A Sunny Start

Reflection:
When I was told I was going to make an Interactive Digital Media (IDM) site for Media, Culture, and Society class, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. My brother once mentioned how he thought a website compiling human-interest stories would do well on the internet. Now, given the opportunity, I felt this would be the perfect project to pursue.

The purpose of the site is to show readers that good news stories DO exist, which is sometimes hard to believe when exploring newspapers. As my IDM Project grew and developed, I was able to experience first-hand the lifecycle of a newly created blog. After landing on a background template, adding some stories, and editing the layout – I was stuck. That was the easy part; now it was time to bring visitors to the site. While the experience was more difficult than I had imagined, it helped me learn about the ins and outs of content distribution. I specifically learned about the influence social capital has on a website’s success.

With so many bloggers on the web, I had to figure out how I could get my blog to stand out in the crowd. My intended audience was very broad: I wanted it to be accessible for children and adults of all ages. To reach everyone, I started sharing with my classmates and tried to expand from there. However, as time progressed, I realized just how difficult it was to entice college students to visit a news blog (except my sociology classmates). I finally decided to expand my resources in order to reach out to more people.

At the start of the project, I had never written a blog, I did not have a Twitter account, and did not even know what Stumble Upon was. In other words, my social capital was low. “Social capital broadly refers to the resources accumulated through the relationships among people” (Coleman, 1988). Since I only had a Facebook at the start of this project, I really had no connection to the general public beyond UVa. I also knew that while my site would be appropriate for all ages, it would be better received by an older, non-collegiate audience. Thus, to help my blog succeed, I had to expand my social capital and reach out to more potential visitors. Additionally, I had to increase the number of tools I used to do so. This would help increase my chances of the blog being spread even further.

When I only spoke to classmates about the site, the visitor count was extremely low. With the addition of a Twitter account, the number of visits began to increase. By adding this particular tool, I increased the number of internet users I could access. Many of these people I did not know at first; however, I was able to increase my friend count and thus the number of blog visitors by adding users who were interested in good news, “hash-tagging” my posts, and tweeting about popular topics. I then furthered my social capital by adding a Stumble Upon account so those interested in current events might come across my site while exploring the web. Additionally, I reached out to those beyond my social circle. I asked friends to share my website with people they knew and asked my mother to forward it to her work. I used the social capital of others as well as some social outlets to increase visitation; this worked with flying colors. I immediately saw an increase in the visitor count. While it was one thing discussing the importance of social capital for a website in class, it was amazing to see (with statistics) the affect it truly had on my blog’s success.

Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) define social capital as "the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition" (p. 14). As the sum of my digital resources increased from Facebook to Twitter, then on to Stumble Upon and friend’s acquaintances, I saw my blog’s success increase. I believe from watching this progression that the only way to really stand out on the internet is to actively pursue an increase in social capital. I had no problem doing this; my classmates suggested ideas or other tools to help my site gain traffic. However, I realize that many people may not have the means to do the same. In order to cross the visibility divide, one must gain social capital. One cannot gain social capital if he/she is on the other side of the digital divide. Even if one has the means to access the internet, it is difficult to utilize the various tools to gain social capital unless you possess contacts who are aware of those tools.

Ultimately, I was happy with the success of my blog. I will continue to update it and explore sites that may help advertise it. Below are links to both my blog and my Twitter, as well as screen shots of the two and my Google Analytics report.

Links:
My Blog
My Twitter

Screen Shots:
My Blog:








My Twitter:

Ji Yon Han's "Phat Green Pig"

For my Interactive Digital Media Project, I had the opportunity to work with one of the most widely used forms of Web 2.0, a personal blog titled “Phat Green Pig.” The purpose of this blog is to give tips and ideas for people that do not or cannot spend afford to spend too much green but at the same time do not want to sacrifice their “phat-ness.” What set Web 2.0 apart from Web 1.0 are its two distinct characteristics of interactivity and openness. Whether one is a consumer or a producer, one has to face the issues dealing with interactive and open nature of Web 2.0 at one time or another.

As I was creating the content in ways such as creating the blog and developing the ideas that would contribute to the blog, the issues of privacy dawned on me. I’m rather a private person and the fact that my written words would be read by random strangers that accidently “stumbled upon” my blog was a bit intimidating. I did not want the blog to be too personal where it would infringe on my privacy but not too impersonal as well that my audience would not be comfortable enough to participate in this collaborative media. After wrestling with the idea of openness of being in the public forum yet desiring for a bit of personality from my private sphere, I decided to create an advice blog where I would have the chance to give my personal input but did not feel as if my privacy was being invaded.

After the topic of the blog was decided, my target audience had to be determined. Because I sought after a personal element to the blog, I decided that I would gather viewers/consumers from my pre-existing social networks. When the blog was first launched, I only incurred 3 visitors, consisting of my two roommates and me. By using the word of mouth, there participation level was not high. On the following day, I introduced the blog to the “social world” by linking the blog to my status update or adding it to my profile on both gchat and AIM. There was a great increase of viewership that day with 67 new visitors to the site. It was very interesting to see the participatory divide based on the methods I used to advertise the blog.

One interesting finding that I found by observing that statistics through Google Analytics was that I incurred many visitors on the first few days of the blog's inception to cyber space but as I had help from other friends to advertise the blog the number of visitors decreased. The decrease in number would be supported by the overlapping of social circles and the fact that the content of the blog did not change. Most recently, I had asked four friends with expansive networks where I do not have as many mutual friends to advertise it on their Facebook but it did not incur as much visitors as I had first incurred on the first day I had launched it.

Another thing I had not noticed earlier was how involved people are into other people’s lives, even if they do not share close off-line social ties, through social networking sites such as Facebook. Social networking sites create a sense of community. Community is not just a structure that embodies us people as a society but community is what we as human beings create by interacting. If we decide to get involved in our social circles, then we need to make an effort to be more involved through our social networking. By interacting with others, we personally feel as though we belong to something.

Blogging with VWC Alumnae

I created a blog to help organize the Virginia Women’s Chorus’s 35^th Anniversary Concert, which is coming up in the spring of 2010. My goal was to create a site where alumnae could stay connected with the chorus and with each other, and where they could find information about the concert and get involved easily. Essentially, I wanted to build a forum where my audience would feel included, well informed, and valued as members of the VWC network. I realized that the Internet allows for me to convey this kind of message in ways that other forms of media would not, and that different mediums inherently portray a certain message that shapes how they are used.

As my project progressed, I was always thinking of ways that I could make sure that the message I was trying to send to viewers was accurately reflected in the blog. For past anniversary concerts, the chorus had contacted alumnae through more traditional means like mail and telephone, and not via digital media. While this previously worked fairly well, it was both time-consuming during the creation and distribution process, but also required much more manual upkeep in terms of sustaining a correspondence between alumnae and the chorus (i.e., making regular phone calls, answering letters, etc.). I was also aware that as the use of social networking sites by some of the group’s older alumnae has increased, more of them have expressed interest in VWC becoming more accessible online. So, I did not only choose to take on a blog for VWC as my project because it was beneficial to the chorus, but because it appeared alumnae thought it would benefit them, as well. In simply choosing to put this content online, and not in another form of media, the audience assumes a certain streamlined quality of information, content that is easily navigable, and an ease of communication with the creator and with other viewers. These automatic assumptions would hold true for any viewers of a certain website or blog, not just my own. This shift in demand for the digitization of information and communication shows how different forms of media carry with them certain assumptions and values, and that as peoples’ lives are growing busier and increasingly ‘digitized’, the more they value having all of their resources in one place—which, apparently, is online.

Despite the extra effort required for older mediums, though, today those mediums are associated with a sense of personalization that the Internet is not. I struggled to find the ideal balance between what type of message I wanted to send to these women—that of efficiency and consolidation, or that of intimacy and maintaining a personal bond, both of which people value. Throughout my phases of distribution and promotion, I tried different techniques involving both old and new forms of media, and found that for my particular audience, the combination of digital and more traditional media channels reaped the best results in drawing attention to my blog. I realized that while each form of media conveys a certain message, the way in which the medium is promoted sends its own message, too, and has an impact on how successful that promoting tactic is. For instance, I first used the medium of standard mail to promote my blog, sending out “Save-the-Date” postcards for the concert, with the URL for my site on them and a blurb about using the site to find out more. I also promoted my blog by linking it to VWC’s Facebook pages and website, and was convinced this combination would be successful.

I found, however, that while the medium shapes the message, and I had covered this from several angles hoping to draw alumnae looking with different values in terms of receiving information, the message is also dependent on the social context and intended audience. Content on the Internet is capable of reaching an incredibly large audience on a global scale, but it can also be used for smaller groups, both those who are only acquainted virtually, and those who have a social bond outside of the digital sphere. In my particular case, my intended audience was a group of women whom were fairly interconnected, and all had the common thread of having been members of VWC. In a scenario where the intended audience was much wider, digital promotion would send the message of universality, drawing a larger scope in to the site. Here, though, I discovered that my blog needed to send a hybrid message of efficiency and interconnectedness through its content format, but a message of social intimacy and personalization in its promotion, in order to gain more attention. Since I came to this realization, I have combined these messages and have received a more positive response. By personalizing digital media—for example, having alumnae with many connections sending personalized emails to their former co-members with links to my blog—I have been able to reshape the message the medium of the Internet sends. It seems that the medium shapes the message, but then, the larger social context and the creator’s knowledge of how their audience perceives that medium shape it, too.

Considering the Audience while Vlogging

After spending many hours logging time watching YouTube videos I decided to finally take the leap into YouTube stardom. It was relatively simple to create my vlog, derived from the combination of the words “video” and “blog”, and soon enough I had narrowed it down to have a format I was happy about. Throughout the process I learned a lot about the differences from being a media consumer to a media producer.




When comparing my project to other class projects, I noticed a large participation divide. While many define the participation divide as one where there is a large difference between those that consume versus those that produce. For me, I saw it in the type of projects students chose to tackle. Many of them chose to write blogs, while I went the more untraditional route with a vlog. I believe this is because different platforms take different skills and types of knowledge to operate. For them trying to put together a video might be intimidating, while I would rather spend an hour or two editing footage over trying to type something interesting. While Web 2.0 has made it exponentially easier for people to participate in online culture without having the technological knowledge, since some know-how is still necessary individuals might still be hesitant to join the conversation.

By jumping into a very popular platform, I had to contend with the attention economy. Rather than fighting for money, users on YouTube are competing for users’ valuable attention. Because of this, I had to determine whether I wanted to target niche audiences or a mass audience. Niche audiences have specific characteristics that might not be present in a mass audience. For example, out of the general population I would consider serious YouTube viewers (individuals who watch a variety of videos on a daily basis) a niche market. This niche can be broken down even further, by what types of content users like to watch, specific users they watch, and communities that form within the larger YouTube community. While targeting a mass audience might give a user a lot of attention value, it is much more difficult to cultivate a mass audience. It is easier, and more economical in terms of time and value, to target a niche market. Not only will a creator be able to tailor their content to interests of their audience, they will be able to show specific areas that they, as an individual, have interests in. With my vlog, my target audience would be college students who are also interested in surfing the web and looking for interesting sites that could connect to items learned in class or larger world issues.

The hardest aspect of my project was getting people to actually visit and interact with my content. This shows the relevance of social capital to content distribution. We gain social capital through our connections in social networks; the more connections we have, the more social capital we have accumulated. Manuel Castells describes how the internet has allowed these social networks to abound and create stronger connections. In projects such as this, where we are trying to get our information out to a mass audience, we have to work to become more than just nodes in the network but rather connectors, bringing to people together over our content. While this might seem counter-intuitive to niche audiences, it actually works to help gain an audience. While the internet allows us to produce and find anything we want, people are more likely to visit a site if it is recommended by a friend. We must first reach out to our social networks, who might recommend it to their social networks emphasizing it to those who have the same interests. The more social capital we have, the more likely we are to gather an audience.



The transition from YouTube viewer to YouTube content provider has changed the way I look at the platform. Not only do users have to consider the content they are producing, but also the audience they will be attracting out of the larger group of YouTube users, and internet users.

Mahogany is the Message

I designed the new Mahogany Dance Troupe website. When approaching this new design, I had to keep several ideas in mind. They needed a clean, fresh site that had fun and interesting content to keep users interested. They needed functionality—a site that allowed their members to use it for interactively organizing the group’s events, practices, and social events. So, when developing the Mahogany site, I realized that this medium contextually shapes the perception and use of the content within.

When Mcluhan first suggested The Medium is the Message, he discussed it in terms of what is now considered to be “old media.” In this old media framework, content was extraordinarily proprietary—content that was created by the producer, then unidirectionally received by the audience. This left little room for interactivity or direct exchange between the producer and audience. So Mcluhan’s original conception behind The Medium is the Message might break down to describe the difference in meaning between content that is mediated by newspaper, radio, and TV.

However, with the advent and growing popularity of the Internet in the 90s, a new Medium was born. This new medium allowed for much more flexible, digital content that proprietors could update almost instantly. However, in terms of the relationship between producer/audience, the new medium of so-called web 1.0 did little to break down the barrier hindering interactivity.

In the 2000s, web 2.0 began to take hold. This allowed for a more social space online, instead of the old proprietary relationship between media producer and consumer. This finally allowed for the exchange between producer and consumer in the context of the Internet.

I wanted to include as many easily (code knowledge free) updatable elements in the Mahogany site as possible, so as to encourage this interaction between the producers (Mahogany executive board) and the audience. In terms of the web 2.0 medium, it shapes the message of the site by the mere addition of interactivity.

It makes the content approachable. This mostly web 2.0 enabled site looks and feels much different than if it were designed in the web 1.0 framework. The message of Mahogany is thusly shaped through the medium by which it’s delivered.

For example, the blog adds a level of interactivity that web 1.0 was without. Through the Mahogany blog, executive members can ask for feedback, post relevant (or totally irrelevant) videos/links; and members or the audience can respond to the post, or post more links in response. This notion of the content being accessible by all shapes how the content is both delivered and received.

Additionally, web 2.0 encourages networked interactions between different sites. By linking, tagging, and suggesting—a site can gain popularity from the mere popularity of the sites which link it.

For example, looking at Mahogany’s analytics report, we can observe that many of my referrals came from social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. This rather new online social context is less about keeping people on your site, and more about taking your user to interesting places that compliment your site in order to bring them back in the future.

The web 2.0 medium has completely altered the way content is shaped, delivered, and received. In this manner, Mcluhan’s famous (and somewhat cliché) phrase The Medium is the Message might assist in describing the shift from web 1.0 to web 2.0.

Baby, Let's Cruise!

Intro: The IDM Project for Carey Sargent’s course on Media, Culture and Society, was a great learning experience that allowed students to put their knowledge of new media and content creation to the test. This process of creating content can help one learn about the internet as a public forum. Being that new media and technology progression is an advancement that has just recently shot off in the last few years, it is easy to compare older ways distributing information and public forums with more current ways. I used a blog as a public forum to organize and distribute information to a particular audience that consisted of 95 people.

About The Project: In August of 2010, a group of 95 people are going on a Carnival cruise together to the Western Caribbean. We all may not know each other on a one-on-one basis, but we are all connected in some type of way. It started off as just my family of five (parents, me, 2 sisters) and from there each of us invited extended family, church members, friends, etc and asked them to spread the word and invite others as well. Now the tricky part was keeping everyone on the same page. How were we going to introduce ourselves and our idea of traveling together? Get everyone registered and payments made to the travel agent? Provide a place to answer questions? Suggest ideas for fun and entertainment? Traditional ways of communicating to a mass audience often times relied on telephone calls, mail, and word of mouth. Although email was helpful, it is not always the most efficient way to get information out to a large body of people- in terms of keeping everything organized, easy to update and to have readily available information.

The Internet as a Public Forum: By condensing the entire cruise information into a blog- barrier, after barrier was knocked down when compared to the disadvantages of more traditional ways of communication. The blog provided such a rich social and cultural experience to the audience that after it was made, it made no sense to turn back. We introduced our travelers to the blog through email. We highlighted it in an electronic newsletter and discussed it as an alternative way to stay linked to the cruise updates and news. Firstly, the blog was valuable in that provided information to a large amount of people. We provided different types of information and it was organized, included pictures and had spaces available for people to comment and interact. The audience could develop a more concrete and clear understanding of what the information entailed of in a visual, presentable and condensed format. Secondly, the blog was valuable in that it distributed knowledge in a more efficient way. If one person posted a question, the question and answer was seen by everyone. Through email, content is often times buried in an inbox or even spam, but through this blog, it was readily available and had a concrete home in the cyber world that was easy to retrieve. Furthermore, it allowed people to access it in a time that was most convenient for them.

Check It Out! sweeney2.wordpress.com

Conclusion: In the end, this was a very valuable experience for both the creator and the audience. Sociologically, it provided a place for everyone to connect, communicate and obtain knowledge. As the creator I learned how to make a blog and I learned about new ways of communicating and distributing information to others. This project has taught me to think more creatively and sociologically conscious in terms of distributing information to others. I am so thankful for this experience and I look forward to creating more content, teaching others along the way and last, but not least, cruising the night away!

SAS Summer 2009 with Patty!

For my Interactive Digital media project, I decided to make a blog about my summer experience. I was on Semester At Sea, where I met amazing people and visited different countries around the Mediterranean. Using my passion of traveling to make my project blog seemed like the perfect way to re-live my summer and tell the world about my adventures. I called my blog “Sas Summer 2009.” My blog’s purpose was to let others know about the wonderful program I was on over the summer, and hopefully encourage many to go. I wanted my blog to be a place where future voyagers could ask questions and truly get a sneek peek into what life was like on the ship and past voyagers could reminisce about the good times they had. The problem was getting the word out there, and having past, current and future ‘SASers’ (another word for semester at sea students, or semesatsea-ers) to actually find out my blog existed and follow it. I came to find that ‘old’ ways of spreading information (word of mouth, or fliers) were not nearly as effective as the ‘new’ ways (using facebook, sending out mass messages, joining groups).



In order to let others know about my blog, I took the simplest and oldest way of spreading information, word of mouth. I talked to the Uva study abroad advisor, Stacey Hansen. Since I Have been abroad twice before, I know her pretty well, and I thought having her as a connection would be a great way to start spreading the word that I was beginning a blog about a program she was in charge of. She told me to leave fliers at the Study Abroad Office promoting my blog (which I did), and that she herself would keep one to remind students who came in to see her that it was available. She said she would also mention it at the pre-departure meeting they were having a couple of weeks later. After having told her, I felt that a person of authority was now aware of my blog’s existence, and that would make a big change in the number of viewers I received. Unfortunately, this was not the case. I realized that I had to take manners into my own hands and could not expect others to simply spread the word for me. Although a few people came in to visit my blog, it was still very few, and I realized I had to expand the range of people I was trying to reach. Being active at UVa would only get me to reach other UVa students that wanted to go abroad on semester at sea, but I needed something that could reach everyone around the globe. I myself already knew that out of 716 students on my summer voyage, only 33 were UVa students, very far from the majority.

The next step I took was to advertise my blog through my Facebook page, a very ‘new’ form of media. The fact that I was already friends with most of the people I met on semester at sea made it a lot easier for me to let them know I was making a blog. I sent all of my friends messages, in hope that they would become involved. I realized that already this was a way more effective way to get people to visit. The fact that I know all of my friends have access to the internet and they know they can just click on the link I send them to view it makes my chances of having them view my site triple, and also increases the chances of them spreading the word about it.



The wisest move I made when I tried to get others to view my blog was joining three semester at sea groups on facebook. These groups allow any facebook member to join, and it is solely a place to discuss anything related to semester at sea. I found an immense group of 1,076 students, all who have been or will be on semester at sea, another one of 7,567 fans, and a third one with 631 members. When I posted comments and updates about my blog, my google analytics demographics showed I got a lot more visits than ever in the past.



This in itself made me realize that how accessible you make your site to others highly affects if they go on or not. Simply giving friends your website won’t do nearly as much as already having the link available on a wall post. Although the difference of effort may be minimal, it makes lowers your chances of having people visit if people have to copy/paste or write out your website on a search engine, as opposed to having to click on a link that takes them straight to it. This also made me realize that the speed and ease with which you offer people access to your site can affect whether they visit your site at all or not.

Near the end of my project I made sure I updated twitter and facebook statuses to remind my friends of my project and hopefully lead them to either re-visit the site, or visit it for the first time, and I also made sure to re-post comments on the semester at sea groups I had joined on facebook. Once again, I saw results on my google analytics go up and came to the conclusion that new technologies that make information available the quickest are the most effective forms of advertisement. I also realized that the ‘old’ ways of advertising are dying down, and that things such as fliers do not compare to the amount of audiences you can reach through technology and new media.