We’ve long heard that the ways the web is tailored for each user—how we search, what we’re shown, who we read and follow— reinforces walls between us. Veronica Belmont investigates how social media can create, and can break, our filter bubbles. Link to the podcast: Social Bubble Bath

Quotes

“Everyone looked like me. Everyone thought pretty much like I thought, so, it was comfortable, you know.”—B.J. May

“When I think about us in Ferguson, if it were not for us like coming together, using social media as our own space, we wouldn’t have ever begun the protest.”—-DeRay Mckesson

“It’s really strange sometimes to look back at old videos of myself or current videos of my family and because, of course, there’s a part of my brain that knows exactly what they’re saying and where they’re coming from and why they think the way that they do. ” —–Megan Phelps-Roper

She was born into Westboro Baptist Church and lived in that social bubble for a long time. However, as she reached out online, she started to understand others and started to question her own belief. Then she left the church. This quote is interesting to me because I have this feeling too when I look back at my ideology in different stage of my life, and at my friends in China.

“The average online user who does not use social media, use somewhere in between one or two different sources of online news per week, whereas those who use social media are exposed to significantly more different sources of online news……In some ways, the very technologies that some people feared would lead us to filter bubbles, right now, at least as they have operated in recent years, seem in fact to have the opposite consequences.” —–Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

His team surveyed 70,000 people from 36 countries.

How the episode used the conventions, and to what effect?

This episode followed the convention. It contains all the parts and has a very good structure. It’s pre-intro bumper has a nice background music, and quotes from people about their opinion on social bubble. This part sounds nice, and light on information, make audience interested in the topic. The standard intro is very brief, kind of acts like a transition between the introduction and the detailed content. The chunked segments contains 4 separate stories, presented in the form of interviewing. These stories provide real life story about social bubble can have different effects in different situations. The episode also has a standard outro at the end. Except there’s a joke at the very end to relax down the audience after discussing about social bubble.

What about this episode helps you pick the challenge to try out?

Social bubble can be easily broke by connect with someone outside of your normal social circle. One man in the episode unfollowed everyone on his twitter account, and then follow someone who has completely different opinion and experience. He was very happy to be able to see both sides by doing that. There’s one challenge similar to this, “Change up your media diet and watch one video from one of these Youtubers every day”. However, I don’t think that’s what I need. In real life, everyone’s ideas are so conflicting: school VS parents, friends in international school VS friends in China. So conflicting that I can’t even form my opinion. I really need a social bubble online. I need that group of people to let me know that I’m not alone. I need to rest in those bubbles, to see people can actually think the same and do the same. However, this challenge only ask to watch video, doesn’t say I can’t do what I am originally doing, so this is still okay for me.

What new questions do you have as the result of thinking about this episode? 

• People form social bubbles because they are naturally similar to some people and different than the others; or is this people live in a bubble, which makes them similar to some people and different that the others?
• When you try to break a bubble and live outside the social bubble, how do you make sure that you are not swapping one bubble for another? Is social bubble just unavoidable as long as we are social?

Intro:

We have been studying stop motion unit since the end of November, for our digital perspective course. This blog post records down the whole process.

Stop Motion Notes-taking

(with the trial stop motion film is linked on the last slide)

On these slides, we watched a few stop motion films and took notes on them. Then we made a trial stop motion in class. On the last slide, there’s a photo of reflection sheet and also a link that would lead to our stop motion. The purpose is just for practice, not a full project. This challenge helps us to understand what stop motion is about and what does creating it feel like. I also learnt some basic skills and gained experience, which helped when I am creating the final project (thunderstorm story) later on.

Storyboards and Plan

Now we get into pairs to create the stop motion project; I paired up with Winnie. We first need to make a detailed plan.

Reflection on collaboration

• To what extent did you honor your original partner agreement?
  • We very much exactly followed the partner agreement. And it does help a lot to make things clear beforehand. In our partner agreement, the most important points are: don’t do work at mid-night; Remind each other to do work; do everything together; equal work distribution; be positive; plan well and have discussion; stay and work after school. We successfully carried out everything! The partner agreement really helps to have a positive anticipation and confidence in our collaboration and also made it easier to give out advice.
• Looking back now, what is one thing you should have added to that agreement and how could that help future collaborations?
  • I think our collaboration is perfect. Maybe we should get rid of “do everything together”. Our original intention is to ensure we both contribute and that the final product is the way we both want it to be. It does help with that, but we also wasted a bit time for this. For example editing and some drawing, you really only need one person at a time, the other person is just kind of waiting beside. Which make us less efficient.
• What did you bring to this collaboration? How well was your partner able to rely on you?
  • Work Distribution: I did most of the drawing and Winnie did most of the editing. But we were working together for the whole time, giving ideas and help. For example when I’m drawing, Winnie will help me to erase the board; and when Winnie is editing, I found the raining sound, and I also check with her about the sequence of each photo.
• What can you do to be more reliable in future projects?
  • Give opinions + listen to opinions
  • respect deadline
  • Do things that are in my skill sets and trust my partners for the rest
  • Always say the good aspects about our progression and collaboration

On The Set Day

All of the photos taken for making the stop motion.

We spent 3 afternoon and 1 class period to get these done. 103 photos in total.

The finished Video – Thunderstorm Story

The background music came from here: Youtube link. Other sound effects are just from iMovie.

Reflection on the original rationale

(The original rational is on the slide 5 and 6 of the “storyboards and plan” slides)

How well did you communicate what you hoped to communicate in the final film? How do you know?

I think the actual story, what really happened, is not presented clearly in the video. I know the original written piece, so I can make connection between the video and the vignette, and they quit match. However, if someone only watched the video, it’s hard for them to know what exactly happened in the story.

I know this because when I showed this to my friends, all of them thought that the girl jumped out of the building, but later on she appears again which doesn’t make sense. It actually is that the girl looks out the window and see someone jumping out of the building. Then the girl was really frightened and realise that she can not always neglect problems and run away, otherwise she might end up like the person who died.

However I still think this is successfully, because with 2 sentence of explanation, everything make sense again. This amount of misunderstanding is good already for us, since we are all beginners in stop motion. Moreover, the emotion and tone is represented very well in the video, have the potential to leave a mark in people’s hearts. Even myself would sometimes feel shocked when I watch the video. The highlights is obviously the parts where there’s a thunder or lighting. We did put many effort into creating this effect too.

ATL reflection