Question four:

There are billions of users on Facebook and it's still growing at a fast paced rate. Already having a movie made about it ( The Social Network) only boosted the popularity of this site. Younger and younger users are now using FB for socialising.

The audience size of twitter would alsao be in the billions as the social networking on this website rivals Facebook. Audiences are drawn in futher as celebrities have taken to tweeting, appealing their fans.

Over the years DeviantArt has existed, no doubt more of an audience has joined and has made fellow UGC.

Question three:

Facebook is distributed on the internet and also exhibited on the internet. The FB page can be exhibited by a number of people dependant on the profile. On this profile there are a number of people depending on the profile. On this profile there are details such as age. gender, work education etc. Through this detail members of this network are also targeted by advertisements.

Twitter is again distributed and exhibited on the internet. On a Twitter profile page. it displays your "following", information, "tweets" and the people you follow.

DeviantART is distributed and ehibited on the web. This website runs and depends on UGC as viewers of this website get to upload self drawn pictures.

Question two:

Instead ofAudiences taking a more voyueristic position, these social networking sites allow them to produce and post their own thoughts and ideas. Facebook allows audiences to voice their own opinions and therefore gives them a sense of entitlement and power as they choose what goes onto the website. Twitter serves the same purpose and also audiences get the opportunity to interact with their favourite celebrities, a feature which is appealing. DeviantART is where UGC is a main factor into the function of the website. With UGC as its centerpoint, audiences both consume and create the content which is viewed.

Question one:

The texts I am studying are Facebook, Twitter and DeviantART, all social networking sites. All of these networks first existed on the internet so all of these sites are owned by corporations that have thrived online.

The Impact of New and Digital Media:

My Case Study will involve... Social Networking and how socialising has changed in the technology age.

I have chosen this topic because social networking in this technological age is an interesting subject in which I can explore both the benefits and downsides of socialising on the net.

The three texts I will be studying is... Facebook, Twitter and DeviantART.

Media Magazine articles/quotes:

Representing masculinity
It has been argued that The Public Enemy has a homoerotic subtext, in relation both to Tom and Matt’s close friendship and to Putty Nose’s interest in Tom. However, the film also tries to assert masculine values. The Great Depression created a crisis in masculinity, and in film the previously refined leading males were replaced by rougher, tougher ones. Clarke Gable and James Cagney became icons of masculinity, and Cagney uses this for the character of Tom Powers. (Social, cultural, historical context and Key Concepts – Representation)

Feelings of insecurity about male dominance are at least partially resolved when Tom pushes a grapefruit into the face of Kitty (Mae Clarke) in a scene that is both amusing and distasteful in equal measures, and which bemuses students every time I show this film (Textual analysis to illustrate Representation).

The roles of women are objectified in The Public Enemy. This is certainly true both of Kitty, as exemplified by the breakfast/grapefruit scene, where she fulfils no function other than to be humiliated by Tom, and Gwen who appears to be used as mere decoration. This is shown in the scene in which she accompanies Tom to the dinner dance and is nothing more than a beautiful object for him to show off. This does, however, demonstrate the patriarchal values of the society at the time; the women in the film are represented as having no power other than to attract men with their looks, or to cook and clean for them, as is the case with Tom’s mother. It is the men (and in this case the gangsters) who have the power. This reflects society in that men in America in the 1930s would certainly have held all the positions of power (Key Concepts – Representation and social context).

Media Magazine articles/quotes:

Conventions and realism
It is argued that the major conventions of the gangster genre were laid down during this classic period of the 1930s:
• the iconography e.g. the stylised suits, overcoats, shirts and ties etc., cigarettes, alcohol, guns, flash cars
• the sleazy settings and urban backdrop, of bars, clubs and police precincts
• the themes with which we have become so familiar, such as the ‘rise and fall’ structure, the mythology of the gangster as tragic hero, revenge as a prime motivating factor, the binary opposition between the family and the gang.
But the convention that is particularly worth commenting on here is Realism. Gangster films reflect a realist representation of contemporary society, and this is certainly so of the 1930 films and in particular The Public Enemy. (Key Concepts – Genre)

The two main characters in Little Caesar and Scarface, Rico and Tony Camonte respectively, are based on Al Capone; in The Public Enemy, Tom Powers is based on Hymie Weiss. These were real life gangsters and deadly rivals; Weiss was the only man Al Capone ever truly feared. In real life Hymie Weiss had a partner called Dion O’Banion who saw him rise as a gangster (like Matt Doyle in the film). The reason for Weiss’s hatred of Capone was that Capone arranged a successful hit on O’Banion’s life. Similarly, in The Public Enemy, the Burns Mob kills Tom’s partner Matt. Like Weiss, Powers wants vengeance for his friend’s death, so goes into enemy territory armed with only two guns. He is shot and ends up in hospital. Capone later killed Weiss, just as Tom is kidnapped and killed by the Burns Mob (Historical context and Key Concepts – Genre).