Community or Nah

Thoughts about the community

[communityornah]

China’s social media scene

Everybody knows China for 2 things:

China being the most populated country in the world

The copycat of the world

China literally copies everything, from electronics to even cars! Don’t believe me? Back in 2008, BMW had sued Shuanghuan Auto for allegedly copying the X5 design.

The above picture isn’t the X5 but the clone. Yeah even I was surprised. But BMW did win some cases and lost some cases (AutoNews, 2008). The full story can be seen by clicking here.

But back to the point, the copycat scene also continues to the world of social networking sites and that’s because China being the conservative country it is, blocked all social networking sites. When I say all I mean ALL. And once they realised there’s no other option other than to create a copycat version, the Chinese citizens did. They made replicas of SNS such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr and more! The copycats had to be made, it was estimated by The New York Times that there maybe up to 600 million internet users in China (Background Check, 2013), so it makes complete sense why people would make them.

According to Synthesio, a social media monitoring and analytic company, EVERY western SNS has it’s Chinese copycats

Twitter has Sina Weibo (290 million active users) and Tencent Weibo (280 million users)

Facebook has a variety of copycats such as RenRen, Kaixin, Tencent Pengyou, 51.com and the most popular one QZone with 600 million active users

YouTube has Youku Tudou (475 million users) and 56.com (120 million users)

(Synthesio, 2013)

McKinsey stated that China’s distinct social-media users can segmented into 6 groups based on motivation and behavior:  

Social Enthusiasts

Resenders

Readers

Opinionated users

QQ Spillovers

Inactive users

The first four user segments are normally more important than the last two for companies trying to reach Chinese consumers. These consumers’ differing motives for using social media and their purchasing patterns and influences should be considered when companies think about how to engage them.

Services even like WhatsApp don’t work there and they have a copycat or some say a better version called WeChat and a substitute for that is LINE.

It looks like the Chinese don’t need the more mainstream SNS as they have their own and are living happily with those sites. The good part about their websites is that they won’t be blocked anywhere in the world, so they can still access them once residents leave to another country and maintain contact.

It astonishes me how even in this day and age we’ve got to restrict people from certain products or services just because the government feels like it. But I guess that’s what can happen when people are given power.

REFERENCES

Shuanghuan Auto, (2008), CEO [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.autonews.com/article/20081218/ANE02/812189978/bmw-loses-chinese-clone-court-action [Accessed 23 May 15].

China Business Review, (2013), Crompton Map [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/social-media-in-china-the-same-but-different/ [Accessed 23 May 15].

[communityornah]

Social Gaming

Ahhh gaming. Some people love it, some loathe it and some take it really seriously. Personally i love gaming. I wouldn’t say I’m addicted but I do play video games a fair bit. And because of that I believe that social Gaming is using video games for the use of relaxation and to socialise with peers or random people on the same game. But that’s my definition, there’s no academic of social gaming so far.

But I believe anything that doesn’t have a reward at the end of it, isn’t competitive gaming. Anything which gives you a reward at the end of a game other than bragging rights and personal satisfaction, is considered to be competitive. MLG (Major League Gaming) is the best example of competitive gaming.

There are several services that changed the social gaming scene with the evolution of the internet such as;

Xbox Live

Playstation Network

Steam

Xbox LIVE is an online gaming service from Microsoft that extends the power of the company's Microsoft Xbox gaming platforms by connecting users to other Xbox LIVE subscribers for multiplayer gaming and social networking as well as making a wide variety of Internet-enabled content available to its users (Webopedia, N.D). I’ve used Xbox Live since 2011 when I bought an Xbox 360 Slim. And Xbox Live offers such amazing features such as Party chat, joining friends or random people on multiplayer games, chats and many more. Xbox Live has 2 types of subscriptions; Gold and Silver. Gold membership is a paid membership that allows users to use the features mentioned just before whilst the Silver membership is a free membership that every Xbox Live user gets if they don’t buy the gold subscription. In other terms users can be excluded depending on whether they buy the subscription or not.

But back to the social aspect of this post. The fact that these online services allow people to connect and talk with each other whilst playing a video game reduces the face-to-face social aspect but increases the social aspect. How? Well imagine this, actually this is a real life scenario, I was living overseas for a couple of years and I got to join games with my friend’s here in Australia and play the same matches with them and talk to them through the headset.

As much as people will deny it or hate on gaming and how it “ruins” your life, I must say in the social aspect it does quite a fair bit. Connecting people, meeting new people, sharing moments and what not.

REFERENCES

Hugues Johnson, (2014), Saving Gamestop [ONLINE]. Available at: http://huguesjohnson.com/features/saving-gamestop/logos.png [Accessed 23 May 15]

Microsoft, (2014), Xbox Live Poster [ONLINE]. Available at: https://gotgame.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/xbox-live-logo.jpg [Accessed 23 May 15]

[allnightgamer]

Playing outside

[thatannoyinggamerguy-deactivate]

[communityornah]

Social Imaging Platforms

It’s been said that a picture or an image can speak a thousand words such as the photo shown above. This was taken during the protests that took place in Brazil.

But nowadays it isn’t about just sharing powerful or meaningful messages. Developers have come up with ways to make sharing images with others fun or enjoyable. There are many apps/websites that do this.

Snapchat

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Tumblr

Some don’t agree but I believe that Flickr is also a social imaging platform. This is because is fits into the social networking website frame. As said in my first blog post, a social networking website is one that allows a user to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. (Siapera,Eugenia, 2012). I’ve included YouTube as well because a video is also a form of image.

Taking pictures isn’t restricted to just cameras these days. You can take photos on your cellphone as well and that lead to the popularity of the #Selfie trend. 

A Selfie is a photo taken by you of you, typically with a smartphone or a webcam, and then usually put on a social networking site (Oxford Dictionary, 2013). But Mr. Bean did it before it was cool

I believe that the selfie trend got even more famous because of Instagram (Note: This link for Instagram is more of a definition for those who for some reason don’t know what Instagram is). 

Instagram allows the user to publish their Instagram post on several other social networking sites such as Facebook, Tumblr and even Flickr (Told you Flickr was a social networking site!).

Snapchat also popularizes taking selfies, except snapchat is very different than other social imaging sites. It’s not a website but an app, and it allows users to send photos to friends or randoms (depending on who they add) for a set time frame with a limited amount of texts and then after the time limit reaches, it magically disappears completely! And because of this time limit, there are some nice photos and some embarrassing ones, such as my photo below this text.

The good thing about Snapchat is that it tells the sender whether the receiver took a screenshot or not, so that means no one can be sneaky and hide the fact that they have an embarrassing photo of you.

Selfie has become such a huge thing in our lives that EDM producers, The Chainsmokers (inb4, I knew them before this song that made them famous, #ImSoHipstah) produced a song in 2014 called #Selfie which topped the charts everywhere!

Some people call it narcissistic some call it normal. In all honesty, it’s normal THESE DAYS, but flashback around 20 years and you’d be called a self obsessed prick. But hey, time changes everything doesn’t it? Also everyone is so obsessed with how many likes they get on their pictures, like chill out. Likes won’t define who you are. Anyways, in this time and age, the digital trend of everything has picked up which means photos are now digital and shared and that applies to videos, news, etc. I’m gonna finish here before I go on. Oh and Pssssst, follow me on Instagram - https://instagram.com/that_skinny_bastard/ :)

REFERENCES

Distractify, (2015), Brazillian protester [ONLINE]. Available at: http://qltyctrl.com/60-photos-of-human-experience/ [Accessed 20 May 15].

OLIUR, (2013), Quirky GIF [ONLINE]. Available at: http://a4.files.theultralinx.com/image/upload/MTI5MDI2NDc0MDQzODg1NTc4.gif [Accessed 20 May 15].

Rhygos Gaming, (2014), Mr Bean [ONLINE]. Available at: https://imgflip.com/i/bfeqp [Accessed 20 May 15]

Instagram, (2015), Mr Bean [ONLINE]. Available at: http://instagram-signup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/instagram.png [Accessed 20 May 15].

Snapchat, (2015), Akash Sabharwal

Michelle Riall, (2015), Little promo gif [ONLINE]. Available at: http://38.media.tumblr.com/e97ee576538542e9f0126dffe92381c5/tumblr_n43mvt4d8L1r4ea7so1_1280.gif [Accessed 20 May 15].

[communityornah]

The art of crowd sourcing in times of a crisis

Like everything in the world, crowd sourcing/crowd source has become very popular with the increase usage of the world wide web. Now what is crowd sourcing? Well it’s to utilize (labor, information, etc.) contributed by the general public for a cause or project, often via the Internet and without compensation (dictionary.com, N.D).

There are many websites that use crowd sourcing, The top 3 according Forbes.com are:

Kickstarter

Indiegogo

Crowdfunder

But crowd sourcing in times of a crisis is very different that crowd sourcing for funding. In times of crisis, crowd sourcing not only becomes fundraising but also the need of volunteers. And because of the internet, the message of asking the general public can be sent everywhere in the world. Using hashtags can help the company in need of crowd sourcing spread the word which the general public can use to identify. The Queensland floods in 2011 can be used as an example to prove this.

In 2011 the public took it to twitter to spread the news using the hashtag #qldfloods. Within 6 days (Jan 10-16) there were more than 35,000 tweets and more than 15,000 users using the hashtag (Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Crawford, K., Shaw, F., 2012). And there were plenty of retweets of the tweets and that’s what caused the information to spread.

I recent example that can be seen is the use of companies asking the general public to sign up and help volunteer in Nepal as Nepal was hit with a earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6. Swinburne University itself was hosting a fundraiser plus a sign up form for anyone who wanted to volunteer in aiding people in Nepal.

Not only twitter, but other social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and even Instagram nowadays have a trending page that is used to inform the public of what is going on around the world. In a way that’s a very indirect and sneaky way of crowd sourcing. Why do I say that? Well because if people see what’s trending, they can decide to help and that’s basically crowd sourcing.

The use of social media just proves how much can be done through the proper use of them, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s downside. With crowd sourcing also comes the issue of management. A lot of the time you have to manage a large scale of workers, it’s difficult for collaboration between crowd members as they compete with each other in nature. Worst of all, there’s no contract in most crowd sourcing cases. Workers can run anytime they want.

As Jeremy Clarkson used to state, “And on that Bombshell, Goodnight”.

REFERENCES

Dictionary.com. N.D. Crowdsource. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/crowdsource. [Accessed 06 May 15]. Forbes. 2013. Top 10 Crowdfunding Sites for Fundraising. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2013/05/08/top-10-crowdfunding-sites-for-fundraising/2/. [Accessed 06 May 15]. Executive Summary: ‘#qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods’, pp 7-10. Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Crawford, K., Shaw, F. (2012) 

IMAGES

Moshe Greenshpan, (2013), Crowdsourcing. http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/crowdsourcing.jpg [Accessed 06 May 15].

[communityornah]

Activism & Protest

With the development of the internet, protesting and activism has evolved with time. People these days can use the internet to get the word out to the world! A big example of such a thing is the Kony campaign that took place in 2012.

This one video reached global audiences and now has over 100 million views on YouTube.

Now what exactly is Digital activism? Well firstly it should be noted that digital activism is known by other terms as well such as internet activism and cyber activism. Digital activism's basic working principle is similar to standard physical activism: to initiate a citizen-based movement toward a specific goal, cause or objective. But digital activism uses social network websites to share and broadcast messages, and to interact with netizens. (C. Janssen, N.D). 

Social media, in fact, the internet and activism create such an amazing bond like they were made destined to be together at one point. Social media allows people to connect to people all over the world as mentioned before and the Kony 2012 campaign is the perfect example to prove it. Hashtags allow people to join together and search for other people who are interested in the same topics. When the Sydney siege happened late last year, the hashtag #illridewithyou went viral to show that Australian citizens showed a beacon of hope and shows that people are becoming progressive – and less inclined to rally towards ignorance. (S. Thresher, 2014). 

The hacker group known as Anonymous are an active protest group that use social media to spread their message. Anonymous took down more than 1,000 Islamic State websites on February 11th, 2015 within three days. (A. Bond, 2015).

There are even online petition websites such as www.change.org and www.ipetitions.com. These websites allow the public to create online petitions for creating change. And the best part about these websites is that you can just send a link and it could be around the world within HOURS and get THOUSANDS of signatures. This also allows more audiences to see these petitions and hopefully have a bigger impact. Petitions are only the start of a dynamic and exciting campaign journey. (B.R Lowrey, 2013)

The online community or user database is increasing day by day, why wouldn’t anyone take advantage of this and create a change?

REFERENCES

Invisible Children. (2012). KONY 2012. [Online Video]. 05 March. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc. [Accessed: 29 April 2015]. Cory Janssen. N.D. What is Cyberactivism?. http://www.techopedia.com/definition/27973/cyberactivism. [Accessed 29 April 15]. Steve Thresher. 2014. The Australian Sydney Siege Hostage Crisis And #illridewithyou. http://www.neonnettle.com/news/1331-the-australian-sydney-siege-hostage-crisis-and-illridewithyou. [Accessed 29 April 15]. Anthony Bond. 2015. The Australian Sydney Siege Hostage Crisis AHacking group Anonymous remove 1,000 Islamic State websites in 3 days and warn 'we'll hunt you down'. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/hacking-group-anonymous-remove-1000-5143903. [Accessed 29 April 15]. Brie Rogers Lowery. 2013. Small online petitions can effect change. http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2013/apr/12/small-online-petition-change. [Accessed 29 April 15].

GIF

rama_siong2, (2013), Anonymous~ http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view4/4635512/anonymous-o.gif [Accessed 29 April 15].

[communityornah]

Trolling and Social Media

In this day and age it’s impossible to say you haven’t been trolled or seen someone get trolled. And to the people who don’t know what a troll is, well it’s kinda difficult to explain. That’s because there is no academic definition of a “troll” or “trolling”. Here’s a definition of a troll on the internet, “A person whose sole purpose in life is to seek out people to argue with on the internet over extremely trivial issues“ (Urban Dictionary, 2009). Here’s another definition of troll, “A deliberately provocative message board user" (Internet Slang, N.D). Trolling has been around for almost two decades and of course with the birth of the internet, it just made it easier (McCosker, 2013). Trolling can be deemed as cyber-bullying as well. These 2 definitions show that the word troll/internet troll doesn’t exactly have a proper definition. To put it simple, Trolls are people on the internet that just want to attack/abuse, annoy, upset, etc. for the sake of it or for their own amusement.

Here’s an example of trolling:

Now to some people trolling is funny, like I don’t mind it when people troll me, I just laugh and go with it, but there are people who take it seriously and react to it and it gets them aggravated.

Here’s another example I found pretty funny, but the person that got trolled didn’t exactly like it:

Now the people that take trolling as a joke are all good, but what about the people that don’t take it that well? They take it to heart. They consider it to be cyber-bullying. Some people take it so hard that they commit suicide. There have been many cases of people harming/killing themselves. A big example is Amanda Todd, another is Jessica Logan. Here are some stats about cyber-bullying by the i-SAFE foundation:

Over half of adolescents and teens have been bullied online, and about the same number have engaged in cyber bullying. 

More than 1 in 3 young people have experienced cyberthreats online.

Over 25 percent of adolescents and teens have been bullied repeatedly through their cell phones or the Internet.  

Well over half of young people do not tell their parents when cyber bullying occurs.

Cyber-bullying can never be stopped 100%. And cyber-bullying can’t exactly be monitored, but there are ways that can help reducing it. People won’t know if the person is being bullied unless they tell someone. So I would advise anyone and everyone to tell a parent or someone really close to you that you are getting bullied so that they can help you.

Like I said in my last post, the internet is a very cruel place.

And to finish on a happy note, here’s a funny troll.

REFERENCES

Urban Dictionary. 2009. Urban Dictionery: Internet Troll. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Internet+Troll. [Accessed 16 April 15]. Internet Slang. N.D. What does TROLL mean?. [ONLINE]  http://www.internetslang.com/TROLL-meaning-definition.asp. [Accessed 16 April 15]. McCosker, A. (2015). Lecture 6: Week 6 – Digital Citizenship 3: Trolling and Social Media Conflict [PowerPoint slides]. https://echo.swinburne.edu.au/ess/echo/presentation/2fb6d894-5afb-4981-a212-2b86c93b4aa3?ec=true Bullying Statistics. 2013. Cyber Bullying Statistics. [ONLINE]  http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html. [Accessed 17 April 15].

IMAGES AND VIDEO

Coach Topher. (2015). GUN GAME TROLLING RAGE ~ #5 ~ ADVANCED WARFARE ~ Coach Topher . [Online Video]. 15 April. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTmcqz51YGU. [Accessed: 17 April 2015]. Caitlin Linskey, (2013), Trolling on Facebook [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.thisisparachute.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/facebook-trolling-example.jpg [Accessed 17 April 15]. funnyjunk, (2014), The Troll Face did it for me [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.gifbay.com/gif/the_troll_face_did_it_for_me-63289/ [Accessed 17 April 15].

[communityornah]

Politics and Civic Cultures

Politics, something I never really got into. I mean I do tend to keep up with what’s going on in the world but never really got into politics so much, but it turns out that politicians are taking it to social media these days. Politicians are using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even Instagram! Like I mean, "Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the world's second-most followed politician on Twitter, having added two million followers in the first 100 days of his government, says an official blog on the micro-blogging website.

At 6.13 million followers for his personal account @narendramodi, he is second to US President  Barack Obama who has a massive following at 46 million.“ (Times of India, 2014). Now why would politicians take it to social media? There are actually quite a number of reasons to why politicians would use social media, but the main reason would definitely be for their campaign. Social media allows politicians to speak directly to voters without spending any money. Now whilst on the topic of saving money, politicians can use services such as YouTube to publish campaign ads for free instead of paying television networks a large sum of money. (Tom Murse, About News) Another reason why politicians would use Social Media, is to communicate with the younger generation. This is because Twitter and Facebook have energized younger voters, which has had a profound impact on elections. (Tom Murse, About News). It can be seen that much changed between the 2001 and 2010 elections. (Young 2010) Freedom of Speech is a very powerful thing, and that allows the public to post positive or negative comments about these politicians. Example? Look at the pictures below.

The Australian Liberal Party wasn’t exactly “happy” with this photo of Abbott being compared to Gollum from LoTR.

What can I say? The internet is a very cruel place.

And on that I’d like to say that using social media can help or destroy a campaign. It just depends how those politicians use these resources.

REFERENCES

Times of India. 2014. Modi's world second-most followed politician on Twitter, Facebook. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social/Modis-world-second-most-followed-politician-on-Twitter-Facebook/articleshow/41735598.cms. [Accessed 08 April 15].

Tom Murse. How Social Media Has Changed Politics. N.D, http://uspolitics.about.com/od/CampaignsElections/tp/How-Social-Media-Has-Changed-Politics.htm. [Accessed 08 April 15].

Young, S. 2010, 'New, political reporting and the internet’ in How Australia decides: election reporting and the media, Cambridge University Press, Australia, pp 203-228. [Accessed 8 April 2015]

Image 1: Abbott Fail, N.D, Tony Abbott is Gollum [ONLINE]. http://abbottfail.com/memes/tony-abbott-is-gollum/ [Accessed 08 April 15].

Image 2: yetiman, (2014), Tony Abbott putting the N back into cuts [ONLINE]. http://www.didioffendyou.com/graphic/3857/tony-abbott-putting-the- [Accessed 08 April 15].

[herjudgement]

Source:  Know Your Meme

[communityornah]

Tumblr. A blog or a social network site?

Is Tumblr a blog or a social network website? That’s the question. What defines a social media website? What defines a blog? Why is Tumblr included in the social media picture where some may argue it’s a blogging website?

Well honestly, Tumblr is both.

Now you must be wondering why it’s both. Well that’s because it’s been said that a social networking website is one that allows a user to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. (Siapera,Eugenia, 2012). And it can be clearly seen that Tumblr does allow a user to do that, but the bonus feature about Tumblr is that the user allowed to post absolutely ANYTHING. That includes personal thoughts, other people’s work (On Tumblr it’s called rebloging), videos, pictures, music, etc.

Tumblr has both the most basic tools such as posting an image, video, link, etc.This is where people start to debate and state that Tumblr is a blogging website because a blog is said to be “a website containing a writer's or group of writers' own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other websites.” (blog. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved April 06, 2015, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/blog), but Tumblr also has advanced features such as changing the HTML code of your page, even setting personal themes that can be copied or made by you and you can even add your own personal music player on your profile with songs selected by you! I myself have another Tumblr account and that is completely different than this one. That Tumblr account is made to look like how I exactly want it to look like with a very simplistic layout of posts with the background of a picture I took.

Tumblr isn’t just your average blogging website because of the affordances it has to offer and that’s the reason it starts to become a social networking website because this allows users to find other users with similar interests, hobbies, traits, etc. Tumblr’s search engine (A huge affordance) allows users to find other blogs that can be anyone’s from anywhere in the world! This allows users to be completely anonymous whereas Facebook and other social networking websites don’t. Now to be completely honest, Tumblr is actually a micro-blogging website and a lot of people don’t know that and still put it with the major social networking websites. But at the end of the day, no one can clearly classify what Tumblr is and that’s what makes it unique. REFERENCES

Siapera, Eugenia (2012). Understanding new media. SAGE, London IMAGE Sharon McKay. 2014. Social Media. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.themediadiva.com/social-media/.