The Digital Footprint of Paul Moran

The Digital Footprint of Paul Moran

The digital world is a massive, all encompassing frontier with limitless possibilities. My relationship with the Internet first began when I was at the ripe age of 10 years old. It was around this time that I started to hear my older sisters’ friends talk about AOL Instant messenger. This was the new cool social networking tool, which allowed people to chat over the Internet, and even create private chat rooms. Soon, friends my own age were registering for this free application of “over the web” conversing. Naturally, I HAD to get involved with this new fad. After many attempts of registering myself for this new phenomenon, I convinced my father to help me out. This application was the start of my current obsession with the Internet. I started playing online pool on yahoo.com, posting on video game forums, and even started creating my own websites (with my father’s help of course). Over the past ten years, I have accumulated a pretty extensive digital footprint.

The biggest and most lasting digital footprint was made possible by the social networking website MySpace. Between 2004 and 2006 I played in a band, which toured extensively throughout the state of Texas. Our band, like many others, created a MySpace music account, and uploaded music to the website. Over our two-year stint as a band, we gained over 12,000 friends. This means that my name, and our music reached over 12,000 people. This is a pretty impressive statistic that I am quite proud of. The power of the digital world allowed a band of teenagers from a small town in Texas to reach people across the United States of America.

Another footprint that I have left in the digital world is that of my online documents. I choose to have my banking, insurance, student loans, and utility bills be delivered and stored online. Some people might not consider this a legitimate digital footprint, yet whichever way you look at it; this is a big part of my life, which is represented solely on the world-wide-web. These banks and insurance companies have a digital record of my monthly statements, and every payment that I have made. These online accounts even store valuable and personal information such as my Social Security Number, Drivers License Number, and credit card numbers. Similarly, I register and pay for my school classes online. I have my own personalized University of Dallas at Texas e-mail address, and even participate in class assignments as well as discussions over lectures on the Internet.

I have always been, and continue to be an avid online gamer. One of the first online games that I started playing was Yahoo.com’s online pool. With the same username associated with my yahoo e-mail address, I was able to play against other yahoo users all across the world. This hobby led to an obsession with online multiplayer games. The invention of video game systems with built-in multiplayer functions using the Internet did not help with my obsession. To this day I am still an avid player of free online games, a participant in the online gaming community of the Playstation 3, and a regular online poker player. All of these game venues store personal information such as my real name and my game history.

A digital footprint can be left by many actions. Social networking sites, banking documents, online bills, school work and information, and even games can leave a pretty substantial digital footprint. Over all, my Internet presence is pretty well spread out. I tend to spend 2 to 4 hours a day expanding my footprint, and personally do not use my cell phone to access the Internet (Although I do rely heavily on text messaging as a source of communication). It is very hard for me to imagine my life without its digital-life counterpart. Being a member of over 20 websites that require a password and having 3 different e-mail addresses, my digital footprint is easily as important to my personality as my real-life footprint.

Convergence Fueled Storytelling

Convergence Fueled Storytelling

Discussing The Matrix’s excellent storytelling techniques is not quite a difficult task. This 1999 movie was ahead of its time in many ways. The visual and sound effects were groundbreaking, and the basic storytelling principles transcended the boundaries of film, comic books, and the internet. It helped that the film’s story was fairly dependent on the internet and the idea of convergence. To my knowledge The Matrix was one of the first films that didn’t stop at the end of the movie, yet continued to tell its story through different avenues. I remember being in middle school when I first saw the Matrix. I specifically remember writing short stories involving myself with the Matrix’s characters. Little 11 year-old Paul definitely wasn’t the only creative person inspired by this movie. There have been countless websites, books, comics, short films, animations, etc that have helped expand this story.

More recently, movies have used the internet and other storytelling medians to not only expand the universe of the story, but to help promote the movie as well. The biggest example that comes to my mind was the movie The Watchmen that came out earlier this year (March 2009). This movie was adapted for the screen from the groundbreaking graphic novel. Essentially, this movie already had a pretty remarkable fan base, yet the producers needed to grasp the attention of people who had not read the novel. The most obvious convergence fueled example was when the producers released a digital representation of the graphic novel. This was pretty much a series of videos of the panels of the graphic novel, with an audio track reading the book word for word. This refreshed the memory of people who had read the story, and helped the people understand the quite confusing plot who had no knowledge of the Watchmen universe.

In my opinion, these new storytelling techniques are extremely effective no matter the age of the audience. As long as a person is interested in the original story, they will usually be positively effected by its related material.

Is Mass Media Marketing Effective?

Despite whether you are looking for it or not, advertisement is everywhere. In recent years, advertisement has transcended the boundaries of text, television, and film and has definitely converged with each and every one of our personal lives. It doesn’t matter is you are listening to music, eating food, or even taking a walk in your favorite park, you will experience an advertisement of some sort. There is no denying that we live in a culture where the influence of the persuaders is unavoidable. The only question is whether or not this overbearing, converged, boundary transcending technique is effective.

I’m going to analyze the effects that a few different marketing ploys have on me. It is no secret that I am addicted to watching television shows on the internet. This used to be an illegal activity, yet most television stations now allow viewers to watch their shows online. The only catch is that in order to watch these shows, you must endure short commercial clips of one product per episode. Since one product can be assigned to a specific show, the persuaders have more control over their target audience. This technique is definitely effective. For example a set of commercials for the new R-rated comedy Extract attached to the online episodes of my favorite show South Park are more effective than if the same commercials air on a television channel during a family show such as American Idol. Since I am watching a comedy for adults, theoretically I would be interested in a movie of the same nature.

The other day I was on the popular website MySpace, listening to a band’s CD. This particular band was streaming their entire CD online before it’s release date. This chance to hear the band’s entire new record was extremely enticing for me. Unfortunately to do so, I had to sit through an annoying advertisement about a completely irrelevant product every two or three songs. I paid no attention to the advertisements, and eventually gave up listening to the unreleased CD. These advertisements weren’t related to the band I was enjoying, or even music in general, definitely not an effective marketing ploy.

According to my research, the effectiveness of mass media marketing is directly related to the relativity of the ploy to the avenue it is tagged to. For instance an advertisement for a new opera would be more effective near a traditional theatre as opposed to the same advertisement at a rodeo in Texas.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Both high schools and colleges assign countless writing assignments every day. Anything from short essays to in-depth, massive research papers are expected of students across the nation. For these writing assignments, it is more than common for the instructor or professor to ask the students to find a specified number of reference articles. This is usually around the time when students (I know this from personal experience) begin to groan and complain about the grueling task at hand. This result is mostly triggered by the phrase “You can NOT use Wikipedia as a credible source!” Students across the nation join together in the argument that Wikipdia can be a powerful research tool. Although Wikipedia can produce some shaky (ok, downright ridiculous) information, I am a firm believer that if used correctly, Wikipedia can definitely be a credible resource outlet.

According to the New Media Journal, Wikipedia has been quite the success story becoming one of the web’s top ten most visited web sites. Although it is obviously booming in popularity, this journal still sees its flaws. Ganaele Langlois and Greg Elmer write, “Because it relies on a collaborative process to produce knowledge rather than the credentials of experts, the Wikipedia model puts into question traditional processes for legitimizing truth claims, such as relying on expert knowledge rather than the wisdom of the crowd.” (Langlois and Elmer, 2009) This statement refers to an article by Cross, T. written in 2006. Langlois and Elmer are validating that Wikipedia takes a risk by relying on the knowledge rather than the proof of the knowledge. This risk usually pays off as a success, yet when subject to vandalism, the information can be misleading.

Wikiedia itself is aware of its lack of credibility, and is attempting to make revisions in order to establish itself as more reliable. According to CNN’s technology portion of their website, Wikipedia is initiating a new rule of editing in which an “experienced volunteer” will be assigned as an editor to an article in their particular field of expertise. This has started a heated online debate arguing whether or not this is destroying the basic ideas that the web based encyclopedia was built around. Caterina Fake, the founder of the photo-sharing website Flickr, has this to say on the change, “If you really want to participate in Wikipedia, it is open to you so long as your contributions are benefiting the community and everybody kind of collectively decides that your contributions are good.“ (Sutter, John D., CNN.com)

When I searched for a Wikipedia entry on Wikipedia, I found some interesting self-reflecting information. “Wikipedia's departure from the expert-driven style of the encyclopedia building mode and the large presence of unacademic contents have been noted several times. When Time magazine recognized You as its Person of the Year for 2006, acknowledging the accelerating success of online collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world, it cited Wikipedia as one of several examples of Web 2.0 services, along with Youtube, Myspace, and Facebook. Some noted the importance of Wikipedia not only as an encyclopedic reference but also as a frequently updated news resource because of how quickly articles about recent events appear.” (Wikipedia)

Langlois, G. and Elmer, G. “Wikipedia leeches? The Promotion of Traffic Through a Collaborative Web Format” New Media & Society

Canada: Ryerson University, 2009. 773-390

Sutter, John D. “Wikipedia: No longer the Wild West?”

CNN.com/technology Aug 26, 2009 <http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/26/wikipedia.editors/>

Sep 8, 2009

Wikipedia

Wikipedia.org

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Cultural_significance>