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Race, Gender, New Media Course Syllabus

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Race, Gender, New Media

A course designed by

TreaAndrea M. Russworm

with Jennifer Malkowski and Maria San Filippo

in partnership with Five Colleges Inc.

Course Description

 

This class will have a special topic focus on race, gender, and new media.   We will study a variety of new media forms, including video games, online web series, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos.  All of our case studies and weekly lesson plans will either feature content produced and created by women artists and fans or deal explicitly with questions about gender representation—both masculinity and femininity.  Throughout the term, some questions we will explore include: Does misogyny persist in new media and digital cultures? While art games may tend to convey more complex messages about gender and sexuality, what can we say about the industry, mainstream video games, and the dominant image of gamers as young and male? Is there anything productive or interesting about the dominance of normative masculinity in digital spaces?  Can the web series format compete with television in any significant way? By the end of the semester, all students in the class will conduct interviews of new media producers and help archive this work on a course website.

 

Required Texts (see course packet)

Sample Assignments

 

1. Audio commentary analyzing a selected online video or clip.

Building on the skills you learned analyzing short sequences in Papers 1 and 2, choose a 5-10 minute sequence from any film in the “Further Viewing” queue of our Media Gallery to analyze. Again, given the focus of our course, you should choose your sequence with an eye to what it reveals about the film’s construction of gender and sexuality, i.e. what is being conveyed about gender performance and politics, sexual identity, desire, the body, romance, eroticism, coupling, or any other concepts clearly relevant to this course. Your commentary must be interpretive – do not merely describe what is contained within the sequence. Rather, tie those observations together to formulate a cohesive, comprehensive discussion of the sequence that addresses its audiovisual and narrative aspects with clearly articulated descriptive examples and thoughtful debate. You might listen to the audio commentary of a film from our syllabus to see approaches other filmmakers have taken, though I don’t recommend listening to the commentary of the film you’re working on yourself. Take a look at the DVDs on course reserve to see which ones offer commentaries. — San Filippo

For this selection, your proposal should contain an embedded clip of your sequence along with a 1-2 paragraph rationale for its selection and a description of the approach your analysis will take. This should be followed by a 1-2 page transcript of your commentary-in-progress, sufficiently demonstrating the following: a) you’ve chosen your sequence and begun to formulate your thoughts on its form and content; b) you’ve identified a worthwhile reason for this scene’s importance and gestured at the main points of your analysis; c) b) you’ve accounted for the sequence’s length and mapped out the arc of your discussion.

 

2. Video montage on selected topic or theme, discussed within appended artist’s statement (500-1000 words).

With the aim of inspiring you to think about common themes or noticeable progressions across our course’s viewing material, this selection allows you to draw from films that we have seen in class alongside the “Further Viewing” titles. There needs to be some coherent motivation, clearly evident in your proposal, for your grouping of shots/sequences and the order in which they will appear. Possible approaches include:

·      an historical progression (then-and-now representations of sex work, e.g.)

·      variations on a character type (femme fatale, e.g.) or relationship structure (mothers and daughters, e.g.)

·      shared historical, narrative, or social theme (the women’s movement, sexual assault, homosocial bonding, e.g.)

·      films with shared or opposing viewpoints and social values

·      variations on a aural/visual motif or ideological trope (appearance of clocks or references to women’s biological clock, e.g.)

For this selection, your proposal should contain a 1-2 paragraph rationale for your project’s conception and design, followed by a 1-2 page storyboard layout that uses frame captures or drawn images to give a visual accounting of your montage-in-progress. Together these should sufficiently demonstrate the following: a) you’ve devised a topic or theme for your montage and identified shots/sequences to include; b) you’ve identified the relevance of your topic or theme to our class topic and gestured at the ideas your project aims to generate; c) b) you’ve mapped the arc your project will take.

3. “Mash-up” trailer that “queers” 1-2 films, discussed within appended artist’s statement (500-1000 words).

Eligible films include those we’ve screened in class and those in the “Further Viewing” queue. It’s up to you to define and explain what “queering” means in the context of your project, but our course readings and discussions should prove instructive and inspirational, as should the following examples:

Brokeback to the Future:

Buffy vs. Edward:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2988615/buffy_vs_edward_twilight_remixed/

For this selection, your proposal should contain a 1-2 paragraph rationale for your project’s “queer” conception and design, followed by a 1-2 page storyboard layout that uses frame captures or drawn images to give a visual accounting of your trailer-in-progress. Together these should sufficiently demonstrate the following: a) you’ve selected 1-2 films and identified shots/sequences to include; b) you’ve explained your “queer” take on the selected film(s) and gestured at the ideas your project aims to generate; c) you’ve mapped out the arc your project will take.—Malkowski

 

3. Revision paper (5 pages, 6-7 pages, 7-8 pages) You will work on writing and revising one argumentative paper throughout the entire semester.  Each version of the paper will demonstrate a mastery of true revision, not just proof-reading or editing.  Your paper may be on a film, album, performer, theory, show, web series, or any aspect race, gender, and new media that you find interesting—as long as I approve the topic beforehand.  The final draft of your paper must be read and commented on by your team members before the last due date.   Although each version of your individual paper will be graded, I will drop the lowest grade so that the final grade is an average of your highest two papers.–Russworm

4. Final Team Digital Project/Wiki/presentation/ Your team must commit to making a final digital project of your choice that is based on the research area/popular form assigned to you.  A draft of the basic idea and pitch of the project concept must be approved by me during the 5th week of classes.–Russworm

 

Course Schedule

Unit 1: Theories and Sites

1. Why Race, Gender, and New Media?: On Digital Divides and Other Matters

Virginia Eubanks, from Digital Dead End, “Four Beginnings” and “The Real World of IT”

S. Craig Watkins, “Living on the Digital Margins: How Black and Latino Youth are Remaking the Participation Gap”

 

2. What is New Media?

Lev Manovich, “What Is New Media?” from The Language of New Media:

Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, “The Double Logic of Remediation” and “Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation” from Remediation

3-4.  Google and YouTube: It’s a Google World and We All Live in It

from The YouTube Reader:  Rick Prelinger, “The Appearance of Archives”; Thomas Elsaesser, “Tales of Epiphany and Entropy”; Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, “The Entrepreneurial Vlogger”

Alexandra Juhasz, Learning from YouTube (digital book, MIT press): http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/learningfromyoutube/routes.php?youtour=21

 

Unit 2: Forms and Platforms

 

5-6. The Web Series: Toward a Post-Televisual Era

Shows: The Slope; The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl; The Guild

Christine Acham, “Blacks in the Future: Braving the Frontier of the Web Series” in Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences

Elizabeth Ellcessor, “Tweeting @feliciaday: Online Social Media, Convergence, and Subcultural Stardom,”Cinema Journal Volume 51, Number 2, Winter 2012, pp. 46-66

Sheila Murphy, “Introduction,” in How Television Invented New Media. Rutgers University Press, 2011. Print.

 

7. Digital Games and Culture: Masculine and Feminine Archetypes in Video Games

Game: Tomb Raider (2013)

Burgess et. al., “Sex, Lies, and Video Game Covers”

Ian Bogost, “Political Processes” from Persuasive Games

 

8. Digital Games and Culture: Race and Games

Game: Assassin’s Creed Liberation

 Lisa Nakamura, “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft”

Tanner Higgins, “Blackless Fantasy.” Games and Culture 4.1 (2009): 3 –26. Highwire 2.0. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.

Williams, Dmitri, Nicole Martins, Mia Consalvo, and James D. Ivory. “The Virtual Census: Representations of Gender, Race and Age in Video Games.” New Media & Society 11, no. 5 (2009): 815 –834.

 

9. Digital Games and Culture: The Sims and Gendered Storytelling

Game: The Sims

 

from Tanja Sihvonen. Players Unleashed!: Modding The Sims and the Culture of Gaming. Amsterdam University Press, 2011. Print.

Lisa Nakamura, “Pregnant Sims: Avatars and the Visual Culture of Motherhood on the Web”

 

10-11. Machinima

Videos: Leeroy Jenkins (2005, PALS FOR LIFE), Vietnam Romance (2003, Eddo Stern), Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday Tribute (2009, Rysan Fall), My Trip to Liberty City (2006, Jim Monroe)

Hugh Hancock, “Machinima: Limited, Ghettoized, and Spectacularly Promising”

Eddo Stern, “Massively Multiplayer Machinima Mikusuto”

Irene Chien, “Playing Against the Grain”

 

Unit 3: User Responses

 

12. Fandom and Digital Culture

Videos: Star Wars Uncut

Jonathan Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, C. Lee Harrington, “Why Study Fans?”

Henry Jenkins, “Confessions of an Aca/Fan” and “Star Trek Rerun, Reread, Rewritten”

Jason Sperb, “Reassuring Convergence”

Lori Kido Lopez, “Racebending: Fan Activists Fight Racist Casting”

Julie Levin Russo, (2009) User-Penetrated Content: Fan Videos in the Age of Convergence, 125-130. In Cinema Journal 48 (4)

Jennifer Gillan, “Fashion Sleuths and Aerie Girls: Veronica Mars’ Fan Forums and Network Strategies of Fan Address,” in Teen Television

 

13. Social Media

Videos:  Kony 2012

Jessie Daniels, “Propaganda, Cyber-racism and Epistemology in the Digital Era”

Danah Boyd, “Race and Social Network Sites: Putting Facebook’s Data in Context”

Ming S. Trammel/Monica L. Dillihunt: Black Girls Talking Back: How Black Girls Use Facebook and Blogs to Resist Marginalization”

 

14. Course Conclusions

 

 

 

 

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Mass Effect Case Study

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As the years pass, video games become more and more sophisticated, from both a technological standpoint, and from an artistic one. Very often, video games are given a bad reputation for being violent and mindless, or are simply dismissed as being “just games,” when they have potential to do so much more, especially in the realm of storytelling and narrative. Narrative is an important component to most video games, even in games that focus primarily on the gameplay element as their primary draw. For example, the extremely popular Call of Duty games that are being released year after year are filled with narrative, such as the story structure in Call of Duty: Black Ops, where most of the events of the game are retold and experienced from the perspective of captured U.S. agent Alex Mason (the player controlled protagonist) in the midst of an interrogation, during which he suffers post-traumatic flashbacks to his experiences, which constitute most of the gameplay.

As an interactive medium, video games possess a peculiar power of immersion unrivaled by books or film, and allow the player to effect the narrative in ways that books and films cannot match. They possess similar narrative tools to both, but also have their own, unique toolset. This paper seeks to identify and discuss a small sample of these narrative devices and techniques, and why they are important. At the same time, this paper seeks to analyze and discuss another, increasingly important element in video games: gender presentation. The video game industry is rapidly growing and expanding, becoming one of the single greatest sources of entertainment in the United States, having already surpassed Hollywood in terms of profit. Yet as feminist media critics like Anita Sarkeesian have displayed, video games have remained painfully immature in their treatment and presentation of gender roles, with heavily sexualized male and (especially) female characters, rely heavily on stereotypes for female characters, and generally do not present or approach topics of gender and sexuality in a mature manner. That does not mean that the medium is devoid of well written, strong female characters or is completely incapable of discussing gender and sexuality, only that it is difficult in the climate and expectations of the gamer community, as shown by the harassment and personal attacks by male gamers on Ms. Sarkeesian when she proposed her web series “Tropes vs. Women in Videogames,” seeking to identify and evaluate these stereotypes and problems in the medium.

For my own case studies, I like to turn to the Mass Effect series. Mass Effect pioneers and pushes the limits of player interactivity and immersion with the narrative. At the same time, it engages, utilizes, and deconstructs many of the gender stereotypes utilized by the video game medium in different ways. It is not immune to the immaturity common to the medium as a whole, but is also self-aware of its use of these tropes, poking fun at itself through dialogue and deconstructing several common science fiction conventions regarding gender. Mass Effect possesses strong, compelling female characters that react to these conceptions of gender, and provides examples of how characters can be conveyed and presented in a video game format. It is also one of the few series willing to address and portray same-sex and bisexual relationships and characters in a mature manner. In short, Mass Effect is an ideal case study in the ways that video games can convey narrative, and in the many ways games present female characters, both good and bad.

-William Clifford.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU1Rus70ns0[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfHxklxMhA4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pShKKOV_gA

Dr. Google

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Runny nose, fever, itchy throat… Just type in your symptoms into Google and get a diagnosis. Some people are criticizing Google for trying to play doctor, however Google only means well.

We live in a day and age where everything is literally at our fingertips. We can search Google or any other search engine and get an answer to our questions within seconds. People have been searching their symptoms online on site such as Web MD and other online resources and they will continue to do so in the future. In my opinion, as long as Google is simply providing information and not pushing products like a specific pill made by the pharmaceutical industry, there is no harm done.

Google provides patients with an additional resource and in some cases, an online community. In my opinion, these platforms give users and patients more agency over their care. What if your doctor is not versed in the newest technology or treatment plans available for your diagnosis? What if you are not able to afford to get a second opinion? Google is simply giving you the tools and the questions to ask your physician moving forward.

This is especially true for people suffering from uncommon or uncurable diseases and disorders. I know someone who suffers from a mild form of hidradenitis suppurativa – a recurring skin condition with no cure and a treatment plan that only treats the symptoms after they have already occurred. After numerous unsuccessful doctor and dermatologist visits, this person has found solace in the online medical community. They have provided a way for them to find different alternatives to treat the condition through trial and error of what has worked for other people. It has also provided them with certain medications or treatment options to ask their doctors about – many of these are things that would not have been previously recommended.

The Dr. Google article reminded me of a story that I heard about one of my favorite HGTV hosts. The host, Tarek was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer after receiving and tip from a viewer asking him to get a biopsy done on his neck. (http://news.health.com/2015/11/23/tarek-el-moussa-thyroid-cancer-battle-remission/) This viewer’s actions may have very well saved his life.

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While there are some negatives to Google and heath/medical treatments, I think that as long as Google commits to not promote certain products or miracle treatments and simply offers information and always recommends that users confer with a medical professional, there is no harm done.

Is Television Dead?

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When I first moved into my current apartment, my roommates did not have cable television. They had a TV with a DVD player to watch movies and a Hulu account, but no one wanted to pay the extra cost each month to add cable. Eventually, I convinced them of the benefits of cable for things like watching a Law & Order SVU marathons on a rainy day and HGTV shows on Saturday mornings and they gave in.

Contrary to popular belief, the rise of Netflix and other online streaming sources has not led to the death of television. While there may be fewer people choosing to watch live TV or even purchasing cable packages, television is still alive and well. This is because the major networks have noticed this change and they have adapted.

One thing that is around now that wasn’t when I was a high school student is a DVR. Those who choose to have cable or watch TV now have the option to record their favorite show and watch it at another more convenient time. On Demand is another feature that has grown more and more popular as well. Companies have even built commercials into their On Demand show streaming so that they can still profit off you watching.

Another way that the major TV companies have gotten around the rise of online streaming is to provide content online as well. The day after the show airs, you can go online to the networks site, like abc.go.com or cbs.com and watch them right then and there. The networks offer the show for a certain amount of time, usually 4 weeks before taking them offline and they insert commercials into their online account so that they can still profit off its viewers.

Social media has also kept the major networks in line. They have created a mentality of “Watch or miss out.” Some commercials for new episode say things along the lines of “If you don’t watch it tonight, you will hear the spoilers tomorrow.” With today’s social media and instant notification society, that couldn’t be truer. If you miss the finale of your favorite show, you run the risk of seeing a spoiler on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Yahoo might even do a write up and put it on the front page of their site and the entire episode will be ruined for you. These networks have also created a “hive mentality” when it comes to shows and social media. They offer ways to engage with their fans through the use of hashtags throughout the show. Some of the actors even retweet or answer questions while the show is on air and if you don’t watch on time, you miss the chance to interact with your favorite celebrity about your favorite TV character. A great example of this is Shonda Rhimes and #TGIT (Thank God Its Thursday.) Thursday is the day that all of the Shondaland shows air so you can watch Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How To Get Away With Murder back to back and interact with all of the cast and producers of the shows online using the hashtag.

While Netflix, Hulu and even YouTube+ are creating new and valuable content at more affordable prices than a cable subscription, people who use these sites also watch re-runs and old seasons of shows that once aired on major networks like NBC and FOX. They are adding something new to the market but they are not yet at the point of replacing it.

Get Rich or Die Streaming – Monetization: YouTube vs. Twitch

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I have to admit when I first started this course, I had no idea what Twitch was and I was a little disappointed that I would have to spend an entire semester researching and doing work on the subject. However, I soon realized that Twitch was it’s own niche. Much like how I can watch hours of family vloggers and sermons on YouTube, there are many game obsessed people who can spend hours watching other people play on Twitch. To each their own! And with that, I set out with an open mind.

 

Monetization on YouTube has always been plain and simple. YouTubers make money through clicks, commercials, and sponsorships (affiliate links, brands, etc.) There are plenty of other ways that YouTubers with thousands and millions of views can make a living too, these include becoming represented by a management company or doing partnerships with larger well-known brands. Overall, you must put in a lot of work in order to have a successful channel to make a high level/quit-your-day-job type of income.

 

Things are a little bit different on Twitch. Yes, there are commercials and brand sponsorships, but users can make money through other means such as “sponsors” that pay $5 a month for faster content and song requests. This is something that I found to be so strange. As much as I love watching family vloggers and beauty tutorials on YouTube, I couldn’t commit to paying $5 per month consistently. In addition, some of the more popular Twitch users can make money through donations. Many channels have a link that leads to a Paypal or other account that will accept personal donations at any amount. The highest donation that I saw in my research was over $20,000! I am sure there are more donations of that size or even higher.

Overall, it’s important to remember that these YouTubers and gamers on Twitch are targeting a certain niche and there will be people willing to pay money to see their favorites succeed and create more content for them to consume.

 

In my personal opinion, it is definitely easier to make money off of YouTube and posting videos than it is through live streaming your game on Twitch . It is said that consistency is key to becoming successful at anything, especially when it comes to creating online content and building a large audience. In my opinion, it is much simpler to spend one day a week recording all of your YouTube content and scheduling them to go up throughout the week versus scheduling a few hours every day or every other day to play your game so that you can live stream it to your audience.

Amazon & UMass – A Perfect Partnership?

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4.-Amazon-Student

When I first heard that Amazon would be partnering with UMass to bring textbooks to campus, I was excited. I shop on Amazon for everything and as soon as the company launched Amazon Prime, I signed up because I wanted two day shipping all the time. I thought that this would be a match made in heaven, but as I’ve grown to know more of what happens on the other side, I’ve grown weary to think that this is a perfect partnership.

 

When Amazon at UMass was launched, there were a lot of promises made. Amazon promised UMass students speedy delivery times and affordable books. However when you look at the Amazon site, you are not able to purchase the cheapest option of the book you are looking for. Most of the time, the book available to Amazon prime delivery was a used version that cost almost as much as a brand new copy. As an English major who has to order several different textbooks for nearly all of my classes, this was disappointing to me. A book that I could’ve ordered used from another Amazon retailer for $3 is being offered to me for $25.

In terms of delivery times, Amazon offered students free 1 day and 2 day shipping. However they neglected to put the infrastructure in place to be able to handle so many deliveries. While the pick up location in the campus center was an added bonus, many students elected to have their books delivered to their dorms, which inundated the Residential Service Desks and the student employees with bags and bags of packages to handle and log in a timely manner. As a Customer Service Associate for the residential service desks, I can attest to the fact that each day during the add drop period we received close to 900 packages nearly every single day, three times more than what the desks normally handle.

 

Students are not the only one’s frustrated with the system. There have been professors who were told at the last minute that a book for their course is not available, forcing them to reconfigure their syllabus right at the start of the semester. Books that are marked available to students are actually not even shipped for weeks, leaving students behind and unable to complete course readings.

 

When Food For Thought bookstore closed on 2014, I was a little devastated. As a book lover, I much prefer to wander around a bookstore and find something that interests me than to just order something offline. Nothing beats the feeling of a book in your hand and to smell the pages as you cracked it open for the first time. This was an experience that ordering off of Amazon and Barnes and Nobles could never give me. However, I hate to admit, I never ordered my academic textbooks from Food for Thought. What I failed to realize at the time is how much the local bookstores depend on textbook sales.

 

Amazon has taken UMass by storm, but it seems to be at the expense of the students and of the local community. Students are not saving as much money as they thought they would. Local bookstores are closing and leaving the community without a choice of bookstore for residents. If Amazon wants to be successful, they should partner with the professors and the community to come up with something that works well for both. They should put the people they are working with ahead of the profit they are making in order to have a perfect partnership.

 

 

Google is Everywhere and It’s Awesome….Right?

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The company has cornered the market for indexing our very lives into a neat and UI friendly search engine. “Google’s Grand Plan to Make Your Brain Irrelevant” discusses Google’s buying spree, as it attempts to absorb every bit of useful infrastructure build on its omnipresence. The company claims that it does this in order “to build an enormous digital brain that operates as much like the human mind as possible”. Google’s pet project, Google RankBrain, already handles 15% of all google searches as an organic AI that adapts and learns. This “digital brain” will be able to “learn ‘organically’ — that is without human involvement”.

The aggressive push for acquiring new technologies and absorbing every innovator into the Google fold seems a little hostile to the average Google consumer. To us it seems as though Skynet is rising and that soon we’ll all be forced join John and Sarah Connor in rebellion. But before we fire up the time machine and send the Governator back to destroy the evil Google, let me share a little experience. I’ve been to Silicon Valley and indeed spent a few days in the deep dark Google offices. Google has created, for itself, a university after university where you actually get paid to learn and create.

The kind of minds assembled at Google aren’t mad scientists bent on bringing the world to their digital knees. They’re inquisitive and hyperactive minds bent on finding the most efficient solutions to problems we don’t even know about. The kind of conversations going on at Google would make your jaw drop and your mind race. Google has recognized a problem
that most of us only now realize is a problem, the flow of information. For the longest time, the public’s only source of information are from the very institutes that model themselves to be the keepers of the peace. We haven’t had a chance to split the veil and consolidate our collective knowledge…ever. What Google is doing is unprecedented, new and even scary. Especially because Google must build itself in a closed ceiling system, trying to navigate through tricky legislation; special interests who really would want to turn our lives into a privacy dystopia; conservative governments that would rather have its citizens read heavily curated and edited information; and indeed the very public they’re trying to help.

Already “for many of us, Google already functions as an important part of what WIRED columnist Clive Thompson has called our outboard brain. The more Google ‘knows,’ the less we have to remember. We just Google it.” The article seems to be under the impression that
Google’s upgrades will be used to turn our own minds irrelevant. However, it doesn’t recognize that for most of us our minds were a little irrelevant. Just measure the speed with which I can find the answers to most questions than someone who grew up in the good old days of the public library would. Without being able to Google things, I would spend more time memorizing than I do learning and understanding. Google is a scary idea, especially because so many things are already in the wrong hands but when Google says they’re not trying to be evil, I’m inclined to believe them. In fact I have to believe them because without Google I myself may fall into the evils that are conceived by ignorance. With access to so much media, so many publications, articles, forums and perspectives from all over the world I’m able to be a more aware human being. I’m able to navigate through life with a few less fears and few more facts.

What the hell is Google actually doing to me??

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The unavoidable elephant in the room these days is that Google is deeply ingrained into all of our lives, with most humans using one or more of its services everyday. For awhile I’ve been hearing various opinions on the still growing media monolith, many of which have been unfavorable, but some that lauded the company for its innovative work in technology. And while these opinions may differ depending on the service or technology being critiqued, all of these seem to be asking the bigger question, what exactly is Google doing to our lives?

 

Google can sometimes seems as comfortable and familiar as one’s own skin, giving us the freedom to search for whatever information we want and allowing us to collaborate with others from our own home via their cloud services. Other times we hear about features that can actually frighten us a little bit, namely Google diagnosing your ailments via a few search queries. The way I see it, we can handle the inevitable rise of Google in two ways.

  1. We can succumb to Google in their rise to total media/technology domination. Let their powers dictate our lives and become nothing more than an accessory organ to their greater system.

or…

2. We can watch Google as it grows, take advantage of tools and                 services it provides while keeping ourselves informed about                   how to use these tools properly so they don’t use us.

Google is not an evil company per se. You could take isolated incidents from their career and push it whatever way you want. I’d like to think that at the end of the day they are an honest company who does want to help the world grow and expand, but understandably so, efforts of that magnitude always leads to some errors. So when I read articles like “Is Google Making us Stupid” or any article about a new service like self diagnosing, I immediately look at the advantages and disadvantages.

Yes. Google will make us stupid if we rely to heavily on it. When every question can be answered on a whim, it takes away the challenge of deduction. However, if used right Google provides the most comprehensive reference manual the world has to offer, and a resource like that is priceless. You could look at it like caffeine. We function well without it, and while we use it we seem to get a boost in activity and productivity. But be wary, for it will quickly become something to be relied upon, an addiction where you will wonder how you ever functioned normally without it. This could be the world we are heading to, but we could also take advantage of what were given with out abusing it. If google is treated in a respectful way we have much to gain from it, but ignoring those advantages because google is streamlining and simplifying processes is ignorant of our modern age. Google like any tool can be abused or utilized properly, and it is up to us to work hard and manage our usage of Google so that we stay as operators.

Variety Playlist – Griffin Schroeter

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[youtube][/youtube]

 

I use YouTube for a variety of different styles and genres of videos. Seriously, there were almost more videos that represented my interests on YouTube than I could fit on the playlist. My favorite videos on YouTube, generally, are ones that have to do with analysis of games and films. The channel Extra Credits is probably the one that I follow the most religiously – their main video series exploring video games and why they mater is released weekly on wednesdays, making for an easy schedule to keep up with. Many of the channels I follow most closely are ones that analyze media – whether it be games, movies, or television series. I find this sort of content fascinating, because it teaches me to always look at pieces of media from many angles to try to find what is most important or worth talking about. Keeping up with these channels has expanded greatly my ability to pick apart games, especially, and understand their mechanics at a depth that was unknown to me before YouTube.

Another channel I enjoy that analyzes films is YourMovieSucksDotOrg, wherein Adam digs deep into his experience watching thousands of films through his life and talks about what works and what doesn’t in modern films – but mostly what doesn’t work, hence the channel name. While I don’t enjoy negative or overly critical explorations of media (such as the channel CinemaSins and their series “Everything wrong with (this movie)” ) YMS has enough of a spread of criticism (usually carried out in a comedic way, which helps) and surprising insights that it feels actually quite balanced by the end of each video. He may be critical of these films, especially ones that are awful, but he never just sits there and yells at them for being stupid, which is refreshing in a community of critics that take their title too literally.

Other videos I watch, that don’t have to do with analysis, range wildly. I enjoy a reddit trend called “YouTube Haiku”, whereby people will post videos of a “poetic nature” that are under 30 seconds. There’s something about these videos that defy expectation and convention that is really enjoyable, if a bit ridiculous. It’s really hard to explain what “poetic nature” really means – in fact, even the subreddit itself doesn’t seem to have a structured definition. Often these videos have a comedic angle as well.

Amazon, the ever growing beast

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If you were to ask me about Amazon four years ago I would’ve told you it’s an incredibly convenient way to shop online for all your needs, whether they are basic necessities or luxury items, Amazon has it all.

As I watched Amazon grow into a partnership between them and UMass I began to do a little research into their company to see what was really going on behind the scenes. It was not hard to discover that there company was less of a big strong online bookstore and more like a giant manipulative media octopus that had one of its many tentacles in a vast range of media forms. Amazon is a company that does a lot of good and makes the world much more convenient for everybody, but at what cost do we take for our convenience?

Over the years Amazon has grown to be a company that has acquired many other companies while integrating them and their services into their own corporate structure. By doing this they have found a place for themselves among the media/internet giants like facebook and google. You could imagine the ease of use when a company like Amazon streamlines a variety of content to work on the same platform. Those who are already familiar with Amazon’s shopping services will be able to easily hop over to Amazon’s streaming service, and then enjoy a book via the Amazon branded Kindle e-reader. All these products and services are provided by a company you can trust from previous usage both in terms of accessibility, and capability. Amazon’s sheer scope of technology and media has allowed them to make groundbreaking products and services that has allowed them to grow and keep growing after many years.

However convenient it may be, the dark side of Amazon is lurking just around the corner. Being such a big all encompassing media company, they have stretched themselves horizontally over all different forms and services, therefore making themselves an authoritative power over media matters. If you think about Amazon in the context of UMass, it is troubling to consider the influence they may have over our education.

By becoming a provider of text books and other services to students, Amazon becomes responsible for the knowledge base that can be accessed, therefore placing them in a very powerful state. They hurt the small book store businesses that get their profits from students while limiting the books to what is available with them, sometimes forcing teachers to publish books on Amazon with awful pay rates. It is without a doubt that Amazon’s involvement with UMass is convenient but does draw some harm to the system. UMass is such a large conglomerate of media that their power and influence must be kept in check, just like with any business. We want to keep it so that Amazon does not dictate how we are to live our lives, but merely assist us in doing so.

Vines – The Forefront of Comedic Narrative Exploration

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Vines are 6 second long videos that do to YouTube’s formula what Twitter did to Facebook’s: repackage it smaller and allow for a vastly increased amount of accessibility for creation. Like Twitter’s 140 character limit, the 6 second time limit creates a restriction that promotes a community that uses their time as efficiently and smartly as possible. Instead of truly being a limiting force, this 6 second limit encourages Vine’s millions of users to do unique and intelligent things with the brief span of time that they do have, especially if one is trying to produce original content.

This limiting force is not a perfect blessing for creativity, though. There is a sizable community on Vine of users who create and recycle a distinct style of memes, en masse, with effort only in transforming the meme just enough that is received as a unique iteration. I am not saying these memes videos are undesirable or detestable by any means, but rather that the air of creativity that the limiting factor has on those making original content for Vine has an equally sizable side effect for those users who are not trying to produce original content – the format, and the fact that Vines can be shot and edited from a phone mean that it is unbelievably simple to hop on the meme-train on Vine, especially considering the memes on Vine consist mostly of soundbites or their video equivalent, timing in at one half to 3 seconds. This means that the remainder of time is even more severely limited, and can really only be used to set up a joke, with whatever meme is to be used as the punchline. This diminishes the total creativity in the system by simplifying the process by which a Vine can achieve popularity.

Vine represents, to me, the trend for digital items to be made as digestible as possible. In some ways, Vines are even more package-able than animated gifs – a gif can be more than 6 seconds, for instance – and the fact that sound is included asks the question of the creators: how much content can you shove into this tiny box? Depending on the creator, the answer ranges, but it isn’t hard to find impressive displays of organization and comedic timing if you look enough.

Twitch Refelction

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I honestly had no clue what Twitch was before this class and just my luck we ended up being the group that got to present on it. So now I feel as if I took a complete 180 and went from not knowing anything about Twitch to becoming very knowledgeable about it. I think that Twitch is a great platform for people to use and to watch. I started watching some streams to try to understand it better. Although I do not see myself continuing to watch Twitch streams after this semester I do get it now and can understand why this became so popular. I really never understood why people would want to watch others play video games and quickly realized how hypocritical that was because I always used to watch my friend play video games and it was a pretty good time. So I get why people would watch streams online. It also seems like the same thing with watching sports. Why would you want to watch someone play a sport when you could actually just go out and play it yourself? This holds true to video games as well. You are not really watching Twitch just for the games. You are watching it for several other reasons. You may be watching someone play an extremely difficult game like League of Legends who is very good at the game. Or one may just be watching someone who has a good personality. They may just like a certain streamers commentary regardless of how good they actually are at the game.
But even though I now understand Twitch and the popularity in has received there are some real problems with some aspects of it and the gaming industry in general. The gaming industry does not represent people of color or people other genders then male. This holds true to Twitch too. Most of the top streamers are white males. For women to get noticed in Twitch it almost seems like the have to treat it as a webcam website. Some women use their looks to get more viewers on their channel, which causes some debate on whether or not this is a good thing. Should women have to use their looks to gain views? It is a really difficult question to consider and there seems to be no real answer to it. It really depends on who you ask. Like everything Twitch will develop over time and hopefully some time soon we will see more people of color and other genders represented on Twitch and have their channels reach the higher popularity levels

Cough, lost voice, mucus build-up waking up

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Okay Google, what is with this cough that I’ve had since a week and a half ago? I have lost my voice for two days. Help me.

Do I want to know the answer? Yes. Would I think it’s accurate? I don’t know.

It is nice of Google to see if I have a disease just from symptoms, especially if it is life-threatening. However, I don’t think I can trust it. Not just the information, but also, with privacy.

The article on whether Google should tell you if you have cancer describes something that is, or can be something that can be implemented in our phones and computer systems. They can tell us what is wrong with us, by noticing finger tap speeds, for example.

But the problem lies where, what if I just happened to tap my fingers slower on my iPhone, and Siri tells me I have some sort of disease that results in a cognitive decline even though I’m just simply tired? It would make me unnecessarily worried and I I might make an unnecessary trip to the doctor’s office to waste time and money and risk catching someone’s cold. I’m afraid that accuracy here will impact my trust with these systems.

And also privacy. We all know now that Google tracks our searches and sells that info to advertisers. I wouldn’t want to trust them with my medical conditions that can be linked to me, and spread to people I don’t know just wanting to rely on me to make money.

On one hand, technology telling us we have something wrong with out bodies is useful. On the other hand, is it safe? Is it accurate? We wouldn’t know until it has been put to practical use.

The Platforms We Stand On

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In The Age of Platforms, the author begins by talking about what it means to go “off the grid.” 30 years ago, if people had heard about how much effort it would take to become as disconnected we were in 1986, I think they would have been shocked. Even just in the last 10 years, the interconnected nature of our lives has evolved exponentially with the advent of social networks, smartphones, and widespread wireless broadband internet. Especially in the lives of students and those involved in careers focused on technology, we are required by our social circles, jobs, and education to be on the internet, alive and active.

It amazes me how quickly this became the norm, how quickly it jumped from a world in which I went outside to play with other kids on the block to one in which increasingly younger children spend a majority of their time on a screen. Today, the average American holds in their hand Facebook, Twitter, a web browser, all the music they could imagine, and the ability to share their thoughts and feelings with anyone they desire (and many that they do not intend to). The Age of Platforms attributes the success of these platforms to their interconnectedness. Facebook is not just a way to keep in touch with friends. It is now a source of news for many. It is now a way to find recipes. It is now a simple web browser. It is now a game center. It is now a nervous tick for most people I know. Bored? Slip your phone out of your pocket and scroll indefinitely.

The same of Facebook could be said of many of the major tech companies today. Google holds nearly all services of the modern age. Email, education, Youtube, browsers, and all your personal information are now the domain of Google. This ubiquity of an entity is truly unheard of before today. Never before has something offered such a litany of services to nearly anyone.

Why are these platforms so widely accepted and used? Why are they not questioned or considered before their use? Likely because of the new type of business plan introduced by these platforms. These services are all free. People do not pay for Facebook or Gmail or Youtube (in most cases). Instead, these companies reap their massive revenue from advertisements linked integrally into their platforms. Facebook, between things you may or may not care about, includes a “sponsored post” or a “suggested post,” a fancy word for ads tailored specifically to you. These platforms use this information that people voluntarily, willingly, and sometimes unknowingly give away to create an experience made custom by advanced algorithms specifically for the customer. This strategy is not unique to only a few services. Free to Play games, sponsored content on websites, and suggested products litter out online experience these days, and it is working extremely well. This is likely not to leave us anytime soon.

Although Google and Facebook may not live forever, their business plan likely will. In an upward trend with no sign of slowing down, information is the newest commodity, and is given away by most without a second thought. If this happened in 10 or 20 years, what will the world look like 10 or 20 years from now? 30? 40? 100? It is frightening to consider how the world might change within our lifetime.