#COMM2532# 2. Individual peer review blog post

 

1. #Treasure on Trip#

The group of #Treasure on Trip# focused on essential stuffs when people traveling. During this project, they did a relatively comprehensive research about picking different people as interviewees to collect answers, and their questions was quite representative.

Question:

“What”: What is your essential travel stuff?

“Why”: Why is it so important?

 

Advantages:

They chose a very interesting topic that may become a very practical life-hacks-style account on social media. Additionally, the content on their Instagram and Facebook accounts are very colourful and eye-catching, meanwhile, also very informative as well. When people browsing their page, viewers can enjoy two things at once: some sweet travel stories from strangers, and also learns packaging hacks from them.

 

Disadvantage:

Speaking of flaws in their program, I noticed that they barely have videos to illustrate their concept. Video is increasingly significant in nowadays media industry, viewers may don’t have patience and time to read words about one idea or an actual product. In that, video is the best way to introduce one particular value, and shorten the distance between sellers and buyers. The group of Treasure on Trip mainly provided many photos and background stories on their social media page, however, there was no interviewees appealed in the photo. It will lead viewers to doubt the authenticity of their information and also question their expertness.

 

Suggestion:

I totally understand the difficulty of filming an interview. In the meanwhile, what they need to do to become more competitive is to produce more video contents. And it also can prove the authenticity of their cute stories.

I will suggest them just use phone to record their interview. I believe that any kind of videos all can really delight their posts and promote their program achieve a wider influence.

 

2. #Sex talks RMIT2018#

This is one of the most impressive projects in this semester. Topic picking is vital. Picking a sensitive topic normally will stimulate viewers’ interest to explore the content effectively. In the meanwhile, viewers are also become stricter with the sensitive topic. The higher expectation, the higher disappointment.

Personally, I think Sex talks RMIT2018 did a great job.

Sex is not a “thing” that we still keep avoiding to talk and discuss publicly in the contemporary era. People should become more confident to talk about sex. Besides that, woman should become more independent.

This is what I learned from them.

Advantage:

They filmed many fantastic interviews and also posted some female protests in the world on their social media to support their concept, which were very persuasive and powerful.

Firstly, in videos, they encouraged interviewees feel free to talk about sex. Questions in interviews are targeted and straightforward. The vibe during interviews were serious and also in a funny way.

Additionally, the protests and slogans they chose on their posts are very powerful.

Gender equality and healthy sex discussion are unitive existed among their posts. As a viewer, it is a pleasant and also educational experience of viewing their social media posts.

Disadvantage:

Their website looks fabulous to me. After I viewing their posts on social media, I tend to find some professional sex suggestions from an academic professional. However, I didn’t find that part of content in their videos.

Suggestion:

If I have to say anything about their future improvement, it will be better to have someone professional in their videos and provide some knowledges about sex disease prevention, such as STD, HIV, and some practical reproduction health tips in normal life.

#COMM2532# 1. Practice-led research blog post

Besides editing our final digital story video, I also took the charge of analysing the target audience in the early period.

Editing is fine, after filming plan is made and interviewees are decided, I became the host of our interview. In that, editing is not hard due to my fully engagement.

However, dealing with the segment of analysing target audience in the project is completely new to me, and it does widen my perspective of contemporary business running model.

The power of mass media that did to contemporary business marketing is glaringly. There are more than 75% of modern companies tend to leverage on the power of social media to extend their business landscape. (1.) Undoubtedly, traditional commercial marketing relied on sending promotion products or Emails to inform their potential customers in the market, whereas the modern business can collect users’ data, and fashionable social trend easily just via social-media.

We focused on young people in Melbourne city as our target audience at the very initial phase. With the development of our online and offline activities, we found that narrowing down our range of target audience can achieve a better social effect. The more specific, the more effective it is. This is what I learned from this task. We adjusted our attention, from all young generation to students who study in RMIT city campus. From that, we obtained a much more smooth and productive media practice experience and social attention.

Just as mentioned in Top Tip: Using Your Target Audience to Inform Your Choice in Social Media, (Mollett 2017) there is impossible to create a “product” that can win the favour among all groups in the sociality. Therefore, clarify a detailed age or geographical groups as targeted audience may really help a media product gains more attention as it is released.

Additionally, in the present age, a clear straightforward audience positioning not only offers companies effective method to expand commercial influence, in addition, due to the factor of Web 2.0, the interaction between sellers and buyers also provides customers a channel to express how they feel, and what they need. (Mollett 2017.) In that, businesses can save tons of money of marketing research, and produce based on their royalty customers.

Although a narrow audience positioning can benefit the implementation of marketing strategy, what business runners have to conquer is the limitation of public influence. If we have a future opportunity of media practice, we should explore more specific contents which are targeted to one particular audience in the public, and also can relate to other social issues, which may cause a wider social influence. In that, our project will achieve a higher level.

 

Reference:

1. ‘Use of Semantic Co-relation in Target Audience Profiling’, 2013, 2013 Fourth Global Congress on Intelligent Systems, Intelligent Systems (GCIS), 2013 Fourth Global Congress on, Intelligent Systems (GCIS), 2010 Second WRI Global Congress on, p. 234.
2. Mollett, A. 2017, Top tip: using your target audience to inform your choice in social media, SAGE Publications Ltd, London, , [Accessed 30 May 2018], doi: 10.4135/9781526434944.

 

 

• Links to  Digital Story social media accounts:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/snacktime2018/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/snacktime2018/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Snacktime2018 

• Link to your digital story (website / YouTube Channel / any other platform you may have used)

Website: https://hannieyu98.wixsite.com/snacktime

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHe6mDwr8cQHY_4uLLahVqw/featured

• Link to social media campaign details PDF file:

Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/2/folders/16dq3EiRD_ZG91ct2062xUkEAuNP2OAwf

• Link to LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yan-zhao-84434415b/ 

 

Lecture 9 The Internet of Things

How does it work?

Is it necessary?

These two questions linger on my head after the week 9’s lecture.

The first question is easy to answer. Sensor and actuator give subjects life. Technology taking the responsibility of transmitting, internet is the medium, and the psychical subject is the entity which also is the only visible thing in this process.

However, the second question is pretty tricky.

The convenience level of human life always relevant to the development of technology. Do not want to read? We have audiobook. Do not want to wash dishes? We have dish-washing machine. Name anything you are not willing to do, there is always a solution with digital technology waiting for you. There is no technology in the current market can help you? Congratulation, you just found a potential patent can may worth a huge fortune.

I used to think there is only one field of technology that deserve people to delicate themselves to invent and create. The inventions for disability people. Nevertheless, I just feel the inventions in current society are gradually transforming normal people into disabled. We do not to walk to the switch and turn on the light, we do not stand for two hours to roast a chicken. We basically have to do nothing, because we don’t “have to”. Life always has an alternative, digital way to solve. Is this good? Or bad? I can’t say. I am also a beneficiary in this revolution.

Hoffman and Novak (2018) in their research defined that there are four phenomenons emerged within the “IoT”. Firstly, the prevalent of smart home and other technology enabled more people a different life experience. Consequently, it leads to an agentic individual needs-extension and a communal self-expansion. Thirdly, the development of internet-things technology also become a restriction in human life. The more dependence, the more restrictions. Hence, IoT also cause agentic personal restrictions and ability-reduction on both sides.

Is the IoT necessity in our life? I think the answer is yes. The most significant improvement that IoT do to human life was it leveled up people’s efficiency. They are not replacing, they are assisting. Nevertheless, as mentioned in many literatures that excessively dependent on the sensors also may cause negative influence in human life, due to the loose restriction of deploying, physical security issue is increasing serious within the advance of IoT. (Fu & Wenyuan, 2018, p. 22)

 

Reference:

1. Fu, K, & Wenyuan, X 2018, ‘Risks of Trusting the Physics of Sensors: Protecting the Internet of Things with embedded security’, Communications Of The ACM, 61, 2, pp. 20-23, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 May 2018.
2. HOFFMAN, D, & NOVAK, T 2018, ‘Consumer and Object Experience in the Internet of Things: An Assemblage Theory Approach’, Journal Of Consumer Research, 44, 6, pp. 1178-1204, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost

 

 

Lecture 7 Media Convergence

There are three main points in the week 7.

Media convergence is the trend of age, the result of digital technology, and the need of contemporary human life.

For me, the transboundary media cooperation is not about genre and medium, but is a serious challenge of understanding the development of society.

As mentioned on lecture, the transmedia is extracting the integral elements of one certain media works and deliver in a different channel. I totally agree with this theory.

Moreover, I also want to add a point that media convergence is a commercial movement that ask producers have a deep insight of current society and make a bold move. Providing people products that they didn’t realize they need but they will definite want.

Marvel probably is a brand that hard to avoid when people started learning media convergence. Film, theme park, comic show, online games. Marvel has everything in online and also reality life. Wills T (2017) in his book said one of reasons of why marvel achieved such succeed is because their characters are international and changing over time. (p. 77)

In media convergence production, the ability of stimulating consumption is the core, and the popularity level of one element is the determinant. (Hackley, C & Hackley, R 2015, p. 474) Therefore, addition to the perspective of art creating, which offer creators more channels to spread their work. In the point of marketing, media convergence is more about covering a wider range of audience that to accept a certain culture. In that, with the advance of digital technology, consumer’s need more engaging and entertaining experience with their favourite icon or character. As mentioned in our lecture, transmedia program is an extension of the original work, meanwhile, audience can have a diverse experience in different mediums.

For instance, films and games. There are numerous video games in the market were adapted by succeed scientific films or horror films, such as

（Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, 2003-）

(Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 2002-)

Meanwhile, in turn, game-based films also had many excellent works, such as

(Silent Hill, 2006)

（Warcraft: The Beginning, 2016）

Media convergence is an inevitable result with the development of digital technology. Integrating a mature storyline with a new technology and producing a fresh experience that make users feel both comfortable and surprised. Above all, the interaction between different media platform offers audience more options to engage with a story or a conceptive world. On the other hand, it requires the media industry to work harder to confront this challenge in the present also the future society.

 

Reference：

1. Hackley, C, & Hackley, R 2015, ‘Marketing and the cultural production of celebrity in the era of media convergence’, JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT -HELENSBURGH-, 5/6, p. 461, British Library Document Supply Centre Inside Serials & Conference Proceedings, EBSCOhost
2. Wils, T 2017, ‘Marvel and the storytelling industry: Characters in an age of media convergence’, Screen Education, 86, p. 72, Informit Humanities & Social Sciences Collection, EBSCOhost

Lecture 1 online identity

In the first week of the semester, we talked about the significance of online identity in online commerce. One of the concepts do hugely aroused my interest: Online identity is a partial personality that exist in real person, so that internet can use this to track individual interests and display promotions. Nevertheless, in my past studies, I also learned about that online identity is a “fake” characteristic which people actively to pretend in the virtual society.

Accordingly, what if the virtual identity is irrelevant with the real person? Is that  indicating that the whole e-commerce industry is building on a feigned information data base, and earning money based lucky?

I looked up literatures and tried to find answers.

Pinto el at. (2015, p. 406) used gamer as sample demography in their research and claimed that in order to have a better engagement in the virtual community, netizens will consciously extend their online identity and pander to the popular interest. (Belk, 2010, p. 733) Meanwhile, in the past decade, social interaction gradually moved to the cyber world. In Frunzaru and Garbasevschi’s study, (2016) they pointed out that in social media, online-identity is more like a valuable commodity instead of a personal self-illustration. In that, a “standard” outfit or life style is more important than the simple reflection of real life.

Above that, there is one thing shared by these two articles: no matter self-extend or self-promote, online image is an advanced identity which based upon the main identity, and also influenced by the social atmosphere.

Such as there is a type of “Instagram Girls”.

( Stylecaster, 2018)

As shown in our first lecture, there are popular websites that have the function of collection individual browsing patterns. From a higher point of view, in order to save time and cost, social media platforms will lead users to actively shape a “life-style model”, potentially a misleading trend to majority of the internet users. It will lead people to assimilate and also cultivate a more extensive selling targets.

(For instance, the “Instagram girl” driven a huge profit of diet food.)

 

Reference:

1. Belk R. 2010. Sharing. Journal of Consumer Research 5, 36, pp. 715–734
2. FRUNZARU, V, & GARBAŞEVSCHI, D 2016, ‘Students’ Online Identity Management’, Journal Of Media Research, 9, 1, pp. 3-13, Communication & Mass Media Complete, EBSCOhost
3. PINTO, D, REALE, G, SEGABINAZZI, R, & VARGAS ROSSI, C 2015, ‘Online identity construction: How gamers redefine their identity in experiential communities’, Journal Of Consumer Behaviour, 14, 6, pp. 399-409, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost
4. STYLECASTER 2018,‘41 Hottest Women on Instagram Who Aren’t Afraid of Going Nearly Naked”, Viewed 29 April 2018 http://stylecaster.com/hottest-women-on-instagram/slide17