Post Production

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 Hi everyone! For the project this week, the postproduction process got underway. For this, I began by recording a voiceover of my latest draft for my segment on Facebook and their use of algorithms. I took this audio into Adobe Premiere Pro, where I was able to combine it with some relevant stock footage, sourced from Pexel.com and Pixabay.com. With this, I was able to get a view of what the final project might look like. At this stage, I may go back and make some minor changes to my script, making it more suitable for the medium it will result in.

I have also examined the use of motion graphics in both Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects, and how they can be of use when polishing the project in its final stages. I think this will prove to be very handy when it comes to video transitions, citing sources, and the final credit sequence. With these additions to the final video, I think that our group would make better use of the visual aspects of our given medium. Also, while this is probably thinking ahead a small bit, I investigated the Closed Captioning process when uploading videos to YouTube. It seems that we can make use of their automated subtitles, only needing to make small adjustments in punctuation and speech recognition errors.

I was also able to correspond with my project teammates to get a better sense of where we are situated right now. I would like to make the final video feel like a cohesive unit, instead of individual pieces joined together. By establishing proper communication, we can put in effort to make this video fit together nicely. As of now, I also have a draft completed of the introduction and outro piece. However, I think that they could be vastly improved once looking through the scripts for the other segments of the video. I think it would also be preferable to adjust the individual segments to ensure that they can introduce the segments both before and after, giving the video a more natural feel.

I think that should we continue working at this pace, the video should be completed in a reasonable amount of time. Once week twelve rolls around, I believe that in the worst case, we would be working on adjusting very minor details in the postproduction process. Otherwise, I am happy with the progress made throughout this week and hope to have the final piece handed in soon. Thanks for reading!

Final Rewrite

 Hi everyone! For this week’s rewriting assignment, I was able to further improve upon my ‘Media Ethics’ blog post and reflect on my previous writing throughout the semester. This week especially, I had plenty of feedback to work from, in addition to the articles supplied to help with the writing process.

When rewriting this post, I wanted to make it feel more concise and to-the-point. I noticed some sentences were too long and meandering, so I rephrased and shortened some sentences while retaining the same message. Removing small additions like adverbs made the whole text easier to read through, in my opinion. I also separated a paragraph into two pieces, so that a personal example would be spaced apart from direct discussion of the video.

Thanks to the feedback I received on this piece, I could now tell that the paragraphs were somewhat disjointed and didn’t flow together properly. My feedback included a specific suggestion (Simply Psychology, 2021) to ‘synthesise’ the various elements of the article. While I’m still coming to grasp with the concept, I managed to add phrases attempting to join topics, making them relevant to each other. In this case, I was able to join the videos together as they all shared similar themes and tones when it came to ethics in media. While this is a start, I would like to explore topic synthesis in future writing.

All of these changes were implemented in addition to previous feedback and the rewrite from week nine. I found that previous rewrite to be very helpful, both from the perspective of giving and receiving peer feedback. When receiving feedback, I was able to take suggestions into account and put them in practice in both rewrites and in other writing tasks. Having multiple rounds of feedback during the semester made an environment in which I could make multiple iterations of my writing style, evolving as it went on.

When giving feedback, I was able to read through the writing of others, broadening my perspective. Having received feedback, I was able to see some of these techniques in practical use in other blog posts. For example, I had received some suggestions to make a more personal introduction and outro to my blogs, and I was able to accomplish that through the peer feedback system. To summarise, I found that giving and receiving feedback has helped to improve my active writing skills. Thank you for reading!

 

References:

 Shona McCombes (2020) How to Synthesize Written Information from Multiple Sources [online] Available from <https://www.simplypsychology.org/synthesising.html > [accessed 3 Dec 2021].

Rewrite #3

 

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Hello everyone! This week, I would like to discuss the topic of ethics as it relates to media. I would like to delve into its history and how its power may be used for both malicious and sincere gains. The first video (McCombs School of Business, 2018) defines ethics as either “the investigation and analysis of moral principles and dilemmas,” or “rules and guidelines that establish what conduct is right and wrong”.

Ethics is heavily intertwined with media production and consumption. The second video, ‘Minisode – The Medium is the Message’ (Folding Ideas, 2015) examines the work of Marshall McLuhan in his book, ‘Understanding Media’. Importantly, I found a more thorough understanding of his quote, “the medium is the message”. This is contextualised through his understanding of media as “any extension of ourselves”. An example as shown in the video is “the electric light reshaped how humans interact with day and night”. As new technologies and mediums develop, the way people interact with the world around them changes drastically.

So how can these mediums be used with malicious intent? ‘How Dark Patterns Trick You Online’ (Nerdwriter1, 2018) reviews a series of methods used by corporations to sway the actions of consumers. The most common sort of dark pattern is a ‘roach motel’; a situation that is easy to get into, but difficult to get out of. Amazon’s hidden account deletion process is a great example of this phenomenon. This can make customers feel trapped when dealing with an unfamiliar and intentionally confusing system.

There are many other types of dark patterns that may be found both on the web and mobile apps. One pattern I personally experience occurs when websites prompt the user for consent to use cookies. In many cases, companies will hide or obscure the ‘disable’ option behind another menu, making it harder for users to prevent tracking.

Disabling cookies is hidden behind a 'Learn More' button in this case.

 

The fourth video opened my eyes to the vast reach of media campaigns and how advertising can expand beyond obvious messaging. The video (Freedom in Thought, 2017) discusses Edward Bernays’ pursuits in marketing while consumerism saw a dramatic increase in popularity. His belief was that propaganda was “the mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale”. He felt no objection to propaganda as a method of promoting a product or service, assuming it had no ill ends or was untruthful. This way of thinking allowed him to expand marketing efforts into many different forms of communication, appealing to consumers’ emotions, thoughts, and desires. This is easily highlighted through his most famous campaign, getting women to smoke in 1920’s USA. His use of ‘influencer marketing’ created a local perception of smoking as an act of empowerment for women. ‘Influencer marketing’ being the use of influential figures in the local area to generate buzz around an idea. By getting suffragettes to smoke during a parade, smoking would become symbolic of their cause and convince more women to smoke. He also appealed to the beauty standards of the time by conveying smoking as a health benefit. With doctors and suffragettes pushing cigarettes to the public, it became much easier to influence customers than through direct advertisement alone.

I feel that I have a much better understanding now of the place media has in our society. It is always present in our day-to-day lives, making it easy to miss out on the finer details. By acting more critically to the media around us, it can help to identify manipulative messaging. Thank you for reading!

 

References:

McCombs School of Business (2018) Ethics Defined [online] Available from <https://youtu.be/4vWXpzlL7Mo> [accessed 1 Nov 2021].

Folding Ideas (2015) Minisode - The Medium is the Message [online] Available from <https://youtu.be/OseOb_wBsi4> [accessed 1 Nov 2021].

Nerdwriter1 (2018) How Dark Patterns Trick You Online [online] Available from <https://youtu.be/kxkrdLI6e6M> [accessed 1 Nov 2021].

Freedom in Thought (2017) How One Man Manipulated All of America [online] Available from <https://youtu.be/nj_UWbifM2U> [accessed 1 Nov 2021]. 

Blogger (2021) Media Ethics [online] Available from <https://milo-idm.blogspot.com/2021/11/media-ethics.html> [accessed 3 Dec 2021].