Discussion Exercises

1. Many television shows, movies, and advertisements use styles to make them seem amateurish or "homegrown". Some examples of television shows that do this are MTV's "My Life as Liz" and NBC's "The Office", which use production techniques to make it seem like reality shows. One well known advertisement that uses this technique is the E-Trade commercial. The advertisement is made to look as if the babies speaking in the ad are talking over a webcam. The quality of the commercial is similar to the quality of a webcam video. Examples of movies that use the amateur techniques are "The Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal Activity" to make it look like the characters are shooting the film on their own home video recorders.

I don't necessarily believe that these techniques are indicating the production values are dropping. Even though they may look amateurish, a lot of thought and design goes into developing and producing these shows, advertisements, and movies. It may be cheaper to produce this way as the type of film used is different from the high quality and high definition that we're used to, but I do not believe that the values of these productions are decreasing. The purpose of these mediums is to connect to the audience. Reality and internet play a large role in many people's lives, and they can relate to these new production forms in a more personal way.

Over time, I think user-generated content quality will become highly developed. When the first television came out, its picture quality was a lot different than it is today. Over the years, as technology continues to develop, the quality of internet videos uploaded from webcams will undoubtedly continue to get better. In turn, production will try and match the changes in this quality over time as well, to continue to connect and make an impression on the users of these mediums.

2. The new article I found was called "Apple Sues HTC, the Maker of Google Phone" from the Wall Street Journal. The article discusses Apple suing Google over patents rights for its iPhone smartphone.
My Tags: Apple, Google, Android, smartphone, patent, lawsuit
Delicious.com Tags: Apple, Google, Android, HTC, patent
In comparing these tags, I learned that it is easy to create similarities in tagging labels. The tags seem to be key words in the summaries of articles. I believe, however, that tags can also be different depending on the way a person interprets an article. In this article, for example, a person may choose to use words that favor HTC/ Google, or words that favor Apple, depending on which side of the argument they favor or relate to. For example, if a reader favors Google, additional tags can include "misunderstanding" or "confusion" in terms of whether or not apple was correct in filing a lawsuit. On the other hand, if a reader favors Apple, additional tags can include "violation", or "infringement". Despite these differences, however, many of the tags will turn out to be very similar because they are key words summing up the article as a whole.

3. Transparency is a very important concept in the social media world. This is because millions of people are interacting and it is important the information shared is truthful and not deceitful. For example, in blog entries, it is very difficult to know exactly who is being honest and who isn't. People can post blog entries for their own personal gain by getting paid for it. The information, therefore, may not always be what the blogger really believes, but rather the beliefs of the corporation or entity that the person is blogging about. This information may not always be disclosed to the public and readers may be mislead to believe that the postings reflect the truth. I do not believe that this idea is any less important in the offline world. It is equally important to be truthful, honest, and open in the real world as well. It is not necessary that people disclose every bit of information about themselves, but it is important to not be deceitful and intentionally mislead others. Not every bit of information needs to be open to the public, but if information is going to be passed around, it is important that it be truthful.