Beyond Blessed

  this blog is for educational purposes only as part of a university assignment  

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Global Case Study: China’s Social Media

I believe most of us here knows about China’s condition of the banning of various widely-used socials apps, especially those owned by Google. Now, do you wonder how do the mainland Chinese’ internet life be like, and do they get exposed and communicate with the world since they are using a new platform of social media apps? Yes indeed, media censorship is the main issue in China. The government in China affords its citizens on speech and press freedom. Instead, the opacity of the rules and regulations of the Chinese media has allowed the authorities to break the serious news stories, which was referring to how they expose secrets of the state and later leads the country to become an even more endangered nation. In the year of April 2010, the government of China revised through an existing law of “Law on Guardian State Secrets” in order for the country itself to tighten control over the flows of information. This amendment has then strengthened the requirements for most online internet companies. Besides this, there are certain websites where the government has checked and mentioned that it is potentially dangerous. Such example would be Wikipedia, which is known to be blocked during controversy periods (Xu & Albert 2014, p. 245).

Those who are not very familiar to China’s online social network platform may wonder what kind of communication platform its citizens use. Currently, Baidu Tieba is China’s largest communication platform for everyone there. Baidu Tieba is basically provided by the search engine company in China, Baidu. This communication platform is a keyword-based discussion forum where every user is able to search for their desired information through typing on a search bar. You may be wondering that why does this sounds so familiar? Well, this is just because Baidu Tieba is basically the Google search engine of China. As highly expected, this forum covers hosts discussions on latest world news and literally all topics that are imaginable (Thai 2018).

In terms of economic perspectives, the Chinese social media platforms will indeed contribute to the China’s own economic growth. This is because of the efficiency in completing business transactions on these various platforms. For instance, WeChat does not only serve for online transactions, but it also now allowing the wide availability of offline payment for users’ efficiency in purchasing activities on all goods and services. The company of WeChat, Tencent has reported that there is over 200 million social network users who had bound their personal banking accounts on WeChat Pay, and this is also highly connected to a wide array of physical, brick and mortar retail stores in China (Wu & Alaimo 2018).

List of References

Thai, N 2018, 10 most popular social media sites in China (2018 updated), Dragon Social, viewed 28 November 2018, <https://www.dragonsocial.net/blog/social-media-in-china/>.

Wu, CJ & Alaimo, KS 2018, Social media in mainland China: Weak democracy, emergent civil society, Oxford Research Encyclopedias, viewed 28 November 2018, <http://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-509>.

Xu, B & Albert, E 2014, ‘Media censorship in China’, Council on Foreign Relations, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 243-248.

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Social Gaming

In the trend-following society this days, it is so common for people to be exposed to all kinds of social gaming activities despite whether are you one of the digital gaming players or not. The game of Pokemon series video games published by Nintendo has recently came out with its latest release known as Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon in the year 2017, which has caused an obvious impact socially among people. This social gaming has not only brought an addiction to current players, but has also shown a great influence on attracting non-players of social gaming to try it out. Pokemon being well-known as a cartoon series itself has not just only bring impact on children and teenagers, but its social game has also a large number of players from individuals of all ages and demographic sectors.

Not surprised at all, social gaming has become an important element of digital lifestyle activities to most individuals in this era. However, it is believed that most of us has never come across the question such as what the social impacts of social gaming to the people are. Does social gaming bring more of a benefit or does it create more harm to the community as a whole? No doubt, it is being said that video games or social gaming has become a catalyst of change in social wise where it is generally preparing players to emotionally deal with certain realities that brings heavy impact to the individuals themselves. This may include cyber bullying (that even leads to physical bullying), love and relationship problems, suicide as well as bridging certain gaps in life (Sloat 2016).

How often is it normal for people to have the thinking that all digital game players are anti-social and living in their own world away from the reality? Well, this is a rather mainstream mind-set among most of us. Based on a scientific research carried out on students, it is proved that addicted game players have lower social skills in comparison with the non-addicted game players. It is also stated that social games might be able to fulfil or satisfy needs of social interactions done online among the players which will then lead to physical social isolation. Definitely, physical social isolation with people and loneliness will cause a person to never improve on his or her individual’s social skills (Zamani et. al. 2010, p. 63).

To look at the bright side, social gaming can build up cognitive development among players. Most social and digital gaming require mental rotation abilities, speedy and accurate attention allocation, and also higher spatial resolution in terms of visual processing. Therefore, cognitive advantages of social gaming improve attention functioning, generates neural processing and helps in recognition of pattern (Vitelli 2014).

Similar to many other aspects, social gaming has its pros and cons at the same time. Self-discipline might be the key to control one’s addiction towards this digitalize world of social gaming.

List of References

Sloat, S 2016, The social impact of video games, Inverse, viewed 17 November 2018, <https://www.inverse.com/article/17065-how-next-generation-video-games-will-teach-us-to-think-beyond-player-number-one>.

Vitelli, R 2014, Are there benefits in playing video games?, Psychology Today, viewed 17 November 2018, <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/media-spotlight/201402/are-there-benefits-in-playing-video-games>.

Zamani, E, Kheradmand, A, Cheshmi, M, Abedi, A & Hedayati, N 2010, ‘Comparing the social skills of students addicted to computer games with normal students’, Addict Health, vol. 2, no. 3-4, pp. 59-65.

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Fandom and Fan Activism

Living in a world that is full of entertainment these days, it has always been widely seen that people or netizens are heavily involved in fandom activities. Fandom is known as a subculture that evolves on a particular pop culture format or series. In this context, this term “fandom” is particularly applied to diehard fans out there who are crazily involved in television series, movies, characters, music and games. Often, fandom will occur when fans of the pop culture develop their shared experiences on a specific pop culture of theirs. This would include those specially made vocabulary terms, pastimes as well as traditions among themselves which will in a way resemble the subculture of it. Basically, we can say that the term fandom is a subculture that evolves out of enthusiasm for a particular pop culture (Spacey 2017).

Due to the growing usage of the Internet, fan activism has apparently been increasing in volume in the world of pop culture these days. For instance, the extent of contemporary fan activism can be seen through fan discontent that has been expressed through protest activity. This involves social movements of fans’ protest tactics which shows the eagerness in themselves to make a difference in the pop culture of their favorite idol (Earl & Kimport 2009, p. 225).

I believe most of us here can be categorized as a deeply devoted fan. Well, this can be of anything, ranging from singers such as Camila Cabello, to movie series like Fast and Furious and even to DC comics fictional characters. Of course, we can never deny that fandom has a strong way of influence and may take up a significant part of our social, emotional and even mental aspect of life. Social media can be seen easily to increase the interactions within the fan culture. The form of interactions has made the connection between fans to grow closer and stronger, by allowing them to interact and bond with each other over a common interest (Social media and its positive affect on fan culture 2014). By this, fans are able to voice out their opinions and own perspectives such as giving feedbacks to producers and comment on how their idol has performed their work.

YouTube is and always has been one of the top social media platforms for media audiences as well as fans to get exposed to all activities related to fandom. An American singer and songwriter, Madilyn Bailey has released quite a number of albums on song covers. Currently, she has 5,627,886 subscribers on YouTube and has fans from all over the world. Using the YouTube as a platform for her to interact with her fans, she has done many songs covers that are requested by her fans who commented on her YouTube channel. Being an admired idol or singer to many fans out there, Madilyn often thanked her followers and fans in the comments of her videos as well.

List of References

Earl, J & Kimport, K 2009, ‘Movement societies and digital protest: Fan activism and other nonpolitical protest online’, Sociological Theory, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 220-243.

Social media and its positive affect on fan culture 2014, Rampages, viewed 10 November 2018, <https://rampages.us/tommyspage/work-1/>.

Spacey, J 2017, What is fandom?, Simplicable, viewed 10 November 2018, <https://simplicable.com/new/fandom>.

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Digital Communities: Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding

Every time we go online, it is so common for us to come across any activities of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding on the internet sites. Crowdsourcing is known as the activity and practice of getting engaged in a group of people towards a common goal and objectives. As crowdsourcing is now powered by the digital platforms of social medias, Web 2.0 as well as other new technologies, this activity often involves the specification of innovation, efficiency and also problem solving. No doubt, all credits should go to the internet as a growing connectivity among the society, which makes it so much easier and effective than ever for people to contribute and collect ideas, information from expertise and many more towards a common goal. As we can all see, crowdsourcing has grown and expanded its popularity as the years go by (What is crowdsourcing? n.d.).

For instance, the worldwide-used application, Waze, can be seen as one of the most successful crowd-powered start-ups application now. Basically, Waze is an application that let users to check on or even report situations on traffic jams at a certain location, and this will automatically show them the most suitable directions and routes to use to avoid getting caught in heavy jams. Overall, Waze is really an amazing and highly recommended application that portrays a dedicated crowd of users getting engaged in a similar platform to obtain information towards a common objective.

Moving on to crowdfunding, it is known commonly known as the use or collection of small amounts of capital mainly from the source of large number of individuals for the purpose of financial support towards a new business venture. With the wide usage of social media these days by people of all ages, crowdfunding activities are often done through the social media platforms due to easy accessibility towards a variety of networks of people. In this context, there is also crowdfunding websites that bring people of entrepreneurs and investors together in the same platform in order to expand entrepreneurship possibilities when fund-raising activities can be carried out online (Crowdfunding n.d.). Besides crowdfunding for business purposes, many organizations or individuals out there has also used online crowdfunding for social and charity intention as well. Such popular crowdfunding websites includes www.kickstarter.com, www.donorschoose.org, www.youcaring.com, and many others.

To conclude, crowdfunding is known as a novel way for organizations and individuals to raise capitals for a specific purpose or objective. Not to forget, online crowdfunding through websites and social media platforms has been performing its best by reducing the importance of traditional locality and geographical constraints (Mollick 2014, p. 11). Investors, entrepreneurs as well as donors from all over the world are now able to get involved in crowdfunding activities with high efficiency, speed and accessibility.

List of References

Crowdfunding n.d., Investopedia, viewed 2 November 2018, <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdfunding.asp>.

Mollick, E 2014, ‘The dynamics of crowdfunding: an exploratory study”, Journal of Business Venturing, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 1-16.

What is crowdsourcing? n.d., Crowdsourcing Week, viewed 2 November 2018, <https://crowdsourcingweek.com/what-is-crowdsourcing/>.

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Digital Citizenship: Trolling & Social Media Conflict

In today’s addiction to the internet from most of us, it is rather normal and frequent for us to come across and experienced matters such as the “internet trolls”. This term is known as a person who brings up the topic for quarreling and making others upset on the online platform such as the Internet. The purpose of “internet trolling” is to provoke the public into giving responses based on their own emotions which contributes for the troll’s amusement or even specific benefit. Internet trolling will always be the start of a hot topic on social media platforms, as well as other types of online communities. To most people, “internet trolling” draws a huge amount of interest because often people finds a sense of humor in it, which is highly appreciated. Despite this, the act of trolling someone or someone being trolled will get worst and also nastier gradually from time to time. Therefore, “internet trolling” can never be just a laughing matter (Moreau 2018). Internet trolling happens most frequently among public figures on the social media platforms such as between artists, YouTubers, politicians and can literally happen to anyone.

Of course, internet trolling can happen in many ways and places on the internet. This includes blog comments, forum websites, emails, YouTube video comments and literally any social networking site.

As an example, one of the hottest internet trolling case this month is the happening of one of Singapore’s top online social influencer named Xiaxue, who did a Halloween make-up tutorial video on her well-known YouTube channel. What is so special about this? Well, this is not just any normal Halloween make-up, but it is how she managed to do her face almost exactly like the wife of Malaysia’s former prime minister, Rosmah Mansor. Rosmah is known by almost everyone for being involved in money-laundering and misuse of the country’s state fund with all of her lavish lifestyle spendings. With the occasion of Halloween coming up, Xiaxue has eye-catchingly used this chance to turn into Rosmah’s outlook for her Halloween character, mainly just for the sense of humor. Xiaxue did mentioned herself in the video that nothing is more scary than rampant corruption in a country.

Before the video was shown to the public, Xiaxue did posted a two-second video clip of herself in the outlook of Rosmah in a jail attire with cutouts of luxury brand Hermes handbags. She received many pissed off messages from the public asking her to respect Rosmah instead. Negative feedbacks and comments was thrown directly onto Xiaxue some saying that she should not do this, as she is a Singaporean therefore has no right to interfere in Malaysia’s political issue. Xiaxue of coursed did argued back saying that there are no such rules, and it can be seen that the world is always making fun of America’s president, Donald Trump as well (Why the hate, S’porean blogger Xiaxue asks after getting flak for Rosmah Halloween make-up 2018). 

When all sorts of provoking messages appeared in the comments of her released video on the Halloween make-up tutorial, Xiaxue, however, took the hate and mentioned that she loved looking at all those attention from the public. Despite all these negative comments, there is another percentage of digital community that look at the lighter side to her video. A post was created where there is Rosmah’s face and Xiaxue’s fake face of hers with a funny comment stating that “Utilising Face ID, Xiaxue confirm can unlock Rosmah’s Iphone” (Foo 2018).

List of References

Moreau, E 2018, Internet trolling: how do you spot a real troll?, Lifewire, viewed 25 October 2018, <https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-internet-trolling-3485891>.

Why the hate, S’porean blogger Xiaxue asks after getting flak for Rosmah Halloween make-up 2018, Mediacorp News Group, viewed 25 October 2018, <https://www.todayonline.com/world/why-hate-blogger-xiaxue-asks-after-getting-flak-rosmah-halloween-make>.

Foo, K 2018, Xiaxue gets threats and verbal abuse after posting video of her Rosmah Halloween look, The Straits Times, viewed 26 October 2018, <https://stomp.straitstimes.com/singapore-seen/xiaxue-gets-threats-and-verbal-abuse-after-posting-video-of-her-rosmah-halloween-look>.

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Activism and Protest

Activism is widely known as the actions carried out by a certain group of people or individuals to bring effect to social or political changes. Social movements such as protesting is often concerned with the main topic of what needs to be done to change the world. This can be related to all perspectives such as political, economic, social as well as environmental changes. When viewing and considering to get involve in activism and protest, it requires the need to be realistic about what needs to be achieved, and at the same time what impact should be seen as the outcome of the whole activism process. As important as it is, when viewing activism in actions, one should not just look at how the activists define and portray themselves. Instead, one should focus more on the things that they do as this will be often more informative and decisive at the same time (Introduction to activism n.d.).

In all activism and protest movements, leaders play crucial roles such as theorists, figureheads, spokespeople, role models as well as strategists. Leaders are like the head of the activism activity where discrediting a leader can be known as discrediting the entire movement of activism and protest. Likewise, leaders who are wise are able to give good guidance based on the usage of planned strategies (Martin 2007). Such strategies include the usage of social media platform and how can this influence activism and protest movements of theirs.

Social Media and Activism

Through technology in this digital age, social media allows the generation as a whole to be empowered as they are enable to act in ways that are out of the box. Similar to many other cases, activism through social media may work as usage for both the good and bad, which is going to affect the public either negatively or positively.

In regards to the serious issue of mass shooting case at a high school in Florida that killed 17 people, Twitter accounts for the purpose of spreading messages of controlling gun violence has then gained hundred thousands of followers in a short-term period. Not only this, the ENOUGH National School Walkout was then planned and coordinated online through the social media platform exactly a month after the shooting incident (Espinosa 2018).

Similarly, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is an activity that is carried out to promote the awareness of motor neuron disease which has been carried out online through social media by sharing videos of dumpling a bucket of ice and water over another person, and later challenging another person to do it within the time limit of twenty-four hours. The main purpose of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge done through social media platform is to encourage donations to research activities for this disease, which is known as a charitable financial donation that was done online.

As it can be concluded, our generation now are looking at a world of collectives who are utilizing the social media platform to obtain their desired goals of visibility. To conclude, what is important is that activism activities that keep in touch with the social media platforms should be able to create a greater amount of awareness to the public as well as a more rapid change towards the society as compared to physical activism.

 List of References

Espinosa, N 2018, The internet and the next generation of activism, Forbes, viewed 13 October 2018, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/04/10/the-internet-and-the-next-generation-of-activism/#57ea79c5130b>.

Introduction to activism n.d., Permanent Culture Now, viewed 12 October 2018, <http://www.permanentculturenow.com/what-is-activism/>.

Martin, B 2007, Activism, social and political, Brian Martin, viewed 12 October 2018, <http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/07Anderson.html>.

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Digital Citizenship: Political Engagement

Being a part of the younger generation in today’s society, I could not deny that citizenships from my generations, despite the differences of countries, are mostly reluctant to get involved in politics anymore. No longer like those generations back then, many of us are not even interested in joining the political parties of our own nations. As from what I can see from my own country, Malaysia, most of us from the younger generations in the late twenties or thirties no longer go for voting during the election period, and at the same time portrays the slightest trust on those politicians who are involved. Despite all these, I supposed that this does not really means that young people like us are apolitical. From what is observed through today’s technological society, it seems that the political engagement with a nation’s society can by far work out better through different means of conducting. Here, it is reliable to say that utilizing the social media for the purpose of political engagement is a useful and great platform to keep the society updated with all political activities. Through this, it can be seen that voting during political and governmental election can be done through online participations, rather than just the usual traditional way of polling booth (Using social media for political engagement 2017).

No doubt, it is agreed by most of us that digital engagement is able to facilitate new ways of political and civic participation, yet there is still questions about the effect of online engagement towards the social change of our society (Digital engagement empowers a new political participation 2016). In relation to this, it is found out that interactions relating to political information through digital platforms can lead to further topic complications as well as participatory behavior. For instance, certain forms of political participations online may lead to positive effects of empowerment on communities, whereas some may just seem to bring negative statements relating to social political issues such as the case of Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal issue.

As I can conclude, building up on political participation as well as civic engagement, it is determined that engaging with political news online through social media such as Facebook, Twitter or politician’s official blog site is an effective way for the young citizens as well as citizens of all ages to increase the level of interest in terms of political knowledge and discussions. Study also detects that forms of digital communications like online discussion forums, emails, chat-rooms and also voting in nation’s elections is one of the most effective ways to attract digital citizenship to political engagement (Silva 2008, p. 1036).

  List of References

Digital engagement empowers a new political participation 2016, Bang the Table, viewed 5 October 2018, <https://www.bangthetable.com/news/digital-engagement-empowers-new-political-participation/>.

Silva, TLD 2008, ‘Young citizens in the digital age: political engagement, young people and new media’, Information Communication & Society, vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 1029-1036.

Using social media for political engagement 2017, Future Learn, viewed 4 October 2018, <https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/digital-society/0/steps/23848>.

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Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site?

Tumblr being founded in the year of 2007, was known to be used by millions of communities as a platform to express themselves through certain online postings, such as posting texts, photos, videos and GIFs. Tumblr also enables all of us to share and update our everyday lives or interests through live videos or audios. As useful as it is created for, Tumblr is the place in the digital world where people’s interests are connected with one another (Tumblr is where your interests connect you with your people 2018). Not just this, it accommodates the sharing through connectivity with those people that shares the same interest. To be part of the Tumblr community, one can always blog a post or search with hashtags to join and inter-connect with any group of communities of your choice. In this context, a fan of Taylor Swift can just search and click on the hashtag of Taylor Swift to get to see blogs, videos or photos relating to Taylor Swift.

Some of us might come to the question of whether Tumblr is a blog or a social network site. For all that I could say after having a Tumblr account recently, and doing some profile research on Tumblr site itself, it may be both a blogging site, as well as a social network site. These explanations below will be the reasons why I say that it may be both.

Whenever someone mentioned about the word “Tumblr”, all people could relate to immediately is blogging. Almost limitless and with no boundaries, Tumblr is a digital platform which allows users to effortlessly share literally everything that we want and feel like to. Users blog by posting short to long texts, quotes that they adore, share links that they find interesting and many other activities. Often, Tumblr is being described as a microblog due to communities posting short texts and also quick snaps, which is much different from those traditional blogging style constructed out of long texts and passages (Explainer: What is Tumblr? n.d.). Other than this, internet blogging is usually done by the communities of the younger generation. In Tumblr, it can be seen that it has a younger user demographic, as compared to other social networking sites such as Facebook, which is mostly used by people of all ages.

As for the social network site point of view, Tumblr has always been similar to other social medias such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in terms of allowing its users to expose and share one another’s personal posts to their followers of their accounts. Furthermore, Tumblr is also another platform to embrace the pop culture and activity of fandom (Raymundo 2014). Tumblr has got into a partnership with well-known TV shows such as The Walking Dead and The Voice. This social networking site has as well expanded its appeal towards the pop culture with live events for its communities. Popular stars such as Lorde routinely post personal updates on her Tumblr account and also re-blog photos, messages, GIFs and videos from her own fans out there. This shows that Tumblr brings interaction among users through social networking.

As I can conclude here, Tumblr can be known as a cross between a social networking site and a blog.

List of References

Explainer: What is Tumblr? n.d., Webwise, viewed 28 September 2018, <https://www.webwise.ie/parents/explainer-what-is-tumblr-2/>.

Raymundo, O 2014, How Tumblr became the fastest-growing social network in just 6 months, Inc., viewed 28 September 2018, <https://www.inc.com/oscar-raymundo/tumblr-doubled-its-users.html>.

Tumblr is where your interests connect you with your people 2018, Tumblr Inc., viewed 30 September 2018, <https://www.tumblr.com/about>.