Monday 23 November 2015

Teens can't tell the difference between Google ads and search results

on @jjvincent
 

The familiar narrative of teens and technology is one of natural proficiency — that young people just get technology in a way that older generations don't. But research suggests that just because children feel at home using smartphones, it doesn't mean they're more aware of the nuances of how the web works. In a new report published by the UK's telecoms watchdog Ofcom, researchers found that only a third of young people aged 12 to 15 knew which search results on Google were adverts, while this figure was even lower — less than one in five — for children aged 8 to 11.

"The internet allows children to learn, discover different points of view and stay connected with friends and family," Ofcom's director of research, James Thickett, told the Financial Times. "But these digital natives still need help to develop the know-how they need to navigate the online world."

31 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds couldn't identify the ads in Google's search results
In the tests carried out by Ofcom earlier this year, children were shown screenshots of Google search results for the term "trainers" and asked whether the results at the top of the page were either a) ads, b) the most relevant results, or c) the most popular results. Despite the fact that these topmost search results were outlined in an orange box and labelled with the word "Ad," they were not recognised as such by 31 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds and 16 percent of 8- to 11-year-olds.

Other tests showed that one in five 12- to 15-year-olds (19 percent) believed that if a search engine listed particular information then it must be true, while just under half of all children (46 percent) could say for sure that Google itself was funded by ads.

More young people preferred youtube to TV for the first time

This lack of awareness of the role of advertisers in the web's ecosystem was also noticeable when it came to young people and YouTube. Ofcom's researchers found that for the first time since they had conducted the annual survey, more 12 to 15-year-olds said they preferred watching YouTube over traditional TV than the other way round. Additional, more than half (53 percent) of those surveyed in this same age group were unaware that vloggers might be paid to endorse certain products.

For organisations worried about the relatively unregulated world of online content these findings aren't good news. Earlier this year, for example, several US consumer watchdog groups filed a complaint to the FTC claiming that Google's YouTube Kids app blurs the lines between ads and original content. And in the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority has even banned videos on YouTube that were not clearly advertised as paid-for content. (The videos in questions featured a "Lick Race" challenge to lick the filling off an Oreo. Some of the UK's most prominent YouTube stars participated, with the videos paid for by Oreo makers Mondelez.)

Although Ofcom's research only examined children's awareness of advertising with regards to Google and YouTube, other social networks — including Instagram and Twitter — have also been criticised for letting paid-for promotions slip under the radar. Instagram is especially well known for its often unofficial celebrity endorsements of products like weight loss teas and teeth-whitening oil. In the US, the FTC says that any commercial relationship between a brand and an endorser online must be "clearly and conspicuously" disclosed, but as Ofcom's tests show, children often do not recognise ads, even when they're clearly labelled as such.

[via The Verge]

Thursday 19 November 2015

The 37 Basic Plots, According to a Screenwriter of the Silent-Film Era



In his 1919 manual for screenwriters, Ten Million Photoplay Plots, Wycliff Aber Hill provided this taxonomy of possible types of dramatic "situations," first running them down in outline form, then describing each more completely and offering possible variations. Hill, who published more than one aid to struggling "scenarists," positioned himself as an authority on the types of stories that would work well onscreen.

Advertising Hill's book in a 1922 issue of the Scenario Bulletin Digest ("A Magazine of Information and Instruction for the Photoplaywright"), the manual's publisher, the Feature Photodrama Company, offered hope to screenwriters feeling stuck for inspiration who might be willing to send away for the volume:
A few hours' study of this remarkable treatise ought to make it an easy matter to find a cure for your "sick script"; to inject new "pep" and suspense into your story or safely carry it past a "blind alley"; it gives you all the possible information an inspiring [sic] scenarist may require.
Historians Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs point out that Hill's book was part of a tradition, citing 19th-century playwriting manuals that likewise listed catalogs of "situations" that could provoke action and frame a plot. Nor was Hill the only screenwriter to publish a list of this type around this time; Frederick Palmers, whose Photoplay Plot Encyclopedia (1922) can be read on the Internet Archive, gathered 36 situations instead of 37.

1ThirtySevenBasicSituations






































From Ten Million Photoplay Plots: Master Key to All Dramatic Plots, by Wycliffe Aber Hill (Los Angeles, California, Feature Photodrama Co., 1919)

2ThirtySevenSituations


























From Ten Million Photoplay Plots: Master Key to All Dramatic Plots, by Wycliffe Aber Hill (Los Angeles, California, Feature Photodrama Co., 1919)

10MillionPlots.pdf by Rebecca OnionSlate’s history writer, also runs the site's history blog, The Vault. Follow her on Twitter.

Monday 16 November 2015

Before And After The PC Makeover- Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever

• via Neatorama


Reading Richard Scarry books isn't supposed to be a scary experience for children- they're supposed to expose children to realistic life scenarios so kids better understand the society they live in.


Even though the people and the perils are the same as they were when Richard Scarry's books first started coming out in the 1950s, a shift in social values has changed how we describe our world.


Photographer Alan Taylor spotted some differences between the 1963 version of Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever and the 1991 version, as the book received a PC makeover to reflect modern social attitudes.

Some of the changes seem a bit nitpicky, like removing pretty and handsome from character descriptions, but there's one change everyone can get behind- dad's cooking!