It’s never too late to make the big bucks.

“I want to be a superhero” was a line you’d probably expect coming from young children, but as the case with a large portion of society I didn’t really grow out of my superhero phase and here I was 22 years old still lining up at comic book stores waiting to get a new Batman comic. Today’s social society being receptive to anything that is a result of mainstream media production is said to be acceptable in social circles, such as if Marvel came out with a ‘Spiderman’ movie, it would be acceptable to go see it regardless of your Age or gender as it’s a ‘popular narrative’ providing content to the masses and is easily accessible. I feel if one tends to go further into this narrative like I did with superhero’s and try to get their means of entertainment through more unconventional means like comic books, video games, and animated cartoons, would lead people to have a negative perception about being overly attached or interested in content that might not be regarded as acceptable by mainstream media at this particular point in time. I do however feel like this is becoming more lax and people are becoming more acceptable of ‘geek’ or ‘nerd culture’ as the rise in popularity of ‘Marvel’ and ‘DC’ movies has led to superhero’s and superhero culture being a more common topic of conversation in society and the rise in mainstream actors playing superhero roles such as Robert Downy Junior Playing ‘Iron Man’ and Ben Affleck playing ‘Batman’ tends to help audiences feel more at ease and accept superhero’s as being more common place as acceptable medium in story telling. Boothe talks about the ‘Spime’ of a fandom which is ‘the lifecycle of an object from initial design through physical substantiation to final digital trace. It changes the ‘object’ from a purely physical entity into a lifecycle of technological transformation, and uses time as another dimension upon which an object can be measured’. Booth, P. (2105). Fandoms like Batman which started off with the comics in 1940 and has amassed success over a wide stream of media platforms such as comics, graphic novels, television shows, movies, video games and now even virtual reality immersion technology that allows you to become ‘Batman’. Transmedia therefore allows the franchise to develop a larger following across the world and allows people to find out information regarding the fandom at the touch of a button. This would have led Batman to develop a large fan following across many countries and fans of many generations that come together to enjoy it no matter the means how the do so. The spime of Batman helps it remain relevant across time and helps retain its popularity. I remember getting my first glimpse of Batman from my father showing me an old Batman movie staring George Clooney. My father exposed me to a fragment of the fandom thus including me in the ‘spimatic wave’ associated with the Batman fandom. When the voice actor who played batman for a little over ten years went to twitter to put up an idea to bring back the classic animated show for a reunion episode I was up in arms for the idea. He and the other members from the cast of the show used the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to try and obtain financial means from their most loyal fanbase in order to provide funding to create the content that would-be tailor made to the fanbase paying every dollar to make it happen. The success of the Kickstarter campaign is dependant on successfully utilizing the fan nostalgia and acknowledging the presence of a group of like minded people forming the batman fandom and supporting the project at multiple nodes in the production process. With such experiences I can add ground to Boothe’s views that Fandoms by applying certain theories of the Spime towards fandom through the appropriate mode of crowdfunding would lead to a more emotional and effective process of media creation.” Fandom is traditionally participation after-the-fact; the Spime allows us to see fandom as generative of meaning throughout the entire participatory process” Booth, P. (2105).

Being a media and communications student, my passion has always been to get involved in the journalism stream and eventually turn that into a career in sports writing. Basketball in particular had always been an area of interest for me and the opportunity to try and work in a career related to my passion was too hard to pass on and therefore I had been looking into what it took to become a sports writer in todays world. New means of media has led to the evolution of transmission of news and information regarding a player or a team in the National Basketball Association and writers have been quick to adapt. While most of the main story pieces that provide in depth analysis and detail regarding a situation, team or player are done via websites such as ESPN, Bleacher Report and Yahoo Sports, applications have also been developed so access on various devices becomes easier as migration to accessible devices had been a key goal of sports media to become commonplace among new technology. Breaking news on the other hand needs to be reported at a moment’s notice to the public which has led to the large-scale use of Twitter as a platform amongst sports media content creators. Twitter as a platform allows instant transmission of ‘viral sports news’ such as an immediate player trade between teams, a sudden injury or altercation or even a player spotted in public. It allows the content to be received and reacted to at the touch of a button. Live-tweeting updates during games has become popular via twitter and writers would tweet from arenas thereby relaying tiny details they pick up from team personnel, player huddles, in arena altercations that might not be seen or heard on TV. This unique information available almost instantaneously allows these content creators to have an advantage over traditional media broadcasts in terms of specificity of information they would be providing.  Lets take the example of ESPN’s senior sports writer Arash Markazi, Markazi has been providing quality content through his stories and coverage of Los Angeles based sports teams for over a decade and had built a rapport amongst avid sports fans as being a reputable source of information. When the twitter revolution happening in the sports coverage world. Markazi began posting snippets of interesting information along with his regular stories on twitter, these included some off the court content that sports fan started to get accustomed to. He once posted a video on his twitter of a then unknown blonde girl doing a ‘dougie’ which was the popular dance move of the year live at a basketball game and as you would expect the video quickly turned viral and led to media companies picking up the video and then fame and fortune hit. That blonde girl is now married to World series winner Justin Verlander and is named Kate Upton who became internet famous which further led to her mainstream popularity in the past couple of years all due to this little snippet on twitter by a sports writer. The power of media in whatever form is astounding. As a social media content creator in this scenario Markazi exercised his power over his followers by sharing content that was good enough to be mass distributed leading to it going viral and therefore creating a buzz over information that if created and distributed by someone without such a platform or standing might not have stood out. In Wasike’s study he talks about the usage of twitter by social media editors in order to entertain a particular audience, he describes Twitter as a form of media that is built for personalization of people’s messages since it allows individuals to create a list of loyal and committed followers who share a common interest in a certain social media editor. Therefore, leading to Social media editors reciprocating and accepting this connection by tweeting information relating about their personal life, humorous content, memes, in-transit activities, etc. Finally, most of the Social Media Editors would go ahead and specifically start to use personalized themes in their Twitter bio sections to gain a sense of identity amongst the clutter. Apart from providing personal information such as native home town, spouses and hobbies, it was common to encounter phrases such as; music junkie, foodie, hobby enthusiast and other quirky titles that would lead to the audience being able to relate to the editor and make them seem almost like a regular everyday person thus helping them garner that nativity amongst their audience. (Wasike, B. (2013).)

A long time ago in a land far far away, a lazy teenager who shared a name and a birthday with me once thought of a plan to get rich quick with minimal effort along with him friends and scoured the internet in hopes of figuring out how to achieve this masterful plan. After google highest paid internet jobs and doing diligent research we wound up on Felix Kjellberg who goes by the internet nickname of pewdiepie who annuals earns 12 million dollars a year by creating videos on YouTube that amass millions of viewers every day. Now what did ‘Pewdiepie’ do you may ask, does he create his own music or do stand up comedy or tell stories, well no its not what one might assume. He garners millions of dollars every year playing video games from home and people are inherently very interested to see someone else play a video game, sounds easy enough right? Wrong again, after going through a lot of his videos we figured out that it takes a special someone to be able to obtain such an audience and maintain it over a period of years. People log on everyday to see this man play games of different genres while using a webcam to show his reactions to various thing that happen within the game. Suspense and intensity during horror games, humor and quick-witted jokes during funny scenarios and all out just an uncensored commentary is what Felix delivers during his gameplay segments that turned from a hobby to more income than most corporate millionaires. The world is changing, and people like to be entertained without really putting in much effort and Felix allows them to enjoy videogames that they really might not have enjoyed quite as much with his unique style and humor and thus game me my idea for internet millions. Till today my total YouTube earnings amount to 12 dollars and 27 cents as compared to Felix making 12 million in 2016. He wins …. for Now. Aggire and Young refer to user generated content in there work where it is said even though the historical novelty of the active behaviour of an audience is unpredictable at the least, and the use of of participation terms with respect to  activities that pertain to the audience usually are open for interpretation, the ineractive possibilities offered by new forms of media are what is seen as interesting here, These are usually  facilitators of interaction amongst users in the onlie world that have endless possibilities with the content. (Astigarraga, I., Pavon, A., & Zuberogoitia, A. (2016)).

 References

Astigarraga, I., Pavon, A., & Zuberogoitia, A. (2016). Active audience?: Interaction of young people with television and online video content. Communication and Society, 29(3), 133-147.

Booth, P. (2105). Crowdfunding: A spimatic application of digital fandom. New Media and Society, 17(2), 149-166.

Wasike, B. (2013). Framing news in 140 Characters: How social media editors frame the news and interact with audiences via Twitter. Global Media Journal - Canadian Edition, 6(1), 5-23.

How media around me is ever changing

Uses and gratification theory can be seen in many aspects of our lives, as media has become an integral part of human society and we all consume large forms of media in our own unique ways.

I can think of my own experience as a transfer student coming to Canada. Moving to another foreign country was a daunting task that took a lot of planning and thought before making the decision. My parents along with myself did a lot of research regarding the region, the people, customs, languages and political climate before making the decision to transfer my education to Canada as we were culturally different and wanted to make sure that we were aware of all the changes that were to happen to my life and be prepared for them before making the big decision.

I can accurately say that at the time I knew what information I required from the internet and other media regarding Canada and I spent my time actively and passively collecting any information or opinions that could have affected my decision. I can relate this to uses and gratification theory as I had actively researched media that was specific to suit my specific needs at the time. It had more to do with what use I had for the media consumed rather that what the media did to me as a person.

Sundar states in his work that any gratifications that might have been obtained from media are largely based on a users pre-existing needs and had not be due to any specific features of the media technology at all. (Sunder et Limperos, 2013 ,2).

While I had prepared to experience the whole stranger in strange land scenario after arriving in Canada the people who greeted me as a foreign student at the airport couldn’t have been more approachable or nicer giving me a first-hand experience of the country’s welcoming generosity and friendly populace. As soon as we stepped outside the airport I began to notice something was was quite familiar to me even being continents away from where I had set out on my journey, The McDonalds logo. The golden arches of McDonalds were just the first of many on billboards placarded around downtown Toronto that I could recognize due to McDonalds having a major presence globally allows people who might have never even had food from McDonalds be able to derive what the golden arches logo signifies. I was able to analyze and derive meaning from a sign I had identified and as Sullivan had stated “The scholars of the CCCS recognized the power of text to structure potential interpretations, they also imagined audiences as active decoders of media texts, leaving conceptual room for them to challenge these meanings” (Sullivan, 139).

Here if we look at semiotics I could say that the physical billboard with the logo is the signifier. The concept of the brand of McDonalds being a large corporate chain of restaurants that I recognized is what is Signified here. The golden arches on the billboard meant to denote the McDonalds logo is the sign as it is what was used to communicate to the decoder which was me.

Semiotics is important as it allows us to decode messages in different ways that it helps us both interpret and decode mass media texts that can come in many forms. It could have been a physical sign as was the case with the McDonalds billboard. It could also include other forms of media texts such as a song, the latest album by The Red-Hot Chilli Peppers had come out and everyone I know had varied thoughts about it and weren’t shy to voice their opinion about their music as they felt they decoded and interpreted the texts differently and wanted to make sure other people knew how they felt regarding that media text and they wanted to know how it felt from other perspectives as well.

Companies have begun to take advantage of this as more and more of funding now goes towards building a brand image because audiences tend to gravitate towards products and services they feel comfortable using or that they see their peer using thereby assuring them of the quality of the former. Apple products can be seen abundance in my experience at Brock university, they are massively consumed amongst the student body due to being ‘easy to use’. This is due to apple creating a user interface which promotes simplicity and allows user who do not want to go through trivial menus and advanced options to obtain content and the sleek design and simple applications cater to a more basic user with little time on their hands. Apple likes to build a sense of brand loyalty amongst their customers by offering the same interface and software through all their products and maintain easy connectivity thereby building an image in a household or a group of people rather than just the individual thereby diversifying their market audience.

 TV advertising is a major industry where corporations spend millions to make sure consumers get an idea of what kind of exciting product is at their disposal through the glitz, glamour and fanfare associate now with advertising. I feel like advertisers tend to try and focus on programming that might cater to the audience they are focusing on such as luxury cars and men’s wear being advertised during sports events when an estimated large amount of male populace would be regarded as the audience thereby providing the advertisers a chance at reaching their target market. Super bowl Sunday advertising slots can cost millions of dollars for advertisers but these slots are seen as goldmines for companies as they reach one of the largest demographics of TV audience thus pushing product to a new extreme. Budweiser has experienced tremendous increases in revenue after the airing of their initial Super bowl spots which has led to them doing a new innovative yearly spot during the period such as the iconic puppy advertisement. All these advancements in advertisements and reaching certain target audiences and demographics were in large part due to the early investment by the Nielsen company and their early efforts to engage participation and rate early TV in an effort to quantify viewers and sell this information goldmine to advertisers. Buzzard’s article refers to the Nielsen company as an early pioneer who had tied to  maintain control of this practice thereby trying to develop a monopoly in this particular sector through the use of Nielson ratings. ( Buzzard, 2015, p4).

       References

1.      Buzzard, K. (2015). The rise of market information regimes and the historical development of audience ratings. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 35(3), 511–517.

2.      Sullivan, J. (2013). Media Audiences: Effects, users, institutions and power.

Why Companies need Logos and how they help advertising.

The Comedy Show

I have been going for Comedy shows for as long as I can remember, from local comedians to big names like ‘Russel Peters’ . I enjoy the night no matter who performs as long as there are laughs and the atmosphere is comfortable.

I never really thought about my experiences as a member of the audience till now, but I thought I would share my experience from showtime comedy club in St Catharines . I was ushered in by the owner of the small club and sat at a booth overlooking the main stage while people began to slowly squander in . There were groups of people ranging in size as well as a lot of people who came alone to enjoy their night with some entertainment.

The audience members began to converse among themselves before the show and not just the people that knew one another but the strangers as well which was foreign to me as with most entertainment venues strangers usually stick to themselves while the bigger groups dominate conversation. The comedian who kicked off the show was new and not particularly entertaining , he relied on shock value and cliche jokes to try and get a laugh. I wanted to voice my displeasure at some of the rape culture jokes being made but I was afraid to voice my opinion among the large group. 

I believe ‘Spiral of Silence’ had an effect here as I was afraid of what the majority’s opinion was and that it went against my thoughts thus causing me not to speak out about my displeasure .

The second comedian was much more personable and enjoyable. He told his jokes through stories about his life which the audience thoroughly enjoyed. He seemed like an average everyday kind of person with real life issues that the average working man could relate to thus enjoyed a much higher approval among the audience. It was near the end of his performance that he revealed that most of his material came from observing his friends and other regular people and that most of his ‘real life experiences’ were fictional. He had put on a ‘persona’ where he became humanized and ability to relate to the audience thus increasing their acceptance level and comfort around him. This persona did not reflect the comedian’s real character or intentions but was created to seek a certain goal and it worked out very effectively.

Before the show concluded there was a charity drive where a local woman came on stage and told the story of how her four year old developed cancer and how her and her husband lacked the financial means to provide care and support to their child. It evoked strong emotional responses out of the audience. I began to slowly notice show the audiences reactions began to change slowly but surely . A room that was filled with laughter and smiling faces slowly became understanding, sad and comforting . The pain the woman who was speaking at the podium could be seen on most of the audiences faces at a point. I noticed how it was a case of Emotional contagion where it was a phenomenon where a persons emotions and similar behavior slowly triggered responses of the same emotions and behavior in other people.

Life

Friend: Hey, you going out tonight ?

Me: No.

I’m a deep boy