O.K Computer?

Welcome to MDA20009. Yes, the colour design was specifically chosen to make your retinas bleed as fast and painfully as possible. Eh, we might as well have some fun while we work. Мне нравится дюгоней .

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My short film for the Altona Beach Film Fest!

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The Great Firewall of China

“Welcome you’ve got jail” (Phys-Org), is probably the first thing, then 37 year old, Shi Tao – a reporter for Contemporary Business News based in Changsha - thought when he discovered that e-mail messages he sent to out an overseas Chinese Democracy site, which contained documents of the Communist Party were intercepted by the Government (Physorg). He spent 8 years, 6 months inside prison and was released on September 5th 2013. The reason he was caught? Because Yahoo!China had essentially dobbed his actions in to the Chinese government. Can you imagine that? If your internet search engine ran such a strict watch tower on your online activities that one wrong move could land you over 8 years in prison (Shi Tao was originally supposed to serve 10 years but had his sentence reduced)?

Internet censorship is an ongoing problem within China and it is ironically known as ‘The Great Firewall of China’. China’s attempt at shuttering the world out of its business and vice versa for its inhabitants. Almost every common tool you can think of has been blocked in China and that means no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Ebay or Google. However, like most Chinese products these days, there are shoddier versions of China’s answer to Facebook. These social media sites go under the names of Renren and Qzone. “Renren, which means 'Everyone' in Chinese, enables users to connect and communicate with each other, share information, create user generated content, play online games, watch videos and enjoy a wide range of other features and services”, (Renren Inc. 2015) which if I’m honest sounds almost exactly like a word for word description of Facebook.    

Qzone is more of a blogging tool which allows users to write diaries, entries and play music & videos. While on the other hand the Chinese equivalent for Youtube is similarly titled “Youku”. Translating into “cool”, the social media site is pretty cool with a total of over 500,000,000 active users (Bischoff 2014).

I’m going to be honest. Until writing this blog post I had never heard of any of these “cool” social networking sites that laid the groundwork and foundations for so many Chinese citizens to connect to one another. According to “a new McKinsey survey of 5,700 Internet users in China has found that 95 percent of those living in Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 cities are registered on a social-media site” (Chiu, C, Lin, D and Silverman, A 2012, p.3), and a further “91 percent of respondents saying they visited a social-media site in the previous six months, compared with 30 percent in Japan, 67 percent in the United States, and 70 percent in South Korea”(Chiu, C, Lin, D and Silverman, A 2012, p.3.). Interesting stuff.

So, that’s about it for my blog posts… hope you enjoyed reading them! Now I’m going to go and cry in a corner for the remainder of the week as I write my 3 essays. Yay.  

References:

Bischoff, P 2014, ‘China’s favourite video site gets into the movie making business’, viewed May 24th 2015, http://phys.org/news/2005-09-china-yahoo-youve.html

PHYS ORG, 2005, ‘The China Yahoo! Welcome: You’ve got Jail!’, viewed 24th May 2015, https://www.techinasia.com/chinas-favorite-video-site-youku-movie-making-business/

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

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmLHVb-56ig)

Tumblr can be used for shameless promotion right? Well, either way, this is a music video I made for a little competition where top prize means the potential for this video to actually be the official clip for WAVVES new song - Leave. Yuuup, this is why I love games.

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Social Gaming

I classify myself as a gamer. I also hate most of the people I meet in online games. Through my experiences of playing Call of Duty, Doom 3 (back in the day), Left 4 Dead and most recently Grand Theft Auto Online, I have witnessed and heard many disgusting, horrific, homophobic and misogynistic actions. While I’m one who is not easy to offend, it is pretty alarming to hear most of these unthinkable phrases of bullshit spouting from a whiny, pre-pubescent, snotty nosed 10 year old brat. Frankly, these kinds of experiences in what some would label as ‘casual games’ have marred my expectations for enormous social games such as E.V.E Online, World of Warcraft, League of Legends or even Second Life (yes, even that, although I would not classify this as a “game” in the strictest sense). I am proud to proclaim that I have never gotten myself hooked on any of the above games and it’s for that very reason. The fact that I have to interact.

The only good thing to come out of Call of Duty’s multiplayer? meeemetastic

While I find just the general notion of being able to interact with other gamers from across the world and the affordances that that brings in an almost infinitesimal amount of scenarios a fascinating one, I believe it is the potential that I may be opening myself up to some of the ugliness … the uncalled for abuse, name calling, slander etc. that is so inherent in online communities that really puts me off playing these online games. Yes, I’m aware that this kind of trolling is not inherent in every single server of every single game ever but to me, it is more of a psychological thing if anything. The fact that I don’t want to open myself to even the slightest potential of abuse from other players really keeps me away from social gaming. Knowing that ugly side to gaming will always exist.

Just take a gander at Phil Fish’s twitter account https://twitter.com/phil_flsh , replete with an almost never ending spewing of hatred toward the video game community. Phil Fish, by the way, is (was?) an indie game developer and creator of “Fez” who reportedly quit the gaming industry after being fed up with the general douchebagery and ungratefulness of gamers, as perfectly chronicled in the fascinating documentary ‘Indie Game: The Movie’ (2012). While I’d never go to Phil Fish’s extremes, I can somewhat see where he is coming from. There is an ugly side to the gaming community and social gaming as a whole. I want to avoid that.

References:

Indie Game: The Movie 2012, documentary, BlinkWorks Media, USA

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Social Imaging Platforms

Have you ever done something really dumb? Something that you have really, truly regretted? Have you ever done something really dumb and had it recorded by your mates? Have you ever done something really dumb, had it recorded by your mates and then they uploaded it to Facebook without your permission for the harmless sake of ‘shits n gigs’? If you answered ‘no’ to the last question then consider yourself in luck. Once the stupid, dumb video of you drunkenly taking a shit on your boss’ front lawn hits Facebook and the internet it’s there to stay. Forever. Say goodbye to your job. Say goodbye to your employability.

These are the modern day conflicts and politics of ‘tagging and being tagged’ on Facebook without your permission. In this day and age, where everybody is seemingly so connected, we must be more aware than ever about what we do since every waking second of your life could be uploaded to the internet in a matter of seconds and a couple of button presses. Quoting Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel, he found the “traditional social media view of identity”, that is to say “you are the sum of your published experience” (Herrman, 2014) as a problematic notion. Suggesting that profile based social media was over in turn for ‘ephemerality’. With the main basis of Snapchat centred around the notion of ephemerality, people taking photos that last up to 10 seconds at a time, has this become the new thing? To take over the standard form of profile based personality building? Evan Spiegel seems to think so and I see it as an interesting concept. The idea of the selfie, especially through Snapchat, is that it is a snapshot of yourself in ‘the now’, or more accurately, couple of seconds ago, which is a very ephemeral thing. People can gather a lot of information from a photo (hence the saying, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’) so the notion of Snapchat and the ‘selfie’ overtaking standard profile based social media hubs such as Facebook isn’t as much of a joke as one may think. Since somebody may perhaps update their Facebook profile with a new picture, status or job update every couple of weeks or so, a ‘Snapchat selfie’ opens up a tiny personal glimpse of what somebody is doing ‘right now’. The fact that Snapchat only allows photos or videos that last up to 10 seconds at a time is because it is meant to act as a “snap” of your life. Right up until the next 10 seconds you decide to share with your friends.

References:

Herrman, J 2014, ‘Meet the Man Who Got Inside Snapchat’s Head’ BuzzFeed.

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Blog Post #5 - Crowdsourcing in times of crisis

There is not one simple, set definition for the term ‘crowdsourcing’. A combination of the words ‘crowd’ and ‘outsourcing’, the name largely speaks for itself. It is largely known as the simple process of getting work, assistance or most commonly, funding from a crowd of people. During a time of crisis such as an earthquake, flood or hurricane, or in times of war, criminal activity or hostage takeovers, social media has played an irreplaceable role in enabling a successful act of crowdsourcing.

Take for example the latest tragedy that just recently occurred in Nepal. An earthquake which decimated cities and destroyed towns and has resulted in the deaths of over 7,000 people. Social media has played an incredibly significant part in conveying much of the outpouring of information of what and where the affected areas are exactly. A lot of this information came in the form of news updates, Facebook posts, tweets and on the spot video footage uploaded directly to YouTube. Facebook recently introduced a feature that allows users to mark themselves as “safe” from any disasters, natural or manmade, that they happen to be near. This allows the user to alert their Facebook friends via a push notification. Facebook also added a ‘donate now’ button atop the news feed for a brief amount of time which allowed users to donate any sum of money to help funding for rebuilding Nepal. The ‘donate now’ button was reminiscent of another crowdsourcing attempt by Facebook back in November last year which added it in response to help contribute to Ebola containment and treatment efforts.

In other crowdsourcing efforts that respond to crisis, tech company DigitalGlobe is enlisting the general public’s assistance by making satellite imagery freely available to the public with their “First Look” site. This allows people to identify safe areas via satellite imagery and lets users view a before and after of the affected areas. The company also activated another crowdsourced website known as Tomnod which allows people around the world to use before and after photos to tage collapsed buildings, blocked roads and other areas of major destruction. This could prove to be an invaluable tool for emergency services.

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Blog Post #4 Digital Activism - “Slacktivism”

This week was about digital activism and looked at how social media could be used as a means to facilitate the mobilisation of movements, encourage social revolution and of course promote social as well as political change through discourse. One of the more interesting aspects of this week was the notion of a term called ‘slacktivism’. So what is slacktivism? It is basically described as a form of ‘feel good’ activism over the internet with putting as little effort and involvement in, from the users part, as possible. This could mean giving a Facebook post from an organisation such as Greenpeace a ‘like’ signifying that you care and support about a certain cause while reinforcing your conscience and karma with as little effort as possible. The most recent example of slacktivism was exemplified in the past week with the montage of different celebrities pleading for Prime Minister Tony Abbott to “save our boys” (Robert Walker, 2015). A horribly misguided, last second attempt at saving both Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan from being executed by Indonesia’s death penalty. Steve Wilkinson of the The Drum describes the futility of this campaign and the idea of armchair activism: “in coming weeks, calm will be restored. Our ambassador to Indonesia will be returned. There will be nary a ripple in our sea of complacency. Until the next affront to our civil liberties when from the comfort of our armchairs, armed with our iPhones, we will fire off some more blanks at yet another unhearing, unfeeling, uncompromising enemy.”

 Although this form of publicity (or activism, I’m not sure what to call it, to be honest) garners an immense amount media and public attention, it does very little in the way of making any actual change aside from creating a few new hashtags (#saveourboys). In a way, I have to liken the general media’s attention span to that of a goldfish, regarding the executions of the Bali duo, we have two inmates on death row for over 10 years with a huge amount of media attention at the beginning. This attention began to peter out over the years as we forgot of their existence and now that the executions have occurred and publicised, media attention shot up again significantly with many people “calling for mercy”. In the next week or so, everyone will go back to their normal lives and go on their ways as if nothing ever happened. This is the ultimate failing of slacktivism. It gives people some sort of self-satisfaction to know that they have contributed to a cause when in reality they have done absolutely nothing, ultimately resulting in a failure to produce any tangible effect.            

References:

Wilkinson, S 2015, ‘Bali 9 and the #hash reality about slacktivism’, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-01/wilkinson-slacktivism-and-the-hash-reality/6436410 

Robert Walker 2015, ‘Save our boys, Mr Abbott’ Aussie celebrities call on prime minister to bring Bali Nine pair home’, 27 April, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3vQHiey4R0   

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Blog Post #3 - Trolling & Cyberbullying

Cast your mind back, say, 15 years ago. If you were asked to personify the act of bullying way, waaay back in 2000, what would the picture you just painted in your mind have looked like? For me, it was your typical school yard bully. You know, your typically big, scary kind, with a shaved head that made his ears look like ginormous flippers, nostrils that flared whenever he spoke and a t-shirt that always seemed like it was 2 sizes too small for him (usually yellow with black stripes). To put it into much simpler terms, in my mind, a bully would have had the raging personality of Biff Tannen combined with the looks and size of Lardass from Stand by Me. Of course, what I had just envisioned was an extremely exaggerated but nevertheless faintly true (stereotypes exist for a reason!) recreation of what I like to think of as the ‘old school’ bully.

These kinds of bullies take action through physical as well as emotional abuse, putting down other students out of some sick, reversed form of gratification which is most likely a reflection of their own incredibly low self-esteem. However, in recent years, with the rising trend of social media, bullying hasn’t been so much about big, scary skinheads in the schoolyard as it has been about anonymous, almost invisible, users causing all kinds of grief and distress across websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Reddit. This form of bullying, known as cyber bullying, can potentially create far wider reaching and inherently evil consequences than any schoolyard bully, simply due to the vast spread and infinitesimal longevity of our personal information stored on the internet. Dana Boyd (2014) discusses the act of cyberbullying among teenagers, describing the added dimension and visibility that networked sites give to understanding how cyber-bullying is constructed. “When this results in enabling others to amplify the attacks, heightened visibility can significantly increase the emotional duress of a bullying incident… [prompting] people to assume technology must inherently make bullying more hurtful and damaging” (Boyd, 2014).

A high profile example of cyber bullying taken to its extremities was the suicide of Amanda Todd, a girl who was harassed, blackmailed and bullied through webcam chat rooms and other social media platforms. Boyd (2014), argues that the high profile case created a distorted view of online social engagement and the bullying that occurs in these sites. “It’s clear that technology enabled people to engage in more sustained harm. Yet most people who experience bullying do not face the level of distributed and continuous cruelty that Todd encountered” (Boyd, 2014). Essentially, the media, or perhaps people who did not understand social networking sites, took the idea of cyberbullying out of context and proportion creating a seemingly dark void, condemning such social networking sites. Whereas Amanda Todd was the rare case in which cyber bullying and social media played a large part in the decision for her take her life. What Boyd (2014), tries to explain is that the positive affordances of social networking sites such as interconnectedness, photo sharing etc. were greatly overshadowed and shafted by the overblown reports of Facebook, Twitter and reddit being overrun by cyber bullies and “trolls”.

Is the internet as inherently evil as the media makes it out to be? 

This should answer your question...

References:

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

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Official Post #2

Social media’s prevalence in the modern world is highlighted by the continuous reminder by our superiors, whether it be parents, politicians or lecturers (who are, let’s be honest, more mature…) of everything we put on the internet will be there to stay. Once it’s there, it’s there for good. We have all heard the horror stories about the eventual day you will be lined up for a fancy job interview only to completely botch it up based on the employer spooling through your collation of social networking accounts and finding  something offensive and perhaps out of character for something you wrote on Twitter seven years beforehand. Society has reached a point in time where our online and offline lives have completely meshed together, where social networking sites, or rather, the choices you make on the sites can truly dictate your future. Hell, I can’t even remember the last time somebody actually referred to the terms “online and offline” as separate entities. The importance of social media and this constant reminder of content checking couldn’t be better exemplified in the world of politics. Greg Jericho (2012) recalls a former ALP candidate, Peter Wilson, who was forced to resign his candidacy after homophobic comments he made as a 15 year old boy were found on blogging sites such as slackbastard. He, goes on to recall a quote, made by Obama, regarding the weariness of posting things onto the internet: “be careful about what you post on Facebook, because in the YouTube age whatever you, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life” (Jericho, 2012: 296). The internet and social media is also changing the way we receive information and vocalise our opinions. Social media grants the ability to give everyone a voice and in turn allows a much wider distribution of news and media. “The Pew Research Centre found that nearly three-quarters (74%) of American internet users went online during the 2008 presidential election to take part in, or get news and information about, the campaign” (Young, 2010: 204). 74% of the American internet users is a ridiculously huge number and would no doubt have caused a shift in the way people voted as they were being subjected to more varied information and free range opinions.

References:

Jericho, Greg, Aug 22, 2012, The Rise of the Fifth Estate: social media and blogging in Australian politics, Scribe Publications, Carlton North

Young, Sally, Dec 01, 2010, How Australia Decides: Election Reporting and the Media, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge         

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A fine example of when the ever creative efforts of the internet spawn a parody of a parody. And it’s still better than Nicki Minaj.

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1st Official Blog Post: ‘Is Tumblr a blog or a social networking site?’

The notion of forming our ‘social identities’ online (so to speak), has become such a vital necessity to today’s culture and youth who, for the most part, are focused almost exclusively on expressing and personalising their ‘Facebook’ or ‘Tumblr’. As media theorist Terry Flew (2002) stated, ‘social media and digital media are doing something very important: they are ‘promoting a culture based upon interactivity and virtuality’ (Flew 2002: 207). But hang on, did I just compare Facebook with Tumblr? Aren’t the two sites completely different? Isn’t one for connecting (or avoiding) your mothers, cousins, step-father’s creepy uncle and the other for reblogging GIFs of adorable sombrero wearing alpacas? At first glance, yes, they may seem like completely different entities and one would probably never consider Tumblr a ‘social networking site’ but rather a dumping ground for recycled GIFs and overused Memes but this is simply not the case. According to Adam Rifkin of TechCrunch (2013), the reason Tumblr is as popular as it is today is due to the fact that it prides itself on being the anti-blog. Many blogging sites before Tumblr such as WordPress and Blogger encouraged users to create their own blog and cater for as large an audience as they could in an overly professional and, for lack of a better word, unexciting way as possible. This method of personalisation and encouragement of not subjecting your blog to a broad audience is what I believe makes Tumblr less of a ‘blog’ and more of a social networking site, in that it encourages users to connect and share the things that THEY WANT to share. Which can be videos or links or other websites OR EVEN GIFs of adorable alpacas wearing sombreros rather than just reposting the same trifle to an already niche audience that is, let’s be honest, probably already disinterested in your blog. An idea that was so excitedly encouraged and yet failed to deliver by those other former blogging sites. To put it simply, ‘Tumblr users actually don’t want an audience. They do not want to be found, except by a few close friends who they explicitly share one of their tumblogs with’ (Rifkin 2013). This is exactly the same train of thought that most users (certainly I) stick to when using ‘social networking sites’ such as Facebook when determining what and what not to share. When talking about the affordances of Tumblr and the concept of it encouraging users to connect with their network of friends rather than a broader audience, did the creators originally pre-empt this? Maybe yes, maybe no, the point is that through creating a website for content sharing it has encouraged personalisation and creativity which in turn should allow Tumblr to fall under both the ‘social networking’ and ‘blog’ categories. 

References:    

Flew, T. (2002). New Media: An Introduction (3rd edn). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Rifkin, A 2013, Tumblr Is Not What You Think, http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/                

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1st (Unofficial) Post

Hello World!