For a long time I dreamed of learning to podcast. What stopped me? The usual; not knowing how to start, too high expectations etcetera. But in the end, I got there (listen here). I won’t top iTunes anytime soon but it was what I needed, proof I could do it. So how did I get there?

Outline:

Step one was some parameters. I chose a topic of interest; ‘How has social media impacted contemporary politics in beneficial and problematic ways’, a short time frame of approximately five minutes with a music intro and outro and most importantly, a deadline.

My strategy was not an exhaustive essay but a brief look at the subject that would give food for thought and inspire interest. I did this by using a selection of examples for the positive and negative using research of academic and media sources.

How the research informed the podcast:

My research uncovered plenty of material and soon found I had to cull my content rather than expand.

I found an academic book by Janna Quitney Anderson; Imagining the Internet: Personalities, Predictions, Perspectives, an in depth work on the predictions made by its early pioneers. I noticed some predictions sounded like echoes of the issues encountered with social media. My favourite had to be Vic Sussman’s 1994 article: ’The Internet will gain popularity, problems’ which predicted massive societal adjustment and the potential for “goblins and all to come rushing in”. I also uncovered the example of the Clinton administration to be the first to have a website for the White House in 1993. It struck me just how recent they were despite the far off tone of the prediction. This gave me something to tie the examples for the positive and negative together, internet development and the rise of social media has been so fast, the world is still adjusting.

Creating my content:

I recorded, mixed and edited using Audacity. It was challenging and my vocal debut was far from spectacular, but I eventually learned to create an edited track that smoothed out any errors.

The world is simply not ready for my musical abilities so for my musical intro and outro,  I used Creative Commons content; Reatch – Funk City by Argofox on Soundcloud, eventually learning to create a short intro that would fade down to allow for my voice then fade up as an outro to fit with my script and credits.

Challenges faced, solutions found and lessons learned:

Four words: Frustrating, humbling, interesting and rewarding.

With so much material available, many drafts were required. The biggest challenge however as a working parent of two children, was finding time to make it, so I started early and made the most of my time windows.  

Another challenge was a problem with my Iphone microphone. I had to record my humble vocals on a borrowed headset but it did teach me about resourcing for the task. When I can afford it, a proper microphone is in my future.

Learning Audacity was an uphill but rewarding experience. The biggest challenge was making sense of tools such as envelope, compression and auto duck to mix and manipulate tracks. Using, the tutorial, YouTube and persistence I succeeded.

Final thoughts:

Once I learned not to be so hard on myself, I instead started to learn something I initially thought beyond me and with time go even further. If I can do it…

REFERENCES:

Aaker J, Chang V, 2010, ‘Obama and the power of social media and technology’, The European Business Review.com, retrieved 25 April 2019, jaaker.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/fil…e-obama.pdf

Anderson, J. Q, 2005 Imagining the Internet : Personalities, Predictions, Perspectives, Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, retrieved 17 April 2019, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dir…ive&scope=site

Benedictus, L, 2016, ‘Invasion of the troll armies: from Russian Trump supporters to Turkish state stooges’, The Guardian, retrieved 22 April 2019 www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/…a-trump-russian

DiResta, R, Morgan, J, ‘Opinion: The Facebook hearings remind us: information warfare is here to stay’, The Guardian, retrieved 22 April 2019 www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2…-warfare-normal

McMahon, A, 2019, ‘Five things we’ve learned about Robert Mueller’s report into Donald Trump and Russia’, retrieved 22 April 2019, www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-25/d…-we-know/10935242

Muller, D, 2018, ‘Opinion: Why social media is in the doghouse for both politicians and the public’, The Conversation, retrieved 27 April 2019, www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-14/s…nd-public/9446894

Perez, S, 2018, ‘Facebook expands fact checking program adopts new technology for fighting fake news’, Techcrunch, retrieved 22 April 2019, techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/facebo…ighting-fake-news,

Sussman, V. (1994) ‘The Internet will gain popularity, problems’, U.S. News & World Report, p. 76, retrieved 17 April 2019, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?dir…ive&scope=site

Music:

Reatch – Funk City by Argofox (CC BY 3.0) Argofox – Reatch-funk-city

Thumbnail image made with Canva

I have always been open to new ideas and where technology can take us. When it comes to my online identity, striking a balance between openness and foolishness is tricky. When email came along (yep, I grew up in the nineties) I thought ‘cool’ and ‘of course, it makes so much sense’. I didn’t think twice.

When Facebook came along, I definitely hesitated. I still do. I got sent invites by friends to join up. When I got to the part where it asked me to hand over so much access and personal info, I actually called them up thinking it was an identity scam. Identity thieves have dreamed of access like this and along came a company that asked you to celebrate giving it away freely. After three years of resisting, I caved. I had moved interstate for work and it was the only way to stay in the loop. That is the ‘evil genius’ of these apps. They have expertly conditioned a global ‘everyone else is doing it so I guess I better too’ paradigm, a subject well explored by Jaron Lanier (2013).

‘An older person who grew up in a world without wearable computing is more likely to feel violated when confronted with a face-mounted camera. Companies such as Facebook have been criticized — or praised — for socializing young people to be comfortable with the activities of the NSA and other intelligence agencies’ (Lanier 2013, Para 5).

Credit where credit is due I suppose, it allows me to keep up with family and friends which can be priceless.

These initial reservations have shaped my online identity journey to this day and it is a journey. I have enjoyed posting about the things I found funny, worrying and inspiring but kept in mind I am on display. On the flip side, I saw people I thought were cool fall into the addiction of posting for constant validation reveal a side I didn’t like or at least, could have slept on it before posting. Hey we all put our foot in it but we now live in a era where ‘it’ can stay on your foot forever.

#ALM101 Incredibly relevant book for those interested in the phenomenon of social media (or anyone who uses the Internet, yep everyone) & how everything lives forever online https://t.co/IgEhHPxmLK
Society is very much learning this medium by doing which ain’t always easy!— Aaron Elsey (@ohfortwitssake) March 14, 2019

With each year I have seen awareness of this grow with increasingly curated profiles as discussed by Mateescu (2010, p. 13). History is written by the winners, in the digital age and rise of social media platforms, all those with access have the opportunity to write as the ‘winners’ and therefore be tempted to present a version that is far from the truth. Take the apparent queen of social media Kim Kardashian where an arrangement with paparazzi has been revealed (Croffey 2017). In return for favourable photo-shopped images and a cut of their profits, they get advanced warning. So much for reality.

Photoshop means a photo can lie and what is real can be manipulated. Gotta give credit where credit is due, we are in the presence of a master https://t.co/YJwG9LJvQB

— Aaron Elsey (@ohfortwitssake) April 6, 2019

It is my desire with my online profile to stay truthful but maintain my privacy.  Will I be able to present honestly or will it be ‘fake news’? It’s a tricky balancing act. For example, my profile picture is one of me with my beloved border collie Hugo at the million paws charity walk. On one hand, I don’t consider myself an image conscious person and it is far from a glamorous selfie pout, just a nice treasured photo. On the other hand, when I really think honestly about why I chose it, the sun glasses hide my squinty eyes and Hugo is such a beautiful dog I am hoping his good looks rub off on me. Both sides are true but perhaps I am not that different to a Kardashian after all.

Although I am wary of the potential for the tail to wag the dog, I am eager to explore the positives of engaging online thanks to my experiences following a favourite author John Birmingham on his excellent ‘Cheese Burger Gothic’ site. I discovered this initially to find out more about an upcoming book but stayed due to the interesting community I discovered there. That was back in 2004. Over time it has been the source of interesting conversations and discoveries (such as books, movies and podcasts) that have shaped and even tested my opinions on matters.

Just finished listening to @bastardspod take on Elizabeth Holmes who used branding, marketing & skivvies to build multi million medical co despite not actually having the tech. Identifying as the next Steve Jobs doesn’t mean you skip the talent que https://t.co/DyGTUc5BDK— Aaron Elsey (@ohfortwitssake) April 6, 2019

One of many discoveries through the Cheeseburger Gothic Blog.

More importantly, I have observed and interacted with not just his journey as a writer but the things he has discovered about himself through engaging with his audience, such as what kind of writer he is, his evolving style and adapting to changes in the industry. It is this experience I hope to emulate to some degree with my online presence and output.

References

Croffey, A 2017, ‘Kim Kardashian’s secret deal with paparazzi revealed’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September, retrieved 19 March 2019, https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/kim-kardashians-secret-deal-with-paparazzi-revealed-20170922-gymxa2.html

Lanier, J 2013, ‘How Should We Think about Privacy?’, Scientific American, vol. 309, no. 5, p. 64, retrieved 30 March 2019, <http://ezproxy.deakin.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.26018151&authtype=sso&custid=deakin&site=eds-live&scope=site&gt;.

Mateescu, O, 2010, ‘Introduction: Life in the Web’, JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE RESEARCH IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY, Volume 1(2): 1-21 ISSN 2068 – 0317 http://compaso.ro

I was inspired to write this because well, I have to write something to introduce myself or I will soon be stuck in some ‘if a blog is created in the net yet has no posts, does it still make a blog sound?’ (The answer: who cares, philosophy 101 is down the hall).

Who am I? I think the question for all of us could be ‘when are you’?

I was recently asked for things to do in Geelong by someone from Sydney and it got me thinking, I used to be from there and that I no longer was, I am now from here. My house is here (I definitely wasn’t going to own one in the affordability upside down known as Sydney), my first dog and cat I ever got myself is here, my kids were born here and despite functioning at a level just barely above the average ‘married at first sight’ performer, my kids are continuing to grow here and finally, my keys are…somewhere around here.

I started my uni degree here, my woodworking hobby, my collecting crap off the side of the road which “I swear I will turn into something awesome I can sell, you’ll see” hobby.

So much of what I am and able to pursue is of this time. Before I moved to Victoira, I did so many other things with my time but it was connected to the place I was in. I worked in Sydney, lived in a share house and traveled. I like travelling but how much of that impetus comes from living and working in a big city like Sydney? It definitely led to me pursuing a career in radio which requires moving about. If it were not for that, I never would have met my wife, which in turn led to moving here. That was then and this is now as they say.

So where to from here?

I

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton