Catfish task

Catfish research
The critical reception for the film was mixed. ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ gave the film this review ‘Catfish may tread the line between real-life drama and crass exploitation a little too unsteadily for some viewers tastes, but its timely premise and tightly wound mystery make for a gripping documentary. TIME magazine did a full page article saying ‘as you watch Catfish, squirming in anticipation of the trouble that must lie ahead―why else would this be a movie?―you're likely to think this is the real face of social networking."
Catfish was made/produced by Andrew Jarecki, Marc Smerling, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman.
Andrew Jarecki is an American film maker who is regarded as helping the film funding.


What kind of shared experiences are there in the online world and what are some of the issues surrounding this 'global media'?

There are many shared experiences to be had on the online world- whether it be becoming friends with strangers on facebook or following people on twitter. There are ways of sharing videos and music with people and as a result media files and a wide range of other experiences. Catfish is a good example of how even though there are some very good experiences to be found on the online world, there are also some experiences which could be quite dangerous. The main character in the film ‘Catfish’ Nev Schulman thinks that he knows the people that he starts communicating with however when he actually takes the time to go and visit ‘Megan’, ‘Abbie’ and their family but when he and his friends turn up the whole thing turns out to be a complete lie. In the end the story turns out well but it could have been quite dangerous for the people involved- there have been many stories of young girls meeting strangers and ending up in tragedy.
There are some issues surrounding global media. The first issue is rivalry between two newspapers or different news ‘broadcasters’. Encouraging more people to start participating in ‘grassroots journalism’ will inevitably take interest from the main newspapers and thus the interest or readership will get distributed to a more local level or conversely worldwide level depending on whether the news is broadcast via an online website or to a local newspaper.