Over the past few weeks, we worked on specific aspects of the Equality of Opportunity Project. My group wanted to explore top tier public and private school endowments to see if there is a correlation between the annual money they receive and the success of their students. Personally, I am a little lost when it comes to Tableau, but Shiven did a great job visualizing our data in graphs that were easy to read and analyze.

As seen in this figure, it was hard to establish a clear trend between endowments and economic mobility. This was not surprising to us because it is not only the amount of money that factors into mobility, but it is also the allocation of it. We saw that UCLA and UC Berkeley were high in mobility rate but were one of the lowest endowments of top tier schools. I wanted to look into this but allocation of endowments are kept under wraps so it’s hard to access that information. If the Equality of Opportunity project could somehow access that data, I think it could really contribute to their mission and help us better understand the financial aspect of a school’s success.

This project has a lot of potential but it was worked on for a very short amount of time in our class. With the amount of data EOP provides, it would take at least a full semester of working on it to start to establish some real trends. Also, the economic mobility of students after college has so many underlying factors (sex, race, gender, socioeconomic status, geography, resources, etc.) that it is hard to study one aspect when it clearly involves all of them. There is no way to involve all of them at once but then again it is hard to address one at a time. It reveals a true conundrum when trying to discern what kind of school will make a student most successful.

When looking for material to address Every Frame a Painting, I went through first some of the series entries before poking around Vimeo to find every episode of the series uploaded there, before turning to Tony Zhou’s Patreon for EFAP, which offers alternate versions of the episodes for educational use (at a price), and then to Twitter and Reddit, both forums that I used quite often. Showing these different resources to my partner, we both made our own observations. As I watched Zhou interact with his followers and advise them on how to critique the works that had impacted them, I saw how viewer-audience participation worked its way into Zhou’s new media and how it allowed him to continue participating himself despite how long it had been since the series had updated.

I was not initially exceedingly familiar with Every Frame a Painting, nor was my partner Kevin. However, I was familiar with the YouTube scene and personalities like the Nerdwriter, so when we sat down to plan out the episode, we each brought our own impressions on the series and our own contexts (Kevin had previous experience with the Soul Pancake episode of The Web We Weave). Kevin pitched questions to me while I did my best to answer them, and I would then in turn bring up different topics of conversation (such as the Reddit AMA mentioned in the episode and the idea of Tony Zhou perpetuating the participatory culture with his work). Collaboration was more than integral in making this episode what it was. It was also more than reassuring to have someone who was so confident on board and had faith in my work. We worked on applying Every Frame a Painting to the terminology we had covered in class and we put it all into one Google Doc entry.

The document was interesting because it was far more fragmentary and incomplete- when writing for another mode, because it relied much more on my voice and the natural chemistry I had with the co-producer, I found that it was both challenging to not fall back and write out whole monologues or answers to questions without stifling the conversation, and recording became difficult because I found myself worrying that my co-host would feel cramped or cut off. It was difficult to not be overwhelmingly self-aware of everything. This did help my rhetorical composition in the end and I think it’s made me more adaptable than I was before.

The process also felt much faster and immediate than writing, say, this reflection or another blog post or article, which takes me a lot more time. It also felt natural to go faster than with my previous work. While structuring the argument and conversation was both very much the same, it also felt different because I had someone else to bounce off and interact with. In a way, it was like having another person alternating the argument paragraphs- similar arguments that still differed in subtle ways.

I’ve learned that I need to work on my timing- we went over by a lot and editing involved cutting out a lot of material and it was a struggle to finish the episode in time while balancing other obligations. I need to work on my self-confidence as I was exceedingly nervous during the episode, and I think that it is evident that while I eased up as time went along, I still have a long way to go.

But given the chance to work on a similar project? I’d jump at the opportunity.

In our podcast episode, we focused on Imgur. Brian is a frequent visitor on this site but it was the first time I had used it. It revealed itself to be a lot different than the blogs I have been on. Rather than posting written text accompanied with media, its main focus is on media itself. It is a collaboration of images posted by millions of users. In this way, it really utilizes an active audience, instilling participatory culture as a cornerstone of its website. With that, there are some drawbacks. Its purely democratic nature highlights certain images over the others because a group of users sift through the pile of new images and “upvote” the ones that they like. This leaves the other images lost amidst the thousands of images that are constantly being uploaded. It’s ranking of users reminded me of Black Mirror. One of its episodes was about a community revolved around up-voting and down-voting people based on their actions and dispositions. Their rating determined their rank in the social hierarchy. It is eerily similar to the environment established within Imgur and we discuss this more in our podcast.

As I stated in my last podcast reflection, our HONY podcast was rich in content but our delivery was not effective or engaging. We stuck to a script and that was transparent when listening to it. After completing that podcast, I wanted to improve the flow of our discussion in our next new media topic. Rather, I wanted it to be more of an actual discussion, not us describing why it was a good example of new media.  I decided to go about it in a new way in this podcast, which I found very effective as the assistant producer. Brian was well-versed in Imgur, and I was not. However, I used this to our advantage. When I first went on the site, I was overwhelmed by the hundreds of pictures that were thrown at me, so Brian wrote out a list of key points he wanted to discuss in the podcast. I took that list, went onto the site, and started doing some research. Along the way, I wrote down questions and certain points I wanted to discuss in response to his ideas. Afterwards, we just sat down and started recording. I found that this was a much better conversation and we were still discussing all the points related to new media while actually having a conversation. Overall, I feel that we have improved from the last podcast.

Turns out, Every Frame a Painting is a film analysis video blog series. Beginning on YouTube, Tony Zhou narrates while the screen shows the different elements and strategies that filmmakers implement to make their movies ‘good.’ I remember first watching a video about Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, mostly because it was a movie I was familiar with. From there I watched a couple more and began to feel a bit more comfortable with his content

This being the second time around, I had a better idea of what this process would entail. Daniel and I had a bit less preparation than Shemi and I did for my first episode, but we were ready to go once we started recording. In a lot of ways, I think we may have had a better balance, because this time around we had less content and we were more direct in terms of our topics of conversation and what exactly we wanted to say. With Pancakes for the Soul, we probably had a bit too much content we wanted to cover and subsequently paid the price when we had to go back and edit our audio down to the 15-minute limit. Fortunately, Daniel took the lead on editing and all that jazz, so most of my work was in preparation for and execution of our recording, and he took care of the rest.

This lack of extensive preparation also gave us a better opportunity to talk about our ideas as they popped into our heads, rather than trying to recall old epiphanies and repeat them. I think this helped with our flow in the recording and kept our conversation fresh.

Given how little knowledge of the subject I had to begin, I really learned quite a bit. The way in which Tony Zhou has upped his production quality and taken his vlog in such a specific direction mirrors a lot of what television shows try to do, and made me realize just how much an individual with a vision can accomplish if they can find an online following. Tony Zhou is on to something, and I am curious to see how television will respond as the following (and skill level) of various youtuber’s continues to grow. Check out Daniel and I’s discussion here, in what is yet another exciting installment of The Web We Weave.

I began my research of Lynda by talking with my mother. I have not spent much time personally using Lynda, but my mother has. After getting a good feel about the usage of the site from a frequent user, I spent some time of my own on the site. This process was substantially different than my experience with researching for the FiveThirtyEight podcast. Since I have a lot of experience with FiveThirtyEight and not much with Lynda I was originally relying on a third-party account of the site as opposed to my own knowledge base. Surprisingly, this was beneficial. Entering my analysis of Lynda I had no bias that would hinder making a non-opinionated evaluation of the site.

The main focus when we began recording was to avoid sounded scripted. In the FiveThirtyEight podcast we had a harsh transition from the introductory more formal segment to the discussion segment. During our in class discussion of the FiveThirtyEight podcast, we recieved negative feedback regarding this transition, and we noticed a much smoother transition in most other podcast published to this point. We tackled this problem by creating a list of talking points and then just talking. I feel that the transition is much smoother if not seamless for the Lynda Podcast.

After completing a podcast as a producer and a podcast as an assistant producer, I have a much better sense of what enables “new media” to be effective. From our in class discussion, I was able to develop a reasonably clear perception of “new media” (to the extent it can be perceived accurately), but the techniques that one can use to convey a message or argument through new media is a much more allusive idea to pinpoint. Although these techniques are not static due to the nature of “new media”, I understand what these techniques should seek to accomplish both now and in the future. This understanding is important to cultivate in order to be an effective “new media” writer and critic.

This was my first time creating a podcast.  I have recorded audio commentaries of a similar length in the past back in high school, but since I had not done it in such a long time, this almost felt like a new experience.  And I had fun doing it.

I am a huge fan of podcasts.  I listen to a couple of bi-weekly soccer podcasts as well as a daily politics one, each episode being about an hour long.  Fortunately for me, I only listen to them when I go to sleep so it does not eat into schedule at all.  In fact, it’s gotten to the point where I can’t go to sleep without having a couple of middle-aged men talking in the background.

As it turned out, recording the podcast was not as challenging as I had anticipated.  Because we had a clear rundown of the episode, we did not have to cut and trim too much of the audio, though as a result, there was not much improvisation during the recording, which made us sound a bit robotic at times.  At the same time, however, having a clear structure going into the recording ensured that we gave our content as much consideration as possible; we covered everything that we wanted to express.

As the producer of this episode, I decided not to center the episode around a specific New Media product. Instead, I wanted to draw out some of the overarching themes, trends, and concerns of New Media and its consequences at a societal level.  We did reference Black Mirror a couple times because it was actually the show that gave me the initial idea to address some of the growing concerns of New Media such as encroachment of privacy, detachment from reality, etc.  However, we also used personal anecdotes and other real-life examples to really hit home the point that these concerns are legitimate problems that plague our current society and generation.

Overall, this was an enjoyable assignment and I am looking forward to recording our second podcast.

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!

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.

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.