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[eevong]

Breaking Camp Keiynan Lonsdale (in Thom Browne Menswear Fall 2009) and Ezra Miller in Thom Browne Menswear S/s 2018) by Ethan James Green

[eevong]

Social Media (China)

It’s been said that China have been missing out with all the social media revolution is that so?? And also, it’s been said that there is a different alternative of social media revolution in China.

One of the biggest social media revolutions these days are Facebook, based on Jamie from Make it a website Hub (2018), face book had approximately surpassed the 1 billion point of user account and it is the very first website who surpass that mark. Without being said that actually Facebook is the most used social network worldwide.

But, during July 2009, which is almost 10 years ago, Facebook has been banned in China. The main reason why Facebook is being banned in China is because there is a of riot in Xinjiang, Urumqi, which is located in a province on the western side. The activist from this province had uses facebook as a platform to communicate with each other, and the Chinese doesn’t want it to happen again, so shortly after the riot, Facebook had been officially banned in China (Zucchi 2019). Other than Facebook, there is also few social media that re being blocked by China using their “The Great Firewall of China” a system used to block different websites. This system is known to be one of the strictest censorship programs in the world. The main reason for them to put up this program is to restrict things like fraudulent, corrupt, or anti-government practices to be wrongly used in through social media platform (Zucchi 2019).

Other than Facebook, Google, YouTube, Netflix, Instagram and etc. are all being banned in China too. So, the social media that are being used in China are Weibo, this application or websites act as Facebook, Twitter and other socializing app where you can follow each other and update something. As for Google, the Chinese doesn’t use google as their main search engine as what most of the country do. The main search engine in China is Baidu. And I had heard from my friend that had travelled to China few years back, he doesn’t believes that Facebook is banned or other social media is banned so when he reached China and uses their Internet there and open his Facebook app the whole app crashes and also his profile also crashes and he doesn’t have any chance to recover it since they will be staying there for few weeks. By the time he is back in Malaysia everything was too late, and he was forced to create a new account.

But when traveler or the locals really wants to access to all the blocked websites there is another way which is using VPN, but recently based on the SLC Team from StartupLivinginChina (2019), the latest update is that for people who uses Apple Product or iPhone, the VPN application that are available in the application store are being slowly removed by China to make sure there no one really can access to all this block websites or apps.

References.....

Jamie 2018, “60+ Social Networking Sites You Need to Know About”, Make a Website Hub, viewed 24 May 2019, <https://makeawebsitehub.com/social-media-sites/>.

Zucchi, K 2019, “Why Facebook Is Banned in China & How to Access It”, Investopedia, viewed 24 May 2019, <https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042915/why-facebook-banned-china.asp>.

SLC Team 2019, “List of Websites and Apps Blocked in China [Updated Jan 2019]”, StartupLivinginChina, viewed 24 May 2019, <https://startuplivingchina.com/list-websites-apps-blocked-china/>.

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What is it Social Gaming?

Social gaming is known as playing online games with a bunch of people that they know from social network. But why does social gaming has become a thing to the society nowadays? According to Richard (2018), he mentioned that there is 5 main reason that cause the social gaming become so popular in the society these days. First, is because everyone could basically get access to it as long as they could get access to the internet. Easy to play and affordable are two of the main reason too. some game that are offer online are free some only cost you around 0.99USD which mean it’s extremely cheap for user, even though some people might think it is unnecessary to purchase games. But there are also people that will pay for games too. The selection of online game is also pretty wide too from free to the more than 10USD which, game enthusiasts are willing to pay for too. Other than that, gamers also could interact with people that has the same interest with them and make new friends.

Based on my own opinion, I think that after social game being monetized, the communities that plays social game will slowly decrease day by day especially of the person is not an game enthusiast, and also if they don’t have the habit to purchase an app for their phone, the possibility for them to purchase a games is even lower.

Online gaming community actually is a good platform for people to make new friends or people could also invite their friends to play games with them. But when something has its advantages, there will be also disadvantage for it too. The disadvantage when a person joins an online gaming community is, they might get emotional and say something hurtful or disrespectful to a person. Normally online games that are being played nowadays by gamers are team-based type, which means there are more than a person. And this had come to the sense that, when they win or lose the game is all group wise not person wise. When a “newbie” is playing the game with a bunch of “seniors” and he/she had caused the team to lose continuously for few games, they will just gang up and bully or scold him. This will turn into a cyber bullying. According to Plusmana (2016), because of people nowadays play games with strangers and they think that people might not recognized them from just their username so situation like asking a person to “get cancer and die” will happen very frequently. This will also made people that originally feel lonely feel even more lonely because everyone is isolating them.

So, people everyone should use this platform as a platform to make friend instead of creating a negative platform to increase negative vibe in the society.

Referencing………..

Richard 2018, ‘Top 5 Reasons Why Online Gaming Has Become Popular’, Connection Café, viewed 16 May 2019, <https:,//www.connectioncafe.com/top-5-reasons-why-online-gaming-has-become-popular/>.

Plusmana, A 2016, ‘Is the Gaming Community a Toxic Environment?’, plus.mana, viewed 15 May 2019, <https://plusmana.com/is-the-gaming-community-a-toxic-environment/>.

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Fandom

7How does fandom really works these days? And also what is fandom?

Fandom is when a person is passionate with definite TV Show, film, celeb, book series, group, genre, etc. In digital space and also social space fandom has become the most targeted consumer group. New language and also culture has been taught to the marketers in order to help the business growth due the sudden explosive growth in the fandom communities (Netzer 2016).

Based on my past experienced and also based on my friend’s experience, following and being in a fandom it might cost people to spend a lot of coin when they are really “addicted” to that idol or idol group. According to Tiffany (2017), she is madly obsessing with Jack Gyllenhaal and she had spent a lot of money just to buy ticket to watch his off-Broadway play Sunday in the Park with George during a one-weekend benefit concert reading at City Centre. As for me, I used to be a Sone which is Girls Generation Fans name, and every time they come back with new album, I will go crazy and wish I could purchase their album. There is this once, I had save up just to purchase their I Got A Boy album. I had save up for around 3 months when I know they are doing a comeback so I could at least support one album from them. But as for my friend, she is an Army, not just a normal Army but a crazy Army (BTS fans club). Whenever BTS came out with new album she will buy she had bought 7 BTS album, and its normally the premium type which cost a lot.Other than that, paying for their concert ticket will cost quite an amount of money too. For Instance, the cheapest price for a Kpop concert is around RM300++, imagine getting the premium seats. But sometimes fangirls or fanboys doesn’t really care about the price point when they could see their favorite idol in a reachable distance.

These days fan had also involve in fan activism. For instance, Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) is a group of harry potter fan whereby they are involve in social activism to run social justice not only in the USA but globally based on ideas and values of the movie. Basically, climate changes awareness and also campaign that are related, lawmaker is being contacted whenever there is discrimination or unjust bills are being showed, the community is there to help them. This community act as Dumbledore’s Army, and trying their best to go against systematic and institutionalised racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and more(Caicedo 2017). and with this they have helped the public to voice out whenever the public needs them.

All in all, involving in fandom could be good sometimes and bad whenever someone could not interpret it properly.

Referencing....

Caicedo, M 2017, The harry potter alliance is using fandom as a basis for real-world activism and resistance, Bustle Digital Group, viewed 9 May 2019, <https://www.bustle.com/p/the-harry-potter-alliance-is-using-fandom-as-a-basis-for-real-world-activism-resistance-78727>. 

Netzer, J 2016, The fandom phenomenon: winning over today's super fans, Spredfast, viewed 9 May 2019, <https://www.spredfast.com/social-marketing-blog/fandom-phenomenon-winning-over-todays-super-fans>.

Tiffany, K 2017, I love you, Jake Gyllenhaal, Vox Media, viewed 9 May 2019, <https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/3/16576850/jake-gyllenhaal-newsletter-fandom-fans-essay>.

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Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding

Basically, crowdsourcing means people start getting their information through an online platform from a large crowd of people. Skills, ideas and also partaking of the public is used to generate or even to enable the creation the of content on a particular website. Based on this the website uses the power of the crowd or the public to generate content and also information on websites (Goodrich, 2013). For example, as everyone know Facebook is a very good platform for news updates and also place to get their latest update. When there is an accident happens in any particular city that you live in, you can get the latest news when someone snap a picture and share it on Facebook, and it went viral. Even if there is an accident are happening during peak hour when someone share it inside a group that you have joined you will know, then you could choose a different route to get home. Furthermore, Starbucks has also used the crowdsourcing method to search start up a campaign which is the #WhiteCupContest with this they had uses the social media to spread awareness and make their customer to go green and uses product that are environmentally friendly. In addition, they also use the social media platform to discover young talented artist that loves drawing with this contest. With a help of hashtags, the Starbucks management could just simply see the creation of anyone worldwide and choose the design that they think it’s nice and announce the winner instead of holding a competition that someone that are interested and not able to join.

As for crowdfunding, it is basically a type of funding method that are widely use by the public now no matter it’s for starting up a business or charity. According to Kenton (2019), crowdfunding means a lot of individual uses small amount of money to invest and getting into a new business. The massive networks had made the accessing of different investors and entrepreneurs to be easier and made the potential of increasing in their business wider. For instance, anyone with good business ideas but had not enough startups could just simply use the net to crowdfund for their company.

Other than business, charity had also used the platform to fund for those least fortunate people. Personally, I am an Ariana Grande fans so when I heard of the bombing happens on her concerts at Manchester, I felt really bad for the victims and their family members. After that Ariana had also invite quite an few amounts of her celebrities’ friends to help her fund for the victims and this homeless guy who help the incident a lot. This is also a very good way to fund through online platform no matter where you are and who you are by just typing a few texts and send it to the organization fund will be raised and give it to the people who needs it.

So, online platform is a very good place to source for information and also fund for any needs, but everyone should make use of this and not turn it into something bad.

Reference........

Goodrich, R 2013, What is Crowdsourcing?,Business News Daily, viewed 1 May 2019, <https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4025-what-is-crowdsourcing.html>.

Kenton, W 2019, Crowdfunding,Investopedia, viewed 1 May 2019, <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdfunding.asp>.

[eevong]

SO... What is trolling?

So basically, trolling always do happen in the online community only, upsetting post and arguments post that are posted in the community has causes arguments or disharmonies on the Internet. People seek attention through online community by purposely saying something that is sensitive and creates arguments, this is what we call SOCIAL MEDIA TROLLS (Hanson, n.d.).

As a social media user, it is very common to be getting “trolled”, this is because when people hide behind the computer screen, they do could whatever they want and the things they do are not are not seen by anyone. If something really does happen, by just plain clicking on a button and delete their account that will solve everything, this had made those people who are timid stronger (Moreau, 2019). Recently I have come across a social media trolling case on Instagram where I’ve read a post on Facebook. Some haters had left really nasty comment on a member from Girls Generation, her name is SooYoung Choi. Normally celebrities don’t really react on their hate comment since they have receive so much just posting a picture but this one in particular is getting the nerves on SooYoung. He/she created a so call “trolling account” which posted a lot of the celebrities that he/she hated and start giving weird and nasty comment about them in his/her profile, and also whenever SooYoung posted a new picture he/she will start firing her. After quite sometimes, SooYoung has saw him/her leaving those really malicious comment she had replied and also warm him/her to stop by reacting to the comment. And she says “Whenever things like that happen on social media, people has the guts to just fire at the people they don’t like, once they are being called out and have to meet the person who they are trolling, they will just keep bowing and say sorry what is the main point of you saying sorry when you want to troll at the very first place.” She also said, “this time I will not ask my manager and ask you out. I have already found out who you are and where you are, if you don’t stop, prepare to receive a lawyer’s letter from me.”

Social media actually is a very good plateform for people to spread good news or latest news and most importantly for people all around the world to connect with each other’s. it is not a platform for people to leave hate comment and troll people. But if you are just making it just to make jokes like Ilao Ilao is coming out with Bubble Milk Tea topping frozen yogurt on April fool’s day its fine, since it is a International pranking day.

JUST DON’T SPREAD HATE TO PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW, YOU KNOW THEIR FACE BUT NOT THEIR STORY SO JUST STOP.

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Social Activism & Protesting

What do you understand about social activism and social media protesting??

Social activism also known as digital activism, and as stated by Fuentes (2014), digital activism is also known as “cyberactivism”. At the very first place, this is a platform that are used by the public to share their thoughts and spread information that they know using Wide Web (WWW), a platform that we are using now. But now as technologies is getting better day by day, some people use it as a site for protesting and also magnifies off-line demonstration. For examples, do campaign through social medias, emailing, and etc. all of this are mostly done by the social activist now.

Online social activism

Some really huge and dominant organisation had been pressured by the social activist via hashtags on the internet. The increment in voices of disagreement through internet has been developing day by day, from the hashtags #Metoo, #TimesUp and #WeStrike to #NeverAgain and #BlackLivesMatter (Ghobadi, 2018). This is a way where people has the same opinion starts to talk to each other and agrees with what each other says in different places all around the world.

For example, a group of activists which called themselves 350.org, they are a group of activists where encourages the society to save the earth. Organizing campaign to contradict new coal, oil and also gas project via the internet has been done by them (Ghobadi, 2018). So, the environment would be “greener” in the futures.

Other than that, who doesn’t remember the most important social activism during the summer of 2014 where the whole internet has been flooded with the #ASLIceBucketChallenge which is started by a lot of celebrities and nominating a lot of other people for charity purposes for the ALS Association. This challenge is to let people know how it feels like when someone is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis diseases (ALS) also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Through this challenge and video, the association has raised funds and also awareness at the same time (Hitchings-Hales & Calderwood 2017).

#HeforShe has also became one of the very trending hashtags because of the participation of Emma Watson and also Justin Trudeau. And in this post, femininity isn’t all about women. Gender equality is the main reason behind this hashtag to be this popular. Emma Watson had tweeted and says “Wonderful men out there. I'm launching a campaign - #heforshe. Support the women in ur lives and sign up here now! ❤️ http://heforshe.org” on her twitter and requests to keenly include men and boys who are struggling and been assumed of as a “women’s thing” (Hitchings-Hales & Calderwood 2017).

Reference......

Fuentes, M A 2014, Digital activism, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. viewed 11 April 2019, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/digital-activism>.

Ghobadi, S 2018, Going viral: what social media activists need to know, The Conversation, viewed 11 April 2019, <https://theconversation.com/going-viral-what-social-media-activists-need-to-know-96043>.

Hitchings-Hales, J, Calderwood, I 2017, 8 Massive Moments Hashtag Activism Really, Really Worked, GlobalCitizen, viewed 11 April 2019, <https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/hashtag-activism-hashtag10-twitter-trends-dresslik/>.

[eevong]

Political Engagement on Social Media 🤔

Political engagement? Do people nowadays really care about politics? Usually, there’s two type of people you can find according to this it either they’re really into politics or the other type is just like me. I am the type of person who really doesn’t care much about politics but when the people start sharing and discussing about it, I will just sit and listen without giving any opinion. Other than that, when people share in social media, I will just read the title without clicking in since I have no interest in the topic all I care is about the outcome and what benefits to society and not being bias about this and that.

Does politician nowadays really use social media platform during election in Malaysia?

According to Lim (2018), Social media is proving to be an important channel through that we have a tendency to develop a view of the broader world and its issues. People who grows up in the digital world uses social medias as a tool to spread information, raise funds, exchanging opinion and lot more. Instead of thinking of it as an exclusion, it has become a norm in this modern era of technologies. When I say spreading news, it has also become of the main platform people used spread news about politic during election period.

According to the Malaysia’s Election Commission, 41% of the voters who had registered to vote in the past election are between the ages of 21 to 39. Come to think of it 21 years old on 2018 mean they are born in the year of 1997, and this is the age where digital natives falls in. Which mean they grew up with all kinds of social platforms. And there is where all this millennials gets their information and keeps every information up to date throughout the election. Even for people like me I don’t really have much interest on topics like this I will also read the tittle of news and understands what is really going on (Lim, 2018).

Other than that, hashtags that are also one of the things that are widely used by everyone especially when people wants their opinion or post to known by everyone. For example, during the past election period, Malaysian that are studying or working aboard will hashtags #PulangMengundi that means “go home and vote” in Malay. During the election period, on a lot of the social sites like Instagram, YouTube or Facebook, advertisement of voting to make the country better will also shows up and reminds you to go home and vote. But they will not particularly asked you to vote for any parties since no one could predict the winner.

During the past elections in Malaysia, the social network site had helps and gives a lot of credits to the winner of the elections which is Pakatan Harapan (or Alliance of Hope) and this is the first ever changing of government in the past 60 years of history

So all in all I do think that social media has really plays an important role when it comes to elections and politics, since people nowadays could get excess to the information of the politics fairly easily.

reference....

Lim 2018, Social media and politics in Malaysia election, YourCommenwealth, viewed 7 April 2019, <http://www.yourcommonwealth.org/social-development/democracy-participation/social-media-and-politics-in-malaysia-election/>.

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New York Fashion Week 2019. (feb)

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☁️

[eevong]

Is Tumblr a Blog or a Social Network site?

In my opinion Tumblr could both which is it could be a blog and also a social network, it depends on what does the user use the platform as. If the user uses it as a platform to share about their own experience and reviewing product and writing as a journal and also discussing on a specific topic, that will be considered under the blog category (What is a Blog? – The Definition of Blog, Blogging, and Blogger, n.d.). As for social networking, it is used as a platform to connect a person with another no matter if it is their family, friends, co-workers or even their customers. Which means social media doesn’t mean it’s meant to be used to communicate. It is also used as a platform for people to do their businesses, and has become one of the platform for marketers to communicate with their customers ( What is social network, 2019). So Tumblr is judged based on the content that are being published.

Personally, I think Tumblr is a platform for people to share different types of really aesthetic pictures. I first realized the existence of Tumblr is because I am searching for a nice wallpaper to use it as phone wallpaper. and started to know different account just from searching wallpaper. After that it made me have interest on taking pictures and post it so people could give comments and also reblog or use the picture as their wallpaper like my very first intention the picture I posted. After that, I got addicted to KPOP which is Korean Pop, and at first I never know the fan communities in Tumblr is that huge but slowly googling the idol group that I like and most of the link brought me to Tumblr had made me start using Tumblr as a platform to search what is the latest news and also the latest airport fashion on my favourite idol group. With that I have started to follow a lot of different admin from different country just to keep myself up to date on their news. For blogs on Tumblr, they normally will just post the item that they are reviewing and give their own opinion of the product that their reviewing. And normally this type of blog is meant to be seen by the public. With that company had send them product to review. This might also help the company in advertising their product. Also, sometimes they’ll just post a short text on their websites and talks about their own life. When the blogger him or herself thinks that the question by the viewer are important they’ll reply and it will create a small discussion on the page to allow everyone to comment and discuss. So this will make up a small community like the fan communities

Reference:

What is a blog? – the definition of blog, blogging, and blogger 2019, firstsiteguide, viewed 29 March 2019, <https://firstsiteguide.com/what-is-blog/>.

What is social network 2019, Affilorama viewed 29 March 2019, <https://www.affilorama.com/internet101/social-networks>.