BETA VIDEO
What is so interesting about Reddit?
Forum sites diverge themselves from the now consistent theme of social media sites that centre a post’s worth on the visual content or the following behind the user. As discussed in my BETA, Reddit guides the interaction to occur in the form of discussion, and not just liking or passively engaging. The overall discussion under each post evolves as a tree structure, growing over time (De Francisci et al. 2021).
Forum sites almost act as a community, like a Facebook group, but less objectively embarrassing. Reddit itself has bloomed into a dedicated gateway to the Web. It has become an “increasingly self-referential community” which focuses on a user’s content, not external sources (Singer et al. 2014). How the dynamic evolves in the future will be crucial to all future media sites.
References
Bell, Wendell 1998. Making people responsible: The possible, the probable, and the preferable.American Behavioral Scientist, Vol 42(3), Nov-Dec, 1998 Special Issue: Futures studies in higher education. pp. 323-339.
Business of Apps. 2021. Reddit Revenue and Usage Statistics (2021). [online] Available at: <https://www.businessofapps.com/data/reddit-statistics/> [Accessed 7 May 2021].
De Francisci, M.G., Corrado, M. & Michele, S. 2021, “No echo in the chambers of political interactions on Reddit”, Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group), vol. 11, no. 1.
Moore, C. 2021, Week 4 Multiple Futures Lecture. BCM325 Future Cultures.
Singer, P., Flöck, F., Meinhart, C., Zeitfogel, E. and Strohmaier, M., 2014. Evolution of reddit. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web – WWW ’14 Companion,.
PAIGE SUTTON 
Reblogged this on Future Cultures.
LikeLike
Hey Paige, your beta video was really good and very informative, and respect how honest you were when it came to your pitch feedback and the progress of your digital artifact. Creating a digital artifact can be challenging and it can take time to figure out what you what to create as you want it to be engaging and worthwhile while which I think you have finally found. Creating a final video to be posted on Youtube is a great idea as it will be very engaging and visually appealing to your audience. I also like how you go into detail about your social utility and you address it very clearly and professionally. Touching on possible futures by Wendell Bell was also interesting and loved how you can relate to this lecture concept.
So, I found it a little hard to leave some constructive feedback as you have not got any form of media for your digital artifact yet. I definitely believe you have the right idea and you will provide a great digital artifact at the end of the semester. One way I believe you can improve your digital artifact as a whole is to create two separate video pieces instead of one big one at the end of the semester. It simply allows you to produce more content that will be good for your audience and will allow you to have a more engaging digital artifact. You could also write a separate blog concluding your video piece (or two if you decide to do more). This will allow you to wrap your digital artifact up in a short blog post and you can share this on your socials. Also, make sure you touch on lecture concepts in your digital artifact. I know you spoke about possible futures in your beta but, if you discuss this in your media you will gain more marks and it will be more engaging for your audience.
I did some research for you in creating an engaging video piece and found some interesting blogs and videos. The blog below lists some useful techniques that I thought would be very useful for you in creating your final video. The two big techniques were creating engaging content and filming and editing. Both of these techniques I’m sure you are already aware of but they go into a great deal of detail which could be useful. https://99designs.com.au/blog/video-animation/creating-engaging-videos/
The Youtube video below is around seven minutes long and is full of useful tips in creating engaging videos which I think can help you in creating your digital artifact.
Overall, I can tell you’re well on your way to creating a great digital artifact and love how your persevering through this digital artifact process. I know whatever you end up with will be great and hope this comment helped you out a bit. All the best Paige
Alex
LikeLike
Hey Paige! This is a really informative beta/pitch 2.0 as you have a very clear direction of where you want your DA to go and a very specific social utility. I admire how you were able to take on board such critical feedback and use it to better your concept.
I wouldn’t be too worried about not having an content to show yet as it’s far better to change your idea in the early stages than it is to continue with something that has an unclear direction and something that you have no real passion for doing as it would have reflected in the content.
The only thing I’m a little bit confused about is how you will be sharing your progress going forward. Will you only be sharing your findings to reddit and will you be sharing any visual content? As that is a key aspect in keeping an audience engaged.
As you are now creating a singular video for your DA, which is also what I’m doing getting continual feedback on your progress will be really important. Something I have been doing is sharing updates of script drafts, and visual content on twitter to gain feedback and show a level of public engagement in my final contextual essay. I know said that sharing drafts doesn’t align with how you work, but I think it could be beneficial to receive further peer feedback as it will help you keep your DA connected to the subject content.
Hope this helped and I look forward to seeing what you end up making!
LikeLike
First of all, your presentation is ~aesthetic~. Second of all, I went through the exact same pitch-and-switch situation with my DA, changing my topic to better connect with the subjective objective and not be too broad, and my Beta is also kind of a Pitch 2.0. I use Reddit almost every day as well (embarrassed high-five), so I’m super excited to see what you investigate.
Your short- and long-term questions are really interesting, and I think we have some answers already to some of them. There’s most definitely an influence over mainstream ideas and real-world impacts, the most recent significant one being the GME stock situation (https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/docview/2486893038?https://search.proquest.com/globalwires&pq-origsite=primo). It’s still wild to me that users on Reddit created huge financial impacts through their participation in the forum. One of your long-term questions asks whether there is money to made through Reddit accounts. I’ve seen so many comments already about farming karma and karma bots, like this one, which regularly repost popular content to generate upvotes and karma to then sell it off to the highest bidder, which has so many different repercussions to consider (https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/8l1r2k/psa_karma_bots_are_becoming_a_lot_more_prevalent/). This r/TheoryOfReddit sub (https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/) might also be really useful for your project, if you haven’t already been using it. Another interesting question you asked was the influence of certain users who might amass a large following. One interesting case was Unidan, who gained a lot of popularity by commenting interesting scientific information but ultimately got almost ‘too popular’, manipulating upvotes with alternate accounts, and ultimately was banned (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/unidan).
Using a Reddit account yourself to get primary feedback from Reddit is genius, especially since all the responses are anonymous and may be more likely to give insight. I also really like how you’ve used the rise and fall of 4chan as way of interpreting the past to orient your current study of Reddit.
I’m really on the same page as you with not having an actual working prototype of my DA, since I went through a similar 180 after my pitch feedback. I’ll be working hard in these last few weeks to get something up on YouTube and rooting for you too!
LikeLike