Fatimah-Zara's New Media Blog

I decided to use Apple’s AniMoji, which is animated emojis Apple has created that responds to facial expressions. I use it quite often because it’s very entertaining. I decided to make a screen record on my phone of how one can go about making an AniMoji. In this video, I didn’t realize it, but I was lip syncing to a song by Kacey Musgraves, an American singer and songwriter. I was inspired by her song “Happy and Sad” and decided to create a character of a cowboy only because the song has country themed elements. You can see, Apple offers different features when it comes to skin tone, hair type, color, face shape, eye shape, hats, and different accessories. They made sure to cater to everyone and be diverse as possible. In the video, you’ll see me picking out different features that I thought would fit right for the character I had in mind. Song: Happy and Sad Artist:  Kacey Musgraves

The rise of new media has allowed creativity to be reached at levels it’s never seen before. Now, new media allows people to express themselves in different ways on media platforms when it comes to entertainment and art. People take pictures and texts out of context and create something out of it. An example can be memes, parodies, gifs, etc. These three examples have changed our culture to what it is today, it is being used by multiple generations all due to new media. These examples are passed to one another as a form of communication that sometimes really does not have a serious meaning behind it, it’s mostly use for comedic effect. According to Brooks Barnes  Disney Tolerates a Rap Parody of Its Critters. But Why? , the author states how a musical artist took Disney characters to create a mash-up parody of a song. The artist took something out of context and used it to their own benefit. The parody later became popular which seems to be great because it promoteed both sides of t

Virtual worlds are realistic environments generated by computers. The term virtual reality allows us to interact with such environments through sensory stimuli which is created by the computer. Virtual reality has been used in many different categories, but mostly when it comes to entertainment specifically in the gaming industry. This can be broadened to actual gaming that people do, or as relaxation. Virtual reality became so prominent as well as a trend. Virtual world has really shaped reality for many people which can be an advantage but also a disadvantage. According to  Virtual world may impact real-world behavior , the article gave us an example of how virtual worlds in the gaming industry affected people’s behavior. A study was conducted where participants were either given a character of a hero, a villain and someone who is neutral and after playing for sometime, they have to choose between giving future participants either or chili sauce. The results were that people who pla

Twitter discussion is more informal and casual as opposed to a Blackboard discussion and in-class discussions which tends to be more formal. When speaking about a specific topic, Blackboard is much clearer in the sense that it is organized. One can go to each person’s thread to see what their perspective or post is but it can be time-consuming at the same time. Unlike Twitter, everything is shown on a timeline on one page of what someone has liked, retweeted or posted starting from the most recent to the oldest. The only problem with Twitter’s timeline is that it starts showing what everyone is liking which tends to become distracting when it comes to discussions. But unlike Blackboard discussions, Twitter allows people to interact immediately, with a press of a button, with Blackboard, to create a post, one would have to go through numerous steps. The in-class discussions are a combination of both Twitter and Blackboard discussions. It’s all in real time, the response rate is much hig

For this assignment, I visited social networking sites Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit. I’ve never really used any of these sites so after making an account on each platform website, it was interesting to see how the comparisons as well as the differences. The obvious similarity is that one can make a post easily, the only difference is that on Twitter, they limited to 280 characters. But platforms such as Reddit, Tumblr, and Facebook, there is no limit from what I see. Even if there was a limit, it would be greater than the character count of Twitters’. Along with a creating, and sharing a post, all of the platforms mentioned allow one to share images, and the most trendiest images used are gifs (animated images) as well as videos and links alongside with the message one would like to post. After browsing around Facebook, they have more variety than the other platforms when it comes to making a post. They let their users “ask for recommendations, answer questions, check in, s

Social Network has been a commonly used trend since the rise of technology. It’s being used almost everywhere in personal ways and in social ways as well. Since social networking has been growing rapidly and has been so common in our culture, many companies have started using social networks as a way to market and promote their business as well as staying in touch with the public. There aren’t that many businesses that aren’t using social networks because nowadays, companies want to be easily accessible to their customers. There are many uses for social networks and one main use can be for customer service. Many businesses use Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook as a platform to reach out to customers to provide some sort of assistance and many businesses use these specific type of social media is because of how many people use it. According to  Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet – and Keep Google Out , it states, “ Facebook was more than a fast-growi