Multimedia Anti-Hazing Argument

I did my video argument on hazing in sororities. I used audio, video, pictures, and title slides for my multimedia argument. In the beginning I used pictures, video, and upbeat audio to portray the happy side of joining a Greek organization. I then used darker music, images and video of hazing victims, and interviews to show the horrors and flawed reasoning behind hazing.

 

I started the video with pictures and video of a sorority rush, rather than of just a sorority in order to focus to video on the pledging period. I chose to focus on this time in Greek life because it is around this time that members are most commonly hazed. The video then switches from happy rushing to being hazed while pledging with a transition slide and a clip of a young woman saying she’ll do whatever it takes to join a particular Greek organization. I put this here because I thought it was a nice transition into hazing in Greek life. The next parts explain what hazing is, why it is done, and why no forms of it can be allowed. It also shows pictures of hazing incidents that have gone too far. I think this all creates a strong foundation for the anti-hazing argument.

 

I used the title slides to help transition between the happy rush period and hazing in pledging. I also used the title slides to portray the idea that the video is not arguing against Greek life, but rather against hazing in Greek life. Also, the ending title slide verbalizes the video’s message that there can be serious implications to hazing that is not worth the entertainment gained from it. I also changed the color and width of the font of the title slides to match the change in tone between the two parts of the video.

 

Anti-Hazing Visual Argument

Check out my visual argument against hazing in Greek life!

Visual Arguement vs. Traditional Written Arguement

In a many research papers the authors argue either for or against an issue or thesis. If my image mash-up were a research paper it would argue against hazing in sororities. It would argue that hazing for the purpose of bonding is ineffective and the consequences are far too great. However, with the advent of new forms of media, research papers aren’t the only way to make this argument. As Lessig mentions in one of his articles the new generation has ADD. Individuals between the ages of 15-19 only read for 14 minutes per weekend but leave the TV on for over 16 hours (Lessig, RW: Revived 11). This means that in order for a research paper to convince a reader of a stance, it would have to be short. However, if the same issue were argued on visually, particularly on TV, it would have several hours to prove its point. However, the method of convincing a consumer visually is quite different from that of the research paper method. In a research paper, evidence from other sources can be used as long as citations are included. This is not true for visual arguments. The only evidence that can be used must be generated by the visual argument creator, or the visual argument creator must have prior permission from the evidence author, or the evidence must be from a royalty free site such as Creative Commons. This far limits the creator of a visual argument’s ability to prove their argument. So, the creator has hours of a consumer’s attention but few resources to use to fill the hours with. With these restrictions, what are the options an argument’s creator is left with? A creator could write a concise yet well supported research paper, or a visual argument that has useful self-created evidence, royalty free evidence, or evidence that the creator created prior permission to use. What then is a more effective method of convincing a consumer of your argument? The answer depends on the strength of the evidence.

Facebook and Twitter Are Not the Same

Freishtat and Sandlin argued that Facebook creates and shapes users’ personal identities. I think that this part of their argument can be applied easily applied to Twitter. I think that Twitter helps you shape your internet identity. It does this most by encouraging you to constantly share with others your thoughts and what you’re doing at that moment. Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t feature a lot of photos to look at, users’ interests, or work history. This means that users’ identities are based on just what they tweet. Through tweets, their followers determine their personality.

For example, the singer Pink tweeted four times one day about the superbowl. This gives her followers the impression that she’s a sports fan. Even companies and programs can form identities on Twitter. For example, The Colbert Report twitter tweets several times a day and each tweet posts a link to a short video. The videos and the tweets are ironic commentary on current events, mostly focusing on political current events. This portrays The Colbert Report as a show that comments on current events and politics, which of course is correct.

However, Freishtat and Sandlin also said that they believe that Facebook takes away a users’ privacy. I don’t agree that this argument could be applied as strongly to Twitter for several reasons. Twitter shares less information about its users than Facebook does, additionally, it doesn’t ask its users many questions about their interests. In this way, a users’ followers and Twitter itself know less about a user. Also, it does not search what you post for keywords, and then choose ads to display on your screen based on those keywords. Additionally, it is easy to set Twitter to a private stream, which means people may only see your Twitter page if they send a request and your accept it. For these reasons, I don’t believe Freishtat and Sandlin’s argument applies to Twitter well.

 

Scholars Fearing Facebook

Megan Robinson

I understand Freishtat and Sandin’s skepticism towards Facebook’s cyberspace frontier. They seem to think that Facebook uses attractive rhetoric to convince users that they are in control, when in fact Facebook manipulates their information and privacy for their own personal gain. This is an argument that I have previously heard, most recently in an interview with Mark Zuckenberg on CBS’s 60 minutes program. This argument seems to come most often from older adults as opposed to adults in my generation and below. In this regard I agree with Freishtat and Sandlin in that I think that younger adults are less worried about privacy. I believe that this lack of concern is for the reason Freishtat and Sandlin said, my generation was raised in a society where privacy no longer exist in the manner it did for previous generations because of the constant sharing of information through the internet and technology.

However, just because my generation and the ones younger than mine are less cautious about privacy does not necessarily mean that Facebook is purposely trying to take advantage of our information. I think Facebook was created for the purpose Zuckenberg claimed it was created, to foster communication and sharing between people. I think the employees of Facebook absolutely have an affect on the way that people communicate, after all they design the communication forums that users use on the site. I also think that the Facebook designers shape the way that users communicate outside of Facebook. The vocabulary, social norms, and experiences shared on the site are creeping their way into our regularly word usage, behavior, and conversation. However, it seems that Freishtat and Sandin have a negative opinion towards Facebook’s ability to shape it’s users behavior and communication. This opinon of their’s I don’t agree with; I view this shift in communication as a generational one that future generations will be sure to build on and change as time and technology progresses. So in my opinion Freishtat and Sandin should let go of their fears that Facebook will lead to the same horrors as the western frontier will, because at the end of the day, one is thousands of miles of unsettled land and another is connecting with your friends.

Exploring Social Media: Digg and Delicious

I looked at the website www.delicious.com and the website www.digg.com. I loved them both! I thought they were both equally useful sites but for different purposes.

Delicious is a social bookmarking site. Users can upload and store their favorite web pages to delicious, and assign tags to the pages that relate to their purpose. The website then uses the tags to organize the bookmarks for you. Also, all of the bookmarks you upload to your profile are visible to other delicious users. So other users can use your bookmarks to find something or just entertain themselves for a while. I thought the site was AMAZING and very time consuming! I found really interesting and handy websites through it! I found a website where you can make a card that combines all of your store club cards, I found a website about what’s really in Taco Bell’s meat (I shamefully must admit I’m still planning on eating there), and I found a website that is an aggregator of apartment search engines (which was so handy because I’m looking for an apartment in D.C. because I applied for a bunch of internships there). Delicious is handy and entertaining, so much so that’s it’s very easy to spend way too much time on it.

 

The homepage of delicious for nonregistered users

Digg’s lay-out is very similar to Facebook. It’s a website that aggregates news from  a variety of source including  big name news companies and small blogs. Users on Digg can “digg” certain articles, and hence raise their prominence to other viewers on Digg. Digg is great for a number of reasons. It categorizes news so it’s easy for users to find the type of news they’re looking for; it aggregates news so it’s coming from a variety of sources (the most unique part of it’s aggregation is that it pulls from small outlets as well as big ones); however, it’s most important feature is that the prominence of an article on the site depends on user recommendation. This system of recommendation allows articles to be ranked by quality of content judge by readers, as opposed to the media prominence of the news outlet. Digg is great for finding articles that would be hard to notice elsewhere. Another cool feature of Digg is that you can create a profile and customize it so you only relieve alerts when news is added to categories or by outlets you’re interested in. This is a super handy feature because it alerts you about only news your interested in. Digg is very useful for an avid news follower, who wants to read about topics of interest to them from a variety of big and small name outlets.

 

The homepage of Digg for nonregistered users