User:Mihail Bakalov/Trimester 4/GraduateResearchSeminar/ProjectProposal2

RESEARCH DIRECTION

Through the rest of my studies in PZI I would like to investigate the information that is presented to me from social networks as newsfeed. Focusing on how this information reflects and effects me. I will deal with the facebook algorithm, not with the apparatus of its mechanism, but with the outcome of it. The result is a cause of my actions, as the platform presents me with information based on my activity. The actions that I take on the platform are a reflection of myself, which are the bases for the operation of the algorithm. In return the algorithm spits out information in the newsfeed for me to read. My research on the influence on me from external components on on-line social networks would result into sampling the external sources and reconfiguring them into the creation of shifting versions of my own constructed identity. The outcome will lead into an audio-visual narration/film/essay, like a fictional documentary about me.

RESEARCH QUESTION

As we spend more and more time in online social networks I want to research what is the influence projected on us from the information that we are presented there. For me it's interesting to analyze external influence from the environment and from the social circle that I am part of. There are invisible factors which can't be understood, because of the non transparency of their mechanism. I would like to find out how do these components come about and what kind of an environment are they forming.

PROJECT PROTOTYPING

My project uses the output of Facebook's newsfeed, but would not deal with the real inner operation of it. Taking the content from this environment and social circle and focusing on the idea that it lays an effect on me. The reflection of the components from the newsfeed I would like to use as constructing my self-portrait. By using the data, I don't want to do data analysis, but rather that I want to use the information as a bases for my narrative. The portrait would be a layout/a map of all the content placed on it. It's specific order will be decided by me, it would reflect the normal way I read the newsfeed. The content that enters the narrative is not all the content displayed to me by the algorithm, it's only the content that I have read and seen. This selection of the posts is based on what has influenced me. During my current exploration I found ways to point out some of the method which are typical for and through which the system is functioning. I am taking the element of non-sequentiality in the results that the facebook newsfeed produces and using it in my approach of building the self-portrait of influencing external elements. Taking the out of sequence element and pushing/taking it to the extreme, breaking the feed into small bits, which are left for the user to be explored in a non-linear way. constructed identity. The outcome will lead into an audio-visual narration/film/essay.

Possible narration structure: A post from the newsfeed will be broken down into sentences. each sentence will fill a pixel. A arrangment of the bits of the post would be linear, one after another horizontally put.

Prototypes:

1st tryout: https://vimeo.com/115192688

2nd tryout: https://vimeo.com/115536385

3rd tryout: https://vimeo.com/116465103