"Look Up" from social networks and mobile devices.

A viral video that has been floating around Facebook and Twitter over the last week, has been calling for a digital revolution. Putting to one side the irony of creating a video promoting the dissolution of social networks, which is being promoted on Twitter and Facebook; does the video have an actual moral message about how we should remove social networks and our online self from our lives or is it just taking a narrow minded single view approach to how people use the online environment?

Related theories
Nathan Jurgenson - Facebook is real life.
Danah Boyd - Social networks blur boundaries of friendship.
Steven Handel - Digital Divide
Christine Rosen - Social Networks is about self-fulfilment.
David Gauntlett - Making is Connecting
Jean Burgess - Memes

Shut Your Facebook

Shut Your Facebook is a New Channel 4 program that explores the online world of Facebook and questions the ideals of 20 somethings. Posing questions about whether your Facebook, Does affect your ability to get employed? and Do we shared too much online about our private lives?

Watch the first episode HERE.

Caution is advised as nudity and strong language are present in the episode.

BFI Player

The British Film Institute (BFI) has just released the BFI player. An online service that allows users to watch films that have influenced generations. Most of their films will be offered for free (approximately 60%) and the rest of the films will be able to be rented (approximately 40%).

The BFI Player will launch with seven different collections:

• London Film Festival Presents; exclusive red carpet action, talent interviews and special behind the scenes access to the UK’s most important film festival
• Backed by the BFI; the best of British cinema – a showcase of some of the finest films, many funded by the BFI Film Fund
• Edwardian Britain;  for the first time ever all 28 hours of the extraordinary films of pioneering filmmakers Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon, c.1900 – 1912
• GOTHIC: The Dark Heart of Film; The BFI’s blockbuster project featuring four compelling themes Monstrous, The Dark Arts, Haunted and Love is a Devil
• Cult Cinema; a passport to an exciting and surprising world of cult British cinema from the BFI’s Flipside DVD label
• Inside Film; films about filmmaking for filmmakers and all those who love cinema
• Sight and Sound Selects (from their Greatest Film poll); a growing selection of the best films of all time

If you are looking for something to do during the holidays or those rainy days and what to develop your film knowledge while watching some of the most entertaining and groundbreaking films of their day - then go and explore the BFI Player.

Social Media is a Game?

Watch the last 5 Minutes of Charlie Brooker's How Videogames Changed the World and you will find that the argument arises that social media such as Twitter and Facebook are now considered as games.

The idea that is presented mirrors that of Danah Boyd:

“As we Twitter our way to friendship, scoring ourselves based on the numbers of 'friends' we can convince to subscribe to our existence, perhaps we lose track of what friendship and connection mean.” 

What do you think? Are we "playing" a game online? Are you yourself online or offline or both? In fact who are you really?

A2 Twitter Discussion - Storify

Here are all the tweets from today's Twitter discussion...

A2: The Matrix, Social Networks & Self-made Prisons

The Matrix is real but it's not a product of mainstream media. It's self-made, constructed by the public, proliferated by social networks. We are (knowingly) constructing personalised prisons for our minds; our realities essentially giant filter bubbles, made up of ideologies we accept. We are turning ourselves into thoughtless, marketing machines, exploited by the highest bidder.

Sounds scary doesn't it!? However, the more you think about it, the more 'real' it becomes...

During the first week back I want to make a more congruous link between the work we did on 'digital self' and Baudrillard's theories of "hyperreality" explored in 'The Matrix'. 

We'll be looking at, analysing, evlauating and debating the following material. If you've got your essay out of the way, then you may want to get a head start...

Sherry Turkle: Aspect of The Self

Danah Boyd: Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life

Steven Handel: The Dark Sides of Our Digital Self

Christine Rosen: Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism

Pieter Boder: Habermas' heritage: The future of the public sphere in the network society

Cass Sunstein: The Daily We - Is the Internet really a blessing for democracy?

Helen Keegan: The Paradox of Openness: The High Costs of Giving Online

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Thanks go to Catherine Cronin for sharing the material for her 'Social Media Classroom' online.

Postmodern Media: Digital Identity vs Digital Self

Two useful videos as we come towards the end of the unit:

Network from Michael Rigley on Vimeo.

"Information technology has become a ubiquitous presence. By visualizing the processes that underlie our interactions with this technology we can trace what happens to the information we feed into the network."

WoW from aram bartholl on Vimeo.

"The WoW project takes this mode of publicizing players’ names that’s typical of online 3D worlds and transfers it into the physical domain of everyday life. Participants of the WoW-workshop will be able to construct their own name out of cardboard and then parade around in public with it hovering above their head. What happens when a person’s customary anonymity in the public sphere is obliterated by the principles operative in virtual worlds online?"

I came across the two videos via Dean Groom. He makes some thoughtful comments in his original post as well.

What is a Meme?

Read this: internetmeme.net

Then read and play with this: whatismeme.com

Watch this:

And then have a look at these: Lolcats

Conspiracy Theory: The Dark Side of Google

Josh, from my Year 11 Creative Media Diploma class, found this and thought it was worth sharing:

GCSE Media - Parent/Student Guide to Exam & Revision

This is the PowerPoint that I used for an Adobe Connect Online Meeting with parents of Y10 GCSE Media Studies students. They have their B323 Textual Analysis (Print Topic) exam on the 25th June.