Living in the digital age has many perks, but it’s especially great when it comes to listening in on topics not just expressed by politicians. Podcasting, as one of the latest mediums to emerge into mainstream media, has attracted a high volume of attention (Nigmatullina, 2019). 

What exactly is a Niche?

A Niche is a place or position that is suitable for a specific purpose. Basically, a niche’s entire objective is to concentrate your content to cater to a selective target demographic – within one’s main targeted audience – who have specific wants, needs, and interests. A media niche is the same deal, it includes content/media that serve a particular audience with particular interests. 

So, what is MY niche?

Throughout my studies of BCM241, I will be carrying out an ethnographic investigation into the “Its A Lot” podcast hosted by Abbie Chatfield. Abbie Chatfield’s podcasts delve into areas of interest including, mental health, patriarchy, life experiences and everything in between. My methods of research will include observations and participant observations into the interactions of myself, through the likes of autoethnography, and the interactions of the community that involve themselves within this media niche. This research investigation will provide me with a deep insight into this particular niche to understand the level of engagement and interactions podcasts create, how “Its A Lot” podcasts reflect their ideas and opinions within their public persona, and how the public reacts to these certain topics/opinions/ideas. This will entail studying people’s regular environments to generate a narrative account against a theoretical backdrop.

Public Persona

You may think that a persona is a brand, but it’s not. A brand or person can be part of the PERSONA but it is not the individual or the brand by itself. A public persona is referring to the personality that a person presents in public and that they are known for by most people thus creating their online presence. 

“On social media platforms, we are likely to ethnographically observe online publics – fluid associations among persons that largely do not know each other, mediated by the platform’s affordances (Baym & Boyd, 2012), characterized by emotional intensity (Papacharissi, 2015) and channelled by a common focus..”

Through the platform of Instagram and Tik Tok, I aim to delve into how my audience interacts with my public persona as well as developing my ethnographic skills through observing my audiences and understanding their behaviours towards tailored posts, content and ideas within the social sphere “It’s A Lot” podcasts hosted by Abbie Chatfield.  

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by ABBIE CHATFIELD (@abbiechatfield)

References 

1. UOW Lecture week 1 – part 1: BCM241 2021 Week One – Introduction and Overview 
2. Issuu Blog. 2021. Tips for Attracting Your Niche Audience. [online] Available at: <https://issuu.com/blog/niche-audience#:~:text=A%20niche%20audience%20is%20a,for%20brands%20and%20their%20success.&gt; [Accessed 5 August 2021].

3. Nigmatullina, Almira Shamsunovna (2019) “THE BENEFITS OF LISTENING TO PODCASTS,” Scientific
Bulletin of Namangan State University: Vol. 1 : Iss. 8 , Article 71.
Available at: https://uzjournals.edu.uz/namdu/vol1/iss8/71

4.The Interaction Design Foundation. 2021. Personas – A Simple Introduction. [online] Available at: <https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/personas-why-and-how-you-should-use-them&gt; [Accessed 5 August 2021].

The two P’s riddled throughout our Uni life – Productivity and Procrastination. But which one do let control your Uni work?

Even if you go to each class and spend several hours in the library daily, a low level of productivity could consider all that worthless. Nailing productivity might be the most valuable ability you can learn as a student. This is extremely relevant to university as productivity can make or break your Uni life, as you either keep up with or fall behind your subject content. Which in turn, has the power to create an unenjoyable and overwhelming Uni experience.

As a result, I propose my research topic as the operation University students conduct before sitting down and engaging in their uni work/assessments, to be as productive as possible.

This topic is important and relevant to university students because students, if they haven’t already established a good productivity routine in high school, might just have found what works best for them throughout their university education [so far]. Hence influencing their personal operation in terms of being productive when it comes to university work. As well as understanding the difference when it comes to not engaging in their usual pre-uni work routine and the difference in productivity.

Through my sample twitter poll, I evaluated the two primary, but broad options students would do before engaging in their uni work. This gave me an insight into what my fellow BCM212 peers engage in and insinuating there would be an influx of reasons as to why they chose the option they did and an indication that there would be a variety of content to be researched. The engagement with my polls from my target audience was promising.

There is a certain amount of research about brain stimulus in regard to learning processes, as well as students and education productivity. There is also research that discuss student concentration and learning styles and strategies that help students heighten their productivity.

Sánchez, Tatiana M. C., and María E. M. Martínez (2020) discuss in their journal “Brain system influence on teaching-learning process and stimuli” through the objective to demonstrate the incidence of the correct functioning of the brain in the educational process. Although this article refers to in the classroom productivity, it still addresses motivation and strategies in preparing the brain for work through a student like manner.  This journal reaffirmed my suggestion of relations between behaviour and motivation.

Zimmerman, Bandura and Martinez-Pons, (1992) addresses “Self-motivation for academic attainment: the role of self-efficiency beliefs and personal goal setting” through the study of student’s self- regulation of their academic learning and productivity. However, though this article studies high school students, it points out a strong correlation between self-motivation and personal goal setting.

In this journal, Simone Volet discusses “Understanding learning and motivation in context: A multi-dimensional and multi-level cognitive-situative perspective” and how learning and motivation come together when it comes to productive thinking. The article also creates an understanding of the influences which provide support for a multi-level framework.  

Hillman, Erickson and Kramer (2021) examine the “Exercise effect on brain and cognition” and introducing how there is beneficial influence of physical activity on selective aspects of brain function. The article reveals the positive effects physical activity has on cognition and how it might also improve academic performance. I have summarised from this article that physical activity can help to prevent or reverse cognitive decline. This article will allow me to understand in further depth the participants answers when it comes to conducting in physical activity before engaging in uni work/studying and how it has helped them to be more productive.

I have considered the ethical parameters of my question and have concluded that there are no unethical risks, and any questions should be with the understanding to learn and should not cause any distress to the participants regarding their motivation and productivity.

In summary, I am eager to begin my research and am personally interested into how other students handle their time and productivity before beginning university work as I fell it can be not only beneficial to my fellow peers by to myself also.

References

1. Sánchez, Tatiana M. C., and María E. M. Martínez. “Brain System Influences on Teaching-learning Process and Stimuli.” International Journal of Health Sciences, vol. 4, no. 1, Apr. 2020, pp. 18-24, doi:10.29332/ijhs.v4n1.412.
2. Zimmerman, B., Bandura, A. and Martinez-Pons, M., 1992. Self-Motivation for Academic Attainment: The Role of Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Personal Goal Setting. American Educational Research Journal, 29(3), pp.663-676.
3. Volet, S., 2021. [online] Faculty.washington.edu. Available at: <http://faculty.washington.edu/sunolen/motsem/volet%202001.pdf&gt; [Accessed 20 March 2021].
4. Hillman, C., Erickson, K. and Kramer, A., 2021. [online] Drlardon.com. Available at: <http://drlardon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Perspectives.pdf&gt; [Accessed 20 March 2021].

The two P’s riddled throughout our Uni life – Productivity and Procrastination. But which one do let control your Uni work?

Even if you go to each class and spend several hours in the library daily, a low level of productivity could consider all that worthless. Nailing productivity might be the most valuable ability you can learn as a student. This is extremely relevant to university as productivity can make or break your Uni life, as you either keep up with or fall behind your subject content. Which in turn, has the power to create an unenjoyable and overwhelming Uni experience. I am interest in learning about the practices students put in place before starting their Uni work/assessments to help them be more productive and to use there time efficiently.  

I’m curious into gaining an understanding about the operation in which students like myself, conduct before sitting down and starting their uni work. My two general thoughts about what students would primarily involve themselves in before sitting down would be; being active – e.g going for a walk, to the gym, yoga, casual swim etc. or waking up and jumping straight into their uni work/assessment or going straight to the library.

As this research question is easily relevant to practically any uni student (though I am only limited to my twitter followers), I began my research by questioning my fellow BCM212 twitter fam by creating the following poll.

My poll evaluated the two primary options students would do before engaging in their uni work. I’m excited to see close results as that suggests there would be an influx of reasons as to why students chose the option they did. I’m interested in diving more deeply into the minds of my BCM212 fam.

A warm hello and welcome 😊

My name is Ivy, I live in Sydney, Cronulla and I’m currently onto my second year of Uni at UOW. I am studying a Bachelor of Media and Communications, majoring in Visual Communication Design and minoring in graphic design and marketing.

Looking back onto the end of my year 12 schooling life and the start of my life as a Uni student, I imagined Uni to be full of life and meeting a variety of different people. Though when COVID hit and meeting new people was a lot more difficult through a screen, my initial idea of Uni work and learning was still the same as to what I thought it would be. During high school I selected drama as one of my senior electives and it was my favourite subject by far! Performing and acting was always enjoyable, but I mostly enjoyed the creative arts side of creating flyers and posters for our selected plays – particularly our HSC final grade task. This is what lead me into the major of Visual Communication Design and I never think twice about my decision.  

I asked my best friend who doesn’t attend a Uni, “What comes to her mind when she thinks of a University student?” and she replied with “It reminds me of someone that has a passion and interest in something and has the motivation to study it to then reach their goal/dream job”.

My digital artefact first began with a beauty Instagram account ‘if looks could kill’, which quite quickly died, ultimately just due to the fact that I didn’t have enough time which then snowballed into no motivation. This also helped me embrace FEFO – fail early fail often.

I then created my new project which consisted of an Instagram account called ‘Syncd in’ to showcase my love for everything techno and house music, while also creating light on a possible new passion for others who follow the account. ‘Synced in’ served as a social utility by posting new and up-to-date techno music and videos.

My inspiration for my Instagram Platform was just to be as fun and engaging as possible. I’ve was inspired by a few other websites, much like ‘Sync in’ that produced very similar content. They showcased music, DJs and festivals all along the same type of music that I’ve heard and encountered in the last 3-4 years. Hence, posting for ‘Syncd in’ was quite engaging and nostalgic for me, while also interesting and entertaining for my users.

I began rapidly prototyping and started with the creation of ‘starter packs’ and went on a hunt for new fresh music to share. Through all of Instagram’s features and posting different genres of house music, I was able to keep track of my audience and gain a better understanding of what they enjoyed and the consistency of my active audience. Since I created my account as a public platform, I became familiar on posting stories with questions to connect with my users and ultimately narrowed down the types of posts I needed to create as well as the type of audience I was providing for. 

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Engaging in the idea of FIST – fast, inexpensive, simple, tiny – majority of the music I posted was from my personal playlists or footage from my phone. In the cases where I was uploading music that was just released also embraced then notion of FIST as it was always free to find and only a click away.

In the beginning I was only posting once a week which wasn’t helping me grow my account. After checking out account that were similar to mine, I was able to see how many times they posted a week, which averaged around 3 times. I also began to understand that each account, though they may have been posting the same songs, each had little individual tweaks about the way they showcased the new music. That being said I sharded my new music through a website called ‘Turn audio’, which ultimately helped me create a new aesthetic for my account. Embracing once again the concept of #FEFO.

Through observing my audience through Instagram’s algorithm and analytics, I discovered that my audience enjoyed live footage. This ideally would have changed how I went about creating content for my page, though because of COVID I wasn’t able to create new footage and ran out of pre-filmed footage from last year. Receiving feedback through comments and replies to stories poster helped ideate ‘Syncd in’ and was essentially very rewarding.

Instagram – @syncd_in

Ah yes, here we go again
My names is Ivy carter and you’re watching Disney channel….
Or reading about ‘syncd in’ – either way you’re going to have a good time

Breaking and developing
Since my online presence 1 blog post and my beta video/blog I have continued to create content on my music page DA ‘Syncd_in’, and hasn’t it been fun! Since last time I checked in I have reached 50 followers and I have gained plenty of love on each post which is always so reassuring and continued to gain an understanding of the principles of how to develop my page.

Engagement
After posting quite a bit of content since my online presence 1, I have seen a substantial growth in my followers, engagement, and reassuring/encouraging feedback loop that has helped me guide ‘Syncd in’ in a positive direction.

I kept reacting to feedback I got on my posts and tried to build more interaction as well as continuing to question my audience on what they would like to see, as part of the process of improving my project’s growth. I do reply to every comment – as there isn’t an overload of them – in order to keep that feedback loop rolling and engagement circle active.

I also utilised Instagram’s tools through the use of include relatable #hashtags in order to grow my engagement and allow people to discover my page through different avenues. I found that this helped grow my engagement and feedback loop as around 30% of my audience discove3red ‘Syncd in’ through the hashtags connected to each post.

Breaking and remaking
Through the breaking and remaking concept of my Digital artefact, I have created new modifications to my content and how my audience views it. Via this transition, I had a successful range of likes and comments that are comparable to any of my engagement tweets. I created a new aesthetic for my page with the help of a website called “turn audio”. This website created what was a still picture with music overlapped, to what could be described as a record with the cover photo of the song spinning around, intending to create appealing content.

I also employed stories and polls as a form of interaction with my audience and to engage them with content prior to my posts.

This helped me understand what time of content they would like to see in terms of different types of techno music.

What’s next?

• Create more polls and questions as this helped create engagement for the account that typically don’t engage with posts as much
• Continue finding new music that isn’t as popular (but within the same genre)
• Check-in with my regular audience about what they do and don’t like to see in my content

BCM114

Syncd in is an Instagram account that showcases my love for everything techno and house music, while also creating light on a possible new passion for others who follow the account.

I have built this account for those who keep on top of up-to – date and new techno and house music, individuals throughout the dj community as well as those with a strong interest in this specific genre of music.

Influential accounts that helped me gain a better understand of my audience action where those of similar concept as mine but post on a daily schedule:

 @techitdeep

@technobible

@club_techno  

I am also able to collect feedback through comments on my posts and/or answers / responses to my stories. So far, I have received positive feedback on my content, which is very meaningful and inspiring to see. I prefer to respond to all of my comments as a means of appreciation and gratitude.

Through the creation of syncd in I have learnt that posting often and consistently helps me grow my page and keep it up to date.

After engaging in some research, I obtained and quality information in relation to helping grow my Instagram form a website called Sprout social. I do tend to take these tips on board when creating more content for my audience.

1. Optimize your Instagram account
2. Keep a consistent content calendar
3. Schedule Instagram posts in advance
4. Get partners and brand advocates to post your content – this ones tricky
5. Avoid fake Instagram followers
6. Showcase your Instagram everywhere
7. Post content followers want
8. Get the conversation started
9. Find hashtags that convert
10. Make your Instagram followers happy!
11. Pics of the website

Future goals

1. Grow my audience
2. Gain more of a feedback loop
3. Post more consistently

Feel free to check out Syncd_in!!

Digital artefact

A progress report. Where do I begin?

I started this semester off with the DA idea of @if.looks.could.kill Instagram makeup and beauty page. At the time I thought this was a great idea and it could easily be engaging and fun. I thought in a way it would be like second nature creating these videos considering I do my makeup quite regularly before I go out and then all I had to do was create some sort of script to say.

That being said, I completely ran out of time to do that idea. Though it would have been fun and interesting, I just felt as time went on it would be more of a chore than anything else creating the videos and I never actually got around to creating any sort of video. So, I ended up deleting the account and back to the drawing board I went.

During the last week or so I came up with @syncd__in and I love it. ‘Syncd in’ is a music Instagram page that I created in the hopes of sharing and inviting users into the world of techno/house music.

My inspiration for my Instagram platform was to be as fun and unique as possible. I was inspired by several other pages much like the one I intend to create. They showcase songs, DJs and festivals all along the same calibre of style of music that I listen to and have experienced in the last 3-4 years. Hence, posting for ‘Syncd in’ will be quite engaging and nostalgic for me, while also interesting and entertaining for my users.

I created a few logos to use as my profile picture for my page and eventually picked the one that I think best suits the overall vibe – you could say – that I’m trying to achieve.

The bottom logo was the winner

Since creating my public platform ‘Syncd in’, I became familiar on posting stories with questions to better understand my users and to then strategize ideas about how and what to post to gain attention off my specific audience. This was also followed by a poll on my twitter account with the same question.

Because I created ‘Syncd in’ from scratch, I haven’t gained a lot of followers as of yet, but I have received some comments from friends who so far are enjoying the content being posted. Instagram is a great tool as it allows viewing insights and statistics relating to your post, stories, and your overall account. Ted always specifies how feedback is crucial for understanding your audience and a successful outcome in making media, thus using the social utility of observation I can recognise on what content is working and overall just understanding my users’ interest and needs.  

Through learning about the different components on the process loop in lectures and tutorials, #FEFO struck home with me – ‘fail early, fail often”. This is quite relevant to me as I failed with my first idea, picked myself up and began a new idea. Although I haven’t gained a lot of progress on my new Da ‘syncd in’, I feel creating a whole new DA concept is progress within itself and I’m proud of what I have achieved so far. Along the lines of #FIST – fast, inexpensive, simply, tiny – I feel like my DA hits the mark when it comes to the notion of #FIST. Being a uni student who almost works full time, ‘Syncd in’ fits the criteria of my life quite perfectly, as finding new music is as simple as a click away because majority all of the songs will either be from my personal playlists or videos that I’ve taken either throughout the past years or so or at a festival. This has been a dramatic change from my last digital artefact idea, affirming the idea that sometimes less is more and your process is never linear.

I cant wait to see what the future holds and to grow my DA even more!

Check it out and show some love 😊 @syncd__in