alvarendraf-blog

[alvarendraf-blog]

Week 11: Global social media practice - case study on China

The Great Firewall of China

as we know that china is one of the biggest country with the biggest population in the world.  800 million people in china are using social media which is it’s 57.7% of their population (Chan 2019). However they cant access the normal social media like , Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or even Youtube ,because the government has create a firewall to block the access. China authorise the wide scope of substance utilizing the biggest arrangement of Censorship in the world, that also called as The Great Firewall. Incredible firewall is a consolidated accomplishment of both government screens and the innovation and media communications firms and it is compelled to force state's guidelines. Around 50,000 specialists are employed to force censorship, blocking rejected sites and convincing web indexes to sift through destructive substance. China announces that the limitations are chiefly about supporting social request just as defending national security. 

So, do people in China have any Social media?

Yes, they do! the social media that they use are their own social media that they have created.  In fact there are some studies says that chinese social media apps have more users that the western or international social media platform. i use Sina Weibo as an example, Sina Weibo is an alternative apps of twitter. Weibo has around 430 millions users where twitter just has 326 million users. there is one more big social media platform in china it is the chinese version of Whatsapp that called as Wechat. Wechat become a really popular messaging apps in china, this app can allow you to make payments, sell goods and services (Yuan 2018). 

Can we access the normal social media in china?

yes you can! you can use VPN to access the blocked social media in China. VPN (Virtual Proxy Network) help the user’s device to connect to a secure connection to other networks across the world or they will connect you to the best network. Hence, it allows users to access blocked websites from their home network (Sharma 2018).

The weakness of the great firewall of china

eventhough china has blocked the social media and  some websites with the biggest censorship system, people still can access it by using the VPN. because of that china has ordered three Chinese telecom companies to completely block all access to virtual private networks or VPNs by February 2018 (China moved to block internet VPN from 2018, 2018). but i create new problems for researchers or student because it is hard to find or search any refrences because they require VPN to access the website and also some university are protecting their data by using the VPN. so for me it is way better if china can let some platform to be accessible such as academic websites or maybe google scholar. 

references

Yuan, R 2018, ‘Know your chinese social media’, The New York Times, viewed 25 May 2019, <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/fashion/china-social-media-weibo-wechat.html>

China moves to block internet VPN from 2018, 2018, the guardian, viewed 25 May 2018, <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/11/china-moves-to-block-internet-vpns-from-2018>.

Chan, J 2019, All you need to know about the Chinese social media landscape in 2019, LinkFluence, viewed 24 May 2019, <https://www.google.com.my/amp/s/www.linkfluence.com/blog/chinese-social-media-landscape-2019%3fhs_amp=true>.

Sharma, A 2018, How to access blocked websites? — 13 working ways to bypass restrictions, FossBytes, viewed 24 May 2019, <https://fossbytes.com/how-to-access-blocked-websites-6-easy-ways/amp/

[alvarendraf-blog]

Week 10: Social Gaming

have you ever play online games or are you a gamers? have you ever play or heard about mobile legend, Apex legend , DOTA or have you ever played the games in facebook? so those games are social games.

what is social gaming?

so social gaming is Social games are structured activities with contextual rules through which users can participate in each other. Social games have to  be multiplayer and it must have one or more of the following functions: turn-based, based on social platforms, to provide users with identity and freedom (Nick O’Neill,2008).nowadays there are a lot of people playing social games to release their stress or maybe to interact with their friends because now there is an apps where gamers usually us it to chat in a group that called as Discord. 

in discord people can make a group chat that can be used to share the videos of the games or even to chat or call while they are playing games. 

The impact of social gaming

One of the most common benefit of social gaming is participatory culture. Gamers around the world with common interest get together in gaming communities and form social relationships with other players (Cade & Gates 2017). this can make the gamers have wider connection to other people all around the world. the other positive thing is it can improve the brain spatial skill.

Video games can help improve an individual’s spatial skills and are used for education and training. good spatial skills is important for people because it can help a person succeed in future.

For example, research found that by playing Tetris could improve spatial skills as the task in Tetris is similar to the performance of a spatial cognition task called ‘Mental Rotation Test’ where the individual is tested on their ability to rotate mental representations of 2D and 3D models (Choi & Feng 2017). and also it playing online games can boost the self esteem because the rewarding sense of accomplishment of winning or levelling up (Wang & Sun 2011).

Bad sides of social gaming

other than the good things, social gaming can cause some bad things too. it can cause addiction and it can make people to become introvert. there is one of my friend that really active socially before but when he got addicted to the online games he start to close himself and just waste his time in his room playing games. and he just communicate with others through Discord or the games. his academic marks also got affected because he just focus on playing games and does not really care wit his assignments. so it way better if we can use social gaming wisely and not get addicted to it. play it to release stress but dont use it too much

refrences

Wang, H & Sun, CT 2011, ‘Game reward systems: gaming experiences and social meanings’, Digital Games Research Association, pp. 1-3, 2011.

Choi, HS, Jing, F 2017, ‘Using video games to improve spatial skills’, in R Zheng & MK Gardner (eds), Handbook of research on serious games for educational purposes, IGI Global, USA, p. 94.

Nick O’Neill,(2008). What Exactly are Social Games? Available at: https://www.adweek.com/digital/social-games/

Cade, R & Gates, J 2017, ‘Gamers and video game culture: an introduction for counselors’, The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, vol. 25, no. 1, p. 71.

[alvarendraf-blog]

Week 9: Fandom and Fan Activism

before we know what is fandom, we have to admit that we are a fan of something right? it can be our favorite singer, actress or even a fan of a place that we usually go. so what is fandom?  

  “Fandom” itself has a wide definition. It can be defined as a group of people that are gather by similar beliefs and interests (Locke 2017) but it depends on the perception of other people, some people also inter prate fandom diffrently even within the fans. some people think fans or the fandom itself are weird because some fans can be overreact to the person that they admire, even some people can cr or even passed out just by seeing their idol. some fans will spend a lot of money to buy the idol accessory and they will use it everyday. some of my friends are also a big fan of anime, she watch anime everyday an also a big fan of japanese anime songs. and sometimes the way she show her interest in anime are by doing the cosplay or becoming a costume player. she can be satisfied by imitating her anime idol.

However, there are some bad side of fandom. 

Examples of the bad sides are isolation, addiction, pedophilia and squandering money. some fans that are really addicted to anime can isolated themselves from their social life because they prefer to spend their time by just watching anime or thinking about living in the anime world. there are some anime that showing a love story between an adult guy and a little girl or an a adult that look like a child where it is called as “loli” but this become one of the motive to become a pedophile. 

there are some cases of the over reacted fans that can make the idol in danger, for example the john lennon case where he got killed by his fan. 

so there are a good and bad things with fandom also.

what is fans activism?

according to  Jenkins (2012)  fan activism as “forms of civic engagement and political participation that emerge from within fan culture itself” 

for example 

protest initiated by the enthusiasts of English football club, Liverpool, with the hashtag #walkouton77 (Olesen 2018, p.118). Amid the 77th moment of the 2-2 draw against Sunderland, roughly 10,000 enthusiasts of Liverpool left the arena to challenge changes to ticket costs at Anfield. The most costly ticket amid the 2016/2017 season had expanded from £59 to £77. This protest denotes the first walk out in the club's history. One of the proprietor of Liverpool FC (LFC), Fenway Sports Group (FSG) remove the recommended ticket structure which is £77, and apologized to fans and guaranteed to fix the ticket costs for in any event 2 seasons (later reached out to 3 seasons).

refrences

Locke, M 2017, 5 things I learned studying fandom, Medium, viewed 30 May 2019, <https://medium.com/s/5-things-i-learned/5-things-i-learned-studying-fandom-2bb857fdef03>

Olesen, M 2018, “#walkouton77 Football fan activism in Premier League”, Journal of Media and Communication Research, vol.34, no.65, p.118.

[alvarendraf-blog]

Week 8: Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding

in this modern world, social media has become a platform for us to get more information and what is happening around us. people can be give reaction to all of the information. 

what is Crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing  is a sort of participative online action where an individual, an establishment, a non-benefit association, or organization proposes to a gathering of people of changing information, and so on the willful endeavor of an errand (Bassi et.al. 2019). 

for example is Waze. Waze is one of the biggest crowdsourcing company It's an application that enables clients to report congested roads and naturally gives headings for the best course to take. Waze publicly supports data by measuring drivers speed to decide car influxes and by requesting that clients report street terminations.  (Kearns, 2019)

It's an extraordinary application that demonstrates a committed group is here and there each of the an organization needs. It additionally pulled in some huge name financial specialists and suitors.

So why crowdsourcing is a good thing?

according to (Brabham 2012)  Crowdsourcing can help public to be more creative and open to new innovation and creativity by participating with the technologist hence the rise of collective intelligence. other than that, it can  engages more communication by allowing citizens to engage in contributions to the democracy process.

and Publicly supporting is bigger than a movement. In the decades to come, it will be the new DNA of our people  in the advanced and physical world. I'm a strong adherent to of world abundance. It troubles me that we are as yet battling incorrectly battles essentially in light of the fact that we are screwed over thanks to old mentalities. Today, the worldwide economy keeps running based on shortage and dread. These mentalities are deadly for society. Publicly supporting can be an extraordinary empowering influence to push us toward the prosperity of each human on earth, basically by seeking the group for supply.As a method for drawing in individuals, numerous publicly supporting stages utilize difficulties to take an interest in as regularly as you like. This opens members to solve various issues. This can upgrade versatility and critical thinking aptitudes. As I've said ordinarily, publicly supporting is about interests, gifts, aptitudes and unmistakable assets. Early this year, Women of NASA maker Maia Weinstock roused another age with a LEGO toy, and in only two months, her creation was sold out on Amazon. Remember that Maia's experience is in science news coverage, and she is as of now the representative editorial manager of MIT News. Presently we can begin to consider different potential outcomes with publicly supporting. (Harvey, 2019)  

what is crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding is a new way of funding, diffrent than the traditional method of borrowing money. It is where projects by creative grassroots are funded through websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo (Benett, Chin & Jones 2014).

The Benefits of Crowdfunding

there are few benefit of doing crowdfunding 

first is Reach – By using a crowdfunding platform l, you can access to thousands of accredited investors who can see, interact with, and share your fundraising campaign.

Presentation – By creating a crowdfunding campaign, you go through the invaluable process of looking at your business from the top level—its history, traction, offerings, addressable market, value proposition, and more—and boiling it down into a polished, easily digestible package.

PR & Marketing – From the time you launch , you can use social media to campaign and promote and promote. it can be email newsletters, and other online marketing tactics.  you can double down by steering traffic to your website and other company resources.

Validation of Concept – Presenting your concept or business to the masses affords an excellent opportunity to validate and refine your offering. As potential investors begin to express interest and ask questions, you’ll quickly see if there’s something missing that would make them more likely to buy in.

Efficiency – One of the best things about online crowdfunding is its ability to centralize and streamline your fundraising efforts. By building a single, comprehensive profile to which you can funnel all your prospects and potential investors, you eliminate the need to pursue each of them individually. So instead of duplicating efforts by printing documents, compiling binders, and manually updating each one when there’s an update, you can present everything online in a much more accessible format, leaving you with more time to run your business instead of fundraising.

References

https://www.fundable.com/learn/resources/guides/crowdfunding/what-is-crowdfunding

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/307438

Bennett, L, Chin, B & Jones B 2015, ‘Crowdfunding: a new media & society special issue’, New Media & Society, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 142.

Bassi, H, Lee, CJ & Misener L 2019, ‘Exploring the characteristics of crowdsourcing: an online observational study’, Journal of Information Science, p. 2, 2019.

Brabham, DC 2012, ‘The effectiveness of crowdsourcing public participation in a planning context’, First Monday, vol. 17, no. 12, 2012.

Kearns, K. (2019). 9 Great Examples of Crowdsourcing in the Age of Empowered Consumers - Tweak Your Biz. [online] Tweak Your Biz. Available at: https://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/9-great-examples-crowdsourcing-age-empowered-consumers [Accessed 30 May 2019].

[alvarendraf-blog]

WEEK 7: TROLLING AND SOCIAL MEDIA CONFLICT

[alvarendraf-blog]

Week 6 : Digital citizenship

Digital Citizenship: Activism and Protest

Nowadays social media is one of a necessity for some people. A lot of people can live without social media, and that is why some people use social media as an effective platform for activism, and it usually called as digital activism or cyber activism. But what is digital activism? According to Fuentes (2014) digital activism is where a form of activism take action on issues of society by using the Internet and digital media. Digital activism usually works in a big group to voice opinions together and disturb existing issues for change in social media and it is also can be an online petition to support one issues. I will take an example of an issues that become so famous in Indonesia and globally because of the digital activism and protest.

#justiceforaudrey

This hashtag has become a viral and trending topic in Indonesia and some countries in a night. This case begin where there is a sexual harassment happen in Pontianak, West Borneo. The case begin where a 14-year-old girl named Audrey was brutally attacked by 12 high school students, Audrey was believed to have been targeted after her cousin, who is the ex-boyfriend of one of the alleged assaulters had a relationship that not work really well. The chronologist is where the perpetrator assumed to slammed Audrey’s head on an asphalt road, kicked her stomach multiple times, choked her and poured water over her. One of the suspects purportedly tried to force her finger in the victim’s genitalia (Choy, 2019). This chronologist was uploaded by her cousins in twitter and become viral. it has made a lot of people not just in Indonesia but also other countries get trigged on social media and there are more then 3 million people have signed the petition in change.org. people start to insult and berate the perpetrator in their social media even some people hack their social media. other than that it also make a lot of people tweet and post pictures or video to support Audrey in social media such as Instagram and twitter by adding the #justiceforaudrey.  

A lot of social media influencer even celebrities also share it in their social media. One of the celebrities is Atta Halilintar, one of the biggest you tubers in Indonesia with 14 million subscribers. He went to visit Audrey in Pontianak and give her some money and motivation for Audrey. But after the police do the medical check-up and also post mortem they didn’t find any sign of harassment in the genitalia and some part of her body.  it makes a lot of people become mad at her and make a new hashtag against her and It also become viral #audreyjugabersalah. (developer, 2019)

From this case we can see that digital activism can be a very effective way to help and change people live but it can be a problem in the same time if people just shout out, judge others and support something that just based on evidence in social media without doing a deep research on it or wait for the investigation from the police. People nowadays are easy to trust something that viral social media without doing any research. So people have to use digital activism in a smart and wisely to avoid another problem or misperception in the future. 

References

https://www.change.org/p/poldakalbar-segera-berikan-keadilan-untuk-audrey-justiceforaudrey

Fuentes, MA 2019, Digital activism, Britannica, viewed 14 May 2019.

Choy, G. (2019). Brutal attack and sexual assault of Indonesian teen sparks outrage. [online] South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3005592/justiceforaudrey-indonesian-teenager-14-allegedly-bashed [Accessed 13 May 2019].

developer, m. (2019). Soal Kasus Audrey, Kemendikbud Imbau Pelajar Bijak Gunakan Medsos. [online] Mediaindonesia.com. Available at: https://mediaindonesia.com/read/detail/228779-soal-kasus-audrey-kemendikbud-imbau-pelajar-bijak-gunakan-medsos [Accessed 13 May 2019].

[alvarendraf-blog]

week 5 : political engagement

Nowadays social media has been used for a lot of purposes, and one of the purpose is for political engagement. The era of social media platform allows politicians to use social media as a place for them to campaign or build their self-brand. Some politician also use the social media where they can engage and communicate with larger audiences. There are some famous politician that have used and active in social media for political purpose, such as, Donald Trump, Jokowi, Barack Obama, etc.

What social media offer to politician?

Large Audience: Having a large audience on social media evens the playing     field for candidates who may not have as much funding, or as big a name as     their opponent. So if the candidates don’t have that much money to promote     themselves by renting some billboard to introduce themselves or campaign,     they can use social media for cheaper and effective platform. Example: PSI     a new party that made by youngster in Indonesia, most of their campaign     are using the social media because a s a new party in indonesia they don’t     have a lot of money for billboard all over indonesia. (Psi.id, 2019)

Feedback/Engagement:     One aspect that makes social media such a powerful communication tool is     the feedback aspect. Politician can communicate through society in their     social media so they can get critic and feedback there. And According     to (Murse 2019) political campaigns in social media can analyse viewer’s     information as a way of connecting with the audience 

Analytics:     Radio and Television did not give politicians an understanding of who was     watching/listening to them. Social media, on the other hand, uses     analytics software to give politicians an idea of the different     demographics who they are engaging

 In the other hand According to (Srnicek, 2016), In the age of ‘platform capitalism’ the users of social media platforms and the data that they have and create are becoming a product by some social media platforms to make profits from this advertising way. And this is also dangerous because this can be used by the political actors to exploited the data and even to change the truth of some new by paying he platform. It is going to be hard for people to see which news are the truth or which news that has been made to give a good brand for the political actor that have paid or this.

A lot of politicians also use the social media for attacking their political rival using hoax, for example in indonesia. In 2017 Ahok the first Christian and ethnically Chinese governor was attack by Islamic hardliners after his edited video appeared to show him insulting the verse in Quran. It cause hundreds of thousands of conservative Muslims onto the streets of Jakarta in major protests, and led  Ahok being jailed for blasphemy after losing the election to a Muslim challenger. The Muslim Cyber Army played a pivotal role in disseminating content attacking Ahok and non-Muslims. (Post, 2019)

 Refrences

Srnicek, N (2016) Platform Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. 

Murse, T 2019, ‘How social media changed politics’, ThoughtCo, viewed 1 April 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/how-social-media-has-changed-politics-3367534

Psi.id. (2019). PSI Public Policy Platform – Partai Solidaritas Indonesia. [online] Available at: htPost, T. (2019). Indonesia battles fake news as elections loom. [online] The Jakarta Post. Available at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/03/15/indonesia-battles-fake-news-as-elections-loom.html [Accessed 13 May 2019].tps://psi.id/berita/content/psi-public-policy-platform/?lang=en [Accessed 12 May 2019].

[alvarendraf-blog]

[alvarendraf-blog]

The Pinnacles - Australia (by Trevor Dobson) 

[alvarendraf-blog]

Tumblr is a social media or blog?

what is Tumblr? Tumblr is platform for blogging where you can also   Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos. a lot of people describe Tumblr as a microblog because there are a lot of people are using Tumblr for writing some short blogging and maybe quotes. The page set up on Tumblr is quiet similar to other social media networks. The users have to sign up for an account but if they just want to read the post they don’t have to make an account. To sign up you have to provide your email address, URL for your page, password and of course username. You can change the URLs address every time you want to change it, but it is way better to not change it too often because it can give a negative impact on SEO. In Tumblr you can custom your own design or you can choose from the list that Tumblr have provided and from other websites. Furthermore, the most of these themes can be adjusted in terms of the colours, the frame size and others. Nowadays people also use Tumblr as a media to share their design or pictures. Some people also share their private contents in Tumblr. You can also use Tumblr as a business media. A lot of people has made online stores in Tumblr because it is easier to make a good design for the online store in Tumblr and there are a lot of tools that can be used for business in Tumblr.

so, Tumblr is a social media or blogging platform?

For me Tumblr can be both. Why? Because you can use the social media tools and blogging tools in Tumblr. Not like the traditional blogging Style that full of words, Tumblr is more visual because the users can upload pictures, animated GIF or even video to their posts. In Tumblr you can find some similar tools that you can find in social media. For example there a messenger tools where the tumblr users can direct message the other users that they have followed and have followed them back, the ask tools where people can give questions to something that related to their blogs or even the like, comment and reblog tools in Tumblr that can make the users interact socially with other users. So in conclusion Tumblr can be used both as a social media and also as a blogging platform because the users can interact socially with other users other than just posting blogs.

Bibliography

Moreau, E. (2019). The Complete Beginner's Guide to Using Tumblr. [online] Lifewire. Available at: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-tumblr-4049305 [Accessed 8 May 2019].