Digital Communities Blog

By Tina Tsironis

[cameronmda20009-blog]

Week 10: Social gaming: playing the crowd

I play online games, mostly ddo (Dungeons & Dragons Online) although my connection speed makes it a painful experience on occasion.

I have also introduced the kids to a collaborative online came called Arcane Legends to try and get them used to the concept of working together instead of alone, so far so good, although they still prefer Minecraft (which is fine, it is a good platform for demonstrating expression through construction). They also think it is funny to say that their dad kicks ass on Lego Play Station games that I play with them.

One of the things that they are developing through their guided journey in a MMORPG with my assistance, is when to spot trolling and time wasters, and who to respond to and who to ignore. If anyone contacts the littlest one (who is 7) she gives me the ipad to read the comment and I decide if it needs blocking etc, and I explain what and why I have decided to either allow communication or block it. I hope that this is helping them to develop their own sense of how to navigate an online environment.

Humphries and de Zwart cite an argument of Pargman and Jakobsson (2014 p. 5) where gamers move between frames while communicating, from an individual player, to an embodied person (that has physical needs) to being ‘in character’ as a role playing toon or avatar. This is the case, however, the individuals doing so are not born knowing how to socialise through these scenarios, they are socialised into an online gaming paradigm, through learning and experience, different and separate from face to face physical reality.

This is an argument that I have made pretty much the entire unit duration (sorry if I am boring my public!), that socialisation, dealing with trolls and bullies online, crowdsourcing information and participation in providing data are learned social activities that require guidance and experience to navigate, not government regulation or protection. 

A reinforcing point that seems to be lacking in discourse surrounding other online behaviour is the identification of the fact that individuals bring their own ethnocentric ideals and behaviour to the games and online interaction as well as “their cultural background, their education levels, their gender, their age and their own individual moral compass.” (de Zwart & Humphries 2014, p. 17).

Here is an interesting twist on RPG that has, I believe, just been released.

Online games provide a brilliant resource for other online fields to study established communities that have already experienced the problems that mainstream networked communities are only just starting to experience. Funnily though, up until recently gamers were ignored or thought of as aberrant due to their commitment to the gaming worlds.

References de Zwart, M & Humphreys, S 2014,’ The Lawless Frontier of Deep Space: Code as Law in EVE Online’, Cultural Studies Review, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 77-99.

Suzor, N & Woodford, D 2013, ‘Evaluating consent and legitimacy amongst shifting community norms: An EVE Online case study’, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 1-14.

[shivaniielizabeth-blog]

Hi Cameron - again great post! My parter is a huuuuuuge online gamer, he loves playing MMORPG and MOBA games. I just read your post to him, and he told me that he has stopped playing them so much because he really hates the negative aspects of the online gaming community and in particular, the anonymity of the internet and the way that it allows people to act the way they wouldn’t normally - he says they are called ‘greifers.’ [side note, as I typed, he asked me to reference him so: (Quinn, 2016)]

I really like that you are bringing up your children in a way that shows your children both the positive and negative sides of the internet, especially in online communities. This is something I had to discover myself, and the hard way. I also agree with you, nothing beats experience as a learning tool, but guidance is always going to benefit, especially in the case of children.

Really great perspectives, and I can definitely relate. 

[cameronmda20009-blog]

Haha, thanks for the comments, two thumbs up to your partner for demanding to be referenced! Yeah the “greifers” (Quinn 2016 cited in shivaniielizabeth 2016) are everywhere (there you go now I quoted your partner lol), when their rubbish gets too much I exercise my inalienable right to turn that computer off and go and do something else. Generally though, to me the comments from others online are not a lot different to computer generated content, they simply do not matter :) The power of trolls, griefers and bullies to influence and disturb is granted by the affected user, if you deny effect then they become the ultimate embodiment of impotence, flailing angrily away at their keyboard to no acknowledgement.

Cheers

[dig-comms-life-blog]

This is the third time I have reblogged your post! I keep accidentally reblogging it on my personal account! 😩

Excellent post, Cameron. 😊 I’m inclined to agree with your socialised perspective on trolling, gaming, etc, and that navigating these platforms and situations require experience and guidance, as opposed to the big bad government merely coming to save the day.

Your example of how you deal with strangers speaking to your kids is a great one - through your own guidance and behaviour, you’re teaching the young ones to be able to handle themselves in what I imagine will be an increasingly digital world, by the time they transition into teens and adults! Tina

[theresesollazzo-blog]

Week 10: Social gaming: playing the crowd

This week I am bit of a fish out of water - When it comes to gaming I really haven’t a clue since the days of Nintendo 64! Therefore trying to understand this week’s readings on Eve Online was a bit challenging with no context, so like with anything foreign these days I ‘goggled’ it and a whole lot of spaceships came up! I’m sorry if you’re a gamer reading this. You probably just cringed… But if Penny can do it and beat Sheldon too, then there is still hope for me!

Particular characteristics of online games in facilitating digital communities and online publics can be defined by their type of massively multiple online role-playing games (MMORPGs), which are online games that are capable of supporting large numbers of players simultaneously in the same instance, or world (Technopedia 2014). 

So MMORPGs are ‘video games’ that allow hundreds or thousands of simultaneous players, on a PSP, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DSi - providing they are connected to the Internet! Right?

In exploring some of the processes of forming rules and norms (and breaking them) - or ‘codes of practice’ within online gaming communities,  de Zwart and Humphreys’ article discusses that a typical MMOG such as EVE will involve layers of overlapping and potentially conflicting rule sets. The law, norms, architecture and the market are all factors that can affect the regulation, as present in the governance of MMO game EVE. In breaking the rules, this reading mentions that players learn to play with and against the code, and it is this tension between control and creativity that keeps the game space interesting (de Zwart and Humphreys 2014, p.79)

The growing popularity for MMOs I think is an implication of these cases for how we can understand digital communities more broadly.  From what I have understood, your traditional single player games as a result are being developed into multi-player online games, with their own digital communities, that can include anything from ranking charts to their own official gaming events. Digital communities have reinvented the gaming world by connecting players from all over the world and as a result the gaming industry has exploded. Massively Multiplayer Online Games have now grown into 15 distinct categories:

MMORPG: MMO Role Playing Games – Harry Potter

MMOBA: MMO Battle Arena – League of Legends

MMORTS: MMO Real Time Strategy Games – Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, War of Legends

MMOFPS: MMO First Person Shooter Games – Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament, Halo, Planetside

MMOSG(sports): MMO Sports Games – FIFA, Pro-Evolution Soccer

MMOR: MMO Racing Games – Need for Speed, Drift City, Project Torque

MMORG/MMODG: MMO Rythm/Music Games or MMO Dancing Games – Dance Dance Revolution, Audition Online

MMOMG: MMO Management Games – The Sims Online, Monopoly City Streets, Virtonomics

MMOSG(social): MMO Social Games – Second Life, Club Caribe, Everquest, Dotsoul, Furcadia

MMOBBG/MMOBBRPG: MMO Bulletin Board Games or MMO Bulletin Board Role Playing Games – Quest For Magic, BladeMaster

MMOPG: MMO Puzzle Games – Three Rings, Puzzle Pirates

MMOCCG: MMO Collectible Card Games – Magic:The Gathering Online, Alteil, Astral Masters, Astral Tournament

MMO alternate reality games – Second Life

MMO Turn based Strategy Games – Ultracorps, Darkwind:War on Wheels

MMO Simulation Games: Equilibrium/Arbitrage, The Sims Online, Jumpgate

Apparently what makes MMOGs so addictive is the sense of meaningfully interacting with thousands of people halfway across the globe. Games like the World War II create an actual war-like simulation, while those like FIFA or Pro-Evolution Soccer reproduce an entire Soccer stadium virtually. And for a non-gamer like me, I think that’s pretty cool! (Germino 2013)

On that note I would like to conclude my last blog entry on a positive note. I have really enjoyed keeping this blog. It’s been a great way to share my learnings and interact with other students and I hope reading has been just as enjoyable for you.

Therese 

Germino J,  2013, 16 Different Types of Massively Multiplayer (MMO) Online Games,  Dragon Blogger, accessed 29/1/16 

What is Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG)? - Definition from Techopedia, accessed 29/1/16

De Zwart, Melissa and Humphreys, Sal. The lawless frontier of deep space: Code as law in EVE online [online]. Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, Mar 2014: 77-99. Availability: <http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=225934593111540;res=IELAPA> ISSN: 1446-8123. [cited 29 Jan 16].

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Hey Therese!

I must say I'm in the same boat as you - I was equally as lost, going through the Week 10 reading. Lots of re-reading and Googling was done!

Isn't it great to witness/read about the enormous transition the gaming industry has made? From creating relatively solitary one-player games, to becoming a virtual community in itself, full of games hosting hundreds of thousands of players from all around the globe! It's like a mini-real life community. What's next? It'd be cool to see a virtual sort of futuristic reality, where fellow gamers are able to play the game as if it's happening in real life, almost able to touch their competitors and team mates even though they're on the other side of the globe. Maybe I'm just using my imagination a little too much! :P

It's been great reading your posts. 😊

Tina

[prprincess-blog]

When you take a sickie and your mate tags you playing beer pong...

Learning materials week 9.

Yep, true story. I can’t even begin to explain the level of cringe that took place between the moment of seeing the tag, telling my friend to delete it and cracking the next beer. Well, maybe not too much – thankfully my boss is listed as an “acquaintance” on Facebook, making them completely blind to my posts [and those I’m tagged in].

However, I’ve also been in awkward social situations. The kind where you’re hanging out with someone right after you’ve told someone else you’re busy, and this person is disliked by the other. #awkies

It’s becoming quite the debate; to tag or not to tag. Would Shakespeare be proud?

Videos, selfies, images – they’re all increasingly used throughout social media platforms to build connections with users across different cultures (Lange 2009). Short videos [aka vines] are strewn throughout my Facebook feed and I am both tagged and tagging others in the comments of vines at least four times a day. In tagging a particular person in a vine, I am looking at it in two ways:

Does this video remind me of this person; and/or

Will this person find this video as funny as I do.

There’s not much method to my madness.

However, lately my mam decided to join Facebook land – resulting in self-monitoring my comments and tags. It would seem I’m not the only one to experience this, with most young people expressing ‘degrees of anxiety, concern and fascination with the visual landscapes encountered through Facebook’ (Hand 2012, p. 175).

I know I say this every week; but technology, the internet and the way we use it is all forever changing. Social media protocol in general is a liquid thing (Demetriades 2015), so as much as we want there to be some kind of socially-acceptable protocol to tagging, there isn’t and there never can be. Fortunately, for my generation, we are ‘the first to grow up and proceed into adulthood having mastered how and when and why’ to use social media platforms (Demetriades 2015).

REFERENCES

Demetriades, D 2015, “Facebook Photos: To Tag Or Not To Tag”, The Odyssey, viewed 4 January 2016, <http://theodysseyonline.com/muhlenberg-college/to-tag-or-not-to-tag/219048>.

Hand, M 2012, Ubiquitous Photography, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Lange, P 2009, “Videos of Affinity on YouTube”, in P, Snickars & P, Vonderau (eds), The YouTube Reader, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, p. 70-88.

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Loved your post! It's interesting how we need to mediate our behaviour on different social media platforms, depending on who we have as an 'audience'. I'm so thankful that my mum or dad have yet to join Facebook.

A loooot of my statuses, tagged photos, and comments would have to stop, or be hidden!

I love that you mention that we're the first to grow up and enter adulthood being so social media savvy. As we move into an increasingly digitalised age, it wouldn't be a surprise if this social media knowledge serves us well 😊

Tina

[riceage-blog]

Blog Post #7; Week 9

Social Media has seen communication around the world reach unprecedented levels. It seems new platforms are consistently being developed and allowing us to share where we have been, what we are doing, and how we feel along the way. This creates what I found to be the very interesting topic of affinity via Social Media and how the millennial generation are finding new ways to feel connected to one another. 

Affinity can be described as the feeling of connection between people (Lange 2009, p. 73). Traditional forms of Social Media (Facebook, Twitter etc) are clear examples of how affinity can occur in the digital format, however this becomes more intricate when platforms evolve and the means of communication change. Enter Snapchat. The hugely popular photo & video sharing application is one I have always found odd, and my friends’ obsessions with it even stranger. However when viewed with a sociological mindset, the ingenuity of it becomes intriguing. 

Nathan Jurgenson (Farman, 2014) explains “People are taking so many photos today, not because they have a camera with them all the time…the difference is now you have an audience.” This shows a distinct shift in the objective of amateur photography. Rather than the traditional format of taking photos during your vacation, coming home, putting an album together and then inviting your friends & family around to view them. Content is instantly shared and therefore communicates the experience and feelings at the exact time, increasing affinity. This traditional method of amateur photography promoted a thinking that every picture you take in the present, is in preparation of it being your futures past (Farman, 2014). Meaning it could only be enjoyed later in the future, by which time it was truly over. Snapchat has revolutionized this by introducing ephemerality to the formula. 

Traditional Social Media provides you with a focal point of conversation. A photo may be posted, and then communication will ensue around that in the form of likes or comments. However by taking away the ability to comment or like, and making the content temporary (just like a real life moment), the content now becomes the communication itself (Harman, 2014).

When examined with a sociological view it becomes clear why Snapchat is the poster-child for a new generation of messaging apps (Herman, 2014). Broken down to its fundamentals, it changes the way we share experiences together and increases affinity between people. Rather than seeing a photo with bad lighting or a video with terrible sound a week after the event happened, the ephemeral Snapchat communicates the experience by plugging the recipient into the emotion and excitement of that exact moment. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go update ‘My Story’.

References

Farman, J 2014, Photography, Self-Documentation & Social Media: An Interview with Nathan Jurgenson, 16 June, viewed 20 January 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnPtZ5IKDHo>

Herman, J 2014, Meet the Man Who Got Inside Snapchat’s Head, BuzzFeed 28 January, viewed 20 January 2016, <http://www.buzzfeed.com/wherrman/meet-the-unlikely-academic-behind-snapchats-new-pitch#3dlvjg2>

Lange, P 2009, Videos of Affinity on YouTube, in P, Snickars & P, Vonderau (eds), The YouTube Reader, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, pp70-88

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Hey Matt!

The ephemeral nature of Snapchat, as you said, arguably makes it the 'poster child for a new generation of messaging apps'. With direct communication through the video or image itself, which obviously increases immediacy and consequently closeness with your Snapchat friends.

We are seeing something happen immediately as it happens; whether that something is good, bad or ugly. I wonder what's next in terms of messaging apps?

Tina

[chantelleraleigh-deactivated201]

Week 8: Crowdsourcing in times of crisis

Prior to studying Digital Communities I really wasn’t aware of Crowd sourcing platforms. I was aware that social media platforms such as Facebook, twitter and Instagram have the capabilities that you can reveal your locations. For example I might be out for dinner and upload an image of my plate, at my favorite restaurant (BORING I KNOW) you can then tag the restaurant location. I personally don’t enjoy revealing my location, as I am slightly paranoid for my safety. I think it’s very dangerous to continuously put your location out on the World Wide Web, by revealing your location you could potentially be jeopardizing your safety. On a positive note, if everyone knows where I had dinner and then the building burns down or the restaurant becomes a location for hostages and my phone battery dies, I would hope everyone knows where I am or last was!!

I am also aware of the smart phone application “Find my friends”. It’s a super simple way to find your friends or family and it tells you their exact address location. I utilised this application many years ago when I lost my license (I know naughty, naughty). I have a TERRIBLE sense of direction and can never describe where I am. So I had my friends and family download the app, they could see exactly where I was on foot and would often find me when they were trying to track me down for a lift. Wonderful! Contrary, I have heard of some stalker, untrusting people in relationships installing the application onto their better halves phone and keep and eye on where they are! Weirdoes!!

Ushadidi gives ANYONE the opportunity to post reports and their locations. (Ioc.sagepub.com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au, 2016). Like everything this has some pros and cons too. Ushadidi platform unfortunately does not cross collaborate information with other human search engines; therefore someone being lost or found in a disaster may be reported twice or not at all. The general population posting these reports may not be best equipped or mentally stable to create and post these alleged disasters.

 References:

 Friends, F. and Limited, A. (2016). Find My Friends on the App Store. [online] App Store. Available at: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/find-my-friends/id466122094?mt=8 [Accessed 4 Feb. 2016].

Ioc.sagepub.com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au, (2016). Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. [online] Available at: http://ioc.sagepub.com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/content/41/4/33.full [Accessed 4 Feb. 2016].

iPhoneLife.com, (2015). Tip of the Day: How to Remove Your Location From Instagram Photos. [online] Available at: http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/30704/how-remove-your-location-instagram-photos [Accessed 4 Feb. 2016].

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Hey Chantelle!

Great post. 😊 I completely agree with your assessment that the relatively newfound ability to share our location through social media, and services like Find My Friends, has both its benefits and downfalls.

Find My Friends will give people piece of mind, and sharing one's location at a restaurant, along with a picture of a meal, is another interactive way to socialise with friends and provide the restaurant with some promotion. And sharing a photo of your plate isn't boring, by the way! If the meal was visually appealing and tasted great, why not let your friends or family know? 😛

The ease with which we potentially compromise our privacy through location sharing can sometimes lead to a detrimental outcome, however. My friends and I often used to tag ourselves at the pub near Swinburne that we are regulars at. I eventually had to stop sharing my location there, because a person I knew who's behaviour was erring towards stalking would turn up there after he would see that I was present at the pub.

Scary stuff, but really demonstrates the way the social media has changed our social lives, and even forced us into awkward and unwanted social interactions. 😕

Tina

[ljt245]

Week 7 -  Bullying and harassment online.

Blog post 5

What is bullying?  The collapsing of contexts.

“There’s no bullying at my school, everyone’s much too chill.” – Luke, age 16, Sydney.

With a third of all teenagers having experienced annoying or menacing behaviour online, communities are rightly concerned about the issue of bullying and the safety of children (Lenhart 2007).  However, the term has become a one size fits all description of harassing behaviour in online spaces that has confused the issue (boyd 2014, p. 131).  Olweus (cited in boyd 2014, p. 131) says bullying is defined by power distance, repetition and aggression, very different from the forwarding of an unflattering pic on Instagram for a laugh, or malicious gossip that often goes by the same name.  This blurring from a generational misunderstanding between those experiencing the behaviour and those in a position to report them, is damaging because the behaviours and the technologies that conduct them are all different, and so require different interventions to address them (Fuller 2014).

How does cyberbullying affect you? (MySecureCyberspace 2010).

Why do kids do all this stuff?

“Adults just don’t get social media.  Like if I put a status up and it doesn’t get 50 likes I delete it, you guys don’t know what that’s about.” – Owen, age 16, Sydney.

More often, aggressive online behaviours between teens fit Boyd’s (2014, p. 138) definition of drama: performative, interpersonal conflict in front of an engaged audience.  While teens have more autonomy than children, they still lack agency in much of their lives, and they know it.  Identity creation and evaluation of others falls within their zone of influence and social media gives them the opportunity to exercise it (Boyd 2014, p. 142).  Screens put distance between actions and consequences in ways that developing minds don’t always appreciate, resulting in issues that get out of hand before the participants realise (Kids Health 2015).

Cyberbullying: what it is (O’Brien 2014).

Do kids need protecting?

“It happens all the time, a girl will dis someone on their social media and like 15 girls get involved and the person comes back and says why didn’t you tag my so I could hear your lies straight away, and it’s on.” – Terry, age 16, Sydney.

In his discussion of agonism, McCosker (2014, p. 215) suggests the value of adversarial interaction online for productive impact.  In other words, that aggressive exchanges online can be a good thing.  For me though, the safety of teens in online spaces it too big a price to pay for the tempering of adolescent character.  Bullying may be more common offline than on, but we do not ignore it in the real world and have a moral duty to apply the same standards to our online spaces (Queensland Government 2015).  They may have different norms but at their heart remain just places for the interaction of people.  Lacking the structural defences and resources of adults, our adolescents need our protection (Boyd 2014, p. 150).  The efforts to combat bullying and other harassing behaviour that teens can be subject to are worthwhile.

To This Day (To This Day 2013).

References.

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

Fuller, G 2014, 'Cyber-safety’: What are we actually talking about?, The Conversation, 27 February, viewed 22 September 2015, <http://theconversation.com/cyber-safety-what-are-we-actually-talking-about-23505>.

Kids Health 2015, Cyberbullying – bullying from a distance, Kids Health, viewed 19 December 2015, < http://www.cyh.com/HealthTopics/HealthTopicDetailsKids.aspx?p=335&np=288&id=2704>.

Lenhart, A 2007, Cyberbullying, Pew Research Centre, viewed 19 December 2015, < http://www.pewinternet.org/2007/06/27/cyberbullying/>.

McCosker, A 2014, YouTrolling as provocation: Tube’s agonistic publics, Convergence, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 201-217.

MySecureCyberspace 2010, Think Time: How Does Cyberbullying Affect You?, 30 November, viewed 20 December 2015, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oGFh0mwrjM>.

O’Brien, J 2014, ‘Cyberbullying: what it is’ [image], Jean O’Brien, viewed 20 December 2015, < http://www.jeanobrien.com/2014/01/29/cyberbullying-advice-infographic-for-barnardos/>.

Queensland Government 2015, Bullying and Cyberbullying facts, QLD Gov, viewed 1 January 2016, <https://www.qld.gov.au/disability/children-young-people/bullying/facts.html>.

To This Day 2013, To this day, 18 February, viewed 20 December 2015, <https://vimeo.com/59956490>.

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Great read this week, Luke 😊. I absolutely agree with you that teenagers are often not aware of the dire consequences that their 'behind the screen' actions may have. They're not standing in front of the person, verbally ripping them to shreds or physically assaulting them in front of a group of other people, so what harm could it possibly do? Plenty of harm, obviously. While McCosker's view of online conflict being beneficial in some ways does hold merit, it is crucial not to sweep aside the fact that social media has added a whole other platform for youths to harass, intimidate, and bully their peers. As you stated so eloquently, it is our moral duty to apply the same standards to online spaces as we do to offline spaces. Good job! Tina

[riceage-blog]

Blog Post #5; Week 7

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Good job, Matt. 😊 I liked the way you ended your blog post - 'don't bully, don't troll, and basically just don't be an asshole'. Don't you wish it were that simple? Unfortunately, whether online or offline, some people will continue to...well, be assholes. Whether they are that way due to peer pressure, a rocky home life, or just because they love making the lives of others hell, bullies and trolls will continue to exist. Your suggestion of a cyber safety ombudsman is a good idea - would their findings have any legal standpoint, though? Would they have the authority to ban people from certain websites or social media platforms? Further, the definitions of 'trolling' and 'bullying' are often blurred, blown out of proportion, or minimised. Getting an ombudsman on board would obviously take a lot of work and a lot of strict guidelines, but would it stop bullies from doing their thing or would it curb free speech? A lot to think about! Thanks for an interesting post! Tina

[miaarenee-blog-blog-blog]

Week 6 - Digital citizenship 2: Activism and protest

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Hey Mia! Great job this week. 😊 I completely agree with you that subactivism does indeed have its merits. While we may not be able to completely change the world with our Facebook posts and discussions, we are effectively standing on a (metaphorical) podium and allowing our voices to be even slightly heard. If even a few people hear what we have to say about an important issue or injustice, perhaps these people will be inspired to see the issue in a differing light, which may help them gain perspective. It may also illuminate issues that these people may not even have been aware of, which may inspire them to sign the petition we have shared on our Facebook pages, for example. Tina

[cameronmda20009-blog]

Week 6 Digital Citizenship 2: Activism and protest

WARNING LIKELY TO OFFEND ANYONE 

I love culture jamming, in all of its myriad forms. It is in fact, a favourite hobby of mine to interfere with peoples pictures, or sometimes take some of my own and add a few things, through the wonderful application of the very basic editing tool, Microsoft Paint. Sometimes, if one of the kids has not cleaned their room or have left toys out, I would take a picture and edit it a little and claim that was what the toys were doing while they were at school, the below is an example where my youngest, Bella, brought home someone else’s Care Bear (I don’t want to think about how she got it) from school and left it at home the next day. This is the picture I produced for her of the Care Bear abusing her bear, Man-Bear-Pig.

Now, neither my partner or I smoke, and Bella thinks smoking is disgusting, and funnily enough using it in this manner simply reinforced to her that smoking was bad, the swearing is also an interesting approach we use where the word itself is not banned to her, however she does not use it, ever, because she thinks it is bad. On the down side, when Bella thinks she is being clever she will tell her grandmother that I smoke now. I will note at this point, that you have been warned by the big bold letters at the top of this blog, that it may be offensive. We were, not very long ago, living in South Australia and my partner worked in the council, I received an email from her one day and I decided to redo the email banner and send it back (It was not appreciated at the time, not at all, until much later).

While not on the scale or import of culture jamming today it is still symbolic subversion (Dery 2010) and represents my personal version of “semiological guerrilla warfare” (Dery 2010), and, is representative of the original concept underpinning ‘Billboard Banditry’ which in my opinion, should be a sport. Although these are really for my own entertainment and do not represent any sort of position, the altered media does still “speak back to media” (Bainbridge, Gok & Tynan 2011, pp. 192-193) which is in essence, culture jamming. Some production are much clearer and intent in their vision, specifically targeting recognised social signs in the name of culture jamming, such as the religion of The Flying Spaghetti Monster:

Image sourced (Smith 2011) While amusing, the FSM came about through a frustrated parent being confronted with creationism being taught in a public school alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution (Smith 2011). The parent, Bobby Henderson, then argued that his belief in Intelligent Design focused on a deity composed of pasta, meatballs and sauce, and deserved equal teaching time due to it being equally impossible to prove or disprove the existence of this deity against any other. The FSM church is now a registered religion and continues to ‘culture jam’ religions discourse through its very existence which confronts the biggest flaw in the multiplicity of world religions, that no one can empirically prove the existence of their respective deity.

References

Bainbridge, J Goc N & Tynan L 2011, Media & Journalism, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, Melbourne.

Dery, M 1990, ‘The Merry Pranksters And the Art of the Hoax’, New York Times, 23 December.

Smith, JC 2011, ‘The flying spaghetti monster and the Pastafarian quatrains’, Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 35, no. 5. Pp. 54-56, viewed 8 December 2015, http://ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA265486029&v=2.1&u=swinburne1&it=r&p=AONE&asid=0052e53f0b923f7c710d705515e9ee04

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Hahaha! Your post was incredible. You eloquently and humorously summed up the concept of culture jamming in a way that I could never do, so props to you! 😊 It is interesting the way that culture jamming involves media 'speaking back to media'. Your example of the Flying Spaghetti Monster certainly highlighted the idea that, as hilarious and often odd culture jamming can be, it also may serve to make an important political or religious protest or statement against the status quo. Great job! Tina

[shivaniielizabeth-blog]

Social Media and Politics - an Untapped Resource or a Disaster Waiting to Happen?

Before the September 2013 Federal election 400,000 of people between the ages of 18 and 24 did not enrol to vote (McGrath, 2013), therefore they were unable to participate in the election. According to some, this is causing a ‘democratic deficit’ and that when young Australians reach adulthood, they disengage from the Australian political process (McGrath, 2013). Many young Australians perceive the culture of formalised politics to be one of conflict, cynicism and distrust, resulting in lack of faith in politicians (Arvanitakis & Marrin, 2009). Now, this may be a part of a greater problem involving the Australian political system but how do politicians engage with their younger audiences, to help them become engaged with the political process?

Considering that 90% of young adults aged 18 to 29 are social media users (Perrin, 2015), it would be senseless for a politician not to use all tools available to them. Many politicians have joined social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in recent years but few in Australia have really embraced the medium to its full potential (Jericho, 2012). Many politicians have social media accounts. One that I regularly follow is Mike Baird, the Premier of New South Wales (and I’m from Queensland!). Having young daughters himself, I think he may find it easier to reach the younger demographic, like when he live tweeted the finale of Bachelor Australia, when he shared a picture of his alarm set so that he could watch the Wallabies play in the Rugby World Cup final or when he went to a Taylor Swift concert (Mike Baird, 2015).

Hillary Clinton famously used her Facebook page to encourage a young American gay man, on popular photo blog page Humans of New York (Humans of New York, 2015).

Social Media can be used to bring politicians closer to their younger demographics, but does it translate to votes? There isn’t any conclusive data to support this, but there seems to be a correlation between social media use and political engagement and participation (Wihbey, 2015). A study conducted by the Information, Communication & Society journal noted that in America, this effect was seen most prominently in the studies that focused on youth populations (Whibey, 2015).

There is a downside to a politician utilising social media. If a politician fashions a tweet or post that could be taken in bad taste, the repercussions can be considered to be catastrophic to a politician’s image. Dr. Brun from the Queensland University of Technology has said that while social media can help a campaign, but if a mistake is made, it can turn into a major issue, especially when picked up by mainstream media outlets (Brun, 2013). For example, Governor of Delaware Jack Markell accidentally posted a link to a racy photo of a model when tweeting about a public education initiative (The Associated Press, 2014) which was promptly deleted and an apology issued – but I would bet my yearly salary that no one took him seriously after that.

References:

Associated Press, The 2014, ‘Delaware Gov. Jack Markell accidentally tweets racy photo while announcing state funding for schools’, NY Daily News, 4 September, viewed 29 November 2015, <http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/del-gov-jack-markell-accidentally-tweets-racy-photo-article-1.1928604>

Arvanitakis, J & Marren S 2009, ‘Putting the politics back into Politics: Young people and democracy in Australia’, Discussion Paper, Whitlam Institute University of Western Sydney, Sydney.

Baird, M 2015, Twitter Feed, viewed 29 November 2015, <https://twitter.com/mikebairdMP>

Bruns, A 2013, ‘Social media a “double-edged sword” for politicians’, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, 27 August, viewed 29 November 2015, <http://www.cci.edu.au/node/1597>

Humans of New York 2015, “I’m homosexual and I’m afraid about what my future will be and that people won’t like me.”, 4 July, viewed 28 November 2015, <https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork/photos/a.102107073196735.4429.102099916530784/1010497585691008/>

Jericho, G 2012, ‘How many votes are there on Twitter?’, in The Rise of the Fifth Estate, Scribe, Victoria, Australia.

Perrin, A 2015, ‘Social Media Usage: 2005 – 2015’, Pew Research Centre, 8 October, viewed 26 November 2015, <http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/>

               McGrath, C 2013, ‘Statistics show 25 per cent of young people failed to enrol to vote in the September election’, ABC News, 21 August, viewed 28 November 2015, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-21/figures-show-25-per-cent-of-young-people-failed-to-enrol-to-vote/4903292>

Wihbey, J 2015, ‘How does social media use influence political participation and civic engagement? A meta-analysis’, Journalist’s Resource, 18 October, viewed 29 November, <http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/digital-democracy/social-media-influence-politics-participation-engagement-meta-analysis>

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Excellent post! (That I accidentally reblogged before using my personal account, oops) 😊 It was interesting to read about how young Australians are less inclined to vote or participate in the political process. Does/will social media help change that? It may help increase interest on behalf of these bored-of-politics youths, but this interest may not necessarily lead to more votes. Your Jack Markell example perfectly demonstrated the way that a simple mistake in the form of a seemingly accidental posting of a risqué image, can lead to the potential destruction of a politician's reputation. Ah, the power of social media! Tina

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Week Ten: The Gaming Community - Built up, Only to Break Down?

Over the course of many years, ‘gamer communities’ have formed, been maintained, and have even been broken down (Swinburne Online 2015).

The presence of online games has arguably drawn together existing social media friends; through social games like FarmVille, which make it possible for Facebook friends to engage in game play with each other (Swinburne Online 2015), or even gamers from opposite sides of the world, through massively multiple online role-playing games (MMORPGs).

This drawing together is beneficial to gamers and the games industry alike. Digital citizens are able to communicate with people they may have otherwise never met; fellow digital citizens who share the common interest of gaming. It is also logical to assume that the popularity of MMORPGS, or even role playing games in general, due in large part to their social and communicative nature, also benefits the game industry as a whole.

But where digital communities in the context of the gaming world enable healthy and vital communication, gamers can develop their own social norms and codes of conduct (de Zwarts & Humphreys 2014, p. 80), as mentioned in this week’s reading; conduct which often serves to lead to conflict between gamers.

A widely-known and controversial example of a breakdown within the gaming community is Gamergate. Many of us have likely heard about the movement, which came about after a number of female game developers like Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu and critic Anita Sarkeesian spoke out over sexism within the gaming world.

Many supporters of Gamergate believed that the attempts of these progressive developers and critics to voice their views were 'corrupt’ ways of casting video games in a negative light (Weinman 2014). Death and rape threats ensured that the chasm between two separate subgroups within the gaming community widened at an increasing rate.

It is human nature for conflict to exist within a large community, whether it is a community close in physical proximity or bound together by a common interest.

Conflicting viewpoints will certainly exist. Beyond viewing Gamergate as a clash of opinions, the controversial 'culture war' could also be viewed in another light. A few members of the gaming community spoke up against what they saw as discrimination and sexism. They wanted to illuminate the ways that women were sexualised and represented as damsels in distress within games and the video game community in its entirety (Weinman 2014).

By casting light on the issues that they had with the treatment and depiction of females within video games, members of the gaming community like Zoe Quinn were asserting their status as digital citizens; attempting to negotiate and even change their perceived role of citizenship within the digital gaming community.

Subsequently, opposing members of the gaming community were asserting their own rights as digital citizens, aiming to shirk what they saw as an unethical attempt to nitpick games for supposed threats against feminism and 'ruin games for everyone'.

The validity of the arguments of both sides have been both questioned and held up as truth. Whichever group you agree with, if you do indeed agree with any, it is interesting to view the way that the gaming community has grown to the point where identities, both perceived or otherwise, are shifting, changing, and viewed in different ways by different people.

The gaming community, in this way, seems to mirror real life. We have women speaking out against sexism and their portrayal as digital citizens. We have men who are arguing that women are acting as bullies and trying to take everything too seriously. Gamers are moving away from their seemingly passive identities as gameplayers; blurring the line between real life and the gaming world.

REFERENCES

de Zwarts, M & Humphreys, S 2014, 'The lawless frontier of deep space: Code as law in EVE Online,' Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 20, no. 1, informit.

Swinburne Online 2015, 'Week Ten: Social Gaming: Playing the Crowd', MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning Material on Blackboard, Swinburne University of Technology, Teaching Period 3, September 14, viewed January 4 2016.

Weinman J J. 2014, 'Target: Women: It Started as a Fight Between Two Kinds of Gamers, but Gamergate Snowballed Into an All-Out Culture War', Maclean's, no. 127, vol. 47, Cengage Learning.

[dig-comms-life-blog]

[ljt245]

Week 8 – Crowdsourcing, disaster and otherwise.

Blog post 6

No one knows everything but everyone knows something (Brabham 2008, pp. 80).  It’s with this in mind that crowdsourcing works to harvest individual capabilities, through networked technologies.  Swinburne Online (2015) defines it as obtaining outputs by soliciting contributions from a large online community.  

Is a crowd more intelligent? (Business Spotlight 2012).

This week’s readings showed the practice, in the area of disaster management to good effect.  The Ushahidi platform, a dynamic map of the experiences of those immediately impacted by an event, can assist disaster response, ignite social media movements and displace often co-opted traditional forms of media (Ford 2012, p. 33).  The Queensland Police Service’ use of twitter, to focus information about the 2011 floods, monitor impacts on the ground and align other services and agencies (Bruns et al. 2012, p. 7).  The ABC’s blurring of traditional and social media emergency coverage, using multiple twitter accounts to tailor message to audience, reflecting and supplying traditional channels (Postetti and Lo 2012, pp. 34-35).

Tactic 8 - Use collective intelligence - 10 tactics for turning information into action. (TacticalTechVideos 2010).

It’s tempting to credit technology alone for these benefits.  The digital age overcomes traditional barriers of distribution and sharing across time and distance, but examination of the human interactions within is instructive (Zak 2009).  The Ushahidi’s verification process is built on witness confirmation (Ford 2012, p. 37).  The role of retweeters in strengthen and amplifying the Queensland Police message was vital (Bruns et al, p. 7).  The ABC’s mediation of social media through user feedback is ongoing (Postetti and Lo 2012, pp. 35-36).  This is proof that Crowdsourcing requires a human component to produce their synergies, creating what Jenkins (Zak 2009) calls collective intelligence.

Think…..( O’Reilly n.d).

Where tools that aggregate intelligence such as Google search average the contributions of many individual sources of data, collective intelligence leverages multiple users to test, weigh and vet data over time to add to the quality of information (Zak 2009).  It is the purposeful choices and judgement of many individuals, mindfully shaping a body of data, exemplified in such examples as the ongoing edits in Wikipedia or the thumbs up and down ratings in reddit.  These human interactions produce superior results because many real world situations involve unstructured information, where permutations are difficult to plan for or allow for in the algorithmic instructions to machines and volumes of information alone are not sufficient to solve problems (Nagar and Malone 2011, p. 13).  Where technology can gather and disseminate information, crowd sourced tools built on collective intelligence extend their usefulness and empower their participants.  Those affected by and interested in a crisis event, help each other, making crowdsourcing as the very essence of a digital community.

References.

Brabham, DC 2008, ‘Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving’, Convergence vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 75-90, viewed 30 December 2015, <http://www.crowdsourcingverband.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Brabham_Crowdsourcing_Problem_Solving.pdf>.

Bruns, A, Burgess, J, Crawford, K & Shaw, F 2012, #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods, Arc Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, pp 7-10, viewed 17 September 2015, <http://www.cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf>.

Business Spotlight 2012, ‘Is a crowd more intelligent? [image], Smarter than the CIA?, viewed 31 December 2015, < http://www.business-spotlight.de/news/americas/smarter-than-the-cia>.

Ford, H 2012, ‘Crowd Wisdom’, Index on Censorship, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 33-39.

Nagar, Y & Malone, TW 2011, ‘Making Business Predictions by Combining Human and Machine Intelligence in Prediction Markets’, Paper presented at the Thirty Second International Conference on Information Systems, Shanghai 2011, viewed 30 December 2015, <http://web.mit.edu/ynagar/www/papers/Nagar_Malone_MakingBusinessPredictionsbyCombiningHumanandMachineIntelligence.ICIS2011.pdf>.

O’Reilly, T n.d, ‘Think….’ [image], IZQuotes, viewed 31 December 2015, <http://izquotes.com/quotes-pictures/quote-collective-intelligence-think-of-how-wikipedia-works-how-amazon-harnesses-user-annotation-on-its-tim-o-reilly-256991.jpg.>

Postetti, J & Lo, P 2012, The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 34-39.

Swinburne Online 2015, ‘Week 8: Crowdsourcing in times of crisis’, MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning materials on Blackboard, Swinburne University of Technology, viewed 28 December 2015.

TacticalTechVideos 2010, Tactic 8 - Use collective intelligence - 10 tactics for turning information into action, 18 May, viewed 31 December 2015, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=933PhnD5IqE>.

Zak, P 2009, Henry Jenkins Interview short, 1 July, viewed 31 December 2015, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGVfJVde164>.

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Hey Luke!

Thanks for a very in depth and critical analysis of my own blog post.

Great work on yours - love the opening quote ’ no one knows everything but everyone knows something’. It certainly sums up the way that crowdsourcing can draw together the assistance of multiple individuals, with their varying skills and capabilities, in order to advance/manage/improve a common cause.

I will remain true to my opinion that technology has played a crucial role in the advancement of communication during times of disaster. Platforms like Ushahidi wouldn’t exist without its users, but the rise in social media and technology as a whole makes it possible for these users to communicate vital information in a relatively easy manner. To credit technology alone for the benefits of crowdsourcing would ensure that the people who use it are overlooked. You’re right, life ain’t that black and white. 😊

Cheers,

Tina

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Week Nine

Research on computer-mediated communication has commonly pushed forward a binary, black-and-white ‘real life’ vs ‘online’ discourse (Lange 2009, p. 72). The positive effects of the creation, uploading, and sharing of a YouTube video has been buried amongst the notion that online communication is supposedly lacking in a way that face-to-face communication is not.

This week hones in on the concept of ‘networked visuality’; the way that as a network, we communicate visually: through snapshots and images. The rise of social media platform Snapchat has made networked visuality a common thread linking our communicative practices.

One of Snapchat’s key affordances is its ephemerality - the fact that the image we send through a snap lasts for up to ten seconds (Herrman 2014). There is no way for recipients to comment on a Snap, or ‘like’ it. This is a key feature of networked visuality - instead of the selfie or video being a piece of media that people communicate ‘around’, they are solely communicating <i>through</i> the Snapchat video or selfie.

If you had told me about this form of communication a few years ago, as a teenager, I’d have likely laughed and imagined that you had gleaned the concept of Snapchat through a movie or a TV show. But our current reality is one rife with imaging communities; communities where people create content of the visual, aural and haptic variety, in order to communicate directly to people.

Whether this method of communication pales in comparison to offline communication is an opinion that has been explored ad nauseam. This week served to move beyond this discourse, and onto an exploration of the kinds of ways digital imaging serves to draw audience members and content creators together.

In this week’s first reading, Lange discusses 'videos of affinity’ on YouTube. She deems these videos as the types that are made in an attempt to establish a connection with people (Lange 2009, p. 71). They can be 'amateur’ type video blogs, complete with a shaky handheld video camera; yet they can also be professionally made and dispersed to a large audience (Lange 2009, p. 71).

As I was poring through Lange’s reading, I immediately thought of popular Australian YouTube makeup blogger Lauren Curtis. Curtis’ YouTube channel boasts over three million subscribers (Lauren Curtis 2015), and I happen to be one of them!

Curtis’ videos are largely 'professional seeming’ in nature. The lighting is normally close to perfect, there is often a soundtrack or voice over accompanying the video, and Curtis’ camera is trained directly in front of her. She does however, often film and upload videos of affinity. They’re usually titled 'Follow me Around’. Her most recent video of this type, uploaded in December, is called 'Follow Me Around: NEW MAKEUP STORAGE, SEEING OPRAH, ROAD RAGE!’ (Follow Me Around 2014).

The title of the video, 'Follow Me Around’, immediately brings to mind the idea of following Curtis around as she goes about her day. This arguably helps to make audience members feel as though when watching the video, that they are placed in the role of 'Lauren’s friend’, following her around and having a casual chat as friends would.

The video begins with grainy footage of Curtis, makeup free, freshly awoken. She mentions that it had been a while since she had done a video of this nature, and that it was 'well overdue.’ Evidently, Curtis perhaps figured that to retain and form new connections with her followers and potential audience members, it was important to film a video of affinity, to perhaps remind audiences that despite her increasing fame, she is still a real person who isn’t in makeup all day, every day

.

Curtis even references a pimple on her chin, which further serves as an attempt to engage her viewers. Curtis makes a living creating makeup tutorials for her audience members; many of which perhaps want to wear makeup to help them feel better about themselves. By showing her audience that her face isn’t flaw-free, Curtis affiliates’ herself with her audience, assuring them that she is just like them.

Curtis also reorganises her mounds of makeup products during her video. This is an act that is a bit of an inside joke for a large amount of her audience, as she often complains about the extensive amount of makeup she owns and how difficult it is to sift through it all.

Like many videos of affinity, this act also ensures that Curtis’ video lies in the intercies of her other work (Lange 2009, p. 71) - viewers may be amused by the video, but they will also be reminded of who Curtis is, and the makeup tutorials on YouTube that have made her so successful.

Whether the creator of a video of affinity is a well known YouTube celebrity, or a relatively anonymous person whose video receives five views, one fact remains clear: connecting and communicating with people in potentially meaningful ways is no longer relegated to the 'offline world’. Images, whether still or moving, are now used as immediate tools in the act of communication.

We don’t just post an image on Facebook and wait for people to comment on it, we communicate directly to our best friends or YouTube subscribers by looking straight through a lens and speaking to them, as if we would in person. There’s something a little intriguing about that, isn’t there?

REFERENCES

Follow Me Around 2015, Lauren Curtis, December 7, viewed 29 December 2015, http://youtu.be/IMUHgjlbJmA.

Herrman, J 2014, 'Meet the Man who got inside Snapchat’s Head’, Buzzfeed, Jan 28, viewed 29 December 2014, http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/meet-the-unlikely-academic-behind-snapchats-new-pitch#.wkJqPKPxla.

Lange, P G. 2009, 'Videos of Affinity on YouTube’, The YouTube Reader, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm.

Swinburne Online 2015, 'Week Nine: Visual Communities and Social Imaging’, MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning Material on Blackboard, Swinburne University of Technology, Teaching Period 3, September 14, viewed December 29 2015.

[dig-comms-life-blog]

Week Eight

The rapid evolution and development of technology in the past decade cannot be disputed. This growth has made it possible for platforms other than traditional media and emergency services to deliver information to people, in times of crisis and disaster (Swinburne Online 2015).

This week’s first reading explores the mechanisms and effectiveness of social media mapping platform Ushahidi. Essentially, through this mapping platform, residents in Kenya are able to start their own mapping website (Ford 2012, p. 33), allowing the public to send text messages reporting instances of human rights abuses in their country (Ford 2012, p. 36).

Here, the concept of ‘crowdsourcing’ comes into play. Crowdsourcing relies on obtaining information, content and ideas from a large number of people; particularly the online community rather than ‘traditional’ and professional employees and suppliers (Swinburne Online 2015).

As I mentioned earlier, we traditionally received updates in times of crisis from traditional media and emergency services; people paid and employed to deliver timely and useful information to residents. It is interesting that we are moving into an era in which the 'amateur’ has a role to play alongside news networks and emergency websites.

Residents in the centre of the action of crisis situations now have ample opportunity to have their voices heard. While social media mapping platforms like Ushahidi have come into existence, their presence in Australia is relatively non-existent (Swinburne Online 2015).

Platforms such as Twitter have played a significant role in providing the tools for its users to communicate information, as this week’s second reading discusses. Bruns et al. analyse the role that the Queensland Police Service Media Unit Twitter account (@QPSMedia) played during the 2011 South East Queensland Floods (Bruns et al. 2012), as well as the way that 'regular’ Twitter users made use of the hashtag #qldfloods.

It is important to note that in the second reading, which was a report, a common theme emerged. @QPSMedia’s account largely disseminated situational information and advice for Queensland residents (Bruns et al. 2012, p. 8), while users posting with the #qldfloods hashtag largely focused on personal reactions and anecdotes, with a great deal of photos in the centre of the action posted (Bruns et al. 2012, p. 7).

It is also important to note that many tweets featuring the #qldfloods hashtag were in fact retweets from the Twitter accounts of emergency services and the @QPSMedia account. So while crowdsourcing served to enable digital citizens to further disperse timely, likely accurate information from emergency services, the information didn’t come straight from these 'amateurs.’

Their role in the crisis seemed to be to A. Provide a 'human’ voice to the crisis, with the sharing of their images and personal reactions, and B. To ensure that information delivered from professional organisations was seen by as many people as possible. Thus, the role of 'regular citizens’ seemed to be less direct than that of organisations such as Queensland Police.

This is not necessarily a bad thing or a good thing. Professional organisations are reputable and have people working for them who are employed for the sole purpose of keeping residents safe and supplying them with the information to do so. Digital citizens are spreading information of their own accord, and are not paid to do so. This may mean that their information will be false, whether intentional or not. They’re perhaps not as reputable as emergency services, and so the 'human role’ that they play in times of crisis, as well as their role of retweeters, may be more appropriate than directly providing information to other citizens.

Social media mapping platforms could be useful in Australia, but again, it is vital that information delivered to the websites are screened, checked, and verified to ensure that it is accurate information. The large presence of a platform like Ushahidi in Australia would mean that the role of the 'amateur’ in times of crisis would become even more important and reputable.

REFERENCES

Bruns, A et al. 2012, ’#qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods’, Media Ecologies Project, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Brisbane.

Ford, H 2012, Crowd Wisdom, Sage Journals.

Swinburne Online 2015, 'Week Eight: Crowdsourcing in times of crisis’, MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning Material on Blackboard, Swinburne University of Technology, Teaching Period 3, September 14, viewed 29 December 2015.

[dig-comms-life-blog]

[dig-comms-life-blog]