Politics 2.0

For Roosevelt it was radio, Kennedy had television, and Obama had social media. Needless to say, social media/networking has revolutionized the way people around the world communicate and has allowed for constant access to each other. The Internet created a new outlet for nearly every aspect of daily life. These new forms of communication via social networking are not just for connecting with old friends or posting pictures, the use of these sites provide a new world of potential connections of which politicians have recently grown akin to.

The most exemplary of this exact phenomenon is the campaigns of both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. These two opposing candidates differed in many ways of course, but specifically regarding media, they showed a large contrast in the effectiveness of online media and advertising in drawing attention of potential voters. Firstly, the actual tools both candidates used are very telling. Obama, in 2012, used tools such as Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, Twitter (two accounts) and Spotify. By the looks of these tools alone you can see his target demorgraphic and the entire vibe of his presidential campaign.

Using a total of nine social media tools was unheard of before Obama, and because of that he connected the historical process of presidential election with the world of Web 2.0 that exists today. Obama’s campaign was more active and generated many more responses from users of these sites. It would be foolish to say that his social media use didn’t help him win the election that year. He posted 29 messages per day on average, had twice the amount of Facebook supporters on said posts, used almost double the tools as Romney, and on all fronts, definitely trumped Romney in the social media campaign sector.

Romney’s approach to social media tools for his campaign was slightly different to say the least. He used Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Google+, and twitter. Five compared to the nine Obama used. Perhaps because he focused on a more conservative, older audience or because his campaign team for some unknown reason decided deemed a big social media presence unimportant.

It is said that there was about a 10-to-1 spending gap on social media between the two candidates. To put it in perspective, the Obama campaign spent $47 million on digital spending. And the Romney campaign spent $4.7 million.

CNN reported that the “Obama campaign believed from the start that digital was an important new area, and really had an almost an evangelical feeling about signing people up to register to give money through Facebook and Twitter.” Like many others, I now wonder, will 2016 be another social media campaign or will we be on to something new?

Streetheart Podcast

Studying abroad in Barcelona for the past 4 months had made me fall in love with the city—the street performers, food, laid-back lifestyle, history, people, art, and plethora of activities.

Every day I’m here Barcelona surprises and inspires me in a new way. Barcelona is like Paris, New York, or Tokyo—any major city in that there’s always something to do, and you’d need a lifetime to do it in.

But as tourists we don’t get a lifetime to see a city. We get a few days, maybe a week or two if we’re lucky. We see as much as we can before we move on. So for those with limited time, what can we do? How can we maximize our time in a place like Barcelona where there’s just so much to see? Well, seeing as Summer is right around the corner, I’ve created a sample itinerary for your Summer vacation in Barcelona to help you organize and maximize your time in this incredible city:

Day 1
Barri Gotic

This is Barcelona’s historic center and dates back to pre-Roman times. The area is a maze of tiny streets that turn around on each other and open into lovely squares and plazas. Highlights include:

Barcelona History Museum – Barcelona has one of the best city history museums I’ve ever been to. It does an incredible job of explaining the history and importance of Barcelona and has over 4,000 square meters of Roman ruins located beneath the museum that you can walk through. It’s spectacular. There’s a free, detailed audio guide and descriptive explanations of what you’re seeing.

Picasso Museum – While I’m not a huge fan of most of Picasso’s later work, with over 3,000 pieces of art, this museum has a lot to see, and even I was happy.

The Gothic Cathedral – Located in the heart of the Barri Gotic, this Gothic cathedral was built on top of an 11th-century church. You can take an elevator up to the roof for sweeping views of the surrounding historic area.

Lunch: La Boqueria – This is the famous central food market in the Barri Gotic and one of the best places to grab lunch in the area. (Watch out for crowds!)

Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art – In the Raval area of town is the city’s modern art museum. They have hundreds of exhibits, especially from Spanish artists. If you love modern art, it’s worth a stop.

Night 1

Parc de la Ciutadella

On the complete other end of the Barri Gotic (it’s a beautiful walk through the historic streets, so you’ll enjoy it) is the Parc de la Ciutadella. Gaudi designed the famous Cascada Fountain when he was an architecture student. On a warm day, I just like to sit and stare at the fountain. There’s also a zoo in the park and some short walking paths. Take a bottle of wine, grab some ham, and have a picnic.

Day 2
Food tour

Barcelona has some of the best food in Spain, and there’s no better way to spend your morning than learning about the food culture of the city. I strongly recommend Context Travel’s food tour, which takes you around the Barri Gothic and the food markets there to highlight the food history and delicacies of the region. One of the most informative and delicious tours I’ve been on in a while, it’s not the cheapest food tour in the city, but I got everything I paid for.

Beaches

No trip to Barcelona is complete without a visit to its famous beaches. After you’ve gorged on food, siesta all day on the beaches, work on your tan, and relax with all the locals who had the same idea. Day one was a busy one, so make day two relaxing.

Day 3

Gaudi

Gaudi is Barcelona’s most famous architect and is considered the father of the modernitsa architecture movement. His unique style, use of nature, and catalog of work draws a lot of attention and visitors to the city. You can find his work spread throughout the city, but in the Eixample area, you can visit these four big sites:

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Sagrada Familia, Park Güell, Casa Mila, Casa Batllo

Lunch – Take a breather (and a late lunch).

Walking tour– While still in the Eixample area, you can visit all the other modernista movement sites.While Gaudi was the most famous architect of the movement, Barcelona is full of modernista-style buildings by other great architects. You can identify the buildings by the red circle in front of them on the sidewalk. You can also take the Context Travel tour about the movement or simply download a mini walking guide (right) and do it yourself.

Night 3

Visit Placa d’Espanya at night (Thursday)

On Thursdays, the Placa d’Espanya has fountains and lights that line the street towards Montjuïc Hill. At the end is the Magic Fountain of Montjuïc, which puts on a spectacular light and water show. Afterwards, walk up the hill to the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya for an expansive view of the city. This is also a great place to take a date. Very romantic!

Day 4
Harbor Cable Car

The 1450-meter long harbor aerial tramway with red cars connects Montjuic and Barceloneta. It starts near the beach on top of the 78-meter tower and takes you all the way to Montjuïc Hill.

Montjuïc Hill – When you arrive on the hill from the cable car, you’ll be able to enjoy a good view of the city and visit the Castell de Montjuïc (a large 18th-century fortress), as well as gardens, a Spanish village, and some Olympic stadiums. There’s a lot to do here, so you’ll have plenty of choices.

Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya- The Catalunyas take regional pride very seriously. They’re Catalunyas first, Spaniards second, if at all. It was no surprise to me then to find a whole museum dedicated to art of the region. Since it’s high on a hill, you can use the museum’s patio to take pretty epic photos of the city.

Day 5

Relax

On your last day in Barcelona, relax and just enjoy the city. Every city visit needs a free day where you can just slow down and not feel rushed. Use this day to do whatever you want.

Suggestions:

Hit the beach again – work on your bronze a little more.
See anything you haven’t seen – didn’t get time to visit some other sites, museums, or walk through some neighborhoods? Spend your afternoon doing that!
Eat a ton – you can never have enough food in Barcelona.
Drink lots of sangria –every restaurant has its on take on Barcelona’s famous sangria. Try them all!

Other things to do:
Barcelona hosts many other activities beyond just the normal picture-taking sightseeing:

See a soccer match: The first football game I ever saw was in Barcelona. It was FC Barcelona versus Valencia. I still have the shirt I bought that day. Barcelona’s two teams are Espanyol and FC Barcelona (one of the top in the world).

Learn to cook – Since Barcelona is such a food-centric city, if the normal sights and activities bore you, take a food class. There are many one-day cooking classes offered.

Day trip to Figueres – This region is home to Dalí, and you can take a day trip to Figueres, where you can visit the Dalí museum featuring some of his most famous works.

For more suggested eating, check out these places:

• Cerveseria Catalana, Carrer de Mallorca, 236- http://www.yelp.com/biz/cervecer%C3%ADa-catalana-barcelona-2
• La Fonda, Escudellers, 10 – www.lafonda-restaurant.com
• Cal Pep, Plaça de les Olles, 8 http://www.calpep.com
• Allium Restaurant, Carrer del Call, 17 – www.alliumrestaurant.es
• Pinotxo, La Boqueria – http://pinotxobar.com
• Can Majo,Almirante Aixada, 23 http://www.canmajo.es

For your Summer vacation you could squeeze in the real highlights of Barcelona in two or three days, but taking five (or even six) for the above itinerary gives you enough time to gorge on Iberian ham, tapas, and sangria while not rushing around.

Studying abroad this semester in Barcelona, there are a few tips I wish I had known when I first arrived: Barcelona moves slowly—dinner’s at 9, you’re early to the bar if it’s before 2am, and everyone sleeps late and loves their siesta. And since this city moves slowly, so should you. Sleep late, take breaks, eat lots, don’t rush your visit, and just enjoy Barcelona—at a Spaniard’s pace!

I thought I’d save the best, in my opinion of course, for last. If you find yourself vacationing in Barcelona this Summer and are looking to see some incredible street art, there is no better way to  tour this vibrant city and its culture than a Barcelona’s famous street art tour!

Whether you want to see

Barcelona Street Art Tours: http://barcelonastreetstyletour.com

The Age of “Youtubers”

Thinking about quitting your day job? This may be some inspiration for you. Apparently, quite a few lifestyle “YouTubers” are raking in more money in a month than a lot of people make in a year. AdAge estimated the monthly earnings of some of the top vloggers (video-bloggers) on YouTube, and then ranked them. And, these video-bloggers,  many of them are twenty-something’s or younger, are pulling in insane cash flow.

Most of the more successful vloggers are focused on lifestyle, fitness, and beauty tutorials. On the beauty side,  a vlogger named Yuya is the top earner, making over $41,000 per month. By comparison, according to Fashionista’s 2014 survey on jobs in the fashion industry, a copy editor on a successful magazine makes a little more like $40,000 a year. Grav3yardgirl and Zoella, also female lifestyle vloggers, round out the top three, bringing home $32,000 and $27,000 monthly, respectively.

Every country has their own YouTube stars. There’s a similar trend in Asia with vloggers who make just as much money as the aforementioned ones in the US.

For example, Kanna and Akira are two Japanese sisters who, with their parents’ help, make videos of themselves playing with and using a variety of toys and make-it-yourself candy and baked goods.

These young YouTuber’s have an impressive $165,000-$1.65 million estimated yearly income after YouTube’s 45% cut, 265,000 total subscribers, and 403 million total views.

It’s incredible because a vlogger never really creates products unless they’re a DIY kind of vlogger, but they share tips and bascially build their own fan-base that follows them purely for their thoughts and tutorials and opinions.

A survey conducted by Variety last year found that YouTube stars scored significantly higher than traditional celebrities across a range of characteristics and were considered to have the “highest correlation to influencing purchases among teens. YouTubers were judged to be more engaging, extraordinary and relatable than mainstream stars, who were rated as being smarter and more reliable”, the magazine reported.

Where does all this money come from? Aside from advertising, plenty of these vloggers have endorsement deals and side projects. Zoella, for example, released her first novel last year, with a second one already in progress. And, of course, there are all the paid placements and appearances. The vlogger industry is a difficult market to crack of course, but one that is incredibly lucrative once you do.

To put it simply, it’s really all about how many viewers you can draw in and YouTube pays these vloggers out based on their view count because they include ads in their uploads. Once these vloggers obtain a certain amount of channel subscribers and views per video, they also get to use facilities provided by YouTube to film their videos. Most of these viewers/fans are teenagers or women in their early 20’s gushing in their comments about how they want to be like the vlogger, meet them, or say all kinds of things anything to get these YouTuber’s to acknowledge them. Zoella can upload a video talking about her day, what she ate for dinner, what time she went to sleep last night, etc. and you can be sure that video will have more than a million views in a matter of a couple days. 

Street Art in Seville

Seville, as a street art enthusiast, is absolutely one of my favorite cities I’ve visited while studying abroad which, was a rather surprising realization. I was immediately drawn to the vibe of the city, a combination of typical Spanish features such as fabulous tapas bars, wine, and flamenco dance but also a vibrant young art scene which I initially noticed when I walked by a large wall by the Guadalquivir River filled with some of the most creative street art we’ve seen anywhere in Europe (below).

As I explored more, I  found myself surrounded by street art in Seville. Particularly graffiti is all over the the place. It is on walls, buildings, blinds, even the garbage containers in the street are full of graffiti and tags. I hadn’t expected to see any street art in such a quaint-looking city so i was thrilled by this discovery. I was so hungry for information about who the artists are and curious as to where exactly the art comes from in the very apparent, vibrant street art culture in Seville.

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Uniquely, Seville’s street art encompasses every single style and form of street art there is. Like the rest of the art world, there are different types of graffiti artists, some realistic, others like to incorporate history into their work, some prefer to make their artwork cartoonish, a few protest against the government in their art, and then there are the ones who just like to fill up space. Almost like a museum collection, you can find examples of every single type in Seville despite its small size.

Here are a couple more pictures I took of my very favorite pieces:

The art on this wall (above) has a little bit a Sevillian history in it. In the middle of each of the lamps is a famous building in Seville. From left to right: La Giralda, Torre del Oro, and Las Setas. The lamps signify the ones usually present during the Feria – a popular fiesta in Seville.

The art pictured above in this image I was initially attracted to because it stuck out with such powerful colors against a background of buildings of all the same neutral beige. Later, I was informed by my friend studying in Seville that there are about four graffitis of this exact unicorn around the city and it represents the artist’s resentment and retaliation against the Spanish government.

The street art has a very powerful way to modernize and add a new sense of contemporary art to an otherwise richly historical city. Seville is the perfect example of that impact. If you’re want to see exactly what I’m talking about, but don’t necessarily have time to visit Seville in the near future, I recommend you watch the video below to get a real taste of the incredible culture of street art in this magnificent city.

Street Art in Portugal

In the wake of the global growth of interest in art in the streets, one form of tourism that may soon be blowing up could be graffiti excursions, street art sightseeing, or even mural journeying. New York and Los Angeles have been a magnet for years for aerosol artists and street art-enthusiasts but visiting Lisbon, and experiencing its street art first hand, was just the opposite. When planning your trip to Portugal, I highly suggest including a hunt of the elusive wheat-pastes, stencils, and fill-ins in order to capture an exotic local feel than any museum could offer. And why not take a few pictures with your favorite works by street artists that you only previously saw on Instagram or other street art blogs? When I told my friends my plan to find some of the work I’d researched, they scoffed, looking at me like I was crazy to think there was any street art worth seeing in Lisbon. Perhaps because of the way the city is designed, or because it was a somewhat random tour I’d planned on taking with multiple destinations that they’d never heard of. I thought I would be the only tourist in Lisbon seeking to discover this street art suggested through other street art enthusiasts but I was wrong. Urban or contemporary, this project has a tremendous following that I had not anticipated. I decided to take my friends on my own, self made “art tour” last week in Lisbon, Portugal and in preparing for the trip, I started by using the “Underdogs” and the local “Vhils” project as some of the references for where to begin (as they had been the most mentioned in all the research I’d done). “Underdogs is an international working platform based in Lisbon, Portugal that aims at creating space within the contemporary art scene for artists connected with the new languages of urban visual culture,” say the organizers, and they have curated a program of some large-scale pieces around the city in a manner that makes them seem like the installations have been there for decades, rather than a handful of years. Our “tour” began unexpectedly when immediately after leaving the airport, our taxi driver unintentionally drove us by the famous block-long Os Gemeos, Blu, Sam3, Ericailane, and Lucy Mclauchlan mural. I told the taxi driver that I was in town to take pictures of art in the streets and, after a slight translation struggle, he mentioned I should find one street where a group of artists painted a series of murals about the local government administration which I later found out was one of the famous Vhils collaborations that I’d planned on seeing. As with any vacation, planning your means of transportation is key. My friends and I soon realized, Lisbon is not quite as pedestrian friendly as other cities, mainly because of the topography and many hills. So, for your personal street art tour, I suggest using public transit or taxis to get to most of these locations. One of the first spots we went to was the harbor area for the Pixel Pancho and Vhils collaborations. After that, with intentions to continue our exploration, we went to the Belem Tower and a How & Nosm mural. The next day, we decided to take a taxi to the area where I had located some C215 work. The taxi driver asked why we were going to that location/area, and I explained, as best I could, that I was writing a blog about art in the street. Once we arrived at the location we asked him if he wanted to come with us to see the art. We, perhaps our driver in particular, were all incredibly impressed with the C215 mural. He said he’d bring driving in town for 25 years and had never been on that street or never seen the artwork. That evening we took a ferry over to Almada with a great view of the 25 de Abril Bridge (the same architect who designed the Golden Gate Bridge. You can walk up the coast toward the bridge and there are two small restaurants that make for a perfect sunset meal or drink. The waterfront is covered with graffiti and is a good representation of the art in the area. I don’t normally give travel suggestions aside from street art but I have to recommend taking a trip up to the castles in Sintra once you’ve finished your street art tour. It’s a 30-minute train ride from the center of Lisbon and it is worth every minute. The castles are breathtaking and definitely should not be missed. Sintra, including the train ride, was one of the highlights of our entire stay. The train ride gave me an opportunity to see all the trackside graffiti that is quite common in Europe that I otherwise would have missed. I’ve come to learn, highway and train-track graffiti are very common, much different than what we are accustomed to in the US.