To begin testing how individuals would react to a glaring awareness of audiences present on social media, I asked several individuals to participate in a project. I asked each individual if they would let me film them and use it in a blog post. The participants of this project did not have any knowledge of what I was going to film them doing. Moments before each recording took place, I selected a post created by the participant and posted on social media in the last few months. Then I asked the participants to read aloud to the camera what they had posted.
So often we post on social media without a second thought as to the number of views it will get from people all across the world. We subconsciously consider each post to belong to the people in the forefront of our mind as we post it. Whether we're thinking only of ourselves or we're also including a small number of close friends, we don't often think to ourselves, "This is going straight to three-hundred and eighty-two people." Because of my relatively low number of Facebook friends by the standards of many social media users, it is more likely that for the majority of individuals the number of people who receive posts is a larger number than my three-hundred and eighty-two.
What I found after filming several individuals was that most individuals were flustered by my request. They showed great hesitance in how the post should be read. They created the posts themselves, yet they didn't know what tone of voice to use or which words to emphasize.
This project started with no expectations, only to see how people would react to reading their posts aloud. I revisited this project a few weeks later and began brainstorming ways to expand on the original project. After some thought, I decided to go back and ask the same individuals to participate in a sequel project where I would once again film them.
Because my original project included only four participants, I thought it would be beneficial to also expand on the first project by also asking additional individuals to participate.
As with the first part of the experiment, I gave no details other than to say it would be similar to the previous filming session only slightly different. "It will be better than the last one." was a phrase I ended up using with each participant.
When I met with each participant, as I set up my tripod and camera to prepare for filming, I requested for each individual to create a social media post with the knowledge that they would be reading it aloud and it would be recorded.
The response that I got to the second part of the project was slightly disheartening. I felt that because I was now giving the participants control over what they would post and read aloud, it would be easier for them. While the participants had written their posts, the first part of the project allowed the participants the least amount of control and I felt therefore, that the worst part was out of the way.
Out of the four original participants, two agreed right away, one hesitated, and one said no. After asking two additional individuals to participate, one said yes and the other said yes until we got to part two. That participant spent several minutes trying to conjure up a creative post before laughing and saying that she wasn't going to be able to participate.
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| Tweet posted by Laina on April 22, 2015 |
After looking at each video for the participants in the second part of this project I've found that, generally speaking, the participants were more comfortable being recorded. Confidence was also higher as I did not have any participants ask how they should speak in transferring their posts from written word to spoken word.
One option that I believe would have improved the results of this project, would have been to do both filming parts in one sitting. If there had not been several weeks between part one and part two, it is likely that I would have gotten more participation from all participants. In the case of the participant who had the option to do both parts in one sitting, it did not increase her participation.
Comparing part one and part two of this project did show me that there is a difference in communication when knowledge of the reality of audience is understood. At least one of two things was changed between the two parts of the project. Either the message was changed or the delivery was changed.
This project has outlined on a small scale the absence of understanding audience for individuals who post on social media.
