PROJECT

          In light of English Cultural Matrices in Media, a subject which focuses on media literacy, we have developed a social study. This project aims to help us understand how credulous audiences can be when information is provided. The video above can somewhat be seen as an introduction to our project. It depicts how manipulation works in social media and the different situations in which social media users take anonymity as an advantage – it serves as a protection not only of identity but also of crimes.

          For this study, we created a fictional Instagram account, where Catarina took one for the team and became the face of it in order to show how content creators can easily manipulate media audiences without being detected. We posted travelling pictures and worked on photoshoots to create a sleek and professional looking account.

          To enlarge our followers count, we followed several important accounts (some of which followed us back) which helped us gain access to a comfortable audience sample to work with. We would also like to emphasize that we bought one hundred followers and ended up being scammed ourselves. We aimed to reach teenagers and young adults – representative of the larger number of users on the platform – but we were also able to reach a middle-aged audience.

        The subtopics studied (read more about them here) were chosen based on the reactions we got on the account – from sexual harassment and scams to usage and credulousness. If you click on the Instagram tab, you can check the account and see some correspondence examples.

         To top all this, we have also done an interview to Edgar Cabral, a student majoring in Cinema which helped us get a better understanding of image manipulation. We chose someone who not only had some knowledge of the topic but also who was born during the digital era, which helped him acquire both the theoretical and practical insights. You should check that down below, you may find interesting content about the topic on that conversation.

        If you want to know a little bit more about the people behind the project, check the About Us tab and you can see the editing process in the The Process tab. Any question you might have, send us an e-mail – you can do so on the Contact tab. We will be happy to answer your questions and we hope you will enjoy this project as much as we enjoyed doing it!