Social media: Purposes and uses

Aim: To investigate the impact social media has had on human interaction.

Case study: Avengers Endgame (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2019) 

Part of a wider Marvel franchise, bringing together a number of characters from previous films, such as Iron Man and Captain America.

Why was the film so successful? ( box office)

 It has grossed over $2.7 billion worldwide, surpassing Infinity War's entire theatrical run in just eleven days and setting numerous highest-grossing film and box office records, and is the highest-grossing film of 2019, as well as the second-highest of all time.

It is the highest-grossing superhero film of all time, highest-grossing film based on a comic book, highest-grossing film released by Walt Disney Studios, second-highest-grossing film of all time worldwide and in the United States and Canada, as well as the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time worldwide when adjusted for inflation

part of a wider Marvel franchise, bringing together a number of characters from periods films, such as Iron Man and Captain America.









Marketing technique: A Multi Channel Approach

• With 32.5 million followers on Instagram, Marvel has a well established platform to publish content on.
• They have catered their marketing materials specifically to individual channels, for example, using condensed snippets of their trailers on Instagram with a link to the full trailer on YouTube.
• Marvel has also stayed consistent with the #AvengersEndgame hashtag being used on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
• Many iterations of poster designs for the movie can be seen on Marvel’s Instagram, Twitter and Facebook too. The stylish poster designs work perfectly on social media to engage fans and visually showcase the actors/characters in the films 
• The actors who play the Avengers characters will also promote the film on their own social media because if fans who view her social media are also fans of the other actors in the film they will also view their social medias which in turn widens the views and awareness of the film.
• the film also provides more teasers on film posters that fans will not necessarily see on the social media.

To capitalise on the audiences bereavement, Marvel has produced a series of images for social media juxtaposing the characters who survived with the ones who were snapped out of existence. 

A very simple idea but one that builds up anticipation as to whether the dusted characters will return or not and drives huge engagement.

The Marvel YouTube is a verified channel with 13 million subscribers and is linked to the Marvel site. The Endgame trailer gained over 123 million views. Similarly posting the trailer on YouTube gives viewers the change to like/dislike the video and also share it on other platforms if they wish. Another feature of YouTube is autoplay which gives you various links and subsequent Marvel trailers/ related videos that will play automatically after your video ends.

Consumers = prosumers: they contribute to the webpage, and also to the overall culture of the film.

The trailer:
Focusing on story and character development in the trailers, instead of spoiling the action, only builds even more anticipation.

Going into a film and not knowing how it's going to pan out, or what scenes are going to be shown, is very rare these days.

Showing very little story and action sequences also encourages audiences to speculate how the film is going to turn out. This leads to masses of people producing speculative content for sites like YouTube, indirectly marketing the film from a user generation point of view.

Endgame Super Bowl TV trailer (2019): this video was also featured on other YouTube channels. For example Movieclips Trailers is a verified account which featured the Super Bowl trailer on its channel. This video received a further 2.5 million views for the Avengers Endgame movie.

Consumers = prosumers: digital technology enables fans to have their say, as in this 'trailer theory' post from YouTube channel "Deffinition" and for it to be liked and shared across the film's fanbase, which is globalisation is action.

Marketing techniques for the movie campaign: 

Easter Eggs:

“In less than two weeks, Avengers: Endgame has already become the second highest-grossing movie ever (watch out, Avatar). The blockbuster flick, which concluded the 22-film long Infinity Saga, was jam-packed with intensity, exciting action scenes, high emotion, and a ton of subtle Easter eggs you might have missed.”

Leaks

Avengers: Endgame Footage Has Leaked: Use Social Media at Your Own Peril

Meanwhile, the Russo brothers plead with fans not to spoil the final film in the Avengers saga.

Flickr:
Is a popular photo-sharing and hosting service with advance and powerful features. It supports an active and engaged community where people share and explore each other's photos. You can share and host hundreds of your own pictures on Flickr without paying any money. Flickr also provides both private and public image storage. A user uploading an image can set privacy controls that determine who can view the image. The app has an age restriction, you must be 14+ to create an account with the option to purchase premium services, and you need to be 18+ to be able to make your account public, connect to Facebook for sharing content, view restricted or moderate content and joint 18+ groups.

What are the main ways in which they are able to distribute content to audiences?
The services enable you to upload, post and transmit photos and videos to the site or other portions of the services, and also provide you with access to discussion forums, blogs and other interactive areas in which you or other users may post or transmit photos, videos, text, music, messages, information or other content or materials.

In relation to Avengers, Flickr can be used by fans to post and share their fan art, pictures and videos with other people who are also fans of the Marvel series.

Media convergence is the blending of multiple media forms into one platform for purposes of delivering a dynamic experience.
Through convergence, fans are able to access the app through various digital media platforms and share their content with other people who are also fans, who are then able to have their say.




Another function of Flickr is joining Groups made up of lots of people from all different backgrounds who come together to discuss different parts of Avengers and create different creative content based off of the movie series.
The main page has 2 main categories titles; explore and create. Each with 3 sub categories;

Explore: explore, trending and events
Create: photos, people and groups.

Users are able to make their own portfolio which can be public/ private, and people can join the group if they want to see more future content.

 

Flickr users also have the opportunity to upgrade their app to Flickr Pro. Some features of FlickrPro are:

• advanced stats on your photos and videos 
• ad free browsing on Flickr 
• unlimited uploads and worry-free photo backup 

Vine:
Was app owned by Twitter, which can be downloaded for free from the Apple App Store or from the android platform. Once downloaded, users can sign in using twitter credentials. The app allows users to record videos of up to seven-seconds. Closed down is 2016.  It was created by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll in JunE 2012. The company was later acquired by Twitter in October 2012 for a reported $30 million. Vine launched on January 24, 2013 as a free app for iOS devices. An android version was released on June 2, 2013. In November 2013, in a couple of months, Vine became the most used video sharing application in the market. Within April 2013, Vine became the most downloaded.

in the Vine app it allows users to create 6 second videos of any genre. Many popular creators nowadays originally started on Vine.

Tumblr:
Tumblr is a social media service that advocates the use of its users uploading their own “original” and “creative” artwork in a space where other users can share their comments, similar to the service blogger. The more views a piece of work gets, the higher the likelihood that said artwork would get featured by the service. The artwork usually gets to the featured status by it being more original and more to do with mainstream pop culture such as Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes etc. so in a sense, the service could have potentially built up hype around Marvel’s fan base by it rewarding users who used franchises that were in the mainstream, the Marvel Cinematic Universe arguably being the biggest franchise ever suggesting that the Tumblr platform could have helped promote Avengers Endgame. However, until recently, Tumblr didn’t police what users uploaded onto their platform. When they came to a decision to police what was on the website in January 2016, it was revealed that 22% of traffic on the website was pornographic in nature meaning that all corporations that already had small amounts of influence of their content on the website retreated as it revealed that the social media was just a hub for “rule 34” fanatics and as a result, their monthly user base of 500 million in January 2016. dropped to 425 million in August 2019



Example of how you can access graphic content on Instagram that shouldn't be accessible:
Molly Russell committed suicide in 2017. her account had a lot of saved self harm content.