1) Map all of the social networks that you feel you belong to.
2) Then, map where media come into play in the networks you list.
3) Choose one of your networks and describe how media (devices, uses, environments, economies) are changing your lived experiences of that network right now ... or, have the potential to change your experiences of your social network significantly in the future.
4) Do any of your social network experiences count as an extreme media phenomenon? (In other words, is there any place on your map where media have shaped or altered some deep core experience of your social network?)
In 2007, Eyebeam’s Sustainability Research Group (link) sponsored a challenge to media designers: “Eco Icons invites participants to create one or many information graphics that could be used to make visible environmental/ecological concerns. Thematically, these are icons that engage the politics of information and the persuasion of graphics. The icons could be used for various purposes. For example, the final form for your icon could be a banner for web sites, stickers to place on objects or buildings, drawings for stenciling on the streets or a tag that could be “shopdropped” in stores. You can invent one or a collection of icons. Be creative in conceiving the icon and its use!”
Winning designs were awarded cash prizes totaling $5000 and, along with finalists, were included in an Eyebeam exhibition called Feedback.
Create an eco icon and share it as a monitorial citizen through some form of media-based social networking. link to eyebeam
People have turned number of social networking projects, such as MySpace, into platforms for supporting their efforts as monitorial citizens. You can explore the potential they hold for what Jenkins calls a "culture of democracy" by creating media and submitting it to one of these sites. This mo'tech project gives you a context for engaging with a question that Jenkins has put at the center of his study of media and democracy: How do people use popular culture to explore and express cultural and political identities?
• Design and produce a video, audio cast, or slide show and submit it to one of the social network-turned-monitorial-citizen sites below. http://www.myspace.com/ourplanet
http://www.myspace.com/moveonspace