Douglas Rushkof's Generation Like Video

Link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/generation-like/
Time: 55 minutes

Summary: Douglas Rushkoff followed several American teenagers to explore the complicated relationship between young consumers and the big-name brands that are constantly working to target them. Today, “likes,” “follows” and “shares” are the arbiters of cool. Now consumers are also the marketers, and teens are able to create and interact with culture in ways never before possible. These teens say that social media makes them feel empowered. For them, you are what you like. It is a part of their identity.
Companies know how to take that data, and turn it into money. The people who are handing over the data because they’re hitting like or they’re telling all their friends, "Will you please come like me?" don't know what the value of that is.
But, the efforts of a snack food or soft drink company to win “likes” and “follows” isn't seen as something to avoid or critique, but rather a self-promotional opportunity gain more likes for themselves. In fact, the more kids participate, the more they appear to absorb and express the values and agendas of the marketers. After all, the key to success is to bring a social media fan base along with you. Likes and views can be a ticket to fame, a path to a career or even way out of poverty
I want to see The Merchants of Cool which was Rushkoff's film from earlier talking about marketing  when corporations needs to chase down kids to find out whats cool and then market that tot them. Now, teens are putting themselves online for anyone to see. They tell the world what they think is cool starting with their own online profiles. Likes, follows, retweets, and favorites  have become the social currency of this generation.
I really enjoyed the video, it was very well made and the people in it have interesting stories. However, its also sad to me to see kids spending a large amount of their time on gaining followers and acting stupid for likes and popularity. I think that companies like The Audience are great and I aspire to work for people like them. I do agree that social media is very important and everyone needs an online presence in this time period. But, Rushkoff is right in that people especially teens need to be informed about the way this works and that they are doing marketing work for little to no money.

The history of relationship markers: In the early days, there was the Hit Economy. Information was linked through hits. Every hit and click represented a visitor of a particular web site and revenue was generated through banners. To increase traffic and value, webmasters would buy their way into the listings of search engines. In the late 1990′s, Google introduced the hyperlink as the new value determination mechanism. They weighed the quality and quantity of links using an algorithm. This is called the Link Economy. In the Link Economy, links lost their former function as central relationship markers and could now be traded and sold.

Like Economy: With the emergence of the Social Web, connections were massively made between people and between people and web objects. Digital devices such as social buttons were developed. The most prominent being the “Like” button. This button was made in February 2009 and shortly became integrated onto other web sites. The production, distribution and consumption of online content, thus, transform into a social activity as well as a value producing activity. This is what they call the Like Economy.

Facebook cookies: The cookie is placed on the user’s machine, even if the individual does not actively use the “Like” button. Facebook still manages to retrieve data on the individual user and their user activity. Additionally, the cookie does not merely trace Facebook users but also non-Facebook users, because the cookie is connected to an IP address not to one person’s identity.

Front vs back of social web: They distinguish between the "front" of the social web, or the interface of the social media platform where users interact with each other and upload content, and the "back" of the social web, the users cannot see the databases where all interactions, content and user data is stored and processed, for example, to make recommendations and to display targeted advertisements.

Central argument: Social media platforms set up a data-intensive infrastructure by decentralizing data collection through social plugins and recentralizing data-processing.

Reaction: The historical path to which we arrived at the like economy makes sense to me. I remember each of those times and how the internet functioned. The idea of the back social web, makes me unhappy. Cookies and targeted market have always bothered me. It’s invasive in that most people don’t know this is happening. The blindly go on Facebook and upload content, but they don’t know that the content is being processed in order to target them. I remember in my Persuasion class sophomore year when this was first pointed out to me, how annoyed I was. All of the advertisements on my Facebook, which I hadn’t looked at closely before, were all targeted to me. I agree with the authors that this system of likes spread throughout the internet is allowing for more data collection. It makes sense. I think that I would be less bothered if people understood that this was happening. Where will the internet go next?

The Circle by Dave Eggers

The Circle, published in 2013, depicts the life of a young tech worker named Mae Holland at a fictional San Francisco based technology company called The Circle in the near future. It starts out as an incredibly rewarding experience when then she begins to face doubts about her vocation due to the company's seemingly well-intentioned innovations revealing a more sinister underlying agenda.The time is somewhere in the not-too-distant future, the Three Wise Men who own and rule the Circle are recognizable as individuals living today. The company demands transparency in all things. Anonymity is banished; everyone’s past is revealed; every­one’s present may be broadcast live in video and sound. Nothing recorded will ever be erased. The reader sees as Mae becomes this rank obsessed person and very transparent during her time at the Circle. she allows her every wakign moment to be recorded and become a celebrity. Although, the reader identifies with Mae at the beginning of the book, the reader at the end realizes that she is not a victim but a dull villain. Her motivations are teenage-Internet petty: getting the highest ratings, moving into the center of the Circle, being popular. She presents a plan that will enclose the world within the Circle’s reach, but she exhibits no complex desire for power, only a longing for the approval of the Wise Men. She is more a high school mean girl than an evil opponent. She doesn't believe the serious consequences of her actions and seems to not care at some point about her disconnect with her parents as well as the death of her ex boyfriend. The final scene is chilling, where she seems to not be concerned for Annie's health condition but rather wants to invent a way to hear her thoughts. She ignored Ty, the creators asks for help and warning of problems with is own company and just continued doing what she is doing. I think Eggers is trying to address the problem with social media and how we are losing our privacy in this technological era. We don't have as strong connections with the people present in our lives because we are so engrossed with our social status. Certain things do need to be private and this novel really reminds us of that. At first, this company seems so amazing, especially in the way it is presented with facilities and perks for all the employees. As the story continues and more of the expectations and norms of working at the Circle are revealed, it becomes so revolting to me as a reader that I have a hard time understanding why Mae can learn to be happy with it. To be in constant communication with everyone and having that kind of pressure to always respond is so stressful. Its no wonder that Annie falls into a coma. This dystopia brings up a multitude of issues that have been talked before a fair amount before (especially in media classes) involving privacy and publicly presenting yourself on social media. I absolutely loved this book and hope to read more things like it.

Mr. Squishy- David Foster Wallace

This story follows a focus group in a marketer's conference room as well as the facilitator of the focus group, Terry Schmidt. Schmidt leads the focus group that is taste-testing a new chocolate snack, named "Felonies!"  The story is about the deception and manipulation in the operation of modern corporations, particularly those whose success is highly dependent on the public's perception of the company and its products. 
Most interesting to me was that Wallace's structure of the story matches the setting (a skyscraper), but its layers are revealed one at a time in an upward journey that reveals the figures of each lower layer to have been duped by someone above them. The higher levels is where it really gets fascinating. We are introduced to the perspectives of members higher up in the marketing firm and told that the true purpose behind the inter-focus group study is to explore a class of marketing strategy where a depiction of the inner workings of the company is the subject of advertising material. So, Schmidt, without knowing it, is effectively delivering to the focus group a primitive form of this behind-the-product advertising.
Further up, the future of demographic analysis is anticipated to be carried out by monitoring websites rather than running focus groups. Only problem is all of the presently employed focus group coordinators. The inter-group experiment is actually a device that will be used to demonstrate to the coordinators their own inimical influence on the focus groups, using a statistical argument which the coordinators, themselves statisticians, will be forced to accept, followed by their resignation or, if they are so unreasonable as to protest, as evidence against any case they may form in a lawsuit regarding their termination. 
There's also a guy scaling the wall of the building and drawing a crowd that speculates on his activities throughout the story, who in the end inflates his costume which bears the image of "Mister Squishy."
This to me represents the interaction of marketing firms with consumers. Marketers put on a carefully designed performance and the consumers are drawn to it.
I very much enjoyed reading this short story. The amount of detail put into the story was very unique and I think it has a lot to say about marketing and the world in general. Deception and secrecy are huge parts of the marketing and business worlds. Its a scary idea and it makes this story very thought provoking. 

Additional Essays due 10/26

Valuing Fans: This essay talks about the rise in popularity of “engagement” a few years ago, a tactic to sell advertisers audiences whose enthusiasm is believed to translate to more awareness of and receptivity to product placement and commercials.The author proposes the building blocks of a more holistic methodology for valuing a fan community, with the goal of helping producers, creators, and advertisers assess how to increase the effectiveness of their investments of time, money, talent, and reputation. For fans, having a model that moves toward quantifying their contribution to the bottom line will help foster a better understanding of how they can function effectively in the media ecology and may ultimately help to better align the interests of the media industry’s decision-makers with theirs. Many of the activities within the broad spectrum of fan behaviors that contribute economic value fit into four categories. These are watching, listening, or attending; purchasing primary and secondary products; endorsing; and sharing and recommending. The first two sources of economic value are “direct” and are thus generally easier to quantify and track than the latter two. Direct sources are already components of how we measure and value audiences.The two “indirect” sources of economic value listed above are so called because, although some of their dimensions can be measured and even quantified, they focus not on existing sources of value but on nurturing and creating new audiences and markets. In terms of economic value, the payoff of indirect sources of value is in the recruitment of new fans who will contribute to the two direct sources. These types of expression, while more difficult to quantify and sometimes to measure, are immensely valuable because of the social elements that help to both retain and recruit audiences. It is also an instance when interests among fans, creators, and producers are aligned. For fans, expanding the community and forming or strengthening social relationships through the media property provides an extra incentive to participate further and to contribute both direct and indirect sources of value. For creators and producers, this type of behavior increases the audience, enhancing both the short- and long-term value, and thus the sustainability, of their projects.One of the biggest misconceptions about the value of a fan community is that it has to be large and locked into particular consumption behaviors to be meaningful. However, without mass-market-size audiences, the property needs a dedicated core of fans who will contribute enough economic value to achieve sustainability through primary sources and who will recruit more people like them to help grow the market or at least compensate for attrition. The author argues that fans have always gone beyond the consumption behaviors that advertisers and producers have used as the predictor of the ultimate value of the audience. But, by broadening the framework and digging deeper into how people actually show their affinity for a media property and what drives them to do so, we can gain a more thorough understanding of which communities are fast and fleeting and which are here to stay.

Retro Brands and Retro Marketing: This short essay discusses and analyzes a form of brand extension strategy that has gained prominence, in which tired or even abandoned brands have been reanimated and successfully relaunched. When these big brands, who are routed in the past, extend and use their existing brand name to introduce a new product or service, the past meanings and images that it invokes become an important element to be managed, understood, wielded, and shaped by managers.  Management will deliberately reach into the past and consciously seek to gain new value from old brands and the meaningful relationships they convey. Stephen Brown, John Sherry, and the author define retrobranding as “the revival or relaunch of a product or service brand from a prior historical period, which is usually but not always updated to contemporary standards of performance, functioning, or taste,” seeing retro goods as “brand-new, old-fashioned offerings” (2003b, 20). Old brands retain value simply by being old: the value of nostalgia, the so-called retro appeal. There is also value in the communal or cultural relationships that the brand has built over its lifetime. Finally, there are values on an individual level that relate to the former two other values.This investigative work on retro-branding bridged Brown’s (2001) theorizing and retro-marketing case studies with my ethnographic research on longstanding entertainment brands, their ongoing extensions, and the role of consumer culture and subculture in this process (Kozinets 2001). As well, the investigation sought to bring together research on popular culture with research on consumer and marketplace cultures. It deepened an exploration into the sources and implications of the convergence of fan communities with brand cultures.Brown, Sherry, and the author argue that powerful brands possess their own detailed story structure. They say that aura (brand essence), allegory (brand stories), and arcadia (idealized community) are the character, plot, and the setting, respectively, of brand meaning. Retro-branding research thus builds on the idea that brand allegories are stories, narratives, or extended metaphors in symbolic form. Successful branding is successful world-building, and the world it builds can be a window into the brand’s own past. Successful brand narratives will possess an almost utopian evocation of past worlds and past or present communities.The propose that there are six key characteristics that create value in sleeping brands and other properties. They are dormancy, iconicity, evocativeness, utopianism, solidarity and perfectibility. After these six characteristic elements are met, the conditions for revival and the revaluation—as well as the addition of value by the efforts of the community—are met. Yet, behind these elements, there is also an inspiration: a motivation to find, to share, to dream, and to build on.Buried within the stories and histories must be something mysterious and strange, something that powers the connection and motivates the chase.A strong brand will combine the opposing elements of a deeply meaningful product. The brand that can tap into these insoluble puzzles offers lasting engagement and meaningful connection that can persist through the decade.The author uses the example of Health Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight (2008) to show how Hollywood remakes and refreshes old franchises just as old brands are continually extended and renewed.

“Consumer” or “Multiplier”: This short essay is about the difference between the terms consumer and multiplier. The term consumer is a fixture of the marketing, media, and cultural worlds. It evoked the distinction between producer and consumer, reminding the corporation that capitalism is not about the art of the possible but the art of the desirable. It doesn't matter what the corporation does. It will sell only what the consumer wants.On the other hand, not everyone likes the term consumer. Some think consumers sound like ravening beasts who must destroy what they buy instead of renting it from the recycler. Others dislike the term because it suggests that the consumer always destroys value and can’t actually ever participate in its creation. Another objection is because in what sense can we be said to consume digital goods, when they are not scarce in any conventional sense, and they are not diminished by the act of consumption? The author's preferred term is multiplier. A multiplier is someone who will treat the good, service, or experience as a starting point. Multipliers will build in some of their own intelligence and imagination. They will take possession of a cultural artifact and make it more detailed, more contextually responsive, more culturally nuanced, and more valuable. Multipliers will add value by involving others. They will multiply the value in collective acts of construction. Furthermore, the multiplier will use his or her instruments and networks to publicize the innovation.

“In Defense of Memes”:
The author agrees that the terms viral and meme often connote passive transmission by mindless consumers, but she takes issue with the claim that meme always precludes active engagement or that the term has a universal, static meaning. As understood by trolls, memes are not passive and do not follow the model of biological infection. Instead, trolls see memes as microcosmic nests of evolving content. Memes spread because something about a given image or phrase or video or whatever lines up with an already-established set of linguistic and cultural norms. In recognizing this connection, a troll is able to assert his or her cultural literacy and to bolster the scaffolding on which trolling as a whole is based, framing every act of reception as an act of cultural production. She uses the example of Insane Clown Posse, which performs in full-face clown makeup, always being a target for trolling humor. Especially with the 2010 release of the group’s single Miracles and its video.Within a few days of the video’s release, dozens of remixed images and .gifs were posted to 4chan’s infamous /b/ board, many of which merged with existing memetic content. Most significantly, memes in the trolling world emerge organically, with absolutely no consideration for or loyalty to the supply side of the equation. Capital, in other words, rarely enters the picture. Trolls don’t benefit from the largess of media producers, and media producers don’t benefit financially from the engagement of trolls. Trolls may appropriate media content, but there is no interest in either camp for symbiosis, preempting any possibility for moral/economic relations between trolls and media producers.

Reaction: These four essays read rather quickly because of how familiar I was with the content. I think that the most powerful part to me was in Retro-branding. Writing that aura, allegory, and arcadia are the character, plot, and the setting of brand meaning, makes so much sense to me as a media major but also as someone who grew up watching this at work. Nostalgia is one of the best ways to promote anything because it is such a strong emotion. I also very much agree with the switch from the term consumer to multiplier, it makes more sense in this modern time of mass technology. I generally agree with the majority of what these short essays said. However, I didn't completely understand the last essays point. 

If It Doesn't Spread, Its Dead (Part One and Two) by Henry Jenkins Due 10/19

Part One: Media Viruses and Memes
Jenkins concerned with the use of the terms “viral” and “memes” by those in the marketing, advertising and media industries creating more confusion than clarity. Both these terms rely on a biological metaphor to explain the way media content moves through cultures, a metaphor that confuses the actual power relations between producers, properties, brands, and consumers. Furthermore, just what counts as viral is unclear. In focusing on the involuntary transmission of ideas by unaware consumers, these models allow advertisers and media producers to hold onto an inflated sense of their own power to shape the communication process, even as unruly behavior by consumers becomes a source of great anxiety within the media industry. The infection metaphor is attractive in that it reduces consumers, often the most unpredictable variable in the sender-message-receiver frame, to involuntary “hosts” of media viruses and that it hold onto the idea that media producers can design “killer” texts which can ensure circulation by being injected directly into the cultural “bloodstream.”
Given the problems with these terms, Jenkins and his partners are  proposing an alternative model, the idea of spreadable media which better accounts for how and why media content circulates at the present time. this model emphasizes the activity of consumers also called “multipliers”  in shaping the circulation of media content, often expanding potential meanings and opening up brands to unanticipated new markets.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 was looking for a way to explain cultural evolution, imagining it as a biological system. What genes are to genetics, he suggested, memes would be to culture. Like the gene, the meme is driven to self-create, and is possessed of three important characteristics. These are "fidelity — memes have the ability to retain their informational content as they pass from mind to mind, fecundity — memes possess the power to induce copies of themselves and longevity — memes that survive longer have a better chance of being copied."
The authors argue that this approach misunderstands the way content spreads, which is namely, through the active practices of people. They say that “memes” do not self-replicate and that people are not “susceptible” to this viral media
Part Two: Sticky and Spreadable- Two Paradigms
The authors prefer to think of media as spreadable. Spreadability as a concept describes how the properties of the media environment, texts, audiences, and business models work together to enable easy and widespread circulation of mutually meaningful content within a networked culture. This new “spreadable” model allows us to avoid metaphors of “infection” and “contamination” which over-estimate the power of media companies and underestimate the agency of consumers. In this emerging model, consumers play an active role in “spreading” content rather than being the passive carriers of viral media. Spreadability relies on the human mind to spread valuable content to others.
The term “sticky” first and foremost refers to websites which “grab and hold the attention of your visitor” (Meredian, n.d.). Stickiness seeks to attract and hold the attention of site visitor and depends on concentrating the attention of all interested parties on a specific site or through a specific channel. Stickiness typically tracks the migrations of individual consumers within a site.
They argue that for media companies to fully grasp the advantages of spreadability, they have to unlearn the lessons of “stickiness,” which is less effective than it used to be.
Reaction
I noticed that this was written in 2009 and since it is more than 5 years later, I was wondering if they have new ideas about the spread of media and if this piece has actually effected and changed the terminology of "viral media" to spreadable media in some circles. I agree that the term viral media doesn't give enough credit to the consumer who actively spread the media and change it to their liking. The work of the consumer or "multiplier" is too important to only give it a host role inferring that they don't have any influence on the spread what so ever. I like the idea of spreadable media, it is a more comprehensive term for the process that is commonly know as viral media.

Six Provocations for Big Data by Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford due Oct. 4

Introduction: Big Data is not notable to these authors because of size, but rather because of relationality to other data. It is fundamentally networked and its value comes from the patterns that can be derived by making connections between pieces of data, about an individual, about groups of people or simply about the structure of information itself. Big Data is important because it refers to an analytic phenomenon playing out in academia and industry. Big data is the kind of data that encourages the practice of apophenia which is seeing patterns where not actually exists, simply because massive quantities of data can offer connections that radiate in all directions. Because of this, the authors raise questions about the assumptions, methodological frameworks, and biases in the Big Data phenomenon. As well as what the data means, who has access to it, how deployed, and to what ends.
Different Sections:
1. Automating Research Changes the Definition of Knowledge: This section talks about how Big Data refers to a computational turn in thought and research. From this emerged a system of knowledge that is changing the objects of knowledge while also informing how we understand human networks and community.  Big Data re frames key questions about ethics, process of research, constitution of knowledge, and reality. Boyd and Crawford respond to Anderson's piece which I wrote about last week. They read his piece as revealing an arrogant undercurrent in the debate- where other forms of analysis are sidelined and Big Data is seen as privileged as having a direct line to knowledge. Big Data has limitations and restrictions. The issue of time is one where their data is about right now with no historical context that is predictive. This makes research limited because of the sheer difficulty or impossibility of accessing older data. Rather than what Anderson asked "What can science learn from Google?" these authors believe that we should ask how Google and similar companies might change the meaning of learning and what limitations/ possibilities come with it?
2. Claims to Objectivity and Accuracy are Misleading: This section is about how Big Data and its  issues with objectivity and accuracy. It is supposed to offer the humanistic discipline a new way to claim the status of quantitative science and objective method. However, Big Data is still subjective and what it quantifies doesn't necessarily have a closer claim on objective truth. Furthermore, large sets of data from Internet sources are often unreliable. You have to understand the properties and limits of a data set regardless of its size. It could not be random or representative. We need to know where data is coming from and to know and account for the weaknesses in that data including bias
3. Bigger Data are not Always Better Data: This section is about how quantity doesn't equal quality, which is something that supporters of Big Data aren't taking into account. It is also increasingly important to recognize that value of small data. Research insights can be found at any level including modest scales. The size of data being sampled should fit the research question being asked. Sometimes smaller is better.
4. Not all Data are Equivalent: Some researchers assume that analysis done with small data can be done better with Big Data, however this is presuming that data is interchangeable. Taken out of context, data loses meaning and value. The example the authors give is with types of networks. When sociologists and anthropologists were the primary scholars interested in social networks, data about people’s relationships was collected through surveys, interviews, observations, and experiments. Using this data, social scientists focused on describing one’s ‘personal networks’ which is the set of relationships that individuals develop and maintain. These connections were evaluated based on a series of measures developed over time to identify personal connections. Big Data introduces two new popular types of social networks derived from data traces: ‘articulated networks’ and ‘behavioral networks.’Articulated networks are those that result from people specifying their contacts through a mediating technology These articulated networks take the form of email or cell phone contacts and buddy/friend/followers lists on social media. Behavioral networks are derived from communication patterns, cell coordinates, and social media interactions. Both behavioral and articulated networks have great value to researchers, but they are not equivalent to personal networks. For example, although often contested, the concept of ‘tie strength’ is understood to indicate the importance of individual relationships. When a person chooses to list someone as their ‘Top Friend’ on MySpace, this may or may not be their closest friend; there are all sorts of social reasons to not list one’s most intimate connections first.
5. Just Because Its Accessible Doesn't Mean Its Ethical: This section starts off with an ethical research problem where the privacy of unknowing Facebook users having their data collected was compromised.  So what is the status of "public data" on social media sites? Can it simply be used without permission? Research on human subjects always brings up privacy issues. Little is understood about the ethical implications of the research being done. In order to act in ethical manner, scholars need to reflect on the importance of accountability.  Protect rights and well-being of human participants. Big Data researchers often don't acknowledge a difference between being in public and being public.
6. Limited Access to Big Data Creates New Digital Divides: This section questions the assumption that Big Data has easy access. Really only social media companies have access to large social data especially transactional data. some companies restrict access, others sell privilege of access for high fees, etc. Basically, whoever has money can get access whether it be huge universities or wealthy companies. Skill is another aspect to consider. You need to have a computational background- be able to read numbers. There are also more male researchers who have these skills and determining what questions are asked.
Reaction: I found reading this after reading the Anderson piece to be very helpful in understanding how this new system works. This was a very convincing counterargument. What I got from reading this piece is that when doing research don't always go to Big Data, use what data is good for your question, be ethical in the use of Big Data, and sometime other methods besides Big Data would be better. I am very concerned about the points made in number six. This digital divide is a huge problem. Not everyone has the money to get access to it. Computational skills can be learned but the money and gender issue is a problem to me. It seems to me that society is flying forward with the concept of Big Data. We should embrace it and try to use it effectively and ethically. Other data collecting methods shouldn't be thrown out the window though. Those methods still have value. We also need to address this divide because this information needs to be more accessible for it to benefit research in a big way.