des

Desiree. Digital Communities Student.

[detectivepeach-blog]

China Firewall

Image source: (China Daily Mail, 2013)

Contrary to popular belief, China is not missing out on social media revolution! Yes, they may not have access to sites such as Facebook , Twitter and Wikipedia and are regulated when using Youtube; They are on the forefront of the social media revolution in terms of online communication. China have their own apps which are not government related and allow them to talk freely amongst themselves and use code words when talking about politics.  Apps such as WeChat, Weibo, QQ, Mobile Baidu, TaoBao and Tencent Video are all used as social media alternatives to the western Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. 

Sina Weibo, a platform created by Sina.com in 2009. Over the years it has developed more than 500 million registers accounts and 50 million active accounts ( AFP,2014) and has seen to be a platform used to challenge state authority in china, critics argue that the technology has so far failed to deliver structural reform and ongoing engagement (Wilfred,2015). This platform similar to Twitter, with the ability to use hash tags to connect through a key word making it easier for users to find relevant tweets associated with that hashtag. There is also the option to attach images, videos and URLs. Unlike Twitter, 140 Character limit, Chinese Characters can convey nuances and a great deal of information (Sullivan,2013). This could be a reason to why Weibo has become a catalyst for public discussion and information sharing over the years. As China is a communist country, the government still has the ability to use Weibo to effectively develop more advanced protocols of online control. As a result, ‘ the Chinese people are individually free, but collectively in chains’ on the internet (King et al.,2013:399)

Although online communication is monitored, this does not stop the people of China from actively using the internet. It is found by (Chiu et al., 2012), 57,00 internet users in China has found that those living in tier 1, tier 2 and 3 cities are registered on media sites. It is also found that Social media has a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in china that for those anywhere else in the world (Chiu et al., 2012). This is due to the cultural difference as the Chinese consumer values peer recommendations rather than institutional information as they lack trust informal institutions (Chiu et al., 2012).

Therefore, there is no lack of social media engagement in China, rather an emerging and ever growing sphere in the digital community. There although it is highly restricted and monitored by the government, they can still access western social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter through VPN. Although it is time consuming and dangerous, it is predominately used by tourists and westerns that want to connect with their family and friends overseas.

Here is a brief overview of the Fire Wall of China- which describes the censorship well. However a more detailed version can be found  further below of the TED TALK surrounding the issue:

References:

AFP 2014, ‘Sina Weibo, “China’s Twitter”’, files for IPO, Hindustan Times, 15 March, www.hindustantimes.com/technology/socialmedia-updates/sina-weibo-china-s-twitter-files-for- ipo-in-us/article1-1195375.aspx.

China Daily Mail, 2013. Cracks appear in the Great FireWall of China. [Online] Available at: https://chinadailymail.com/2013/09/25/cracks-appear-in-the-great-firewall-of-china/ [Accessed 15 May 2017].

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

King, G, Pan, J and Roberts, M.E 2013. ‘How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression’, American Political Science Review vol. 107, no.2, pp. 1-18.

Sullivan, J. 2012, ‘A Tale of Two Microblogs in China’, Media, Culture & Society, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 773–89.

[detectivepeach-blog]

GAMING COMMUNITIES!

There are tens of thousands of people who play online and offline games daily. Over the years there has been a massive demand for online multiplayer games, allowing players to connect with others on the other side of the globe from the comfort of their own home. 

These online games have rules created by developers in the establishment of an online digital game space intersect and overlap with rules created socially by players, with cultural norms emerging from within the game space and from the contexts of play (Zwart & Humphreys 2014). The rules established by the developers have been set out for the game to be friendly however these rules are broken by players and they establish their own norms. Which in turn, creates conflict within the game and amongst players. This can be seen in Massively multiplayer online games (MMOG), it supports are large amount of players, typically hundreds of users at one given time. One game widely known is the PC game World of War Craft. 

They are often described as contractual environments, with the rules and limits of conduct determined by the user license agreement (Zwart & Humphreys 2014), one sided between the game and the player. However, these rules are often broke due to the large community, forming their own rules and norms within the game. Often leading to player-to –player disputes, which cannot be resolved by platform providers as they have neither the resources nor the inclination to become involved in such disputes (Zwart & Humphreys 2014). Moreover, Suzor (2010) has argued that for governance in online social spaces to be legitimate, the consent of participants must be real and the arbitrary power of providers must be limited to protect the fundamental procedural and substantive interests of participants. This can be difficult to manage, as the appeal with online gaming allows for anonymity with the use of a Pseudonym in these virtual realities, so the ability to create new accounts with new names can allow for people to violate rules govern by the developers. However, these players consent to the rules and conditions are the very start of the game so implications and consequences that follow are a part of the game. 

The need to update and change rules and regulations is more evident than ever, as the digital space is ever-changing, to combat player-to-player disputes and the violation of the license agreement initially made by players.

More insight in the gaming community and the toxicity of it can be found here:

REFERENCES:

Suzor, Nicolas P. (2010) The role of the rule of law in virtual communities. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 25(4), pp.1-40

Melissa de Zwart & Sal Humphreys (2014) The Lawless Frontier of Deep Space: Code as Law in EVE Online' Cultural Studies Review

[detectivepeach-blog]

Public Health Campaigns: ALS

Public health campaigns can be fuelled by social media. Media campaigns aim to promote new health interventions and encourage people to endorse positive and protective health behaviour, through education. Health campaigns include; health education, eradication of infectious diseases and the modification of their behaviour to help combat issues such as mental illness. Organisations, usually no profit; aim to raise awareness and receive donations in order to put the money towards further research and development of the illness or disease. The more money raised will allow a larger budget to use for research to hopefully find a cure or medicine/ medical treatment to treat the issue. In terms of the role it plays in social media, it allows people to google medical symptoms and access information about things that may worry them; such as lump in breasts (could possibly be breast cancer). It is also able to broaden the scope, making the public more aware and engage with issues that they may have never heard about. This can be found through user generated content via social media, it is a low cost alternative to reach a wide audience however it allows for superficiality and popularity because of trends. The ALS Ice bucket challenge was a health campaign, created by Pete Frates. Pete has heavily driven by social media, even though the cause had the intention to spread awareness about a motor neuron disease, many may have just done the ice bucket challenge for a laugh, rather than researching and associating it with the ice bucket challenge. It is found that people participated in the viral challenge but have not donated to the cause or have little knowledge of what ALS is and how it affects those who live with it. Alternatively it has also been labelled as ‘extremely successful ’and one of the best social media campaigns to this day. It was able to get the attention of various celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Cher. It’s success stemmed from the clear and concise message, the ease of accessibility to take on the challenge and presented with ‘ humour and levity.’ (Janish,2014)

Reference: Janisch K, 2014, The Ice Bucket Challenge and social media virality, The Conversation, 22 August 2014, viewed 19 April 2017, http://theconversation.com/the-ice-bucket-challenge-and-social-media-virality-30821

[detectivepeach-blog]

Crowd Sourcing

In times of crisis such as natural disaster, information flows are increasing for people to communicate in emergencies. It was found that the Queensland floods had ‘highlighted the important and rapidly emerging role of social media in emergency communications.’(Posetti, J & Lo,P., 2012) In 2014 Facebook introduced safety check; alert notifications to help people communicate in the midst of the natural disaster occurring, using location based information it allows Facebook users to see who might be in the affected area. Zuckerberg announced that it ‘is our way of helping our community during natural disasters and gives you an easy and simple way to say you’re safe and check on all your friends and family in one place.’  (Zuckerberg, 2014). Twitter is also another form of communication people can use, as hashtags allow people to use identifiable key words and facilitate a search for it; being searchable by others. As twitter shows ‘what’s trending’ it engages the public to understand what is currently talked about on twitter at that moment. The downfall for social media is limited by internet and location, and people might not have access to it but instead have network coverage; An SMS alert beneficial, in terms of helping people avoid the natural disaster. An example would be forewarning people in a bush fire zone to evacuate encase of a bush fire, this will help prevent lives being lost. However, the due to various reason it may not be able to reach everyone.

Crowd sourcing through social media with the use of hashtags and keywords allows people to have leverage and discuss about disasters and political events that occur. ‘People can organise more quickly, find others who share their views and work together in disparate locations to produce powerful sources of information.’ (Ford,2012) With variant opinions and ideas, allows for citizen reporting. As journalists may not be there in the time of the event, the public can help inform and understand the disaster or event occurring.

References:

Ford, H. (2012) ‘Crowd Wisdom’, Index on Censorship, pp 33-39

Posetti, J. & Lo, P. (2012) 'The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication'

Zuckerberg, M., 2014. Mark Zuckerberg. [Online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101699265809491 [Accessed 25 April 2017].

[detectivepeach-blog]

TROLOLOL

Online environments can cause people to act differently because the screen shields allows them to conceal their identity. Trolling are acts of provocation that characterise comment sections, forums and blogs. This can be seen in the comment section of YouTube. Thelwarll and  Pardeep ‘found a high prevalence of negative comments in videos with a high total number of comments, and that controversial or perhaps ‘provocative’, topics such as politics and religion were most likely to trigger and sustained comments and discussion’(Thelwarll and Pardeep, 2011: 14). Being a globally accessible and open social media site, allows anyone to make up a pseudonym to hide their identity giving them to freely troll and say things hiding behind the keyboard. It is found that’ more recently hating and trolling, spans two decades worth of dramatic change to, and expansion of ,network computer mediated communication. (trolling as provation, journal article).

Trolling may seem childish and only to lightly make fun of a person or situation, however there can be drastic implications because of trolling. Bullying can be a result of trolling and can be the reason why so many young people are anxious using social media or are affected by the cyber bullying that may cause them to sadly end their life. They are able to easily target their victim through cyber bullying by posting embarrassing pictures or threating them through social media sites or texting them. This causes the victim to feel very isolated, anxious to go to school, resulting in depression.  

This is one of the negative effects of social media as it is able to amplify bullying. Boyd recounts that a girl, she spoke to said that a girl from her high school ’ would threaten to put embarrassing information on Facebook to humiliate [her] in front of her friends’. Peers can use information against you in a public way, violating their privacy. It is found that ‘Over 25 percent of adolescents and teens have been bullied repeatedly through their cell phones or the Internet.’ (BullyingStatistics, 2016). In order to try and combat this issue, parents and teens need to be educated about cyber bullying and the ramifications caused by it. Parents need to be informed about some signs their child might be showing if they are bullied and how to deal with it. As well as teens need to be more cautious when sharing personal information with people and learn to take time to get off their phones and the internet.

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.

BullyingStatistics, 2016. Cyber Bullying Statistics. [Online] Available at: http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html [Accessed 25 April 2017].

Thelwall M and Sud P (2011) Commenting on YouTube videos: from Guatemalan rock to el big bang. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology November, Available at: http:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.21679/pdf (accessed 24 April 2017).

[detectivepeach-blog]

Slacktivist or Activist?

Just because you share a post about the current Syrian gas attack, joining an online petition (I am guilty of this) or have applied a flag filter to your profile picture to ‘support’ those affected by the terror attack in France last year, are you really doing your part as an activist? Not really, although it promotes awareness but it doesn’t really make you an activist, it makes you a ‘slacktivist’; oxford dictionary defines it as ‘Actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement, for example signing an online petition or joining a campaign group on social media.’ (Oxforddictionaries 2017)

The beauty of this, is that people are able spread awareness about issues through the use of social media,this can lead to an online global movement using hashtags to bring light to issue such as #InternationalWomensday , #Blacklivesmatter and #PrayforParis. 

But with this new found awareness comes action. Are you going to do something about this issue?  As signal states ‘The stories of digital activism and protest overlap, forming a body of material that gives us a rich picture of the relationship between digital technologies and their use in creating or supporting protest movements.’ (Signal& Biddle 2015).This was evident in the global movement for the #WomensMarch on Janurary 21, 2017. Protesting against gender and inequality on Trump’s inauguration date ‘marches held in more than 600 US cities were attended by at least 4.2 million people’. (Frostenson 2017) and even across the waters in Melbourne, Australia over ‘6000 people marched through the CBD ‘ (Woods 2017) in protest against Trump.

Although media platforms allow us to inform and be informed about global issues in the world, it only does so much. However, awareness is a stepping stone to something bigger, taking action; utilising these platforms to become actively involved in rallies and protests, activist groups, NGOs and charity work can help build a community of humanitarians fighting for those who are affected by great injustices.

Reference:

Frostenson , S 2017,’ The Women’s Marches may have been the largest demonstration in US History’, Vox, January 31, viewed April 8 2017, <http://www.vox.com/2017/1/22/14350808/womens-marches-largest-demonstration-us-history-map>

Oxforddictionaries,2017, Slacktivism, Oxforddictionaries, viewed April 8 2017, <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/slacktivism>

Signal, I & Biddle,E 2015, ‘Our Enduring Confusion About the Power of Digital Tools in Protest’, The Fibreculture Journal,no.26,pp. 287-993

Woods, E 2017,’About 6000 join Melbourne Women’s March movement protest Trump inauguration’ ,The Age, January 21, viewed April 8 2017, <http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/about-6000-join-melbourne-womens-march-as-global-movement-protests-trump-inauguration-20170121-gtw3qz.html>

[dilemmadraws]

THE FIGHT IS NOT OVER! 

[officialromaniantranslatiuni]

Ro-mânia: 175.000 protesters

And those who voted for PSD are watching the news in their warm beds, while eating the bag of rice they received for their votes.

[detectivepeach-blog]

How does social media influence political engagement?

Despite various social media platforms available, it seems politicians and political parities connect most with the public via Twitter and Facebook. As it is seen to be more ‘personal’ platform, allowing the public to’ tell the politicians exactly what they thought of them’. (Jericho, 2012) through commenting on posts, using hashtags of relevant topics.

 Australian politician Kevin Rudd, benefited from using social media. His 2007 campaign ‘ Kevin 07’ gained labour party victory. Since then Australian politicians have increased their social media presence, it allows politicians use Twitter and Facebook “primarily for one-way transmission of political messages, rather than citizen engagement or listening to the electorate”(Macnamara & Kenning 2011, p. 16)

 Facebook allows users to reply to people you don’t know allowing for an online political debate/ discussion and the liking of comments means you agree with what that user has said. This can allow your friends to see it on their news feed, which can help promote awareness to political campaigns or topics, issues you care about, sharing articles about current relevant topics and ideas you want to share. Whereas twitter allows you to do the same think but connect via hashtags, key words or events.

 With ideas shared on social media platforms-many, especially the younger generation would heavily rely on social media as their platform for news or current events. So, this can to an extent, affect a voter’s decisions on election day because not many make an informed decision with voting- only choosing one particular party/ political.

 Trying to engage with the younger generation and get them interested in politics is difficult.

That’s why I think the curation of political memes, making fun of or highlighting a serious issue in a humorous way, allows for discussion or remakes by youths. As of recently Clive Palmer a former Australian Liberal MP has turned himself into a ‘meme’ and is well liked among youths. Postings of whimsical nonsense, confusing people but grabbing the attention of many and playing along with it. Palmer confessed” I always wanted to be a meme ever since I saw the doge meme sticker one time” (Zerbst,2017).

   Reference:

 Jericho, G. 2012 ‘How many votes are there on Twitter?’ in The rise of the Fifth Estate: social media and blogging in Australian politics, Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, Australia, EBL eBook Library, viewed 20 January 2013, pp 254 – 278

 Macnamara & Kenning 2011,’  An analysis the use of social median online communication in the 2013 Australian federal election and comparison with the 2007 and 2013 election’, E-electioneering 2013, Australian centre for public communication, University of Sydney, pp. 1-29

 Zerbst, V 2017,’ Clive Palmer’s inspiring transformation: “I will become a human meme”’, The Chaser, 16 Feburary, viewed 31 March 2017,<http://www.chaser.com.au/general-news/clive-palmers-inspiring-transformation-i-will-become-a-human-meme/>

[kvasrespecter]

they say i’m the dreamer but i just want to see the dinosaurs again

[detectivepeach-blog]

Political icon

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Is Tumblr a blog or a social media site?

Tumblr is weird site. It always has been, filled with gifs, memes and rants. Everyone gets confused as to whether is it a blog or social media platform, but it’s both. Tumblr is known formally as a microblogging site and a social media platform. It is classified as a social media platform because the social media allows’ individuals and communities that create, share, and consume’ (Kietzmann etal. 2011,p.246) content to communicate with one another. It allows individuals and groups of people also known as ‘fandoms’ to like, reblog and add comments to text posts, pictures and gifs. A fandom allows individuals to discuss their immense love for a certain, Youtuber, Tv show, book, celebrity or artist. Fandoms are curated by people who have an interest for anything and label themselves as a ‘fandom’.

 Tumblr differs from the ‘traditional’ social media sites such as twitter and Facebook, because users have more control over their blog and the content they produce.Users are able to customize everything, from colours to the html. It becomes a very personalised platform, which appeals to the age their demographic under 35′s. 

 I personally have a Tumblr, I was very active in 2012-2013 during high school, now I can’t even remember the password to access it.

 However back in 2012-2013, Tumblr was foreign to many people not many people had it. It was known back then that Tumblr was meant to be kept a ‘secret’, not to be mentioned on the other social media platforms. The only reason it was a ‘secret’ was because users kept it as private journal which detailed intimate stories, rants or opinions which they did not want that their friends or peers to know about but to see if anyone out there would resonate or sympathise with their struggles.  Coinciding with Blatter’s theory ( found in Wilken and McCosker 2014) that individuals are in the ‘pursuit of visibility’ (Blatter 2010, p.79 ) ‘associating the pursuit of self disclosure and the willingness to share an aspect of ourselves with others and aspects of our intimate everyday lives.’ (Wilken and McCosker 2014, p.292)

     Tumblr has evolved over time and is still transitioning from a microblogging site to an   emerging social media platform. Tumblr has influenced the development of social media interaction, ‘especially its use of reaction GIFs: shot clips of movies and television shows  that communicate emotions (“feels”), reactions, and everyday events.’ (Bourlai,E & Herring ,S.C. 2014, p.171) . This has be recently integrated in Twitter in reaction to a tweet and in Facebook’s messenger app, allowing users to send gif reactions to reply to a message sent.

 Reference:

Bourlai,E & Herring ,S.C.( 2014) ‘ Multimodal communication on tumblr: “I have so many feels!”’, Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on Web science,vol.1, p.171-175.

 Kietzmann, J.H, Hermkens, K, McCarthy, I.P, Silvestre, B.S (2011) ‘Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media’, Business Horizons, vol.54,no 3, p. 241-251.

 Wilken, R, & McCosker, A. (2014) ‘Social Selves’, in Cunningham & Turnbull (eds) The Media & Communications in Australia. 291-295