Planning/Timescale

If I am on track with completion for the rest of my animation on the 29th March I will return home again and take images for the suicide dream scene as I do really feel this will make my narrative more interesting and realistic. However I would rather the rest of the animation which is vital to the storyline be complete and finished first before tackling this. 

I will also have to take into account that I am not putting any sound on my animation until after it is all complete as I will use soft music over most of it with a few setting sounds, like a keyboard tapping possibly though I do not want anything to distract from the storyline. I want to be able to have the visuals draw people in and explain the story. This will then tie in with the silence of the virtual world. Connoting how she really is alone.

Social Networking in the News: Helen Flanagan Posts Pro-Anorexia Messages

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2287321/Helen-Flanagan-heads-friends-causing-outrage-Twitter-praising-pro-anorexia-messages.html

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/4822036/helen-flanagan-praises-pro-anorexia-pic.html?OTC-RSS&ATTR=TV

Helen Flanagan is a female celebrity that many girls and women look to as inspiration due to her role in the popular soap Coronation Street and appearence on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Helen has hit a lot of controversy today due to promoting the new craze that encourages girls to be as skinny as possible called 'thinspiration'. Helen liked the link on Instagram, apparently not realising that her user activity was public and that all of her fans could then see she liked this notion. She is seen to be promoting an unhealthy image to her fans, as these are pro-anorexia messages. The worrying fact is that she has 27,000 followers on her instagram account who can see her liking images such as the one below.

The image Helen 'liked' on Instagram

This is just a simple easy mistake that Helen made. Celebrities now have to monitor their behaviour in every way as their fan bases have access to so many tools, thanks to the variety of social networks, which update them on their role models lives. Helen has admitted before to previously suffering from an eating disorder so many other suffers do follow her for inspiration on how they can also get over it.

Helen supposedly did not realise everyone could see her activity, and this is one of the issues surrounding social networks as people do not realise the power of the online world. Nothing posted online is completely private and no matter if you delete something it can be found again in an archive somewhere.All Helen did was like something and that information was shared with all her followers. Most activity on social networks can be viewed by anyone you have allowed to 'be your friend', 'follow you' etc. Therefore the content is spread fast for all to see and join in or copy. This is yet another aspect that helps to spread cyber-bullying and humiliation it causes.

People do not seem to be educated properly on the usage of these social networks which leads to problems such as this news story. It also reveals how something so simple as liking a picture can have a big impact on everyone else linked to your account and can have a lot to say about yourself. Cyber-bullies do not realise that what they are doing can be seen by everyone else, a problem is that this can get others to join in but it will also highlight to many the poor character of that individual.

Social Networking in the News: Schoolgirl Sent Death Threats By Bieber Fans

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2287328/Justin-Bieber-Schoolgirl-15-sent-death-threats-jealous-fans-star-retweets-review.html

Today I found an article on the DailyMail which reflects the enormity of cyber-bulliyng. Fifiteen year old school girl Courtney Barrasford posted on Twitter a positive review of Justin Biebers latest album. 'Not usually a fan of Justin Bieber, but his acoustic album is really good!'. This lead to the singer retweeted her post, meaning that his 35 million followers could see it too. As a result of this Courtney ended up receiving tonnes of abusive messages, many of them were even death threats.
A 12 year old posted "Just tell her to die and leave Justin alone".

This article highlights how out of control cyber-bullying has become, Courtney posted a nice tweet on Twitter which resulted in hate mail from all over the globe and from complete strangers. It is also scary to see how young some of these teenagers are who are happily posting such nasty messages. This news article reflects the issues I cover within When The Virtual Becomes Real, the blur between the real world and these online communities. these youngsters would be a lot less likely to say such things to someone face to face, let alone a stranger.

The girls mother demands that there should be tighter monitoring on the content that is posted on these social networking sites. However due to the volumn and range of use, it is impossible to attempt to control which is what makes the sites a perfect tool for bullying. Content can be removed once it has been flagged up as inappropriate but by then the damage is usually done as the content has been seen by those intended to.

The severity of the situation escalated when some of the bitter fans circulated rumours that Courtney was dating Justin and that she was also pregnant with his baby. This shows how easy it is for anything to become viral on the internet and how quick other fans were to join in and spread the gossip further. This is one of the problems with cyber-bullying, the platform provides the ability for anyone to easily join in with their own taunts. It also shows how a post can be seen by so many and spread even further. Humiliation can be caused on such an extreme scale.

Cyber-bullying is something that really needs addressing as the fans do not realise the severity and impact their actions can cause. By abusing someone through the use on an online social network is a cowardly form of bullying but it also de-humanizes the action as it is simply typing words through a keyboard. The virtual world is seen to be completely distant than these fans real life.

Publicity Materials for the Exhibition

Title

When the Virtual Becomes Real

Blurb

When the Virtual Becomes Real explores the psychological effects that cyber-bullying has on teenagers through visual style and narrative. Bullies hide behind their computers feeling distant from this virtual world however the consequences are extremely real.

Critical Introduction (150 words)

When the Virtual Becomes Real is an animation that explores the issue of cyber-bullying. A sixteen year old girl, Rosie, becomes a victim of cyber-bullying on YourBook, a social network created by myself. As the nasty comments build up on her profile and the more people join in, her inner turmoil grows. The psychological effects that cyber-bullying can have via social networking is the focus of this animation. These themes are explored through both the narrative and the visual aesthetics. Stop motion photography is used to represent the real world. This is contrasted with the screens of her laptop and phone being animated to emphasise that the virtual world is different. Rosie starts off as a real image but once the bullying gets too much for Rosie she becomes a black and white rotoscoped animated character. This symbolises how the distant virtual world can have real catastrophic effects on an individual.

Amanda Jenks - Guest Lecturer

A film producer
She started as a director before progressing to a TV series producer of documentaries
Then progressed into drama.

Films produced by Amanda are:
- Mysterious Creatures (2006)
- The Grey Man (2007)
- An Englishman in New York (2009)
   - received Best Feature at the Hamburg Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
   - received three BAFTA nominations
   - short-listed for a 2010 Rose d'Or for Best Single Film
- From The Ashes (2011)
- The Girl (2012)

Amanda produced the recent HBO biopic about Alfred Hitcock titled The Girl. This film starred big names such as Sienna Miller and Toby Jones.

Social Media: Individual Expression vs Mass Conformity

When it comes to thinking about social networks there is the masive debate about whether or not they are to provide a platform for individual expression or if their popularity is simply down to mass conformity.

Social Media can be viewed with a wide variety of interpretations and definitions dependind on it’s function. It is a medium for individual expression as well as a platform which is characterised by mass conformity. Both of these are inevitably linked to each other, in fact, nowadays, many people will join social networking sites in order to comply with the masses, as there is a constant fear of “missing out”. Every form of social media allows the individual to create their own user profile, which is arguably promoting individual expression.The profiles provide the ability to control the ways in which others see you by manipulating the material you post in order present yourself. It is evident to us that both individual expression and mass conformity come hand in hand as you cannot have one without the other. An example that can be compared this dilemma to is clothing; although we want to express our individuality we still conform to the latest fashions to a certain extent.

Emerging Ethical Issues of Life in Virtual Worlds

Emerging Ethical Issues of Life in Virtual Worlds
By Charles Wankel and Shaun Malleck

This book discusses the term "virtual reality", how we do not experience the real world or a fictional world it is a hybrid experience.This is important in relation to the issue of cyber bullying because of the need to address the experience of the individuals involved. Online communities are seen by many as something distant and unattached. The personal element of communication has been removed by technology, before it was the telephone then the mobile phone and then now social networking.'Interactions with virtual worlds are made possible by real devices and can produce secondary effects on the real user and the real world'. Social networks can be accessed through laptops, tablets and mobile phones now. There is no escaping technology in today's. It has helped us to progress as a race in many ways, making many parts of life easier, more convienent and therefore more enjoyable. However it has caused problems too such as 'cyber bullying is a method of bullying made possible because of technological advances' (Agatston, Kowalski and Limber, 2010:2).

Cyber bullying is an ethical issue that only arose due to the new digital age. The internet is a powerful tool but when used in the wrong way it can be vicious. Many things posted online are not just an issue for the present time as they can come back to haunt a person later on. This is another issue that should be stressed when discussing cyber bullying. The bully may not actually realise or understand the implications of the content they are posting online. How it can never properly be fully removed once it has been posted online as everything gets stored in archives.