But actually, one late night, my partner Shemmi summoned me to Woodruff Library in order to hammer out the next episode of The Web We Weave. 

She pitched me the idea of covering 350.org for The Web We Weave and I jumped onto it. Going onto the website, we browsed through the different initiatives and statistics that 350.org had to offer. I then asked Shemmi what made this organization and its background an ideal candidate for this new media podcast. She explained that the fact that this information had never been as openly available as it had with the advent of the Internet. To illustrate, the environmental statistics that the site sought to share had only really been available in texts that not all had access to or had trouble finding and using (such as encyclopedias and almanacs) and that it allowed opportunities for service and for environmental campaigns to promote and get their message out across the world.

This was the setup we chose to maintain throughout the planning and recording process. I would question her and allow her to answer, and this back-and-forth made the planning and scripting process for this podcast far quicker and enjoyable the second time around. Because I was not the star of this show, I felt much more comfortable helping and planning and also letting Shemmi take the spotlight to discuss her passions. This time, it felt much more like I was writing essay prompts for Shemmi to fill out and structure as she saw fit, and I definitely felt more comfortable than I had in my previous episode. With Shemmi’s encouragement, I tried to quell the quavering in my voice, and I succeeded. I’m really proud of taking another step out of that shadow.

As compared to “Pancakes for the Soul” and “Every Frame a Painting”, which both specifically focused on the medium itself, I feel that this episode pushed against a solitary focus on new media and talked just as much about the cause of environmentalism and brought these issues alongside the discussion of the accessibility of information and the participation of audiences in protests and locating data. I think this episode was one of the few that could have benefited from a longer running time to allow further depth and to allow both issues to stand side-by-side, for as it is, the episode itself, to me personally, felt a little crammed. Moreover, I think it addressed and focused on digital citizenship a lot more than previous episodes may have as 350.org focuses on calling us denizens of the Internet to IRL action, and this episode in turn focuses on how the site makes that possible.

This allowed for a more natural dynamic that extended into the recording process- the immediacy of taking our words and thoughts and immediately throwing them into action felt refreshing and allowed our commentary to not be stale. While I felt it wasn’t as thorough as the process Kevin and I underwent, it did allow for a more interesting performance. I would love to use this form of brainstorming and I actually later used this role as the questioner in an editorial for The Emory Wheel, which you can read here.  This, as well as working to have a clearer voice in this podcast were what I felt my best achievements walking out of this podcast.

This episode of The Web We Weave solidified a style of thought for me, and I greatly enjoyed working with Shemmi to bring it together. If you’d like to listen, you can find it here.

Featured Image: Watching Westworld

Producing this podcast was a new experience for me and a lot more challenging than I thought it would be. I expected to meet with Ruth (assistant producer), record ourselves discussing the points, and then lightly edit the podcast before sending in the finished product. However, our challenges started before we even began recording.

Westworld is one of my all time favorite tv shows and when I learned about all of the interactive websites and other resources available, I knew I wanted to analyze the new media surrounding this show. What I did not expect was to find so many outlets of new media. Not only were there two websites created by the producers of the show, there were millions of videos, Reddit threads, quizzes, Buzzfeed articles, and many more channels of new media. It was difficult sifting through the sources and choosing which ones in particular we wanted to discuss in the limited time we had for our podcast.

We decided to divide up the tasks by each researching interesting points and coming together and combining them. Ruth had never watched Westworld before so she started out by watching the first few episodes to get a general idea of what the show was about. We also created a Google doc where we put up key points and sources we wanted to go over so that we could each look over them before meeting up and recording our podcast. After hearing about the challenges and successes of the other groups, we decided to record ourselves discussing the topics instead of writing a script. We thought that this would be the easiest way to keep the conversation running smoothly; however, like some of the other groups stated, the editing took a very long time. Whenever we messed up, we kept recording and it was difficult cutting everything out, especially when we would restate whatever we were saying and some parts would sound better in the first try than the second.

The main goal of this podcast was to analyze the new media surrounding Westworld. Given that the show is a form of old media, it was interesting to explore the ways both the writers and the audience extended the viewing experience outside of the show onto these new media platforms. After cutting down the points we wanted to discuss, we decided to look at the participatory aspect of the show. The enigmatic nature of the show and the various Easter eggs on the websites designed by the writers led many fans to express their own theories and make discussion platforms. We also decided to include a sound clip from the show in the ending credits. One of the most challenging aspects of this podcast was understanding that our audience may not have seen Westworld or even heard about it before. It was easy to get caught up in the discussions and reference specific parts of the show that people who have not watched or have not finished the season may not understand. This also led to the second difficulty of timing. After cutting down our main points, we found ourselves discussing the show more in depth and recorded a 25 minute podcast that I was barely able to trim down to around 15 minutes. For the next podcast, I think that it would be better to include a few main points and analyzing them in depth instead of trying to get as many points across in the limited time we have.

For the learning outcomes, the making of this podcast falls into rhetorical composition. While recording, we had to understand that some of the audience may not have watched the show before or have not finished the season. It was important that we didn’t talk about things the audience may not have understood or given away spoilers. We tried to organize the points in a manner so that it was logical and easy to follow. The first thing we discussed was the general synopsis of the show for people who have never seen Westworld before. We hoped that by giving a brief description, the audience could follow where we were heading with our analysis of the show.

In all instances, the Humans of New York podcast was an eye-opening experience with regards to the content that a podcast could cover. Even with the experience of the previous podcast at my disposal, I continued to open new doors with how a podcast can function.

First, this was my first time producing a podcast on a subject that I knew little about in a field of study that is largely undeveloped. Discussing how Humans of New York functioned as a new media piece of work moved in a circular fashion; I found that I could not settle on a solid definition on either. So we changed our strategy. Instead of trying to ask a large over arching thematic question, I tried to focus on functionality questions. This led me to a more reasonable question: in what ways does Humans of New York utilize accomplish its goal that other forms of old media cannot?

The answer that we came up with started off technical, but evolved in a more organic direction. For example, the juggling of various social media platforms (and utilizes each to their maximum effectiveness) led me to the conclusion that the limiting of information makes the content of Humans of New York more important. In essence, the process of controlling the amount of substance brings greater attention and value to the individual pieces of the project, such as images or quotes. This is precisely why the format of Human of New York (in the form of social media posts) is more effective than that of an all encompassing blog post or a book.

But this answer still didn’t quite answer why readers were so interested in Humans of New York. Why should readers trust this limitation of information that could potentially be politically or socially charged? The key component that I found in the relationship between the content creator of Humans of New York and its readers is trust. Trust not only that the content provided is high quality, but also that its genuine. People continue to read and support Humans of New York because there is simply not a reason for the product to be dishonest.

Something else that blindsided me was the difficulty in choosing music for the podcast. Without any music, it seemed that the podcast was bland. However, forcing a background soundtrack into the podcast took away from what was being said and disoriented the listener. This wasn’t a problem for the video game podcast because it was easy to use the actual game themes to match the subject being discussed. Here, it was difficult to create music that would go with the analytical points being made. We were eventually able to make it work, but this was a point of contention that was especially surprising to me.

Overall, the success of the podcast came from the breaking apart Humans of New York as a project and commenting on its individual parts. Once we were able to nail down our approach, it was easy to discuss all of the new media elements that were being utilized in Humans of New York.

You can check out the finished product here.

Firstly, I have never intentionally followed or listened to a podcast (series) so the concept of what was to be done was a bit blurry for me at the start. After choosing BuzzFeed, I knew that I loved the site and could talk about it for days, but I honestly had no concrete opinion on their ‘effectiveness’ as a new media platform, beyond their attractive (and might I add, addicting) media. This podcast allowed me to analyze BuzzFeed as an independent entity, without my ideas of how ‘cool’ it was coming to the forefront of my argument. And even with that outlook, I began realizing the faults and nuances of BuzzFeed, and how they handled their content, when before I was ultimately camouflaged by the ‘ mindless fluff.’ BuzzFeed is great when you want to waste time and brain space (sometimes necessary after a stressful school day), and it would have been great if that’s the only realm of my life they sought to dominate; but now we see BuzzFeed entering new sub-markets in media such as hard news, and the that idea just didn’t seem to make much sense to me.

After searching the web and seeing what other critics had to say, I started to realize that like any other company whose goal is to be profitable, BuzzFeed was just playing into all the ‘media’ markets, without a single rebranding effort or twist. They are able to do so because like Google, BuzzFeed’s presence defines their entire market; and so I thought it would have been interesting to look at why that is, and also see how they are able to use this leverage to make a name for themselves in  hard news.

Besides the content of the podcast, one of the biggest challenges for me was losing all my audio files the moment I was exporting my podcast.

I was distraught to say the least, and I had no idea how the problem could have been fixed. However, my partner and I were able to meet up again shortly after the incident, and re-record the podcast. Thankfully, I think our second time recording was 100 fold better than our first podcast, because after going through BuzzFeed’s history/style/impact in the market so many times, my brain just began buzzing with bigger, better and more concrete ideas. So what has been posted is of substantial quality, and I would hope our viewers would think the same.

This podcast pushed me from my comfort zone because 1) I have never been the person to take ‘charge’ in a group setting. So the idea of being a producer and having to ensure my assistant producer was also carrying her weight, was a bit unsettling for me. Thankfully, we were able to both do our part, and she was gracious enough not to kill me when I lost all our files.  2) I hate hearing the sound of my voice! Especially on repeat, so editing for me was a daunting task. However, when listening to myself speak, I picked up a lot of speech weaknesses that I now more aware of and can now work towards eliminating those.

I am overall proud of the work I have published and I have definitely grown from this experience!

Firstly, I have never intentionally followed or listened to a podcast (series) so the concept of what was to be done was a bit blurry for me at the start. After choosing BuzzFeed, I knew that I loved the site and could talk about it for days, but I honestly had no concrete opinion on their ‘effectiveness’ as a new media platform, beyond their attractive (and might I add, addicting) media. This podcast allowed me to analyze BuzzFeed as an independent entity, without my ideas of how ‘cool’ it was coming to the forefront of my argument. And even with that outlook, I began realizing the faults and nuances of BuzzFeed, and how they handled their content, when before I was ultimately camouflaged by the ‘ mindless fluff.’ BuzzFeed is great when you want to waste time and brain space (sometimes necessary after a stressful school day), and it would have been great if that’s the only realm of my life they sought to dominate; but now we see BuzzFeed entering new sub-markets in media such as hard news, and the that idea just didn’t seem to make much sense to me.

After searching the web and seeing what other critics had to say, I started to realize that like any other company whose goal is to be profitable, BuzzFeed was just playing into all the ‘media’ markets, without a single rebranding effort or twist. They are able to do so because like Google, BuzzFeed’s presence defines their entire market; and so I thought it would have been interesting to look at why that is, and also see how they are able to use this leverage to make a name for themselves in  hard news.

Besides the content of the podcast, one of the biggest challenges for me was losing all my audio files the moment I was exporting my podcast.

I was distraught to say the least, and I had no idea how the problem could have been fixed. However, my partner and I were able to meet up again shortly after the incident, and re-record the podcast. Thankfully, I think our second time recording was 100 fold better than our first podcast, because after going through BuzzFeed’s history/style/impact in the market so many times, my brain just began buzzing with bigger, better and more concrete ideas. So what has been posted is of substantial quality, and I would hope our viewers would think the same.

This podcast pushed me from my comfort zone because 1) I have never been the person to take ‘charge’ in a group setting. So the idea of being a producer and having to ensure my assistant producer was also carrying her weight, was a bit unsettling for me. Thankfully, we were able to both do our part, and she was gracious enough not to kill me when I lost all our files.  2) I hate hearing the sound of my voice! Especially on repeat, so editing for me was a daunting task. However, when listening to myself speak, I picked up a lot of speech weaknesses that I now more aware of and can now work towards eliminating those.

I am overall proud of the work I have published and I have definitely grown from this experience!

Our overarching goal with this podcast was to get listeners familiar with Stanton’s work, strategy and implementation of new media writing. We focused on strategy for a bit because we believe that it contributed to the purpose of the blog. As I just mentioned, the photos and stories he captured was to get the audience in touch with reality, as well as to remind us to not judge a book by its cover. In terms of making the podcast, expressing our thoughts on the content and its relations to new media was surprisingly easy. Brian and I met up a couple times before just to discuss and brainstorm about the website and we felt that talking it out helped us a lot with that we wanted to say. I also wanted to include some clips of Brandon Stanton discussing his purpose and strategy so listeners know that we aren’t simply speculating his motives and goals. The most difficult part was establishing a flow in our discussion. We wrote a script to make sure we covered all the content necessary but in the end it sounded as scripted as it looked on paper. I think for our next podcast, we will be working on creating more of a discussion and editing our podcast afterwards to include the important points.

SOURCES:

“Brandon Stanton: The Good Story.” Ted Talk at Columbia University.
“On how I approach strangers in the street: Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton: UCD, Dublin.”
“Humans of New York’s Brandon Stanton on Trump.” Interview with Katie Couric with Yahoo Global News.

Making this podcast on fivethirtyeight was a challenging yet rewarding process. I was the assistant producer on this episode, Greer was the producer, and Jose was the line producer. Greer and I were primarily responsible for the content and Jose helped with the editing process and gave suggestions during recording. In terms of collaboration, we started with a group chat where shared links to articles that we found interesting. Then, Greer and I spent some time on the fivethirtyeight site and bounced ideas off one another. This collaborative brainstorming was fruitful in that it gave us a clear direction for our podcast.

The primary goal of this podcast series is to look at a source and analyze it in the realm of new media. For our episode, we wanted to give a background of how fivethirtyeight.com got to the place it is today. In addition, we attempted to discuss the various aspects of the site that make it “new media”. The first portion of our podcast was very scripted and probably not the most interesting. Once we just started recording our conversation, we were able to just continue to build off each other’s points.

The 10-15 minute time frame was definitely the hardest part of the podcast. Due to the broad nature and our familiarity of the site, we had many things we could have included. Even after deciding to only keep a few talking points, the podcast ended up being 22 minutes. If we had more time, I would have liked to interview someone else for his or her perspective on fivethirtyeight. Greer and I look at the other portions on the site, but primarily focus on the sports section and the statistical side of fivethirtyeight. It would have been nice to get the angle of someone who focuses less on the sports and stats.

As far as the learning outcomes for this class go, producing this podcast was definitely similar to rhetorical composition. While the podcast isn’t a rhetorical composition in the traditional sense, it ended up requiring a similar process. While planning the podcast, we had to keep in mind the audience we wanted to reach and what the goal of the podcast was, all while staying within the time range. Additionally, we needed to make sure our talking points were presented in a coherent manner. In the end, planning out the podcast ended up being more difficult than traditional writing.

With the task of creating our podcast episode, Pancakes for the Soul, I began just as most inexperienced people do when undertaking a new job: uncertainly. I had picked SoulPancake because I liked its mission and content, but I really had no idea what to say besides my own opinions. My partner, Shemi, was not familiar with the site or any of its content, so we had a bit of a learning curve to tackle. I wasn’t even sure whether or not SoulPancake was new media, but I soon realized that my lack of knowledge might not be such a bad starting place.

We did not have the luxury of framing our podcast after previous episodes since this was the first week of the podcast, but we at least had some familiarity with podcasting and had a vague understanding of what our end product might look (sound?) like.

I began by exploring the home site and gradually built an understanding of the scope of the content and substance of SoulPancake’s goals. Questions began to develop: What is the purpose of their home site, soulpancake.com? What was Rainn Wilson (the head honcho at SoulPancake) trying to accomplish? Why was SoulPancake a distributor of online content, and what advantages did they hold as such? We watched numerous interviews of Rainn Wilson and began to see his vision for a ‘social networking’ site that supported a ‘community’ of people sharing ideas.

The more we looked, the more we began to see the concepts of participatory media intertwined within the structure of SoulPancake. We tried to take as many concepts from class and address them within the confines of SoulPancake’s content and strategy, hoping to create an outline that might structure our podcast in a manner that was conversational yet concise. We wanted to create something that was engaging while also hitting a set number of informational points, a task easier said than done.

This project, maybe more than anything, challenged me to reconsider my digital citizenship. I would not have thought much about which sort of music we could use if not for Professor David’s guidance, nor been as conscious about citing sources and carefully using sound clips. I tried reaching out to SoulPancake (unsuccessfully) to learn more about the inner workings of the organization, a process which further reminded me of the opportunities and limitations of online communication.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the need for collaboration through this project as well. Shemi and I had to communicate and make many, many decisions regarding what we would talk about and what we would include in the final cut. The collaboration aspect also helped make the task far more enjoyable.

With our first podcast completed, I feel good about the work we created. From the brainstorming, the editing in garageband to the creation of the episode’s cover image, this project challenged me in a lot of different ways. I was a little overwhelmed by the length of the editing process, so I hope that I can learn to be more efficient in future projects. All things considered: I’d do it again.

The initial process of creating the podcast was confusing and ambiguous. Shiven and I began by spending several hours on the website FiveThirtyEight making sure that we knew everything the website had to offer. During this time our argument began to take it shape. However there was still a major question that needed to be answered, “how do we communicate this argument in a podcast?” We started the podcast with a description of FiveThirtyEight. In my opinion this segment is the least interesting. It sounds extremely formal and scripted. After the description was finished we decided to record Shiven and I talking about random points for the next hour. This segment is where the podcast gained its life. Although a majority of the hour was not interesting, there were very insightful moments of conversation. The key for us to complete a successful podcast would be to edit the audio to shift out the wheat from the chaff. This task proved to be more difficult than we initially anticipated. Neither Shiven nor I had any previous experience using audacity to edit audio, and we had too learn on the fly. If we had more time to work on the podcast we would have spent more time editing and cleaning up the audio. Specifically, we would have spent more time on the into and the transition from the into to the main arguments.

Although there was frustration in editing the podcast, the time that we had to spend reviewing our audio provided useful insight into our arguments. The necessary focus on our arguments developed a a more clear understanding of the near form of rhetorical composition that we used to create the podcast. The general process of conveying an argument to an audience is the same in a podcast as it is in writing. However, it is obvious that the method is vastly different. It is this difference in methods that makes a podcast interesting. The podcast must actively keep listeners interested. In a written essay a reader can easily reread a portion that was confusing or monotonous, but in a podcast it is much more difficult for a listener to play the audio back. It is import to consider the way the audience will consume the podcast, and I hope to improve in this regard in the next podcast.