Wednesday, 8 November 2023

Blog 5: Activism through Digital Media and Group Collaboration

 

As I was reading the article ‘YouTube as an alternative media for digital activism in documentary film creative industry’ by Marina Rospitasari, there were a few meaningful points and insights that I wanted to analyse and share in this blog. The very first point in the fact that how digital media especially social media platforms have been used today excessively to spread digital activism and spread awareness rather than the traditional methods like protesting on the streets and poster campaigns which are still practiced but are also incorporated into digital activism. The author in this article focuses mainly on YouTube and documentary films – two audio visual mediums when collaborating with each other can bring a desired effect on the audience.

Secondly, digital media is a form of participatory media, where users from any part of the world can interact with and participate through their mobile phones or laptops. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube were great sources and mediums to spread activism and bring social change in past few years. It is a great medium that can be used to raise the voices of oppressed and marginalized, the author has given an example from Indonesia. Similarly, I would like to give an example from my country India about the Dalit community as I mentioned in my pervious blogs. Social media platforms especially YouTube was used by the singers and rappers from the marginalised groups as they wrote songs and released them and used narrative methods to explain their plight and spread awareness on their situation. Apart from that, films were also a wonderful medium that raised the subaltern concerns in India, from documentaries to independent films though they do not receive the response like commercial films they are still recognized by the audience and the filmmakers continue to raise political and social awareness by making these films and documentaries.

GROUP COLLABORATION

As a group while we were discussing these points, we also gained an idea on the ways we can shape our documentary and posters. We discussed on how we can film the documentary, where to start, what do we needed to keep in mind and the editing process. We decided on filming the process we undertook while working on the posters, projection mapping campaigns, our discussions, and other individual and group activities. Through that we also wanted to showcase our collaboration with each other while we had similar ideas and also if we had any disagreements or challenges during the process and how we overcame it unanimously. The meeting dates outside of class was also fixed and the work was divided among the team on what each person must do, the work was given according to their specialty like someone was good with writing so ideas for coming up with caption for the poster was given to them, someone was good with videos and editing they took the responsibility for documentary. We divided our parts in such a way that even if a member was not able to attend the meeting, they could update on the progress through group chat in WhatsApp. Thus, all these things were finalized to begin our work, and deadlines were set for our next meeting in the coming weeks.


 REFERENCES

Rospitasari, M. (2021). Youtube as alternative media for digital activism in documentary film creative industry. Jurnal Studi Komunikasi, 5(3), 665–692. https://doi.org/10.25139/jsk.v5i3.3779

 

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