Sooo…. What’s new media? Anyone? Oh yeh, I can hear pretty interesting stuff out there. New media or social media includes youtube,skype, facebook, twitter, blogging…. what else??? MySpace Digg…New Media led to the emergence of citizen journalism where each person regardless of his position or profession can have a say! It also increased the interaction between the audience and producer of the news event where more chance of  expressing different ideas is now possible with new media. The BBC started offering courses online for people willing to learn about it see this: http://www.bbctraining.com/newMedia.asp.

Part of lausocial class taught by Mr. Ayman Itani at LAU where we learnt about everything related to new media like blogging, tweeting, and live covering events and conferences, we had to do a project entitled “What Does New Media Mean to You?” As mentioned in my previous blog post, we had to interview three persons of different age groups and inquire about their uses of new media and in what ways it is affecting their daily lives.

Observations:

Tala Bekdash:

She was influenced by her home environment where every family member has a facebook account. That’s why she registered for a facebook account. She is also cautious in using it. When strangers added her on facebook, she consulted her older sister. Part of the movie wasn’t there because after struggling hard to find a good video convertor in order to convert the video file recognized by windows video maker, I realized that half of the video wasn’t there. The missing part included asking her if her parents sit with her when using facebook. She said that nobody sits with her and that “I know what’s right and what’s wrong to do online”.

Caroline Hodroj:

Although she misunderstood the first question, she gave me an in depth perspective about the positive and negative effects of new media and she considered that its positive effects outweigh it negative effects. Although she focuses on the new media more, she still prefers getting the news from traditional media outlets.

Ahmad Shatila:

He doesn’t consider new media important and doesn’t use it very frequently although he has an iphone and maybe he isn’t aware that iphones are considered part of new media. He also said that the new media didn’t have much impact on his profession and he will definitely monitor his children when they’ll use the new media.

Similarities:Both Dr. Shatila and Ms. Hodroj responses were similar regarding the issue of one’s privacy with new media where they emphasized the fact that one has the choice to either reveal private things about him or not. They both prefer getting the news from traditional media outlets. Dr. Shatila and Tala Bekdash referred to importance of parental supervision when kids use new media. Tala Bekdash referred to an incident where she had to call her sister and consult her regarding strangers adding her on facebook. I found also that all use the new media mainly for entertainment and socializing.

Differences:Dr. Shatila aged 47 years old doesn’t use it very frequently while both Tala and Caroline use it on a daily basis. Among the three interviewees, Caroline Hodroj showed much enthusiasm and comprehension of the new media and its effects.

Techniques Used:

I used my phone to record and I regretted it later on because my windows video maker doesn’t accept the video file my phone has so I had to find a suitable video convertor. The first one ruined my audio. The second convertor didn’t give good quality picture. The third time I was fed up; I used a convertor that only converted half of my video. I missed certain significant parts of the video, but I was late then and I had no choice… Then I transferred them to my PC and I uploaded 2 of my videos (Dr.Shatila and Ms. Hodroj) that didn’t need significant editing to youtube and I started adding captions using Captiontube (http://captiontube.appspot.com/) and adding annotations as introductions and final credits and I published them. I enjoyed subtitling my videos and it was really easy to do. Tala Bekdash’s video needed editing and I previously said suffered from the conversion problem. I worked on windows movie maker and then I uploaded it to youtube and voila… The easiest thing was actually recording the interviewees and the most difficult part as you have noticed so far from my previous comments was the video conversion.

My favorite part of this project is actually having my own Youtube channel with videos that I’ve prepared myself although from a technical perspective, the videos weren’t that good. I think also that the unprofessional thing I did is that asking questions that my interviewees had hard time elaborating on. What I didn’t like about the project is the whole converting process that I mentioned above that was very annoying and because of which I lost significant parts of Tala’s interview. In conclusion, I consider this experience as a start for a real assessment of new media’s uses among the Lebanese. We, as lausocial class, could later on move further to conduct research about new media’s uses in Lebanon and people’s preferences and we could also engage in workshops dedicated for new media literacy.

I know that I was very late to submit my project, but it’s better late than never!

Here are the links of the videos in case the” video embed” thing didn’t work:

Tala’s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOaGwvBsYVA     Caroline’s:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og0g784lrrw  Dr. Ahmad’s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i27ZfFed54k