Abbey's Digital Community

Hi friends, I'm Abbey. My blog contains weekly posts relating to social media and its relevance socially, politically and culturally, with my love for films and gaming snuck in.

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

One Last Note

This is the last post for ‘Abbey’s Digital Community’ thank you to anyone that took the time to read anything posted here (especially that far too long blog post about social gaming) I have learned a lot from this blog and hope that other people have as well. 

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

Global Social Media Practice: Case Study China

China has a large amount of internet users with there being  513 million active internet users in the country in 2011 (Chiu, Lin & Silverman 2012, p. 1) with that number growing to 772 million as of January 2018 (Borak, M 2018, p.1). 

China’s social media users are also extremely active with them spending 46 minutes a day on social media sites compared to 37 minutes in the United States and only 7 minutes in Japan (McKinsey 2012, p.3). 

However there is not access to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in the country, instead Chinese social media sites dominate the market in the country (McKinsey 2012, p.3). 

In 2017 WeChat (which is used instead of Whatsapp) had 963 million active users (Statistica, 2017) and Youku (whcih is used instead of YouTube) has over 500 million monthly active users (Chozan, 2018).

China is a fascinating case study when it comes to social media as the country manages to have an extremely high number of active social media users despite the censorship and firewall that the internet exists in, this seems to be due to the fact that China has its own social media platforms that are direct replacements for many western social media platforms but are changed to suit a primarily Chinese consumer base. 

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

Social Gaming: Playing the Crowd

Introduction 

Let’s start off with the picture above, one of my favorite memories in all my years of gaming. It was New Years 2018 and Blizzard decided to turn the auction house in Orgrimmar into a disco (I assume they did the same for Stormwind, I don’t play Alliance). 

The Alliance were attacking Org and a bunch of people were yelling “Get on your mains they’re attacking the High Overlord!” But we were all too busy having a dance party in the auction house to care. It was a wonderful night of people being turned into Moonkins on the dance floor, all the Blood Elves bitching that we couldn’t get on stage because there were so many of us (and all the other races bitching about the fact that there were so many of us in the first place) and trolling people that were wondering were the hell the auction house had gone (who apparently forgot that there is more than one auction house in Org). It was one of the best New Years I’ve ever had and truly demonstrates how social gaming can be, a lot of the time it is where the real fun is. 

But moving on to one of my first experiences of social gaming, playing Mario Kart on my cousin’s Nintendo 64 (handed down from her brother) as a kid. 

By social gaming I mean my cousin and my brother making fun of me because I sucked, and because I always picked Peach (a character I would never dream of picking now). 

I also loved picking Rainbow Road (primarily because I thought it was pretty). However I quickly learned that my brother and cousin hated it (it took forever to complete) so to get back at them for making fun of me constantly, every time it was my turn to pick the track, I would pick Rainbow Road every single time without fail, just to piss them off. 

For a good chunk of my life my cousin, brother and I would play our Nintendo DS’ side by side, even if we were not playing the same game, I was typically playing Spyro (my favorite game series as a kid). 

The Nostalgia from playing the Nintendo 64 with my cousin was so strong that when I finally got a Nintendo 3DS the first game I bought for it was ‘The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask’, because of all the memories of my cousin and I playing it as kids.

It wasn’t until I was fifteen that I would truly sell my soul to gaming. This was when I got my first shitty Dell laptop from school. I remember the first game I downloaded was Slenderman, because all the Youtubers were filming themselves freaking out while playing it and so was everyone at my school (that game sucks by the way, I hope no one still plays it). 

I then moved onto Age of Empires, mainly due to the nostalgia of playing it in Primary school. On occasion our teacher used to let us play it and if two students were playing against each other, nearly the whole class would be running back and forth between their screens to see who was going to topple who and on occasion people would try and help their friends/ siblings cheat (yeah I’m guilty). I also dug up my brother’s old copy of Rise of Nations, he always argued that it was better than Age.   

Once again because everyone else was playing it, and all the YouTubers were, I started playing Skyrim, and while I usually try not to be a sheep, in this case it payed off, believe me that game is amazing. 

MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)

And here we have it, my favorite kind of game. The picture above is from the Blizzard Anniversary event in World of Warcraft from 2017 and I feel like it sums up MMORPGs quite well. So many people were trying to get to the NPC that had the event quests/rewards that it was impossible to see him (I can’t even see my character in this picture, just the tail of my mount). 

An MMORPG takes place in a world with thousands, or even millions, of players developing their characters in a role-playing environment. The world is never static, events are constantly occurring across the world (Techopedia). They depend on game play based on the interactions of players and groups of players. MMORPGs allow players to form alliances, interact with each other within the game and customize their avatars (Techopedia). 

World of Warcraft

Below: My main, Ariianna, a Blood Elf Assassination Rogue (she has a double i in her name because Arianna was taken so I kept adding letters until it worked).  

And here we have my favorite game of all time (I apologize in advance for me inevitably nerding out), the one I sold my soul to many moons ago (like so many other nerds across the globe). 

Let’s start with guilds, one of the the main social aspects of WoW, Blizzard describes them as Coordinated player congregation. Most guilds will have scheduled weekly raids on a specific day and in a specific time slot. 

(I had to include this picture below of my favorite guild name of all time, it never fails to make me laugh) 

Guilds give players the opportunity to work together to gain rewards. The guild earns an achievement the first time that it completes a Raid etc. which levels and guild and gives them access to guild perks. The guild can also gain experience while completing a raid or winning a battleground where 80% of the guild is present or 25% for some of the older content. A player can also unlock purchasable rewards by gaining personal reputation with their guild. The guild roster tab allows guild members to easily browse and sort their guild members by a number of categories, including by their status, contribution to the guild's advancement, and profession.

Watch the video below, it is my favorite video by this YouTuber because I am not even in this guild and I love everyone in it. If it does not convince you how great and social guilds are, then there is nothing I can do for you my friend. 

Let’s move onto Trade Chat, or troll central as it probably should be called. Seriously if you are a new player do not ask a question in Trade Chat, some asshole is going to send your level 10 character to a level 50 zone or something. 

Trade Chat is a chat channel that only works in capital cities and neutral cities that is used for the buying, selling and trading of items and services. People often use trade chat to advertise their guild, find groups for quests and sell high quality items that they don’t need. 

It is also just used for general conversation, like the time I was in Orgrimmar and a bunch of people decided to use it to have a chat about Bunnings sausages. I actually stopped what I was doing in the game at the time to watch the thrilling conversation unfold. 

Outside of the game the forums are the main way that World of Warcraft players socialize. People use forum threads to discuss anything new in the game that they want to complain/ gush about, compare anecdotes (such as the “worst dungeon/ raid groups you’ve ever been in) or like me players will go on the forums to have other players tell them something about a quest, achievement etc that they couldn’t figure out them self. 

Below example: I couldn’t find the dungeon boss that I had to kill for a particular quest, a quick search in the forums quickly helped me. It turns out I needed to have a 225 level in archaeology to even see the boss. Fun fact: my archaeology level was 0 at the time (but don’t you worry, afterwards I spent hours of my life grinding it to max level). 

Finally let’s discuss what WoW is probably most famous for, the factions. Do you play Horde or Alliance? That is usually the first question you will get asked when you meet another WoW player. There is good reason for this, the battle between the two factions was the whole premise of the original Warcraft games and Vanilla WoW. A lot of players are genuinely attached to their faction and would argue its case to the death (yes I’m guilty). Practically all of my real life friends that play WoW, play Alliance. One of them will always message me some variation of “Yuck, Horde” if he sees me online, sometimes he will actually yell it out to me in real life, all in good fun of course (but he is Alliance scum so I don’t care about his opinion). 

Discord 

I feel as if a blog post about social gaming would not be complete without at least mentioning Discord.

Discord is a free voice and text chat app for gamers that works on both desktop and mobile platforms (Lopez, 2017). It allows groups of players to communicate through text and voice chat via private servers whilst in game (Melcon, 2018). Players are able to share images, videos, Gifs and links and can also message friends individually outside of servers (Discord, 2018). As of March of 2018 Discord has 90 million registered users (Melcon, 2018) and currently has 14,000,000 Daily players and 6,250,000 Peak current players with 315,000,000 Messages sent a day (Discord, 2018).

At one point my friends and I were just using it to send ‘Bee Movie’ memes to each other whilst we were gaming. 

Conclusion 

To conclude I will summarize what I was trying to get at with this entirely too long (and nerdy) blog post. I feel as if gamers often get a bad rap for being antisocial, and when they are seen as social, people often associate them with being negative (trolling, sexist etc). While there are some assholes in gaming, there are assholes in every community. A lot of games bring people together and help them socialize and the majority of gamers are awesome people. I hope all of my positive experiences with games and gamers can show you this. 

And to prove my point further here is one more positive social gaming experience. Here is a picture of me and two of my real life friends (Alliance players as well) dancing in World of Warcraft. Totally unplanned, we just saw each other online, met up and had a dance. 

And to end I will leave you with a picture of me in Eversong Woods, my favourite ever zone in World of Warcraft, I feel like I can show you no better picture to explain why I love gaming so much. 

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

Public Health Campaigns & Communities

Warning

This blog post contains discussion of self harm and mental illness. 

Introduction 

Health and illness are becoming increasingly tied to social media, and are becoming 'public' like never before. A large portion of online health practices involve people sharing health information through social media (Morehead, et al., 2013) and around 83% of internet users seek health information online (Pew, 2011).

“Social media brings a new dimension to health care as it offers a medium to be used by the public, patients, and health professionals to communicate about health issues with the possibility of potentially improving health outcomes” (Moorhead, et al. 2014)

Due to online communities people are more likely than ever to engage with health services and organisations, as it is far quicker and easier for a lot of people to gain information about their health and interact with others with the same illness. Online communities offer a way for people to record their health experiences, inform other people on how to deal with their illness, give treatment options and advice on how to emotionally and physically deal with their health issues (McCosker, 2013 p. 131). However online health communities can also have negative effects. 

Negatives

Whilst people suffering with any kind of physical or mental illness need a community of people to talk to and share their experiences with, social media is not the best way to go about this.  

Often social media can create “cultures of self-harm, eating disorders and suicidal ideation” (McCosker, 2013).  

When I was about fifteen to sixteen I loved Tumblr and spent a vast amount of time on it, I mainly just used it to interact with people who were fans of the same movies, television shows, games and novels that I was. However I often found other communities within Tumblr, and I remember one such time when I found one of these communities that disturbed me greatly. This community consisted of people who maintained blogs that were centered around self harm. However they were not well researched pages with expert advice, they consisted of mostly young teenagers posting artistic looking pictures (often in black and white) of self harm, the pictures would never have any comment or context, only on occasion would they have an inspirational quote posted with them. Communities like this have a negative effect, they provide no conversation (professional or otherwise), no research and no information on how a person should get help. Instead they romanticize the idea of self harm and encourage young impressionable people to do it, as it makes them think that they will be accepted into this community.  

Conclusion

Social media has provided people a way to get health information faster and easier than ever before and interact with other people with the same illnesses as them. However this online information and interaction should be done through official health organisations or with the help of medical professionals as otherwise it can have more harmful effects than positive effects.

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

SOCIAL GAMING

Presentation on Social Gaming: Gaming Identity, Gaming Scandals and the Gaming Community. 

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

Crowd Sourcing in Times of Crisis

What is Crowd Sourcing?

Crowd sourcing can be defined as an “open call for proposals or solutions to a problem or issue of social need” Jeff Howe (Wired, 2006 outsourcing) however with the rise of social networking sites and digital communities a more modern definition would be a large number of people who are working together to reach a common goal involving electronic communication networks (Littmann and Suomela, 2014).

Why Social Media?

Social media has changed the way in which people connect and interact with each other. Proximity used to determine our social life, we met with people within our immediate environments and relationships were sustained by regular face to face contact (Siapera 2012, p.191). Social media is “powerful tool for mobilizing the public” (Schimak, Havlik, & Pielorz, 2015) as it is quicker and easier to connect large groups of people and spread awareness than in traditional media forms.

Social Networking sites can be understood as “sites at which individuals and groups make sense of events and experiences.” (Horbury & Hughes, 2010, 'Social Media After Black Saturday' p 144). Making them perfect for crowd sourcing during disasters when people are confused and scared.

#qldfloods

During the 2011 South East Queensland floods social media played a major role in “disseminating and sharing crisis information and updates from state and local authorities” (Bruns ,2012). #qldfloods was used more than 35,000 times and most the most used Twitter hashtag between the 10th to 16 of January 2011. People using the hashtag were about to share information advice, news and reports quickly. The information included things like road closures, flood warnings and offers of assistance.  

How to Successfully Crowd Source…

According to the ABC’s national social media coordinator, Ping Lo, the way to successfully crowd source is to use clear, simple questions. That is the most effective way to get a response particularly in emergencies when people do not have time to sift through a lot of information. Consistency is key, people in times of crises need to know when and what the account will be posting. You also need to remain flexible and to be able to adapt as the people in crisis needs may change or there may be a new development in the emergency.

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

Digital citizenship 3: Trolling & Social Media Conflict

Now that I have got your attention with Vol’jin, my second favorite character, and favorite troll from from World of Warcraft, let’s begin. 

Introduction (What is Trolling?) 

As much as I would love to sit here and talk about World of Warcraft or anything else fantasy related unfortunately that is not what we are talking about. Today we are talking about the internet troll.  

In a nutshell, a troll is a person that deliberately tries to starts arguments and or embarrass, anger, upset and annoy people by creating malicious and/or outrageous  posts in an online community (Dahlberg et al 2001). Their main aim is to get a reaction out of people (Coles et al. 2016) and is often done for amusement (Bergstrom et al 2011).

Why?

With newly established technology comes the autonomy for users to express what they wish towards who they wish; (Boyd, 2014). Social media allows people to say the most outrageous things that they would never say in real life to somebody’s face as they are now able to say it anonymously and without repercussions. 

‘4chan’, a popular message board known for trolling, contains a culture of anonymity which allows people to create content that contains pornography, fierce debates hyperbolic opinions and general offensiveness (Knutila et al 2011) without being accountable.

 “The Biggest Troll on the Web”

In October of 2012, the popular public discussion forum ‘Reddit’ was embroiled in controversy when “the biggest troll on the web” (Chen, 2012) Violentacrez real identity was revealed by Gawker Journalist Adrian Chen, who referred to him as “one of its most reviled characters but also one of its most beloved users” (Chen, 2012). He was responsible for several subreddits including ‘Jailbait’ which contained sexualised photographs of young girls, and ‘Creepshots’ which contained sexualised photographs of women taken in public without their consent. (Milner et al 2013). Violentacrez turned out to be Michael Brutsch, a 49-year-old office worker from Texas (Milner et al 2013). After his exposure the backlash he received caused him to lose his real-life job (Simpson, 2012). The example of Violentacrez shows how social media has given people an opportunity to do and say things online that they would never do in real life, as soon as his identity was exposed he suffered the consequences that he would not have had he stayed anonymous. 

Conclusion (How to deal with trolls )

Trolls thrive off of people’s reactions and deliberately make outrageous posts to upset and anger people.The best thing to do is to ignore them, if no one reacts then they don’t have a reason to do it. And if their posts are directed at you, block or ban them where appropriate. Don’t let them get to you and eventually they will go away. 

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

Digital Citizenship 2: Activism and Protest

So, now that I have got your attention with Sex Pistols let’s actually get into the blog post for this week. As much as I would love to keep posting Sex Pistols Gifs, unfortuanley this is not a blog about my love for that band. 

Introduction 

Social media has given people a new tool to share their opinions whenever they want to large groups of people.This means that activist groups are able to reach a wider audience and people are able to protest online, reaching more people and making people more aware of world issues. However often people can fall into a habit of ‘Slacktivism’, (if you are wondering what that is, we will get more into that later).

Positives of Social Media and activism 

Social media gives people the opportunity to learn about world issues and the protests that are happening in the world, making it easier for them to find issues that they care about and keep up to date with particular activist groups and protests related to them. ‘As the communication landscape gets denser, more complex, more participatory, the networked population is gaining greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action’ (Shirky, 2011) 

It is now easier for activist groups to reach people, they are able to reach thousands of people in a couple of seconds due to their social media presence. 

There is now ‘unprecedented opportunities or expression and interaction, especially among activists, artists and other political and cultural group who have found new media to be inexpensive, powerful tools for challenging the givens of mainstream or popular culture.’ (Leah Lievrouw 2011, Alternative & Activist Media: p2) 

I have a rather odd example but I will use it anyway, Reverend Billy Talon and the Stop Shopping Choir put on radical performances in which they disrupt operations by corporations that they deem to be unethical. Without social media the only people that would see these performances are the people that were on the street at the time, which would be no where near the amount of Twitter followers that he has. 

Slacktivism 

Slactivism, or activism for slackers, ‘is feel good activism that has zero political or social impact but creates an illusion of having a meaningful impact on the world without demanding anything more than joining a Facebook Group.’ (Morozov, 2009)

Essentially, it refers to the fact that it is very easy to like a Facebook page, share something or use a hashtag to say that you support something, but it does not necessarily mean that it is helping in any way. It is much harder to actually go our and protest about something. 

For example, it is very easy to follow Reverend Billy Talon and like and share the things that he posts on social media, but a lot of the people following him would still be shopping a buying things that they probably do not need. 

Conclusion 

Social media has both positives and negatives when it comes to activism. It can ‘facilitate both apathy and political engagement’ (Joyce, 2011), it is able to give activist groups an opportunity to spread their message as well as providing people with a way to find these groups, however it also contributes to ‘Slacktivism’ in which a person goes no further than to like a Facebook page or use a hashtag which makes themselves feel good and look good to their friends, but does not actually help the issue. 

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

Digital Citizenship 1. Political Engagement

Introduction

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube are now being used by politicians to promote themselves and their campaigns and communicate with their potential voters. Social media has provided politicians the ability to not only communicate with each other in a different way than was typically done but also gives them direct access to the public and vice versa. The usage of social media by politicians can have both positive and negative effects for them.

The Positives

At a glance, social media would seem like the perfect way for a politician to promote themselves and their campaign. They can post about anything that they want and have the ability to reach millions of people in a few seconds for free. It  personalizes them and makes them more accessible to the public and they are able to put out the image of themselves that they want the public to see.

However it can also have negative effects.

Negatives

Many consequences can arise when high profile politicians with a large following are able to say whatever they want in a manner of seconds. Social media does not only give politicians the power to speak, but also the public and it leaves them open to vast amounts of criticism. If they do post something hastily, with even the smallest mistake, people will notice. Even if the post is deleted right away, that is no help if the person in question has a large following, remember, once something is on the internet it is there forever.

To demonstrate the negatives let’s take a look at the man who most people think of when we talk about politicians on social media, Donald Trump. And more specifically let’s talk about one of his most infamous tweets.

Convfefe

On the 30th of May 2017 Donald Trump tweeted “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.” At the time Trump had 31 million followers on his Twitter account (Hunt, 2017) who were all instantly baffled as to what the nonsense word was supposed to mean. People immediately started replying and tweeting with the hashtag ‘convfefe’ and the next day most news sites were talking about it.

The tweet was not removed until shortly before 6am the following morning (Hunt,2017). Another tweet was then posted reading: “Who can figure out the true meaning of ‘covfefe’ ??? Enjoy!”

The second tweet only furthered the ridicule and ‘covfefe’ quickly became a meme.

It eventually ended up on urban dictionary.

Conclusion

Social media can be a great tool for politicians to promote themselves as it is quick, easy and cheap to use and can get the exact message that they want out to millions of people in a manner of seconds. However it also has many negative effects, it gives the public the chance to more openly criticize them and if they make so much as one mistake they can be open to ridicule even if the post is eventually deleted, as demonstrated by Donald Trump’s ‘covfefe’ tweet.

[abbeydigitalcommunity]

Tumblr. Social Network or Blog?

Introduction 

Does Tumblr fall into the category of a social network or a blog? Well what if I told you that it is both. Tumblr can be primarily a social networking site, a blog or a mixture of both, it all depends on how each individual user decides to use it. Before I explain why, let’s start off with some definitions.

Definitions 

Social Network:

‘A dedicated website or other application which enables users to communicate with each other by posting information, comments, messages, images, etc.’ (Oxford English Dictionary)

‘Web-based services that allow individuals to; construct a public or partly public profile within a restricted system, the ability to acquire a list of users that they share common views and interests with and thirdly, view and navigate their list of connections and those made by others within the system (Boyd & Ellison 2007, pg 210.)

Blog:

‘A regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.’(Oxford English Dictionary)

A website containing the writer’s personal commentary on a particular topic as part of an online publication (Merriam-Webster, 2018) 

Now let us see how Tumblr can fit into both of these definitions. 

How does Tumblr Fit?

Social Network:

Tumblr fits the definition of social networking site as it allows its users to create a public profile in which they can make individual multimedia posts to share with the wider community that can include information and images as well as videos and music. Users are also able to acquire a following of other users that share similar interests, through the use of tags. Users are also able to interact with each other through messages and liking,commenting and re blogging each other’s posts. 

Blog:

Tumblr allows the user to personalize their page and create an aesthetic to match their page and personality, it can be hipster, minimalist, gothic or any other aesthetic that they like. Users can also choose a theme to dictate how their posts will be displayed. These are things that you are unable to do on a social networking site such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Users are able to publish a series of long form posts providing commentary on a particular topic, such as a blog consisting on posts relating to social media. 

Now let’s move on to some examples. 

Examples

Social Media

For example, When I was fifteen, I used Tumblr primarily as a social media, I liked, re blogged and commented on other user’s posts. If I did make a post of my own it was only ever a picture, GIF or video from a TV show, movie, novel or video game that I liked with a comment along the lines of ‘OMG I love this thing so much’. I did not use it to create blog posts centered around a general theme.

Blog

The best example I can give you as to how Tumblr can be used as a blogging site is the blog that you are reading right now. My Tumblr page will be updated at least once a week and will contain long form informal posts, such as this one, that are centered around a particular topic, in this case social media. I will however also be interacting with other students on this site, so I will also be using some of its social media features as well.

Conclusion

In conclusion I believe that Tumblr is not just a social networking site or a blogging site but rather a hybrid of the two. Depending on each individual user the site can be used as a social network, blog or a mixture of the two. 

What does everyone else think, let me know your thoughts, do you disagree or like me do you think that it can be used as both?