A2 Documentary

This is my A2 Media Documentary. The name of my Documentary is FaceLess.

Radio Advertisement

As you can see above this is my Radio Advertisement, this is what I will be using to make people aware of my Documentary.

'faceless' newspaper ad

Within my newspaper ad, I have done it in the same style that Facebook has been set up. the newspaper ad is the image above.

Final A2 Evaluation

As you can see here this is my final A2 evaluation, I have also created a small powerpoint, which you will be able to see on a later slide....

Hypodermic Needle Theory

Within my Final Documentary I use the hypodermic needle theory, the way in which i use this is to inject information in to the people that are watching my documentary.

Hypodermic Needle Theory - 


Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model (see picture!) and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. Don't forget that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking. This was particularly rampant in Europe during the First World War (look at some posters here) and its aftermath.

Basically, the Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.


Here is a Youtube video that will help explain the theory better:

'faceless'

Now that I have finished my Production Piece, I need to start think of a name, there were many that I first thought of, however i feel that the name that really caught on was, 'faceless'. The reason why I feel that this name is suitbale is because it relates within the social network effect.

Production Name Ideas

Now that I have finished my documentary, I need to start thinking of names, here are a few ideas that I have in mind: The social network effect The facebook network The global network faceless What I think I am going to do is set up a poll to see which one people feel is the best name for my documentary.

Production Process

I am now coming towards the end of editing my final piece, as the deadline is this week. The final bit of work that I need to do is finish recording my speech, where i talk about the changes in society, from when people used to get in and go out with their mates, to getting home from school and plugging themselves in to their social networking site!! The content of the speech was: "In today’s society there has been a revolution in the way that we communicate with one another. With social media sites like ‘Facebook’ coming in, it is having a massive impact on everyone’s life’s. In this documentary I am going to look in to the effects that facebook is having on peoples lives, and the way that people have created a community over the internet and exclude themselves away from the community outside there front door."

The effects of social networking

There was an article in the Daily mail the other day suggesting that social networking sites are harming children's brains. Within this article they go on to say that it has been proven that children that use social networking sites on a regular basis have shorter attention spans than children who don't.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1153583/Social-websites-harm-childrens-brains-Chilling-warning-parents-neuroscientist.html

I have also managed to find a video on youtube discussing the matter.

Arab Spring

Over the last few years there has been several countries in conflict with their governments, and the way that the people of these countries have tried to make changes, is by using social media sites like Facebook to make people across the world aware of this. A few weeks ago there was a documentary on Television called the arab spring, and they were showing coverage of what was happening and the impact that facebook played on these peoples lives. Here is a short video of one of the episodes:

Production process

Currently in full swing of filming. I have been watching several youtube videos in current weeks, to expand my knowledge on the effect that facebook is having. A video that I found very useful was; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4gt62uAasE In this video it identified lots of facts and statistics that I can use in my documentary, and it also gave me an insight in to some editing techniques i could use. Some of the figures in this video are amazing, especially the one about; if 'facebook' was a country, then it would be the third largest country in the world.

Production Process

I am currently undergoing my filming. However, I have tweaked a few sections of my interview process, and instead of me formally interview the candidates, I am goig to use Facebook to ask the interviewees the questions. This will show some continuity throughout my documentary.

How close are you to your facebook friends?

I was reading an article in the daily Telegraph recently, and someone carried out a poll that found that the average young adult has 237 Facebook friends, but only two they could turn to for real support. The survey, of 1,000 people aged 18 to 35, found two-thirds of respondents said they had two or fewer really close friends. This shows that although there are lots of people that hide behind their computer screens and use their social networking sites to keep in touch with their 'friends', the majority of the people that they are speaking to they wouldn't even consider to be a proper friend. If you'd like to read more on this article... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9033161/Facebook-friends-cant-be-relied-on-in-a-crisis.html

'Policeman facing disciplinary action over tweets'

I was reading an article online the other day about a Policemen that got himself in trouble over the cuts that they have made within the public sector lately. The tweet was in October when he wrote "Last 3 nights in North Dorset 3 cops covering everything north of the A31, the public here should have #noconfidenceintheresamay". They are currently investigating the tweets that have been made by the officer, and will be taking appropriate action. I feel that this is underlying my point that social networking is taking over, and even public sector workers are using it to criticise the way that the country is being run. You can read more on this story here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-16627270

Statistics of Facebook

In this post, I am going to be carrying out some research in to some of the Facebook statistics:

This next image is a graph idenitfying the ages of people using facebook:

This next graph is Identifying what sort of activites that people carry out on their social networking site:

For every 1 minute of Facebook time there are 1,789,736 actions being; 510,414 Comments 382,861 Post Likes 231,605 Messages Sent 135,849 Photo's added 98,604 Friendships approved 82,557 Status Updates 79,364 Wall Posts 74,204 Event Invites Received 72,816 Pages Liked 66,168 Photo's tagged 55,304 Links shared

I have also done an essay on how Facebook is and has changed the world

Social networking has become one of the most popular means of communication in recent years. Since 2005 social networking sites have taken over several other communication methods, as people are able to access these sites to speak to their friends, which is what most people use the sites for. However, there are lots of countries that have started to use these sites to communicate with the rest of the world, and make people aware of what is going on within the country. People within these countries are signing on to facebook accounts to let one another know what they think about the corruption within the country, and how they feel they can take action against this, and then when the protesters take it to the streets they record all of the scenes and update them on to a YouTube account, so that they can stream them world wide. This is known as the Arab Spring. An example of a circumstance like this is within Libya, when there were families praying after there were 1000 Libyans gunned down in cold blood by gadafis men in 1996, the Libyan people never forgot this and have a day in remembrance of people that had lost their lives. There was a family who’s father had died in the massacre, and they felt very strongly about this day and had a large hatetrid for Gaddafi. However, the next day the family came home to find out the Gadafi had arrested the families lawyer. This caused lots of upsets as this lawyer was not only the families lawyer but the majority of the cities, so there were hundreds of people starting to take to the streets to protest against this, and as hours went by they got closer to the headquarters where the lawyer was being held. When the protesters gathered outside, they realised that there wasn’t just hundreds anymore, there were thousands of people supporting them, they gathered around the gates, and one of gadafis men came out to warn all the protesters that if they didn’t return to their homes they would all get shot, which caused an even bigger uproar and people began to attack the headquarters from every angle. Later that day they finally broke through the gates and had burnt the building down to the ground. However, whilst all of this was happening a large amount of the protesters were not only fighting, but they were also streaming the scenes straight to the web on their mobile phones. It was after a small protest in Tunisia where the Tunisians started to fight back against their government, and broadcasting in on social networking sites to try and get the attention of other countries. After this there started to become a trend, and you start seeing lots of other countries around them taking the same route, so in a way they were all helping one another, as everyone in Libya would send videos and images to people in Egypt, then everyone in Egypt would send them back to Libya and other countries around them, hoping that they will make their way to the Western countries, as it will only be the western news channels that will broadcast them to the world. On the other hand there are lots of people not using social networking sites for this reason, and use it to just communicate more efficiently with their friends. In the last few years social networking sites have been very much an up and coming technology, and it is thought that there is to be more than 800 million active users, and 50% of these log in on any given day on one of the most popular social networking sites called ‘Facebook’. Another interesting fact about ‘facebook’, is that you can choose from 1 of 70 languages, which I feel was the big fact that stood out to me, as it shows that it is used all across the world.

About 'Facebook'

About Facebook Founded in February 2004, Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Board Members: Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Don Graham, Reed Hastings, Erskine Bowles and Peter Thiel; Observer: David Sze; Observer: Paul Madera Employees 2,000+ People on Facebook More than 800 million active users More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day Average user has 130 friends Activity on Facebook More than 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages) Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events On average, more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day Global Reach More than 70 languages available on the site More than 75% of users are outside of the United States Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application Platform On average, people on Facebook install apps more than 20 million times every day Every month, more than 500 million people use an app on Facebook or experience Facebook Platform on other websites More than 7 million apps and websites are integrated with Facebook Mobile More than 350 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices More than 475 mobile operators globally work to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

‘For media audiences the internet has changed everything’

The Internet was created during the cold war as an information network within a country; in the UK for businesses and in France for scientific research. But it was most notably used in the USA and Russia for the military and intelligence purposes. The internet hit the public in the mid 90’s, as it was when the internet first became affordable. When the public started using the internet, businesses started seeing opportunities, such as; Amazon. As time went on and we came in to the year 2000’s we started to see the growth of social networking sites. By 2006 there were several successful social networking sites that were being accessed on a daily basis by millions. The majority of these sites are being used by people under the age of 35, however you do see all ages using them. The internet has helped build a global networking that enables people to communicate at any time, as it is now as easy to get in touch with someone the other side of the world, rather than someone across the street. In the last 10 years we have seen what some call as ‘Web 2.0’, this is the way that media is being used in our era. What I mean by this is that media used to be big newspapers, television channels, magazines, etc. however, since social networking has become very popular, this is where the majority of people will find out what is happening in the world. The first thing that a lot of people do will be to check the social networking site, before even getting out of bed in most circumstances, and this is how such a large amount of people are relying on social networking to keep them in touch with what is going on in the world. So, we have developed from ‘Web 1.0’, which was us being the audience of media, to know what we call, ‘Web 2.0’ which is us creating the media. The term ‘Web 2.0” was created by a man called, ‘David Gaunlett’, he says that, “the media is no longer a stable entity that can be taught about or studied coherently in such a broad way. It is too big, too fluid, too complex – too different”. Gauntlett argues that people don’t get ‘ represented’ by the media anymore, Instead they use web 2.0 platforms to make their own media, share it with the world and thus represent themselves. Another man that has had a huge influence in the term, ‘Web 2.0’, is ‘Michael Wesch’, he is an anthropologist, and he has been talking about how we are becoming the web, and taking over from other forms of media. However, also does say though about how we all believe what we see on the internet, even though we don’t know who is was published by. Another example of a way in which the inter has changed lives is, with the circumstance in Libya, when there were families praying after there were 1000 Libyans gunned down in cold blood by gadafis men in 1996, the Libyan people never forgot this and have a day in remembrance of people that had lost their lives. There was a family who’s father had died in the massacre, and they felt very strongly about this day and had a large hatetrid for Gaddafi. However, the next day the family came home to find out the Gadafi had arrested the families lawyer. This caused lots of upsets as this lawyer was not only the families lawyer but the majority of the cities, so there were hundreds of people starting to take to the streets to protest against this, and as hours went by they got closer to the headquarters where the lawyer was being held. When the protesters gathered outside, they realised that there wasn’t just hundreds anymore, there were thousands of people supporting them, they gathered around the gates, and one of gadafis men came out to warn all the protesters that if they didn’t return to their homes they would all get shot, which caused an even bigger uproar and people began to attack the headquarters from every angle. Later that day they finally broke through the gates and had burnt the building down to the ground. However, whilst all of this was happening a large amount of the protesters were not only fighting, but they were also streaming the scenes straight to the web on their mobile phones. The other side of internet that has seen a massive growth in is the online TV industry. The internet has also seen organisations set up micro-series, which is a very short series of episodes; a micro series is intended to promote a product while engaging viewers with entertaining conent. Not very long, are advertised on other social networking sites, e.g. bebo and youtube, etc. Over the past decade the TV industry has changed massively, if there is something you want to watch, or catch up on its easy to find instantly. TV ratings have decreased in viewers due to the creation of ‘BBC Iplayer’, ‘ITVplayer’, ‘4OD’, and there are many more. An example; ‘Lonelygirl15’, which began on youtube in June 200, this was about a ‘real’ 16 year old girl video blogger with the eponymous username. At first this was all very real, and there were millions of people tuning in because they felt they had the same problem, however as time went on people started to realise it was a fake. Another example of a micro series would be; an online set up called E20, this is an Eastenders spin off, which is set up by the bbc. The E20 is a website that is set up by the bbc that is trying to put younger amateur actors, and directors in work experience by setting up a micro series. You can only watch the E20 episodes online. Online TV has had a huge impact on many lives, as it has allowed people to live their lives more effectively, due to people tuning in online at any point to catch up with their favourite television shows.

Production

I have decided to go out and start filming on Friday. My aim is to of captured my two main scenes, that are trying to identify the difference between now and 10 years ago. This sketch is going to be the opening sequence of my documentary.