Social Networking (lecture 2008)

Michael Dieter gave a guest lecture in Networked Media this week on Social Networking. He was quick to point out how the concept of “networked individualism …hyper-individualism” seems to become the precedent - a centric, narcissitic approach that contradicts the community potential of social software. His image of a friends wheel off Facebook was a good visual example of this concept. The MySpace celebrity sites Tila Tequila and Jeremy Jackson also provided prime examples. It was intriguing to hear that MySpace paid Tila to come across from Friendster and bring here 40,000 odd network. Overall, a concept that filtered through from Manuel Castells trilogy of books on ‘Network Societies’.

Also, he debunked the idea that websites like Facebook and MySpace actually provide young people with a free space to engage with peers without an authoritative figure in the background. Instead these spaces become places that he described as being governed by “corporate surveillance”, where a key economic objective is the monitoring of users personal information and purchasing habits for marketing purposes. This is the selling and distribution of this information to third party operatives. Facebook Beacon is an example that uses specific documentation in UGC content as a means to promote ‘Behavioural Forward Advertising’- Behavioral targeting (wikipedia). A confronting interview by 60 minutes with the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on this development. The distribution of private content in this context to friends networks is used for economic gain.

He also touched on the historical development of Social Network Sites based on the article danah boyd and Nicole Ellison, ‘Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship’, http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html.

Aesthetics in terms of design where also covered with the ironic note of PCWorld voting MySpace as the worst design on the Internet in 2006. MySpace in comparison to the early Friendster website opened up the HTML and CSS for users to customise which caused a proliferation of competing and fashionable design responses amongst users. A notion he demonstrated in the MySpace celebrity examples above.

A current key figure in terms of research on the social networking field is Danah Boyd who is in the process of completing her PhD at Berkeley. Boyd also acts as a commercial consultant to Yahoo in this area.

Fred Scharman a MA post-graduate produced a critique on Boyd’s perspective in the essay, You Must be Logged in to Do That!: MySpace and Control.

Dieter finished the presentation with a reference to the Greg Elmer book Profiling Machines: Mapping the Personal Information Economy which critically examines for example, the mythical notion that contributing UCG is a voluntary process that is not constantly being monitored.

Upload -Portfolio 2#

1. What do I need to upload an .html file to the RAWS server?

You will need a FTP (FIle Transfer Protocol) application in order to access your RAWS server space from your desktop. In the labs we use the freeware software Fugu and Cyberduck. You can use either.

Here is the instructions for CYBERDUCK (FUGU is similar):
a. open up cyberduck
aa. hit new connection
b. set the top drop down to sftp
c. change the port to 22 (the RAWS sever as a university server uses Secure File Transfer Protocol)
d. enter the server address: raws.adc.rmit.edu.au
e. enter username
f. NOVELL password
g. hit connect

2. When you access the RAWS server you will be using the public_html folder an placing your portfolio folder inside that folder. The word ‘public’ in this instance refers to ONLINE public access to the Internet.

Note: NOT do not PUT any website files inside the ‘blog2′ folder. Your blog is completely separate from the websites that you make.

3. Where will I find this home page when it is uploaded?
All networked media students are on the RAWS server :
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/
Each student has their own space on the server:
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~student_id/
The home page will be inside the ‘portfolio’ folder:
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~student_id/portfolio/
The html file and page is called index.html:
http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~student_id/portfolio/index.html

Note: This is the URL address you hand in for the portfolio assignment (cut n pasted) into an email that you submit to your lecturer.

(read the portfolio assignment NMPortfolio.pdf for full details) - NM documents

http://raws.adc.rmit.edu.au/~e62420/index.html (this is what mine looks like)

Preparation - Portfolio 1#

1. On the desktop make a folder (Shift-Apple-N) call it portfolio (make the name lower case no spaces as it will be included in your address for your website) - - this is the folder for all your website pages and jpeg images.

1a. If you are going to have images in your site make a folder called images inside the portfolio folder. (Shift-Apple-N) Please note in this first exercise we are mainly looking at your work with text so images are not necessarily required)

2. Make a home page - Open text wrangler create a page with opening closing html tags and a head and body.

3. Name the page portfolio on the head (this is what you will see in the top of the browser above the URL address). Make sure all the .html pages you name as web pages use lower case as these names will be included in your web address for your website. Also, there should be NO spaces in the name use page1.html or essay_introduction.html etc

Note: This web page is still offline on the desktop as can be seen in the URL address at the top of the browser.

file:///Users/e62420/Desktop/portfolio/index.html

4. Save this file as index.html (It needs to be a .html to work as a webpage). Test this (index.html) web page offline on the desktop by dragging and dropping it into a Firefox borwser window. Or click on the file and hold down the (Control) key and ‘open with’ Firefox from the list of applications.

Upload - Portfolio 2#

ABC and User Generated Content (UGC)

As media professionals it is important to get a real strong sense of the client’s brief - in this case the ABC. First up, the ‘My Street’ brief is influenced by the final outcome which is the Radio National program “Street Stories’

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/streetstories/

This is what the competition is being directed at which is about radio as the final outcome for this VERY SPECIFIC ongoing program - My Street competition detials

“A selection of My Street competition entries suitable for radio adaptation will also be broadcast and podcast on ABC Radio National’s Street Stories.”

Therefore, I would be thinking strongly about your audio track being the final outcome and this could be your starting point for the project. A solid narrative that works as an audio track. Listen to some of the street stories examples to get an idea of what is produced for this program and use this as a CONSTRAINT. Remembering at the same time that your visual translation is also for a mobile which does not rely heavily on audio.

The other really important thing to keep in mind is that the POOL is all about creating a connection between traditional broadcast media and User-Generated Content

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-generated_content

This area of media is really good to be getting experience in because many media organistations are now experimenting with this area of media production. One of the key issues is how they develop ways to gatekeep the content that ends up being used and broadcast alongside traditional media production. Check out my notes on ABC Multiplatform. You will notice the mantra of establishing subject orientated ‘communities’ forms a big part of this nexus between traditional media and UCG content. The Poolmunity Guidelines are a literal example.

In the POOL brief there is numerous links to terms and conditions and legal requirements in relation to the POOL content - because a public organisation like the ABC has to be very careful about what they endorse and support as content. This means you need to think CAREFULLY about the content you produce in terms of fitting within these guidelines to be accepted as part of the editorial process. For example ABC-SBS practitioners learn how to work very carefully within these parameters. A GREAT skill to start developing now!

The other thing to remember is that privacy for example works very differently in an audio/radio work compared to a visual work using video for example. Radio allows intimate access in comparsion and it is interesting to listen to how ABC radio people still carefully negotiate ethics and privacy. In most cases your work will be animated SL versions of possible real-life situations. These may be completely fictional or non-fictional. The important thing to remember is that the final work is public either way and therefore moves beyond the insulated sphere of being held within the university as a non-public assignment. Engaging with public distribution on the Internet sets up a precursor to 3rd year studio projects that may also have real-world outcomes.

POOL terms and conditions - http://www.pool.org.au/conditions
POOL COMMUNITY guidelines
Read our competition terms and conditions (pdf) -download from this page - http://www.abc.net.au/rn/streetstories/features/mystreet/competition.htm

ABC General Terms of Use - http://www.abc.net.au/conditions.htm
ABC Privacy Policy - http://www.abc.net.au/privacy.htm
ABC Editorial policies - http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/edpols.htm

Teaching award - media rmit

Our department received a teaching award from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) The Carrick Institute.

http://www.altc.edu.au/carrick/go

For the collaborative delivery of a program that enhances student knowledge through integrating process-based learning with
practice and fostering links between pedagogy and industry.

Prim video tutorials

Video tutorial links from the Course notes:
Sculpted Primitives and Sculpty Paint - Part 1:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bHmXzAq0WWA

Sculpted prims made simple:http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=EEAM1GCzk74
Sculpted Primitives and Sculpty Paint - Part 2:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=5-MhsrSvh9E
Building direct in SL - Second Life Construction Tutorial:
Build fast in Second Life with Free Stuff:
Collaborating in Second Life - group building skills:
Find Friends & Groups faster:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bHmXzAq0WWA
Let friends & groups edit your objects:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=UgJPUQQbQSg

SL building

‘Assets’ from wikipedia:

Every item in the Second Life universe is referred to as an asset. This includes the shapes of the 3D objects known as primitives, the digital images referred to as textures that decorate primitives, digitized audio clips, avatar shape and appearance, avatar skin textures, LSL scripts, information written on notecards, and so on. Each asset is referenced with a universally unique identifier or UUID.[104]

Sculpted prim (wikipedia)

A Sculpted Prim (or Sculptie) is a Second Life 3D primitive object whose shape is determined by a texture. These textures are called Sculpt Textures or Sculpt Maps. Sculpted prims can be used to create more complex, organic shapes that are not possible with Second Life’s prim system.

Sculpted Prims: Technical Explanation (Second Life wiki)

Sculpted prims are three dimensional meshes created from textures. Each texture is a mapping of vertex positions, where at full resolution each pixel would be one vertex, this can be less due to sampling (read below how the Second Life viewer treats your data). Each row of pixels (vertices) links back to itself, and for every block of four pixels two triangles are formed. At the top and bottom the vertices link to their respective pole.

ABC Pool

Im2 students are diecting part of their projects this semester to the ABC Pool project.

About:

Pool is a place to share your creative content with friends and the world — music, photos, videos, documentaries, interviews, animations, and more.

Imagine, a creative explosion, an open source broadcast / cinema / gallery / magazine. A place where audiences become makers. Your work on ABC TV, Radio and Online.

IM2 (semester schedule)

week 1

week 2

Establish groups

Work out set design in relation to Assignment 2; Machinma for mobile phones

week 3

Learn to build sets

week 4

Building sets

week 5

First blog conference (groups of 3)

1. One entry proposing criteria for how your blog should be assessed, to be presented during the first blog conference. The criteria will be arrived at by analysing what you think makes a blog entry good, with reference to another blog entry (not written by you). Approximately six criteria would be appropriate;

Building sets

week 6

Assignment 1 due (in lab); Second Life set design

week 7

Book gear for shooting in week 8 and 9

week 8

Final script details
Shoot and capture happens this week

week 9

Latest week for shoot and capture

week 10

Second blog conference (groups of 3)

The second blog conference will require you to present one of the entries (2)-(7), and you will need to be able to reflect on how you are progressing against your own criteria.

week 11

week 12

ASSIGNMENT 3: reflective blog

Email permalinks of responses to all the 7 criteria.

week 13-14

Monday November 3

ASSIGNMENT 2: Machinima for mobile phones

IM2 first lab

Create a second life account - http://secondlife.com/
Download second life to their desktops.

Take a look at the video clip Introduction to Second Life.
Blog a response to the You Only Live Twice video viewed in lecture one.

Work through the tutorial tasks (Grab a copy of the SL for Dummies)
Configure your Avatar
Find an interesting location in SL. You will be asked to speak about this location for a couple of minutes either in week 2 or 3 tute.
Fill in the Avatar list with your SL name.

Check through the assessment criteria.

Make a note of the reference ‘Top Ten Tips for making Mobile Movies’.

Bookmark Jenny’s blog and my teaching blog.

There are a lot of links in the blackboard to tutorial online video resources.