Estudo sobre o suporte tecnológico para edição de áudio na produção audiovisual para mídias sociais digitais por não especialistas

Abstract

A greater availability of digital devices, such as smartphones, and of internet connection associated with human need for communication have favored a significant increase in consumption and production of audiovisual content in/for digital social media. If in traditional media the content production was under the responsibility of specialist professionals, in digital social media the performance of non-specialist producers (people without specific training and experience) began to gain space. However, this new audience performance in the audiovisual production process is still little known. Thus, this work had the general aim to investigate technological support for audiovisual audio editing for digital social media by nonspecialists. Therefore, we define the following specific goals: (1) to investigate whether and how non-experts participate in production process of their own channels on Youtube and Instagram; (2) to investigate demands of audiovisual content producers for digital social media; and (3) to assess whether and which usability factors of the Audacity audio editing software may be hindering the audiovisual production process by non-specialist producers. Three studies were carried out to achieve these goals. Study I was a semi-structured interview with nonspecialist producers about their content production processes for their YouTube and Instagram channels. Study II was a questionnaire (survey) on the demands of content producers for digital social media, particularly those related to difficulties in editing videos and audios. Study III evaluated usability of the Audacity software with a usability test and the SUS (System Usability Scale) questionnaire from the observation of volume, cutting, noise and distortion editing tasks in audio. As main results, it was identified that non-specialist producers tend to get involved in various activities of the content production process for digital social media, in particular in the edition of what was recorded. Some of them, however, reported avoiding editing recorded content. Among the various demands reported, content producers claimed to face more difficulties in editing audio than videos. When evaluating Audacity's interface, it was identified that usability problems may indeed be related to editing difficulties reported by content producers. Thus, it became clear that there are opportunities for improvement in the Audacity interface to adequately support non-specialist content producers for digital social media.