Spreadable Media Ch. 2-3

     Residual value, generally speaking, is the value that remains in an object when its useful life has ended. “Useful life” refers to the use for which it was made. For example, the use for which a car is designed is to serve as a mode of transportation. Once a car reaches the end of its useful life, it can no longer be used for that purpose. The only value that remains is the car’s residual value, which in this case would be the value of the scrap metal and various vehicle parts that could potentially be used in other vehicles. Residual value in the context of physical and digital objects can be thought of as the value an object has in its afterlife. The authors in Spreadable Media discuss the residual value of digital content in terms of cultural and economic value. Cultural residual value exists largely due to the nostalgia of content from the past such as retro video games. Economic residual value exists largely due to the discovery of forgotten content from the past that is made newly available. An example of economic residual value that is discussed in Spreadable Media is the resurfacing of old WWE videos. The use for which these videos were made was the promotion of local WWE events. When the usable life of these videos ended, they were thought to have no residual value and many of these programs were lost. As time passed, however, demand was created for these old videos, thus increasing their residual value. Digital environments catalyzed this value as fans were easily able to share and distribute them.


     Transmedia engagement is the use of multiple mediums to encourage and increase levels of engagement by viewers while also creating new sources of revenue for the creators. Examples of the multiple ways of engaging a narrative using transmedia engagement include webisodes (online episodes that supplement the main story or tell new stories in relation to the main story), comics, video games, and interactive websites. An original example of transmedia engagement is the interactive viewing experience for AMC’s Breaking Bad called Story Sync. During the live airing of a new Breaking Bad episode, users could go to this interactive website. In real time as the show progressed, users be given polls, quizzed on previous occurrences in the show’s history, reminded of occurrences from previous episodes that relate to a particular scene in the new episode, and much more. This interactive experience supplemented the television show, and encouraged users to watch the new episodes as they aired in real time. Breaking Bad Story Sync also served as an additional source of revenue for the show’s creators as they obtained ad revenue not only from the airing of the show on television, but also from the traffic generated on their website. Since Breaking Bad’s run has ended, the spinoff show Better Call Saul which is airing currently has its own Story Sync during airings of episodes, and continues to keep Breaking Bad’s viewers engaged.

Net Smart Ch. 3-4

     The term “playbor” refers to a combination of play and labor. Playbor often involves turning a laborious task into an entertaining game. Internet-goers who play these games essentially become sources of free labor for the companies who create the games. One example of playbor is Google Image Labeler (also known as the ESP Game) which was online between 2006 and 2011. Two randomly matched players with no way of communicating with one another would be shown an image for which they would submit descriptive tags. Players received points when they both submitted identical tags. While some may view this as exploitation for free labor, I believe playbor is a win-win scenario as both parties benefit from the game. In this specific example, Google benefits as the accuracy of their image search is improved at no cost to them. The players benefit as they receive a free form of entertainment. Instead of receiving monetary compensation for their work, players are compensated by being entertained. Google is in no way forcing these players to contribute free labor. Rather, the players are doing it because they find it entertaining. If someone were to not find the game entertaining, they could simply stop playing. Only in a situation where one party received nothing in return for their participation would I consider playbor to be exploitative. Otherwise, since both parties receive some form of compensation, playbor is not an exploitative practice.

 

     Collective action involves a group of people coming together to work toward the achievement of a common goal. Many institutions exist, both physically and digitally, that practice collective action. Institutions of collective actions are very relevant to digital writing, as digital writing has allowed for significant magnitudes of collective action that may not have been possible otherwise. One great example of this from chapter 4 of Net Smart is the search for a man named Jim Gray who disappeared at sea. Satellite photographs of the area in which he went missing were provided by Google and NASA. These photographs were then divided into five hundred thousand pieces by Amazon which were examined by twelve thousand online volunteers. Although he was not found, this seemingly impossible task of examining forty thousand square miles of ocean was made possible thanks to digital writing. An original example of collective action that I experienced personally came from the institution of GoFundMe.com. In May of 2015, a friend of mine from high school was killed in a hit and run. Shortly after this happened, a GoFundMe page was created to raise money for her family. In a short time, over four thousand dollars was raised by seventy five donors. Digital writing environments like GoFundMe.com provide the capability to foster collective action quickly and efficiently. They make it easy to share a cause and take action with minimal effort. I am confident that the amount of money raised in that short time span would not have been possible without the existence of institutions of collective action in a digital environment.

Net Smart Ch. 1-2

      In chapter 1, Sherry Turkle argues that “controlling relationships becomes a major theme in digital communication.” Turkle is referring to the increased level of control that one experiences in digital communication versus face-to-face interactions. When communicating face-to-face, responses are essentially reflexive and instantaneous. When communicating digitally, one is able to take as much time as they desire to draft responses. With this level of control, one is able to take the time to make sure that they are saying exactly what they want to say in exactly the way they want to say it. This increased control can be negative as it makes interactions somewhat less fluid and natural. When communicating digitally, people are able to express themselves in the ways that they want to be received. The digital medium provides them with the time to craft the ways in which they express themselves. With the spontaneity of face-to-face communication, people get a more true sense of who a person is by the way they express themselves in that moment. Another aspect of control that is acquired through digital communication is the ability to interact with multiple people simultaneously. However, the increased quantity of interactions may come at the expense of the quality of those interactions. If you have ever tried to hold a face-to-face conversation with someone who is also involved in one or more digital conversations, you know exactly how frustrating that can be. The quality of that interaction will almost certainly be negatively affected as they are dividing their attentional resources amongst multiple conversations, rather than fully investing their attention in the face-to-face conversation. Digital communication can be a great tool, but people who use it should not allow it to come at the expense of the quality of face-to-face interactions.

 

     In chapter 2, Rheingold discusses “triangulating.” This is a form of crap detection that involves finding three different, credible sources to validate information that is found online. For example, in November 2015 Donald Trump tweeted an infographic stating that 97% of the murders of black people are by black people and 81% of the murders of white people are by black people. The image cites the source of this information as being the “Crime Statistics Bureau in San Francisco.” A quick internet search which reveals that this bureau does not even exist provides the first point of the triangle. A search for available data on this topic brings us to FBI.gov. Here, we find data for 2014 that shows the killings by white people are actually 5 times higher than Trump’s infographic stated and killings by black people are actually 5 times lower than Trump’s infographic stated. This serves as the second point of the triangle. For the third and final point of the triangle, we should try to find where this infographic originated. Placing the image into a Google image search reveals the earliest tweet in which the infographic appeared. It was originally tweeted by an account with a swastika as the profile picture and a bio that reads, “We should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little mustache.” With these three points, we can conclude that the image was clearly created by a racist group with the intention of spreading disinformation.

Content Strategy Infographic

Content Strategy and Google Analytics

This blog post by Anastasia Sidko has some interesting information on ways Google Analytics can be used to in order to develop and improve a website's content strategy. Check it out!

Netflix’s Shady Mobile Throttling Policy Doesn’t Break Net Neutrality Rules

In an article by Motherboard, shady practices by Netflix are brought to light. The streaming service known to be a large supporter of net neutrality has itself committed actions that seem slightly hypocritical. While laws regarding net neutrality apply directly to internet service providers to prevent them from making certain content less accessible than other content, these net neutrality laws do not apply to providers that deliver services through the internet. According to the article, Netflix limited streaming speeds to users with specific service providers. This raises the question of whether or not net neutrality laws need to be expanded from just internet service providers to include those providers who deliver their services through the internet.

Rhetorical Analysis of Snapchat

Andrew Thomas

ENC4416

March 1, 2016

Rhetorical Analysis of Snapchat

Introduction

            In the time since its initial release in September 2011, Snapchat has quickly become one of the most popular social media applications on the market. As of 2016, in a given day, there are over 100 million active users with over 60% of them creating content, and giving videos over 7 billion views (“3V Advertising”). With so many social platforms available to users, what are the aspects of Snapchat that have made it so successful? I believe that the privacy (or illusion thereof) that Snapchat provides is what attracts users, while the architecture of participation that it establishes is what retains those users. Also, the inclusion of playbor makes Snapchat successful monetarily to the point that it received offers of $1 billion and $3 billion from Facebook (Rusli par. 7). In the book Net Smart by Howard Rheingold, a writer and teacher who focuses on the impacts of modern communication mediums, he describes that an architecture of participation is where, “millions of individual acts of participation add up to a participatory culture …” in which, “individual behaviors … add up to collective value …” within a community (Rheingold p.112). The established participatory culture, “[shifts] the focus from individualized work to collaborative efforts, from individual learning to collective knowledge, [and] from passive reception to active creation. (Thompson p. 711)” This participation directly contributes to Snapchat’s monetary success through playbor. Astra Taylor describes this cross between ‘play’ and ‘labor’ in her book The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age where she states that, “the more we comment and share, the more we rate and like, the more economic value is accumulated by those who control the platforms on which our interactions take place” (Taylor par. 17). Throughout this analysis, we will explore how an architecture of participation, establishment of privacy (or illusion thereof), and utilization of playbor apply to the digital environment that is Snapchat.

Architecture of Participation

            Snapchat is built around an architecture of participation with nearly every aspect of the application encouraging the user to participate. Unlike traditional social media platforms where users can half-heartedly participate by clicking a like button, snapchat contains no comment sections or like buttons for shared pictures and videos. This encourages users to actually participate by creating their own pictures and videos in response to others. Also because Snapchat lacks a “like” feature which is traditionally viewed as a form of currency in other social media platforms, the currency exchanged within Snapchat is simply the users’ participation in itself. The application keeps track of the number of people who view someone’s story (posts that are public amongst their friends for twenty four hours) but this data is only viewable by the user to whom that story belongs. Therefore, this view count cannot be considered as a currency within Snapchat.

An architecture of participation is also established by many aspects of Snapchat’s user interface and overall visual design. Starting from outside of the application with the icon, the bright yellow color stands out significantly. Amongst the application icons on my phone which are primarily blue, red, or green, Snapchat is the only one that is yellow. The high energy and happiness evoked by this color choice as well as its eye-catching nature encourage participation by the user before they have even entered the application. According to the paper “The Colors of Emotion” published in the journal American Ethnologist in 1974, the emotion evoked by a color is not simply due to its hue, but rather its brightness and saturation (D'Andrade and Egan p.62). If Snapchat’s logo was a dark, unsaturated yellow, it would not evoke the same emotions within the user. Once inside, the camera feature is opened immediately. This differs from most other social media platforms where users are immediately faced with content and have to navigate to another area in order to create posts, thus allowing consumption by users before contribution. Due to the immediacy of access to the camera in Snapchat, it is essentially doing the opposite by encouraging contribution from the user before consumption. Consumable material only exists when contributions are made to the community. Therefore this feature strengthens the architecture of participation that is present within Snapchat. The very straightforward layout of the camera allows for ease of use that attracts participation from even the least tech savvy users. The minimalistic design of the overall application where all major functions are a single swipe away also encourages participation by advanced and novice tech users alike. More complex applications can be daunting to new users and discourage their participation.

Additional features in Snapchat that contribute to its architecture of participation are the symbolic use of emojis, the trophy system, and the points system. Snapchat employs the use of emojis next to friends’ names to signify certain things about a user’s relationship with that person, or solely about that person’s use of Snapchat. For example, a gold star signifies that someone has replayed that user’s snaps in the past twenty four hours, a yellow heart signifies you and that friend both send a majority of your snaps to one another, a smirking face signifies that friend sends a majority of their snaps to you but you do not send many of your snaps to them, a grimacing face signifies you and that friend both send a majority of your snaps to the same person, and a fire emoji signifies that you and that friend have both been snapping each other every day (“Friend Emojis”). Snapchat has created a new literacy by giving new meaning to these emojis. In order for a person to get the most out of the application, they need to be literate in the symbolism of these emojis. An illiterate user would just take these emojis at face value, and would not understand their true meaning. I believe this system of emojis serves to motivate user participation as they try to make certain emojis appear by certain friends’ names. For instance, a user may make an extra effort to snap someone to continue a snapstreak (fire emoji) or to make sure their relationship with their best friend is reflected within snapchat (yellow heart emoji). Snapchat also includes a trophy system where users unlock emojis in a trophy case for completing specific actions within the application. The identities of the trophies remain hidden until they are unlocked by the user. This provides the application with a game-like quality whereby the trophy system acts as a user incentive for participation as they attempt to win all of the trophies, and thus uncover their identities. Snapchat also includes a points system which acts in the same way. Every user has a score which is viewable by other users and is calculated using a proprietary equation that takes into account snaps sent and received, stories shared, and other non-disclosed factors (“What’s my “Score”?”). The points system incentivizes user participation even more than the trophy system as a user’s score is viewable by everyone. This can spark the competitive nature of some users as they attempt to outscore their friends by increasing their levels of participation within the application.

A final aspect of snapchat that contributes to the architecture of participation is snapchats received from Team Snapchat. On holidays and other special occasions, every user receives an animated snap from Team Snapchat. If a user has notifications turned on for Snapchat as most users do, the reception of this snap can cause illumination of the user’s screen as well as the vibration of their device and/or the playing of a ringtone. This can bring the user into the application at times when they were not even using it, and encourages the user to participate by sharing what they are doing on that holiday or special occasion.

Illusion of Privacy

            With so many mediums available to stay in contact with others and share pictures and videos, what is it about Snapchat that separates it from applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? In other words, what is the niche Snapchat fills that these other mediums do not? I believe Ryan Ganzenmuller, former editor-in-chief of the Buffalo Law Review at the University at Buffalo best answers this question in his paper Snap and Destroy: Preservation Issues for Ephemeral Communications where he states, “In an Internet age where “delete” no longer means “gone forever,” the desire for short-lived communications has risen. (Ganzenmuller p.1239)” As privacy policies around social networks life Facebook become more concerning to users, they are seeking out less permanent mediums of communication. Snapchat has taken advantage of these concerns by creating a medium in which user communications are volatile. Users sending personal snaps can set a viewing time limit between one and ten seconds, and snap stories are viewable by a user’s friends for up to 24 hours before disappearing. However, this begs the question: are these snaps truly disappearing?

In the current privacy policy on their website, Snapchat states that messages are deleted from their servers and the recipient’s device once they have been viewed, but they cannot guarantee a timeframe in which they will be deleted (“Privacy Policy”). They also state that they keep certain information in backup even after they have deleted messages from their servers, and messages in temporary storage on a user’s device may be accessed even after they are deleted as is true with any digital information (“Privacy Policy”). However, from its launch in September 2011 up until June 2013, the application description explicitly stated that snaps “disappear forever” after the time limit set by the user expired (United States p. 2-3). Also, in the FAQ section of their website from October 2012 to October 2013, the question, “Is there any way to view an image after the time has expired?” had the response, “No, snaps disappear after the timer runs out (United States p. 3).” These claims prompted charges in 2014 from the United States Federal Trade Commission regarding Snapchat’s promises of the disappearing of messages in the application. The charges made against Snapchat were settled and finalized later that same year. The terms of this settlement included the prohibition of Snapchat misrepresenting their maintenance of users’ information privacy and security as well as the implementation of a privacy program in which an independent privacy professional will conduct monitoring for a period of twenty years (“Snapchat Settles FTC Charges” par. 11).

            Although Snapchat may have implemented some changes following this settlement, the concern of whether or not these snaps actually disappear is still prevalent. One major issue that still remains is the presence of third-party applications that circumvent the ephemeral nature of Snapchat. Snapchat’s API (application programming interface) was uncovered and leaked by Gibson Security in 2013 allowing programmers to interact with Snapchat’s servers outside of the official application (“Snapchat Security Disclosure”). This allowed for the development of the previously mentioned third-party applications in which a user can view and save snaps without the sender knowing. This raises concerns because it defeats the ephemeral nature of Snapchat which separated it from other social communication mediums, and it requires users to trust not only the security of Snapchat’s servers, but also the security of the third-party application’s servers. An example of one such third-party application was SnapSaved.com. This application would automatically save a user’s received snaps to their servers, allowing the user to access all of their snaps at any time. In October 2014, hackers got into the servers of SnapSaved and got away with roughly 40,000 snaps (Isaac par. 9). This application has since been taken offline, but several others still exist that take advantage of Snapchat’s exposed API.

            Another aspect of Snapchat that aids in generating an illusion of privacy is their chosen method of encryption. Snapchat uses a hard coded encryption key, meaning that the encryption key is written in the application’s code and thus cannot be changed without changing the coding of the application. Since the encryption key is hard coded, it acts as a universal key unlocking any and every photo, video, or message sent through Snapchat. To make matters worse, the encryption key (M02cnQ51Ji97vwT4) can easily be located within the program files, and it is stored in plaintext (unencrypted text) on Android devices (Defossez p. 5). According to MITRE, the operator of the National Cybersecurity Federally Funded Research Development Center under the sponsorship of the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, the consequence of using a hard coded encryption key is that malicious users can gain access with almost absolute certainty (“CWE-321”). A competing ephemeral communication application called Wickr uses multiple layers of encryption, generating random and unique encryption keys for every message that is sent between users. This is a model that Snapchat could utilize in order to transform their application’s privacy from an illusion to a reality.

Playbor

            For its first few years of existence after its initial launch in September 2011, Snapchat was entirely ad-free and included no revenue-generating features. It was not until October 2014 that Snapchat began to attempt to capitalize on its large and ever-growing user base (“Advertising on Snapchat”). Today, Snapchat includes several features that utilize the concept of playbor. The act of the users “playing” with the features is essentially “labor” for Snapchat as the users’ actions generate revenue.

One of these features called Discover is a collection of channels each curated by a different publisher. These publishers include CNN, ESPN, BuzzFeed, Vice, Comedy Central, and National Geographic to name a few. Each of these channels posts new content every 24 hours. Rather than playing ads before content, which Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel believes is, “really annoying because it gets in the way of the content you want to watch,” Snapchat integrates ads within these channels’ stories (Tipton par. 4). According to an article on Re/code, a tech news, review, and analysis site, ads within these Discover channels cost around $100 per thousand views, which equates to around ten cents per view (Wagner “Snapchat’s Discover…” par. 2). With a given channel receiving potentially millions of views a day, this is a tremendous source of revenue.

Another feature similar to Discover is Live Stories which is a series of channels of curated content submitted by users from specific locations and events. Live Stories can cover events such as political debates and rallies, sporting events, and holiday celebrations as well as locations such as a specific city or college campus. According to another article from Re/code, ads within Live Stories cost around two cents per view, and Snapchat’s director of partnerships Ben Schwerin states that Live Stories have an average audience of 20 million people every day (Wagner “Snapchat is Making…” par. 4-5).

Snapchat also includes sponsored content in select filters and lenses. While filters simply overlay a picture or video, lenses use facial-recognition technology to add various animated elements to selfies. Select filters and lenses may be sponsored by movies, television shows, products, or sporting events. According to an article from Business Insider, sponsored lenses can cost $450,000 on normal days or $750,000 on holidays (Kosoff par. 3). These high prices exist because of the overwhelming popularity of this feature amongst users. Without the existence of user desire to “play” with filters and lenses, there would be nothing for Snapchat to translate into “labor” and generate revenue from these features.

Conclusion

            Snapchat has quickly become one of the most popular social applications on the market, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Although it has faced legal challenges regarding promises of disappearing messages, its ephemeral nature still makes it a better option for privacy than Facebook or Instagram. Snapchat attracts users with this illusion of privacy, and retains those users with the establishment of a strong architecture of participation. It has also made tremendous strides monetarily through the use of playbor. It is these three aspects in unison that have contributed to Snapchat’s overwhelming success.

Works Cited

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