Section 3: Multimodal Artifacts

In this section, please find the Wikipedia Project, Produsage Project, Twitter Project, Pinterest Project, and YouTube Project. Links to the Pinterest and YouTube projects may be found at the bottom of the page.













Wikipedia Project Report

Sarah Cordle, Daniel Robey, Jim Nagle

For this project, our group participated with and analyzed the Wikipedia pages for Ariana Grande and The Chainsmokers. This experience was very telling as to the inner workings of this website and those who actively participate with it.

Summary

The first piece of Wikipedia that was noted was the group of users that were actually contributing to the site. For both pages, additions and edits were occurring almost daily with back and forth dialogue about suggested changes. While there were a few repeated names that kept showing up, a majority of the edits were suggested by unique individuals. Each of these pages featured over 500 pages worth of revision or talk notes; it was evident that these pages were being frequently revised and edited. While these additions were frequent and, for the most part, relatively minor, the talk page seemed to be much shorter in length as issues began to resolve and turn into actual revisions. The screenshot below shows all four active “talk” threads currently open on the Ariana Grande page. The first comment that you see was written by our group, the other three were all written by strangers within the past 2 months.

After looking deeper to see who exactly was making contributions, it appears as though most of the major content was generated long ago in terms of edit history. We did dove down into the user profiles to see who was making these revisions and it seems like many of the editors had little knowledge of Ariana Grande or The Chainsmokers, but they were excellent grammarians or interested in preventing “article vandalism,” or the act of purposely messing up an article. There was a combination of human users, such as a user by the name of “Aoi” who has been editing pages for over fifteen years, and certified “bots” such as “SineBot” who was created to polish these articles.

These users seem to make up a majority of the contributors that are currently generating content for the articles. There were also many users who were aiming to vandalise these articles, but the history page showed that they had very little success on these pages due to strict editing policies on high traffic pages and frequent moderation of each page.

Exploring both of these articles in a different language, specifically French, was another aspect of this project that led to interesting observations. Upon searching The Chainsmokers Wikipedia article, there was very little information in comparison to the English versions. The article was shorter in length and a lot less substantial in content, perhaps suggesting that the group is less prevalent in French speaking countries than in English speaking countries. Additionally, when we investigated the talk pages, there were no active conversations occurring. It is evident that this page receives a lot less traffic in French speaking countries than it does in English speaking countries. It is an interesting contrast that provides a lot of perspective on just how big the world is and how interests differ from country to country. Ariana Grande’s page had a lot more content in French and the talk page was rather active. However, it was still far less active than the English version. Also, the issues discussed on the talk pages differed greatly. For example, there were several comments on fixing file uploads and inaccurate and/or invalid pdf’s related to the article. There was also a comment on fixing a section of the article relating to voice octaves. It was interesting to observe the difference in communication and how the French-speaking users and the English-speaking users prioritized different topics for revision in the talk pages. Overall, it was incredibly beneficial to review both of these Wikipedia articles in a different language.

In terms of commonly discussed issues, it was a mixture of grammatical suggestions, copyright related suggestions, and content suggestions. However, we found that it varies depending on the article. We noticed that on The Chainsmokers talk page, there was a lot of conversation regarding grammatical revisions. However, the Ariana Grande talk page featured a lot of suggestions for changes regarding content and formatting of said content. Though both of them had a mixture of the two, there was a common theme amongst the suggested revisions on both articles.

The Ariana Grande page was created in November of 2009, and has been edited nearly every day since its inception; however, there have been days, and longer periods of time, where the page has not been edited at all. Generally, the Ariana Grande page sees between 5-10 edits per day, although on some days the page did see fewer edits. The edits typically concern grammar, formatting, and reversions of previous edits, and periodically edits are made when Ariana Grande is active in the news. Weeks in which Ariana Grande released or announced new music typically see more activity, as far as edits. This tells us that the Ariana Grande page is one of the more active and high-profile pages on Wikipedia, though we expected this before beginning the assignment.

The Chainsmokers page was similarly active; the page was created in December of 2012, and like the Ariana Grande page, has been edited nearly every day since its inception. The Chainsmokers page sees slightly fewer edits than the Ariana Grande page. Generally, the Chainsmokers page sees about 4-8 edits per day. Similarly to the Ariana Grande page, most of the edits to Chainsmokers page concern grammar and formatting issues, as well as reversions of previous fallacious edits. The Chainsmokers page also sees heavy editing activity in the weeks in which the group released or announced new music. The page also typically sees heavy editing activity when the group is in the news, or is currently on tour. Again, much like the Ariana Grande page, this information about the article’s development tells us that the Chainsmokers Wikipedia page is one of the site’s more active and high-profile pages. Unlike Ariana Grande, the Chainsmokers appear to only be active in the news when they announce/release new music, or are on tour. This suggests to us that Ariana Grande has a larger following, as both a musical artist and a celebrity, than the Chainsmokers. This is reflected in the amount of edits that each page typically receive.

Analysis

According to Santana and Wood, internet writing should appeal to the following characteristics: transparency, credibility, social responsibility, and authorship. Wikipedia does a terrific job of being transparent. The entire history of the document throughout the decades is laid out clearly for any user to see. I can go back to the very generation of a page and see each and every change that was made to get the document to where it is and who made each of those changes happen. The amount of transparency was overwhelming at times with 500+ pages of edit history. Credibility was an interesting piece to analyze. While many of the editors of this site didn’t seem to exhibit credibility on the specific subject, a majority of the users are extremely practiced editors and anti-vandalists on the website. Major edits to the content are hard to find, but highly credible editors were frequently interacting with these articles. Additionally, there were multiple edits a day going on, it appeared as though any false information was almost instantaneously corrected. Within minutes after the user “Troll667” attempted to spread false information on Ariana Grande’s website, the suggestion was denied before it was ever allowed to go public. Wikipedia does an effective job of guarding the credibility of high traffic pages.  In terms of social responsibility, Santana and Wood say, “trust in modern society is changing its character, becoming less of a personal identity and relationship issue, and more reliant upon credentials and ‘testaments.’” Wikipedia is an excellent demonstration of this quote. Rather than looking to individuals who personally feel like experts, the site is relying on long-trusted editors and appropriate links to verify information. Finally, Wikipedia provides and interesting route to authorship. It is a platform that easily allows any user to become a producer at their will. Many lower traffic pages have no barriers in place for content creation. Even the higher traffic pages that do have these barriers allow users to suggest changes. Wikipedia is a mighty platform that perfectly embodies Santana and Woods’ theories on online interaction.

The overall clarity and quality of the writing on both articles was decent. This can be attributed to the fact that both of these pages have a very high amount of traffic so there are constant grammatical revisions being made and content is consistently being being updated. This does not necessarily make these articles immune to any errors, but it does help that they are constantly being evaluated and are both highly moderated. For these same reasons, the articles do a good job of staying within all of Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines. If they didn’t, the errors would be caught quickly and dealt with since there are a lot of eyes on these pages due to the large amount of visits they see.

Both the Ariana Grande page and the Chainsmokers page appeared to generally adhere to the 5 pillars of Wikipedia. Both pages did not seem to adhere to pillar 3 however, which states: Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute. While anyone can in fact use and distribute the Ariana Grande and the Chainsmokers pages, not anyone can edit said pages. The Ariana Grande page, as well as the Chainsmokers pages, are considered “semi-protected” pages. Per Wikipedia policy, semi-protected pages prevent “edits from unregistered users (IP addresses), as well as edits from any account that is not autoconfirmed (is at least four days old and has made at least ten edits to Wikipedia) or confirmed” (Wikipedia:Protection policy). None of the members of our group were able to edit either the Ariana Grande page, or the Chainsmokers page; although, we were able to suggest edits to the page. Our suggested edits would become active edits if approved by the given page’s mods, though none of our suggested edits are currently active on the page. This suggests to us that neither the Ariana Grande page, nor the Chainsmokers page, adhere strictly to the 3rd pillar of Wikipedia. However, this may be for good reason, as per Wikipedia policy: “This level of protection is useful when there is a significant amount of disruption or vandalism from new or unregistered users, or to prevent sock puppets of blocked or banned users from editing, especially when it occurs on biographies of living persons who have had a recent high level of media interest” (Wikipedia:Protection policy).

Further, we found that the Chainsmokers page does not closely adhere to pillar 4, which states: Wikipedia’s editors should treat each other with respect and civility. The mods on the Chainsmokers page (editors who have the ability to approve or disapprove suggested edits) were often more aggressive in their responses to suggested edits and generally came across as more rude in tone than the mods of the Ariana Grande page. This didn’t seem to be in keeping with pillar 4, as the mods generally were not particularly respectful or civil to new users or users who had suggested edits. However, this may be due to the high number of troll accounts that had attempted to vandalize the page in the past.

In conclusion, analyzing and critiquing these two Wikipedia articles, as well as immersing ourselves into the talk pages attached to these articles, was a beneficial experience that was immensely telling as to what Wikipedia really is and the communities that are involved with it.

Sarah Cordle, Skylar Gwilt, Jim Nagle, and Daniel Robey

Dr. Sergey Rybas

New Media Writing

February 24, 2019

Participatory Culture and Social Media Produsage - Reddit Music Community

Introduction

For our group participatory culture and social media produsage assignment, we have decided to utilize Reddit as our platform for analyzing, producing, and consuming content. We decided to join music communities specifically because music is a shared interest between the four of us. All of us decided to follow one specific musical genre.The four genres are EDM, Musical Theatre, Country, and Metal. We thought that following and contributing to four diverse areas of music would be an insightful experience that provides a lot of content to analyze.

A Participatory Culture

Reddit and it’s communities would be considered a participatory culture for a variety of reasons. First, as Jenkin’s puts it in his “How Content Gains Meaning…” video, the barriers for engagement are low. We were able to sign up for a Reddit account, follow our respective music communities, and interact/engage within those communities all within 5 minutes as shown below.

The platform allows for easy access to all of its features and it makes interacting freely with others an easy process. Next, Reddit offers a strong support for sharing creations with others. The whole website is centered around creating content within a community of people who share a common interest with you. If no one is creating content within that community, then there wouldn’t be as much opportunity for interaction and engagement. Within the Country music community, there were a lot of posts by aspiring songwriters as well as song covers by aspiring singers. These posts generated a lot of positive feedback and support. People encourage the creation and sharing of content because it gives them something new to consume and may even inspire them to create their own content. It also represents a participatory culture because not only are members encouraged to share their creations, but they believe that their creations matter. People aren’t going to subscribe to a specific community if it bears no interest to them. They’re apart of the community because they want to see that kind of content, so the creations that people produce and share matter because the audience is there specifically to consume and interact with that type of content. Additionally, not everyone is required to produce content for the site. However, if they decide that they want to that option is always available to them if they have an account. Their content is almost ensured to be valued within the community that they post in since their product aligns with the interests of that community.

Analysis of r/MusicalTheater and r/Showtunes

The musical theater subreddit featured a community engaging in global transmedia. The art of theater is exclusively a live artform. However, by bringing videos of these shows and conversations about them, they are automatically more accessible than they ever would have been less than a decade ago. Just the idea of recording musical theater with a video or soundtrack is already transmedia. By transmitting these videos on social medias like Reddit, there is an additional layer being added to this art. Finally, on this Reddit, we saw many users take these musical theater moments into their own hands. We saw someone use the video game “Wario DIY” to transcribe the song “Dear Theodosia” from the musical Hamilton into a 16-bit video game style. The media of a musical number was popularized through video and a soundtrack (a new media), into the video game, and then on to Reddit. This is prime example of transmedia through social media. There are also many videos posted on this site of people doing covers of broadway songs that are also perfect demonstrations of transmedia.

Reddit users also demonstrated the intense global nature of produsage. Users interacted on the r/showtunes thread constantly. Users were posting videos of themselves covering musical theater songs, others were discussing favorite songs and shows, and others more were sharing jokes and stories about their experience with theater. Jenkins describes the global, spreadable nature of produsage in his article on the subject. The community was an open forum of produsage that allowed users to share, respond, and learn new information from each other and from all around the world. Unfortunately, musical theater is primarily located on Broadway and in the West End of London. These Reddit pages showed how global and spreadable this content was through produsage.

Analysis of r/EDM & r/GRiZ

The culture of Reddit’s main subreddit for EDM, r/EDM, would be considered “participatory” due to the subreddit’s low barriers to engagement, easily accessible features, and strong sense of community. Creating a Reddit account is a fairly simple process, and took very little time. Further, we were able to quickly find a large variety of subreddits for genres of EDM music, EDM artists, and more. We subscribed to r/EDM, the largest EDM subreddit in terms of subscriber count, and made a post asking for recommendations of artists that are similar to my favorite DJ, GRiZ. Within minutes, our post began to receive dozens of replies, to an almost overwhelming degree.

r/EDM & r/GRiZ as Spreadable, Remixable, Transmedia

Posts in r/EDM, and various other EDM subreddits engaged heavily in spreadable transmedia. Users often post their own remixes of popular songs, make memes of their favorite EDM genres/trends, and post music videos of their favorite songs (both official and fan-made). In this way, the content of r/EDM and r/GRiZ are considered transmedia; because, content in these subreddits is found in multiple channels of delivery. These subreddits allow content to be easily spread around the internet, as well as the world. r/EDM allows fans of EDM to discover new music, as well as spread their favorite music to users all over the world. Media on r/EDM would also be considered remixable, largely because remixing existing songs and collaboration between DJ’s are huge components of the EDM genre/community.

Produsage

As far as produsage, we posted in both r/EDM, and r/GRiZ, and received dozens of post replies almost immediately. Producing in this subreddit was fairly easy, as a post is all that is needed to produce. While produsage was fairly simple, (asking for music recommendations), more complex produsage in this subreddit existed in the form of remixed songs, links to music videos, photo collections, links to other articles/social media posts, and more. There seemed to be more produsage than usage in r/EDM, as many of the posts in the subreddit received few, if any replies. In this sense, we were more of a consumer in r/EDM than a producer. We only posted twice and spent far more time in the subreddit browsing through posts and replying to posts that we found interesting.

Twitter Project: Sarah Cordle, Stacy Abroms, Jim Nagle

Topic:

US Supreme Court allows transgender military ban to go into effect. The US Supreme Court justices voted 5-4 in favor of allowing President Donald Trump’s military ban on transgender people to go into effect (@CNN Politics) 

This is a cause because it directly involves the transgender community and, because it restricts them from the right to join the military, it becomes a civil rights issue. In this case, 15,000 soldiers or so have been affected by the ruling as they are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and or transgender and therefore their role as a soldier in the United States Army has been called into question and their livelihood could be affected.

The Twitter population plays a pivotal part in the life of this cause because several news media outlets have utilized their platforms to discuss the topic and therefore a lot of the Twitter population is interacting and engaging in conversation about the topic. Additionally, it was on Twitter’s “discover” tab which generally features high profile current events. Because it was on the discover tab, it generated a lot of responses from the Twitter population and sparked a lot of conversation. In this case, there were politicians, transgender army personnel, and Joe/Jane Public coming together to spread the news of the Supreme Court ruling, debate the pros and cons of the ruling (more cons than pros) and figure out what they as a community could do next to make a difference in the minds of the powers at be in the Judicial, Legislative and Federal branches of government.

Active players in this cause are President Donald Trump, and news outlets like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC in addition to other media sources and political figures. These accounts were quick to report on the issue and spread information about it – whether it be positive or negative. They all have a lot of followers on Twitter so their tweets are consumed by thousands of people. 

Writing plays a role because each of these active players have to craft a tweet in 280 characters and how they craft that tweet can be very telling of how they feel about the cause or where they stand. For example, a more conservative news outlet like Fox will report on the topic differently than a more progressive news outlet like MSNBC. They will write the tweet and report on the cause in a manner that is consistent on where they stand with the issue. The writing in this contest is linked to interviews, personal view points that are supported by primary sources, thoughts on the matter/issue and personal experiences.

Community can represent the Twitter community as a whole and how Twitter users can come together and discuss this issue on a shared platform. It can also represent the LGBTQ Community, specifically the transgender community, and the impact this has on them and what this means for them and their rights going forward. The community was mostly current and prior soldiers that were either transgender or would have not cared the sexuality of the soldiers around them as when they needed help, they were happy to have anyone to help them.

Developments that we were able to observe are there are a lot of different people, political figures, and news outlets who have tweeted about this cause in a variety of different ways. We have seen a lot of different perspectives and effective arguments both for and against this ban – specifically in the comment sections of the Tweets where a lot of active conversation and dialogue takes place. After four days of the twitter string reading the Supreme Court upholding President Trumps ban of Transgender military personnel, there was disintegration of the original cause. 

Memo:

To begin our group Twitter project, we first discussed what topic we should do in class so we would be ready to work on it a soon as possible. We went to the discovery tab on Twitter to look at some trending topics and articles. We eventually decided to go with Trump’s transgender military ban because we felt there was a sufficient amount of information circulating on Twitter that would allow us to craft an effective report. 

In terms of locating tweets and conversations about the topic, we searched the key words “Trump transgender military ban” and a plethora of tweets would then pop up that mentioned those key words. We selected tweets that displayed a variety of perspectives about the issue, as well as comments on some of those tweets to gain insight of how regular Twitter users were interacting in regards to the topic. 

As far as individual roles in the group went, Stacy and Sarah conducted a lot of the research which was then sent to Jim who consolidated the information and crafted a report and a presentation. 

We were able to delegate responsibilities well, however we found it challenging to devise a plan that would work effectively without us being able to physically meet in person due to our conflicting schedules. Aside from that, we feel that we eventually came up with a strategy that allowed us to complete the assignment efficiently.

Pinterest Links:

https://www.pinterest.com/thejim198/english-230/

YouTube Project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euicj_MbB9w&feature=youtu.be