yanting01 - Tumblr blog

[yanting01]

Internet Access in North Korea

North Korea is the northern portion of the Korean peninsular in East Asia. It it bordered by China and Russia to the north and by South Korea. North Korea national capital is Pyongyang, a major industrial and transport center near the west coast (Yu 2021).

Internet restrictions in North Korea have been a topic in recent years, and have been made into funny memes.

Based on a news report on BBC, North Korea restricted internet access for their citizens, only some websites can be surfed outside the country (Asher 2016).

There are a list revealed by a US-based engineer that only less than 30 websites, majority about propaganda, mundane ministry and tourism information, and some North Korean recipes and films on the websites.

Most of the sites revealed by the US-based engineer are in Korean, and there is a lot of information about the Supreme Leader's Activities, such as their leader, Kim Jong-un visited a fruit farm to deliver some guidance.

He also added that many of the websites are very slow and not frequently updated. However the news-focused are daily updating, but still, only presenting state propaganda, stated by website that monitors North Korean media. The websites are poorly designed and are not user-friendly.

The North Korea's intranet is a mysterious and closed system for its citizens that are not connected to the internet, which only displays the state workings.

The leader Kim has been particularly tough to restrict access to foreign media and been more aggressive in digital monitoring. In 2014, an operating system was introduced into the country. It will identify and delete all unapproved files and applications from phone or computers that are linked to the North Korean network (King 2019).

To conclude...

In my humble opinion, I think that the restriction of Internet in North Korea is over extreme. Especially during the pandemic of Covid-19, the people could not receive more information about Covid-19, here assumed that the North Koreans would not aware of the virus, or even public health, as we all know that information regarding Covid-19 are mostly shared and spread throughout the Internet. However, in North Korea could be another case, where its citizens could not travel abroad from the country. According to Shin (2021), the country have taken strict measures to control the virus, such as closing the borders with China and also ban entry from abroad since China announced 1st of coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Therefore, their risk of infecting Covid-19 will be smaller. Shin (2021) also stated that North Korea have been insisting that there are not cases of Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

———————- This is a cute ending line ————————-

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! 😍

—————————- References below —————————

References

Asher, S 2016, ‘What the North Korean internet really looks like’, BBC, 21 September, p. 1.

King, R 2019, ‘North Koreans Want External Information, But Kim Jong-Un Seeks to Limit Access’, Center For Strategic & International Studies, 15 May, viewed 23 May 2021,  <https://www.csis.org/analysis/north-koreans-want-external-information-kim-jong-un-seeks-limit-access>.

Shin, M 2021, ‘What Is the Truth About COVID-19 in North Korea?’, The Diplomat, 6 January, p. 1.

[yanting01]

Are gaming communities becoming less about play and more about monetization?

Monetization in game developed recent years is already a trend. It is less to see game that does not include features for players to purchase, whether is it in-game purchase method or players need to buy the game before they can enjoy it. It is common that online games nowadays utilized method where players will need to pay for an amount to get their desired items in-game so that they could proceed to play the game more enjoyable, as I believe the paid items will be more powerful than ones that are free. To illustrate, video below shows a game called Genshin Impact, players need to draw to get a chance to get their desired characters that have particular skills or abilities.

What drives players to purchase the contents in-game?

Developers nowadays no longer create best possible game they can in the artistic sense, rather they sell the in-game content, which will drives players to purchase the content frequent as possible. Studies by Hamari (2017) have shown the reasons why players purchase in-game content.

One of the reason would be they want to be dominating in the game. Various in-game items act as support that could increase their performance and hence provided the players that purchased an advantage to be the best in the game. For example, a game called Tower of Savior will regularly update new items, where the new items will always have ability that can solve the game's puzzle for conveniently, and that will drives player to purchase in-game currency to draw the new items.

Next, some responded that their reason will be for personalization. Some games like Mobile Legends and League of League have features that the characters could wear skin to be looked more cool and dashing. Several other reasons include showing off to achievements and to friends, special offer, supporting the game and also unlocking content.

In addition, some other drivers of in-game purchase include to support the game. Some players that really like and thinks the game is good, they will support the game by investing some money. Including me, sometimes to support the game to continue develop and survive longer in the market, I will invest small and affordable amount to the game I play, such as Genshin Impact. Besides, if there are promotion of the items, I will consider to purchase, too.

Will monetization affects gameplay?

Several case studies by Markopoulos (2018) studied the successful and unsuccessful games on the market based on their monetization.

League of Legends

The successful case is League of Legends by Riot Games. This game is a genre of Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA). It has a lot of game modes and maps, and its most trending attraction will be the mode in Summoner Rift of 5 players versus 5 players. To win the game, one team have to destroy the structures of the other first.

Its business model is free to play, and players could not win by any chance of purchasing items in store. The items in store are only used for purchasing characters and personalization, such as the skins of the characters. Even its business model is free to play, in 2016, it reached a landmark of 100 million monthly active users, and earned revenue of $1.8 billion, and even went up to $2.1 billion in the next year. Until last year which is 2020, its revenue still maintain at about $1.75 billion (Clement 2021).

The game put the players' experience as priority then the revenue. With that, the game had established huge fan based which is a good point for the game and business development.

Star Wars Battlefront 2

The unsuccessful case will be Star Wars Battlefront 2 by Electronic Arts (EA). The game is an action shooter video game based on the film Star Wars. Since the release of the game, it received widespread criticism because of the loot boxes, where players could gain advantage of it substantially, if they purchased them.

The game does not success because it is like a pay-to-win game. The richest players wins instead of the skilled. Even worse will be the in-game purchase, where the loot boxes were randomly getting what they going to get. Players only get upgraded with characters they are not familiar with, and could not proceed to play with their most liked characters that have weaker abilities because of their luck, which is like gambling.

In a result, places like Hawaii and Belgium were looking into to ban this game because it support underage gambling. The company EA also lost $3 billion because of the monetization fault. EA did compensate and take action on their mistakes, but looks like it is only worsening. More rage from the players are rising. As some players realized that unlocking a hero character, Luke Skywalker requires about 40 hours of game time, and others also revealed that the game requires 6 years to unlock everything.

Conclusion

Back to the topic, I think that gaming communities in recent years are focusing both, where using their gameplay to support the monetization method, just like League of Legends. Players are also wise enough to determine whether the game is worth to monetize or not. If games are mainly focusing on attracting players to purchase in-game content, I believe the game will not stay on the market for too long. Game developers should really looked into their monetization style to avoid cases like Star Wars Battlefront 2.

———————- This is a cute ending line ————————-

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! 😍

—————————- References below —————————

References

Markopoulos, P 2018, 'The effect of monetization in the gaming industry', BA (Hons) Games Design Thesis, University of the Arts London, London.

Clement, J 2021, League of Legends (LoL) revenue worldwide from 2015 to 2020, Statista, viewed 20th May 2021, <https://www.statista.com/statistics/806975/lol-revenue/>.

Hamari, J, Alha, K, Jarvela, S, Matias Kivikangas, J, Koivisto, J, Paavilainen, J 2017, ‘Why do players buy in-game content? An empirical study on concrete purchase motivations’, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 68, ISSN 0747-5632, 538 - 546.

[yanting01]

Week 9 - Fandom

What is fandom?

Fandom, a word that spread rapidly through nations, often means a community formed by the fans of a particular game, books, actor and actress, movies, and many more (Hunt 2016). Some people might consider themselves not being part of fandom. Still, never they know that they have already been part of the fandom community whenever you started to loop a piece of certain music, begin to follow a game streamer, or even watching a drama series constantly. All these can be considered as an act of fandom. Fandom has been a part of the community in various ways, and it has been affecting the community. Let us watch the video below to find out more about fandom:

How does fandom work?

Fandom is formed through having a common interest among a group of strangers. These strangers will group and form their community that spread worldwide through the power of social media (Pursey 2018). Brands and media often take advantage of the news spreading speed of social media to create more members to join the fandom community. People will somehow be interested in something, and that is how these brands and media get you. The constant growth of fandom in social media is tremendous, causing social media to become the platform where the brands and media target their consumers. Let us find out more about how does fandom work in the video below:

Social media in fandom. Good or bad?

Social media has always served as a double-edged sword in almost every event that happens worldwide. The success of an artist strongly depends on fan activism. Through social media, fandom can boost an artist's popularity by sharing information and promoting their idol. However, at the exact moment, fans with a toxic mentality like assume an artist is an object and "I made that artist who they are" often cause a negative influence on the fandoms (Derseh 2019). This made us think twice; social media in fandom help artists to succeed in their career, also might causing them to fail at the same time. Remember, the network is amplifying your thoughts (Lindsay 2019). Now, what do you think? Watch the video below and think again.

Conclusion:

Is fandom excellent or bad? I guess you already have a thought in your mind, but I would like to share mine. Fandom is good but only when it is treated positively, and self-control will is essential to keep it that way. When a person is too extreme in the fandom culture, things might go the different way that we want it. In conclusion, fandom culture is cool when you keep it that way.

Reference list:

Derseh, M., 2018. Social Media in fandom. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://medium.com/meron-d3r53h/social-media-in-fandom-9f1382d76eb8> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

Hunt, S., 2016. What Being A Part Of A 'Fandom' Means. [online] The Odyssey Online. Available at: <https://www.theodysseyonline.com/fandom-meaning> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

Lindsay, K., 2019. The Good, The Bad, The Loud: Welcome To Fandom Fridays. [online] Refinery29.com. Available at: <https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/06/234404/fandom-fridays-introduction> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

Pursey, T., 2018. Building audiences and delighting fandoms on social media: six insights. [online] Medium. Available at: <https://medium.com/flyingobject/building-audiences-and-delighting-fandoms-on-social-media-six-insights-4db4de8fa4ae> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

Youtube. 2014. How Does Fandom Work?. [online] Available at: <https://youtu.be/EmuuOJms62s> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

Youtube. 2017. Are Fandoms Good or Unhealthy Obsessions?. [online] Available at: <https://youtu.be/onxeBOnjWnU> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

Youtube. 2021. Fandoms (Animation). [online] Available at: <https://youtu.be/clO20WqStuw> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

[yanting01]

nice post 👍🏻

Week 9 - Fandom

Fandom is the state of being a fan over someone or something but in the case, I will be touching on fandom towards celebrities regardless they are singers, dancers or bands. Although I personally have almost zero experience with fandom, I can still see why certain group of people are obsessed with who they like and what they are doing. There's nothing wrong with it when you're trying to support someone just because you love the songs they wrote or just their personality, but if you're going overboard with it and starts to influence people around you, the person you're support will sure be upset too. Being the most powerful fandom - a south Korean boy band, BTS, according to MTV (2018), has achieved a global success with two consecutive number 1 albums on the billboard charts, a sold-out world tour, and a historic stadium show at citi field in which had over 40,000 fans in attendance. They named their fan base ARMY just like Beliebers for Justin Bieber, Swifties for Taylor Swift and Arianators for Ariana Grande (Ross, 2020). This creates a bond between fellow celebrities and their fans indirectly.

Impact of social media towards Fandom

In the presence of social media, there is also where fans will be able to get an update on what their idols are doing. But through social media, there are always pros and cons. Are these fans being too extreme and weird? One of the example for pros is that sometimes ‘Emotional support K-pop boys’ can help fans with their mental health (Yeo, 2021). He or she will be able to motivate their fans to do better and aim bigger in their lives. Laffan is from the National Anti Bullying Center at Dublin City University stated that Emotional attachment to an idol can be fairly healthy too. Although it might sound ridiculous but some fans are really living for their idols.

Way back in 2017, Jonghyun from SHINee had passed away at the age of 27 and according to BBC (2017), the hashtag #YouDidWellJonghyun and #StayStrongShawols went viral on Twitter (shawols is the term what fans of SHINee called themselves) as they have come together to pay tribute on social media.

Spread Love

Through this, fans can unite as one and continue to spread love just because they have so much love towards the same idol. But here also comes the cons of it. For example, some might be expressing their negative sides on social media too. Especially when their idols passed away or found out actually taking drugs, they might act differently and somewhat being over extreme on social media platform. This negative energy will then influence everyone else that have the same thoughts on the incident and some might try to hurt themselves or commit suicide due to disappointment or when they are not able to accept the fact. Dam-young (2017) stated that an Indonesia fan attempts suicide following the death of Jonghyun. As mentioned by the fan who attempted to suicide in her Twitter post that she had lost both her parents and now her idol, she is thinking of giving up her life instead.

Extreme? "Weird"? Social Media Abuse?

Some extremist might even post pictures of them hurting themselves on Twitter or Facebook just to let the community know how upset they were and how important this idol is to them. This is totally against the law as some other people that are thinking of committing suicide might have really done it after seeing someone with similar experience had already done so, therefore following on attempting suicide.

Fandom Wars

Another effect of social media is that fans tend to abuse social media by using it to leave hate speech on posts by other celebrities that they either don't support or their competition such as the rivalry of EXO-Ls and VIPs in 2015 according to Koreaboo (2018). They often compare to each other and argue which is better.

This really creates a bad trend on the social media as you're scrolling your new feeds, you see hate speeches everywhere, attacking, insulting each other. It acceptable to support who you love but don't hate because they are your rivals. In fact, some of these groups are from the same entertainment company and are good friends, so why should fans hate each other for no reason at all. Fans get raged when their group did not win any awards and get jealous when other groups won the title and start backlashing them through social media behind screens.

Conclusion

So is fandom normal? Are they extreme and "weird"? According to Arzadon (2020), there is nothing wrong with fandom culture and to be a fan of someone or something but most importantly there are still standards of behavior that needs to be met and understood by everyone involved. We shouldn't be over obsessive, violent and bully because in the end, everyone is still a person that needs to live a normal life.

Lastly, is fandom a beautiful thing?

Yes!

Is it dangerous?

Yes!

List of References

Arzadon, L., 2021. Is Fandom Culture Bad?. [online] The Tower. Available at: <https://sbadamsthetower.com/4622/ae/arts-entertainment/is-fandom-culture-bad/> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

BBC News. 2017. Jonghyun fans take comfort in 'pearl aqua Moon' images. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-42436476> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

Dam-young, H., 2017. Indonesian fan attempts suicide following Jonghyun‘s death. [online] Koreaherald.com. Available at: <http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20171221000714> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

Koreaboo. 2018. 6 Biggest Fanwars In K-Pop History That We’re Thankful Are In The Past. [online] Available at: <https://www.koreaboo.com/lists/kpop-history-remember-biggest-fanwars/> [Accessed 9 May 2021].

MTV. 2018. ARMY: Inside The World's Most Powerful Fandom - | MTV. [online] Available at: <https://www.mtv.com/video-clips/romgsq/army-inside-the-world-s-most-powerful-fandom> [Accessed 7 May 2021].

Ross, A., 2020. The best fandom names in pop. [online] Planetradio.co.uk. Available at: <https://planetradio.co.uk/hits-radio/entertainment/music/pop-fan-nicknames/> [Accessed 7 May 2021].

Yeo, A., 2021. ‘Emotional support K-pop boys’ help fans with their mental health. [online] Mashable SEA. Available at: <https://sea.mashable.com/social-good/11974/emotional-support-k-pop-boys-help-fans-with-their-mental-health> [Accessed 8 May 2021].

[yanting01]

Is Korean Fandom a friendly space for Malaysian fan?

In this era filled with digital technology, lots of activities could be done on the internet, especially the social media, one of it will be fandom. When I see the word 'fandom', the first direct terms that came into my mind are K-pop, K-drama, all sorts of 'Hallyu' , a global phenomenon that signifies the spread of Korean popular culture, such as their pop music, dramas, etc. Other than 'Hallyu', I know there is also other types of fandom, such as anime fandom, movies fandom, western countries pop singers, etc. Anything that have a state or attitude of being a fan, that will be fandom. So, you have guessed it right! Today's topic is more interesting, which is fandom, and we will also be discussing about fandom in Malaysian fans, is it a friendly space or not? Below is the main cast of drama Vincenzo that I "fandomed" recently 😜

The Term 'Fandom'

'Fan' refers to "an enthusiastic devotee usually as a spectator" (Merriam Webster 2021).

'Fandom' refers to "the state of being a fan of someone or something, especially a very enthusiastic one" (Cambridge Dictionary 2021).

By the definition, fan and fandom are correlated to each other. Fandom provides fans a medium to engage and communicate with other fans that shares same interests (Abd Rahim 2019). It is an essential mediating factor of relationship between fans and the object fans their fanaticism, and between individual fans themselves (Abd Rahim 2019).

In this era of arising digital technology, fans participated in a variety of online discussions related to their interests. They form groups to devote to specific music genres and individual stars, encourage daily interactions within the fandom, between fans and the music industry (Abd Rahim 2019).

Here comes an example of fandom: I remember when the k-drama, Vincenzo first premiered on Netflix, there are already a lot of discussions on the drama itself, and also the casts. When I scroll through my social media (Instagram, YouTube), there are quite a number of fan-made videos, short scenes of the funny moments, and others. When I googled the drama, there are also a lot of discussions regarding the drama's plot, and nevertheless shipping the main cast to be in a relationship (that happened every time in romance genre 😂).

Healthy and Toxic Fandom

Fandom has the advantage of creating sense of community and help boost self-esteem of a person. However, it also has downsides, it is sometimes detrimental, where fandom could foster toxicity around a given figure or franchise. To illustrate, a South Korean celebrity, Sulli was found dead caused by suicide, and the reason was guessed to be the attacked by the community, together suffering from depression (Boroweic 2019).

Good fandom is healthy, appreciative, that support each other in a collaborative community. The opposite is only toxic and abusive.

Influences of Fandom

Korean fandom have appeared to be influencing, industries such as food and cosmetics have been using them to market their products. Below is a video shows a Korean celebrity, Siwon Choi, doing advertisement for Mi Sedap new flavor Korean Spicy Soup instant noodle. Mi Sedap is a top-leading instant noodle company from Malaysia.

(Link to Mi Sedaap Facebook 2020)

And the comments on the video posts are quite engaging and positive, showing that the celebrity did somehow boost the product visibility. Another thing will be the Malaysia community towards this 'Hallyu' fandom is mostly accepted.

(Image captured from Mi Sedaap Facebook 2020)

In addition, in a news post from Syok (2021) stated that Malaysian K-pop fans composed of the 7th biggest market for K-pop-related conversations on Twitter by tweet volume, according to statistics collected by Twitter and fandom data observatory K-pop Radar.

Again, these shows that Malaysian are having high acceptance on Korean fandom, we couldn't say there are no toxic fandom within Malaysian, but based on the statistics, majority are accepting and loving it.

To conclude...

Everyone have different likes and dislikes, even Korean fandom will have somebody that hates it. I believe fandom is a friendly space for Malaysian, where the condition to share the same interests. Apart from that, Malaysian generally also act ethically on the Internet, especially social media. This will ensure that people don't get conflicted easily, and make the internet a friendly space, and a friendly space for fandom.

———————- This is a cute ending line ————————-

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! 😍

References

Abd-Rahim, A. (2019). Online Fandom: Social Identity and Social Hierarchy of Hallyu Fans. Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography, 9(1), 65–66. https://doi.org/10.15273/jue.v9i1.8885

Borowiec, S. (2021, January 29). Is South Korea’s caustic obsession with celebrity to blame for the early demise of another young starlet? Steven Borowiec discusses the soul-searching in the country after Sulli’s death. CNA. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/south-korea-celebrity-sulli-f-x--suicide-cause-death-12018318

Cambridge University Press. (n.d.). Fan. In Cambridge University Press. Retrieved May 9, 2021, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fandom

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Fan. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved May 9, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fan

Syok. (2021, February 4). Malaysia Ranks Seventh Among Countries With Most Tweets About K-pop. https://en.syok.my/viral/malaysia-ranks-seventh-among-countries-with-most-t

This is a blog post for educational purpose only for unit MDA20009 Digital Communities.

[yanting01]

Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding, What are Those?

I believe when people heard or see about crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, they will be confused, including me. These two terms are quite similar in a way that both encourage mass-community collaboration. However, there are two different things entirely. Let's look into further about what is "crowdsourcing" and "crowdfunding" and also the effect of fake news on crowdsourced information!

Definition of Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding

Crowdsourcing is the act of getting work, information or ideas from a mass group of community that submit their data using the Internet, social media, and smart phone applications (Hargrave 2019).

For instance, an GPS assistant and traffic app called Waze encourage users to report road conditions such as accidents to provide live updated information to other app users.

Crowdfunding is the use of small amounts of capital collected from a mass group of community to finance a new business venture (Smith 2021).

It brings investors and entrepreneurs together to increase entrepreneurship by making use of easy accessibility of vast networks of people through social media and crowdfunding websites. Some well-known crowdfunding websites include Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and GoFundMe.

Crowdsourcing: Pros and Cons

Pros #1: Newer Perspectives and True Feedback

For many big companies such as Apple, opt for crowdsourcing as it allows for testing with all kinds of different parameters. Crowdsourcing provides newer perspectives and true feedback as it has greater diversity of thinking. For example, the Lego company setup a portal for their fans around the world to submit their idea for new Lego sets, then the company gets access to a truly diverse set of thoughts and preferences and ends up with suggestions for new products (Peters III 2019).

Pros #2: Cost-Effective

Cost-Effective will be the best part about crowdsourcing. It is very cheap as compared to all other alternatives such as hiring third parties - new designer or innovator. In addition, you will also save a lot of time and money by eliminating processes like brainstorming and validating. In traditional work relationships, company pays hourly wages or salaries, however in crowdsourcing, it provides work-based payments that increase cost effectiveness. Employees are paid according to the type and complexity of the task. In this way, company will also receive value for every cent that are spent (Chrum 2012).

Cons #1: Confidentiality

The limitation about crowdsourcing is that it doesn't leave much room for confidentiality. Like almost everything on Internet could be accessed by almost everyone. Company that have highly sensitive information linked with the problem they are trying to solve may have this concern (Bakire 2021). The company will need to be aware that the information provided does not give competitors a chance to benefits from it.

Cons #2: Brings Poor Qualities Entries

As some ideas from the crowds might not be professional and suitable always, crowdsourcing could also brings poor qualities entries (Fournier 2019).

Company have to know that people are paid higher because of their expertise, while being cost-effective, the outcomes of crowdsourcing will also be inconsistent.

Crowdfunding: Pros and Cons

Pros #1: Ability to Test Market

Crowdfunding allows company to constantly test its design, marketing strategy, and more. As compared to the traditional funding methods, you need a clear strategy to implement before you begin (Startups.com 2021). Company could get feedback about their ideas and understand how to improve it.

Pros #2: Gauge Interest

Company could gauge public interest in its product before the company works on it. Company that successfully crowdfunded a project could get a huge amounts of attention, whether on social media and elsewhere, which could also helps them to grow beyond the amount that were raised. Company wouldn't need to invest thousands to make prototypes of a product that customers are not interested.

Cons #1: Exposes An Entrepreneurs' Idea

Although crowdfunding have all sorts of benefits, it also have some drawbacks. For instance, crowdfunding will expose entrepreneurs' ideas and detailed insider information to potential competitors. This increases the risk that the owner's idea to be plagiarized, especially if the competition are having better finance.

Cons #2: Limited Amount of Money To be Raised

Another downsides of crowdfunding is that the amount of money that could be raised are limited, although it is a fast way to raise finance. Crowdfunding caps the maximum amount allowed to be raised. Because of this, most companies benefit far more from venture capitalists if they were seeking a substantial amount of capital (Nesterenko 2016).

To summarize...

I believe now you will understand more about what are crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Knowing that social media also adds value to both crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, making them more effective, people should also be aware on the downsides.

———————- This is a cute ending line ————————-

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! 😍

References

Bakire, H. (n.d.). The Top 5 Crowdsourcing Advantages and Disadvantages. HeroX. Retrieved May 1, 2021, from https://www.herox.com/blog/972-the-top-5-crowdsourcing-advantages-and-disadvantag

Chrum, A. (2015, November 30). The Business Value of Enterprise Crowdsourcing Part 3: Increased Cost Effectiveness. CrowdSource. https://www.crowdsource.com/blog/2012/08/the-business-value-of-enterprise-crowdsourcing-part-3-increased-cost-effectiveness/

Crowdfunding: Pros and Cons. (2018, May 11). Startups.Com. https://www.startups.com/library/expert-advice/crowdfunding-pros-cons

Fournier, A. (2019, October 25). 6 Great Advantages of Crowdsourcing You Can Benefit From. Braineet. https://www.braineet.com/blog/crowdsourcing-benefits/

Hargrave, M. (2019, July 8). Crowdsourcing. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdsourcing.asp

Nesterenko, O. (2017, April 20). The Pros and Cons of Crowdfunding. Medium. https://medium.com/@OleksiyNesterenko/the-pros-and-cons-of-crowdfunding-aeb05803ba31

Peters, B. (2020, December 18). What is crowdsourcing? What are its advantages and disadvantages? Medium. https://medium.com/assist-2-develop/what-is-crowdsourcing-what-are-its-advantages-and-disadvantages-d754551b57b3

Smith, T. (2021, March 18). Crowdfunding. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdfunding.asp

This is a blog post for educational purpose only for unit MDA20009 Digital Communities.

[yanting01]

Is Social Media Useful in Spreading Information On COVID-19 In Malaysia?

Spreading information on the pandemic is definitely important especially when more cases are arising and the pandemic are getting serious. Spreading awareness and sharing information towards Covid-19 using social media will be a good way, but is it really useful in Malaysia? This will be the topic to be discussed today.

Usage of Social Media in Malaysia

In a study from Shafizan & Wok (2017) shows that 66% of the Malaysian population were online by the end of 2012. Since then, the government have been doing hard work such as implementing better and faster internet access.

And these has facilitated the boom of e-commerce and online businesses in Malaysia. The people of Malaysia have also become more reliant on the Internet for everyday activities such as daily news or bonding with their friends and families.

According to the statistics from Internet World Stats (2021) on the "Asia Internet Use, Population Statistics Data and Facebook Data - Mid Year 2021", Malaysia has about 89% of its population of internet users and 82% amongst are Facebook users.

Based on that, we can say that people of Malaysia are involved in social media decently well. Just look at people around us, without a doubt, even our parents that owns a smart phone or tablet are using social media as entertainment or even information of daily news.

Ways of Spreading Covid-19 information on Social Media in Malaysia

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Malaysia government have been doing a great job on spreading awareness using social media.

For instance, the Health Ministry of Malaysia have been sharing first hand information of Covid-19 updates throughout Malaysia using Facebook.

Various other regional news media group such as Sarawak Eye, Hitz and MY will also updates news about cases and clusters identified every evening, they will also share information regarding the vaccination, action and decision taken by the government such as announcement of MCO, CMCO, and RMCO. Details about the standard operating procedure (SOP) are also shared clearly by these media through social media.

(Images taken from Facebook of Sarawak Eye)

(Images taken from Instagram of Hitz Sarawak)

(Images taken from Instagram of MyFM Sarawak)

On top of that, General Health Director of the country, Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah will also share information of Covid-19 happening in Malaysia, too. To illustrate, the image below shows the infection rate according to daily cases on 24th April 2021 shared by Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah.

(Image taken from Facebook of Noor Hisham Abdullah)

Is Social Media Useful in Spreading Information On COVID-19 In Malaysia?

To summarize the topic today, I think that social media is really useful in spreading information on Covid-19 in Malaysia. In addition, it plays an essential role to spread news to the people. Various language of information are available for multinational country like Malaysia, so people will not be fall behind of the latest news, especially the elderly. By using social media, people could also get the latest news shared by the official portal and spread by others. As more Malaysians have been used to rely on social media such as Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp to receive news updates, it will also gives an opportunity for them to receive Covid-19 information in a more convenient way, as long as they followed the official accounts such as some of the example I have mentioned above.

———————- This is a cute ending line ————————-

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! 😍

—————————- References below —————————

References

Asia Internet Usage Stats Facebook and 2021 Population Statistics. (2020, December 31). Internet World Stats. https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm

Wok, S., & Mohamed, S. (2017, May 31). Internet and Social Media in Malaysia: Development, Challenges and Potentials. IntechOpen. https://www.intechopen.com/books/the-evolution-of-media-communication/internet-and-social-media-in-malaysia-development-challenges-and-potentials

This is a blog post for educational purpose only for unit MDA20009 Digital Communities.

[yanting01]

How Might Activists Use Social Media in the Future?

Social Media and Activism have been a hot topic in recent years. It has been said that social media have been influential especially on activism with its capability of communication. Let's look at the topic today about how social media could be used by activists in the future. 🤗🤗

What is Activism?

Before getting to the main point, let us know more about what is activism and how it goes with social media.

Activism, by definition of Merriam-Webster is "a practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support or opposition to one side of a controversial issue". In short, it is an action where people react protest or support

There are many forms of activism, writing letters to political leaders, boycotting certain products and businesses are some examples. All types of activism, even micro-activism can lead to macro-activism.

Hashtag Activism is one of the forms of activism, it is an act of building up public support via social media for a cause (Techopedia 2021). This method has been trending to bring socio-political changes in the real world. It has achieved a widespread media attention and participation of a large number of netizens for issues such as raising human right abuses, justice for victims, fund raising, opposition against government policies or regulations to curb crimes, etc. To illustrate, hashtags like #Ferguson and #HandsUpDontShoot, which emerged in the aftermath of Michael Brown's death in the United States, provided a platform for marginalized citizens to condemn police violence and media representations of their concerns.

Social Media and Activism

The emergence of digital networked technologies had led to convergence of distribution and communication formats including social media (Cammerts 2015). Social media are seen as convergent technologies because they combined different forms of communication into one platform. For instance, Facebook consists functions to create posts in public form, where it brings information to people using the platform around the globe, and significantly influenced people, even if its true or false information. People could share and also react to posts to show if they like it, feel angry, sad, surprised and others.

The reason why activists deploy social media would be its ability to increase social movements and organize across borders on a transnational level, to link up with other organizations, building larger networks that time/space constraints overtime, potentially leading to more spill-over. Furthermore, Obaid(2020) also stated that social media provides a rational platform for social movements to share their ideas. More people would engage if the demands of social movements and their harmony with collective identity are more closely associated. For example, when we are scrolling through our news feed on social media, you would see some posts about activism on recent news, if you feel agreed on it, you may share the posts or react on the post, and these moves will help letting the post spread and reach out to more people, engaging more people around the globe.

How Might Activists Use Social Media in the Future?

After doing some research on topics about activism with social media, I personally think that in the future social media will be more utilized by activists for social movements. As we can see that social media is really a good platform to spread information, its power of dissemination is beyond of all doubt. It certainly paves the way for people to participate and engage more freely in public discussions about their country and the world outside while remaining relatively anonymous. This is especially valuable in countries where freedom of expression is not a culture. Social media is a driver for activism, political discussions and the fight for human rights and because of that, we need to ensure that it continues to be a safe space for people to connect about important issues and not used as funnels for a surveillance database that governments can take advantage of (González 2018). It is important for people everywhere using social media to take precaution, protect their digital identity and know their rights. I believe in the future, social media will be one of the biggest platform for activists to voice themselves and engage with communities.

---------------------- This is a cute ending line -------------------------

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading! 😍

---------------------------- References below ---------------------------

References

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Activism. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/activism

Gallo, M. (2020, December 6). Social Media’s Impact on Society and Activism. The Review. http://udreview.com/social-medias-impact-on-society-and-activism/

González, C. (2018, May 27). The Future of Social Media Activism. Medium. https://medium.com/@wordsbyacloud/the-future-of-social-media-activism-35e57ae8232b

Mansell, R., Ang, P. H., Steinfield, C., Graaf, V. S., Ballon, P., Kerr, A., Ivory, J. D., Braman, S., Kleine, D., & Grimshaw, D. J. (2015). The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, 3 Volume Set (ICAZ - Wiley Blackwell-ICA International Encyclopedias of Communication). In Social Media and Activism (1st ed., pp. 1027–1034). Wiley-Blackwell. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/62090/1/Social_media_and.pdf

Techopedia. (2012, October 29). Hashtag Activism. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/29047/hashtag-activism

This is a blog post for educational purpose only for unit MDA20009 Digital Communities.

[yanting01]

Week 5 - Digital Citizenship 1: Political Engagement (Social media VS Political Engagement)

Well well well, what an interesting topic this week? As a citizen, it is also important for us to at least understand a little bit about politics. With social media being so popular nowadays, especially during the pandemic, what's exactly is the relationship between social media and political engagement? What can social media do to it?

What is Political Engagement?

Political engagement can be defined as a cognitive process and when the brain becomes stimulated by external stimuli, in this case relating to politics, elaboration occurs. The elaboration mentioned here means not just the connecting of thoughts and recognizing the new information as important and relevant but also a process that leads to having an attitudinal reaction. Political engagement is a necessary precursor for political participation and thus important for a vibrant civic culture.

But I often ask myself, how effective is social media towards political engagement? Politicians are spending more and more money on social media? Why so? Perhaps the video below can answer that question for us, let's take a look ⬇️⬇️⬇️

How Social Media is Shaping Our Political Future?

So why politicians spent more than 70% of their budgets for advertising through social media? What has it got to do in winning elections and what benefits that can obtain? Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate to use this medium. This shows that social media has changed the game, allowing incumbents and newcomers alike to speak directly to constituents on everything from policy to what they had for dinner. It's not that old-fashioned and traditional way anymore? The way that they communicate now, it's totally different from what they were used to be doing 5, 10 years ago. Some of the older politicians had gone through the phase and those who couldn't adapt, they are out of the game. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it. Politicians nowadays can share almost anything on the internet - "what they had for lunch", "new pet?". Victoria Bonney had talked about how social media is shaping our political future, had a look! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

The survey finds that, aside from voting, relatively few people take part in other forms of political and civic participation. During the old days, it is hard to connect a politician with a normal citizen but after the social emerges, it somehow connects politicians together with everyone else around the globe, even if that person doesn't even live in your country but they still support you because they like what they see through social media. Mostly people get involved in politics to get their problems solved such as healthcare, poverty or financial problems. Research found out that older generations likely to vote more than younger generations but now younger generations more likely to post comments on political or social issues!

Through social media, they can still be anonymous if they chose to, therefore they can post anything they want which links to freedom of speech. Through social media, they are more motivated to be talking about political issues.

Social media really plays an important role in political engagement and if politicians that are smart, they had already realized it long before it became so popular. It is really a good way in connecting people together through it. But something that great also comes with its disadvantage. Some politicians had started some negative trend through social media and further influencing their followers in doing the what they are doing. Some followers just follow blindly and this may give a bad impacts on the politician itself or to the country. A great example will be Donald Trump's "Chinese virus" Tweet which now start to cause Asian hate in the United States with elderly Asian get beaten up without any reason on the streets and this is getting bad, it must stop!

To conclude, social media had a really huge impact on political engagement but its about how you utilize it. Social media should be something that is used to spread peace and love around the world and not hate. It is important that politicians, people who serves the community set up a good example in demonstrating how to continue spread love across the world using social media.

List of Reference

Ahmad, T., Alvi, A. and Ittefaq, M., 2019. The Use of Social Media on Political Participation Among University Students: An Analysis of Survey Results From Rural Pakistan - Taufiq Ahmad, Aima Alvi, Muhammad Ittefaq, 2019. [online] SAGE Journals. Available at: <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244019864484> [Accessed 3 April 2021].

Bournemouth.ac.uk. n.d. Understanding political engagement | Bournemouth University. [online] Available at: <https://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/projects/understanding-political-engagement> [Accessed 4 April 2021].

Knowledge@Wharton. 2020. How Social Media Is Shaping Political Campaigns - Knowledge@Wharton. [online] Available at: <https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-social-media-is-shaping-political-campaigns/> [Accessed 4 April 2021].

Lee, R., Smith, A., Schlozman, K., Brady, H. and Verba, S., 2012. Social Media and Political Engagement. [online] Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Available at: <https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2012/10/19/social-media-and-political-engagement/> [Accessed 4 April 2021].

Wike, R. and Castillo, A., 2018. Political Engagement Around the World. [online] Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project. Available at: <https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/10/17/international-political-engagement/> [Accessed 3 April 2021].

[yanting01]

Nice videos and useful information! 👍

Week 4 - Is Tumblr a blog or social network site?

Tumblr is something that I’ve known even when Wi-Fi is still not popular but when the question whether Tumblr is a blog or a social network site, both terms are heard quite often but I can’t answer this question straight away. The term "blog" is also something that I've heard before, mostly "blogging" and from what I understand is that it is just an action of regularly updating posts on a social platform. In order to answer this question, I will need to explore more about what exactly is Tumblr, the meaning of blog and the definition of social network site. Let's start shall we?

What is Blog?

According to Minaev (2021), a blog (a shortened version of “weblog”) is an online journal or informational website displaying information in reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing first, at the top. In this online journal, you could talk anything about what had happened in your daily life and what have you been doing. This is a way that an individual is able to share their feelings and expressions to their friends and family. Blog content can appear as posts on one continuous streaming page or posts on individual pages reachable through one or more pages set up in a list-style format as post title links, excerpts and related tags. (Jamie, n.d.)

The video below will be providing you all of the BLOGGING TIPS from a full-time blogger. This could help if you planning to start blogging or trying to improve yourself in this field.

What is Social Network Site?

The definition of social network site will be that it be a web-based service that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system and articulate a list of other users whom they choose to form a connection with. According to Boyd & Ellison (2007), social network sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook, Cyworld, and Bebo have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices.

What makes social network sites unique is that it allows individual to meet strangers and make new friends from it. It drastically widen the social network of a person. Through social network sites, it doesn't have to be someone from your neighborhood or from the same workplace you're at, it can reach almost anyone around the globe as long you're connected to the internet.

What was the first social media sites? The first true social media website is considered to be SixDegrees.com, created in 1997 by Andrew Weinreich. SixDegrees.com is still in operation today, and is available at http://sixdegrees.com.

How social network sites had evolved?

The video below further explained how did social network sites had evolved and where it is heading towards to.

Is Tumblr a blog or Social network site?

Back to the question, so is Tumblr a blog or social network site?

Tumblr is a free blogging platform that aims to make posting and sharing anything you want as easy as possible. In many ways, it is also a social network and allows Tumblr members to follow each other, repost each others' posts and content and comment (Digital Unite n.d.). According to Moreau (2020), Tumblr is both a blogging platform and a social network. You can use it strictly for blogging or strictly for social networking with other users — or you both. The power of this platform really shines when you use it as both.

But on the other hand, the founder of Tumblr - CEO David Karp says that he selfishly started Tumblr as his personal blog, then realized that people could be connected through ideas instead of relationships. From his first intention in creating Tumblr, it is not a social network site but then slowly evolved into one. It also depends to the person using it as to be honest it can both. One person might have 2 Tumblr accounts, one for personal blogging while the other one is to either make new friends or connect with existing friends and family members.

What I think....

What I think....

In my opinion, it is hard to argue whether Tumblr is a blog or social network site as it can be both. Few years back, Tumblr might be a blog but as other social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter starts to emerge, Tumblr had slowly evolved to become a social network site, especially during this pandemic. Everyone around the globe had been connecting and communicating with each other through social network sites for about a year now.

This is a blog post for educational purposes only for the unit is MDA 20009 Digital Communities.

Feel free to follow to weekly updates and enjoy your time watching all those amazing videos regarding whether Tumblr is classified as a blog or social network site.

List of Reference

Boyd, D. and Ellison, N., 2007. Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Computer Hope., 2021. What is a Social Network?. [online] Computerhope.com. Available at: <https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/s/socinetw.htm> [Accessed 26 March 2021]. Digitalunite.com. n.d. What is Tumblr? | Digital Unite. [online] Available at: <https://www.digitalunite.com/technology-guides/social-networking-blogs/blogs/what-tumblr> [Accessed 26 March 2021]. Jamie., n.d. What Is A Blog? - A Guide to Understanding The Concept Of Blogging - Make A Website Hub. [online] Available at: <https://makeawebsitehub.com/what-is-a-blog/> [Accessed 26 March 2021]. Minaev, A., 2021. What is a Blog? - Definition of Blog, Blogging & Blogger. [online] FirstSiteGuide. Available at: <https://firstsiteguide.com/what-is-blog/> [Accessed 28 March 2021]. Moreau, E., 2020. The Complete Beginner's Guide to Using Tumblr. [online] Lifewire. Available at: <https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-tumblr-4049305> [Accessed 26 March 2021].

[yanting01]

Is Social Media a Good Medium for Political Engagement?

For about a decade, social media have been a portal for the community to engage with politics, since 2008, the former democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards announced that he will be running for president on YouTube and his website (ABC News 2006). Politics are getting more exposed on social media such as Facebook and Twitter since then. Another strong example will be the former president of America, Donald Trump to do all sort of politics on its Twitter account, whether he is criticizing or praising people on the platform. Personally, I think that social media is a good medium for political engagement, because it led political news to people like me that spent most of the time on social media and lazy enough to read newspaper. Social media have kept me updated on what is happening around the globe whether on politics or other world news. However, I believe there will also be down side for political engagement in social media. And that's the topic to be discussed today, let's go!

What is Political Engagement?

Before getting more in depth of today's topic, let's look at what is the meaning of political engagement.

Definition of Politics and Engagement

Politics is defined as the activities in relate with the governance of a country, particularly debating between parties with power.

Engagement here whereby is defined as the action of engaging or being engaged, in another word, called participation.

So, in short, when the two words comes together, we can say that political engagement is the participation in politics. Based on EU-CoE youth partnership video on YouTube, there are different forms of political participation where politics is all around. There can be voting for elections, participating in candidates campaign or protesting.

On the other hand, in the forms of social media, political engagement can be determined by easy political behaviors on social media occurs across range of political interests (Bode 2017). Political behavior is the activity that has effect of influencing government action. Easy political behavior here refers to actions such as commenting on others political postings on social media, "like" or "share" the political posts. Another political behavior include posting contents of politics.

Good and Bad of Political Engagement on Social Media

Online activities related to politics are useful and encourage youth to participate in political events. Moreover, social media have been playing a key role in elections where, it is associated with political knowledge and political participation one another. An example to be given would be, when someone that is eligible for voting in the elections are always following the news or political information in the country, candidates or parties' behaviors could lead them to an idea of their choice when the election are around, this could also increase the voting rate. Furthermore, social media also helped politicians to reach wider range of audience. Study of Salman (2018) also stated that people agreed social media could empower people to share information about politics, attract people's interest to politics, and provide space for people to create content related to politics. In this way, more people could be in touch with politics.

However, social media did poses threats to democracies, too. One of the threat will be there are a lot of false information despite of a sea of information. According to Jay & Parzi (2018), Multimedia Commission Chief Operating Officer Datuk Mazlan Ismail said that during the Malaysia election season in 2018, number of fake news reports detected had raised almost 100 percent. Therefore, younger generation that are not mature enough to filter out the real and fake news could be influenced thus making the wrong decision. Different social media platforms gather information about their users and their preferences, likes, comments and publications. With this information, algorithms can categorize people into focused groups and feed them personalized content that only strengthens their prejudices and preconceptions. Resulting in increasing the risk of greater polarization between different groups within the society. This is exactly what happened during the United States presidential election in 2016 (Demo Finland 2019).

Is Social Media Good or Bad for Political Engagement?

Back to the topic, is social media good or bad for political engagement? I think it is more of a good than bad. First, social media not only bring more engagement to the community, increasing voting rate, it also help politicians to communicate with its community. Community could voice out their problems through these social media and heard by these politicians. For the bad sides, I think people that use social media should have independent thinking whereby they could determine the information they are exposed to. We should know that social media is always a place with all sorts of information, you don't know if the information are real or fake at first glance, so we can't just believe it blindly.

---------------------- This is a cute ending line -------------------------

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading! 😍

---------------------------- References below ---------------------------

References

ABC News. (2006, December 28). John Edwards Announces He Will Run for President. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Politics/story?id=2755937&page=1

Bode, L. (2017). Gateway Political Behaviors: The Frequency and Consequences of Low-Cost Political Engagement on Social Media. Social Media + Society, 3(4), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117743349

EU-CoE youth partnership. (2020, February 11). What is political participation? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHe6TMMJmDQ

Front, P. (2020, September 3). Social media – a threat or a possibility for democracy? Demo Finland. https://demofinland.org/en/social-media-a-threat-for-democracy%E2%80%AF/

Jay, B. N., & Parzi, M. N. (2018, May 4). Fake news surging in GE14. NST Online. https://www.nst.com.my/news/politics/2018/05/365442/fake-news-surging-ge14

Salman, A., Yusoff, M. A., Mohamad Salleh, M. A., & Abdullah, M. Y. (2018). Political Engagement on Social Media as Antecedent for Political Support among Voters in Malaysia. Jurnal Komunikasi, Malaysian Journal of Communication, 34(2), 155–158. https://doi.org/10.17576/jkmjc-2018-3402-10

This is a blog post for educational purpose only for unit MDA20009 Digital Communities.

[yanting01]

Is Tumblr a blog or a social networking site?

When I first approach Tumblr, I personally think that it is a blog with a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter. However in this topic, we are going to discuss and find out whether it is a blog or not. Check out the video below of how Tumblr are used for memes making. Enjoy ! 😉

What defines a blog?

Based on the Oxford Dictionary, blog is defined as "a regularly updated website, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style." In short, it can be said that it is an informational web page that consists of discrete units called "posts" (Duke University 2021). Blogs can be differ from personal, artistic, academic or professional, therefore it is quite a form of online publishing that produce knowledge, research sharing, social networks building or even personal growth documenting. It is a platform for individual to share thoughts and ideas, but lack of networking. Blog serve the purpose to connect people to the right audience and boost websites traffic (Minaev 2021). To define blog, first hint will be frequent updates, an example will be food blog that shares recipes. Second, blog promote reader engagement, whereby blog authors update their site regularly with new posts (Minaev 2021). Examples of blogging sites include Medium, BuzzFeed, and TechRadar. The video below have explained about the difference between blog and a website and how to determine a blog. In the video by Create and Go YouTube channel, he determine that BuzzFeed is a blog because it is centered around updated content and blog posts about their primary content.

What defines a Social Networking Site?

According to Watermeyer (2012), social networking sites (SNS) helps people in a way to stay connected regardless of contextual barriers such as geographical distance and time zone difference. Development of personal and business relationships are the use of social networking (Investopedia 2021). Social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram allow communities to be engaged and develop relationships, they can share photos and updates things going on in their lives, not only that, people could also be united from having same interests such as fandom, music, movies (Investopedia 2021).

Therefore, based on the definitions discovered above, we can see that SNS serves a clear purpose which is connect its users. Based on Boyd & Ellison 2008, SNS 's objectives is to enable their users to articulate and make visible their social networks. Furthermore, the author stated that majority of the SNSs participants are not particularly networking, instead they are more on communicating with people that they have know offline. Examples of such are like friends commenting on each others' posts and share thoughts.

What is Tumblr?

As what I have experienced all this while using Tumblr, it is a platform that let you share anything effortlessly and engage with others. You can also find community that shares similar interests with you. Like me, I just found out that Tumblr also have bunch of fans that shares info of the anime Attack on Titan: Final Season. Other than that, it is also a place you can find entertainment because there are a lot of "meme-ster" around in Tumblr. In Tumblr you can share photos, GIFs, music, text, quotes and links using phone or desktop, as long as you have Wi-Fi. Tumblr is often described as a microblog where snippets of text and quick snaps are posted usually. Until today, Tumblr is still as popular as it has about 327 million unique visitors around the globe since January 2020 as of January 2021 (Tankovska 2021).

Here's a meme for some funny moments in case my blog are too wordy 🤔

Is Tumblr a blog or a social networking site?

Back to the question, is Tumblr a blog or social network site, in my opinion, I think it is both. As Tumblr have characteristic of both blog and social network site. For instance, Tumblr have these characteristics of blog whereby posts can be created in a regular basis and can be brought to relevant audiences too with appropriate hashtags and title. Also, it have social network site characteristics whereby it can engage people around the world. The re-blog features of Tumblr are one awesome feature where you can share your thoughts on that specific topic and open a discussion on that. That makes community to connected which is also called as networking in SNS.

Moreau (2020) also says that Tumblr is both a blog and a social network site. You can use it only for social networking with other users or just blogging, or both. For example, you can have an account that are only used for blogging to record daily lives, treating it as a diary, and have another account, maybe a business-related account that can helps your business to get attracted by others, promote your business, you can also use one account to do both, by blogging daily routines of your business maybe? Writing about your business processes, upcoming promotions, and maybe some day other user that have similar business as you will come and interact with you, too? Thinking of that, Tumblr is also a good place for business marketing.

------------------------ This is a cute ending line ------------------------

Thank you for your time on reading this blog, enjoy watching the videos on the topic "Is Tumblr a blog or a social networking site". 🍻

--------------------------- References below ----------------------------

References

Duke University, 2021, “Introduction to Blogging”, viewed 28 March 2021, <https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/blogging-introduction.original.pdf>.

Minaev, A, 2021, What is a Blog? – Definition of Terms Blog, Blogging, and Blogger, viewed 28 March 2021, <https://firstsiteguide.com/what-is-blog/#:~:text=So%2C%20the%20main%20purpose%20of,visited%20by%20your%20target%20audience>.

Moreau, E, 2020, How to Use Tumblr for Blogging and Social Networking, viewed 28 March 2021, <https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-tumblr-4049305#:~:text=Tumblr%20is%20both%20a%20blogging%20platform%20and%20a%20social%20network>.

Tankovska, H, 2021, Total Global Visitor Traffic to Tumblr.com 2021, viewed 28 March 2021, <https://www.statista.com/statistics/261925/unique-visitors-to-tumblrcom/>.

Watermeyer, R, 2012, Social Networking Sites, ScienceDirect, viewed 28 March 2021, <https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/social-networking-sites>.

This is a blog post for educational purpose only for unit MDA20009 Digital Communities.