Group's final assignment: Connected, but alone?

And here we are, back again for our eighth and final assignment, which is kind of sad because it means that it's the end of our work together.

For this week's assignment, brace yourselves because we are about to reveal the ugly truth about our so-called relationships.Beginning our reflexion with Sherry Turkle's TED Talk, we start to ask ourselves: what is our own relationship with Technology?

Sherry Turkle's TEDTalk

Are we "alone together?"
We are the generation concerned by the phenomenon. We use every day devices that allow us to do anything, from anywhere, with anyone. Such possibilities would have been qualified as odd or disturbing before but are seen as familiar today because they have changed who we are.This behavior even led us to create the term "alone together", meaning that even when you meet with your friends, everyone is on their phones or other devices and don't pay attention to their surroundings anymore. What's the point of getting together then?

We feel like we always need to be "on", connected. We text, shop, browse the Internet in every situation meaning we don't get or give people our full attention.We are together without being together; as people pay more attention on what they see on their phone than to the person in front of them.

That's something we notice everyday in our society, people don't know how to have a conversation anymore; by using our devices, we gain control over it which is something you can't have in a real face-to-face conversation. We get to edit,  delete, change, retouch..."We sacrifice conversation to connection" as Sherry Turkle says.

We seem to rely more and more on those devices when real-life people could help us. How many time have you relied on the Internet for a question or information you could easily get from someone next to you? We would rather do that to avoid any awkwardness. Same thing with conversation, it's easier to "discuss" via text or mails rather than call or talk face to face. 

Worse, we don’t get the feeling that people care about us and we develop more interest in our devices, and become more vulnerable to their artificial companionships, that seem to care about us; making us expect less from each other and more from the technology.Technology appeal to us when we are the most vulnerable to it

Her, a movie about a writer who develops a relationship with a intelligent computer operating system 

What Sherry Turkle says is interesting and directly aimed to us.
We are the generation who learned how to embrace the technology, we went through the cultural gap and the devices are set in our everyday lives. So well actually, that we don’t know how to be alone anymore.
Conversation face to face is a good thing for us because it allows us to have some self-reflection. We are never really alone, always reaching for a device. We use technology as a fantasy of substitution.

Take for example a day in your life. You usually wake up with to your phone and catch up on social networks. You go to work, spend your day facing a computer, using your phone during breaks, texting, or scrolling the Internet. You go home, spend the rest of your day facing your TV, computer or video games, with your phone by your side.
How long do you really spend without a device near you? The only time we really take a break form our devices is when we sleep and even then, our phone is near by, just in case.
It’s appealing to us, to have automatic listeners that seem to care about us because being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved.
Sherry Turkle describes it as being in “the cold hard centre of a perfect storm” .
We’ve come too far, as technology appeal to us when we’re vulnerable, lonely or afraid of intimacy. So we design robots, technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.

What they offer us are fantasies, they shape a new way of being; "I share therefore I am.”
Technology is good, but it’s time to talk and listen. There’s still work to do on it, how to use it or build it. We need to have a better relationship with it; embrace solitude, make it a value. Talk, and listen.  The problem is not the technology, it’s us with our vulnerability, the fact that we want it to make life simpler, hopeful….We need to see technology as a way to take us back to our real lives.

L.B

Seventh Group Assignment

One more week and we are here again with our next blog post. It can’t be a truth that it is our seventh post. Days go so fast which means that almost every exchange student is unfortunately in the middle of his/her study in Vaasa.

I have never thought that our group will transform into a human. Yes, human! Of course, it didn’t happen in a real life but in Second Life as this week assignment is to make there an account. As I am a leader this week I made an account for our group. I have chosen randomly how our avatar looks and I gave her a name FrozenGroup. I wanted to give her a day of birth the day when our group began but I was thinking about that we will have some limitation because of age so our FrozenGroup is older than 18 years. After these beginning steps our avatar appeared at some island. At first I was confused if this small island is all where I can be but later I found out that it is possible to teleport to another land.

Also if you are bored by the place where you live you can change destination by choosing another one. Lands are divided into several groups like clubs, beaches, sci-fi and adults. There you can find buildings, houses, churches and you can visit them. Also you can buy some stuff or a new hairstyle, etc. If you are lucky you will find some stuff for free. 

Free gift

Second Life has a lot of inhabitants who were created by users like me. Avatars can look like human, animal, mineral etc. When you are registering there are a few predefined avatars in categories like People, Vampires and Classic. It is possible to change appearance of your avatar if you aren't satisfied by them. Players can express themselves by changing their avatar. Your avatar can walk, run or just fly around the land. Player is able to interact with objects, he can touch them, sit somewhere. The game has a functionality which shows users where are others so when you want to chat or talk to somebody you will find him/her easily.  

Flying avatar FrozenGroup

It seems to be a community where everybody lives his/her second life. Players can pretend that they are somebody else as nobody knows them. For other players this is the place where they can show what is inside them. We can say that for them Second Life is a real life as they show a real part of them. This community doesn't have only its own lands but also it has its own currency- Linden dollar. It is possible to buy some Linden dollars so after that you can buy some stuff or maybe earn some million of dollars.

We can sum it up that Second Life is a digital game where people create their own world.

-See you in Second Life next week.

-D.P

Sixth Group Assignment

Hello again from sunny (but freezing!) Vaasa! I guess the "freezing" part is my own fault, hence this sunny spring weather made me already get my mid-season jacket from the basement. And yes, I noticed it was way too early for that but what can a girl do. I guess that's what those long, dark winters do to us when we see the sun more than a minute per day.

...But yes, we had an assignment for this week as well so back to business. This week our task was to come up with a company and to create its communication plan in the network society. And our theme being lifestyle, this task gave us yet again a very wide point of view. I wanted to use a theme that we haven't had anything to do with yet. At first I was thinking about movies, since those are a big passion  of mine. But then we decided come up with a company that has something to do with music, which is great because that is another big passion of mine. Music combined with our lifestyle theme gave us an idea for a company that organizes city festivals and events.

This video above (actually shot and edited by a very good friend of mine) gave me an idea. Personally after moving to Vaasa I got really annoyed with comments like these "Gee you're really moving to Vaasa? Theres like nothing there. I mean that place gotta be dead during the summer if students are the whole point of the city??" Our little frozen group company is organizing a festival, or more like a city festivity. And despite our name it's going to be everything but frozen.

Our main target is to reach to the twenty-something group who are in Vaasa for the summer. And we want to connect and give a chance to the young talents of this area. First we put out teasers of the event, for example short video clips shared on our Facebook-page and Instagram. It could be a "teaser week" We'd upload a teaser per day to keep everyone on their toes. Or if we're lacking on material, a few days in a row.

Considering our main audience consists of these so-called digital natives, using social media is a must. I really like the idea how Flow Festival announced performers to the upcoming festival this summer. They uploaded pictures to Instagram like a puzzle. Each picture was a part of a bigger picture. It didn't make sense when you were scrolling the main page but when you opened their profile you literally could see the bigger picture. It was effecting as hell (pardon my French) but it sure did keep me on my toes, hitting the "refresh" button like a maniac.

Screenshot from Instagram @FlowFestival

We would post information to out Twitter page but we also would have our own Snapchat. More and more companies (or businesses) have discovered the great power of Snapchat. Using the "Moments" program, the client could also sort of be a part of the event planning. Also a way to tease them. I like the fact that in social media you can keep your target in excitement as you probably can see.

We would also let the audience's voice be heard. They could for example be responsible of the food services at the event. We would contact different companies that could have a stand for food or drinks. We'd make a vote. A certain amount of days to vote for your favorite firms and then the winners would have their food stands present at the event. A clever way to get your target even more interested in the product, which in our case is the upcoming event.

Also it is important for us to have good co-operation with different companies. This way we can also get visibility through their channels. And vice versa.  

The Governors Ball Music Festival in New York City 2012. My personal album.

So we're selling (and offering) good time, good music and an experience. "This is the time you look for the stories and experiences that you tell to your grandchildren when you're old."

See ya all next summer then ;--) I'm out.

- H.H

Fifth Group Assignment

After one weeks downtime, we're back again with our fifth group assignment. This week was all about trustworthy and untrustworthy websites. What makes one website more reliable, than the other?

Our assignment was to choose two websites, one that we think is trustworthy and another that is untrustworthy. After choosing we have been analyizing these two sites and come up with five arguments for and against the websites.

We chose as the trustworthy site Minna Parikka's website.  http://minnaparikka.com/fi/

 

Our 5 arguments why Minna Parikka's website is trustworthy:

1.  The website looks professional. The layout is clear and the site looks updated.
2. It's easy to find information from the site, like terms and conditions when ordering.
3. The quality of the pictures is good and the layout on them is clear and neat.
4. The text on the website is grammatically correct and it is easy to read.
5. The links on the website work. You are able to go and see Minna Parikkas facebook page and other socialmedia pages.

As the untrustworthy site we chose to analyze Funky shoes "shoes with a past life". http://www.stephenswork.com/funkyshoes/index.html

 Our 5 arguments why Funky shoes website is untrustworthy:

1. For starters the page looks like a joke (which it probably is). The idea of the page, selling shoes with a past life, is ridiculous.
2. The page looks very unprofessional, the colors, the layout, everything.
3. The page has lots of praising text that try to convince the awesomness of the shoes. It takes it over the top.
4. There are no proper information on what you order and how everything works.
5. There is nothing that you could trust in this website. There are no security measurements on the page.

 

Till next time

                                                              - P.S

Fourth Group Assignment

Sun is shinning and it feels great!

 

And here we are with our fourth assignment, which was all about the Valentine`s day and invitations. 

source

Our assignment was to design the Valentine`s day invitation. And that means that we had to decide who is the sender, who is the receiver, we had to choose design for the invitation on Evite website and write an invitation text.

We started the assignment with collecting the ideas about our party and we came to the conclusion that we don`t want tradicional Valentine`s day party. The original idea for a party was "We hate Valentine`s day party".

Source

Not everybody is in love or have a partner but still wants to go out, hang out and maybe even feel special on Valentine`s day.  So we tried to change the perception that Valentine`s day is only for couples and fancy dates with flowers and chocolate.

We think that chosen design fits the purpose of our group, because it gives an impression of a nice party without looking depressing. 

Link to the Evite page

Our party is about meeting new people, making friends and having fun, without any pressure just because it`s Valentine`s day and your relationship status says you`re single. It`s for people who are active and life-loving but maybe not interested to have a romantic Valentine's day.

Source

~VM

Third Group Assignment

Frozen group is back with its third group assignment! Prepare yourselves for a long post…

This week’s assignment was a pretty nice one. We had to log in to Pinterest, pin interesting pictures regarding our theme of lifestyle and discuss and analyze the pictures later on. Luckily our group members were actively involved in finding pictures and we managed to create altogether seven boards with over 80 pinned pictures.

The assignment started with the group leader creating the account. Pinterest proved to be quite easy and simple to use, so it didn’t take long to actually get the pinning going. Before searching for the pictures, we edited the profile a bit. For example the interests were edited in a way that it would be easier to find pictures regarding to our theme. We also started to follow different boards which were similar to our theme.

The process of finding pictures was relatively easy. Pinterest contains sooo many images and puts together such a large amount of different themes, so there really is anything for anyone. Our lifestyle theme gave us also a wide choice of pictures to pin as lifestyle can contain pretty much anything. Due to that, we managed to collect many boards with varying images. Some of our boards for example comprised pictures of art work, decoration, food, health, pictures from abroad etc. We tended to pin images that we thought were worth seeing, related to our theme, were emotive and pics that we just simply thought looked great. We also found the pics we chose inspirational, interesting, appealing and in a way powerful.

Some of Frozen Group's boards

We noticed that our group members had quite similar taste when it came to choosing pictures, so our images had some things in common. Most of our pictures were for instance quite artistic, colorful and beautiful. Common factors among the pinned pics were also the emotive and inspirational sides most of them had. In addition we felt like our Pinterest pictures in a sense represented a lifestyle of a quite active and life-loving person. The pictures transmitted mainly a happy feeling, so a lot of us were inspired by pics that had a kind of lively and bright feel to them. The most important common factor among the pics were however the fact that they all related to the theme of lifestyle.

The differences between the pictures had mainly to do with the fact that our theme is so broad, so the pics varied a lot depending on in which board they were placed. Even though there were some differences, we felt like our pics were still in some kind of harmony. Some differences were seen for example in the colors of the pics, some images were in black & white form, whereas others were more colorful. We noticed also that some of the pictures were simpler than others and some pics contained text while other pics did not.

All of our pinned pictures originated from other Pinterest users or other websites, such as buzzfeed.com. We also noticed that a lot of our pics originated from different blogs and from tumblr and flickr. We didn’t create pictures of our own, we only found our pics from other Pinterest users' boards.

 When thinking about re – and decontextualisation, we came to the conclusion that the pictures themselves haven’t changed that much, even though they are shifted to a whole new context. However, if the original source had for example captions and other pictures next to the picture itself, the pic could get a whole new meaning. People can interpret the picture differently in the new context, compared to the old where it had captions etc. Also, if the original picture is modified for example by adding text to it, the picture’s meaning changes drastically. 

  

Recontextualisation is seen for example in this picture. The text is added to the photo afterwards, so the current image has a different meaning than the original photograph in its original context.

Source





Until next time...



-ER

Second Group Assignment

Here we are, freezing as usual. Not only is Fabriikki cold as ice but it is also -8° outside. You have probably heard this about million times before but Vaasa is the sunniest city in Finland. Unfortunately it is also the city where the wind will rip your hair off. You can not have it all, can you?

Alright, back to business. The reason why I started to write this post was because we got our second group assignment. We had to find one asynchronous online discussion forum that relates to the theme of our blog which happens to be lifestyle. We chose an article written by Hadley Freeman for The Guardian. An anonymous asked:

"I read that sportswear is now in fashion. Does this mean I can describe my old Man United shirt as vintage?" 

Freeman replied and wrote that even though people say that sportswear is in fashion right now they are actually referring to (sporty) clothes designed by fashion designers. The article seems to be aimed at young 'fashionistas'. The comment section is an actual asynchronous online discussion forum where anyone can join. However you need to sign in or register in order to leave a comment. There are 461 comments at the moment (3/2/2015). We decided to pick the 21 first comments that we started to analyze. 

You are able to edit your account and have a profile picture.

(Source)

The article and the comments can be found here.

We analyzed the linguistic characteristics of the comment section on three levels: lexical (1), syntactic (2) and textual (3).

1. Lexical level

There are not any emojis or emoticons which is quite surprising. Zero acronyms such as "LOL". Well this is getting interesting. There are a few 'clippings'. The first one is "me likey" as a shortened version of "I like it" written by wavypeasandgravy. "Cheapie" is the second one used by the nickname MrMixUp. "Cheapie" is an item that is less expensive than others of its kind. "Cheapie" is shortened from "A cheaper version". The same nickname used "DIY" which means "Do It Yourself".

The one and only swear word "fuck" is posted in the following comment:

"If you can manage the trauma of not having a Nike swoosh on your gear then get yourself down to Decathalon sports shop, they sell everything you need for fuck all. 99% of the time it is made of the same material and looks the same as said Nike stuff anyway!" -ExileCuChulainn (26/01/2015)

First-person pronouns are extremely common. 
"I must say that..."
"I managed..."
"I exercise..."
"I think..."
And the list goes on. First-person pronouns were found easily. First-person pronouns are pronouns that refer to the speaker/writer and they are usually used in informal pieces such as forum comments and stories.

2. Syntactic level

Almost every comment included capital letters at the beginning of all of the sentences. There was no lack of punctuation. All the comments are surprisingly well-written. A few short sentences can be found though:

"Comment of the day!" (referring to another comment.)

"Chest hair is great." (Also lacks explicit reasoning.)

"Me likey."

Some sentences lack explicit reasoning. That actually makes the arguments quite empty. Here we have one example:

"Not even the ensemble effect - 'yoga pants' are basically an excuse for people to show off their bottoms. Its that simple." -TyrannoSuarezRex (27/01/2015)

The person writing behind the nickname TyrannoSuarezRex did not explain why he claimed that yoga pants are just an excuse for some people to show off their bottoms. The comment claims that everyone wearing yoga pants is trying to get everyone to notice their bottoms. However the comment is written in pretty good language, no swear words, capital letter at the beginning, punctuation and so on.
And last but not least, the only verbless expression:
"Clearly a fan of hobo chick."

 Is this you TyrannoSuarezRex? (Source)

Sigh, the issues people have these days... (Source)

Now let's move on to the next one.

3. Textual level

Writing behind a nickname and anonymity are great opportunities to write whatever you want without any consequences. But it can be dangerous. Anonymous comments can be rude and hurt others' feelings. Usually online discussion forums have at least some kind of rules. One of the comments was removed by the moderators as it did not meet the rules. The deleted comment had the following text on it: "This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs."

This discussion forum was a great example of dialogue. The sender and the receiver of the message changed roles.

Strong irony can be seen. For example:

"Speaking as somebody who dons a tracksuit to wallow on the sofa to watch match of the day, I think it is important to wear something that looks cool and also soaks up lager spills." -MikeHarold (26/01/2015)

And as an answer to the previous comment:

"I find my boxers are casual enough; and I also allow my chest hair to grow wildly and this takes care of any lager, or salsa dip, spills." -Kier3216 (26/01/2015)

Humor was a quite common feature as well (an answer to the 1st comment):

"I don't really see the point of wearing any clothes, when wallowing on the sofa." -bunnyla (26/01/2015)

"I also prefer dry fit tops as they are generally kebab and lager resistant." -Patrician (26/01/2015)

It is truly interesting how they used humor but not many emotional words. The irony is strong in these comments and usually online comments mean different things to different people. Some might not understand the irony, some might get angry. Some on the other hand may act like they are angry when in reality they are not. And then again, some people might not understand that either.
There was no code-switching because all the messages were written in English. All the comments were surprisingly formal. They wrote about themselves "As a long distance runner..." and "Speaking as somebody who...".
They did not write those comments in this way: "I am a long distance runner and I..." It seems that this kind of writing ("formal") is not typical when writing comments on all kinds of discussion forums online. 

I'll just let this sink in... (Source)

_________________________________________________________________________

Our group's name reminds me of the new Disney's movie named Frozen. The theme song called "Let it go" starts to play in my head again. Pretty cool (pun intended). I'm done.

-KL