Sunday, November 17, 2013

ASSIGNMENT #5 - "MEMES" and DIFFUSION of INTERNET TRENDS

Below is a list of "memes," celebrities, or events that are famous on the Internet. Each student must select one of the below items, OR select a current meme (which would clearly fit the criteria of "an Internet meme") and post the following information (with their name on the assignment) on their team's website.  You must write in your own words, copying any materials without citation is plagiarism.

• When did this begin to become popular/famous on the Internet and why? Provide a context and offer an analysis of why you think this became so popular (if no obvious reason presents itself).
• The details/description of the "meme," person, event, etc.
• If you chose to select your own current meme, it cannot be anything that would be deemed as "offensive."
• How popular did it become and over what time span? (include "Google Insights" interest).
• Include other memes that may have emerged from this or have been influenced by this.
• Include videos or images when relevant to illustrate your description - please try to avoid posting images or video that may be offensive.
• You can select the same meme/subject as a group team-mate (but remember, one of you will do a better job on the assignment and potentially make the other look bad - or if your assignments look too similar, everyone will think you copied off of each other).
• Please make sure your full name is on your assignment, posted on your team's website by Thursday, November 28th.

A list of memes:
• Chocolate Rain
• "Do You Like Mudkip?"
• Nyan Cat
• Epic Beard Man (& Amber Lamps)
• Planking
• Leeroy Jenkins
• Paula Deen Riding Things
• Cinnamon Challenge
• Chuck Norris Facts
• (Full On) Double Rainbow
• Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop
• Gingers Do Have Souls
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us
• (Operation) Lioncash
• Angry Bert
• Kim Jong-Un Looking at Things
• Pokemon "Missingno"
• "Imma Let You Finish" (Kanye West)

ASSIGNMENT #4 - VIDEO COMPETITION

THE ASSIGNMENT:
The objective of this assignment: a hands-on experience in producing and advertising a video online, in a competitive arena. This is the best way to understand the participatory and competitive nature of Internet media.  This assignment is not about exploring illicit ways to increase "hits" on a YouTube video, but how generate content that would be of public interest and how to use social media channels to direct users' attention to a given material online.

THE RULES:
• Each team will create a video and post it on YouTube (NOT Vimeo or any other video site), on WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 27th (NOT before, NOT after). Each team will post their video (in embedded format) on their team website.  

• Admins: you must make your video statistics accessible and available on your YouTube posting.

• Your team will have until Thursday, December 5th to receive 1,500 hits on your video.  Anything less than 1,500 hits will not receive full credit.

• The team that receives the highest number of hits among the class videos will receive an awesome prize. And will be worshipped.

• The video must be made of original content: NO materials filmed before November 14th, 2013.  NO TV clips, NO movie clips, NO video games (or anything else that you did not generate yourself). The subject/content of your video must be original: NO parodies, NO satires, NO spoofs of anything else, NO recycled materials. Your video has to be entirely new content: NO current events, NO news, NO trends, etc.

• You may use copyrighted music, but you risk being edited (muted) by YouTube or the copyright holder = less views/hits.

• Play fair: NO animals or children/babies. Way too easy.

• NO pranks or offensive or explicit materials. Anyone appearing in the video must give consent/permission.

• Nothing illegal.

• All aspects of these videos must be created by team members only - no use of outside parties in the production or distribution of your videos. You cannot enlist others to distribute your video for you, nor can you use any form of pay advertisement. You can, however, post/advertise your video on websites or any other medium you see fit.

• Teams cannot take any measures to affect the rating of another team's video. Teams cannot utilize illicit measures to increase the number of hits on their video (e.g. - "click fraud" or anything similar).

• Utilizing any online services which specialize in providing "hits" to videos (i.e. - "click fraud" or similar services) will result in an automatic failure of the assignment.

• Good luck and have fun.