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Week 10, Finally, Social Media Governance.

The required reading for this week is on the so-called snowflake generation, and how young teens and university students in Britain tend to get annoyed with what was said more easily than previous generations. The issue this article aimed to tackled is that the snowflake generation isn’t the problem, but it is however the rampant rise of harassment caused by the adoption of the internet. The problem isn’t that the current generation are more easily offended, it is that they have more to be offended by, with the internet and the change is social perception around topics such as the LGBTQIA+, people have started to show who they really are on the internet more, due to the large divide in the world on these topics, people are less accepting than they should be. These people that do not feel the same way as one another, use the internet to spew hateful words onto each other and with how easy the internet is to use this has led to a rapid increase in online harassment. Although yes, people do tend to be more easily offended, that doesn’t mean they are a snowflake generation, people just tend to take disrespect less now, I mean realistically no one is going to stand for having their opinion challenged in a demeaning and rude way.

The additional reading I’m looking into this week is on Andrew Tate, who built a platform off of promoting toxic masculinity to an impressionable group. He flaunts his wealth and his women, then provides his followers with a way they can be like him. This has led to a rise in so called alpha males that do not respect anyone but themselves in a hope that they too can be like their hero Andrew Tate. He promotes ideas that a woman is no more than just an object, which is an archaic approach to anything and a general idea that society moved on from ages ago. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and this man promotes hateful ideas and bad lifestyle choices, he then gets a platform because some teenagers and young adults see him as a god like figure. Dumb.

Haslop, C., O’Rourke, F., & Southern, R. (2021). #NoSnowflakes: The toleration of harassment and an emergent gender-related digital divide, in a UK student online culture. Convergence, 27(5), 1418–1438

Ben Rich and Eva Bujalkagence (2023)  'The draw of the ‘manosphere’: understanding Andrew Tate’s appeal to lost men',Links to an external site. The Conversation February 13.

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Week 9 Gaming Communities, Social Gaming and Live Streaming

The required reading for this week talks about the indie game scene in Melbourne and how due to the fact that no major game producers are based out of Australia this has really allowed the indie game scene to flourish. The last major publisher in Australia, THQ, disbanded in 2011, since then the game scene in the country has been reliant on our huge indie scene, with commercial hits such as Hollow Knight and Untitled Goose Game saving the country with so much gaming history from obscurity. The indie scene in Melbourne specifically has been backed strongly by the state government who value art and such items at a high level, sponsoring events such as the Melbourne International Games Week, this has allowed small developers with small budgets to flourish and compete in a market dominated by multi-billion-dollar companies and in a country with a relatively small footprint in the gaming industry. The reading concludes by saying that the multi-indie scenes in Melbourne may just be one whole thing with smaller sects and I tend to agree, although yes, each developer has a different story and idea, at the end of the day they are all game makers, who just love making games and in that fashion they all share a similarity.

The additional reading I’ve chosen for this week is about the rise of live streaming video games. Video game live streaming is a concept that started to really gain popularity early to mid-2010’s the goal is to provide individuals with a platform in which they can share their gameplay without it having to be recorded and uploaded, similar to live tv, live streaming aimed to simplify the consumption of video game content. As livestreaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube Gaming have developed and evolved the idea of live streaming has expanded beyond just gaming to many forms of content. This ranges from of course video games, to creating music, IRL streams and many more. The overall effect of live streaming in gaming is that communities have grown closer together and people are more interconnect while gaming than ever before.

Keogh, B 2021, 'The Melbourne indie game scenes: value regimes in localized game development' (Chapter 13), Download 'The Melbourne indie game scenes: value regimes in localized game development' (Chapter 13),in P Ruffino (ed), Independent Videogames: Cultures, Networks, Techniques and Politics, Routledge, pp.209-222.

Taylor, TL 2018, ‘Broadcasting ourselves’ (chapter 1), in Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, Princeton University Press, pp.1-23

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Week 8 Instagram Filters.

This week’s main reading focuses on the negative implications of the snapchat filters and how they affect beauty standards. The problem with these filters is they change the facial shape of people by doing things like thinning the nose, sharpening the jaw line, and adding blush to the cheeks to give people a false representation of what they actually look like. The big thing these filters do though, is white washing, where they take the skin tone of a darker skinned person and lighten it, everyone has their opinions on why this is done, with most concluding that it is inherently racist, trying to make everyone look Caucasian. The reading goes on to talk about how these filters make it impossible to look bad and how they promote body dysmorphia as a result of people looking in the mirror and noticing they do not look like their filtered photo. The main take away here is that filters are bad, and they provide nothing beneficial unless they look funny, my personal favourite is the one that turns you into a head of broccoli, funny as fuck if you ask me.

The additional reading, I chose to look into is about how we use technology to change how we see ourselves, more importantly how carry devices around has affected how people act and behave. The article talks about how filters are inherently biased towards lighter skin tones and how this affects people day-to-day. The article talks about how everyone is using filters and thus as people consumer this media you really have to wonder what a person has chosen to include or leave out, and how filters and other things allow people to change themselves in ways that the real person looks different to how they present themselves online. Filtering is also a broad term that affects more than just photos, you can filter spam from your emails, filter comments and filter your feed, not only do people have control over how you see them, but you as an individual have control over what you see, how you see it and when you see it. Whether done intentionally or an algorithm has decided what they want you to see, any piece of digital media you consume has been somewhat filtered, some more than others, but everything you see has passed through a filter of some sort to get to you.

Barker, Jessica. (2020). 'Making-up on mobile: The pretty filters and ugly implications of Snapchat'. Download 'Making-up on mobile: The pretty filters and ugly implications of Snapchat'.Fashion, Style & Popular Culture. 7. 207-221

Rettberg J.W. (2014) 'Filtered Reality'. Download 'Filtered Reality'.In: Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

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Week 7 Digital Citizenship and Health Education

Week 7 Digital Citizenship and Health Education

Week 7s required reading is on platform governance, more specific how algorithms determine what content creators get the spotlight at any specific time. The introduction of the reading starts by talking about how higher-ups at Meta constantly ignore the adverse effects that social media is having on the current generation. Combined, the reading goes on to talk about how there are so many creators, and the business is growing quickly. The problem is a predetermined algorithm effectively selects what and will not be popular, with creators using terms such as ‘shadow banned’ which basically means they have been blacklisted from the algorithm and their content will no longer be shown. This has been happening a lot on apps such as TikTok and websites like YouTube, creators on YouTube have faced drastic change as the algorithm has been unsubscribing inactive users, as well as removing creators’ videos from sub boxes, although YouTube has never come out and agreed with these claims, creators have been facing problems like this for years. Basically, the reading talks about how the ‘algorithm’ is bad for mental health because someone can put in a lot of work and not see the benefits because it isn’t their time.

The additional reading, I chose to look into this week is about how social media has been used to promote a ‘porn chic’ aesthetic and sexualized labour. The reading starts of by talking about how the influencer category is dominated by women and their bodies play a big part in how they market and promote themselves. Sexual labour refers to work that inexplicitly becomes associated with sexuality and sexual pleasure. This came around because companies need to draw business one way or another and they thought an effective marketing strategy was to use pretty women to sell their products. This idea came about in a time when women were more objectified in society, an example of this is the coca cola lady that was plastered on a lot of their advertising material. This girl was picked as she is what would have been deemed at the time an ideal woman, she was blonde, pretty, and not adverse to wearing a swimsuit. Now sexualised labour, involves people using their body to sell products in a digital world, using content creators from TikTok that have a large following to sell their products.

Duffy BE and Meisner, C 2022. “Platform governance at the margins: Social media creators’ experiences with algorithmic (in)visibility,” Media, Culture & Society.

Drenten et al ‘Sexualized labour in digital culture: Instagram influencers, porn chic and the monetization of attention’ Download ‘Sexualized labour in digital culture: Instagram influencers, porn chic and the monetization of attention ‘Gender, Work and Organization

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Week 6 Digital Citizenship Case Study: Social Media Influencers and the Slow Fashion Movement

Week 6s reading is a case study on the slow fashion movement and the effect social media influencers have on the reception of said movement. Slow fashion is the practice of sustainably purchasing clothing, surprisingly (not) it is the opposite of fast fashion, which is the creation of clothing products in an unstainable way with poor business and ethical practices, usually done by major corporations such as Shein and CottonOn, basically, just businesses that think the faster they produce clothes the more money they can get, this business practice is true, logically, the faster you make clothes the more clothes you sell and because they all cost such little money to make the profit margin is bonkers but that isn’t the point, the point is it is ethically bad. Anywho, the case study goes into what makes people buy into slow fashion, things such as their values, attitudes and motivations are mentioned, it goes into how people are somewhat influenced by how their clothing is produced but unlike other products the actual aspect of wearing it influences people’s decisions also, it goes onto say cultural motivations play a big part in the movement also.

The additional reading I chose to conquer this week is on just how bad Shein really is from a sustainability standpoint. From a business standpoint Shein is incredible, 600,000 products basically instant production of anything someone orders, it is truly a feat of excellence. However, to create products nearly instantly they have to really and I mean really not care about their workers, they pay them a barely liveable wage, make them work incredibly long hours and never get days off. On top of that, the clothing they produce has been known to have high levels of toxic chemicals and also be based on stolen designs. All around they are terrible for the environment and not great for the fashion industry. They make alright products unsustainably and they are made by workers in terrible conditions, it is next to impossible to see how this business is even remotely good for people, it is however incredibly good for investors.

Domingos, Mariana, Vera Teixeira Vale, and Silvia Faria. (2022). "Slow Fashion Consumer Behavior: A Literature Review" Download "Slow Fashion Consumer Behavior: A Literature Review" Sustainability 14, no. 5: 2860. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052860

DW Planet A 'If you think fast fashion is bad, check out SHEIN' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4km0Cslcpg&ab_channel=DWPlanetA

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Week 5, Digital Citizens

Digital citizenship refers to people who use the internet to communicate to one another. You can have both good and bad digital citizens, people who cyberbully, bad, people who post tech fixes for windows on YouTube, good, you get the idea, responsibly using the internet allows everyone with access to have a fun and enjoyable time. Now, why is this important you might ask, honestly, being a bad person is real life isn’t very chill, so why would doing it behind a screen be any better. The point of this weeks reading looks at digital citizenship through the lens of education, the point of this week’s reading is to demonstrate how although there are different ways of looking at digital citizenship, no matter which way you look at it, the internet should be used to better peoples lives not make them worse.

One of the additional readings for this week discusses #auspol, a hashtag on twitter that talks about Australian politics, #auspol has been around for ages, the purpose of it is to create a discussion space for the shambolic Australian political system and some of their weird and wacky decisions. Look, like anything on Twitter the discussion space often turns into a toxic cesspool, however, it still, most of the time at least, provides effective conversations on the current political climate, that’s its purpose. Unfortunately, its for Australians, a group of people known for sarcasm and their reaction to the joke of a political system that the country has been facing since 2007. Going on twitter and using this hashtag allows individuals to demonstrate some level of care, however at the end of the day it often just results in some form of abuse being thrown at a political figure, the number of good discussions is a lot, it is just a shame that the country barely cares and does not see an issue with the current way things operate.

Moonsun Choi & Dean Cristol (2021) ' Download 'Digital citizenship with intersectionality lens: Towards participatory democracy driven digital citizenship education’, Download Digital citizenship with intersectionality lens: Towards participatory democracy driven digital citizenship education', Theory Into Practice

#auspol: The Twitter tag that Australia can't do without, Mashable March 6 2018 https://mashable.com/2016/03/21/twitter-australia-auspol/#4tvfXtsZUEqV

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Week 4, Reality TV

The topic for week 4 is reality tv. Reality tv is a genre of tv shows where a bunch or regular people are filmed in certain scenarios for the entertainment of watchers at home. Reality tv as a genre has been around for as long as I’ve been alive and is often looked on as garbage television, the purpose is to entertain and in recent history it has become more and more dependant on fan interaction. With the rising popularity of social media, reality tv has become a form of content that is not reliant on the platform it is produced for, it has transcended television sets and become a whole entity in any digital spaces. Communities form online to discuss these shows and people share opinions on them, the goal with the shows now is to get people talking. It doesn’t matter if people speak positively or negatively about the show, getting ears and eyes on it is the most important thing in the current day reality tv.

As a result a lot of the reality has suffered, the people that go on these shows are no longer just regular people, these people have followings on social media and are sometimes already established ‘influencers’ the reality itself is doctored to get impressions now, the idea of Big Brother which initially took a group of random people and made them live together just does not happen now, the interactions between people are just designed to form drama.

The people that go on these programs do it just to gain a following, the prizes the show offer are meaningless in comparison to the exposure that some of the fan favourite contestants get, the idea now when you enter the show is to farm positive impressions so you can exist the show a micro-celebrity and get brand deals to support your life.

It is called rubbish tv for a reason, the stuff is just so consistently bad that it is an incredible watch even if you hate to admit it.

Deller, Ruth A, (2019) Extract:  'Chapter Six: Reality Television in an Age of Social Media' Download 'Chapter Six: Reality Television in an Age of Social Media'in Reality Television: The TV Phenomenon That Changed the World

Helen Wood (2022) ‘Big Brother is coming back – the reality TV landscape today will demand a more caring show’

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Week 3, Tumblr Case Study

The topic for week three is the reading of ‘Love the Skin You‘re In”: An Analysis of Women’s Self-Presentation and User Reactions to Selfies Using the Tumblr Hashtag #bodypositive’ from my understanding the reading is a deep dive into the content posted onto Tumblr with the hashtag body positivity. Tumblr is a social media platform founded in 2007 that acts as a personal blog for any of their 500 million plus users, although less popular nowadays then in the early 2010s when they peaked at 100 million daily posts in early 2014 to now averaging just 21 million a day. The website has gone through a change of identity of sorts, in 2018 a change in policy meant that NSFW content could no longer be posted to Tumblr, although the diminishing popularity had already started occurring this alienated another group of people who used the website.

This weeks reading focusses on the identity of the people who posted under the body positivity hashtag while going in a breaking down statistically what kind of people were posting under this hash tag. It aims to discuss body positivity and how social media plays a big part in the in the fight against body dysmorphia and other issues that since social medias insemination have plagued each platform respectively.

The additional reading, I chose this week is about teens living secret lives on Tumblr, Pizza, an infamous Tumblr user who created their account in early 2010 and grew an audience until one day their blog was deleted and no one knew why. The main point of this piece is talking about how individuals could use the platform to generate a following and become anonymous people in a digital sphere. These people’s blogs had no connection to them as an individual in real life and they used these public private spaces to talk about anything they wanted. It demonstrates how a person can show themself without needing a face, they can be anything they want on the internet.

Anne Reif, Insa Miller & Monika Taddicken (2022) “Love the Skin You‘re In”: An Analysis of Women’s Self-Presentation and User Reactions to Selfies Using the Tumblr Hashtag #bodypositive

Reeve, E. 2016 'The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens'Links to an external site., New Republic