Twitter is Life

Since its availability, Twitter has been used for much more than socializing and marketing. One example of this is when the Egyptian people used it to plan and coordinate their protests against the government. One man says they used twitter to coordinate their massive gatherings and protests. Twitter served as a unification tool and really gathered like-minded people together in order to fight for what they thought was right and just. Twitter is perhaps the fastest social media platform of them all at leaking information. An example of this would be the Boston Marathon explosions. Within minutes of these explosions happening, they were all over Twitter, some even being recorded in real time. Twitter is now used as a news distribution platform because of its immediacy. Some people even get their news updates strictly from Twitter. Another example of Twitter being a news platform would be the Paris terrorist attacks. Within 24 hours of the attacks happening, there were four million tweets that were sent out regarding the issue. ISIS is known for using social media as a means of recruiting people. Due to this number of tweets being sent out, it is safe to say that violence garners much more negative attention than positive. This is contradictory of what ISIS plans to do when they claim responsibility for things like this on social media. Much the same way that the Egyptian people used Twitter to band together to fight government, the people of the world used Twitter to condemn ISIS and come together as one to try and fight the terrorist organization.

Twitter can be used very effectively as a journalistic, political and organizational tool simply because of its reach. It is a massive social media platform with tens of millions of people on it every day. In terms of journalism, speed and timeliness are the two most important factors when breaking a story or reporting on something. Twitter allows literally instantaneous release of information. If a newsworthy event happens and someone who has Twitter is standing there watching, they can tweet it out within a few seconds, and everyone who follows them will know about what is going on. Twitter is a very powerful tool when in the hands of a journalist.

Twitter and social media was used more than ever in this past election cycle, and for good reason. The whole point of politics is to reach as many people as possible in the hopes that they will like your ideas, and ultimately support you in an election. How do you reach the maximum amount of people with the least amount of effort and resources? The answer is social media. The majority of the population in the advanced world has a cell phone and social media, so it is very easy to reach all of these people and get your message out. It also allows the candidate to remain in constant contact with their followers, which is impossible to do if all you have are phone numbers or house addresses.

Organization is also something that can be done very easily with Twitter. If you want to create a protest or a huge gathering of people, sending a tweet is still the fastest and most effective way of doing so. Think about it, you would have the potential to reach millions of people in order to get them to do something. Even something as simple as a hashtag can create awareness and alert people as to what is going on around them. It is not a guarantee that every single person who sees your tweet will unify to do something, but when you are reaching that many people, there is a good chance that a lot will.

Three events where Twitter was used as a communication tool would be the 2016 Rio Olympics, the 2016 Presidential Election, and the reveal of Pokemon Go. Most of the communication that was done with these three events was done through simple hashtags. #Rio2016 presented an unusual opportunity for the people to interact with the athletes. Athletes would often post pictures and videos to their Twitter accounts thanking fans for the support, and letting the people see a little bit into the more personal side of the Olympics. The communication that took place between the athletes and fans was a very positive thing for both sides. It made people more interested in watching specific athletes, and it made people feel closer to them and the sports than usual. If an athlete has a bigger social media presence, then naturally more people will follow them because it makes them more than just a name on a jersey. It creates a more interpersonal relationship between athlete and fan.

#Election2016 was the second most used hashtag in 2016. More than 75 million tweets were sent out with this hashtag. Twitter served as a continuous stream of communication between the candidates and the people who would be voting between them. This was a huge success because it allowed people to pay very close attention to something that they usually wouldn’t, and it allowed them to be somewhat more informed than they usually would be in an election. They got information directly from the candidates, not from biased friends or family, or biased news organizations. It was an organic way for people to get information and use it for what they think it is.

The release of Pokemon Go was a viral event. The app was downloaded over 500 million times. The whole point of the game was to get people outside to “hunt” for virtual Pokemon. Twitter was a success in this situation also because it let users of the game communicate with one another about where the rare Pokemon were. Pokemon were scattered all over the world in different areas, so this let people all over the world who play the game communicate with each other in order to play the game together and find all the Pokemon. Due to the use of Twitter, an amazing amount of people downloaded and played the game.

I followed ArchDigest because I want to go to grad school to be an architect and I really enjoy it and think it is interesting. I also followed VIPstylecars because I love cars. My dad has a classic car and I owned a second car in order to modify it as a hobby. It is my passion. I also followed Elon Musk because he started the Tesla car company which I have interest in, but he also has a company called SpaceX which I didn’t know anything about. This experience using Twitter was much different from blogging because it was much faster, and it actually let you communicate with others

Separation Video

Making a video about separation, without spoken word, and only cinematography to get your point across can be very difficult. The different phases of creating a concept, shooting the video, and editing it all require thorough planning and attention to detail. Creating a concept is something that requires trial and error because of the absence of spoken word to contribute to getting the theme of separation across to the viewers. It is hard to create a concept that will not only make sense to the creator, but the viewers also. Something that is clearly representing separation to the creator may not even create the slightest idea of it to a viewer. The creator needs to find the medium between creatively displaying the theme, without being too literal about it. With separation, the creator is able to create a tone of being alone simply by having only themselves appear in the video, but again, it may be hard for a viewer to pick up on such a small detail such as that. Creating a concept is definitely the hardest part of making the video.

Shooting the video clips can also be difficult because a lot of the time, the creator needs to film themselves when they appear in the video. This will be much easier with the use of a tripod and a remote shutter. That allows the video creator to frame the shot, release the shutter, and act out the scene while being consistent. However, even with a tripod; the clips may not always come out as planned. The framing might be off, the shutter button could have not gone off, or the camera focus or settings could have been messed up. This requires a lot of precision and attention to detail. If attention is not given, the creator could waste a lot of time shooting, and re-shooting clips.

Editing is arguably the most important part of putting together a video, regardless of subject matter. If one were to shoot ten video clips, and then just import them into imovie in no particular order without trimming them, the video would make no sense. With the use of editing, the creator can take a bunch of random video clips, and make them into something that conveys a narrative. It is also very easy to spot bad editing, which ruins the video. If the clips are too long, too short, or if the sound effects don’t fade and fit well over the clips, it lowers the quality of the video by a lot. In the case of the projects we had to do, the hardest part about editing the video is when the creators have to mesh all four of their videos together. It is hard even when all of their videos connect to one another in some way. But if the videos don’t make sense when put next to each other, the combination of them will make even less sense than they would if they weren’t combined. The group members must communicate effectively and make sure everyone is on the same page when filming their individual videos. This is critical to making the final video legible.

Using video as a communication tool is the most effective way to show somebody something. Writing and photography are also great ways of communicating things to people. However, video is much more powerful than the other options. In order from highest to lowest effect, it would be video, photography, and then writing. The world that we live in today is more visually displayed than ever. And people are starting to read less and less. Newspapers are going out of business, Twitter only allows 160 characters because people start to get lazy and bored with their reading once they pass that point. Memes are taking control of our digital newsfeeds because they are images that display emotion very clearly. The majority of people prefer an image to words. All video is, is moving pictures. Video captures attention very well and people are stimulated the most by video. Attention spans automatically get longer when confronted with a video. People are able to sit through a movie that is three hours long and keep their attention focused for the entire movie; but they can’t read halfway through a 1,000 word blog post without getting bored and going somewhere else. That is partly due to the rise of social media, which is fast paced, tailored to the user’s interests and convenient. The fact that it is tailored to the user just makes it too easy for people to abandon a current task and run to it in order to see something that interests them. For some reason, video kind of negates that need to run to something more interesting. The movement involved in video is cause enough for most people to pay attention. Viewers may glance at a photograph for 2-4 seconds, but they watch a video for much longer than that because it is stimulating and they never know what is coming next.

The public nature of our video didn’t really affect the subject matter because our topic was separation. It doesn’t really need to be watered down for public consumption. If anything, putting somewhat controversial things in there can enhance the theme of separation greatly, which we actually did. One of our group members is a combat veteran, and he chose to center his video around how veterans feel once they return back home. This is a sensitive topic and could rub some people the wrong way; but we as a group felt that this would really display separation. Instead of keeping our video friendly to the viewers, we decided to throw in a somewhat sensitive topic to add to the theme.

The self-portrait experience was the most fun part of the video. Doing your own video is nice because you can do everything just the way you want it. Shooting your own video can be somewhat therapeutic if you enjoy that kind of stuff. It really allows you to be creative and try things by way of trial and error. There weren’t any issues with sharing the video on social media.