FOUNDATION IN ARTS INTRODUCTION TO MASS COMMUNICATION PCOMM001

NAME: CHEN JING YI (12085171) JUVASDEVA (12072641) LAM HOR KAY (12082012)

The Social Network (2010): Movie Synopsis In the opening of the story, Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend Erica Albright. Mark then grudgingly drinks in his dorm room and insults her through blogging. He also creates a website called the Facemash where girls are being ranked by their attractiveness. Mark was under academic probation for trafficking Harvards Network. Facemashs popularity brings Mark to the attention of the Winklevoss twins and their partner, Divya Narendra. The twins offer Mark a job as a programmer for a dating website that theyre working on called the Harvard Connection. Mark and his friend, Eduardo Saverin, partner up to come up with another website called TheFacebook that offers similar social functions as Harvard Connection but it doesnt focus on dating only. Eduardo helps financially to start off the website. The website became popular among the Harvard student body. The Winklevoss twins and Divya knew that Mark stole their idea. One of the twins and Divya want to sue Mark while the other twin wants to settle the issue like a Harvard gentlemen. After Mark is impressed by Christy Lees phrase Facebook Me and after trying to apologise to Erica at the bar, he plans to expand TheFacebook to Yale University, Columbia University and Stanford University. The Winklevoss set up a meeting with the president of the university to resolve the issue but the president does not give any positiveness knowing that there is no potential value from their issue. The co-founder of Napster, Sean Parker, came across TheFacebook and is interested in working with Mark. While Eduardo was not pleased with Seans personal life and history, Sean caught Marks attention as they share the same vision on

TheFacebook. Sean also gave the idea of dropping The from TheFacebook. As Sean suggested, Mark moves the company to California, while Eduardo is in New York doing his internship. The bond between Mark and Sean expanded when Sean convinced Mark that hell expand Facebook to two continents. Sean started to set up meetings without Eduardos consent. The Winklevoss had discovered that Facebook had expanded to Cambridge, Oxford and LSE. Now the twins and their partner have decided to sue Mark. When Eduardo returns from New York, He turns furious on knowing that Sean lives in the same house as Mark and he also makes company decisions. After having an argument with Mark, Eduardo freezes the bank account of the company in order to get Marks attention. At the same time, Peter Thiel offered an angel investment on Facebook and promised to set up an office for the company. While visiting the new headquarters for a meeting, Eduardo discovers the deal he signed with Sean's investors has allowed them to dilute his share of the company from 34% to 0.03%, while maintaining the ownership percentage of all other parties. He confronts Mark and announces his intention to sue him. During a party celebrating Facebook's one millionth member, Sean and a number of underage Facebook interns are arrested for possession of cocaine. Sean tries deceiving Mark into believing that he had nothing to do with the incident and that Eduardo stashed the cocaine, but Mark does not believe him and tells him to "go home". The story ended where the Winklevoss twins received a settlement of 65 million dollars and signed a non-disclosure agreement, while Eduardo Saverin received an unknown settlement and his name has been restored to the Facebook masthead as a co-founder.

The Application of Mass Media Model in The Social Network INFORMATION FROM ENVIRONMENT In The Social Network, Mark Zuckerberg has been portrayed as a computer genius who started a network called FaceMash as a revenge right after his girlfriend, Erica Albright, broke up with him. Hes been portrayed as a revengeful person who started FaceMash in order to insult female students in Harvard by allowing males to rate them for their physical appearance (www.imdb.com) MASS MEDIA ORGANISATION However, the real creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, despise the suggestion that Facebook was created mainly because of the opportunities in social climbing while speaking to an audience at Stanford University in California. In reality, he had been with his current girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, since before the arrival of Facebook. His girlfriend during the start of the movie, Erica, is just an invented character (Child, 2010). This is, of course, a technique to make the movie look more dramatic and entertaining. Zuckerberg also added, They [the film's creators] just can't wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things. (Child, 2010). According to www.oprah.com, Mark Zuckerberg said, It's a movie; it's fun. A lot of it (The Social Network) is fiction, but even the filmmakers will say that. They're trying to build a good story, but I'm going to promise you, this is my life, so I know it's not so dramatic."

Despite what is being shown in the movie, Zuckerberg stated that he has been spending most of his time in the past six years focusing, working hard, and coding Facebook. He said, Maybe it would be fun to remember it as partying and all this crazy drama. Maybe it will be an interesting story. (www.oprah.com) According to www.parcbench.com, the co-founder of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin is actually an occasional guest blogger on CNBC.com. He wrote on his blog, I have wondered how Hollywood would depict [Facebook's] creation and development on the big screen, noting that the movie was clearly intended to be entertainment and not a fact-based documentary. He also mentioned that the true takeaway was that, however complicated, difficult or tortured to execute, entrepreneurship and creativity are perhaps the most important drivers of business today and the growth of their company. (Victor, 2010) Through all of these, it can clearly be seen that the director and the writer of this movie, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin, have clearly been making up scenes of the movie that has never happened in Zuckerbergs real life, which the creative team behind the movie said was inspired by the proposal, not Ben Mezrichs 2009 book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of FacebookA Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal (www.nymag.com). A note in Mezrichs book has stated that he re-created some scenes using not just the factual record but his best judgement. Descriptions have been altered, several conversations being compressed into one, and settings being changed. Mezrich said, Its a true story, but I write in a cinematic, thriller-esque style. (www.nymag.com). Several differentand sometimes contradictoryversions of the

story were told, Sorkin said. I didnt choose one and decide that it was the truth. I dramatized the fact that there were conflicting stories. (www.nymag.com). As what could be seen, the team working on The Social Network changed a lot of the true story, in order to turn it into a dramatic movie, so as to seek the audiences attention and interest in watching the movie. MEDIA CHANNELS The film is released internationally but with different release dates. The first country to get the movie was United States, which the film premiered on 24th September 2010 in New York Film Festival only. Later in 1st October 2010, the film opened in USA, and Canada. Throughout October 2010, the film premiered in several countries, and the last country to have the film was Netherlands on 3rd November 2011, in Amsterdam Film Week. The Social Network was the highlight of many film festivals. The Social Networks movie title was dubbed in different languages. The film was also dubbed in languages like Hindi, French, Italian, etc. AUDIENCE On its opening weekend, The Social Network earned $22,445,653 in the US, and 2,486,454 in the UK. The Social Network released on DVD and Blu-ray editions on 11th January 2011. The movie is available to be rented and purchased in video stores, Amazon, and iTunes. The movie is also shown on TV channels such as HBO.

8 Elements of Mass Communication embedded in The Social Network SOURCE The Social Network is based on the actual incidents that happened in the making of Facebook. However, the source of the story told in the film is an adaption of the book about the founding of Facebook, The Accidental Billionaires, written by Ben Mezrich. Author Ben Mezrich is a Harvard graduate himself, and managed to get the inside scoop of what happened behind Facebook from the co-founder of the site, Eduardo Saverin. Therefore, the story in the book is from Eduardo Saverins point of view. Mezrich tried to get Mark Zuckerberg to help him complete the pieces missing from the story (in which it means from Marks point of view), but he declined. ENCODE The encoding process is the production of the film. The production companies involved were Columbia Pictures, Relativity Media, Scott Rudin Productions, Michael De Luca Productions, and Trigger Street Productions (IMDb, Company credits for The Social Network). The director, David Fincher, chose Aaron Sorkin to write the screenplay of the movie based on the book. Cast and crews were assembled and the production of the movie started on December 2009. The filming locations were mostly in Massachusetts, USA and California, USA. The film was shot in digital with RED ONE in 4K resolution.

MESSAGE The message of the movie is the story behind the billion dollar website, Facebook. The story focuses on the college years of boy genius Mark Zuckerberg, and the events that lead to the lawsuits filed by his best friend, Eduardo Saverin, and the Winklevosses. In the beginning of the story, Mark started a website for students to rank girls based on their attractiveness. All eyes lay upon him and this eventually got the attention of Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, who at that time were trying to find a potential programmer to work on their website, Harvard Connection. This led to Mark Zuckerberg coming up with the idea of creating an exclusive social networking site only for Harvard students. He collaborated with his dorm mates who were also programmers, and with his best friend, Eduardo Saverin, who would provide financial support to the website. The appearance of Sean Parker the founder of Napster, brought Mark and Eduardos friendship in danger. The Social Network is a story that focused on friendship, loyalty, trust, betrayal, ambition, greed, and the power of success. CHANNELS The Social Network was chosen to be presented in several film festivals. The film was shown in New York Film Festival, American Film Festival, Mumbai Film Festival, Tokyo International Film Festival, Palm Springs Film Festival, and Sao Paulo International Film Festival before hitting the cinemas. The film was released on the 1st October 2010 in the USA. The release dates for other countries were later than in the United States. DVD and Blu-ray formats were available everywhere on 11 January 2011.

DECODE The decoding process is done by the audience of the film. Every individual that is watching the film may decode the film differently from one another. Some may think the film was too hard to understand as the character, Mark Zuckerberg, talks in a really fast pace. Without the help of subtitles and complete concentration, they have a hard time keeping up with the conversations that took place. The message wouldnt be delivered because they have lost interest. However, some think that this gives them the perception that a person who is good in computer and technology generally talks faster than a person who rows crew. Based on the comments collected from our group, the film was not hard to decode and easy to understand. RECEIVER The receiver of the film is the people who are watching the movie. The audience of the film is a big amount of people; were talking about millions of people here. The audiences come from several places because this film was shown in a lot of countries. The targeted audiences are the people who are active on Facebook, which range from the age of 13 to 35, but it is hard to tell the age range of people who uses Facebook actively because Facebook is widely used by any ages. The film is also targeted towards the people who are interested in knowing the backstory of Facebook. Another group of audience would be the individuals that read the book.

FEEDBACK The Social Network received more positive feedbacks than negative feedbacks. The Social Network is a great film not because of its dazzling style or visual cleverness, says Roger Ebert, a top film critic for Chicago Sun Times, but because it is splendidly well-made. According to RottenTomatoes, the film is 96% fresh, with 271 critics certifying the movie fresh and 11 critics giving it thumbs down. On IMDb, the users of the site gave The Social Network an average score of 7.9 out of the perfect 10. This film received awards recognition by successfully taking home 3 wins out of 8 nominations from The Academy Awards (also known as Oscars). The Social Network won the Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Screenplay categories for BAFTA Awards. Furthermore, the film won 4 categories out of the 6 categories it was nominated for in Golden Globes Awards. Overall, majority of the audiences enjoyed the movie. NOISE There were a lot of semantic noises in this film. As this is a film with a character that is constantly talking about coding, the terms used might be foreign to audiences that do not acquire the knowledge of coding. They talked about being punched by final clubs, which might be forming a question mark in audiences head as it is a Harvard University thing, where students get invited to exclusive clubs in the campus. Mechanical noise is inevitable because there might be malfunction occurring when trying to play the movie. Environmental noise could occur when a person is watching the film because they cant control the noise made by the weather (heavy rain, thunderstorm) during the time.

The Functions of Mass media carried by The Social Network SURVEILLANCE From the Social Network, the audience are able to get information on beware surveillance through the contents of the movie. The movie contains a message about the danger of hackers. It explained that hackers could take action anywhere, if they are revengeful, or even worse, taking action after getting drunk. Computer geniuses can hack into famous institutions like Harvard in order for the mere fun of it. It shows us how easy it is to be hacked and retrieve private information. Even though Facebook puts users privacy as their top priority, there is still other websites that have low security on their users private information. The film raised awareness on the things that computer hackers are capable of doing. Another surveillance would be on our friendships. Eduardo Saverin was betrayed by his best friend, Mark Zuckerberg, for the sake of power and success. Mark was willing to dilute Eduardos share after all Eduardo has done for him such as starting up the company by financially supporting it. The film gives us surveillance that we should never betray our friends because it might lead to revengeful actions. LINKAGE The Social Network is a film about the social networking site, Facebook. It attracted peoples attention because theyre active Facebook users. People go on Facebook every day to check up on what their friends are doing. Naturally, when a movie about Facebook is created, it would spark their interest on how Facebook was made. The

linkage they and we have while watching the movie is were all Facebook users. Facebook plays a huge role in our lives even though many still tries to deny this. Another linkage for some of the audiences would be the Harvard students that used Facebook when it just started. When Facebook was still shiny and new, it was a great invention to students who were studying at Harvard. Now, they would be interested to watch how the filmmakers interpreted the story to the audiences. People who knew Mark Zuckerberg would have a linkage too as they know him personally or have heard of him before. TRANSMISSION OF VALUES/SOCIALIZATION Media is constantly trying to make their audience act and behave according to their will. They do so by portraying the people in the film in a way that would make the audience think that its only normal if they do the same. In The Social Network, it portrayed college students as wild party animals. They crank up the music, gamble, drink, giving sexual pleasures, and do drugs. It also showed how teenagers are easily affected by what their peers are doing. Theyre highly concerned with the newest trend in this case, it would be Facebook. They signed up for Facebook because their friends are online on Facebook. This happens due to social pressure. Besides that, the clothing and fashion shown in the film could influence the audience. Teenagers that are in college and university or teenagers that are going to college would start adopting the fashion shown in the movie: hoodies and flip-flops.

ENJOYMENT The Social Network is a movie which is entertaining for a large group of people because of the ratings and reviews that have been given. Good movies are always a source of entertainment for any type of audience. To some people, The Social Network is the true story of how a computer genius, Mark Zuckerberg, managed to become a billionaire in a short period of time. This, relating to the real life of Mark Zuckerberg, is somehow entertaining to a large audience from all around the world. While watching this movie, people are able to escape their hectic schedules for two hours, at the same time, they learn something about an accidental billionaires life and how he came to success in life. This source of enjoyment helps people to relax in life, and focus their concentration on someone elses life for a moment. A movie is best when watched with a group of family members or friends that we are really close with. This also increases the enjoyment and double the fun while watching a movie. After the movie, we will be able to communicate more with this group of people because the same movie has been watched at the same time and we are able to exchange information and comments about the movie. Hence, there will always be a discussion about the movie for a period of time whenever we meet up with this group of people and the conversation never really dies. INTERPRETATION A lot of things could be interpreted through this movie. It is up to the audience to interpret what they see in the movie to be true or untrue. The flow of the movie, every

scene, every event that happened in the movie would be interpreted by the audience while watching the movie to try to get the hang of the story. The movie says that it is based on the real life of Mark Zuckerberg, but according to sources, a lot of scenes and events in the movie have been created and added in to make the movie more dramatic and interesting so that it appeals to the audience. This shows that the crew behind the movie actually acts as gatekeepers because they choose what they want to show the audience in the movie. This also influenced the way people see Mark Zuckerberg in the movie and in real life. He has been portrayed as the not-sonice computer genius in the movie. Although this is the case, but people have realized that Mark Zuckerberg isnt exactly what has been portrayed in the movie after he gave opinions and came up with the truth. However, it is still the audiences point of view that determines how they interpret the movie and it is their decision to choose whether or not to believe all that has been shown in the movie.

References The Social Network (n.d.) Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network The Social Network (2010). Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/ The Social Network (2010) Production Details (2013). Retrieved from http://www.movieinsider.com/m5030/the-social-network/production/ Fleming Jr, M. Facebook Film The Social Network Opens New York Film Festival (2010, July 8). Retrieved from http://www.deadline.com/2010/07/the-social-networkopens-new-york-film-festival/ The Social Network Rotten Tomatoes (2013). Retrieved from http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-social-network/ Awards for The Social Network (2010). Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/awards?ref_=tt_awd Ebert, R. (2010, September 29). The Social Network. Retrieved from http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100929/REVIEWS/100929 984 Plot Summary for The Social Network. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/plotsummary

Child. Mark Zuckerberg Rejects His Portrayal in The Social Network (2010, October 20). Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/oct/20/mark-zuckerberg-the-socialnetwork Education For All. Retrieved from http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Viewers-React-toWaiting-For-Superman/11 Victor. Eduardo Saverin Saves Face Blogging About The Facebook Movie. (2010, October 18). Retrieved from http://www.parcbench.com/2010/10/18/eduardo-saverinsaves-face-blogging-about-the-facebook-movie/ Inventing Facebook. Page 3. Para. 2. Retrieved from http://nymag.com/movies/features/68319/index2.html The Social Network (2010) Box Office Mojo. Retrieved from http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=socialnetwork.htm Dominick, J. R. (2010). The Dynamics of Mass Communication: Media in Transition (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.