Let’s plays and viral marketing – Five Nights at Freddy’s

There has been some notable independent horror video games that have done extremely well due to viral let’s play videos. If your not familiar with let’s plays they are people recording themselves playing a video game and normally with commentary to entertain the viewer. There are also examples of first impression videos such as the ones done by Jim Sterling both entertaining and useful information for the consumer.

There have been a number of independent horror games that have benefited greatly thanks to this new entertainment format. For example Amnesia: The Dark Descent did benefit from the let’s play videos made with people over reacting on webcam while playing the game. The game itself was generally good. It had good pacing and built tension well, but the story was rather weak (you play as a man with amnesia and have to find and kill a man) and the monsters became predictable. However, due to the fact you had to hide with no way to fight the game was an enjoyable horror experience.

Youtube was seen as one of a handful of reasons that Amnesia sold well with PC gamers. The developer blog 2 years after release reflected on the success of Amnesia with:

This success is due to many factors, some of which are the uniqueness of the game (horror games without combat do not really exist on PC), the large modding community (more on this later) and the steady flood of YouTube clips (which is in turn is fueled by the modding community output).

The viral success of the game allowed for a wider audience to become aware of the games existence with Youtubers that had large followers making videos. This included Youtubers such as Pewdiepie who at the time of writing has over 37 million people subscribed to his Youtube channel.

Warning: Turn down your volume. I personally cannot stand Pewdiepie, but he is a good example of the viral marketing power of Youtube. His videos consist of him screaming and shouting a lot. You have been warned.

This viral reach of Youtubers has meant that small independent developers which lack a budget for marketing their games can reach a wide range of potential customers if the game is a viral success. This is easier said than done.

A recent example is ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ which has developed an interesting online community and has had viral success is a series of video games by Scott Cawthon. There has been three games in the series so far with a 4th installment coming soon.

The game play is very simple, but works extremely well to build tension. You play as a security guard at ‘Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza’ working the night shift. During the night the child friendly animatronics characters walk around the restaurant and you have to close the doors to prevent them killing you. The game requires you to keep track of the animatronic via CCTV cameras, lights in your door ways, and powered doors. There is limited power so you cannot waste resources. The game increases tension as you expect a jump scare (game over) to happen soon.

Jump scare death.

The success of all the games has created an interesting online community surrounding it. It has gone far beyond simple Youtube videos with a range of fan arts and songs that have been made by fans.

Image found: http://img04.deviantart.net/6498/i/2014/357/6/4/five_nights_at_freddy_s_papercraft__by_zoiby-d8aw5i6.jpg

The viral success of ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ has meant its been a huge success for a game made by a single developer. Considering his earlier attempts to get games released on steam received a very critical reception including one aimed at children which was mocked for being extremely creepy. The jump scare focus has meant that it has been a successful at attracting a lot of attention from let’s players. It is the 8th most viewed game on Youtube.

I am interested to see how this series of games develop and how the community will develop in time. I doubt that other games will have the same success. Generally these games have an element of novelty. For example Amnesia was rather unique when it came out, but since then there has been a flood of similar horror games that have not benefited from the same success.

I also doubt that interest in this game series will last much longer. Sequels are being produced every few months and just over a year since the original game there will be a 4th installment. I expect people will lose interest in this jump scare game and something new will come along that becomes popular. However, it shows how beneficial viral attention can be to small low budget video games.

At the end of the day at least it produced an interesting online community along with some interesting art and music:

Using Twitter to communicate research – a worth while tool or a waste of time?

In preparation for a talk I am giving on using Twitter to promote research I thought it would be a nice idea to get some initial thoughts down in a blog post.

Twitter is an interesting form of social media. It has a user base of 302 million monthly active users with over 500 million tweets sent a day. Its much more transparent compared to other social media platforms such as Facebook which has algorithms that filters everything you see in your feed. Instead you get every tweet from those you follow in your Twitter feed.

Twitter sounds like a great opportunity to communicate your research with the general public and social media is being for a range of reasons by academics. A paper by Noorden published in Nature conducted a survey of academics to see why they engaged with social media. The results of Twitter use was particularly interesting highlighting the use of Twitter to engage with discussions and share their own work.

Screenshot of interactive graph from article in Nature http://www.nature.com/news/online-collaboration-scientists-and-the-social-network-1.15711

This does highlight one benefit of Twitter for research. You can directly engage with discussions and keep up to date with topics of interest. This is particularly interesting if your area of expertise is an area of debate. Personally I find it useful for keeping up with some of the things the Internet is being blamed for, from corrupting youth to making food ‘all taste the same’, and it is useful to keeping up with the current popular discourses surrounding climate change (I recently set up a twitter bot to follow climate change tweets).

Thanks to the real time coverage of events you can keep up to date faster than traditional media. Its common to see online newspapers such as the Guardian having live coverage of events as they unfold with tweets being included along with press statements. You can also watch emerging trending Twitter hashtags to find out about current topics users are discussing. This of course can result in people tweeting about completely pointless topics such as the colour of a dress. Always important to remember that Internet communities can get into drama surrounding the weirdest topics (I have personally spent way too much time on 4chan during my PhD and have seen some bizarre Internet drama).

Another opportunity is the ability to share your work with the wider world. Instead of keeping your work in academic in academic journals that will only ever be read by a relatively low number of people you can publish blogs, make videos, share journal articles (or final drafts of manuscripts if the journal has a pay wall). This is a great way to engage a much larger audience at least in theory.

Parody of the Nature article graph by PhD comics http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1737

However, this presumption needs to be challenged. Due to the wealth of information on every topic imaginable, with some really weird pockets of the Internet, users have been shown to reduce diversity to the range of information that they receive and engage. This is a solution information overload and users instead access information on topics that directly interest them. Rather than engage with topics such as climate change users instead engage with topics that they enjoy such as video gaming online communities for example.

This actually poses a serious challenge for science communication. How do you communicate science in an entertaining and engaging way that those without initial interest will look at? Instead of communicating with the general public when you tweet about your research you are generally only reaching those already interested in the subject. This can be useful for networking with researchers in your field.

For example I have benefited quite a lot from connections with other researchers studying the Internet. As I am based in an interdisciplinary institute I work along side of mostly scientists which has been wonderful for giving me insight into the scientific process and the importance of communicating science to the public, but it has also been an isolating experience. When I can happily discuss Creepypasta (horror stories shared on the Internet) or Internet memes I do get odd looks, but thanks to Twitter I have connected with others doing research into this rather weird area.

That said the line between research and procrastination can become very blurred. This is something I have reflected on before in my own work, but I think it is worth noting that the Internet has a lot of potential content to distract and undermine my writing process. I have even tried using extensions to block the main websites I use to procrastinate on. Even then I find news ways to get distracted. Even writing this blog I have been flicking between songs by Aviators on Youtube. While the time you spend on social media may seem interesting or worthwhile, there is the risk that time is being wasted that could be better spent.

Don’t worry I get the irony of looking for a distraction meme while writing this blog post and it was totally worth the 10 minutes of scrolling through meme images.

Another issue with Twitter as a place to share is online debates are generally not worth having. It is difficult to tell people who really want to discuss an issue from trolls. Online debating can soak up a lot of time and the person you are discussing a topic with may simply want to get a rise out of you. My general policy with trolls on Twitter is to block them. Considering most trolls I deal with are climate sceptics, even if they were genuine rather than simply trolls, I have a zero tolerance policy towards them (don’t want to give them any platform).

The Internet is an interesting tool for researchers and there is some great benefits from embracing social media, but there are also risks. It is easy to presume how we use the Internet is how everyone else uses the Internet as the Internet is a very personalised experience. I believe there is risks with researchers getting sucked into social media too much and losing valuable time that would be better spent elsewhere, but there are also significant benefits particularly connecting with those also working in your field.

#Gamergate – the gaming community, feminism, and online hate campaigns

In this blog I’m going to focus on the hate campaign against women working in video games that emerged back in August, 2014 with the #Gamergate hashtag. This example is particularly interesting as a unfortunate consequence of online communities and the awful hate campaigns that the Internet can be used to carry out.

Online communities and hate campaigns: 

One of the great things that the Internet has brought us is online communities. The restrictions of time and distance are removed allowing users to connect with others all over the world with the same interests as themselves. Whether it is online communities for the LGBT community, fans of a television show, or people who share an interest in a video game there is an online community out there for your interests. Even better they can empower groups for example in healthcare the Internet has enabled patients to become empowered with support groups sharing information, emotional support and giving a place to discuss health issues.

Personally, I am in regular contact with friends in the US I made playing Minecraft around 4 years ago. The Internet has had a significant impact on our social lives with online friendships and being able to talk about interests that interest you but no one else you interact with in your day to day life. Online communities can be a wonderful thing in our lives, but there are also negative consequences.

One of the issues with the Internet is the quantity of information and choice available to users, which results in users limiting the amount of media stimuli they are subjected to. This is through personalisation of their Internet usage with users selecting the information that they see and spending their time only on areas of their interest. This is something we all do.

However, a consequence of this can be the reinforcement of extremist views. If someone who already held sexist views can connect with others who hold the same values and these online communities act as echo chambers reinforcing these beliefs. An example can be seen in the online groups of the MRM [Men’s Rights Movement].

Cartoon by RednBlackSalamander http://rednblacksalamander.deviantart.com/art/The-Men-s-Rights-Movement-in-a-Nutshell-382429679

Unfortunately, within the online communities surround video gaming there are some embedded with racist, misogynistic, and homophobic beliefs that have become the dominant discourse in these communities. Not all video gaming communities suffer from these issues, but the consequences of online communities that hold these values is that they will attack and attempt to silence criticism.

An example could be seen with the hate campaign targeted at Anita Sarkeesian. This hate campaign emerged as a response to a Kickstarter campaign started by Anita Sarkeesian which asked for $6,000 to fund a video series examining female representations in video games.

The attack against Anita Sarkessian was both direct messages and vandalism of her online pages including. This included rape and death threats which she still continues to receive. There have been threats made at public events where she was a speaker. There were images were posted of her being raped by video game characters and there was even a flash game which allowed players to “Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian” by clicking a picture of her until it turned into a bloody pulp.

‘Game’ created by Ben Spurr. New Statesman had a good article on the abuse Anita Sarkeesian received online. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/internet/2012/07/what-online-harassment-looks

Despite the threats and attacks Anita Sarkessian was successful with her Kickstarter campaign receiving much more money than she originally asked. Rather than silencing criticism the harassment highlighted the issues in video gaming culture and produced a huge amount of publicity for her project. At the same time highlighted the issue of sexism within the gamer culture.

Gamergate:

A couple of years after the harassment campaign against Anita Sarkessian in August of 2014 there was the emergence of Gamergate. Gamergate started with a harassment campaign against a video game developer called Zoe Quinn. This began with Zoe Quinn’s ex boyfriend posting a long (nearly 10,000 words in length) blog post which accused her of having a relationship with a video games journalist.

Now a long rambling ranting blog post by an ex boyfriend became viral. The hashtag #gamergate emerged on Twitter and received huge amounts of attention. Gamergate made an attempt to appear to be about ‘ethics in video game journalism’. However, a harassment campaign began with the spamming of negative reviews on her game ‘Depression Quest’ on Steam.

Zoe Quinn’s game ‘Depression Quest’ was spammed with negative reviews

There were death and rape threats made and a pattern of harassment that took place very similar to what Anita Sarkessian went through.

Those who stood up for Zoe Quinn on social media also received harassment and video game websites that took a stand against Gamergate had letter writing campaigns targeting their advertisers to try to damage the income these websites depended upon. Another developer who was the victim of harassment was Brianna Wu who became a target when she criticised Gamergate on Twitter. Death and rape threats and her address was shared online – link to a twitter post showing some of the harassment but be warned its deeply disturbing.

Gamergate received international news coverage due to the online harassment of women in the video game industry and the attempt to cover members true intentions with a discourse of ‘ethics in video game journalism’ has failed. Instead Gamergate will simply be remember as another Internet harassment campaign.

In conclusion: 

The harassment campaign against Anita Sarkessian and the Gamergate harassment campaign highlight the darker side of online communities and also the embedded sexism within some of the online video gaming community. In both occasions those participating within the online harassment have simply highlighted the sexism embedded in some of the video game online communities.  It is deeply disturbing the scale and long term nature these online hate campaigns can achieve.

Paying for mods? – The backlash and reversal of paid mods on Steam

What is a mod?

A mod is a modification made to a game by the general public. This is a form of user generated content which can add minor changes to textures or new items within a game. They can also be massive changes to the core game with new locations, quests/storylines, or even be unofficial patches to fix broken games.

Paying for Skyrim mods?

Now this was a recently announced plan by Valve on their digital distribution platform Steam starting with the popular game Skyrim. These mods would be bought through the Steam workshop which would also continue to host free mods. Skyrim has a vibrant modding community with thousands of wonderfully weird mods to add thousands of hours of enjoyment to the game. There are examples of huge mods such as the Flaskaar mod.

The creator of the Flaskaar mod was hired by Bungie.

The game itself is a lot of fun and the addition of mods can produce a rather unique experience. There are a range of mods that change the dragon model. For example there is a mod to change the dragons to look like Thomas the Tank Engine.

There is a weird and wonderful mix of mods available. My last play through of Skyrim I used a few pony mods which gave me a good laugh. This included a mod to play through the game as Fluttershy.

The Joy of mods – Fluttershy the dragonborn http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198008693173/

However, with a community already producing a wide range of mods without monetary incentive resulted in an impressive backlash. The initial announcement  was on the 23rd of April with a new way for workshop creators to earn money. Along with this was an initial line up of paid mods for a range of prices. These mods have been wonderfully critiqued by Ganerumo and one of the mods was pulled off the store quickly when a copyright issue emerged. A backlash against Valve emerged quickly and a lot of people were angry. So what was the issue with paid mods?

The issues with paid mods:

There were a range of reasons for this backlash. In particular, the following three issues:

• Revenue share:

Now this one in particular annoyed people. To access a paid mod you would have to pay upfront to download. This money would then be split 75% would go to Valve (30%) and the Developer (45%)  while only 25% would go to the maker of the mod. This appeared to be a cash grab by Valve and the developer claiming money on a product they did not make. In particular, this was worrying as mods often fix issues with the game. For example the user interface in Skyrim is awful but a mod fixed that problem.

Why should the developer profit from issues from their game? If paid mods became standard would this lead to more broken games being released with companies presuming modders will fix it?

This was a sore point for most people, but there are two other serious issues with the system of paying for mods.

• Mods break/Valves lack of customer service:

Now when you download a mod you are taking a risk. They may break your game, they may not be compatible with other mods you run, and they may have unexpected bugs which do not emerge until many hours of play. Alongside these issues there is the additional problem that if the developer releases an update then there is a chance it can break the mod.

This is an issue with Valve trying to run this system. There was a refund policy with a 24 hour money back guarantee on the paid mods. This is simply not good enough. Paid mods are a risk to the consumer and if there was a patch that broke the mod then its up to the user to ‘politely ask’ the modder to update the mod to make it work again.

Valve is not known for its customer service and has taken a very hands off approach over its Steam store. Its difficult to get a refund from Steam even if you have bought a totally broken game on there service. Early access was a great idea with some wonderful games such as Besiege and Kerbal Space Program. The latter has recently been released only a couple of days ago.

However, there are other Early Access games which lack any basic content and rarely updated. This hands off approach Valve has taken would mean that there is a risk of dodgy, low quality, and awful mods could flood the paid modding scene. There is an additional issue of stealing from other modders.

• Copyright issues and stealing from other modders

 I was surprised Valve decided to even attempt paid mods. There is a major issue with people stealing the work of modders and uploading themselves. How was Valve going to police this?

Another aspect to this was copyright issues. A lot of mod uses copyrighted material. Some of the examples I have already mentioned, but there are mods that add things like Hogwarts to Skyrim. Again this seems like a legal nightmare for Valve. However, the main concern users had was people stealing work from other modders and putting it on the Steam workshop as a paid mod.

The backlash: 

There was an impressive backlash to the paid mods. A petition was started and signed by over 130 thousand people. There was a range of negative coverage of Valves decision. This included coverage that Valve was seriously harming the modding community it was claiming to be supporting through paid mods.

The good news is that this backlash was a success. So soon after setting up this new paid mods system it has already been taken down. An announcement by Valve makes it clear they were mistaken for trying this approach.

Personally I am happy to see modding protected by the gaming community. Mods are a wonderful example of user generated content with people working alone or in small teams to produce amazing content to please a community of users. Hopefully, paid mods is something we don’t see a company trying to implement again.

However, with that good news the announcement does sound like they may try this again. Perhaps paid mods will rear its ugly head when Fallout 4 comes out, but until then we just have to wait and see.

Teaching while doing a PhD is it a rewarding experience?

Is teaching while doing a PhD a rewarding experience? In this blog post I will reflect on some of my experiences in teaching undergraduates. This has been a post that I have thought about doing for a while.

My situation:

I have been lucky enough to have plenty of teaching opportunities since starting my PhD. During the first two years of my PhD I have taught undergraduate seminars for four units and even given a couple of lectures. In particular, I have taught mostly environmental politics with seminar teaching for a Green Politics unit and a Global Environmental Politics unit. I have also taught seminars for a unit on the Politics of NGOs and seminars for a methodology unit.

Now I know teaching opportunities vary between departments and universities. I have friends doing biology PhDs who do a lot of demonstrating work in lab time for undergraduates, but they teach no seminars. I also know that seminar teaching can be difficult to get in the social sciences. I know that the main Exeter campus has rules on teaching and that there are a lot more PhD students. The reason I have been able to do so much teaching alongside my PhD is due to the luck of being on the Penryn campus where we have undergraduate students, but also a small department. This means that there is lots of seminar teaching opportunities for the politics PhD students based on this campus.

My first teaching experience:

I was warned by my supervisor that my first time teaching would be my worst. Now with that warning in mind I set about to fully prep for the first seminar I would run. I read all the articles set for the class and made detailed notes. Designed the seminar questions and activities to be an interesting introduction to the unit. I felt confident all would go to plan…

Well… It completely went wrong. This was my worst teaching experience so far (I can’t image a seminar going much worse unless I was to accidentally set the seminar room on fire).

There was a failure in communication as the academic running the unit changed the topic and the readings for the first week. This was updated on the electronic learning environment for all my students, but not for me. Alongside this issue the lecture just before my seminar had the unit coordinator informing the students about an additional essay not listed on the unit handbook that they would have to do.

Naturally the students were not happy with this situation. My first seminar only lasted half an hour as I had students walk out in anger. I really could not blame the students for being angry. Most of them were nice enough to not direct blame me. Still a rather shocking first experience for myself. Luckily I had a couple of hours until the second seminar so I was able to edit my prepared material to make sure it covered their reading and the students had also calmed down from the additional essay that the lecture mentioned to them. So the second seminar was a success compared to the first.

Despite this experience I continued teaching and there are rewarding experiences that come from teaching.

Is teaching rewarding?

There are three key benefits I have found from teaching.

1. Wider reading – It gives you the opportunity to read around subjects that you would not normally get a chance to. The PhD can be very focused on your area of research so being able to get my head out of books about online communities, Internet memes, and public understanding of science can be refreshing from time to time.
2. Engagement with undergraduates – Opportunity to engage with discussions on a variety of topics with (mostly) interested students. I have found the PhD to be a lot less isolating when I can bump into students I have taught or currently teaching and get caught up in short chats when walking around campus. Its also pretty cool when you see students improve and gives a very rewarding feeling that you made a difference to their education.
3. Marking – this might sound like a weird point, but marking undergraduate essays has helped me improve my own work. This is due to the marking process making me more aware of errors I make and I do find proof reading my work has become easier over time.

That said there are disadvantages to teaching. In particular, the time it takes out of your week. For example if I teach seminars on a Thursday then I can guarantee that most of Wednesday I will spent preparing for the seminars. Balancing this with the PhD can prove to be difficult. Marking often turns into a massive time sink as essays are not quick to mark and other deadlines may be on the horizon.

Another key issue is that teaching can be very stressful. While I have found teaching to be something that gets easier and I worry less and less before each time I run a seminar. It can still be a very stressful experience and if something was to go wrong the experience just becomes unpleasant. Still I have found that the more teaching I have done the easier it gets.

Overall,  I have found teaching to be a very rewarding experience, but that is not to say that its always gone smoothly or its not stressful at times. With that all said I really should get back to the marking I have been procrastinating from by taking an hour out to write this blog post.

Could memes be an effective way to communicate climate change?

Memes are an interesting aspect of Internet culture. The term meme originates from Richard Dawkins in his book ‘the selfish gene’ who argued that memes were culture that is transmitted ‘brain to brain’. This was heavily contested for two key reasons. Firstly, there are issues with defining what a meme is. Secondly, we do not study culture by focusing on a single ideas, but instead culture is studied on a broader scale as ideas do not exist in isolation.

However, the term meme has been appropriated for use to describe the viral sharing of information. As a result a meme can be either a video or image that has had viral success. A popular series of memes are cat based. Below is two cat memes. The first is a variation of the ‘If I fits I sit’ meme that emerged in 2011. The second is a video meme called ‘Nyan Cat’ also from 2011 which has had at the time of writing 119,811,155 views on Youtube.

These examples highlight an important issue with whether it is possible for memes to spread information about environmental issues. Internet culture is very fast moving and a key aspect of the success of an meme is a requirement that the meme is general enough to be used in a variety of ways or mutated to be used with other memes. This means novelty is an important aspect in the spread of memes. Another core aspect is that memes are often spread for entertainment or because the meme  represents a personal belief or identity.

The sharing of memes for entertainment and identity can be seen in the Brony subculture. This is the mostly male adult fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic that emerged over 4 years ago originally on a website called 4chan. Pony memes became so popular on 4chan (reaching over 6000 posts per day) that they introduced new rules which led to the deletion and banning of pony memes. This was eventually reversed by 4chan with the creation of a pony board /MLP/.

However, pony memes have proved to have high survivability within Internet culture. At the time of writing the Knowyourmeme.com website has an image gallery of over 207 thousand pony images (far larger than any other meme image gallery on the website). This is due to the memes being created for both entertainment and also it is mutated to be used with other memes. For example the creation of pony versions of popular memes like ‘Its dangerous to go alone take this’

Due to memes being shared for entertainment it does call into question the ability for memes to be used to communicate serious issues such as climate change. While there are environmental memes shared they don’t often leave the environmental networks to be seen by a wider audience. There has been two examples I have seen that has managed to get a wider audience and both have been examples of culture jamming. Culture jamming is when you take a corporate or governmental message and subvert it.

The first example is from Greenpeace. This video was used to get people to sign up to a petition to pressure Lego to end a partnership deal with Shell. This was highly successful. The emotionally powerful video uses a depressing version of the upbeat song ‘Everything is awesome’ from the highly successful Lego movie. The success was due to the subversion of a popular song from the successful movie. This video has been viewed over 7 million times.

The second example this time aims to increase awareness of the use of palm oil in Doritos. This video is designed as a parody of adverts with a nice sharp twist ending. This has been viewed over 2 million times. However, the impact of this video is questionable. The video is funny and as a result could have been shared for the entertainment value rather than the serious environmental message that it aims to give to the viewer.

In conclusion, while there are occasional environmental memes that achieve wide viral success it is questionable the impact they have on the user. In particular, the palm oil example may simply be a success due to the entertaining nature of the video. Even then compared to other viral videos such as ‘Nyan cat’ the viewer count is relatively tiny.

The ability of memes to spread environmental information will be explored in more depth in my through a series of focus groups as part of my PhD. I plan to produce a journal article on this subject, but I will make a blog post about my findings when I have completed transcription and analysis eventually. However, the ability for memes to be an effective way to communicate climate change does seem to be very questionable.

Reflecting from the half way point – the PhD journey so far

Coming up to the half way point into my PhD so I thought it was a good time to write a reflective post about the journey so far. Writing this before my upgrade tomorrow. The upgrade is essentially a defense of your thesis so far with academics who have not supervised or even have any expertise in your field of study. Most UK PhD programs have this at either 12 months or 18 months. I produced the good quality drafts of the sections of my thesis that they wanted and I should be adequately able to defend my work so far. It should be interesting to receive feedback from other academics in the politics department.

Comic from: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=690

Still a rather stressful experience, but I have some wonderful meme examples to hand if any of the academics ask anything about memes. Just the thought of explaining memes to senior academics does make me laugh. On reflection its funny how I got to this point.I have heard it said that PhD are never a straight forward process and looking back my PhD has changed so much since the beginning.

How has my research focus changed? 

When I applied for PhD funding I proposed researching into the impact of triggering events in newspaper coverage of climate change (I wrote my masters thesis focusing on one triggering event). A trigger event is just an event that causes large amounts of news coverage of climate change. For example you would expect coverage to increase for a Climate Change conference. Newspaper framing of climate change was originally what I started my PhD researching, but the PhD is not a straight forward journey.

Within the first few weeks my work shifted focus to public understanding of climate change and what impact information formats (newspapers, Television, and the Internet) had on a persons understanding. A major reason for this was that newspapers are pretty much the main focus of the vast majority of academics examining climate change communication. The Internet became a much more interesting area of study.

Image from: http://weknowmemes.com/2012/10/let-me-introduce-you-to-the-internet/ (How am I only finding this image now? I will be using this at the start of all my future talks on my research!)

Within the first couple of months of my research the focus changed to just the Internet and the exploring the consequences that this has had to public understanding. As a result quite early on a lot of the starting literature I read was no longer within my area of interest. I still have a folder full of media framing articles from the first couple of months. However, I did fall into my area of research quite early on and it is still communication of climate change. Just a very different environment from Newspapers and engaging in a range of differing theories.

Even with the focus pinned down its still a bumpy road: 

With this focus my research slowly took shape. The focus meant that I engaged with a range of research from a variety of subjects. For example I found that researchers working in medical research had done interesting work into online communities thanks to the emergence of online patient support groups. I also engage with a lot of work in psychology research on the impact on the Internet. My first year was predominately reading and writing literature reviews. At the start I had a mind map of key areas of interest, but during the writing process its amazing how something that seemed important enough to read 10 articles on became one sentence in a literature review.

Through this long process of forming my literature reviews I did find key areas of interest such as memes, online communities, online political activism. This then informed my research design. My mixed method approach meant that I used focus groups to provide contextual information on how people engage with climate change information online. This analysis has meant that my research design for my experiments has changed again just after submitting everything for the required upgrade document, as my presumptions where challenged by my focus group findings.

I have greatly enjoyed my PhD so far. I have been lucky to have lots of opportunities to teach alongside my PhD, but that has meant balancing teaching responsibilities while also carrying out my research and taking breaks from my work to avoid burnout. Its not been a smooth ride, but I am happy where this has taken me and the research area is particularly interesting. Even if I sound totally mental to those around me when I talk about creepypasta (horror stories shared on the Internet) or popular Internet memes.

The final 18 months: 

Hopefully, the last 18 months will go smoothly. I still have a lot of work to do with the running of experiments in October. As well as having to worry about finding a post doc position/applying for grant funding and working on the draft academic articles for journal publication.

With a bit of luck the upgrade process will be a painless experience. One thing is for sure I am enjoying my PhD and it has been a wonderful experience.

Am I procrastinating or is it research?

Image from Knowyourmeme.com

Researching the impact of the Internet on the communication of climate change for my PhD has been an interesting experience. In one sense my activity online broadly can be considered research and the line between ‘work’ and procrastination does not really exist to me anymore. You never know when that hour I spent looking at an emerging meme may be used to inform a section of my thesis, a talk, or even end up an example in a publication. I do wonder how other researchers in my building see my research at times. I must look like I rarely work.  It does not help that when I give talks about my research I like to choose wonderful and weird examples from Internet culture.

So why do I research the impact of the Internet on the communication of climate change rather than just researching newspaper coverage?

The significance of the Internet? 

The Internet is significant in our daily lives and is still a relatively recent development. The virtual environment which we inhabit is significantly different from the natural world. It has changed how we engage with media from being passive to active in the creation and sharing of online content. While at the same time the Internet has absorbed every form of media and created new ways to engage and communicate. There has been large scale adoption of the Internet, but only relatively recently with the number of Internet users in the UK rapidly increasing from only 7.39 per 100 people in 1997 to 87.02 per 100 people by 2012.

Number of Internet users per 100 people: 

Data set from http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/reports/tableview.aspx
Global average is calculated by averaging the 214 countries within the data set

The way we use the Internet has also changed from originally being an imitation of paper to the development of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 was a new phase of website design based around user interaction and user generated content, with this we saw the emergence of social media.The growing use of social media sites can be seen with examples such as Facebook which has grown from 145 million monthly users in 2008 to 1.35 billion monthly active users in September, 2014. This was rapidly adopted in particular by young people, but there has been a wide adoption of social media across society.

Example of US adoption of social media by age groups:

Data from: http://www.pewresearch.org/data-trend/media-and-technology/social-networking-use/

These changes to society are particularly interesting as anyone can produce content, but users have freedom of choice on what they view and interact with. Along with the rise of the Internet we have seen a decline in the daily circulation of UK newspapers. Despite this major societal change the vast majority of published research into climate change communication focuses on newspapers and in particular they focus on broadsheet newspapers. As a result we know little on the impact of the Internet on public engagement with climate change or how it has shaped public understanding.

So while my research may appear strange at first glance there are large gaps in the communication of climate change literature. The Internet is a significant part of our lives and how we interact with information. That said there is still times I cannot tell the difference between when I am procrastinating and doing actual research.

An Introduction: exploring the impact of the Internet upon public understanding of science

Starting this blog: 

I am a politics PhD student at the University of Exeter based at the Environment and Sustainability Institute on Penryn Campus. I have been intending to start a blog for a while now to communicate my research with a wider audience. Also to discuss some interesting examples that emerged from Internet culture that have emerged through my research. My research focuses on public understanding of science and the impact of the Internet. In particular, my work focuses on public understanding of climate change and the impact of junk information from climate sceptics.

Some of the areas that my research covers can be seen in a talk I gave at a postgraduate research conference on Penryn campus on the challenge of Internet research. The video is low quality as it was taken by a fellow PhD student with their phone. This talk was given to an audience of PhD students from a range of subject areas with the majority being from the bio sciences. So the talk was designed to be accessible and entertaining with some wonderfully weird examples from Internet culture.

Focus of this blog:

This blog will focus primarily on sharing my research and exploring interesting things that emerge from Internet culture. There will also be the occasional post on my experiences as a PhD student and teaching in the department, but the primary focus will be on Internet culture and its impact upon public understanding of science.

My main research focus on the Internet has resulted in my developing interest on memes, user generated content, and online communities. Memes are essentially anything online which has viral spread including images and videos with most people being familiar with cat memes. An example of a cat meme can be seen with Grumpy Cat (see below). Grumpy cat is a great example of this as this meme has achieved success outside the Internet with books published and even a film ‘Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever’.

Grumpy Cat meme example

Memes could potentially be shared to spread information on serious political issues, but the majority of the popular memes are spread mainly for entertainment. Memes can often be in jokes within online communities.

Another key interest I have developed is on the subject of online communities as the Internet has enabled people to set up groups surrounding any interest. This has led to health support groups being formed for patients to support each other while on the other hand communities have emerged surrounding video games. My particular interests in online communities focus on video gaming communities, such as World of Warcraft, and the Brony subculture.

The term Brony refers to an adult fan of the show My Little Pony. The majority of these fans are men. This unexpected fan base originally emerged on the website 4chan around 4 and half years ago with the reboot of the show. 4chan is best known by the majority of the public with the sharing of naked celebrity images and harassment campaigns, but the website is core to Internet culture with many memes emerging from this anonymous chaotic environment.  The Brony subculture has produced a huge quantity of user generated content from original music, mods for video games, original video games, fanfictions, animations… The Brony subculture has also produced a huge quantity of memes (see examples below). These online communities are particularly interesting to my work as the way people choose to use the Internet and social media is important to understand.

The Internet has produced a wide range of seemingly random content and online communities. This blog will as a result explores user generated content, interesting memes, and discuss online communities for the majority of posts. I will also post findings from my PhD research on the impact of the Internet upon public understanding of climate change.