Personal Statement

With so many people connected in internet by mobile phones, laptop and other digital device, the digital media have become an indispensable role of modern life. Meanwhile, 2 billions of internet users are using social media, social media as a most important part of digital media spend most of time, in this case, over using social media should be considered as an issue. Thus, in this digital story project, we create a website to share some problems and states with audience and aware this issue, also, there are 2 social channel to support.

For the video pitch, there are five main parts of it, we explain ‘what is social media’; ‘who are users of social media’; ‘problems of over using social media’; ‘campaign plan and end goal’) in a brief way. The mobile phone have a built-in omnidirectional microphone of recording audio, so it picks up sounds from all around of the device(WITNESS 2015). That will lead to noisy sounds in record, in this case, we act silence videos and additional sounds record. I am responsible for editing the video. The tone of voice need be same, and the background music make the video more vivid. At beginning, the end words be overlooked, so it is wired the video stop in sudden. Thus, the begin words and end words are essential as main content to make the video as whole.

In order to develop the website become effective and active, we developed a detailed timeline. There are four main activities, everyday Twitter, fake “like-worthy” photos on Instagram, interviewing a psychology/ media expert and Facebook live page with three different age people.

The first activity is posting twitter everyday. At first, the content of the it is about the negative effect and problems of over using social media. However, we only focus on and over-emphasize the negative impact of social media. Because we reach our audience through websites and social media, our audience is the user of social media. These users are more likely to accept the information that are consistent with their own perceptions(Casad 2016). Therefore, it is inefficient to directly oppose their actions and call on them to reduce the use of social media. At the same time, we only focus on the influence of excessive use of social media from the perspective of the audience, but ignore another group, the social media industry, for which the audience's use of social media is closely related to their economic interests. According to DePhillips(2015), ‘90% of all marketers say social media marketing has increased their business exposure’, ‘70% of business-to-consumer marketers have acquired customers through Facebook’, and ‘84% of CEOs and VPs say they use social media to help make purchasing decisions’, for the companies the social media is a effective tool to reach consumers, the usage of social media directly connect with their profit. Of course, the social media companies not willing the users to reduce the using of them neither. My previous views on this issue were too singular and subjective, ignoring the professional opinions of psychology and multi-angle analysis. After reflection, we use the advantages of social media to enhance entertainment, for example, to summarize the most interesting events on social media during the day, thus saving the time for audiences to read. This approach conveys our philosophy more positively, and our account becomes a functional platform. In the end Twitter become the strongest social channel.

Joe and me are responsible for the fake photos on Instagram. We took photos in IKEA to pretend the model house in there is my home, show off how my “boyfriend ” love me and PS my body to make it more thinner. When people scroll social media, a mindset that will make them feel as if the life they live is not good enough. Unrealistic thoughts will flood the mind leaving them thinking that these so called "perfect" lives are full of nothing but happiness(Evenosky 2016). It is reasonable to explain people’s fake life on social media result as self-abased, they willing to be a perfect person to obtain others’ recognition. Obviously, it could be a common problem when people use social media, so the social media might bring some mental healthy issue,especially for teenagers. Thus we should appeal parents to consider these psychological problem caused by social media.

Finally, we still need to improve on many aspects, such as our social media imbalance, Twitter obviously are stronger and two platforms, so we should find a way to develop the other two platforms better.

Reference

Casad, BJ 2016, ‘Confirmation bias’, Encyclopaedia britannica, viewed 20 September 2018, <https://www.britannica.com/science/confirmation-bias>.

DePhillips, K 2015, ‘18 Reasons Why Your Business NEEDS Social Media Marketing’, The Content Factory, viewed 17 October 2018, <https://www.contentfac.com/9-reasons-social-media-marketing-should-top-your-to-do-list/>.

Evenosky, A 2016, “Social Media: The Fake ‘Reality’”, Odyssey, viewed 10 October 2018, <https://www.theodysseyonline.com/social-media-the-fake-reality>.

WITNESS 2015, An Activist's Guide to Mobile Video: Sound Recording, Youtube, 19 November, WITNESS, viewed 14 August 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5I4AZL0erc>.