From the start, our group quickly decided to centre our digital artefact on surveillance capitalism, a topic that had captivated us during lectures due to its concerning nature. Motivated to share our insights through a well-thought-out digital artefact, we delved deeper into this topic.
To make the issue more relatable for people viewing our digital artefact, we decided to focus on an individual’s experience, following Emma’s daily routine to observe the extent to which her behaviour and data is being harvested. We decided to create an animated video, as it makes it possible to realize this concept.
The process began with brainstorming and thorough research. Based on our findings, we crafted a script and storyboard. The final animation was developed on Powtoon, where voiceovers were added later. Challenges arose with Powtoon’s paywall limitations, affecting our final video. Additionally, a presentation highlighting our process and findings was created on Canva.
Overall I think we managed to produce a nice video, with meaningful content and great animations. I do believe it makes the topic of surveillance capitalism more tangible and relatable for someone who watches the video while enlightening them about the dangers, which was the initial goal.
My primary contributions to this artefact centred around research, scriptwriting, storyboarding and the final video edit. My research started by watching videos of Shoshana Zuboff and reading segments of ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’. Following that, I tried to find more focused information, specifically useful for our video, like the figure: ‘A Day in the Life of a Typical Google User’. Collaborating with Ewan, who focused on the statistical side, we combined our findings. Using our collective information, I took the lead in creating the script for the video narration, incorporating Ewan’s valuable input. After finalizing the script, I created a storyboard per frame of the video (see image), to give a clear vision for the animations. In the end, we all contributed to recording a part of the voiceover. In the app Clipchamp I edited the voiceovers and the animations together to make sure they synced and I added some background music, resulting in our final video.
Link to the video: https://clipchamp.com/watch/0JnSUuEvl8P