PSA/Tutorial Write Up

As we rest from our wild and fun Independence Day break, I began to research the celebrating of our nations brithday.  The key questions I am asking in my research are; why do we set of fireworls? how much does this firework craze cost each year? what are the dangers of celebrating in such a violently beautiful way? These are just some of the questions that I will look for answers to in my research over the next few days.  

To start I have compiled several minutes of footage of the kenan stadium firework show from the evening of July 4th 2013.  I will continuously show the magnificent arrays of firework explosions in the sky throughout my video as a reminder of what my project is about.  The main announcement that I am trying to portray throuhg my video is that the celebrating of our nation's birthday is very unique and can also be dangerous so when celebrating use extreme caution.  

Throuhgout my video I will have tweets popping up expressing joy in the celebration of our nation.  The main bulk of my video will be surrounded upon bits and pieces of articles which I will bring to the foreground to highlihgt the important and must read material from the articles.  

I also plan to have a patriotic song playing in the background throughout the whole film to further ensure the viewer that my topic is being focused on throuhgout the video. 

For my PSA I plan on exploring video game addiciton.  I want to discuss topics like: is video gaming a true addiction, what are signs of video game addiction, and what can be done about it?  Rather than focusing upon some of the institutional things that can be done to curb video game addiction (like creating warning labels, or dispursing information about sources for help) I instead want to focus on the individual and the importance of not letting video games take over your life (the stage at which video games become detrimental).  To aid me in this PSA I did some research into the controversey of whether or not it is an addiction:

This article talks about how video game addiction is similar to a gambling problem in which mood modification, withdrawal, conflict and relapse are exibited in both activities.  While this article advocates for warning labels and to create a rating system where a games "addictiveness score" would be published.  This article also points out the interesting fact that some games are more addictive than others (ie MMORPGs seem to have a higher level of addiction)

http://informahealthcare.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/doi/pdf/10.3109/16066350903168579

This next article is directed at parents of kids who are playing excessively and highlights some of the signs of addiction like: lying about/hiding how much time is spent playing, losing interest in other hobbies, choosing games over time with friends, and lower grades, loss of sleep, skipping meals, and behavior change may also be signs. 

http://vb3lk7eb4t.search.serialssolutions.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Kids+%26+Video+Game+Addiction&rft.jtitle=Pediatrics+for+Parents&rft.au=Tammy+Darling&rft.date=2009-03-01&rft.issn=0730-6725&rft.volume=25&rft.issue=3/4&rft.spage=13&rft.externalDBID=PDFP&rft.externalDocID=1713597821&paramdict=en-US

This next article expounds on the addictiveness of MMORPGs highlighting the variance in motivation of excessive gamers: one was to kill time and the other was to excape from existing problems.  The later group  had the most problems and preferred personal and social interaction within the game to real life interaction.   The study points to the fact that MMORPGs can provide basic psychological needs like autonomy, competence, and relatedness which can lead to a psychological dependency and an inability to self-regulate.  It also mentions that about ~10% of video gamers are addicted.

http://online.liebertpub.com.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/doi/pdf/10.1089/cyber.2012.0064

Finally this article from a video gamer themself talking about what led them to play was to releive stress, the fact that 'in game' was their comfort zone, and they could decide who to be.  The gamer said that once they started participating more in real life that their gaming went down and that they achieved these goals through other means. 

I was thinking about doing my topic on hog farming and how it has become a monopoly.  Based on research in North Carolina, it is estimated that there used to be a lot more small family farms producing the same amount of pork that there is today procuded by a lot less farmers/contractors.  Even worse, now one of the main pork producers in North Carolina, SmithFields, has potentially sold out to a China firm. 

Here are some “leaders” or “hooks” which, I believe, would grab people’s attention and interest into the topic of hog farms and how they are changing.   Not only are they changing in North Carolina, but nationally and internationally. The following quotes are from articles I have found through a brief research surrounding the topic of hog farming and how it has become monopolized.  My intentions are to present this topic through audio (ideas of which are listed at he end of this proposal). 

 “Shuanghui, China’s largest meat packer, is poised to buy Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork producer. After checking in on reactions to the deal on Chinese social media, we got on the phone with American hog farmers to get their take on the potential takeover. Some sell pork to Smithfield or its subsidiaries, some don’t. Some manage huge operations, others run organic pig farms. But they all agree on one thing: fears about a Chinese takeover of our food system are overblown.”

http://modernfarmer.com/2013/06/what-american-hog-farmers-think-of-the-china-smithfield-deal/

“The chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee has joined in the concerns on Capitol Hill about the proposed sale of Smithfield Farms to a Chinese company resulting in potential food-safety and national-security issues.”

“Grassley thinks the deal could squeeze family farmers and independent producers out of competitive markets and has called for reviews by the Justice Department and the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment.”  Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/08/bipartisan-concern-grows-on-capitol-hill-about-sale-smithfield-farms-to-china/#ixzz2YDihUjyB

“The average size of hog factory farms increased by 42 percent over a decade. The average hog factory farm rose from 3,612 hogs in 1997 to 5,144 in 2007. Seven states averaged more than 10,000 hogs per factory farm.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/08/bipartisan-concern-grows-on-capitol-hill-about-sale-smithfield-farms-to-china/#ixzz2YDhsdA10

Play audio of people playing monopoly.

Play audio of pigs squeeling.

Play of a hog cookout.

Play audio of Chinese country song

And play our national anthem

Play an interview with my Dad who has been in the hog broker business for over 20 years.

Recently, Facebook has started selling the ability to advertise on our news feeds. Each day, as we scroll through our news feeds, we see messages like "Your friend Ian Lipman likes 'Vineyard Vines.' Do you?" These messages are particularly abundant when we our access Facebook by virtue of our cell phones and tablets. They are annoying, yes, but they are technically something that we have to deal with more and more as Facebook needs money, and some of us are willing to deal with it.

Just how powerful is advertising on Facebook, though? With one billion users now registered on Facebook (that is, one 7th of the known world), one cannot help but to underestimate the power of advertising on a news feed. Furthermore, it grows exponentially, when one friend likes a page, Facebook can post on each of his friend's news feeds, and with users having thousands of friends, one like opens the door for a company to advertise to tens of thousands of new users. When you are able to advertise conistently to all people in rich areas of the country, sales increase more quickly than one can imagine.

And now that we have a concept of how effective it can be to advertise on a news feed of a facebook user, we must question how far some businesses will go to be able to do this. With business practices becoming more and more shady in the new milennium, and the government hawking its power to regulate everything we do, businesses are willing to do anything they can get away with in order to increase revenue, but must speak softly and carry a big stick. In the new war for fans, authenticity is the first casualty. It all started with companies giving away small tokens for liking a page, and everyone bit into that. But now it has progressed into something even worse; Facebook advertisers are spending billions of dollars on advertising, and with a "get likes at all costs" attitude, we see that companies are beginning to compromise ethics in order to acquire likes.

But exactly how far is too far? Is it ok for a company to pray on the American empathy experienced in catastrophies such as the Boston Marathon Bombings to get people to like their page? Maybe it depends on the way in which it is done. Is it a picture? Is it just words? Is it clear that the intent of the post is just to acquire likes, or is the company actually trying to enhance its reputation? I plan on answer all of these questions in a video that demonstrates how different companies have approached the ethical boundary in social media marketing, and what we can do to better understand the power we as consumers have in liking, or unliking, a company because of their ethics. 

Sources: 

http://socialmediatoday.com/augieray1/1407041/three-steps-increase-ethic...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/17/facebook-user-numbers_n_3292316...

http://www.experiencetheblog.com/2013/04/the-rapidly-diminishing-authent...

Our class textbook 

A national issue that hits close to home for me and that I think needs to be addressed by our government is the high level of incidences of police brutality in the United States. I plan to create a PSA that highlights some of the recent heartbreaking incidents. Video montages of some of the incidents that were caught on film will be offset by facts about the issue. The video will also be somewhat divided into segments on different types of police brutality such as violence against animals and incidents involving the homeless or children. 

Police brutality and even non-violent abuse has become a hot topic in America, and it is a growing problem. Videos are popping up online of officers blatantly violating American citizens' constitutional rights and even humanity. The abuse of power needs to be kept in check and addressed publicly. A PSA is the perfect opportunity to draw attention to this problem and perhaps suggest solutions. The audio-visual component of a video will be perfect for showing the violence of the videos visually while tugging on the heartstrings with an emotional audio component. 

I plan to use videos from YouTube, Reddit, and other firsthand postings with the original recordings. I may include snippets of news broadcasts addressing the problem as well, if there is time in the video.  I will use screenshots of statistics to supplement the violent video clips. 

This PSA will inform of the dangers of texting while driving to dissuade the act. 

When cell phones became mainstream there was a spike in automobile collisions , and intuitively people understand that texting while driving greatly increases the risk of an automobile accident.  The few seconds that a person gives their attention to read and respond to a text message can give the driver not enough time to quickly adjust their driving to the conditions of the road.  For instance, the average person takes their attention off the road for 5 seconds for texting, which may not seem like a long time to have eyes off the road but according to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, a person driving at fifty-five miles per hour on the highway travels the length of a football field with their eyes off the road, which is a long distance to be driving blind putting the driver, the passengers, other motorists and pedestrians at risk.

Often, people who text while they drive falsely believe that they are a good enough driver that their ability enables them to be immune from the associated danger.  The goal of this PSA is to inform the audience of the dangers and as a call to action to not text while driving.

The Camtasia production will include shock videos to illustrate the dangers of texting while driving.  Additionally, there will be figures and images to flesh out the message.  Layering of visual elements will be used carefully so as to not overwhelm the viewer with visual noise and audio will not compete for the auditory attention of the audience.  Finally, music will be used to set the tone and mood for the piece.

A couple of sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0LCmStIw9E

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/teen-angst/201209/texting-and-driving-deadly-decision