Digital Culture:

Bringing it all together

FMCS 3100Production ProjectKimberly Powers

Introduction

Throughout this course we have learned about a variety of different digital tools including Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogs, and more.

With the use of a blog, it is easy to see how all of these things can come together to help people communicate with each other in a digital world.

My Blog

Throughout the semester I have been keeping a blog about my experiences in Australia.

It is the perfect tool to demonstrate how blogging, social networking, and sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr can be intertwined.

My BlogTo view my blog in it’s entirety follow the link; however, throughout the presentation I will be breaking it down and highlighting key relevant topics.

http://kimberlypowersaz.blogspot.com.au/

Blogs

As Hsu and Lin’s paper demonstrates, there has been a lot of research done on what motivates people to blog.

Their main conclusion was blogging for the purpose of enjoyment, especially if the blog was easy to use.

Blogs

In my specific case, my motivation was mostly to keep my family informed on what I was up to, however, in the process of making my blog I did find it to be quite enjoyable.

Knowing that I was keeping my audience entertained with my stories and adventures was also enjoyable.

Blogs

My motivation for blogging is a popular one which is strongly supported by Stefanone and Jang’s research.

They found that blogs have been adopted as a mode of communication for strong tie network contacts, similar to email.

Blogger

Blogger.com is the site I used to create my Blog.

It is very easy to use for both the blogger and the readers.

It shows statistics of viewership and traffic sources for the blogger.

Blogger

One of the charts blogger provides to show the number of page views over time.

Blogger

-Charts such as these show what type of audience the blog has as well as what types of browsers are most looking at the page.-Statistics like these kept me motivated to keep blogging throughout the semester.

Social Networks

One of the best ways for me to share my blog with my friends is through the use of Facebook.

Whenever I post a new blog entry I can copy and paste a link to my Facebook wall. This also leads to discussion about my blog and travels not only on my blog but on my Facebook as well.

Social Networks

As Pempek et. al. points out, Facebook allows me to have a one-to-many communication style with the novel capacity for personal control and creation of the content.

This is perfect for sharing my blog because I am able to share my link to many people at once. I currently have over 700 friends which means many people are receiving links to my blog via Facebook.

This style blends interactive qualities of new media with the observational qualities of the past (Pempek).

Social Networks

This is an example of a posting of a link to my blog. As you can see, through Facebookpeople have the opportunity to interact withthe blog in an additional format besides justthe blog site itself.

Social Networking

This image shows the statistics of how many viewers are referred to my blog via Facebook. Its obvious that using a social network to increase the audience works!

Flickr

Flickr is a photography website that I can directly embed into my blog posts through blogger.

This is a convenient tool when there are several photos that need to be uploaded to the blog.

Flickr

-This shows how I was able to use Flickr on my blog to show my audience a bunch of photos from a trip I took.

-Flickr makes it very easy to link upan album on their site with Blogger.

YouTube

YouTube is another great site that can be used on a blog to share information.

I have found that a successful blog includes not only text and photos, but also video content.

I can share photos that I find relevant to the content I’m posting or I can upload my own original videos.

YouTube

This is an excerpt from my blog where I was able to, very easily, share a video with my audience demonstrating what I was discussing.

YouTube

Luckily for me the original owner has not felt the need to remove the clip I posted on my blog from YouTube, which is often the case for bloggers according to Hilderbrand’s paper.

Hilderbrand also points out that YouTube has become an archive of television which was beneficial for my blog so I could demonstrate a point to my readers.

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking became very helpful with the creation of my blog.

If I found a link that I thought I would want to post later I could simply save it to Delicious, a popular social bookmarking site.

Social Bookmarking

The above image shows how I wasable to save the link on Deliciousand the clip to the left shows how I was able to post the link at a latertime.

Social Bookmarking

I was also able to spread knowledge of my blog through Delicious. Other people saw that I saved the page and were able to find it by the tags that I selected. This is the beauty of social bookmarking.

Conclusion

To wrap things up, I would like to make the important point that while each of the tools we discussed throughout the course are individually useful and important, they are most successful when used together. They contribute to Digital Culture by working with one another.

Conclusion

All of the things discussed throughout this course were able to help me keep in touch with my family back home.

Digital Culture played a key role in my communication with people at home. I simply can’t imagine a world without it.

It will be very interesting to see how Digital Culture further progresses in the future.

References

Hilderbrand, Lucas. YouTube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge, Film Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 1, (Fall 2007), pp.48-57

Pempek, Tiffany A., Yevdokiya A., Yermolayeva, Sandra L. Calvert College. Students’ social networking experiences on Facebook. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30, (2009), pp. 227-238.

Stefanone, Michael A. & Chyng-Yang Jang. Writing for Friends and Family: The Interpersonal Nature of Blogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13, (2008), pp.123-140.

Hsu, Chin-Lung & Judy Chaun-Chaun Lin. Acceptance of blog usage: The roles of technology acceptance, social influence and knowledge sharing motivation. Information & Management, 45, (2008), pp. 65-74.