Social Media Stories, Deep Fakes and Memes:

Social Media Stories:

Social Media plays a big part of everybody's daily life, especially the younger generation as we are the most active audience. Caring about how many 'likes' and how many followers 

your post gets determine your individual character to society.   

ln 2013, 'stories' were first introduced to social media on the Snapchat platform. They were designed for the purpose of personal use for all your contacts to see a photo/video for 24 hours only and then it would disappear. This was further developed in 2015 with a 'Discover section' for stories in the app. This allowed Media companies such as BuzzFeed, Sky Sports, Daily Mail and many more place content in a stories way. For example, Sky Sports would post sports news on theirs as well as highlight clips of sporting events for its audience. In between each individual story as you would swipe, there would be an occasional advert. This made Snapchat a huge revenue in 2019. In fact, Snapchat made $1.7 billion in revenue (98% of the companies revenue was made from advertising alone).

This inspired other media companies to 'want' this remarkable revenue Snapchat was making by replicating stories in their applications. Instagram introduced theirs in 2016, Facebook in 2017 and Twitter in 2020. They copied Snapchat's idea of placing advertisements in between personal stories in order to gain revenue.

However, advertisements also spilt onto personal stories, rather than the sole advertisement stories in between personal stories. This is because brands use a celebrities huge following to advertise their products. This helps them hit their target audience for their product as all the followers of that celebrity would have similar interest. A typical example is 'Love Island' contestants. Kendal Knight starred on it and now successfully advertises many beauty products. These Businesses target her as her following caters their target audience for their products. This is an example below of one company she promotes for:

This has also extended to brands having their own social media pages and promoting their products on their stories. Pretty Little Thing is a prime example of a business advertising their products and hosting competitions with an entry fee of re-sharing their post onto other people stories. This allows them to reach their products outside their main target audience / follower but to subsidiary audiences.

Deep Fakes:

This technology developed from the 19th century was a way in which photographers used to manipulate their photos. Photo manipulation was made possible by touching up a photo with ink, paint, or scratching the Polaroid to enhance features in the photo. Even techniques such as double exposure were used to combine photos and improve them. Below is a photo consisting of three different photographs being manipulated into one. 

As time moved into the 20th century and technology improved, photograph manipulation became video manipulation. This technique was first seen in the 1950s when video film would be manually trimmed and spliced together. This allowed different film footage to be combined together altering the two original films into one.

In the modern day we see digital approach to video manipulation. Deep fakes are when an image or video of someone that is altered to portray someone else. They look very realistic and deceiving to the eye. Artificial intelligence and machine learning devices help assist in the making of a deep fake. They have been used for the spread of fake news, fraud, pornography or comedy value. An example is a deep fake of Obama. Instead, it actually is not actually Obama speaking, it is actor Jordan Peele reading a script impersonating Obama, but the video makes it appear like Obama is actually saying it. Deep Fake technology manipulates what Jordan peele is saying and attaches it to Obama to make it look like he has said it. This is a very powerful technology as it can lead to the spread of fake news. If a man as powerful and with much influence as Obama can be altered and manipulated to say stuff he has not, if this gets into the wrong hands, it could create a great problem for the world. 

However, it isn't all doom and gloom when it comes to deep fakes. It can create great memes for comedy value. This can make people say and do something that hasn't happened for comedic effect. An example is a deep fake created putting Sylvester Stallone's face on to Kevin McAllister's face from Home Alone. Creating the masterpiece Home Stallone. A voice actor was used to sound like Stallone but the technology makes it look like a child Stallone is home alone. It is quite obviously fake compared to the Obama one, but it makes a great meme and a laugh for quite a ridiculous creation.