This document examines whether people communicate enough in person or rely too heavily on social media and new technologies. The author photographed students on campus over four days and observed that most groups had at least one person on their phone, and people on their own were usually on their phone. This suggests people are distracted from in-person interactions by new media. Further research could explore why face-to-face interactions still involve phone use and the types of social media most distracting.

1. Do we communicate?
Rebecca McAllister

2. Introduction
• The problem that I choose to look at is are we interacting and
communicating enough or are we spending to much time on
new media technologies like social media?
• The research question that my mini project addresses is ‘do
we communicate?’
• Specifically looking at social networks and New media, new
media is means of mass communication using digital
technologies such as the Internet.
• Specifically looking at social networks and New media.
• The main work that has been done that gives rise to my
question was photography this way my research project
relates to finding out the truth

3. • “The medium is the message.” (McLuhan, Fiore and Agel,
2008)

4. New media
• Before social media and new media, we were extremely
limited in our means to interact with others and we were
limited to the people that we knew in person. There were
things we had to deal with that these days we just don’t do,
for example actually calling for a friend instead of texting
them you're outside, waiting for a letter in the mail, waiting a
week to get your pictures that you sent off to be developed
etc.
• New media has a lot of disadvantages to it, for instance we
spend a lot of our time on social networking websites such as
Facebook, Twitter etc. that we don’t interact with our fellow
students or work colleagues as much.

5. Social media
• Social media has also changed the way that we interact,
mainly the way we have lost some of our social skills. Some
people are completely incapable of carrying on a normal
conversation or interacting with people in person because of
the dependency of social media.
• Social networks are becoming one of the dominant ways we
communicate for example Snapchat or facebook. People are
more obsessed with checking their phones every 2 minutes
rather than engaging in meaningful conversation with their
friends or family.

6. • “Today as yesterday, the media filter our experience and
shape our understandings of the world” (Shoemaker and
Reese, n.d.)
• “reported using Facebook approximately 30 minutes
throughout the day as part of their daily routine” (Pempek,
Yermolayeve, &Calvert, 2009, p.227)

7. Literature review
• “online social interactions fundamentally differ from face-to-
face interactions in offlince social networks. Online social
networking typically offers opertunitties for expresion that
are less restrictive. Users may disclose a levels quite diffrent
than in thier face-to-face conversations.” (Noor Al-Deen and
Hendricks, 2011)

8. Methodology
• I will be using an experimental approach to solving the
question of ‘do we communicate?’
• The method I will be using for my first mini project will be
photography.
• I constructed this artefact by photographing students in the
university for 4 days, I photographed students in groups and
by themselves so I could then observe the photos to answer
my question ‘do we communicate?’
• I used photography approach so I could then observe the data
collected from my photographs to judge if people spend to
much time on new media/social media.

9. Studio practice
• The rationale behind this was to see if students communicate
to each other depending who there with or what they are
doing, I choose to sit in the same spot so I could compare and
see if there is a reason to why we are on their phones, this
way I could analysis students without them knowing therefore
know it wasn’t set up so then I could then collect the data and
compare which would answer my question.

10. Process of production

11. Photoshop

12. My mini project

13. Day two

14. Day Three

15. Day Four

16. Results
• Overall as you can see from the images people get distracted by
new media technologies a lot.
• My aim was to find out if we are we interacting and
communicating enough or are we spending to much time on new
media technologies like social media? Answering the question ‘do
we communicate?’
• I feel like I completed this and you can see from my images I
collected that we don’t communicate a lot and even when we are
in groups or with people
• There was only 3 out of 9 groups that were shown that none of
them were using their phones, in the rest at least one person was
using their phones.
• It was shown that we use our phones more when we are alone as
nearly everyone that was pictured alone was seen using there
phone.

17. Conclusion
• Further research:
• when were face to face with peers why do we feel the need to look
at our phones and go on social media? does this mean are we really
face to face?
• Why do we feel the need use our phones more when we are on our
own?
• Look at my results it is clear that we detracted by new media social
networks and our phones a lot, we Could go on to look at for
further research what sort of social media is distracting us the most
and why, why are we so addicted to the likes on facebook and why
when we get up is our phones the first thing we look at?
• “In Sum, scholers treat facebook as a channel of cunnication for
social interaction rather than a place for users to make important
connections and for those relationships to form overriding patterns
worthy of study.” (Noor Al-Deen and Hendricks, 2011)

18. Bibliography
• McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q. and Agel, J. (2008). The medium is the
massage. 1st ed. London: Penguin.
• Shoemaker, P. and Reese, S. (n.d.). Mediating the message in
the 21st century.
• Millennial CEO. (2016). How Social Media Has Changed How
We Communicate. [online] Available at:
http://millennialceo.com/social-media-changed-
communicate/ [Accessed 18 Nov. 2016].
• Noor Al-Deen, H. and Hendricks, J. (2011). Social media. 1st
ed. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Lexington Books.