User:Peach/peach-project

I have a general idea on what interests me and what I can focus my study on. It lies somewhere at the intersection of online culture, social media, access to information and politics. I'm interested in the way social media is used as a news outlet, especially in situations where mainstream news outlets are censored by authoritarian governments or the companies that buy their ads. I'm also interested in how fake news, as well as conspiracy theories spread. And I'm interested in the ways information is distorted on the internet, by government trolls, brands, people themselves. If I had to summarize all this, I think I would say "I'm interested in censorship and propoganda." This interest, started around the same time I started university. When there were nationwide anti government protests in my home country, the biggest news channel of the time stopped broadcasting news and aired a documentary about penguins instead. These protests taught me the importance of media literacy and fact checking in an online context. In the next seven years I witnessed the diminish of civil liberties and economic mobility for the public, and the rise of media suppression and propaganda campaigns. And during my study in communication design, I wanted to focus on doing design that was "good" for people. I struggle a lot with the concept of usefulness regarding my design work, and this motivates me to explore social, economic and political subjects through a lens of design.

September 22 - Session With Aymeric

-We discussed our projects, what we did in summer and why we chose the specific subjects.
-We also talked about the project proposal, which is due the end of 1st trimester.

• The proposal will determine if we have a solid foundation dor a master project.
• The proposal shouldn't get too speculative, and develop in parallel with prototyping and research.
• It's important to frame which direction we want to go as soon as possible. Setting a clear goal is important.

September 23

I'm thinking about possible mediums to work with and games are one of them. Interactivity can be a useful tool to get a message across. I really liked Depression Quest for the way it uses the medium of a text based adventure game to give the player an understanding of living with depression, and achieves this primarily through manipulation of basic principles of text based adventure games. Another game I like is 2:22 AM. It evokes the feeling of watching TV past my bedtime when I was a kid. It's not that related to my study but I think it's cool which is why I want to write it down here.

September 25 - Notes From Session With Michael

-Medium: I was going back and forth between factual documentation and interactive storytelling (like text based adventures as mentioned earlier) and now it's pretty clear to me that I want to work on an interactive medium.

-Recognition and empathy: An important aspect of my project is to familiarize people with the ways access to information is limited by governments. My aim isn't to expose the censorship of a specific country but expose the way censorship itself works, the way propoganda and misinformation is disseminated and hopefully make the audience more aware of these tactics in their own contexts. I also want to dispel the myth that some countries are ruled by oppressive regimes because of certain aspects of the public such as education level and therefore governments in developed countries would never intervene with the right of free speech.

-Connection through experience: I think role playing games can be an important tool for building empathy. There are games that attempt to put player in the shoes of people who experience hardship and convey the frustration through forcing the player to make hard decisions or making sensible actions unavailable, leaving the player with choices that will only make things worse for them in the long run. Depression Quest puts the player character in situations such as being invited to a party. The player can force themselves to attend to the party and feel very emotionally drained, or can go home and spend the night alone, comfortable but also isolated. The option to go to the party and enjoying it is also visible but not available. Grayscale is a game in the form of the inbox of a temp worker in the HR department of a company. The game forces the player to deal with sexual harassment and toxic a toxic workplace, forcing the player to choose between doing whats right and keeping their job. These simulations of real life experiences can be a much more effective learning experience than just reading statistics.

-Sincerity and relatability: A big concern for me in this project is relatability. I want to make a genuinely convincing and informative work and not something only for people of certain political alignment. I don't want the story to feel like a hyperbole and if there are to be hard choices I genuinely want the player to struggle with them.