Creativity and New Media

For my creativity assignment, I created a meme-video because I love memes! Although memes are simple and often brief, I love the humor and flexibility behind every meme. A meme can send a different message depending on how one interpret the text and the image, but hey isn't that the "creativity" behind a meme.

Creativity

Creativity is the act of transforming our ideas into reality. With the help of media and technology,  the media helps foster creativity. Nowadays, it is not just characterize by  the aesthetic aspect, but it can be executed in many forms; it can be as simple as just a text. A form of creativity that is expanding on media nowadays is copywriting. For Twitter, copywriting is important because it includes more text rather than imagery. Due to the innovation in media we have nowadays, people exchange “ideas” on a daily basis, making it easier to reach a wider range or audience in a short amount of time. Marketing companies are using crowdsourcing with the help of social media to sell their products and services.

In the article, "Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?", Disney characters are being used to create a rap song parody for the song, “Crank That”. Although this is an infringement issue, the combination of these two contrasting elements known as “mash-up”, racks millions of views on Youtube, benefiting both Disney and the artists because of  the vast amount of views it is generating from a simple video. This video is an great example to illustrate that  we are entering a revolution where creativity is now beyond its limit.

Barnes, Brooks. “Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Sept. 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/media/24crank.html.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

As opposed to a normal reality, a three-dimensional environment environment is called a virtual reality. It is a simulation used for interactions between users, where you create objects and interact with people.  There are benefits of virtual reality such as the various usages of communication through text, sound, graphical images, and gestures.   Virtual reality can appear in different forms such as  gaming, fantasy, historical and science fiction.  It is a great platform for people to connect with each other in a staged environment with detailed review.  With the technology and the creativity freedom we now have,  we do not physically need to be present to visualize a certain setting as a result of virtual reality. At the same time, this capability can be a drawback as well. Despite all the benefits of virtual reality, there are cons relating to virtual reality. Since virtual reality is  a representation of reality, sometimes the depiction is too surreal or lacks the accuracy that we visualize. 

The future holds many opportunities for virtual reality, and it's no doubt it can improve our quality of life.  Besides the innovation in the gaming and film aspect, areas of expansion for virtual reality can explore into the aerospace  and medical fields. For example, surgeons can use virtual reality for research and practice purposes before performing the surgery on an actual person to test the success rate. Because virtual reality  is still in the developmental stages and with the new technology advancing,  there are many room for improvements and potential  for virtual reality to revolutionize new media.


Work Cited:

Mehta, Diane. “After Second Life, Can Virtual Worlds Get a Reboot?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 1 May 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/dianemehta/2013/04/30/after-second-life-can-virtual-worlds-get-a-reboot/#436f5e54735a.

Knafo, Saki. “In Room 100, It's Sid and Nancy All Over Again.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 May 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/nyregion/thecity/03virt.html.

Blog: Social Networking Sites

There are many different social media platforms for web users can share their content.  Some of the main  ones are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Although these mediums are all meant for human interactions, each of these pages are different and offer a distinctive  impression that makes them unique from other social media pages. Facebook, being the dominating social media platform, offer many different content for  their users to see such as pictures, videos, memes, news or business pages. Because of the vast amount of content and information that Facebook offers, I can find myself spending a lot of my time on Facebook as the newsfeed tends to be endless. While Twitter have the same posting functions, it is meant for users to make brief and concise post as they capped the maximum amount of words per posting. It is a great platform. to share a random thought or simply to give a quick update to your followers. Instagram is a widely used app for users to share their pictures to the public or between friends. It’s different from most of the other media because it is used solely to share pictures and video content. Lastly, LinkedIn is used mainly for professional purposes as opposed to most social media pages where our postings are arbitrary and liberating, LinkedIn is more conservative and mundane. Linked is a great platform for users to showcase their resume and professional skill on their profile for recruiting or networking purposes.

Blog about Twitter

Twitter and Blackboard are two different platforms where students can have a discussion. However,  in terms of usage and design, these two mediums have distinctive differences. Blackboard offers features such as discussions, wiki, and message functions between peers. The look is rather dull, with texts all cluttered together to the left in their navigation pane. To see the discussion board, you need to navigate through different clicks to get to the forums which I find is a flaw as this can be troublesome. At the discussion forums, there is a stream of threads, where you click into in order to read and comment on your classmates’ posting. Compared to Blackboard, Twitter offers a more pleasing look with vibrant colors, and a newsfeed where you can see your friend’s posting. Besides the comment function in the discussion, Twitter offers more function such as retweet, reply, or direct message which all serve different purposes depending on how one choose to react to the posting. A unique feature that Twitter offers are hashtags, where users can use specific keywords followed by a hash mark where users can search to find the tweet as long as it pertains to that hashtag. This function allows more Twitter users to comment on it and in Blackboard, only people in the class can post on the discussion. Despite the similarities between these two platforms, they both serve different purposes and utilized differently.

Blog Social Networking

        Nowadays,there are many forms of social media and different ways to utilize these platforms. It is no surprise that the dominating social media giants are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, but there are also many other social media sites where people can share content and information. According to Hootsuide, three quarters of adults have social media now and with the vast amount of people using social media, connecting with someone is only a click away.The benefits of using social media, especially in corporations, is the power to connect. Many companies take advantage of social media for their own benefits. For example, social media raises brand awareness, incentivising more people to learn about the company and even explore within the company depending on the content of the page. Employees can use social media to for client services such as learning about their clients and their interest to strengthen their relationships. Also, social media pagesfor professionals, such as LinkedIn has become a resourceful tool for web users to connect with employees in different companies for recruiting and networking purposes.  As a result of social media, it is easier for people to expand their network and build relationships with others.

     Despite all the benefits of social media, there can be drawbacks as well. Most of our social media account are not constricted, therefore we are usually free to post anything online, whether it is sharing something exciting, or ranting about something controversial. Although we have the individual freedom to post and write as we desire on social media, we do need to be cautious about what we decide to publicize as anything we post on social media can be used against you in the future. For instance, our managers or coworkers whom we are connected on social media can disagree with your view which can hurt your image and reputation at work, and might potentially jeopardize your job if it is too extreme or inappropriate. The content we post represent who we are, therefore we must be wary of the content we post.

Work Cited:

“Why Businesses Can't Survive Without Social Media.” Fortune, fortune.com/2015/11/18/businesses-cant-survive-social-media/.

“10 Benefits of Social Media for Business.” Hootsuite Social Media Management, 6 Nov. 2017, blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-for-business/.