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The curious case of China online...

China, with its ‘golden’ firewall, and communist politics seem a whole world away to me. I have many Chinese friends who seem completely normal, so much so it’s hard to imagine them coming from such a censored and controlled society.

Meeting and becoming friends with a Chinese person is such a culture show. Their speech and conversation mannerisms alone are enough to make you scratch your head in confusion. Take for instance greeting a friend. Often my Chinese friends will exclaim “Ah, you’re not dead yet!” or “You haven’t died yet!”. To a western person this may seem strange, but essentially this means that the person is glad to see your still alive and therefore around to see them.

Their online presence also sometimes makes you scratch your head. They have their own versions of social networks for practically everything we have: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube all have a Chinese equivalent. When I was growing up, I was at first confused as to why on Earth my friend Arthur wasn’t allowed have a Facebook page to keep in contact (we had to email). Later, in my teen years, I’m blown away by how sophisticated their social networking systems are and how widely used they are across the Chinese population.

Chinese social media has really humanised the China and its citizens for me. As a young child, I feared China, terrified that they were going to take over and execute everyone (as a child, the assumed execution rates in China were extremely high). Now I understand that they are very like us, with the same thoughts, feelings, and personalities we do as opposed to robots. It was one of those experiences that helped me assimilate into a much more diverse culture than the one I grew up in. Plus, I love the weird and wonderful video memes/trends and challenges that come out of Chinese social media. Such a laugh.

Despite the golden firewall attempting to keep us apart, it’s instead given me a much greater appreciation of the youth culture in China, something I would have never experienced if not for the Chinese made and operated social networks. It hasn’t been infiltrated by western culture, and that makes it so much more interesting than my standard Facebook feed.

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Not that I ever quit, but it is an interesting take on the dwindling player numbers that led to the break down of the community

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Yeah I probably spend hundreds over 8 years, no regrets...

smallworlds was a big thing back then kids ok

but i mean

DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I SPENT ON THIS GAME? I WAS LEVEL FUCKING 208, THATS LIKE 500 DOLLARS WORTH OF GOLD AND SHIT OK IM FUCKING CRYING WHY DID I DO THIS 

CRYS ON EVERYTHING

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Mimicry gaming communities saved me!

Growing up my favourite type of play has always been roleplaying and simulation games. From a child playing ‘doctors’, ‘mums and dads’ and ‘hairdresser’ or playing with dolls such as Barbies, to later playing the many versions of ‘The Sims’, simulating any kind of real-life situation where I could emulate and control a better or different version of myself was always my favourite past time. 

It was no surprise when my older sister and younger brother introduced me to online community games ‘Runescape’ and ‘SmallWorlds’ I was instantly hooked. I formed such loyalty to SmallWorlds I became one of the longest playing and richest players in the entire global platform. These games had commerce platforms, extensive and constantly updated avatar and space customisation options and complex communities. Best of all I could revisit old childhood favourites such as ‘mums and dads’ or ‘doctors’ virtually with communities formed around old childhood past times and virtual spaces created for the sole purpose of re-creating these games. 

During the period that I was playing mimicry games, I was having a pretty miserable time in school, particularly socially. I could use these games and communities as an escape from the bullying and school stress and be who I wanted to be. In the game, I was wealthy, respected and influential, and had the most beautiful and expensive clothes, extras and houses. Mimicry games, and the communities they created helped me through some difficult periods of my life. They gave social interactions that I was lacking due to isolation from in real life peers. It gave me an opportunity to practise social situations and develop social skills that I would have lacked otherwise. I had a community of friends, a few from school ended up joining me online, and we had a huge group of diverse friends from around the globe. I was introduced to multi-culturalism that I would have never experienced in my small country town and helped prepare me for moving to Melbourne for example.

Sadly, in April this year, SmallWorlds closed for good, citing dwindling player bases and ever-increasing expenses (servers were costly for such a graphically and code-heavy game). I had been a member for exactly 8 years to the day of the final day, almost half my entire life. An end of a chapter, but I’ve been able at this time to find my legs and leave that chapter behind with fondness and not panic.

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Slacktivism at its finest: Public Health Campaigns...

Social Media health campaigns, at a basic level, do minimal to further research for the causes they represent. While there are some exceptions, like the ALS ice bucket challenge helping researchers find the gene responsible for the disease (you can see all the progress, from the initial campaign to now, here http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge-spending.html), many campaigns are attention seeking rather than progress creating.

The problem with public health campaigns online is that we are already over cluttered with informational noise and we can become complacent with over-saturation of campaigns. Public health campaigns are not the only victims of complacency, but the thing that grinds my gears over this is that public health campaigns are significant. When an outbreak or discovery of a new or highly deadly disease happens, these campaigns are the best way of getting information out and spreading information quickly. In addition to this, social media tends to romanticise some of the diseases/disorders campaigned for which is incredibly insensitive to sufferers and negatively impacts the end goal of awareness. Thirdly, people are very selective in what causes they support, and this affects which campaigns get traction. Rarely do the campaigns that really need the awareness boost such as bowel cancer gain traction and attention, but breast cancer campaigns always are well supported. We as a collective for our own safety cannot risk becoming complacent or play favourites with campaigns, literally for our own health. The world is only going to get sicker with our lifestyle choices and overpopulation causing us ever growing issues.

It’s also wide open to abuse. People can hijack campaigns and spread misinformation about a disorder, which could be extremely dangerous and, again, negatively impacts the end goal of the campaign. Even worse, people could create and run entire fake campaigns. This not only delegitimises real campaigns but could swindle money out of well-meaning individuals.

Like I mentioned above, there are successful campaigns and benefits of running a campaign, but for the most part, all I see is slacktivism across the internet. The system is ripe for exploitation, campaigns have to compete with each other and all the other clutter on the internet. I feel, from personal experience online, I simply do not care for online public health campaigns. There are too many even to pick one to care about. If I cared for a cause that much I would seek out opportunities to help. These campaigns discourage people from doing this by giving the same good feeling for a lot less work.  Awareness is but fleeting. ‘R U OK Day’ is one day when it should be every day. Public engagement, for the most part, is substantial but transient instead of sustained and interactive.

Stop being lazy, campaigners need to more actively campaign for donation and awareness beyond internet click bait and the public need to be less self-involved and donate more than a like or a $1, but some real impacting money and some real volunteer time.

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Crowdsourced information...

In times of crisis, many people of even just one or two generations back would turn on their radio or television, switch on the ABC News channel and watch hours of crisis coverage. My own parents did this when I was a child during events such as 9/11, 2008 Mumbai bombings and many local natural disasters. These days, if there is a disaster to occur the first place I check is social media. Social media is much more current and can be updated far quicker than traditional media. When the Elizabeth street attack happened near Christmas last year, I could get one message out to all my family members saying that I was okay, as I work in the area the attack occurred. Same as the Bourke Street attack earlier in that same year. This was due to social media. Whenever there is fire or floods near my families’ properties, I check social media first to inform my older relatives in the area, before any kind of traditional media.

Social media and crowdsourcing information is an extremely powerful tool for civilians to get information out quickly and to get help arriving quickly too. This is extremely evident in the numerous school mass shootings that have occurred in the US recently. Students could get in touch with their loved ones through social media easily and this helps reduce parent hysteria knowing that their child is safe much earlier than without social media. With crowd-sourced information, relief programs are far easier and quicker to establish because the facts of the crisis could be known much quicker and more extensively by a lot more people.

This can leave this open for abuse and exaggeration. Many people spread false information about crisis events online, and this mixes in all the other crowdsourced information. Take for example the Elizabeth Street attack. A friend of mine who lives 500km away was schooling me on what had happened in the hours after, with false information, even though I had been one of the first on scene due to my workplace proximity. She was hysterical, even though the information she was frantic about wasn’t even true. Furthermore, I’ve had friends who are unreasonably afraid to visit Melbourne CBD mostly to over-reporting and false information that derives typically from crowdsourced information.

There are strengths and weaknesses of crowdsourced information during a crisis. I believe that the concept needs to be filtered and regulated to prevent misinformation; otherwise, potential misinformation may cause another crisis itself.

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THE POOL’S CLOSED!

First off, let me distinguish that trolling is different to cyberbullying. Sarah Nicol, writing for Youth Studies Australia, describes trolling as “Trolling is deliberately trying to distress someone online but usually just to disrupt and often anonymously. It is frequently inflammatory and abusive”. There are easily over a hundred examples of trolling online that I can think of (I love a good, dramatic stir campaign), but one that will always stand out to me is ‘Pool’s Closed’ trolling campaign.

This campaign originated and occurred on virtual world network site Habbo as well as branching out into real life. Internet Historian, a YouTube channel a featured in last weeks blog, does a comprehensive and hilarious recap here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp2EZbbuMa0 HOWEVER with ALL trolling campaigns it could (definitely would be) be interpreted as offensive and inflammatory. Another recap can be found on KnowYourMeme here: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pools-closed.

Orchestrated by Anonymous, avatars all looking the same (grey suit, afros, black skin) were blocking access to the pools within Habbo due to the pools having been infected with ’AIDS’. They frequently would form into Swastika shapes and be generally obscene. These acts then led to people in real life calling local pools and getting them closed as well, met with opposition from the local people. Imagery resulting from this is well recognisable, and several have become memes in their own right. If you image search ‘Pool’s Closed’ you’ll find hundreds of image results all relating to the campaign. Most images carry the design of the avatars used in the trolling, and it carries familiar symbolism.

The entire point of this campaign was to disturb and be inflammatory. I like using it as a trolling example because it has all the characteristics of a trolling campaign. It is also one that, while iconic in internet culture, is less known elsewhere. It also highlights a little used and, to most of the new generation, unknown social media platform called Habbo. Habbo and other virtual reality social network offer a greater affordance to trolls than Facebook, Twitter etc as they are far more visual. You can use any number of inflammatory images either in the creation of your avatar or, like in this case, form several avatars into obscene images. It also mimics real life more than any Facebook or Twitter community does, which makes the damage trolling inflicts far more intense and effective.

Now armed with what you know, as well as looking into the links I have provided, an interesting question I pose to the reader is: In your opinion, can trolling ever be considered comical?

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WHAT! The Pool’s Closed? A sneak peak for the blog going up first thing Friday morning!

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A general overview of Hacktivism: what I feel Week 6 missed.

Week 6 topic is ‘activism and social media’ and funnily enough, it also was my turn to present on the weekly topic to the cohort. One case study that most of the presentations didn’t delve into, and my own only briefly touched on, were cases of Hacktivism.

Hacktivism is an interesting issue to me. I was surrounded in high school by highly skilled, self-described ‘computer science nerds’ who enjoyed and even participated in Hacktivism (the nerdy way channelling teenage rebellion and ‘sticking it to the man’). Adding to this, my younger brother is a computer genius and has taken a great interest in all things computers (hardware, software and network-wise) from a young age. Therefore, Hacktivism has always been something I’ve been acutely aware to a degree most people are not. I’ve known about several attacks before they’ve happened in the planning stages and have gotten the privilege of witnessing a hacktivist campaign occur from start to finish. It’s a topic I’m more comfortable than most with.

Hacktivism, by dictionary definition, is “the practice of gaining unauthorized access to a computer system and carrying out various disruptive actions as a means of achieving political or social goals”. (dictionary.com, 2018). While this severely simplifies hacktivism practices, it is a good definition of the overall concept. It’s word origin, in the 1990s, is derived from the obvious blending of words activism and hack and definitions of those words help depend on the initial understanding of the term.

As to not waste words, a good explanation of hacktivist groups and their campaigns can be found in Steve Mansfield-Devine’s 2011 article written for the ‘Network Security’ publication called “Hacktivism: assessing the damage.”. In here, Mansfield-Devine outlines some large Hacktivist groups, a brief history of said groups, some of their campaigns and defines both the good and bad effects of their actions. It is an excellent read for those who are under-speed with hacktivism today.

It is interesting to note also how companies, governments and the law continue to struggle to keep up with developing technologies and their inherent weaknesses. Hacktivist groups love to take advantage of this fact, whether it is for serious activism purposes or just for ‘the lulz’ as one major hacktivist group, LulzSec claims.

In the article “Hacktivism goes Hardcore”, also written for ‘Network Security’ in 2015, Tracey Cadwell talks about Hacktivism going beyond the online world and having real-world wars move into the online realm. With the new age of cyber-terrorism perpetrated by established organisations like ISIS, experts agree that the tools and techniques used are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Groups are using ‘blended’ attacks that are aggressive and designed to inflict damage rather than inflict inconvenience. No longer do the attackers themselves need to be skilled enough as the tools they need to demonstrate attacks can be readily available on the black market. This opens the playing field for more groups to participate in Hacktivism, and thus a wider range of individuals and groups. With diversity comes a wider range of extremists than before and this results in the exclusivity and leadership groups like Anonymous and LulzSec owned in the hacktivism greatly reduced. With this comes the fear that currently unknown players with greater power, skills and resources, could inflict damage never seen before. Vulnerable organisations no longer know what to expect. The rules have changed once again.

An amazing, comedic source of information for a few Hacktivist campaigns (most erring on the silly ‘lulz’ side) is a YouTube channel called ‘Internet Historian’ (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR1D15p_vdP3HkrH8wgjQRw). I highly recommend, although not for the easily offended. It’s also good for a general study break or if you’re studying memes at all, as it also covers a lot of meme culture on the internet. If you want to watch some hacktivism from a grassroots stage, the ‘4chan’ forum site (http://www.4chan.org) is a great place to start, again definitely not for the easily offended and absolutely NSFW (or the law for that matter regarding some ‘boards’ on there). Browse at your own risk. Discretion is advised for these sources, but are well worth the look. They are also HIGHLY relevant to the Week 7 content so it’s worth a look for that as well.

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Anonymous protesting in the streets. Tomorrow's blog post is on Hacktivism so get around it!

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I did a presentation on Activism and Social Media in Week 6. Check the slides out if you missed it, as it wasn’t aired in the lecture but in the 1:30 pm tute with Cathy. 

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Why Politics and Social Media cannot be friends.

PLEASE NOTE: I've taken this week's blog post on a slightly more personal, less academic stance because I have LOTS of feelings about social media in Political Land.

Social Media and Politics cannot be friends. They haven't sworn enemies per say, more acquaintances. We should, however, not be trying to force them into this weird, inappropriate relationship they find themselves in today. When I see the leaders of countries talk we are essentially watching them at their jobs. Social media is a dangerous medium when it comes to the workplace because of how unprofessional it is, and how easy it is to be left unaccountable for your words and actions on it. You wouldn’t sit at work and use Twitter or Facebook to present an important pitch to your board of directors or use it to conduct employee performance reviews. So why are politicians delivering their important presentations to their boards of directors, us, over social media platforms? It seems to me unprofessional and gives off a lack of thoughtlessness over what they’re saying due to the ease of communication. I want my politicians to be professionals, experts in their field. Not some random off the street with no training and a selfish, narrow agenda (Donald Trump, Darren Lyons, Salim Mehajer, 90% of independent candidates that run in my local area). 

These people are making choices and decisions that affect everyone on varying scales, yet we are letting people with absolutely no training, no character checks and barely a background check (hello dual citizenship fiasco) run countries (sometimes illegally) and vote on laws! How can we expect a lawyer, builder, doctor to undergo intense theoretical and practical training but people with deep pockets and heavy influence on social media need no training to participate in the political process at the highest levels? 

I don’t particularly care for Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘soft’ side, or for pictures of Daniel Andrew’s family at Easter. I don’t care about Bill Shortens message to us all at Christmas. What I care about is people doing their jobs, and having the right people in the right roles to get those jobs done. This goes for my local barista down the street, to my hairdresser, my doctor etc. I want to see professionalism in all forms of their jobs. I don’t want to see a picture of my surgeon’s dog while his giving me a new kidney, why does that not apply to politicians while on the job. They use social media for policy communication, therefore, it doesn’t need to be mixed up with pictures of dogs, it blurs the message and I already have ‘Cute Doggos’ like on Facebook anyway.

If we allow politics and social media to be friends, we end up with the wrong people in charge of the economy, of our laws and regulations, of international diplomacy, of a big red world ending button of mass destruction We end up with people in charge of making laws to protect women sending abusive videos to their estranged wives on Instagram threatening to bash and sexually assault them (and their families) while simultaneously stalking them, communicating policy and breaching AVOs all on the same platform. 

If we are so worried about corrupt pollies, we need to address it in its most primitive form first. Celebrities and big corporations do not belong in the parliament. Social media helps get their foot in the door. I’m going to shut the door hard and jam their foot in it on the way out. 

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Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site?

Tumblr is quite interesting as it combines principles of the older networked communication style with ‘platformed’ sociality to create a unique website. It contains many elements of old-school web nostalgia circa the early days of Web 2.0, however, also takes advantage and utilises technology that is very much a result of ‘platformed’ sociality. An interesting feature of Tumblr is the variety of content you can create. It has almost every content option you can think of, from standard blog posts, ‘quotes’, GIFs, videos, photos, it has all bases covered. It, therefore, can appeal to a bigger and more diverse audience than other communication platforms on the internet. 

Tumblr provides a highly-personalised experience. More than just offering a basic function, it throws together all the offerings of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and forums such as 4chan and Reddit and smashed them into one site. Combine this with a super user-friendly and simple interface, and hundreds of blog customisation options (both free and ‘premium’ $$$ options) Tumblr is the most user-personalised site I have ever come across. Tumblr’s content creation and inter-user communication are a much better reflection of the social network model than a traditional blog is. This is because of the two-way communication between a blogger, their community and other bloggers and their communities that Tumblr’s site design and features foster. Outlying clusters can easily interact and associate with the main cluster while still maintain their independence due to two-way communication. Regular blogging sites can create an ‘echo chamber’ where outlying clusters of a network don’t feel welcome to voice their similar but different perspective. Tumblr avoids this by allowing all members of a community to interact with, share, reply to all content rather than a curated selection of content by the creator with little community discussion.

Van Dijck said in ‘Engineering Sociality in a Culture of Connectivity’, “social media platforms, rather than being finished products, are dynamic objects that are tweaked in response to their users’ needs and their owners’ objectives” (Pg: 7). I believe that this statement supports my view that Tumblr is a social media network and not primarily a blogging site as it is constantly changing and adapting to its user needs and their competition. Tumblr also creates hundreds of thousands of interconnected communities whereas in my view traditional blogging sites, while they do create communities, are much less community focused as they are content creator-focused. They restrict two-way communication, something Tumblr has avoided with its variety of content options and the reblogging/replying systems integral to its popularity. Finally, as mentioned, the sheer diversity of ways a user can communicate, and other users can interact with said communication, imitates real-life communication, something a regular blog lacks in.