User talk:AdamB95

This is my user discussion page that I'll be using to register my work on the Wikibook project and also as a means to contribute to my educational assignment. Feel free to leave a comment. AdamB95 (discuss • contribs)

Wiki Topic #1 - Educational Assignment
The rise of YouTube has seen its content diversify into its own universally appealing and yet unique genres. These can include but are certainly not limited to genres such as ‘Let’s plays’, make-up tutorials, fail videos, react videos, song covers, podcasts and even original series. The list is truly endless. And with any type of media certain names or people become symbols of these fledgling genres. In the case of YouTube, vloggers such as PewDiePie are synonymous within the ‘Let’s Play’ genre, and in his case he has amassed over 20 million loyal subscribers or ‘bros’. He is certainly the most popular on the internet so far however many thousands of other ‘let’s players’ are also enjoying relative success. YouTube it seems panders to all. However what happens when one of these goliaths try to trademark these genres and pass these off as their own? This is exact scenario that arose from the proposed expansion of the extremely popular ‘React’ channel. The two founders and co-owners Benny and Rafi Fine, decided to enlarge their channel’s reach with the introduction of a new project dubbed ‘ReactWorld.’ On paper this was supposed to let anyone use their own format to make their own ‘react’ videos including graphics, guidance and editing software on the user’s new videos. In return however FineBros Entertainment would receive a share on the advertisement revenue. This idea of letting out a format is not new and can be found in licensing existing shows or films for different audiences. You could take the popular show Britain’s Got Talent and license its format to other production companies across the World. But it wasn’t a format they were trying to capitalize on. Subsequent to the announcement of ‘ReactWorld,’ it just so happened that the FineBros tried to trademark the word ‘react’ within the space of YouTube. Therefore any video in the genre of reaction videos that was uploaded thereafter was simply taken down by the YouTube watchdogs. This did not sit well within the community and because YouTube is a relatively new medium and dependent on its avid watchers this spiked uproar. Before the incident the main channel had over 14milllion subscribers and in a few days that number had dropped drastically to close to 13million. In an effort to mitigate this loss the FineBros withdrew their trademark and issued an apology video, thus demonstrating the power of the YouTube community. IP and copyright disputes appear to be becoming more apparent as the internet matures. Many theorists this is explicitly linked to the Medias capitalist modes of production and so to use or steal another’s work is deemed unlawful and loyalties are duly bound. However it does seem extreme that an individual must pay royalties to a person or corporation for using a word i.e. ‘React’ that typically belongs to everyone under the English Language.

Here's a link to the initial announcement video and the subsequent apology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9X8xZzyZyY AdamB95 (discuss • contribs) 11:56, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise 1: Formative Feedback
This clearly outlines a news story of interest to you. When making comments such as "many theorists", it is important to back this up with names of these theorists. Further to this, some of the comments about trademark and intellectual property are naive and underdeveloped. This is an interesting line of inquiry but needs more critical engagement. Make sure to use more paragraphs to break up your ideas more clearly as it's difficult to read all in one big block. Your work would also benefit from further use of wiki mark up including embedding links within your discussion rather than leaving them to the end. Also make sure to follow all parts of the exercise: you have not posted comments on colleague's pages. Engagement is an important part of the portfolio, so make sure to do this in future.

A post of this standard roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor: Satisfactory. Among other things, satisfactory entries may try to relate an idea from the module to an original example, but might not be very convincing. They may waste space on synopsis or description, rather than making a point. They may have spelling or grammatical errors and typos. They might not demonstrate more than a single quick pass at the assignment, informed only by lecture and/or cursory reading. They may suggest reading but not thinking (or indeed the reverse). The wiki markup formatting will need some work. Sprowberry (discuss • contribs) 10:27, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #2
As online technology advances ever onwards it brings with it a great platform for social connectivity. In our modern age the ideas of what we constitute to be ‘public’ and ‘private’ are becoming blurred as our continued presence online increases; This is explored in ‘A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age by Zizi A. Papacharissi who suggests that ‘the ability media offer audiences to simultaneously stay home and travel places.’ If we take the recent arrival of 3G/4G and the spread of communal wifi we can increase our visibility online constantly through increasing access. Personally and not unlike many of those on my generation I have access to and regularly use multiple social media sites such as Facebook, Snapchat etc. This means that through my participation in these public spheres on a site such as Facebook I can freely share my opinions and thoughts with those that I choose. This is due to security settings. In today’s world we can limit our visibility online to a strict number of people that we deem appropriate. As an open person I freely let anyone that I deem a ‘friend’ to access any of the parts on my profile as I have the power to choose who and can and cannot view it through said security measures. If we also take political opinions that I do not wish to share publicly I can privately and freely choose to extend my views invisibly through the signing of online petitions away from the public sphere of social media. However this can also become visible through the sharing of an issue on social media sites again demonstrating the blurring of the lines between private and public boundaries. The content that we place online is so far under our control and as demonstrated we can limit the visibility of ourselves and so control are identity in subsequent ways. However this is not always the case. It is well known that companies such as Instagram can use images without prior consent as was the case in the marketing scandal involving the company in which unknowing users saw themselves and their private photos displayed on billboards. AdamB95 (discuss • contribs) 12:08, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #3
Information over the course of history and in particular along with the development and spread of the internet has become ever more accessible to almost everyone in society. This access to information is instantaneous through such avenues as mobile phones and tablets. And like computers humans too are becoming information processers. This is down to the idea that the definition of information is now not synonymous with the concept of knowledge. This new concept of information leads us to believe that it cannot all be retained following on from the idea of humans as ‘processors.’ This can lead to the undesirable effect of ‘information overload’. This occurs when too much information has been analysed and can cause the inability to retain facts into knowledge or the persistent inability to make choices based on it.

Throughout the course of a day we may in fact come into more information ‘processing’ than we realise. For example through the media of television and its subsequent genres we retain information subtly. An example of this could be through a talk show in which a celebrity raises an issue sacred to them this could then lead to the idea being impressed upon the audience. Similarly this is the case with Social media. Through our own social connections we are instantly provided with information on ‘who is where?’ or ‘who is with whom?’ generally speaking. Therefore it becomes easy, especially in my experience to become distracted from whatever I am doing through the need to involve myself in information, and superficial.

Dealing with our unfettered access to information is difficult as we again like computers have a finite amount of data that we can store as knowledge. I therefore find myself re-reading university materials for example in order to strengthen and store the information that I receive from them. Also the overloading of information can cause the severe breakdown in performance. For me this can mean the inability to focus from continuing with university work and can lead to me becoming distracted even more. To deal with this I tend to dedicate an hour or so in which I do an activity, taking a walk for an example, and leave my phone at home so that I am not tempted to use it and distract myself with useless information. I believe that this is an important way to deal with this idea of information overload as the continued exposure to endless and vast amounts of problems can lead to psychological problems. AdamB95 (discuss • contribs) 11:18, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise #4
The way in which our group approached the wikibooks project was indicative and synonymous with many of the positive aspects of the civic web. The idea of an emancipated use of media in which all members have the opportunity and ability to individually or collectively construct, share and produce various amounts of content or ideas. On the production of content on the wikibook via the internet. This then allowed all groups and individuals within them to connect and to freely and constructively share their thoughts and opinions. The wikibooks project also allowed for a platform in which these different members could provide valuable feedback on said content as we worked with similar intentions and goals.

This small exercise points to an idea that a more positive online consensus exists within the internet away from the more pessimistic side of constant negativity such as useless content, hate-speech, data mining, targeted advertisement and constant surveillance to name a few. This is that ‘rather spreadibility points to a transformation of the entire media system, where less dramatic and visible modes of production may be just as important as others that are seemingly more mundane.’ This then has positive consequences involving added value ‘culturally, socially and economically regardless of the level of commitment that it requires.’ This means that by having many groups of people actively working on a project such as the wikibooks project allows ideas to form and to be spread regardless of the popularity of the platform. These under-represented modes of production have an inherently positive aspect that proves the positive aspects of the civic web. If we look at the function of the discussion pages we can see active debate between many members (albeit to varying degrees) in order to constructively create a product in its entirety.

Within this project there brings another idea such as the changing nature of participation in relation to the ideals of a civic web; ‘quantity has been transformed into quality: the greatly increased mass of participants has produced a different kind of participation.’ We therefore directly attribute this to the wiki project in which a mass of 30 people actively engaged in the construction of an end goal. This means that every individual within a group has actively become a producer of material that can be discussed, scrutinised and compared in order to better its quality. This peer assessment is vital as it allows ideas to be built upon rather than initial shunned or perhaps debated in order to get the best possible content available through mass qauntative participation.

This continued activity on content derived from the discussion pages also allows new meanings and interpretations to be garnered and built upon by the other members of a topic’s groups. This means that content or valuable resources could be shared or debated: ‘passing on and adding a comment to it can render new meaning to the production.’ This is a very valuable demonstration of the principles of the civic web as it again allows for content to be formed under a communal idea of ownership where changing aspects of the product can be actively infused by others opinions and ideas and therefore furthered. The idea of sharing here is important as this then allows the content to be more widely spread not just through the aforementioned discussion pages but perhaps through installing the ideas in others that allows them to be shared through other means. AdamB95 (discuss • contribs) 10:17, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Comment
Hi Adam, I agree with many of your points made here. I also felt that the positive aspects of civic web were on show during the wiki books project. Everyone's points were important, as it was all going up on the main Wikipedia page. I find your point interesting about a positive online consensus in which the internet was used well as you said, instead of the negative aspects of the internet. This is similar to what Gauntlett says, ‘harnessing the collective abilities of the members of an online network, to make an especially powerful resource or service. Any collective activity which is enabled by people’s passions and becomes something greater than the sum of its parts.’ It is correct. However I found another theory, Cognitive Surplus. In which Clay Shirky argues that amounts of free time in modern democratic societies spent watching TV and consuming media, could be used better on civic collaboration and creative endeavour. I am not criticizing the project, I am showing that if one group of us can make a good group project when directing our time to it, so many people, (even including ourselves now that the project is finished) could use their free time on creating more useful things online, instead of, as you said, hate mail and other negative aspects. This group project is an indication of what could be achieved. Cloudon14 (discuss • contribs) 10:36, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

I really like your point about how this exercise encourages us as a group to use the internet in a more productive way: much of the internet is full of worthless information that, if consumed, can be mind-numbing and unprofitable. This exercise allowed us all to come together and work on this project and we in turn created something and learned during the process, participating actively as opposed to passively consuming media. However, the way in which we 'tapped into the surplus' - or contributed to the assignments - was sometimes problematic since often I was blocked from posting by an admin so perhaps if the way we contributed was more reliable perhaps more would be added to the project by individuals. Rossmurray26 (discuss • contribs) 14:01, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wikibook Project Work
While you have embraced some of the elements of engagement required for the assignment (including tackling the complexity of the MediaWiki platform), there is a lack of collaboration with colleagues, primarily evidenced by the relatively short time period you spent on editing the chapter (although you added a lot to the chapter). There's evidence of some critical engagement and integration of relevant secondary sources, but this could be embedded more throughout the exercises and throughout discussion in the chapter

Content (weighted 20%)

 * Your contribution to the book page gives an excellent brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is an excellent range of concepts associated with your subject, and the effort to deliver critical definitions, drawing from relevant literature and scholarship, and your own critical voice in the building of a robust argument is very much in evidence. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes cover an excellent range and depth of subject matter.

Understanding (weighted 30%)

 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of critical engagement with set materials, although some ideas and procedures more securely grasped than others
 * evidence of independent reading of somewhat circumscribed range of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material
 * Argument and analysis:
 * well-articulated and well-supported argument featuring variable depth of understanding
 * satisfactory level of evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position in discussion);
 * satisfactory level of evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections in discussion);
 * evidence of variable independent critical ability

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * Evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content suggests minimally sufficient standard of engagement (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * Acceptable engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Limited reflexivity and creativity, and a somewhat insecure management of discussion pages

Overall Mark % available on Succeed

FMSU9A4marker (discuss • contribs) 14:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)