justmeinthedigitalworld-blog

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#8 -  Global Social Media: China as a case study

The Golden Shield Project censors and surveys the internet and blocks unfavourable sites or information. Part of the Golden Shield Project is the Great Firewall of China which blocks popularly used sites in “the West and in other Asian countries” such as Facebook and Twitter among others. And the reason for China's limited exposure to popular socials used daily outside the country are due to restrictions set by the Chinese Government leading “local Chinese sites [to] dominate the landscape" (Chiu, Lin & Silverman 2012, p. 3).

I don’t think i can live without my Facebook, Instagram, tumblr, YouTube and Snapchat. I know, it’s pretty sad. Without them, it’s a....

GIF source: https://au.pinterest.com/pin/482940760022066236/

But don’t think that China are living in the ice age with no access to social media at all. They just can’t access ours but they do have their very own social networking platforms like WeChat (equivalent to Whatsapp) YouKu (similar to youtube) and so many more!

Meanwhile businesses have to think smarter. Social media engagement is vital for international companies to succeed in targeting the Chinese market. Due to restrictions, Chinese social media consumers use "home-grown social media platforms" (Crampton 2011).

Let’s look at WeChat, It has been described as "whatsapp on steroids" by Duncan Clark, an expert on china and mobile. The app was created by TenCent Holding, the biggest Chinese company with a net worth of $60billion. Kitty Lund, the CEO of lo (long expertise) China, described Chinese consumers as "obedient [where] you tell them what to do, they do it", now we can see how TenCent has such a successful income, it’s because of zero international competitions.

Imagine if we can’t access the Obama memes or tweet about daily rants or Instagram/snapchat our food to our ‘stories’?! Boy, aren’t we lucky here to do indulge in the social media we know and have.

Aaaaaaaaand, this does it for my last post on this fun and interactive while informative blog for this semester. Hope its been helpful for all that reads them! 

Sources cited:

Rampton, T 2011 'Social media in China: The same, but different' China Business Review, Vol 38, Issue 1, pp 28-31 viewed http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/social-media-china-business-review/

Chiu, C, Lin, D and Silverman, A 2012, 'China's social-media boom', McKinsey and Company, 1 May 2013 

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#7 - Social Gaming: Playing the Crowd

'Social Games' is a term used to refer to online games on a social networking platform like these examples that became globally successful and remain so: FarmVille, Cafe World (Zynga 2009) and Candy Crush (King 2012) on Facebook. 

Image source: http://guides.gamepressure.com/farmville/

But like all games, it is important for a “carefully constructed and maintained game environment” in order to achieve a successful and worthwhile experience for users/gamers, as well as profits for the game developers and distributors (Zwart & Humphreys 2014, p. 94). Thus, a certain set of rules and norms (codes of practice), as well as breaking them, within online gaming communities are important to ensure this success.

While it’s all fun and games, it can however, consume a gamers life where the boundaries of internal and external worlds are blurred. This can be the result of obsessiveness where a user/player can spend all their money on getting the added benefits all the while it’s perfectly FREE to achieve the goals of the game, thus losing their consciousness of their ordinary outside life. Other similar games that can lead to the same outcome include gambling environments through online casinos, again blurring the line between gaming (virtual) and gambling (reality - running the risk of losing money). Because of the digital gaming being too accessible for children, cultural anxieties are rising with campaigns promoting anti-gambling slogans and helplines featuring provoking imageries of children in a casino-like setting. 

image source: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2014/01/south-australia-government-agrees-to-change-its-gambling-starts-with-games-ads/

sources cited:

Melissa de Zwart & Sal Humphreys (2014) The Lawless Frontier of Deep Space: Code as Law in EVE Online' Cultural Studies Review

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TWLOHA twitter is filled with encouraging words for those who are active on their socials and need a little pick-me-up during their day just from reading these.

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#6 - Public health campaigns & communities

Social media hashtags for health movements like Movember (concerning men's health), TWLOHA (to write love on her arms: “a social-justice nonprofit combating suicide, self-infliction, addiction and depression, particularly in American Youth” (Milner 2012, p. 423)), ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis aka Lou Gehrig's disease, moto neuron disease: a mobility disease) ice bucket challenge create vocal awareness and financial support for further research but it can also have the "potential for superficial engagement" (Farrell 2017).

Image source: https://au.pinterest.com/pin/71424344059996436/

With the support of celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Hayley Williams (lead singer of Paramore), this organisation gets an extra boost of recognition to those who weren’t aware of TWLOHA through social media (i.e tumblr gifs and concert pictures like these).

With many discussions since the 90s “regarding the potentials of the Internet, and digital media more generally, for health education” but particularly “research which suggests that digital media can: exploit the resources of patients themselves (Hejlesen et al. 2001); afford improved accessibility because they are said to be available 24 hours a day access and offer the pacing of treatment to suit individuals’ needs and lifestyles (Strecher 2007; Rice et al. 2012); and offer increased levels of interactivity and therefore, much more scope for public engagement than with the mass media (Turner-McGrievy et al. 2009; Ito and Brown 2010) (Burgess, Cassidy & Light 2014, p.1).

Using TWLOHA and Movember as examples regarding the engagement between the health campaigns and the communities is that while it can provide mass awareness leading to financial support for those in need, it can also result in some people using such organisations to further themselves and gain unnecessary attention. For example, if a person who in reality does not suffer from mental health issues but due to self-diagnosis and using their personal social media to promote that they are, all for feeling a part of something big, it can result to actual deeper psychological issues for the person. Thus, running the risk of “potential superficial engagement” as i’ve mentioned above.

However, “TWLOHA extensively spans the United States and spills over its borders, garnering degrees of support in places like Canada, the UK, and Australia” providing actual help for those who need the help from this organisations (Milner 2012, p. 423). And as Ryan M. Milner reveals, while “TWLOHA’s supporters may only be wearing t-shirts, writing wall posts, and reading blogs. They may be just as fragmented, mediated, consumerist, and individualist as we fear. But, with these actions, they might be writing a story for those who need to read it”, thus making their online presence important and here to stay for its true supporters (Milner 2012, p. 434). 

Sources cited:

Burgess, J., Cassidy, E., & Light, B. (2014). ‘Deeply superficial Digital Media Engagement? The Case of Twitter and Movember 2013’. Paper presented at AoIR 15, Daegu, Korea.

Farrell, C 2017, 'Lecture 9', MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning materials on Blackboard, Swinburne University of Technology, 2 May , viewed 23 May 2017.

Milner, R. M. (2012) ‘To Write Love Through the Indie Imaginary: The Narrative Argument of a Mediated Movement’, Continuum, 26:3, 423-435

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In relation to my last post, another branch to crowd sourcing is crowd funding. Here, she has done so for the 2015 Earthquake in Nepal (an example i used for my previous post).

So I have my Go Fund Me site up and running! Me and my friend are both students going to Nepal in 2018 to volunteer with orphaned children who have lost their families in the 2015 earthquake. Even a share of this message would help! If you want to help out click the link! Any donation helps ❤️ http:www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/nicole-dowell

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#5 - Crowd sourcing in times of crisis

In an event where disasters occur, be it natural or not, the community comes together to support and help where they can. Crowd sourcing is an example of people in the community collecting important data to a specific platform for the public to connect to. Social media plays a vital role in this where these channels provide everyone with a way of communicating in a crisis. To perfectly encapsulate what Crowdsourcing is, it is ‘the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers’ (Merriam Webster online), in other words, a dispersed yet realistic point of view.

Image source: http://www.social-hire.com/blog/recruitment/is-crowdsourcing-the-future-of-recruitment/

For example, Ushahidi is now recognised as a crowdsourcing platform where "Professor Larry Diamond at  Stanford University has heralded Ushahidi as a ‘liberation technology’,  while Professor Clay Shirky at New York University has described it as a catalyst for social movements" (Ford 2012, p. 33). The immediacy of such crowdsourcing sites provide the public with current information of any major political movements or crisis. However, "as the sources of user-generated content grow and the volume of data increases, users of the technology face critical choices about what information to highlight, about the authenticity of reports and, consequently, which information should be declared as ‘verified’" (Ford 2012, p. 33). "‘Ushahidi’, meaning      ‘witness’ or ‘testimony’ in Kiswahili, because it enabled users to broadcast incidents of death, rape, looting and other human rights abuses to over 45,000 Kenyans, including local radio stations, which used the stories in their broadcasts" (Ford 2012, p. 34-35). Although the platform was originally created by and for Kenyan people, it has now expanded tremendously.

Image source: https://irevolutions.org/2009/02/27/huridocs09-from-wikipedia-to-ushahidi/

Another example of social media importance presence in a crisis is “Facebook and Twitter, played an important role in crisis communication at the height of the 2011 South East Queensland floods crisis (10-16 January)" (Bruns, Burgess, Crawford & Shaw 2012, p. 7). The hashtag #qldfloods on Twitter “quickly became the central coordinating mechanism for floods-related user activity on Twitter”  and since then, this social platform has been used in important ways to find and disseminate information. 50-60% of #qldfloods messages were retweets (passing along existing messages, and thereby making them more visible); 30-40% of messages contained links to further information elsewhere on the web” (Bruns, Burgess, Crawford & Shaw 2012, p. 7). Instantly, “Twitter both drew on and became a  source for mainstream media. Social media users around the world shared a wide range of flood-related media resources via Twitter. Meanwhile, users closer to the site of the disaster shared their own experiences and observations, often by including photographs and videos in their tweets” providing a very realistic perspective for the public (involved or not) (Bruns, Burgess, Crawford & Shaw 2012, p. 7). Another disaster zone is Nepal where the site Quakemap.org was invented with the intention of inviting “people to report earthquake damage in real-time and list what kind of aid was required around the country” (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-16/nepal-earthquake-how-open-data-social-media-helped-rebuild/6700410″).

In Kate Crawford, Frances Shaw, Jean Burgess and Axel Brun’s research report, they encapsulated the positive role “Social media can play...in crisis communication and emergency management, and the wider user community [which] is generally willing to support and assist the work of emergency services if that work is undertaken in a way that is compatible with the established community conventions of the social media platform itself” (Bruns, Burgess, Crawford & Shaw 2012, p. 7).

However, while crowdsourcing is great for immediacy in terms of current important information about a crisis for the community to go to, it can however, display difficulty in narrowing the most vital content from emergency services among others. The platforms may be overflowing with unnecessary content for the public to sift through, thus placing crowdsourcing in the middle of a spectrum in terms of positive/negative benefits. However, in my perspective, through an overall overview, it can be easy to navigate your way in a crowdsourcing platform if you keep an eye out for a recurring pattern that you can authenticate after thoroughly cross referencing with other platforms available, in other words, always double check your stuff (applicable for most things).

Image source: https://medium.com/creative-workplaces/auspol-how-do-i-do-this-voting-thing-ec30665a9e7

Sources cited:

Ford, H. (2012) ‘Crowd Wisdom’, Index on Censorship, pp 33-39

Executive Summary: ‘#qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods’, pp 7-10. Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Crawford, K., Shaw, F. (2012) 

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#4 - Trolling & Social Media Conflict

There are different types of online harassment where such physical and emotional torment leads to public shaming. These include trolling for the sake of it, stalking and cyberbullying where the perpetrator targets their victim's race, sexuality among other personal aspects that would make them vulnerable like the society have rejected them.

In some digital driven communities, "the rise of social media has prompted tremendous concern about “cyberbullying’ [and] the assumption among many parents and journalists is that social media radically increases bullying" (boyd 2014, p. 130). dana boyd revealed that “journalists latch onto and publicise data that suggest that the majority of youth are bullied, with little methodological or analytical consideration for what this implies” (boyd 2014, p. 131). Additionally, “adults use bullying as an umbrella term" which furthers a public ongoing debate that there is not general term for bullying to use universally (p. 132). Meanwhile, "networked technologies complicate how people understand bullying. Some people believe that [it] is a whole new phenomenon. Others argue that technology simply offers a new site for bullying, just as the phone did before the internet” however, people have to also consider that technologies like the internet - social media - can also act as a space for users to spread the awareness and stop online and physical bullying (boyd 2014, p. 132). boyd also sheds a light on how “most bullies react aggressively because they’re struggling with serious issues of their own” (boyd 2014, p. 135).

Since social media is the quickest way for information among others to spread, having the access to these things about a person has “the ability to use it as a weapon is a form of power in social situations” (boyd 2014, p. 145). Meanwhile, viral videos "exemplifies how mass public shaming is a by-product of widespread internet attention and networked distribution" which many refer to this as a form of cyberbullying if the person in the video is not aware of their sudden content going viral and not accepting of it when they do find out as they would have felt that their privacy has been infiltrated for the public to share a laugh (boyd 2014, p. 146). And so, these viral videos can result to being in the “most watched” or “trending” content ( boyd 2014, p. 147). 

However, many viral content like videos and memes have resulted in the person rising into internet fame and becoming a sort of a celebrity. However not always famous for the right reasons in my opinion.

Danielle Bregoli:

According to McCosker, "in order to understand digital citizenship and its potential as a critical concept for digital media studies, we need to address issues like abuse, harassment or cyberbullying simultaneously at the level of publics in national, global and local contexts, platforms and their technical measures and capacities, and practices, in terms of what people do and have the potential to do with digital media” in an essentially, approachable manner to the concept (McCosker 2016, p. 1). He also enlightened readers on an empirical studies recently done “to define the prevalence of online harassment [where] in the US, Pew research has shown that the majority of internet users have witnessed forms of online harassment, and 40% of all internet users report experiencing at least one form of online harassment. Among 18-24 year olds, 70% report being the target of at least one of the categories of harassment queried" (McCosker 2016, p. 3).

i think that all of us in the digital community must work together to shape the online space for everyone to access a supportive and kind environment where trolling and harassment is very limited. i say limited because while i am positive we can achieve better than this, we can’t forget those pesky trollers and time wasters who only strive in the annoying others. We’ve all experienced it! 

Some people are just mean. 

Sources cited:

boyd, d. (2014) ‘Bullying: Is the Media Amplifying Meanness and Cruelty?’, in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, pp 128-52.

McCosker, A. (2016) 'Managing Digital Citizenship: Cyber Safety as Three Layers of Control', Chapter 1, Negotiating Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest and Culture, (forthcoming, 2016, Rowman & Littlefield Int., London) Draft

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#3 - Digital Citizenship: Activism and Protest

Social media is initially used for interpersonal communication where people are enabled to connect to one another no matter the distance or time. Then slowly, it developed into users creating an online presence for work and for self-image. A point i mentioned, in my previous posts.

However, since then, activists now also uses social media sites extensively for political debate and movements as well as ideological leaders on their propagandas. Technology has been relevantly significant to the rise of mass protests, and according to Paolo Gerbaudo, "Social media can be seen as the contemporary equivalent of what the newspaper, the poster, the leaflet or the direct mail were for the labour movement" (Gerbaudo 2012, p. 4). He also describes the “power of social media as a means of collective action” (Gerbaudo 2012, p. 7). Additionally, "much of the initial research and analysis finds that social media played an important role in the collective actions that resulted in the overthrow of the governments of Egypt and Tunisia’s revolutions" (Youmans & York 2012, p. 317).

There have been many "events that mainstream media have tended to focus on” but one particular movement that i’d like to talk about is the Black lives matter movement and i how passionate i got to making a difference with the use of social media (Sigal & Biddle 2015, p. 287).

When this movement was initially created, it quickly spread globally due to social media's influence. I remember, the first time I knew about this movement, I was aimlessly scrolling through my dashboard and I saw some grim and unsettling images and captions of the brutality that was occurring. Then my newsfeed slowly increasingly became more active on this movement where people I was following were reblogging and letting other people know about the importance of this movement. From there, i was tweeting and reblogging on the issue like mad, trying my best to let the world know about the atrocity that i was reading and trying my part for the violence to stop but spreading information about the goal of this movement.

image source: http://www.popbuzz.co.uk/life/features/black-lives-matter-movement/

image source: http://www.popbuzz.co.uk/life/features/black-lives-matter-movement/

Many have faulted social media in totally different degrees. Some say it encourages “’slacktivism’, or superficial, minimal effort in support of causes” (Youmans & York 2012, p. 316). Meanwhile, there are “pundits and political leaders” who blames social media for catapulting “the uprisings in the Arab region and for many other mass protests around the world" (Sigal & Biddle 2015, p. 287), when really, it is because of the power that social media hold, the world have witnessed “that it is an event that occurs on the margins that serves as a catalyst, before becoming a symbol for a protest: often this symbol is human, charged with emotion and historically resonant" (Sigal & Biddle 2015, p. 289).

And as Ivan Sigal and Ellery Biddle from Global Voices stated, “we have learnt that it is the human, story-driven elements that bring people together to protest or  create movements”, a strong statement that i fully agree and stand by (Sigal & Biddle 2015, p. 289).

Sources cited: Gerbaudo, P. (2012). Tweets and the streets (1st ed., pp. 4,7). London: Pluto Press.

Youmans, W., & York, J. (2012). Social Media and the Activist Toolkit: User Agreements, Corporate Interests, and the Information Infrastructure of Modern Social Movements. Journal Of Communication, 62(2), 315-329.

Sigal, I., & Biddle, E. (2015). FCJMESH-007 Our Enduring Confusion About the Power of Digital Tools in Protest. The Fibreculture Journal, (26), 290-296

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#2- Politics and Civic Engagement

So for this week’s topic, it’s about taking a political angle, and i gotta say, i’m one of those who aren’t interested in politics. The reason is that every time, there is always something or someone (Donald Trump, Pauline Hanson etc) with outrageous and invalid beliefs (like banning muslims from entering a country that is their home: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/29/everything-need-know-donald-trumps-muslim-ban/), it just seems wrong that they are allowed to have that much power and hold such a high position in the political world.

But regardless, let’s move on.

The term “digital citizenship” was coined to refer the citizens who use technology such as social media to participate in political and government related discussions (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/digital-citizen). Social media has had a massive impact on the political sphere where politicians all over the world have utilised social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to promote the party and its ideologies that they represent to the society. The use of these platforms is to reach and connect to a large scale audience from various communities. A way of doing so is that they use #hashtags to enlarge the visibility of their ideas and status. Originally, Hashtags was used as a go-to ‘symbol’ to create a common thread used for themes and ideas when people tweeted their thoughts. Using them creates an image of an ‘overall discursive space’ (Driscoll and Walker, 2014). Additionally, “we also have to recognise that existing social, political and economic structures have an impact on how technology is used and how the internet is no longer such a ‘new’ media.” (Young 2010, p. 228). According to Sally Young’s ebook How Australia decides: election reporting and the media, “the internet is having an impact upon election news but also, more broadly, on news journalism and political communication” further supports my statement on social media’s heavy influence on the mass (Young 2010, p. 203).

At the start, i did say i’m not into politics, but i have to admit, the only time i would pay attention about anything closely related to the political world, it’s gotta be memes. MEMES MAN.

image source: http://www.stasheverything.com/lifestyle/top-10-barack-obama-memes/

image source: https://memesuper.com/categories/view/24a54e02addd274756ba60a597a0ae9039284940/meme-obama.html

image source: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/barack-obama

Can you see the common theme here?

IT’S BARACK OBAMA!!!! i love him so much because just look at that face. such a meme-able face in my opinion. Plus, America actually supported him as a president unlike some people (It’s you Trump, we’re all talking about you. The whole internet is, i mean how can we not?!).

#MEMES

Sources cited: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/29/everything-need-know-donald-trumps-muslim-ban/

Young, S. 2010, 'New, political reporting and the internet' in How Australia decides: election reporting and the media, Cambridge University Press, Australia, EBL eBook Library viewed 31 March 2017, pp 203-228.

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#1 - Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site?

It’s both. Well, at least, that’s how i see it. 

Tumblr, like many “blogging” platforms, was created for people to have an outlet to voice our inner thoughts and creative ideas among others. However, it is considered as a social network site as well because you can interact with other bloggers on the similar issues or ideas that you have vented about through tags and following other likeminded individuals. According to Dana Boyd, “Humans are both curious and social critters” (Boyd 2012, p. 73), which furthers my stance on why and how i think Tumblr is both a blogging and social networking platform. Tumblr isn’t the only one i think should be universally classified as this. For example, Instagram should be included because when you post a photo on there, people mostly have to wait and think about a killer caption to relate to the post for their followers. Isn’t that what blogging is? Creating substance for an audience to view, share and discuss. From my perspective, people (including myself) use social media platforms like Tumblr to create a public image.

Tumblr for me is like this collective box containing aesthetically pleasing visuals and quotes extracted from movies and books. I started on here (not this blog but rather a personal one i’ve had since i was 12) to join a community who shared the same interest as me. Over the years, it has slowly expanded and changed. Both Tumblr and i. I was about “being always on” when i first started. (Boyd 2012, p. 72) because i was addicted to establishing this image that i wasn’t necessarily portraying in real life. 

Image source: http://trojans360.tumblr.com/post/138231733854/how-to-blog-in-case-you-were-wondering

According to Social Selves, "being always-on isn't just about consumption and production of content but also about creating an ecosystem in which people can stay peripherally connected to one another through a variety of microdata" (Wilken & McCosker 2014, p.73). Now however, i only feel the attraction and need to go on here if i’m feeling creatively blocked or i want to endlessly and cluelessly reblog anything and everything on my dashboard just so that it gives me something to do when procrastinating (i’m that lazy with uni work). 

People use these platforms as a career tool (again another image representation) such as showcasing their photography or their writing portfolio. Through that as well, they would also insert the other forms of social media they have to further accentuate their current presence in the digital world such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram among others.

Essentially, i believe that media platforms and communication channels are currently crucial tools for today's social self-formation. Boyd refers to the “always-on” as “digital natives”. A generation i was born into and a term to follow for those after me. (Boyd 2012, p. 72). So yes, Tumblr, in its own right, is a creative hub designed for those who like to blog and self-promote at the same time.

Sources cited: Boyd, D (2012). The Social Media Reader, University Press, New York.

Wilken, R & McCosker, A (2014). The Media and Communications in Australian, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW.

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Thought i’m still in Week 2 but really its Week 5 already and i’m a week late on starting this blog. 

Let’s get BLOGGIN’

Image source: http://www.gurl.com/2013/08/08/having-the-talk-with-your-parents-gifs/

Image source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-kelly/25-reasons-why-being-sing_b_4582106.html

All Nighter (2017)