Ethnography

My ethnography presentation is on my usage of instagram and twitter, which are currently two of the biggest social media platforms in the world.

I use both of them a substantial amount, and am on my phone nearly every hour checking them and being updated about what's going on in the world. In the morning the first thing I do is check Twitter and scroll back through the tweets to see if I missed anything while asleep. Throughout the day I subconsciously open and close the apps on my phone, no matter where I am so I can make sure I'm not missing out on anything going on.

This shows a lot about culture these days with both the websites adding to celebrity culture. You are updated about your favourite celebrities lives through these networks, finding out about future jobs, personal aspects and whatever else they want to share. You are also able to find out about what is going on in your friends lives through these, being able to see where they are and what they are up to at a click of a button.

While this can sound great, that you are able to access your friends inner most thoughts and current whereabouts, social media has become so prominent in our lives that many people are becoming depressed because of it. If you see your friends having lots of fun over the social media sites then you wonder why you aren't. People these days are suffering a social media depression, caused by the websites that we all seem to be connected on. 

Whatever people think about social media though, there is one thing for certain: it's just getting bigger.

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Love is Louder

The 'Love is Louder' campaign is a campaign that promotes that 'love is louder than bullying'. It is a campaign that has many influential celebrity supporters, including Demi Lovato, Brittany Snow and Miley Cyrus. It speaks out against bullying and let's young people who are suffering from it know that they can get through it. 

4600 ten to twenty four year olds commit suicide a year, many because of bullying for who they are and how they live, and knowing that so many people are out there looking out for them will hopefully encourage them to get help. The Love is Louder campaign encourages them to do that.

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Campaigns

A campaign I looked at while researching different campaigns was the video above. It is targeted at males who cat call to women on the street, but rather than having females berating them, it is other males who find their actions offensive and setting a bad picture for other men. I like this campaign because it calls out misogynistic men who think it is alright to sexually harass women on the street.

As a young female I am familiar with having comments shouted at me on the street by strangers. In fact the majority of girls are used to it, which is disgusting. Girls should not walk down the street with the fear of having a creep making rude, uncomfortable comments. For girls in the 21st century to be use to this, and still be living with the fear of this, is unacceptable. Thankfully more people are speaking out against it, and women have started standing up for themselves in defense. Having males speak out against it too is a step in the right direction to end the patriarchal world we live in, and hopefully more campaigns like this will come out in the future.  

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Seminar Debate!

We had a debate in our seminar over whether piracy should be legal. I was on the team that answered for pro piracy. We had a few key arguments to support why we thought that piracy should be legal.

Our main point was that even though more people are downloading music/movies illegally, the artists and companies aren't actually losing money. This is because people who are now listening and enjoying their music illegally are then going on to buy merchandise and concert tickets, which is bringing in revenue for the artists.

This chart shows that even though money from the sales of recorded music is falling, the music industry is gaining more money from everything else. The only revenue which has fallen is the records money, everything else; concerts, publishing, merchandise, has risen over the past 15 years. 

Another point we made was that through sharing music and movies, more people are listening to a variety of different artists and watching less mainstream movies that are made with lower budgets. Bands just starting out usually release a free EP at the beginning of their career, and with people sharing more music they are getting a bigger following. This means their revenues from other aspects (as shown in the chart above) are bigger and the bands are making money this way. With movies, despite the decline in physical copies of films, digital sharing is compensating for this. 

A report said '"Despite the Motion Picture Association of America's claim that online piracy is devastating the movie industry, Hollywood achieved record-breaking global box office revenues of $35 billion US in 2012, a 6 percent increase over 2011.' [*]

We presented our points to the opposing team, and then debated why it isn't a negative to the media industry. One of our main points against the team arguing was all of what was said above, and we also pointed out that while they can speak against pirating, the majority of people, especially teenagers, all own at least one pirated album/movie on their laptops.

Unfortunately we lost the debate, but what I learnt from this experience is how to put together points in a situation against over people's opinions, and how to communicate with other people who have different opinions to your own. 

I enjoyed doing the debate, and having an *almost* civil debate against my classmates.

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For our pecha kucha we looked into 'Tracking surveillance and data analysis of shoppers.' We decided to look and see how shoppers were targeted both online and in stores so that companies can make the most profit and best ways to exploit their products.

The first thing we looked at was how shops online track your internet searches to advertise best to their customers and to make the most out of customers' shopping experiences. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter use cookies to track and advertise to their users, so that while customers are using the social networks to share with friends, they are also being advertised to. Twitter we found also promotes accounts that you might be interested in by looking at who you 'follow' on the website. 

Websites like Amazon and Ebay look into your previously brought products to advertise what other people who brought those products also brought and advertises to you in this way. This gives the websites a chance to make more profit from it's buyers as they are advertised things they don't know they want until it pops up onto the website. 

Supermarkets like Tescos and Sainsbury's also track shoppers in the shop and advertise products to them. They use data collected instores to place products in more convenient places for shoppers to find. The aisles in the supermarkets leading you to your goods guide you through other products, which you aren't aware of wanting until you pass by them.

Products that are more expensive are put at eye level so that the buyer will see them first and consider buying them. The shops take into account average height of the customers to place these items on the shelves, before selling them.

We also found that supermarkets use smells to entice the customer, an example of this is that supermarkets often smell like fresh bakery goods, because the smells from the bakery are pumped around the store.

We looked at both problems and benefits from this:

We discussed whether it is going too far for mannequins in shops to have cameras in them to watch and see where customers go to first in shops and how long they spend in certain areas. Also if it is going to far to be able to trace customers around their stores with their mobile locators, which give the store bosses a trail of where customers head to in stores. 

Benefits we found from the ways shops and online track potential buyers include not having to browse the internet for ages to find the products you are looking for. Being able to find items of desire easier in stores, and quicker service times.

In my opinion while it can be seen as an invasion of privacy to have all these ways of tracking you both online and in stores, it also means that you are able to find things you want a lot easier, and therefore make the most out of your shopping experiences. Also these are businesses that depend on people buying things from their shops, and if they don't know what the customers want then they are not going to be able to maintain a business for themselves. It makes shopping a lot less of a chore than it could be. 

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