Designs of Media

Team Members:

Yonathan Wolowelsky
Josef Pacal
Jonathan De Jong
Robbert Schefman

Timetable:

Video: “What is design? What is media?” - 5 min
Discussion: what our classmate thinks media & design is - 10 min
What is media? - 10 min
Design assignment - invent a social media for a certain target group - 35 min
Explaining the game: 2 min. Innovation time: 15 min. Results: 3 min X 6 groups: 18 min.
Break! - 15 min
Social media / how does it change people - 10 min
How does media changes people? - 10 min
Video: part of Black Mirror - 6 min
Total (not including break) - 86 min
So we have 4 minutes gap for time management mistakes and technical problems

A link to the powerpoint presentation:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B0dk7tUreat3dWpaRG9ydmhyZWM

Part 1: What is media?

Media is an industry about entertainment. The product is imagination rather than an actual product.
Media (the plural of medium) are also channels to store and pass information.
It all started with cave paintings, maps and drawings to pass on information, way before Christ. Later on the written forms of communication became more important, like newspapers and books.
The newspaper started to be published weekly around 1605, but something similar already existed for centuries before. In ancient Rome news sheets already were used to publish news and announcements.
During the 17th century printed news sheets were replacing the handwritten ones. Around this time magazines started to emerge. Magazines were often more specialized in a topic and existed of a couple of articles.
In the 19th century the newspaper had its golden years because of the improved techniques, the advertisers and the amount of readers.
During the 19th and 20th century a lot of new forms of media started to arise.
The radio became very popular in the beginning of the 20th century and played music but also spread the news.
Photography and film made a huge impact, especially the TV. In a short period of time a lot of shows were produced, to entertain people but also to spread news and knowledge.
At the end of the 20th century games were being developed. Consoles, but also arcade games became popular. With the development of personal computers gaming on computers also became interesting for the developers.
In the 21th century the internet became more mainstream.
Instead of the other forms of media the internet is very versatile. It is not only used to share information and news, but also to build communities and share ideas and own experiences.
This revolution is also called the Web 2.0. In the old days the owner of the website decided what the visitors could read on the website, but nowadays the users contribute or even create the content of websites.
Millions of users are participating in social media nowadays and in 2011 social media revenue reached a stunning 11.8 billion dollar. The most popular social media website Facebook is being used by almost 995 million users.
Recently the usage of smartphone and tablets changed the internet. A lot of applications and websites are being developed and adapted so they can also be used on small viewports.
Media is about the industry around all these technologies and products. It’s about the way we use it, how it changed us and how it’s providing us with work.

The design of media
Media is an industry about entertainment. The product is imagination rather than an actual product.
Media is hard to define, it has a lot of aspects and it’s changing all the time. New products and technologies come and go.
Audience
The audience of media is the users, the people who use it. Everyone uses media and there even is media created for the masses (hence the term mass media).
A lot of forms of media are created for a group of users with the same characteristics (for an example a sport channel for men or a gossip magazine for females). Often stereotypes are used like age, gender, class and even race.
Often mass media is created for the youth, like video games, hip hop music and movies.
Culture
Media is shaped by culture and the other way around.
Culture is the opposite of nature. Everything that has been intervened and interpreted by human kind can be called culture. There are a lot of subcultures with people with the same characteristics, like religion, science and also media is a subculture.
Creators of media always aim for a kind of subculture.
Codes and genres
Every genre of media has its codes; expectations and stereotypes the creators use to satisfy the users.
A lot of media (like the TV shows CSI and House M.D.) follow the same pattern all over again and are very similar, except for some minor changes. These minor changes keep the show from getting boring, sometimes some new characters are introduced or something unexpected happens.
Business
Media is a money making industry. Art isn’t.
But when is something art or media?
The line is really thin and hard to decide but in media the codes are used very common, and the goal is to make money, while art aims at giving an experience and food of thought.
The last decades the media keeps conglomerating. This means that companies are merging. This means fewer providers of media and thus more similar media.
Technology
Media is born and exists because of technology, like television, the internet and radio.
Technology is a big part of media while art doesn’t use that much technology.
Immediacy and change
Media keeps changing, not only because of the fast changing technology and techniques it uses, but also because media companies create new desires for users to earn more money.

Part 2: Design Assignment

Design a social media for the following target group.
Think about the needs of the target group. What features the social media should have and should not have? How would it be designed? What would be the platform? (not necessarily computers)
Be creative, there are no rules!

Part 3: How has social media changed our everyday lives?

- Global conversation, global village
E.g. Social media like Twitter and YouTube started a revolution in North Africa and even Saudi Arabia. People post cell phone recorded video’s of their success and demonstration on YouTube and Twitter about it. In this way other countries can also fight for democracy.

- It actually makes people more social
We people are social creatures. We want to live in a group and connect to other people. But there are people who are less social IRL than others. For these people social media is a good solution to connect to others. Mostly by helping them or sharing knowledge. It makes people share their knowledge and makes people smarter in some way.

- Where we get our news
Most of the time you read the news your “friends” read and share via social media. You don’t choose the editors and newspapers yourself but you chose what you read by picking out interesting news articles your friends shared. Of course you still read the newspaper and your favourite blog or website. But it is interesting to see how the consuming of news changes through social media. We know which stakeholder is communicating this news and we can easily contact him/her about it. News is more social than ever!

- How we do business
It’s easier than ever to promote your company online. Small start-ups with no budget can easily create a company page on Facebook or post a promotional video on YouTube and go viral with it. For many small companies social media has become the some of their marketing department. Many companies even have a department only dedicated to controlling the online talks about their company and planning their social media movements.

- How we meet and stay in touch with people
As mentioned before, people are social creatures. They are always on the lookout for new contacts and friends. Social media truly changed the way we meet and get to know new people drastically. Before you meet someone in person we are able to know a lot about them just based on their public profiles. It’s also a good tool to maintain long distance friend/relationships.

In every era, cultures go through numerous changes, and in recent years ours has been more impacted than anything else by social media. Large media companies are not likely to go away overnight, nor will the need to communicate by phone or meet people in person, but social media is providing yet one more means of engaging with people on this vast planet of ours, and if used effectively can give all of us greater choice in how we live and what happens in our world.
How social media could’ve changed 9/11

Part 4: How media can influence individuals (or: Is it that Social?)

Intro: Is social media has only good influence on people?
Social media can connect between people, but also it can isolate them.
Make a vote, who’s thinks that media has more positive influence on individual and who thinks the opposite.

Promotion and fame or bullying?
Social media can promote people and give them tools to promote their work, but it can also used as a tool for bullies, to insult people, to spread lies and “dark secrets” about people.
Some people actually committed suicide because of facebook.
Ask the students if they know about an extreme side effect of social media on someone they know.

Is it Social?
Is it social to sit all day in front of a screen?
Maybe you have more than 1,000 friends on facebook, but you have no one to sit for a beer with after work.
Ask the student if they also feels that social media taking too much of their social life.

Social pressure - big time!
Sometimes an individual can think or do something against his clear common sense and will just because a social pressure.

Video: part of “black mirror”

This part is not about making a statement! Let the student discuss about that, and figure it out. Are there more positive sides than negative?