Campaign Project

For one of our workshops we were asked to make a video for a campaign. I chose to do one on healthy eating as i thought it was quite a sensible idea, and quite appropriate for the area as there are no end of fast food take outs and restaurants around town.

I found the video quite interesting and educational to make. I found out that a lot of people use all the fast food places continuously throughout the day. Also the facts which I found for the video surprised me quite a bit. I knew that people liked to eat fast food a lot, but these facts verified that it could be something a lot more serious than I ever could have imagined.

For this campaign we also had to explain how we would use social media to build inform and develop our campaigns. For my campaign I thought that I could set up a Facebook group or page dedicated to those who would like to talk about any issues and problems that either they have, or maybe they know someone and would like help in deciding how to help them. I also thought I could do a similar thing on Twitter and any other social networking groups that could spread the word and help others.

I thought that I could set up various events that would get all kinds of people involved such as patitioning around fast food areas, trying to get as many people involved as possible, maybe families as parents would not want to see their children growing up unhealthy because of the sheer amount of fast food restaurants around the area.

Social Networking

In our first workshop we were asked the question 'What is the first website you go on when you open up your internet browser?’. I along with a vast majority of the class was ready with the answer 'Facebook'. This shows that social networking is fast becoming one of the most popular websites amoung young people.

Although this is a good thing for people to keep in touch with friends and relatives who they do not see much anymore, it can also be a bad thing. For example, some youngsters may spend all their time on the internet instead of actually going out and properly interacting with their friends and family, making them become more unsociable, which must not be the primary aim of these kinds of social networking sites.

Another bad thing about these social networking groups is that it can be quite dangerous. If people add others who they do not know they can end up in serious trouble as has happened to people in the past. By having all your rather personal information written on your page it makes it easier for these unknown people to get to know you and what will connect with you more. It seems very silly for people to have all this information at the ready for those who want to see it, yet we still all do it, knowing that it could potentially be quite a dangerous and stupid thing to do.

Moreover, by having all this information on the website, it makes it possible for someone to take over your identity. Even though it is not as serious as having someone steal for example, your bank card and knowing the pin, it would still be very disconcerting knowing that someone out there may be pretending to be you.

Digital Media

During my first Digital Media lecture, I learnt about all the 'New Media' of today's society. Some of which include: New textual experiences; New relationships between subjects (users and consumers) and media tecnologies; and New conceptions of the biological body's relationship to tecnological media. This all gave me a wider insight into the world of today and just how much the media influences our day-to-day lives.

For example, under the feature 'New conceptions of the biological body's relationship to tecnological media' I fit into the category as I sometimes use the Nintendo Wii, giving you more physical interraction with the technology being used. Another example of this can be seen under the feature 'New experiences of relationship between embodiment, identity and community'. I use Facebook quite a lot in my daily routine creating a sense of identity for myself and in order to keep in touch with old friends, making use of the online community.

In order to further my knowledge of this, I had a look at one of our recommended reading items: 'The bandwidth-sync correlation that's worth thinking about'.
[WWW] http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/08/the-bandwidth-sync-correlation-thats-worth-thinking-about.html

From this I have learnt that each form of communication, whether on the internet or to do with television, can be seen as either high or low impact on its audience. For example, movies being high impact due to the emotions that are invoked while an audience is watching, due to the realness involved and Twitter being low impact as there is not a great deal of information involved.