Final Project Draft
For my final project, I’ll be compiling stories and conversations related to tweets. This stemmed out of my Week 2 practicum, in which I interviewed my roommate about her experience using Twitter in a similar way to the object interviews we did last week. I was particularly struck by her use of tweets as social objects, as she talked about sending them to her boyfriend so that they could talk about them in person. I’m interested in looking at the meaning that these social media posts can take on outside of the social space of the platform itself, as the public posts are drawn on in private interactions. This is particularly interesting to me because it’s a way of imagining lurkers, a type of participant that often isn’t considered in thinking about social media–it allows for a way of looking at engagement that’s private rather than public.
I talked to Deimy and Sebastian about several of the tweets that have recently sparked conversation for them, and am thinking of interviewing several more people in similar ways (though I also wonder whether that would muddy the tone, so am not completely sure). I’m presenting the project through a Twine story. There’s a central home page made to look like a Twitter feed, and when viewers click on a specific tweet, they’re taken to audio from informants discussing it, and a picture of the physical space where that discussion took place. There are other things I’m thinking of incorporating but am not entirely sure how: in particular, Deimy and Sebastian referenced papers that they had read for classes as well as other tweets, and I’m trying to think of how those could be included. I’m also not sure how much to edit the audio–the one I’ve edited so far was originally around 16 minutes and I cut it down to a little under 7. That still seems pretty long, though, especially with only one image accompanying it.
(If anyone in the class is interested in talking to me about a tweet, let me know!)
You can download my early draft of the project here. There are lots of pages that are currently missing audio or images, but you can get a sense of the format. For now, you’ll have to download the html file and open it in your web browser–it’ll be hosted online for the final project and be easier to access.
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Couldn’t figure out how to view anything but the code for the twine draft, but curious about this platform’s narrative frame and how you see that relating to the data you’re presenting. Will people have the option to send to a friend or comment and see where that takes them or what kind of choices or options will people be choosing from?
Currently to view it you can download the file to your computer and then open it in your web browser–I think it should work that way, but if not let me know! And that’s a good question. I hadn’t been thinking of much interaction beyond clicking on the tweets themselves, but there’s definitely potential for more ways to interact that I’ll explore.
Theo, your use of twine is really impressive. There’s a lot of stuff that you’re doing that I didn’t think was possible with Twine, so you’ve definitely inspired me to think about the sort of media I can include in my own project. One thing that I found interesting about your project was your use of images. Although I don’t know if this is possible, it may be worth thinking about including a series of images or a gif instead of a static image. I think the conversations that you included definitely have a sense of movement in them that might come through more clearly with the moving image.
Hi Theo,
I just came across this newyorker article and thought of your project: https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/can-tweets-predict-heart-disease
I really like the format of your Twine story! It presents the tweet to the viewer first without any other influencing information and then allows them to determine which ones they want to dive deeper into. If you wanted to incorporate more to the subpages, you could potentially transcribe part of the audio you include, which could give the viewer the power to also view the interview in words as opposed through only audio.
I really loved seeing your presentation and this was such a cool idea! You did such interesting things with twine. I think it may be good to cut the interviews a little bit? or maybe cut out like a one minute segment and then have a link for the rest of the interview or something? I agree seven minutes might be a little long but I am not sure there is a perfect solution
The embedded aspect of the twine platform is really cool and kinda reminds me of the tweets that respond to screenshots of another tweet. Something about the nested function of it. But anyways, I’m very intrigued by this topic and really enjoyed the audio clip you presented in class. Excited to see how you end up using it.