Team minutes #3 Week 6

The meeting commenced on Tuesday 1pm at Room 209 General Purpose South(78)

Team roles:

Go through each role of the member (Contents from the ongoing proposal)

Led by Lyndon

Lucina O'Brien: Project and Video Director

Hanfei Lin: Front End Designer  and Scribe

Lyndon Moore: Back End Developer and Administration

Jasmine Kazlauskas: Online Portfolio and Copy designer

(Details such as major responsibilities listed in proposal)

Lulu would be in charge of submitting the Proposal before due date (7 Sep)

About pitch on Friday this week:
New Google doc was created on the team drive

Overview and roles being set as:
Concept - outline the idea and the rationale behind it (Lulu)
Target audience - our audience is not determined by demographic means but rather segmented based on needs and wants. (Lulu)
Context of use (Lulu and Jasmine)

Brief timeline (Felix)

* Lyndon will not be able to attend the Friday workshop and take part in the pitch. This has been fully acknowledged by every team member and all his relevant research results would be included in the pitch content. 

Initial research and thoughts on target audience (Jasmine)

Our application 'unbalanced' does not appeal to an audience based upon specific demographics of age, gender, nationality and religion etc, but rather our audience is ideally anyone who consumes news articles online, across the different technologies of a laptop, tablet or phone. 

Our audience will consist of people who have their own unique interests in varying topics, and thus with this inevitably comes a certain level of bias in relation to peoples curiosities about the world around them. People nearly always will privilege certain news stories and news outlets over others based upon their own beliefs and experiences. The ‘Balance Me’ function on our application will allow these members of our audience to broaden their minds on other topics from lots of different news and content creators from around the world, consequentially making their news consumption look much more ‘Balanced’.

The application will work most ideally with an audience who already have access to different social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, as they will be able to share an infographic which depicts their unique filter bubble and then be able to share and compare it with their friends. In this way, our audience will grow and expand by the use of social media. 

Team minute #2 week 5

Allocated work for the proposal : (to be completed before Tuesday Meeting)

Lulu: Concept 

Lyndon: Team

Felix: Plan

Jasmine: Communication 

All edit made in the Google Drive file - Proposal (format).gdoc

Tuesday 1 pm, meeting, General purpose south (78) 209 Studio room

To do list: (Research - post to the Blog before Friday workshop session)

• target audience (people who want to become experts) (Lulu, Felix)
• social networking elements  (Jasmine)
• self concept, in-group acceptance (Lyndon, Lulu )
• context of users (Lyndon, Felix)
• further solution to the filter bubble (Felix)

The proposal to be done by Friday workshop on Week 6 (due on Monday week 7)




Developed Task List :

Week 6

• Main target: pitch on Friday workshop

• Wrap the pitch (Tuesday meeting)

Week 7

• Research on the proposal before workshop

• Wrap the proposal (Friday) (due on next Monday
• Start on week 7 including research, design process
• Share the research result on week 7 workshop

Week 8

• Started working on Design portfolio

Week 8 ~ week 10

Design process, prototyping and testing

Week 10

• Transforming the process of design on the blog to the final portfolio

Week 11

• Start video assignment
• pre-production,

Week 12 

• Filming
• Post-production 
• Public consumption 
• Self-concept
• How to relate to social network

*to be included in the "Plan" of portfolio

Understanding the Problem

Understanding the Problem of Filter Bubble + Online News Consumption

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Capital: ‘‘resources embedded in one’s social networks, resources that can be accessed or mobilized through ties in the network’’ (Lin, 2008)

• Subsequent research, however, has found that media effects on social capital and participation are contingent upon individuals’ motivations for using media
• Question: what does our user want out of their gamified media consumption?

Self- concept: an idea of the self constructed from the beliefs one holds about oneself and the responses of others.

In-group: An exclusive, typically small, group of people with a shared interest or identity i.e. social acceptance among your peers. Versus the out-group – social outcast

Self-transcendence:

Overcoming of the limits of the individual self and its desires in spiritual contemplation and realisation.

To be a part of something bigger than yourself

Gamification: the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.

ONLINE JOURNALISM

We define participation – in online consumption and active discussion of news

• Rather than perceiving journalism’s role in encouraging political participation such as voting
• Therefore, participation is contextualised within the two way communication between audience (reader to reader) and journalist (reader to writer) – enhancing the overall interactivity of online journalism

Implication to Un.Balanced: Users consume, curate and create content around particular topics

NEWS BRAND CONSUMPTION

(http://jmq.sagepub.com/content/92/3/681.full.pdf+html)

•  Many of the behaviours individuals engage in during the formative years of childhood and adolescence continue to influence behaviour over the life span
• Once news behaviour has been established in youth, it is possible that repeated use may form a “habit” that guides future behaviour.

Online news consumption research: An assessment of past work and an agenda for the future (http://nms.sagepub.com.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/content/12/7/1085. full.pdf+html)

• The empirical studies show that despite the proliferation of sites and technologies, most users are still influenced by past consumption habits
•  Although changes have occurred, they have not drastically altered the news consumption landscape.

A Subjective User-Typology Of Online News Consumption (Digital Journalism)

• So easy to consume news according to personal attitudes and preferences (see e.g. D’Haenens, Jankowski, and Heuvelman 2004
•  Fletcher et al. (2011) shows that young Canadians rank both corporate brand online news sources as well as interpersonal sources as important
• With the focus on the subjectivity in news consumption, the personalization of media usage and news consumption, one can also speak of ‘personal media’.
•  Consequently, the notion of personal media also affects genre conventions, that is “individual users are the developers of genre conventions” (688). This means that “exploring genre conventions of various personal media forms is more challenging than exploring mass media genres, because institutional and professional conventions are absent” (688).

How will Un.Balanced allow users to diverge from their habits or encourage them to become experts

•  Do users become micro-news brands within the online sphere?

Lyndon Research

Looking at Feeds and how to potentially get content onto our application. The google Feed API will allow us to get article titles and heading that people can link out to from load and loads of different sites.

https://developers.google.com/feed/?hl=en (Google Feed API documentation)
http://www.sitepoint.com/no-stress-rss-with-the-google-feed-api/ (Tutorial for Google Feed Set up)

If we want someone to stay on our application then we will need to use a News networks API to actually bring their full content onto our site (MAYBE) rather than send them off. This is probably the better situation as with an API we can actually query and specify which information we want to receive back.

Then users can read the content on our application and we can score them based on the length of the article and categorize their expert level based on the query term.

Alternatively we may need to use a combination of the two, so that people can easily see available articles. The New York times API provides both lead paragraph and a word count, so we could give an estimated read time and xp score, then when they click off we give them the xp. But they cant earn anymore until the time expires?

Initial Research (Lucinda)

Dilemma: Filter Bubble

Website algorithms have the capacity to provide personalised content based on the user’s information, such as location and previous click history. While considered a benefit by some, this repeat targeting creates a filter bubble. Ultimately, this blurs the line between convenience and censorship as the user is delivered homogenous information whilst ignoring contrasting points of view.

Eli Pariser: Beware Online Filter Bubbles (http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles?language=en)

• Algorithms function as information gatekeepers in the digital worlD
• Unlike traditional news gatekeepers (e.g. editors or journalists, algorithms are unable to provide a balanced mix of relevant and challenging perspectives.
• Can lead to passive news consumption as click bait articles and what’s trending on Facebook distracts users
• News consumption exists in an opposing paradigm between a desire for self-enhancement and the need for immediate gratification. The user will read the New York Times essay on climate change tomorrow and instead watch a video about the Kardashians now.

Therefore, Pariser frames the filter bubble as a problem for digital news consumption.

Design

Overview

• Allows users to track the their online news consumption through website application + browser button
• Can log articles by using a browser button (e.g. Digest) – then categorise content to specific topic –   similar to Pinterest as it is done by user

(Example Browser Button)

• Unbalanced will then generate a sharable infographic/profile summarising the user’s online news consumption
• Users will also have the option to ‘Balance Me’ in which Balanced algorithms will generate articles with contrasting and diverse topics or viewpoints
• Or suggest other users who are well read in contrasting topics or the topic they want to know more abou
• Users are able to become varying levels of expert in their chosen topics – then curate articles in that topic
• Users can also generate original content? Maybe like forum discussions about news topics?

• Gamification of process as users accumulate points from consuming/logging specific article
• Users can connect with other social networks to share their news consumption across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
• Ultimately, this function allows the user to improve their perspective whilst developing their online self-concept
• This arguably resolves the opposing news consumption paradigm as users are more motivated to consume a balanced news diet OR become an expert in a field so as to gain social acceptance and remain intellectually relevant

AUDIENCE

Rather categorise the market based on demographics – instead employ needs segmentation, which would divide customers of similar needs and benefits

Primary Users:

1. 'Experts’ – top level of the profile – includes those who have the title and those who aspire for the title
2.  'Balancers’ – those who wish to have a broad selection of topics – i.e. a well read and balanced filter bubble profile( Use the experts the balance them – consume/follow the expert’s collections to balance their own filter bubble
3. 'Content Creators’ – are able to curate information as well as contribute original content relevant to the topic

Secondary Users:

1.  ‘Lurkers’ – friends of experts to consume their curated collections of news. Do no contribute to the site in any way – perhaps share through social media

*Will not have to code Log in button etc

Problems:

•  How will we move past the pay wall at many digital news sites?
•  How will we keep up with the 24-hour news cycle?
•   Will this include NSFW content?
• How do we know if users will want to be experts or balanced – market research

Similar Components: Imgur Profile & Pinterest Board

Team meeting #1

Project team is formed on the workshop today, under the team name “Unbalanced”.

Team members:

Lyndon Moore

Jasmine Kazlaukas

Hanfei Lin (Felix)

Lucinda O’Brien

Team Facebook group, team Google Drive folder were set, for members to communicate and share the files. This blog would be used to record the progress of the project. Every member was given the full access to the blog to view, edit, and create content on the blog. The blog is also expected to use for submitting the project proposal (due week 7).

After the first team meeting, as all the member had generated different ideas on the project, the initial brainstorming idea for the project is to create a mobile first web based application where users create profiles to track their filter bubble. The more they read on a certain topic the more they level up in that area, eventually becoming experts in their friend circles. On the regard of feasibility and complexity, we decided to make thorough research before our next meeting.

The focus of the research varied from different member of the group:

Felix to look at bootstrap

Lyndon to look at media aggregators

Lulu - Dilemma

Jasmine - Audience