Final Project

I decided to use a meme for my final project, and relate them to how political candidates use social media during a campaign.  Memes allow a concept to quickly spread, and when used on the internet, they are usually intended to be funny.  I think humor is important for retaining the idea, if the person finds it funny, it gives the person another way of remember the idea.  It is easier to recall information when you have more than one "path" to the memory and thinking something is humorous can provide that second path.  Humor also provides a common ground for people and a way to encourage people to share the information.  And if you don't find it funny or thought provoking, you quickly move onto the next one.  I created these three myself, based on two popular memes.

I picked the Futurama Fry meme because I like the show, but mainly because it is intended to ask questions that people may have, and because the answers they have in their minds are too surreal to give enough credence to say out loud, they are left wondering the answer.  It is about the cognitive conflict between what we believe and what we want other people to think we believe.  I'm not sure if the meme is that deep, or I just over analyzed it.

The second meme is the Success Kid, and it is about celebrating little victories in life.  If you follow a candidate on Twitter or Facebook, you are telling everyone, that cares to know, which side you are on, and some people can become very polarized.  Friends might be disappointed to learn that you are Conservative or Liberal.

Photo Essay

Link to the essay:  http://cspearsdigitalmedia.blogspot.com/2012/11/church-and-state.html

This photo essay was taken at a church in Columbus Ohio, which was acting as voting place, and it was taken on Election Day.  The purpose of the essay was to show how a religious place was being used for a government event.  Unfortunately there were not many people at the church when we visited it, I assume because it was in the middle of the day, and most people were at work.  Because of the scarcity of people, the church itself became the focus of the essay.  Many shots were from different sides of the church with indications of Election Day such as flags and small signs guiding people to the voting entrance.  Some photos were shots of cars in the parking lot that had stickers for either President Obama or Mitt Romney, and political signs from across the street for local candidates, which had the church in the background.

Infographic Revision

The purchase of car in usually going to be the second largest a person is going to make in their lifetime behind buying a house.  The auto industry is one of the largest in the world; it wields a certain amount of political power.  The information for this infographic came from polling car owners in the state of Michigan, where a lot of people are employed by the auto industry.  The Auto Union has been a strong proponent for voting and especially for the Democratic Party, which is why I found it interesting that most of the Detroit brands, with the exception of Lincoln were on the Republican side of the spectrum.  The Republican Party was strongly opposed against the bailout that many have agreed, would have ended two of the three Detroit companies and the many companies that supply those two.  In his reelection campaign, President Obama used his decision to bailout those companies, and its success to show that his policies were better fitted for the current economic climate then Mitt Romney’s policies, which was in favor of a structured bankruptcy.  Those points helped President Obama secure wins in states that had high numbers of auto workers which included the key swing state of Ohio.

This infographic is meant to be very simple, only two sides, either the brand was on the Democrat side or the Republican side.  It was not my intention to show how liberal or conservative brand owners, as a whole, were going to be, but simply show that the brands have more owners that support one party over the other.  The brands are listed from top to bottom by how likely their owners are to vote, and the spaces in between are to give the reader an idea of how much more likely or less likely a brands owner are to vote compared to another brand.  A Cadillac owner is more likely to vote than a Chevrolet owner, and a Chevrolet owner is more likely to vote than a Hyundai owner.

Twitter Revisited

When I learned we were going to use Twitter in class, I was relieved because I had used it before, but felt that there was more to learn.  I've had a Twitter account for years, even though I hardly tweeted, I wasn't even sure how to properly use hashtags.  When it came to using Twitter in class, we focused on how the political candidates used it in their campaign.  When the President tweeted personally, he signs bo at the end.  Looking through his tweets, you aren't going to see many with bo at the end, showing that most of the tweets were composed by staff.  I doubt Romney was any different, but that isn't surprising and with all the candidates had to do during the campaign, it is understandable that they didn't have time to tweet.  I learned how Twitter can be a good way to gauge certain topics, and get quick opinions from people.  I used Twitter to get news and sports updates and during the election, it became hectic with people tweeting about the results.  While most people were watching the results on TV, I was watching the results online.  I had both the New York Times website and the BBC News site on tabs, and I would periodically switch to them when a state went to one candidate or the other, and I then went to Twitter to see people's reaction.

This first photo is of President Obama's tweet soon after securing victory in the election.  The number of retweets is over 800,000, those people wanted to tell all their followers that they are happy with the President winning the election.

This second photo comes from Mitt Romney's Twitter page, and as of December 9th, these are the last tweets posted.  The November 6th tweet was asking people to vote for him, and then he didn't tweet for another 4 days and that was to thank people for their support.  What is interesting is how the tweets basically stopped when the election ended.  It was clear that the Romney camp used Twitter solely for the campaign, which isn't surprising.  I sure Romney didn't wrote many tweets himself, and campaign staffers composed the account.  Without the election there is no need for the account to be updated.  It wouldn't be a bad idea for Romney to keep up with Twitter, I'm there are plenty of people that still want to hear what he has to say.  He is still in a position to help his party, but they should come from him personally.

Twitter is a good tool to get your message out, but it is limiting to what you are able to say.  I think Twitter should be used to direct people to other sites that can post the entire text.  I will continually use Twitter, and while I won't be getting anymore campaign tweets, at least for another 4 years, I will still use it to find news stories and sports updates.

The audience for my video are people that are curious about how nonverbal cues can effect their perception of a person, more specifically a candidate.  The goal of the video was not to make people feel like they were experts after watching the video but just to make them aware of how people in the public spotlight have to learn to control their actions to make themselves more presentable.  How people view candidates is the most important aspect that campaigns try to control, and because those nonverbal cues are mostly unconscious, people might not be aware of them.  The reason for the video was to make people aware of the importance of nonverbal communication.

Educational Video Why are Things Cute?

The video I picked is called "Why are Things Cute?" and is about why people perceive certain things to cute.  The maker of the video is call VSauce, and they usually make videos explaining physics concepts and other scientific curiosities, like how much does the internet weigh or what color is a mirror.  They go into immense detai, but remain easy to understand and at a fast pace.  Their videos usually contain the same man, who introduces himself as Michael at the beginning of each video, and the video changes from shots of him, to mostly still photos of what he is explaining.  The reason I picked this video, is the same reason I like watching their videos, it goes into great detail explaining a question most people never even thought to ask or consider.  The video is a good example of what we are doing in class because it is a low budget and informative video.  The most important thing about the video is not the visuals but what is being said.  The pictures and animations are there just to compliment Michael's words.

Infographic Description

When constructing the picture the first thing I did was divide the picture into two colors to represent the Democratic and Republican parties.  I used the dividing line as a reference point for lining up the text in the picture and the center picture of a road surface.  I placed the picture and shapes first then laid the corresponding text over them.  For the top and bottom I used the rectangle tool, and changed the shape to an arrow for the side portion.  

I got the information from a website called statsinthewild.wordpress.com, and the image from filterforge.com.  The information was from a different infographic but I simplified the design and limited the brands represented and added some color.  Copyrighted materials are fair use because they are not being used in a marketable capacity.

Infographic

The infographic I created was about car brands and how their owners are wiling to vote.  The purchase of a car is generally the second largest purchase that a person will make and is an important decision.  The automotive market is one of the biggest in the world, and large enough to warrant attention from American politicians.  The Big Three car companies have been the topic of debate for years, and carry a lot of weight it comes to voting.  Unions that represent the workers in those companies, are strong proponents of voting and particularly for the democratic party.  It was a surprise to see so many domestic brands on the Republican side because most republicans were not for the auto bailout of GM and Chrysler, whose brands are on the Republican side.

The infographic itself is very simple, a car brand lines up on one side or the other based on how owners of their cars are most likely to vote.  The brands are also organized by how likely their voters are to vote.  The brands with higher voter turnouts are at the top, and lower turnouts on the bottom.  I kept the design simple because I thought it was better to have an easily readable and understandable message.  The design is meant to be balanced, from a visually standpoint each color has the same amount of space and both the top and bottom are white with black text, and all of the text is the same font.  The other way the infographic represents balance is the companies that are represented, brands are from multiple countries but more importantly brands that vary in the social classes they typically represent.  I avoided information that would require numerical representation because I thought that would over complicate the design, and wouldn't make as big of an impact on the viewer.  The main frustration of this infographic was trying to get the information set up in a way that could be understandable with as little explanation as possible.

My Twitter Experience

My favorite part of using Twitter is sports updates while they happen.  I no longer live in the market of the teams I follow, and cannot watch them on TV.  It is also neat to see other people commenting on the same events while they are happening.  I don't get news on current events from Twitter, but every once in a while, a tweet will pop up that will catch my interest and I'll go and research it.  The part of Twitter I don't like is, because I follow over 200 accounts, the information on my newsfeed is constantly being changed, and can get visually overwhelming.  Even though you pick the people or companies you follow, there is no way to filter out the less important and relevant information, unless you actively go to their page.  Many people's tweets are replies, and because you don't initially see the original message, the reply is essentially meaningless.

Twitter allows you to get real time reactions t events from people all over the world.  People with smartphones are able to quickly write a tweet a post instantly as something happens.  Facebook allows you to do the same thing, but you get information from people that you are friends with, people that have confirmed you as a friend, limiting the amount.  On Twitter you can follow anybody without having to wait for confirmation, unless they have a secure account.  The biggest difference is Twitter is more about following people you don't know directly and Facebook is.  Twitter is different from the traditional blog because it limits the size of your posts.  On a typical blog, the writer's limit is only what they can write and what they think the average reader is willing to complete.  Twitter allows readers to quickly finish a post and move on.  By limiting the amount of characters per posts, I sometimes get frustrated because it usually takes me more than 140 characters for me to complete a thought, I fear that the readers will not understand fully what I'm trying to say, and it's even more limiting if you post a link.

The conversations I have on Twitter are usually just with my friends that have accounts, and that is only two people.  Most of the people I have do not have accounts so I talk to them on Facebook or on the phone.  Most of the conversations I have are with my friend Mark and are usually shallow and vacuous in nature, but if we wanted to have a real conversation we would talk on the phone.

Before this weekend, I used Twitter sparingly seeing only some of the benefits, I generally only saw how it impacted me personally and since most of the people I know don't use it, I didn't see the impact as being very substantially.  After this weekend I realized that Twitter is important because it is a way to get many people's opinions quickly, and knowing what people think and value is important to many organizations like the government and companies.  It is like a constant poll of people's attitudes towards certain topics and policies.

I think Twitter can be used to have meaningful communications and political debates, because it allows a person to connect directly to many people without having to know them or get confirmation from them, but with so much information being shared, it is hard for certain messages to get noticed, and it is hard to express a thought when you are limited to the amount of characters you can post.  I think Twitter can be used for political debates and meaningful communication, but those usually require the expression of complex thoughts, which are hard to complete in 140 characters.

Political Brand Comparison

This infographic is showing what brands members of the Democratic and Republican parties prefer and their impressions of the brand. The infographic is using comparison and contrast, but instead of showing how their members prefer different brands, as one would assume, it shows how they seem to mostly prefer the same brands.  Of the top ten brands for each party, seven appear on both lists.

The infographic also uses balance in two ways, the first balance is visual, the highest rated companies are listed on top, and the 10th highest rated on bottom.  The second is that both sides, Democrat and Republican, are represented, it wouldn't make much of an impact if only one side was shown.