Project B Rationale

On the first glance, Facemap seems complex. Full of coloured lines left, right and centre – seemingly all originating from somewhere near Canberra – it looks confusing and messy. But really, it forms a coherent story, just like what the geo-narrative assessment brief asks for. I have created a geo-narrative which , in itself tells a story of networking.

Explanation of the story will come next, but the first step in the process of its creation was trying to come up with a geo-narrative that was somewhat conceptual, in reflecting important issues we had covered throughout the semester, but also reflective on and inclusive of networked media principles. I was also determined to create something a little different. When we were given an example of a previous student’s submission I was inspired by the level of photography and storyboarding she had included – but also a little intimidated, because I didn’t feel I’d be able to excel for the same elements. I also considered what other students were going to be handing in; from my tutorials, I could tell that most, like me, were choosing the geo-narrative. The reason for this seemed to primarily be that datavisualisation was too difficult with our level of skills and the amount of time we had to successfully create something in.

I felt the same way. I knew exactly what datavisualisations were supposed to be. I knew I wanted to create something that was shiny and modern and on the computer, not physically hand-crafted. I just had no idea to do it. With time running out, I considered the geo-narrative option and got cracking.

However, in doing so, and noticing the trend of other students going the same way, I had to consider how I could make mine different. I noticed that the geo-narrative would require more consideration as to how to actually involve networked media; after all, that is what this subject is all about. Looking at Rohani Moore’s submission, and reading through her rationale blog, I saw that in linking Flickr images and Del.i.cious links she was networking. I kept this in mind, but also tried to think of how I could make mine even more networked than that.

Looking for inspiration, I turned to the topic of social networking. We had discussed it to no end in lectures and tutorials, and it was very topical. And it is something I know a lot about. This was a good start.

The next source of inspiration was a little-known event to over 30s, but very well known to under-20s. It made the news in technology sections of e-newspapers worldwide and made many aforementioned under-20s ‘lol’. It is of course Kate’s Party, the Facebook event created that ended up with a guest list of over 60,000 people with tens of thousands more invited. It turned out to have been created by an online prankster, but it made the news for being an apt example of how privacy and the internet aren’t mixing.

I thought about privacy issues, the endless stories of online predators and uncomfortable experiences in chat rooms; I then thought of how 400 million users worldwide have Facebook accounts, connecting them to the 399,999,999 other people who use the same service. We are all connected now in ways we weren’t before; not just by Facebook, but by many other internet-related services, too. And then there was me: I was part of this statistic. I have mentioned in other blog posts an online writing community I am part of, Mibba.com. On this website I have been not only able to post my own writing work, but interact with other users and become friends, despite having never met any of these new people in real life. As is now inevitable nowadays in befriending someone, I have them added on Facebook. I have access to their information, whether it be our favourite movies and bands or what schools or universities we go to. And they have access to mine, on tap. While I am quite sure I know who these people are (having actually met some in real life since befriending them online, much to my parents’ dissatisfaction) there is always a possibility.

What also struck me is the new era of globalization, which is so strongly evident in my online friends. Globalisation began to happen initially because of the sheer availability and accessibility of international travel. Now, with the internet, we’re seeing a whole new type of globalization. People like me can connect with people on the other side of the world in mere milliseconds; this is making the world a very small place.

With these things in mind, I thought of making a story which is an example of networked media – friends connected via social networking platforms Facebook and Twitter – using real-life characters, my international Facebook friends, for a fictional story, that would demonstrate issues with privacy, misconstruing of things posted on the internet, globalization, and viral spreading. The viral spreading is seen in the story where a friend of mine sees my status update and is intrigued as to where it comes from, so googles the phrase and gets into the band where the phrase came from. This is more one of the benefits of the networkiness of the internet, and contrasts against some of the more serious issues I put in the story.
Facemap, my submission for Project B, is almost like a datavisualisation in a way. The global view shows a spread of placemarks which, as you click down the sidebar, are people’s Facebook accounts, and in turn represents the spread of a particular group of friends worldwide.

I have chosen to link these peoples accounts and the people they have listed as “family” (usually not actual family members) on their profiles, demonstrating networked media in itself. In terms of privacy and licensing issues, it is quite within my right, as a Facebook user, to do this. In creating a Facebook account, you are submitting personal details and information which, upon submission, becomes owned by the Facebook company. I stumbled across this piece of information while reading through the website’s privacy policy. I found it quite scary, as the vast (very vast) majority of people who sign up do not care to read such declarations, me included. In submitting your information, you are also making it available for the world to see – including me, who has linked it elsewhere. Not only are you at risk, but the people you list on your profile or friends list are as well. Privacy settings can be adjusted so that certain information cannot be accessed by non-friends, but with the sheer inter-connectedness of the millions of users chances are somebody will be a friend with one of your friends and be able to access that information. Such as one character in my story, whose conversation with my friend I manage to see despite not being that character’s friend.

For these purposes, I have, out of courtesy, made this map unlisted so that only those who are given the link for the map will be able to access this information. The images I myself have uploaded to Flickr are also set to private, only accessible by me or a direct link to the image. I don’t necessarily feel entirely comfortable with the networkiness of this project, either. It does however represent the crucial risk with internet privacy.

In terms of the story itself, I have made it rather clichéd and simple; the misconstruing of a status update was something I have seen in my own Facebook experiences, and served as another inspiration point. The simplicity of the story is coupled with a rather naïve narrative voice for the actual words of the story; this is in an attempt to be ironic. Naivety has no place on the internet.

The photos of the individuals themselves have been used under a suitable Facebook licence, but also remixed by way of resizing and recontextualising to avoid copyright issues. It should be noted that every photograph uploaded to Facebook also becomes theirs. As my story is entirely fictional, I have actually hand-crafted (by way of Photoshop) the screencaps that accompany the narrative. I took many screenshots of posts I have come across online, then copy and pasted my own text in to make conversations or the necessary people involved, involved. This was no easy task, but exceptionally tedious and my eyes were very sore by the end.

As I come to the end of this rationale, I should probably further note that this story attempts to make a linear narrative out of something very un-linear; this is, essentially, the nature of the internet. Things happening all over the place and in no particular order owing to how we might see them. It is best, to get involved with my story, to navigate via the links down the left hand sidebar. Upon viewing my completed project I noticed that it is best if you maximise your screen resolution so that the map can appear at a larger size on your entire screen.

Hopefully I have successfully created something networked, topical, reflective and creative. It was these four things I aimed to do, and hoped to stretch the geo-narrative to accommodate rather than be a simple story. And maybe I’ll reconsider my Facebook use… I’m rather scared that this company owns so many of my photos now.

Just as I was creating this post a conveniently related article came up on the Sydney Morning Herald technology section of their newspaper HERE. It seems Mark Zuckerberg knows we're all suckers...

To see the project, click HERE.