Week 6 Collective Intelligence and Interactive Audiences

My screen time on my cellphone has been up by 20% since last week, this most likely has something to do with having a week off from work and school. Instagram and YouTube are still at the highest, in the last week I’ve spent 6.5 hours on YouTube and 4 hours and 16 minutes on Instagram. i have also been watching a ton of more television, Netflix in particular due to having some down time from school and work. hopefully i’ll be more conscious of my cellphone use when i’m back to my regular schedule. In the reading for last week, Henry Jenkins talks about Pierre Levi’s collective intelligence, which he relates to online fan communities. in the tutorial we spoke about several different topics, one in particular was DIY culture. last week i was hanging out with a coworker during some down time, he’s an aspiring artist and was showing me a video he created through adobe premier, he shot it with his cellphone, and i was in awe about how well the video was edited and shot. he had very little prior knowledge of videography, and he himself was surprised at the quality of the final video. Jenkins article was from 2002, so i suppose this would be a very modern example of the DIY culture in todays society. Most of Jenkins article focuses on online fan communities, and when i was in the tutorial i really couldn’t think of anything that i’ve ever been a part of that would resemble an online fan community. however, after the tutorial i realized that i do follow “fan” pages on Instagram, i follow a few Travis Scott fan pages, mostly just to get glimpses of his live shows, but nonetheless i do sometimes read debate in the comments section about when his new music will be dropping, or when his new sneaker will be coming out etc. Speaking of Travis Scott and fandom, he has said in interviews he most enjoys performing because he is attending a show in itself, the fans. one of the other questions that caught my attention from the tutorial was “What if these Survivor fans turned their attention to addressing other matters besides what is going to happen on TV? Might this have a future impact on community building? Democracy? Politics?” without a doubt, if people invested the same amount of effort as they do in these fan groups, and focused their attention on other things such as social issues, or being involved in politics, things would change. but politics and social issues are boring to most folks. another question from the tutorial that caught my attention was “Are we, the audience, being liberated through improved media technologies? going back to what i previously noted about my coworker; he is certainly liberated in terms of creative expression in the way he is able to shoot these videos. back in the day it would’ve costed him thousands of dollars to shoot a video like that. I think there are hundreds of examples in todays age that would describe how the audience is becoming liberated. collective intelligence vs. the expert paradigm also struck my attention. i think that there certainly is tension, and collective intelligence is for sure a good thing, but i also think we still definitely need experts. having access to information is good, and you may get several different answers, but speaking to an expert when searching for answers would always be the way to go for me, especially in serious situations. for example, i would much rather ask a specialist a medical question, rather than post to a forum and ask tons of random people, who may be able to give me the correct answer, but i’m going to choose the expert every time.