Introduction
My second paper - the film "The Social Network" as a cultural artifact, examines the cultural impact the film had on the fanbase it was created for. It goes through the historical events (though arguably not as historically accurate as they happened) for the creation of the online social networking site facebook, and the film also becomes an iconic piece of history in itself.
This paper views the films representation of various issues in talking with friends and staying connected, and how facebook - the now-famous social network - serves to attempt to rectify them. It goes through the evolution of the website, as well as the characters behind creating it. Admittedly, this paper didn't have as much of a "flow" as my others did, as I was never really able to find a connection to it like I did with the others.
Cultural Artifact - Film:
The Social Network as a Cultural Artifact
In many ways the film The Social Network is a cultural artifact that represents its community, the users of Facebook. The movie exemplifies the ideas and thought processes of the typical facebook user, and the general consensus of them as a whole.
In the movie The Social Network, we get to see the creation process of facebook, one of the most widely used (and widely influential) social networking sites in the world today. The student communities spread across the various college campuses in the movie are in many ways representative of the online communities as they were before facebook. They were there, and they had their own ways of connecting with their friends, but they were fragmented, and were pretty much limited to their own “circle”, in the same way that in the movie the college students were limited to connecting with their own colleagues.
Mark Zuckerburg created facebook out of an expanded idea he based off of another he got from the work he was "doing" for the Harvard students. He sends it to people, they see how quick and easy it seems and sign up and add friends, and it quickly expands throughout all the schools. The people who use it after a short while start saying “facebook me” as if it's an actual term, which can be very commonplace today. It also gives us examples of other reasons people use facebook for, almost like how a dating site is used – as demonstrated when Mark adds in the relationship status to the feature list of the site.
The film is a cultural artifact in itself because it also represents the types of things the people who use facebook like to do - hang out with friends, go to big parties, find out about each other's new relationships - all of these normal activities are displayed in the movie, in a similar manner (if somewhat exaggerated) to how these events occur in real life - and that draws people to it.
This paper views the films representation of various issues in talking with friends and staying connected, and how facebook - the now-famous social network - serves to attempt to rectify them. It goes through the evolution of the website, as well as the characters behind creating it. Admittedly, this paper didn't have as much of a "flow" as my others did, as I was never really able to find a connection to it like I did with the others.
Cultural Artifact - Film:
The Social Network as a Cultural Artifact
In many ways the film The Social Network is a cultural artifact that represents its community, the users of Facebook. The movie exemplifies the ideas and thought processes of the typical facebook user, and the general consensus of them as a whole.
In the movie The Social Network, we get to see the creation process of facebook, one of the most widely used (and widely influential) social networking sites in the world today. The student communities spread across the various college campuses in the movie are in many ways representative of the online communities as they were before facebook. They were there, and they had their own ways of connecting with their friends, but they were fragmented, and were pretty much limited to their own “circle”, in the same way that in the movie the college students were limited to connecting with their own colleagues.
Mark Zuckerburg created facebook out of an expanded idea he based off of another he got from the work he was "doing" for the Harvard students. He sends it to people, they see how quick and easy it seems and sign up and add friends, and it quickly expands throughout all the schools. The people who use it after a short while start saying “facebook me” as if it's an actual term, which can be very commonplace today. It also gives us examples of other reasons people use facebook for, almost like how a dating site is used – as demonstrated when Mark adds in the relationship status to the feature list of the site.
The film is a cultural artifact in itself because it also represents the types of things the people who use facebook like to do - hang out with friends, go to big parties, find out about each other's new relationships - all of these normal activities are displayed in the movie, in a similar manner (if somewhat exaggerated) to how these events occur in real life - and that draws people to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment