Separatist

Selectivity & objectivity of digital media in ethnography

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:44:32 -0500

A challenge often heard in relation to ethnography, especially newer netnographic & social media based approaches, is that the selectivity, production and curation of media makes it a invalid observational record. This position views the content used by ethnographers as ‘objective data’ which shouldn’t be slurried by the intentions or creativity of the ethnographer.

However, Sarah Pink offers three criticisms of this position in relation to video, but they also hold up in relation to other forms of media.

1. Collecting digital media (video, pictures, audio) in a undisturbed or objective way is often a impossibility. When people’s behaviour is captured by any sort of media they ‘play up for the camera’ (or microphone). It follows that most media constructed to a greater or lesser extent.

2. Knowledge doesn’t necessarily exist as observable facts. Knowledge is produced through experience, through a interaction between the researcher and the subject matter. Not all knowledge is in the form of a objective reality which can be captured, recorded and stored.

3. Objectivity isn’t just a matter of a researchers intentions. Objectivity is contextual. At it’s broadest, media is objective when it is deemed to be objective when it’s viewers.

By adopting a contextual view of digital media’s objectivity you’re able to broaden the types, genres and sources of media you are able to include in a research project.

I recently read “What was the hipster?” from...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:22:29 -0500

I recently read “What was the hipster?” from n+1. Now this video haunts me. Needless to say, I’m all hipstered out.

Nature, nurture and liberal values

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:53:50 -0500

Nature, nurture and liberal values:

Biology determines our behaviour more than it suits many to acknowledge. But…

Great overview of the current state of the classic problem of nature vs nurture. Is evolutionary psychology challenging liberalism?

"Science is often presented in neat little packages. Gravity does this, electricity does that, DNA..."

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:06:46 -0500

“Science is often presented in neat little packages. Gravity does this, electricity does that, DNA does the other. But this is not how new science happens. Rather, these “neat little packages” emerge from a grungy mess of uncertainty that would make any sausage butcher proud.”

Photo

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:03:03 -0500

Taken with instagram

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 01:00:45 -0500

Taken with instagram

New York

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:58:11 -0500

New York

Flowers on the wall, Sydney

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:29:53 -0500

Flowers on the wall, Sydney

Cheery pop tune possibly about a teenage killer used to...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 03:36:09 -0500

Cheery pop tune possibly about a teenage killer used to advertise beer. The YouTube comments tell the story:

Have they lost their fucking minds? A song about a teenage school killer being used in a beer ad. DaveScott69

@DaveScott69 Hi Dave. This song has been widely used across radio and in licensed premises recently. Like many songs used in TV ads the tune was chosen for its popularity with our consumers and its catchy beat rather than its lyrics, which have no association with the ad. We are comfortable that the part of the tune we have chosen within the ad doesn’t include anything controversial. We appreciate your feedback. It certainly wasn’t our intention to offend anyone. Thank you. xxxx

…do you think its a coincidence that XXXX have launched a massive advertising campaign and suddenly this apparent controversy has arisen? are you really that naiive?… Macdoo2

Hipsters Hanging bottles of a washing line, having them magicly fill then drinking warm beer. silly hipsters.. HDextremesports

Social media usage SE Asia

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:45:42 -0500

Social media usage SE Asia

Photo

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 04:01:15 -0500

Great work needs a great brief

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:53:59 -0500

It may seem commonsensical, basic even and it has certainly been said before, but great agency work needs a great brief. Importantly, getting a great brief isn’t a passive process. It requires a bit of work. Whilst the person giving you a brief may think it gives all the detail you need, it’s common to find it doesn’t contain everything required. So how do you get a great brief?

Whenever possible the brief should come from the person commissioning the work. The further you get away from the person commissioning the work the more likely problems will occur later on, avoid playing Chinese whispers.

When reviewing a brief ask why does your client want to conduct the work in the first place? What is the benefit for their business? You must be crystal clear about this from the very beginning because it’s the foundation of any great project. Ask your client to clarify and expand upon key points. Take a collaborative approach to fleshing out the brief, improving it without hurting anyone’s ego. It’s ok to ask questions about things which may seem “obvious” or implied.

More often than not there’s more than one person who has as an interest a project. Try and talk-to, chat, interview and positively milk these stakeholders for clarifications and additional information. When it comes to rules to live your life by - “assume nothing”.

The client or whoever is giving you the brief may not be able to provide all the information needed. Often clients are juggling several projects at once, focusing on a single brand; they may not be able to see the brief as clearly as you do. The best agency partners will not accept an incomplete brief before they start a project. It’s all to easy to meet a client, discuss the brief in general, have a coffee, shake hands and go back to the office. When this happens problems will occur later on. Some pre-research maybe needed to help develop the brief. This can be a straightforward as reviewing existing information or conducting a few interviews, whilst this can take time up front it will pay dividends later on.

Lovely… A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 08:58:59 -0500

Lovely…

A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View.

Flirt off

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:33:15 -0500

Flirt off

Why androids will cry

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:55:38 -0500

In fiction androids are often portrayed without emotion because mimicking emotion is difficult or dangerous. However there’s a problem with this idea; emotions effect everything people think & do. Emotion is not a optional add-on it’s central to how people behave and process information. Emotion plays a part every form of cognition, including memory, decision making & problem solving. The exclusion of emotion from areas like, information-processing models of cognitive psychology, scientific management & marketing research has already led people to question the usefulness of such approaches in understanding human behaviour. With this in mind, if your goal was to create a robot which mimics a human, surely it would be difficult to create one without emotions.

Continuing the theme of odd shaped packaging for water. Flask...

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:05:29 -0500

Continuing the theme of odd shaped packaging for water. Flask shaped Sei water.

Video

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:12:58 -0500

Flexible, foldable, reusable water bottle

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 16:12:42 -0500

Flexible, foldable, reusable water bottle

Predicting mega super hits

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 06:00:06 -0400

Imagine if we could replay time. If we could rewind time 5 years and replay it all over again, would we still get the same hit songs, films and products. Would Lady Gaga become a Fame Monster, would millions of people around the world still watch the entire Twilight saga? It’s a interesting thought experiment, but it’s impossible to test fully without a time machine. However, in the absence of a working time machine Salganik, Dodds and Watts conducted a interesting experiment to try and answer this sort of question.

In the experimental condition the researchers created eight artificial online ”music markets” where people could download unknown songs from unknown artists. Each of these online markets displayed how many times each song was downloaded. All eight of the music markets were left to evolve independently over a period of time.

If the songs were judged on quality alone you would expect that the most popular songs to be consistent across each of the eight markets. However the study showed that quality only partially determined success. Good songs rarely did poorly and poor songs rarely did well, but what was clear was that the social influence of including a list of the most downloaded songs decreased the predictability of success.

This has interesting implications for businesses trying to predict which products or ideas are likely to be successful. Traditionally these sorts of predictions have been based on asking people to rate concepts without taking into consideration the significant effect social influence has on the success of these ideas. Maybe it’s time to take social influence more seriously when testing ideas?

Photo

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:55:57 -0400