is because of how little work and research you need to do to find your answer. All you have to type in is a few keywords and you have exactly what you are looking for. However in the article that states the opposite asking if google is making us smarter I tend to lean more to this argument that the 1st. In Does the internet make us smarter one of the key ideas that I agree with is the abundant flow of information. With Wikipedia being the worlds fountain of knowledge we take peer review to the next level. I think this is a credible argument and has indeed made us smarter as a whole. The internet provides an outlet for people to expand their knowledge and also feed the world their knowledge as well.

I found these articles to be interesting because of the compare and contrast style we got from both articles about Facebook making us lonely.  I thought that the article supporting Facebook making us lonely is true to a certain extent. In the article they were talking about how you were able to connect to millions of people in an instant you still have this sense of loneliness. By seeing all of these interactions you expect to see replies and likes to your posts but because of this instant communication you feel like you have all these connections to others you get this desire to talk and share with others but you will always end up with this sense of loneliness. Another point that I wanted to discuss was the anonymity aspect that new technology provides. This gives users this mask that they get this false sense of security that they can make mean comments and feel like it isn’t actually them saying it because of this anonymous setting some social media sites allow.

Future of reputation. This was a really intriguing article because of how influential social media is. The article Future of reputation went in depth about how fast information spreads through social media. In the article it was really crazy to read about just how fast the story about this woman’s dog pooping on the train spread. The most interesting part about the article is that something as small as an accident like this would be blown up to the point where she couldn’t walk out in the public without public shaming from others. This is deadly when it comes to social media because of just how instant this connection makes to its audience. We all know that social media memes spread like wildfire and with this case its no different. I think that it is possible to see the effects of social media when taking into accounts like this. The news spread of her dog and wound up actually ruining her reputation. This is not good because its out of your control to a certain extent. This article was helpful because of how informative it was about how news spreads and the damage social media can deal to its users.