yasssmediayasss-blog - Tumblr blog

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When you Submit your final Digital Communities Blog Post!!!

When you’re ready to celebrate finishing the assignment and party

THen you realise you still have a final essay to complete for the unit

#SWOTVAC

Seeing your uni results

When holidays start and you embrace the YOLO lifestyle

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Great Firewall of China

China is a great country to apply the concept of cultural hegemony for many reasons. It is important when discussing cultural hegemony that the concept is not necessary confined to only the controlled or manipulated interpellated ideologies within media but it also extends to what information is limited or inaccessible by the public. Thus, the Great Firewall of China, is a fantastic example of how the Chinese government holds great cultural hegemonic power over its constituents. The Great Firewall of China, describes how the Chinese government regulates accessible content on the internet. Currently sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all blocked by the government. Right now you might be extending sympathy towards the Chinese population as to how they survive without these popular Western social media sites. In 2010, China shut down 1.3 million sites. Rest assure, China has access to Eastern culture equivalent to these sites. What is more problematic is the political and cultural influence of disabling such sites has own the population.

By restricting accessible content online, the Chinese government can essentially control what media and content the population receive to a certain degree. This allows them to disseminate their own political and cultural ideologies and block opposing beliefs or information. Knowledge and education is often understood as basic human rights in Western culture, thus from a Western point of view, limiting and controlling these values could be considered a violation. Furthermore, it gives the government the ability to manipulate information without objection from online resources and promote false or misleading data and politics. Controlling what the Chinese population has access to also limits what they published online; it’s a two-way street.

Cultural hegemony is often discussed as a non-ideal political discourse. It essentially goes against the progressive democratic political system which makes sense since China is a communist government. However, freedom of knowledge deeply saddens me and makes me question China’s motives. Is The Great Firewall of China an oppressive system or is a protective system? Either way, it places the Chinese government in a lot of cultural and political power; and with great power, comes great responsibility.

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When you get another gaming request on Facebook

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Invite me to one more game... I dare you!

Let’s not pretend that in the past five or more years, the gaming world has changed significantly. The introduction of social media influenced the gaming landscape in incredible ways (and annoying ways). Facebook played a huge role in the now disseminated acceptance of gaming culture in today’s society. No longer is gaming culture limited to ‘gaming nerds’ with specific consoles but was now widely accessible thanks to Facebook gaming features and other mobile technologies. For the gaming industry, this was revolutionary. Gaming production companies now had access to new, large, untapped target markets and an easy consumer access point. However, with the influx of casual social media gaming, so did new business revenue models. People wanted games for free, however this is an unrealistic ideal for gaming production companies to survive in the industry. Thus, to maintain steady and sustainable game engagement with audiences, and therefore return on investment, games either asked for real-life money to unlock features within the game or for gamers to invite their friends to play, a tempting offer once they are hooked on the initially free game.

Five years or so ago, the act of continually asking your close and even distant friends to play games so that you can continue gaming was a foreign and kind of inappropriate idea. Today this irritating request in the form of multiple notifications has built such a relatable reputation there’s a meme culture build around it. Yet, interesting, it signifies how far we’ve come and how dependent people become on playing games. People are so eager to continue playing games on Facebook that they are willing to soil their reputation amongst their friends and commit a huge social faux pas, and invite their friends to play games for personal benefit. To accentuate how large an issue this has become, when you type “Facebook gaming invite” into Google, the entire page loads with links to tutorials that show you how to block such online requests; a feature only introduced late 2015. Even Buzzfeed, a site dedicated to relatable popular culture, has its own tutorial on how to block the gaming invites.

It is astonishing how a simple notification could enrage such a huge population of people. Furthermore, that the disapproval of such behaviour doesn’t deter gamers. Perhaps people’s desire for free content is much more powerful than the desire to maintain a positive reputation with their  Facebook friends.

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The Romanticism of Mental Illness on Tumblr

Trigger warning: romanticism of mental illness, self harm and depression

Tumblr has cultivated many social media trends since its creation in 2007. However, there is one particularly persistent trend that is proving to be both problematic and damaging to the health and understanding of mental illness of Tumblr’s users. It appears that a huge collective of Tumblr users present a romanticism towards mental illness, to the point where it appears that some users compete to appear more mentally ill, as if in someway it correlates with the degree of how cool or popular they are. Disclaimer: this is by no means an article discrediting the legitimacy of mental illness and negating the use social media as a platform to share thoughts and feelings on the subject. Instead, I am looking at how users misrepresent mental illness as something to be desired or that the harmful symptoms of mental illness are in fact beautiful and aesthetic.


The reason why the topic and representation of mental illness is such a common ground on Tumblr is because the culture formed on the site is particularly progressive; a platform where mental illness is not a taboo topic but discussed without judgement. For people with mental illness, sharing their experiences and feelings online can be a positive outlet. However, we are seeing that these communities on Tumblr are creating a discourse of mental illness that can be considered more harmful than helpful. The trend has seen a huge dissemination of youth-generated-problematic-content that is pro-self-harm and encouraging of the romanticism of mental illness by glamorizing symptoms and behaviours. Simply search the tags self-harm, depression, or sadness and you can witness the images and posts that present a distorted view on mental illness. Basically, no matter how it manifests, depression doesn’t really tend to look like decorated cigarette boxes and artfully running mascara.

It is also a difficult issue to tackle because even people could be considered as mental illness romantics still feel emotions. It’s dangerous to talk about mental illness romantics or censor them because we don’t know for certain that they truly aren’t suffering from mental illness. However the glamorisation and popularisation of mental illness through ‘beautiful sadness’ imagery can present as trigger for many people legitimately suffering from mental illness. Looking broadly, representing mental illness, a topic often misunderstood by masses, in this way further perpetuates inaccurate information regarding the issue.

By no means should we stop talking about mental illness. However, glorifying mental illness and harmful behaviours associated with it to be something considered desirable can be particularly detrimental. The romanticism of mental illness should not be encouraged. Acceptance and understanding should be.

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When Facebook alerts you that your friends are safe!

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My Experience with Crowd Sourcing

Crowdsourcing refers to “obtaining (information or input into a particular task or project) by enlisting the services of a number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet.” (2015) The idea of crowdsourcing is often applied to emergency disaster and crisis information, when other forms of communication fail leaving individuals to become the main source of information afforded by social media technologies, and to crowdfunding; receiving money from people to fund a project. Late in 2014, I experienced first hand how crowdsourcing can help protect those at risk of danger in times of crisis.

The night before my valedictory dinner, I was studying in my room when my dad came in saying that shots had been fired down the road from our house. The culprit had not been caught. At the time, I lived on a farm on a remote property out of town; very vulnerable position. My dad told me to pack my stuff and that we were going to the neighbour’s house to group together. On the way over, my dad explains that my sister (who no longer lived at home) had called to say that someone in town had posted on Facebook that police were currently attending a murder scene nearby our house with the alleged murderer still on the loose. There had been no contact by authorities or any form of official to our house to alert us, the only information we had knowledge of was from Facebook.

That night, slowly more and more information was posted on social media. We discovered that the murder took place only six kilometres from my home, who was involved, police activity and whether or not the culprit had been caught. The updates came sporadically through the night. This continued until 1am that night when at last a Facebook post from another member in town reported that the murderer was finally in police custody after a nearly five-hour siege. Never had a I considered Facebook or social media to play such a vital role in my personal safety. My story is only one minute example, crowd sourced information on social media during natural disasters and crises has saved lives. Social media affords important information to be disseminated in real time. Furthermore, it is extremely accessible particularly when other more stationary technologies like TV and radio fail.

Who knew user-generated-content could have such a large impact?

References: 2015, "What Is Crowdsourcing?  - zCrowd", zCrowd, viewed 20 May, 2016, <https://zcrowd.com/what-is-crowdsourcing/>.

[yasssmediayasss-blog]

When people are like “why are you online if you can’t handle the haters?”

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Contemplating Cyberbullying Victim Blaming

When it comes to any form of harassment, the defence that the victim ‘was asking asking for it’ appears all too frequently. This so-called excuse is both unjustifiable and sickening to hear, since nobody chooses to be targeted by bullying. Today, there is a general consensus that this form of victim blaming when applied to situations of sexism, racism and homophobia is completely out of line, however, when applied to acts of cyberbullying the view becomes somewhat challenged. In this article I will look at why victim blaming is considered a problematic concept when applied to forms of cyberbullying. To clarify, in no way do I condone victim blaming in any shape or form but I am evaluating how people perceive cyberbullying in today’s culture.

When social media began to gain popularity, particularly in younger people in the mid 2000s, we saw a surge of bullying taking place online. It was a new form of bullying that no one saw coming and therefore no one was sure how to regulate it. Culturally, people are still divided on who shares responsibility when cyber-bullying takes place. Whilst most people will agree that bullying is terrible in any case, and will hold the culprit of such harassment somewhat accountable (if not majorly responsible) there is still a very present ideology that the victims, to a degree, subjected themselves to the bullying by putting themselves in such online environments. This stems from the similar beliefs like, if a girl walks home alone at night and is attacked when she understands the risk then she ‘allowed’ for the attack to happen. This thought process is inexcusable, since no one deserves to be harassed for simply being. If people didn’t act maliciously or malevolently then there would by no ‘risky’ or ‘dangerous’ situations. In other words, if bullies didn’t exist there would be no bullying. However, the truth is that bullies do exist.

Cyber-bullying has become an all too common shared experience in today’s society; “one in five Australian children aged eight to 15 has experienced cyberbullying.” (2014) Schools have become much more conscious of online-safety and the curriculum now features cyber-safety; kids are well informed of the dangers online. However, what is concerning is the continual and growing engagement of young teens with social media sites that are the perfect environment for cyber-bullying. The site Qooh.me provides service that allows people to ask any question to one of their friends anonymously. As you can imagine, the site is saturated in bullying, yet still kids sign up well aware of its online bullying culture. Thus it is not hard for people to see where the belief, ‘if you don’t want to be cyberbullied then don’t join social media’, comes from and why so many people stand by it. It’s true, if you aren’t online, you can’t be cyber-bullied, yet this is just another form of victim blaming. People behaving appropriately shouldn’t be penalised or limited just because there are those who behave dissimilarly.

Let’s face the facts. Bullying is bad. So is victim blaming. Let’s teach acceptance and awareness, and have appropriate support services and techniques in place to protect those attacked.

References:

2014, "The cyberbullying statistics in Australia are frightening, Paul Fletcher says.", Mamamia, viewed 20 May, 2016, <http://www.mamamia.com.au/cyberbullying-statistics-in-australia/>.

[yasssmediayasss-blog]

When the post is all T and no shade

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When someone starts lying about the facts to make their argument stronger

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Letting everyone know where you stand on the issue

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Letting everyone know how you feel about sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia and any form of discrimination on your tumblr

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Tumblr and Activism

With the rise of social media we have also seen the rise of online activism. Many people would remember the infamous Kony 2012 campaign, bringing social media activism to the mainstream, which was conducted using a variety of social media platforms to reach mass audiences with a powerful activist message. Today, I am going to focus on the activism taking place on Tumblr and why the site’s affordances make it the perfect ideal platform to disseminate particular activist campaigns and how in reality it can be quite problematic.

Firstly, a brief history. During the 2012 American presidential debates, candidate Mitt Romney in response to addressing gender inequality in relation to the workplace was quoted saying ‘binders full of women’. Tumblr went into a frenzy and became flooded memes and political activist statements; continually uploaded, liked and reblogged like never before. It is a momentous occasion in the history of Tumblr, but was it just a one-off moment or the beginning of a new movement in the way users engage with the micro-blogging social network?

“Liba Rubenstein, director of outreach at Tumblr, believes it was a pivotal moment, not just for the election, but the future of political discourse.” (Honigman, 2014) Since the Romney incident, Tumblr has become an increasingly popular platform for political movements, activism and discussion. Thus, the culture of Tumblr has become decidedly progressive in its political discourse, positioning Tumblr users as intellectual and politically engaged members of society. Combining this will the already established humour and meme culture within Tumblr has created a realm of engaging, piecing and original moments of social media activism.

However, we are seeing such acts of ‘social justice’ to be problematic. “Social justice blogs are commonly criticized for being rude, obnoxious, and being misinformed and using skewed data in their claims.” (Orsini, 2012) Whilst, Tumblr users are very forthcoming in moderating other’s content, there is still this dissemination of incorrect information that accentuates and/or exaggerates facts to add power to their arguments. The consequences of this are that this presents Tumblr’s political discourse as an unreliable and manipulated resource.

Tumblr’s affordances set up an idealistic form of social media activism; something both intellectual and engaging. However, the user-generated-content is too often misinformed or manipulated thus the ideal is unfortunately unrealised. 

References: Honigman, B 2014, "How Tumblr Is Changing Online Activism", Forbes, viewed 20 May, 2016, <http://www.forbes.com/sites/citi/2014/02/18/how-tumblr-is-changing-online-activism/#720ea7b6cf67>.

Orsini, L 2012, "The complicated world of Tumblr’s Social Justice", The Daily Dot, viewed 20 May, 2016, <http://www.dailydot.com/society/tumblr-social-justice-laci-green/>.

[yasssmediayasss-blog]

Sometimes the best way to take down a troll is to combat the hate with humour

i may be a troll but at least i don't look like one

[yasssmediayasss-blog]

You're tacky and I hate you.

#trolling #gobackto4chan

[yasssmediayasss-blog]

When you’re finished with your essay but you realise that you’re 300 words under the word count