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 Week 12: Crowd sourcing in times of crisis

            Social media has significantly reshaped the way people communicate during emergencies and disasters. Information now circulates quickly through platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube (Dong et al., 2021). One of these key concepts comes in the form of crowd sourcing, which refers to gathering of information from the public during all stages of a crisis, which helps create maps showing what is happening (Schimak et al., 2015). Social media is a great example for where crowdsourcing can happen, especially for the use during a crisis.

During a crisis or disaster, communication systems would likely be out like television or radio broadcastings, leading to many different communication tools to emerge like, social media platforms (Manners, 2024). Social Media crowdsourcing is a useful method in addressing or informing users around the world of any natural or human-made hazards that has occurred, such crowdsourcing can be gathered through images, video, text and even geotagging for identification of user location, in which allow users to convey their current location for rescue, identification of aids sites and so on (Manners, 2024). There also certain social media accounts made that all work together in disaster management, from authorities, news media, civil society organisation, celebrities and influencers can help convey information to the public about disasters through X, Instagram, YouTube and so on (Andersen, 2025). One example being during the crisis of Covid-19, where celebrities, influencers (like Harry Styles, Taylor Swift and many others) turned to social media for spreading awareness and informing people to stay indoors, with politicians, news medias, and health organisations gave updates on the current cases of Covid-19, health tips, and the progress on the vaccine (Jaworska et al., 2024).

In conclusion, crowdsourcing through social media has become an essential tool in modern crisis communication and disaster management. By enabling real-time, ground-level reporting from those directly affected, it allows for faster situational awareness, supports emergency responses, and enhances public safety.

Andersen, N. B., Hill, L., Baron, N., & Nielsen, A. B. (2025). Social listening and crowdsourcing in disaster communication—A citizen-centered media and communication consumption perspective. Frontiers in Communication, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2025.1568839

Dong, Z. S., Meng, L., Christenson, L., & Fulton, L. (2021). Social media information sharing for natural disaster response. Natural Hazards (Dordrecht), 107(3), 2077–2104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-04528-9

Jaworska, S., Goodman, M. K., & Gibas, I. (2024). The Making of #CovidTwitter: Who Were the Loudest “Covid Influencers” and What Did They Say About the COVID-19 Pandemic? Social Media + Society, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231222240

Manners, P. (2024). Disaster medicine (Third edition), The Role of Social Media in Disasters (3rd ed., pp. 310-312). Elsevier.

Schimak, G., Havlik, D., Pielorz, J., Hřebíček, J., Argent, R. M., & Denzer, R. (2015). Crowdsourcing in Crisis and Disaster Management – Challenges and Considerations. In Environmental Software Systems. Infrastructures, Services and Applications: Vol. AICT-448 (pp. 56–70). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15994-2_5

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Week 11: Digital Citizenship and Conflict: Social Media Governance

            In the digital era, where technology is in the hands of everyone, accessibility allows many digital citizens to use the internet quite regularly. In this total of the population, there will be many bad apples that use social media as a platform for causing chaos and hatred, purely out for their own enjoyment, in which consist of online harassment. Where online harassment has long existed since the 1980s, with emails, forums and so on (Ortiz, 2020). With examples of online harassment being trolling and flaming, where trolling is the behaviour intended to provoke a reaction from another user, and in many cases the use of manipulative, deceptive, malicious or shocking tactics are used to emotionally upset the target, under the guise of humour (Ortiz, 2020). While on the other hand, flaming refers to the usage of offensive language, which include swearing, insults, and hateful comments, leading to gratification for themselves through these negative actions (Lingam & Aripin, 2017).

Therefore, solution to resolve such negativity and issue through the implementation of social media governance and regulatory frameworks. Social media governance is defined as regulations or policies that has been set specific to media and communications, as well as boarding on laws like corporation laws, copyright and freedom of expression laws too (Flew, 2015). Some of these social media governances are normative, algorithmic, distributed and retributive regulation. Normative regulation is self-regulated rules enforced through community guidelines and content moderation that communities need to participate in, while algorithmic regulation uses machine learning models to evaluate content and remove it if necessary (Schoenebeck & Blackwell, n.d.). With distributed regulation focuses on feedback as a way of moderation, in which content that has high upvotes or likes will be recommended more, while those with a significant quantity of downvotes or dislikes will be deleted, lastly retributive regulation is where users retaliate back and punish the offenders with shaming them, sending death threats, threating of doxxing and so on, in other words it can be seen as a form of cancel culture (Schoenebeck & Blackwell, n.d.).

In all, widespread internet access has enabled for both positive and harmful online behaviour to emerge, including forms of online harassment in trolling, flaming and so on. These actions aim to provoke a reaction from users for their gratification, leading to many different governance and regulations to form, in order to combat and reduce such behaviour in the digital landscape.

Flew, T. (2015). Social Media Governance. Social Media + Society, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115578136

Lingam, R. A., & Aripin, N. (2017). Comments on Fire! Classifying Flaming Comments on YouTube Videos in Malaysia. Jurnal Komunikasi, Malaysian Journal of Communication, 33(4), 104–118. https://doi.org/10.17576/JKMJC-2017-3304-07

Ortiz, S. M. (2020). Trolling as a Collective Form of Harassment: An Inductive Study of How Online Users Understand Trolling. Social Media + Society, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120928512

Schoenebeck, S., & Blackwell, L. (n.d.). Reimagining Social Media Governance: Harm, Accountability, and Repair. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3895779

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 Week 10: Gaming Communities, Social Gaming and Live Streaming: Twitch

            Today this post will talk about the topic that most of us are addicted to, which is gaming. Gaming is lucrative entertainment sector, that first started with the arcade machines in 1973 with the game being Pong (a sports game simulation of a tennis table, hitting a ball back and forth), which allowed for competition and social interaction by having player to top the high score charts, furthermore, as technology advances into the future, so does the system and platform we play our games on from cartridges, consoles, PC, mobile phones and even VR (Vasiuk & Dubrovskyi, 2025). This also known as social gaming where streamers can use platforms like Twitch, (a very popular live streaming platform) to play online games, and in which streamers can gain living through gaming live and maximising their reach of the audience (Vasiuk & Dubrovskyi, 2025).

             With gaming, comes about share interest with other people anyway in the world, leading to a community being formed (Saldanha et al., 2023). A gaming community is an online commonplace for users to socialise on the common interest of a game, where people can also help educate users new to a game and they in turn can learn, furthermore, the community also allows users to have a feeling of belonging with others online and this in turn could turn to friendships being formed, which can also lead to physical meet ups, meaning to know each other outside the community (Saldanha et al., 2023).

            However, gaming communities also has disadvantages too, where it can promote unhealthy lifestyles like addiction, poor social skills and decrease in mental health, where all comminates to having a gaming disorder (Gandolfi et al., 2023). Another example being toxicity, as players can feel frustrated when losing at games, where abusive communication can happen with harassment, verbal abuse and so on to other players (Frommel et al., 2023).

            In summary, gaming has evolved so much from technology, and has globally connected many gamers through the use of entertainment. With it fostering online communities that can provide an outlet for players to know each other, however, at the same time a place for bad and toxic behaviour to occur too.

Frommel, J., Johnson, D., & Mandryk, R. L. (2023). How perceived toxicity of gaming communities is associated with social capital, satisfaction of relatedness, and loneliness. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 10, 100302-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2023.100302

Gandolfi, E., Ferdig, R. E., Krause, K., Soyturk, I., Morris, G., & Delahanty, S. (2023). An exploration of why gaming communities may make younger and non-normative gamers vulnerable to Internet Gaming Disorder. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231215348

Saldanha, L., da Silva, S. M., & Ferreira, P. D. (2023). “Community” in Video Game Communities. Games and Culture, 18(8), 1004–1022. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120221150058

Vasiuk, S., & Dubrovskyi, V. (2025). A Brief History of Video Games. In Running a Successful Live Service Game (1st ed., pp. 9–13). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003427056-3

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Week 9: Digital Citizenship and Software literacy: Instagram Filters

            Another day, another post, with this time being on filters and how it can affect people overall. As everyone is quickly becoming a digital citizen and being glued to the internet regularly, leading to many online applications like social media and its features to be very popular and used a lot. One of these features that is used daily and has improved efficiency in application is filters, which is augmented reality technology. Augmented reality is defined as technology that helps integrate digital displays like numbers, symbols, or graphics, and overlaying them with the user’s view of the real world (Arena et al., 2022). Therefore, filters are digital displays or elements that are applied to the user’s face, as seen with beauty filters or ambient filters for entertainment purposes (Ibáñez‐Sánchez et al., 2022).

            Beauty filters allow for users online to create a perception of an enhanced versions of themselves, in which can help with them being comfortable with themselves and improve their self-confidence too (Anani et al., 2024). Not to mention beauty filters having another purpose, which is a tool for shopping purposes, such as displaying digital products from sunglasses, clothing and so on to persuade purchasing decisions (Ibáñez‐Sánchez et al., 2022). Another filter type is ambient, where users apply them to obtain fun (for example a funny dog overlay filter), and to generate entertaining experiences, furthermore allowing for playability of the technology (Ibáñez‐Sánchez et al., 2022). However, with filters being more prevalent and used daily by many, it also comes with many drawbacks. One of them being selfie dysmorphia, where users develop a distorted view of their body image, due to the frequent use of beauty filters, since it can allow for unrealistic self-body image and in the end affecting one’s mental health (Anani et al., 2024).

            In all, the relationship between filters and users can either have positive outcomes of generating fun or the opposite end of having negative consequences to occur like body dissatisfaction, or self-objectification (Schroeder & Behm-Morawitz, 2025).

Anani, P. W., Mintah, F. D., Danso, A. A. A., & Churcher, E. W. (2024). Filtered reality: exploring the motives and socio-demographic factors of smartphone beauty filter usage among university students in Ghana. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2024.2392381

Arena, F., Collotta, M., Pau, G., & Termine, F. (2022). An Overview of Augmented Reality. Computers (Basel), 11(2), 28-. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers11020028

Ibáñez‐Sánchez, S., Orús, C., & Flavián, C. (2022). Augmented reality filters on social media. Analyzing the drivers of playability based on uses and gratifications theory. Psychology & Marketing, 39(3), 559–578. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21639

Schroeder, M., & Behm-Morawitz, E. (2025). Digitally curated beauty: The impact of slimming beauty filters on body image, weight loss desire, self-objectification, and anti-fat attitudes. Computers in Human Behavior, 165, 108519-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2024.108519

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Week 8: Digital Citizenship and Health Education: Body Modification on Visual Social Media

            In the digital age, visual social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and so on, are being more integral in our daily lives and exposing content that can harm many digital citizens who consume content regularly online, guiding many to idealising unrealistic standards, in which leading to negative consequences like body modification (Tiggemann, 2022).

Body modification being defined as the the altering of one’s body or appearance (Featherstone & Nottingham Trent University, 2000). Content online has allowed users to post selfies for many to see, in many times these images use social media features like filters to help modify and enhance body parts, such as enlarging eyes, lips, noses or to shave off some size on the waists or arms too (Tiggemann, 2022). This culminates to viewers being dissatisfied by their body features, since they would compare themselves to online content bodies and in the end leading to developing body dysmorphic disorder or BDD, where it is a psychiatric disorder that causes people to be obsessed with the flaws in their appearance (Ioannou et al., 2024). Other harmful content that has come about in social media is pornification of content, in which it is acceptance and normalisation of sexual themes in mainstream media (Paasonen et al., 2007). Such examples can be seen with selfies displaying nudity or suggestive implications, in which having such exposing content can consequences of being addicted to porn. (Martini & Gangadharbatla, 2023).

            While there is content that can bring about negative consequences, there are others that do the opposite in bring good to many, with the help of health campaigns. Public health campaigns are defined as movements in promoting global health and to spread awareness to many (Bugshan et al., 2022). These campaigns are able to educate awareness of body modification, in order to better arm themselves of such content and to live a healthier lifestyle, instead of following how others look (Bugshan et al., 2022).

Bugshan, W. M., Qahtani, S. J. A., Alwagdani, N. A., Alharthi, M. S., Alqarni, A. M., Alsuat, H. M., Alqahtani, N. H., Rabia Alqahtani, M., Thaar Alshammari, M., Albaqami, R. A., & Almotairi, A. H. (2022). Role of Health Awareness Campaigns in Improving Public Health:A Systematic Review: Life Sciences-Public Health. International Journal of Life Science and Pharma Research. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363412994_Role_of_Health_Awareness_Campaigns_in_Improving_Public_HealthA_Systematic_Review_Life_Sciences-Public_Health

Featherstone, M., & Nottingham Trent University. Theory, C. & S. C. (2000). Body modification. SAGE.

Ioannou, M., Tzani, C., Price, P., Walker, F., Williams, T. J. V., & Fumagalli, A. (2024). NoFilter: The impact of social media body dysmorphic disorder in adults. Mental Health Science, 2(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/mhs2.89

Martini, D., & Gangadharbatla, H. (2023). Pornified Content in Social Media: Exploring the Impact on Brazilian Addicts. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 12(1), 257-.

Paasonen, S., Nikunen, K., & Saarenmaa, L. (2007). Pornification and the Education of Desire, Pornification : sex and sexuality in media culture (pp. 1-20). Berg.

Tiggemann, M. (2022). Digital modification and body image on social media: Disclaimer labels, captions, hashtags, and comments. Body Image, 41, 172–180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2022.02.012

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Week 7: Digital Citizenship and Slow Fashion

Fashion is very popular today with it is an integral part of our daily lives, as this can be seen with how we dress for work, college, outings and so on. One type of fashion today is slow fashion, which are clothes that are handmade and uses a lot of time by a talent to make high quality clothes, that are also highly priced too (Aishwariya, 2019). With one factor contributing to the growth of slow fashion being digital citizens.

Digital Citizens is the ability to participate in online societies, where users can get together to socialize on social media platforms (Mossberger et al., 2008). However, social media is not just a place for digital citizens to socialize only, it is also a place for activism, for example promoting the slow fashion movement online. This is due to how fast fashion, the process of making garments of cheap quality and in mass produced (Aishwariya, 2019), can affect the world. Fast Fashion has caused many of the world’s problems, from increase waste, emissions and pollution due to the trend of dumping clothes that has gone out of fashion and moving on to buying new sets of clothes (Sneha & Babel, 2025). Therefore, many digital citizens go to many platforms to spread the awareness of slow fashion, with its more sustainable and eco-friendly ways, by using hashtags to help with the movement (Ariestya et al., 2021). Such campaigns and movements can then encourage the public to reduce the buying of unsustainable clothing and to have companies to exercise more environmentally friendly practices (Ariestya et al., 2021).

With slow fashion movements online, comes the activist that organise these protest and activism through social platforms. Some activist for the slow fashion movement includes, Aja Barber, Emma Slade Emondson, Marielle Elizabeth and so on. They post encouragements and advice on how to wear sustainably, with such advice being to shop second-handed clothes, re-wearing same clothes, to not give into pressure of getting something new and many more (Lock & Le Seigle, 2021).

Aishwariya, S. (2019). Fast Fashion vs Slow Fashion. National Institute of Fashion Technology. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340273377_Fast_Fashion_vs_Slow_Fashion#:~:text=Fast%20fashion%20consists%20of%20garments,better%20quality%20and%20highly%2Dpriced.

Ariestya, A., Lestari, C. I., & Liliani, H. (2021). Slow Fashion Movement: Is It Still A Tug of War Between Responsibility and Profit?. COSDEV https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352029662_Slow_Fashion_Movement_Is_It_Still_A_Tug_of_War_Between_Responsibility_and_Profit

Lock, H., & Le Seigle, A. (2021, February 3). 10 Sustainable Fashion Activists You Should Definitely Follow. Global Citizen Life. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/sustainable-fashion-activist-follow-social-climate/

Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C. J., & McNeal, R. S. (2008). Digital citizenship : the internet, society, and participation (1st ed.). MIT Press.

Sneha Gargi, & Babel, R. (2025). Fast Fashion and its Environmental Impact. ResearchGate, 1–10. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390286267_Fast_Fashion_and_its_Environmental_Impact

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Week 6: What is Digital Citizenship? Hashtag Publics, Political Engagement and Activism

With the rapid creation of technology from smart hand-held devices to the digital world, it allows users to engage, discuss, and participate together, not to mention turning them into a digital citizen. Digital citizenship is defined as the public being able to participate in society online or use the internet regularly and effectively too (Mossberger et al., 2008). With digital citizen comes the platforms, where users go to engage their time with others online, or the rise of platformisation.

Platformisation is defined as the process by which more parts of economy, society and the web infrastructure are being penetrated to be designed well with digital platforms and how third parties are preparing their data to be easily used on these platforms (Poell et al., 2019). With one example of platformisation being app stores, where it is a centralised, software marketplace for downloading applications, instead of downloading applications from the official company websites (Poell et al., 2019). Another example can be seen with how newspapers were used by many last time, however, today newspaper and news in general has been increasingly turned into platform complementors, where users can access content through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (Poell et al., 2019). With such platforms allowing users to socialise ties back to them being digital citizens online, and with that come connectivity between users when using said platforms.

An example of connectivity through platforms are hashtags, in which can bring about sharing experiences and allowing for socializing with one another like the #icebucketchallenge or to express attitudes like opinions and emotions with others (Laucuka, 2018). Hashtags can also bring about initiating movements that can inspire others, such as hashtags on #metoo, in which it helps to bring awareness of the issues of sexual harassment and to carry out repercussion with the Me-Too Bill (Laucuka, 2018). In all, digital citizens regularly use platforms that has been improved, allowing users a place to then socialise together online.

Laucuka, A. (2018). Communicative Functions of Hashtags. Economics and Culture, 15(1), 56–62. https://doi.org/10.2478/jec-2018-0006

Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C. J., & McNeal, R. S. (2008). Excerpts from Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007). First Monday. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v13i2.2131

Poell, T., Nieborg, D., & van Dijck, J. (2019). Platformisation. Internet Policy Review, 8(4), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.4.1425

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Week 5: Digital Community and Fandom: Reality TV Case Study

Reality TV today is a popular genre watched by minions in the world with many of them being regarded as trash tv, due to every central plot being focused on sensationalism, these include shows like Storage Wars, Keeping up with the Kardashians, Survivor and so on (Plothe & Buck, 2015). However, due to their popularity, it creates a public sphere for the audience to discuss about the show, leading to many different fandoms forming from said shows.

With fandom defined as a group of individuals who come together due to shared interest in media, in which this case is reality tv (Tsay-Vogel & Sanders, 2017). Furthermore, many fandoms however, do not know that many “reality” tv shows are actually scripted, where shows give the illusion of performance (Bruce & Jasmine, 2015). This can be seen with how producers place participants in scenarios that do not allow for them to perform in a traditional sense, not to mention how in post-production, editing made to scenes can be manipulated to how the producers want it to be (Bruce & Jasmine, 2015).

An example of such can be seen with Terrance House Tokyo. Terrance House Tokyo is a Netflix Japanese reality tv show about strangers (consisting three men & three women) living together and getting to know each other. However, during Terrance House Tokyo 2019-2020, a participant named Hana Kimura (who was a retired pro-wrestler) was heavily cyberbullied after many of the public saw her being a villain towards the other participants over her season, which then led to her committing suicide over these online threats and bullying (Yvette, 2020). During this time, Kyoko Kimura (Hana Kimura’s mother) stated that producers had pressured her to faking the confrontation that led to the massive cyberbullying she received (Douglas, 2020). This shows how reality tv shows claiming to be authentic actually is untrue and there is an underlying script that helps push drama to keep interest for the fandoms.

Bruce Gater, & Jasmine B MacDonald. (2015). Are actors really real in reality TV?: The changing face of performativity in Reality Television. Fusion Journal, 7, 1–18.

Douglas, T. (2020, July 4). Hana Kimura’s Mother Says Her Daughter Was Cyberbullied Over A Staged Confrontation In Terrace House. Mediacorp Pte Ltd. https://www.todayonline.com/8days/seeanddo/hana-kimuras-mother-says-her-daughter-was-cyberbullied-over-staged-confrontation

Plothe, T., & Buck, A. M. (2015). Taking in the Trash: Storage Wars, Audience Response, and Trash TV. Journal of Popular Culture, 48(6), 1089–1107. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12350

Tsay-Vogel, M., & Sanders, M. S. (2017). Fandom and the Search for Meaning: Examining Communal Involvement With Popular Media Beyond Pleasure. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 6(1), 32–47. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000085

Yvette, T. (2020). Terrace House: Reality show cancels season after Hana Kimura death. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52829186