Digital Young

I know I have been really lazy that I haven’t been writing on my blog, but I hope you’ll findI have done a lot of stuff since then. I am currently teaching assistant in cultural anthropology and communication and working as a Public Relations department Coordinator. How does that match? I don’t know, it seems it does.

As a coordinator at the Public Relations department at the University of Bucharest, we have done some things, and here is the presentation trailer of three blogs that we started and that we are writing at constantly:

I hope you’ll enjoy it, especially that we really worked our asses on them.

In terms of media, technologies, communication and their uses, I recently read a post that really made me think a lot. Here’s the link: farisyakob.typepad.com.
The blog is written by Faris Yakob, EVP Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson New York. And here are the points he talks about that would explode and are full of potential for 2010: gestures, banners, the socialisation of Media, content, hyperconnectivity and transmedia.

I am not such a big name as he is, but I will have something to say referring to his ideas:

1st: I totally agree with his view on all points, in terms of dynamics.

2nd: still, it is a little bit difficult to see (for an outsider) the link between those points – gestures, banners, socialisation of media, content, hyperconnectivity and transmedia.

So, just for the sake of thinking, what are they? How can we link them in order to reflect the user profile?

All 6 are forms of appropriating media by users. The appropriation has been made in a really pesonal and individual way. They describe an interesting relation between technology and users.

From Faris’ description, I see there is a recurrent view that comes out: the user’s empowerment. The user changes, transforms, re appropriates a technology, in a rhythm that over-passes any prediction. If I look to my friends around me, they stay a lot of time on the internet, they prove a real pleasure on playing with technology (entertainment dimension) and they like to communicate and to keep in touch.

But something came up talking to my students etc: all this entertainment has a purpose now. Before, they were just playing by doing a blog, to give an example. Now, it became more serious. The hyper-specialization of abilities and the explosion of people “doing” things on various media led to a more exigent view over their own abilities and knowledge.

This attitude will have an important impact over the aspects that Faris was talking about: the content that is generated by an user will be shared under some restrictions (the user will control what to share and how to share), the communication will become a controled process (by the user), and all this with the purpose of branding themselves. I have encountered to my students this perspective over their own content: I like to generate new content through technologies, but a controlled content, something that will brand me.

I think that this should also be discussed when talking about “some big next things in 2010″: “branding myself” through media, socialisation, communication and technologies.

Behind anonymity, students feel free to write everything they want. and more specific where they want Here’s a microstudy of what students from Faculty of Letters write on the doors and on the walls of toilets. These messages have a content that’s influenced by two important facts: the students from the Faculty of Letters are mostly girls and the space of toilet. This last element is strikingly important as it reveals provocative attitudes. The language is filled with sexuality: both content and form are touched by this purpose of communication.

Even if you can’t see very well, the structure of a message on a toilet door or toilet wall is pretty much the same. It is always a dialogue; the provocateur is usually a guy who declares his availability for sex and he also puts conditions: “I am looking for a blond girl …” A girl always answers to him, insulting him: she calls him a pig or a pervert etc. After that, there can be a chain of reactions towards the guy’s proposal or  the girl’s reaction.

In this picture, the chain of messages ends with a cell phone number. Usually fictive, this number reinforces guy’s availability.

In the next message, the reaction towards the first person who started the chain is very aggressive: “Don’t write on the walls any more! Repent yourself !”, wrote probably a very religious person.

This last one touches another “saint” figure: “Silence, Eminescu is dead”, and the answer comes immediately: “F…k off christians!”.

Some characteristics of toilet writings:

1. are anonymous;

2. have a licensed content / connotation;

3. the first message always has an answer, which is a critique or an insult towards the first provocative message;

4. the pattern of chain messages: any message requires an answer / a reaction; usually, the person who answers to a specific message draws a line or an arrow towards the message that he answers to;

What do yout think / do you see in all these writings / texts / messages? Is there something to see or it’s just something futile? I wouldn’t say it’s something futile because they are for a long time there, messages are different in time. So, why this need to write, to provoke, to make all this game? I have an idea, but I will really develop it in a different post.