Major
Assignment # 4
I
determined that a good place to display the digital media artifact I made is on
StumbleUpon. The difficulty with
releasing my graphic falls with my target audience. It applies mostly to college age students but
mediums such as Facebook would only reach a limited amount of people. Using Stumbleupon it would be possible to
reach a larger audience and also allow for a secondary audience to reach it:
the average internet user.
According
to the StumbleUpon site (1), the networking site has as many as 10 million
users who could potentially see any page recommended to the site. Unlike Facebook (2), where the average user
has 120 connections, so an image would only get view by a portion of those and
maybe to friends of those connections.
Much like how Boyd (3) talks about the flow of information on the
internet, for something to reach a lot of people it needs to be thrown into the
stream. StumbleUpon offers a direct path
unlike Facebook which would require a lot of redirecting of users for it to be
viewed by a significant number of the target audience.
Because of the
organization of Web 2.0, it is important that if the piece is to be seen that
it attracts the readers. The target
audience does not need to sit there and read it like a centralized broadcast,
but rather can skip over it to the next thing.
Even with StumbleUpon I will be fighting against what Boyd refers to as
the issue of Homophily, where the digital media artifact will almost
immediately be put into a category that will dissuade the main target audience
from paying attention to it. However it
will still be there and won’t be completely isolated.
One of the final
challenges my piece will face once it is released is the lack of interactivity. According to Wright (4), the current
generation is much better at learning and comprehending when the artifact is
something that allows for interaction and is not just a static image such as my
infographic. Something that would have
maybe been more effective at suggesting an alternative to piracy would be a
game of some kind which would punish the player. In this way, the viewer is involved more so
than an image, and their attention is on the material.
My digital media
artifact could potentially succeed if uploaded to StumbleUpon due to how the
image will still possibly be viewed randomly after it has been
categorized. In my opinion, an upload to
Facebook would reach a small audience and would not spread beyond that group of
viewers. Web 2.0 is an interactive
environment and the viewers are going to be looking for something either
attractive or engaging, and an infographic about the downsides to piracy do not
fit into this. The only thing that will
make this work however, is the interactivity.
Viewers will still be able to access the piece and they have the option
to like it or dislike it. If enough
people are enjoying the piece it will be recommended to others.
Works Cited
11)
"Overview." Explore More. Web
Pages, Photos, and Videos. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.
22)
Sandberg, Sheryl. "The Facebook Blog."
How Many Friends Can You Have? N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.
33)
Boyd, Danah. ""Streams of Content,
Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media"" "Streams
of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social
Media" N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.
44)
Wright, Will. "Wired 14.04: Dream
Machines." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2012.
