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[seniornadinemc]

Final Reflection

As the semester comes to an end, I'd like to reflect back on the entire process of this project and look into what I'll be doing with it in the future!

Thank you all for joining me on this hectic, yet amazing journey, and hope to see you all in the years to come.

Good luck to the next senior capstone students and amazing work to my fellow classmates! We did it!

Mahalo!

• View my project at nadineseniorcapstone.com! •

[seniornadinemc]

Week 13

PROJECT UPDATE

Finishing Touches on XD, WordPress, and Elementor

As my Instagram experiment has come to end, I continued to the next phase of my project: my project website. In the last update, I showed a very, very rough draft of what the website may look like. I eventually finished the entire template! Here’s what it looks like:

Some of what you may see will be different in the next few screenshots as I realized that some assets did not work well during the transition.

Once I felt satisfied with the overall design, I began the process of setting up my WordPress and Elementor accounts to then design the actual website. During this process, I encountered a rough issue that took quite a bit of patience and frustration holdback, but I was eventually able to work it out and get my accounts settled. After toggling the settings to make sure things would operate properly, I began the process of setting up all the pages of my website and started editing my first page with Elementor.

As you can see in the screen-recording of my ‘Home’ web page, some assets, such as my minor design to act as background decoration, were not included. When I tried to set it as a background image and view it in the actual website mode, the design did not sit properly and began covering the important items making it difficult to view, so I ended up cutting them from the final design and just leaving the area blank. Although it’s a bit upsetting that it’s not letting me add in all the minor details I wanted to implement, I figured it would be fine as it is and I’m pretty good with how it looks without it!

So for the final weeks, I’m trying to speed my way through transferring everything into place and get everything done so that I can do some minor touch-ups. Very excited for this to come all together!

[seniornadinemc]

Week 10-12

PROJECT UPDATE

Instagram Experiment Finished, Adobe XD

I decided to finish off the last posting on my social media accounts and gather all the information I have obtained to head off into the next phase of my project. Here is the reveal of those accounts!

It may not seem like a lot, but I managed to gather quite a bit of information to help me discover some things about the social media algorithm. Through this experiment and others that I have been conducting on the side, many things have sparked new questions that have initiated me to go back into the research process. I’m glad that I went back into my research as I was able to learn more about the algorithm and how it functions throughout various different social media platforms. I was also able to learn about another way how the algorithm works, specifically through platforms that consist of some type of visual media.

Next process! So originally, I had planned a video series in which I would document the entire process of creating, posting, and observing the data from the social media accounts, but since it was hectic making and preparing all the content for everything with the addition of conducting other experiments, it totally flew right past my head. Instead, I have opted to create a website instead where I can include everything throughout the process of my project and include an article on all my findings and research on the social media algorithm. Here is a sneak peek at what the website will kind of look like:

It’s in an extremely rough, rough phase, and it may look a little different along the way because I will definitely encounter some ideas to change up some assets here and there.

For the next two weeks, I will be working on my website and finding another platform where I can utilize it for publishing. I wanna try and get this done as fast as I can that way I can focus more on just cleaning and fixing any minor errors; make it look as clean and professional. Very excited to get into this process!

[seniornadinemc]

Week 8-9

PROJECT UPDATE

Content Prep, Documentation, Content Posting, New Findings

I decided to take a break from posting last week to focus on my exams and projects for other classes. But for the past two weeks, I’ve been doing the same routine of preparing content for my accounts, posting them on a scheduled basis, and then documenting what happens after.

Recently, I found that my ‘vlog’ account has been getting more and more interactions lately and a few people have started to follow that account. It turns out that even a couple of my friends managed to find it through their recommendation page! Whatever, I’m doing on that page seems to be working in some sort of way which is interesting. Funny enough though, my mental health one, which I thought would catch the most attention, isn’t doing so well with actual users but with bots. Every time I post, I find myself drawing in the attention of social media bots, which aim to mimic the interactions of actual users based on coded information regarding the algorithm and the type of content that is most popular within large communities. Now I’m curious as to why, despite being a content ‘popular’ within the algorithm, this account isn’t doing as well as my vlog one. I plan to research more about Instagram’s algorithm and what users are more geared towards on various platforms.

I’ve also begun thinking more about the algorithm and what other aspects of it could affect it based on human interaction. I found that time is also a factor in what affects our algorithm; the time that we spend interacting with a particular type of content. Ever had a moment on TikTok where you accidentally played a video in the background while doing something and it’s just replaying over and over again? Do you watch them over and over on purpose? Do you watch YouTube videos completely or partially? Do you stare at photos and scroll through the comments while you’re on a post? It turns out that the amount of time you spend and replay a video causes the algorithm to consider it as the type of content you are possibly interested in whether you like it or not. This happened to me on multiple occasions; one where I ended up watching a haunted video multiple times because I could not, for the life of me, figure out what happened and kept scrolling through the comment to see what I should be looking for. That week, I was stuck on haunted-TikTok and could not get out of it until I ended up requesting that “I no longer want to see similar posts”. Now, I’m working on another challenge to see if the time I spend on certain content affects what happens with my algorithm. I’m also getting help from my little brother and sister, to see if anything similar happens to them.

I also kind of want to delve into information regarding algorithms and censorship, and if there’s a possibility of developers or moderators depicting the content that is being pushed out to users’ social media based on the regulations amongst different countries (or social media platforms even). From the example I received from Sharla, I began thinking more about censorship and the idea that the developers/moderators/government can choose what can be available amongst platforms for their users to see and interact with. This can affect a pretty good portion of the algorithm and its data.

Other than that, I’m pretty much just going to continue the same social media routine and hope that I end up on more recommendation pages, gather more data, experiment, and do some more research.

[seniornadinemc]

Week 5-7

PROJECT UPDATE

Content Prep, Documentation, Content Posting

For the past two weeks, I’ve been working on posting the content for my accounts on a scheduled basis and recording the analytics that I’ve been getting from them all. As of now, two of the accounts (Mental Health and Vlog one) have been able to appear of some user’s pages based on the data I have been collecting. I’m actually surprised that the TikTok one hasn’t been getting anything suggesting that it’s content coming from a newly popularized platform, but I guess with how Instagram and their algorithm works, they would rather have their user view something that is more so from their own platform. I feel like I should research on the commonalities and differences of Instagram’s algorithm and TikTok’s algorithm.

I’ve also been playing around with my own personal algorithm and testing out something that has gotten my curiosity. Based on my research from the pre-capstone class, the definition of the algorithm and the way that it works is that everything that is recommended or shown to us on social media is based on the user’s own personal preferences. With that being said, what I chose to interact with is reflected off my own timeline or recommendation on the platforms that I use. On TikTok, I noticed that I get a lot of videos regarding cats, dogs, Korean dramas, Korean pop groups, anime, and drawing-related content because these are the things that I like, that I prefer to see. However, I usually ignore the ones that randomly pop up because they don’t pique my interest. There was a video that I have never seen before that was related to something about a podcast where the hosts were reading funny tweets off Twitter. I ended up liking the video because it was quite funny and ended up playing it in the background a few times while reading the comments. Eventually the next day, I kept getting recommendations from similar content and found myself going through a rabbit hole of podcast-related content for the next couple of days before coming back to my original stream of preferred content. I’m going to test it out again to see if it ends up happening another time.

With the next two weeks happening, I’m already preparing some new content and continuing to record data, and trying out some things to help me really understand what is it that makes up the algorithm.

On a side note, I’ve been receiving some help from Sharla with some videos she’s been sharing with me regarding the algorithm and these have been really getting me to think about more of what the system is about. After watching through these couple of videos, I’m now wondering: Does the algorithm truly work based on what the social media platform creators want us to see? Had these platforms invested the money back to the content creator instead of their platform and their content, would the algorithm really be any different? There’s so much to the algorithm that I have yet to test out through this project.

[seniornadinemc]

Week 1-4

PROJECT UPDATE

Documentation and Content Prep

For the past two weeks, I have been working on preparing all the documentation I need to help me organize and schedule the operation for my project. I currently have all the documents that I will be using to record the data and analysis for my social media accounts as well as for when I conduct my “algorithm challenge”. I have also begun preparing some content for each of the accounts, which I won’t necessarily show all of it since I want these accounts to be discovered, so unfortunately everyone won’t be able to see them unless I end up on your recommendation page, which will be exciting if I do!

(I was trying to hide the username on the graphics hence the random box hahaha)

In the upcoming two weeks, I’ll be multitasking between creating the content for each social media account and recording the data/analysis based on observations. I will also be working on recording data from my progress with the “algorithm challenge”. For that, I plan to begin recording this information the week after I begin posting the first set of content for social media.

Fortunately, I haven’t had any hurdles or hiccups so far since the pre-production process has been going fairly easy. Though if I had to mention one thing, it was the process of creating multiple side email accounts to make the different accounts. It was quite time consuming coming up with email addresses and completing the creation process to continue. Other than that, I haven’t had to much trouble and things have been moving smoothly.

As mentioned before, I did create some content for the accounts already so I’m going to get those checked out before posting it online and recording the data that it will collect. I have yet to start on my observation with the challenge so hopefully I can get that up and going was once everything has officially begin. However, if you are curious as to what my progress has looked like so far, here is a quick update:

(Really trying hard to hide the usernames. If I end up on your recommendation page, let me know! Hahaha!)

So now, I’m going to continue preparing content so that they’re ready to be put out and observed and continue going through my algorithm challenge.

And that’s about it for my progress mark. See you all on my next project update!

[seniornadinemc]

Introduction Video

Aloha everyone, I'm Nadine Castillo, and welcome to my senior project blog! My senior project topic is on the social media algorithm and its ability to mimic our real-life choices. Join me on my journey!