Multitasking with Reddit and Pizza

It starts out as just a simple objective: to research what it means to multitask and the affect that it has on human efficiency. Through studying multitasking the amount of internet tabs I have opened, questioned the exact conclusion researchers had come to. What I was learning and the way that I was going about learning it seemed to be ineffective. Anna Cirell (2014) and Annie Paul (2013) encourages with in their professions that people look at what they are doing, how they are doing it and the reason for it. The addictiveness of looking at multiple screens and engaging with so many different things distracts from the real focus, the real intention of what someone wants to do. With all the gadgets and gizmos that are at our disposal and the portability of those gadgets they are always with us, calling out and tempting us to be used.

The idea of multitasking is interesting to me. With all the screens that I can be looking at and playing with it seemed to me that the simplest form of multitasking would be eating and working on a computer. The main difference I see being that eating is a necessity for health and human survival while using a computer can be anything from fun, work and even just boredom. So the idea behind looking at this topic would be to look at which aspects of eating and being on the computer would people succumb to. Would people stay on the computer and forgo eating because technology is so compelling or would they be able to control themselves – step back from the computer and get something to eat. While this may question the addictiveness of technology it didn’t quite relate to multitasking directly.

My choice looked at pizza and Reddit. Pizza because it is a common thing that I eat on a regular basis while using my laptop and that it is the leading choice of take-away food in America. I chose Reddit as the social media as it is seen as a popular place for American users, so the connection between America’s choice of Pizza and a social media that is used by Americans provides the potential to find connections between what they do in the area of multitasking Reddit and eating Pizza. Looking at how media could have the potential to change the eating habbits of its users is an interesting aspect to look at. My topic looked simple at the way they people would eat their pizza if they were to do nothing but eat and to see what they did differently when using a computer. The results would be a reflection of the people who change their behaviour. Would people consider the qualities of pizza when they are using a computer – grease, loose topping, sides and crust.

Gathering information from making a survey allowed to look at each individual aspect about how someone would get a pizza and then how they would eat in when being on the computer. Looking at where people buy pizzas – independent pizzerias or cafes, multi-chain stores that sell pizza frozen or fresh, if people order online and have it delievered or pick it up and even if people buy all the raw ingredients and make pizza from scratch allows to understand what type of pizzas people are buying. Whether they want a to-do-it-yourself style fresh made, a frozen just stick in the oven or one from a take-away store that supports local business.

There are multiple aspects we can look at in regards to finding out what demographic on Reddit there is that allows for pizza companies to make a decision on how to promote their brand and secure an audience. A potential brand or stakeholder would be Domino’s Pizza as looking at what sort of audience there is on Reddit allows us to distinguish what aspects of pizza are prominent, what costs people are willing to pay, how far people are willing to travel and how interested people are in eating Pizza. My research would provide valid research in looking at what aspects are key in finding if Reddit is a worthwhile promotional platform for Domino’s advertisement.

The additional interest about looking at eating pizza while being on Reddit is interest in how little common problems such as greasy pizza and loose problems is catered to when multitasking. Greasy pizza would lead to greasy fingers and potential greasy keyboard, depending on how much someone cares for their products and so wanting their computer to stay clean how would they go about cleaning the grease up. Also would be to look at what could someone add to their computer to protect from that little bit of liquid landing on your keyboard no matter how careful you are.

References:

Cirell, A. M. (2014) “Media Multi-Tasking and the Learning/Developing Child” The New Social Worker, January 5, accessed online 31 October 2014 http://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/practice/media-multi-tasking-and-the-learning-developing-child/

Paul, A. M. (2013) “You’ll Never Learn! Students can’t resist multitasking, and it’s impairing their memory” Slate, 3 May, accessed online 31 October 2014 http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/multitasking_while_studying_divided_attention_and_technological_gadgets.html

 

Pizza and Reddit Infographic

 

9 Weeks of #BCM240

The past 9 weeks have been an interesting journey through the overall topic of Media, Audience and Place and how people interact with technology in everyday settings. Having to come up with weekly blog posts is nothing unusual for a Media and Communications degree as a majority of the subjects outline that some online writing will be produced at some point. While there are weekly topics written about there are a number of extra interests that writing a blog post has developed along the way.

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This semester the weekly topics have been more involving with the audience and the expression of personal experience. Such as in Week 5 when the objective was to go to a movie cinema and write about the entire experience – who should you go with, where should you go, what should you go see, what time should you go, will there be anything else afterwards or before going, will there be any snacks, who else has visited the cinemas, what types of people have visited the cinemas and where have they sit in the cinema. This experience was an interest take on the development of how technology changed human behaviour. Going through the entire process of going to a cinema I was aware about what actions I have been putting up with from friends who can’t be bothered to answer, not noticing the simple actions made by people I was oblivious to the correlation between how technology affects its audience.

A key aspect in learning to write weekly blogs is the way in which the writer can relate to an audience or keep the audience interested. The subject helped aide general ideas such as with the personal experiences. By being able to write about events, places, movies and just general experiences that the writer of the blog has experienced it brings a more personal touch to the writing style and allows for a more informal conversation to take place. Using the experience of what happened such as going to the movies, it is relatable to the reader and then the addition of talking about the overall observing of the experience, what someone might not see if they were not told to look for it, allows for an extra look at how the experiences compare between what happened to the writer and the reader – providing a connection. This subtle connection between what captures the audience is a more friendly action when attempting to write a blog. With being relatable I have learnt that there is an understanding in knowing your audience that contributes to being relatable and the development of personal growth with writing blogs. Writing my blog posts all I know is that at the moment more of my University peers and tutors read my blog posts, this provides the idea that what I have to write needs to be somewhat formal but not entirely. Though focusing on just peers and tutors as my audience restricts the larger potential audience that my blog can attract, so there is a need to find my own style and continue showing my own personality within my blog posts.

I never put much thought into the look of my blog, looking at the theme, the widgets and the additional personal touches I can do. Having now thought about the intention of my blog and what I want it to look like – I really have no idea, I find that I’m not creative enough to come up with a background that I feel will complement what I write and one that I will be satisfied with. I did change my blog post theme to the Matala Theme as it incorporates some simple colour, such as the colourful header while using some simple texture background as you scroll down while not taking focus away from the posts that have been published, so not to be simple black writing on a white background. The widgets I have used are Twitter, Tags, Categories and Calendar to allow for easy accessibility around my blog – being able to find topics based on the tag bubble or look at specific posts by category. The Calender provides a look at the [in]consistency for which I post my blogs and Twitter provides the means for cross media incorporation where a viewer, who so chooses, will be able to follow me on multiple platforms and contact me.

The only issue that has risen for me with the 9 weeks of blog posting has been the consistency for keeping up the weekly blog posts. While the topics have been discussed at University in the lecture and then talked about with-in a group in the tutorials there has been the personal effort in finding out things that I’m interested in and writing about. While there have been easy cases for what I need to write about such as going to the movies there is always that constant questioning of “What should I write about?”, “How detailed should I write” and “Should I add imagery?” among a lot of others. Though there are problems with myself procrastinating mainly to the last minute producing sub-par work the idea of weekly blog tasks about content that I am interested in allows for schedule that I try to commit to.

Overall this semester has been an interesting look at what I have achieved and what I perceive technology to be in regards to Media, Audience and Place. Looking at the everyday activities and getting asked to question how an individual came to each decision involved in the activity is interesting in looking at the change of perception from those who are involved. Going through these 9 weeks has been quite an eye opening experience and I am definitely happy about my choice of degree and the content that I get to produce along the way.

Aussie Film In Crisis

The Australian Film Industry has been facing a crisis. Australians aren’t interested in watching or creating Australian made films without being tied to big budget Hollywood movies and actors. The Queensland film industry has declined by two-thirds in 2012/13 from what it once was. The belief of a high Australian dollar, the lack of effort from Government business who are supposed to attract over-seas films being created and worked on in Australia, and the Australian people who don’t support Australian made movies has all impacted on the decline of Australian productions and needs to be changed in order to rejuvenate the industry.

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Though there is only speculation about what Australia can do to revitalize its Movie Industry we can look at other countries and see how they managed to keep their Industry alive.

The United Kingdom’s Government has invested money in creative industries. By investing in the creative services and building state-of-the-art sound stages that are purposely built for the Film Industry, the UK is able to promote the best resources for any potential interest for film as well as allow for the reduction of red tape costs as creating a space dedicated for big productions allows for an ease in getting a start up in the UK.

Australia has both the Australian Film Commission (AFC) and the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) that aides in funding, the comparative cost of filming a big budget film is lackluster compared to other countries that create films. Such as that of Canada where their film industry problem was that they have the money to create big budget films but they don’t have the audience. Canada implemented two changes to cater this issue. The first being to preference commercial creations that are linked to user-friendly genres and number two being to relax transnational elements such as foreign actors.

The United Kingdom and Canada have fixed their Film Industry issues Australia is still in need. While Australia can invest money in creative industries, put preference in commercial creations or lift the cost of bringing transnational talent to Australian shores will these tricks get the Australian people to go an Australian created movie.

Top 10 Aussie grossed films in Australia

Looking at Australia’s Top 100 grossing feature films of all time, listed here, there are only two movies that made it in 2013, those being The Great Gatsby at number 6 and The Railway Man at number 40, 26 Australian movies were made in 2013. In 2012 there were only four movies that made it onto the list. The Great Gatsby and The Railway man while nice to see on the list that Australians are watching some movies it could be that the movie star well known Hollywood actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby and Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman  in The Railway Man.

Ren and Stimpy: not til I’m older

It has been a long time since I thought about Ren and Stimpy but today of all days I can relate this to a topic of media influencing audience restrictions, with personal experience. Created in 1991 by John Kricfalusi and first aired on Nickelodeon, Ren and Stimpy created a number of dilemmas around what a children’s cartoon should be and how the humor that surrounds Ren and Stimpy is shown to be suitable for a mature audience.

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Starring Ren a Chihuahua who is temperamental and psychotic and Stimpy a cat who lacks any means of intelligence and rationale, who constantly provokes Ren to go on one of his rampages. Ren and Stimpy highlight the humor of boogers, fart jokes and homophobia with the constant means of brown humor to move the dialogue along and tell a story.

Such as in the episode “I was a Teenage Stimpy”, which highlighted the aspects of going through puberty and masturbation. It captures the changes the body will go through and the quizzical moments that would arise throughout the transition – mood swings, change of voice, pimples and sensitivity.

For me the humor involved in Ren and Stimpy was deemed inappropriate by my parents and seen as not worth watching. Instead of watching what my parents called “toilet humour” they deemed it was better for me to watch cartoons that provided “education in a creative way” such as The Magic School Bus that would use mathematics and general problem solving to move the story along.

The restrictions my parents put on my television watching impacted on what I was allowed to do and understand. When it came to being a child and watching humor seemed to be aimed at young adults the appropriateness of my parents actions can be understood. Though the actual intention of my parents will never be known and even the humor that is on Ren and Stimpy could go straight over my head.  The use of media (Ren and Stimpy) on an audience (parents and myself) impacted the values and qualities my parents wanted to instil on me.

My Simple Multitasking

Watching television, eating some yogurt and browsing the internet while trying to get some University homework completed. This scenario has created an important issue around the value and efficiency for the completion of each task, however multitasking seems to be the way I want to do it. There is always the option to do each activity one at a time but I feel that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish as much as I would want to in the time-frame that I have available to me. I say this because I want to each activity but the time for which I get to do them overlaps into a multitasking situation.

I want to watch a specific television program at a specific time but I need to get something to eat that satisfies my hunger. I want to browse the internet such as Reddit and YouTube to keep up with viral videos and interesting content but I want to also finish writing this blog post and have relief from needing to get University work out of the way.

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The dedication to each action is relevant to how important each action is for my persona and the focus I put on it. Not being able to watch a specific television show on television is no big deal because I can just do it later, ever on other devices. Browsing the internet is also no big deal because the content I want to view stays where it is and will always be accessible (in most cases). Eating is important as not eating will keep being a distraction for everything else I want to accomplish and will need to be taken care of so I can accomplish other tasks. University work is a major aspect in getting done as is has consequences that will impact my future.

Though each task I am doing can be ranked into importance and also whether or not it is a hobby, as to say something I want to do, opposed to something I have to do/ need to do with eating and getting University work done. I still choose to multitask every activity in order to get everything else done.

In my case I find it is the mix of interests balance each other out to allow to me to complete each task. Simply by looking up from my computer screen and just looking blankly at the television of a Futurama episode I have seen multiple times it allows me to get a laugh out every now and again and allow me to thing about what I want to keep writing about. The symmetry of having these tasks going from one to another, whether just briefly or for an extended period of time allows for each task to get accomplished – effectively though, is up for my University Tutor to decide.

Caught in Public: mobile phone use

“Would you mind if I take a photo?”

A simple question to ask an individual or a group of people that are in close proximity, but what if the question wasn’t asked and the photo was still taken, is the photo still allowed for use and distribution? Depending on the location of the photo being taken, whether taking that photo be in a public or private space then there is a concern to know if a photo is being taken.

Taking a photo in 2014 has never been easier since every smart phone has a camera, though taking a photo is nothing unusual, the sharing of that photo on social media can have a consequence that the people in the photo or the people taking the photo have never thought of.

Private space can mean both the space around an individual that they feel is psychologically theirs (their personal space), the other is the area for which an entity has control and power over an area and dictates what rules are followed within that controlled space. Houses and businesses are examples of private space as they are owned by people who dictate what happens with their establishments. To take a photo in a private space would be up to the individual who controls the area, so to ask permission would be needed.

Public space refers to an area opened to anyone for use, these spaces being parks, markets and malls. The use of public spaces deals with more of a social space where anyone can enter and do whatever they want. The intention usually specific to what sort of public space it is, such as a playground for children deals with the surrounding responsibilities, infrastructure and necessities to be called a “playground”. (Worpole, K)

Private and Public spaces were once separated but the ability to take photos and share those photos second guess how private, private spaces really are, and how photos in public spaces captures more than it should. When out in public taking a photo – whether it be scenery, friends, objects or art, the use of the mobile phone can capture every moment not even the one intended. As taking a photo out in a public park where other people are living their lives who you have no interaction with, you could capture a sensitive moment, without even the intention to. A moment such as an unexpected marriage proposal caught in a park Austin, Texas:

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Out in public with your mobile phone, with all of the saved photos among other private information, is used constantly – from a distraction from face-to-face social interactions, as a navigation tool to a just something to use to pass the time. This small gadget that you hold on to impacts on your social convention and dictates what you will do and how you will do it but also those other people who you have captured.

Reference

Worpole, K & Knox, K 2007 “The social value of public spaces”, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, York http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/2050-public-space-community.pdf

Do I have room for another device?

Starting out another University semester of blogging for the reason of current personal development for future business employment. This time, the overall idea is ‘Media, Audience and Place’, how each aspect affects an individual and how it develops that individual into society, whether or not this comes to be answered it will be interesting to see how we go.

To start with, we need to see what our own media space consists of. What technology is around that we use in everyday life, possibly used as an extension of self-identity – the can’t live without it type-of-deal. For myself at this current time I am sitting in my recliner with a smart television on in the background – watching Daria, on quite low-volume to allow for some concentration to get this blog post done, but loud-enough to look and pick up the dialogue as to keep some interest in what is being said. To the left of me is my mobile phone and to the right of me is tablet, both are my main uses of communication with people for which I have some connection to – friends, family, work and those random unexpected one time encounters.

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My phone never leaves my side, as it holds a lot of personal information (for security purposes), but also as it is the best way to reach me in an instant. The tablet is a tool that is flexible with its use, dependent on the location of where I am. When at University and just needing to play some games, the tablet is quite reliable is sense of its size and array of games designed for it, currently just playing Plants-vs-Zombies 2 on it. To top off the technology I’m currently using is my Laptop, which would be the piece of technology I use the most, from doing University work to catching up on news, from browsing YouTube to see what it trending on Reddit, from seeing how much money I earned from my bank to seeing how much money I spent on retail websites. My laptop plays a big part in my life.

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All these devices around me, create a space for which I use them. When I am home all of the devices get used as when I am home there is no restriction for the purpose of the piece of technology. It is when I’m at work, at University or catching public transport that each piece of technology I own provides a different situation for the validity for which I use it in. It could be that these four devices cover everything aspect of my life in some regards, if there is a time during my day where a device is not present I guess I will need to add another one.