There are many sources of academic literature already written on the recently increasing online social networking trend.  We intend to consult texts including “How to find a job on Linkedin, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and other social networks,” “Online social networking on campus: understanding what matters in student culture,” “Making connections: readings in relational communications,” and “Handbook of research on socio-technical design and social networking systems,” which are all available at the University’s library. Reading these texts prior to beginning our interviewing will help us form a thesis about how we believe social networking has played a role in altering the way people interact with different groups now and in the future. We can then gather our own information and see if it coincides with the current research.  As part of our field research, we will create a facebook page, to represent one form of social medium, and attempt to see how many users we can connect with in a certain amount of time. This will help demonstrate the interconnectedness of a social networking site like facebook and the amount of exposure a page can get just by being apart of an online community.

Though we are not yet certain what our thesis about social networking will be until we have read scholarly articles and books related to the subject, we have some ideas about what we will do once we have crafted a thesis.  After we have considered the arguments of multiple academic texts, we will remediate these arguments in various ways.  The main way we plan to do this will be through film.  This film will certainly include footage of interviews relevant to the topic, which will likely be the focus and majority of the film.  This is because we believe that seeing firsthand how social media affects real students is the most productive way to illustrate our ideas on the topic.  Our film will also likely include other forms on media other than normal alphabetic text, such as music, photos, or graphical representations.  Another idea we are considering, if it relates to our thesis, is making a facebook page ourselves in order to document first hand what social media and networking sites are like, and include this in our film.

Before reading academic texts, we some preliminary ideas about how social media affects students’ lives.  For example, we could examine the way social media enhances certain kinds of social interaction while hindering other kinds, or that it is changing social interactions altogether.  We can also examine how social media sites influence consumers through marketing and advertising, and how politicians sway potential voters through various methods on these sites.

Digital media today is a unique form of advertising strategy. With the every growing social network, more and more online users connect themselves through various website hubs. These sites are all-unique and share a different experiences for users. For example, Four Square is a location/geo-tagging based social network. When using the site users “check-in” to share their location with friends. When checking in various deals (based on proximity) are shared with the user. The experience is different for every single account holder. This seems to be similar with other social networking sites. Every single site offers a variety of features to help you connect and share data with other people. The Internet was invented to help connect a network of computers to share data. Social networking sites do the exact same thing, and connect people around the world. Social networking uses the Internet as it is intended to be used. It’s time for people to realize that this social networking thing is not a fad, but it’s here to stay and prosper over the years.

With this project I believe our group can gain a stronger understanding for social networking. With this knowledge we can gain a stronger understanding for current advertising and public relations strategies. The use of a video/facebook page can help improve our experience and used our skills that we have developed throughout this course. We believe that creating a video will best share our research because we can use audio, video, images, etc… The ability to share videos these days through social networking can also help us spread our word to a large group of people easily.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/yourlistenAudio/embed.swf

Stephen: Hi Jake.  I am strongly opposed to the morals of music piracy.  You may not have to worry about getting caught but that is not a reason not to partake in piracy.  First and foremost, piracy is theft.  Most of us would never steal from a mom and pop shop down the street, even if it was easy to do.  This is no different.  Even though it is easy to do, and there is no face on the person you are stealing from, and there is often little to no chance of getting caught, it is still stealing and morally wrong.

Amber: Whose morals are we talking about? Everybody has different morals, so how can you say that this is “morally wrong” in general?

Stephen: I’ll tell you exactly how it’s morally wrong.  People are losing money, and getting laid off because people are not paying them for their music that they worked hard to create. According to the Recording Industry Association of America website:

” Global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year, 71,060 U.S. jobs lost, a loss of $2.7 billion in workers’ earnings, and a loss of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes.”

Piracy causes monetary losses and layoffs in an already strained economy, and real people are getting hurt even though you wouldn’t know it from “harmlessly” downloading music.

Amber: According to these statistics, music industry losses alone due to music piracy is a sum greater than the Gross Domestic Products of many of the world’s developing countries. Arguments such as this are hard to swallow when the supposed “data” to back them up is furnished by the plaintiff party.

Jake: We have a caller coming in with another argument of how piracy is bad.  Amanda, tell us what’s on your mind.

Amanda: Hi Jake.  I’m an aspiring musician and I am very upset that music is being so often pirated. It’s making it harder for artists to break into the industry because it’s tough to make a career when your money is being stolen right away from you.  It’s hurting the arts as a whole because musicians like me are unable to get their careers started.

Amber:

• However, many people discover a band because they first downloaded one of their songs illegally online. Those fans then support them by going to their shows and purchasing merchandise. Te record label is the one making the money off of albums. If anything, free downloads are a good way for bands to break into the industry.

• Artists like Lady Gaga say that they are ok with fans downloading music.  She acknowledges that they make the real money by touring. As much as $40 million can be made from a 2 year touring contract, and that is the low end. She says downloading is good for her career, even if it’s unauthorized downloads because it advertises her music.

• So in many ways, it’s like free advertising.  How many times have you left a concert and other bands were standing outside the door putting free sample disks in your hands? Free music gets people to listen to them. Downloading helps unheard of bands gain an audience. It’s less likely that anyone is going to buy your music before they know if you’re good or not, especially in today’s tough economy.

Jake:

-Let’s take another caller.

Stephen:

-Why would you ever download music illegally, when you can just buy it from iTunes or Amazon?

-Purchasing music can be expensive.  It may only be $1-2 per song, but that quickly adds up. There would be no way for most people to justify spending the amount of money it would actually cost if they had paid $1-2 for every song in their music libraries. And if their not getting it, their not listening to it, and not promoting the band by telling their friends about it.

Amber:

-  Amazon and iTunes do have extensive libraries of music and offer a simplistic service that is user friendly, but the material that you are downloading is limited.

-Apple and Amazon both protect the music that users download from their sites. Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is the software that makes it so music you buy from the iTunes Music Store can’t play on any other player other than the iPod, such as a Zune or other mp3 player. In an effort to keep people from sharing legally purchased music, DRM actually goes much farther than copyright law dictates, denying paying customers the fair use of the music they buy. You should be able to do what you want with an album once you’ve paid for it; like a CD or a record, you now own it for life.

-Free downloads can be the same quality as bought downloads, plain and simple. If you know how to use the internet, you can find a quality mp3 without having to search very hard.

-Last year, Google launched free music downloading in China. Internet users in China simply have to type in the name of an artist and song they are looking for in Google and they are able to download it for free. Google and the record labels then split the advertising revenue. If this is legal in China, then how could it be morally wrong in the US or anywhere else? Would it then be morally wrong for users in China to access the part of the internet that they are barred from reaching because of the absurd censorship laws?

Jake:

-Thanks Amber that’s a good point.  So, who are the ones governing Internet downloading? The Recording Industry Association of America, or the RIAA, is a  trust that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors. The RIAA says, they “create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States.”

-The RIAA was formed in 1952, and promises to uphold and protect intellectual property rights worldwide and the First Amendment rights of artists. The RIAA also monitors and reviews relevant laws, regulations and policies. As of January 5th, 2009 the RIAA ended their search for illegally downloaded material. So, what does that mean for the future of online downloading?

Amber:

I hate the RIAA. The organization is completely bogus. On December 21, 2006, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against Russian owned and operated website AllOfMP3.com in the amount of $1.65 trillion($1,650,000,000,000). This number was derived from multiplying 11 million songs with statutory damages of $150,000 per song. The Moscow court ruled in favor of AllOfMP3.com.