Digital Communities Discussion

An Undergraduate Media Student

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#Official post Public Health Campaigns

Public health is an area of social life thoroughly integrated with communication technologies. We grow up hearing health messages of one sort of another: slip, slop, slap to avoid skin cancer, don't smoke or drink and drive. And we come together around campaigns like the pink ribbon for breast cancer, Movember for men's health and depression, and even the Ice bucket challenge (remember that?) for recognition of ALS.

Remember when it seemed like every second person on your newsfeed was participating in the ALS ice bucket challenge? or what about Movember?

Public health campaigns have been completely transformed but the incorporation of social media. The accessibility to a very public platform with potentially very large reach has created the ability for the every-day-man to participate, share and raise awareness for these causes. 

Although as discussed in earlier weeks, this sort of passive and superficial engagement can be seen as a form of digital activism known as ‘clicktivism’ but we’ll leave that in week 6 where it belongs. 

Media engagement has allowed health campaigns to be much more easily educated to people of certain societies. Whether it is a non-smoking campaign for western-upper-class civilians or an anti-drug campaign in a lower-socio economic society. Media engagement creates the ability to spread the word about the health effects through platforms such as:

Radio

Television - news, movies, tv

Magazines

Social media

References:

Burgess, J., Cassidy, E., & Light, B. (2014). ‘Deeply superficial Digital Media Engagement? The Case of Twitter and Movember 2013’. Paper presented at AoIR 15, Daegu, Korea.

Milner, R. M. (2012) ‘To Write Love Through the Indie Imaginary: The Narrative Argument of a Mediated Movement’, Continuum, 26:3, 423-435

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Black Eyed Peas and Ariana Grande - Where Is The Love (One Love Manchester)

Black Eyed Peas and Ariana Grande perform Where Is The Love at One Love Manchester. Visit the BBC Music website for more videos http://www.bbc.co.uk/programm...

#OFFICIAL POST CROWDSOURCING 

In times of crisis - natural disaster and the like - our communication systems very often go down, just as we need them most. 

At these times we also see a great deal of innovation in use of communication tools, including social media. Information flows through an increasing number of channels, and often through the targeted and distributed networks, or publicly accessible platforms of our social media and social network sites.

As fast as things are changing, they are about to change even faster. Technology is making it progressively easier to access the knowledge, experience, and resources of the crowd. 

We have already seen how applications of crowdsourcing technology can provide funding, services, and navigation. Now this technology will accelerate innovation, problem solving and even politics.

After a suicide bomber affiliated with the Islamic State killed 22 and injured 56 at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in 2017, tragedy rocked the World. 

On 4 June, Ariana Grande hosted a benefit concert in Manchester, entitled "One Love Manchester" that was broadcast live on television, radio and social media. At the concert, Grande performed along with several other high profile artists. Free tickets were offered to those who had attended the show on 22 May. The benefit concert and associated Red Cross fund, raised 10 million pounds for victims of the attack. 

Grande enlisted a number of celebrities to perform, including Katy Perry, Liam Gallagher, Chris Martin, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Pharrell Williams, among others. Throughout their performances, instructions for how to donate to the British Red Cross were displayed across massive screens on stage (TIME 2017).

This is a clear example where the following can be seen:

• Raising money for a certain cause/issue/project 

• Asking many people to make small donations

• All done through the direct emergency fund

References:

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

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)

Poblet M., García-Cuesta E., Casanovas P. (2014) Crowdsourcing Tools for Disaster Management: A Review of Platforms and Methods. In: Casanovas P., Pagallo U., Palmirani M., Sartor G. (eds) AI Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8929. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

TIME 2017, “Ariana Grande’s Manchester Benefit Concert Raised $13 Million”, Time, viewed 23 April, 2018, <http://time.com/4805251/ariana-grande-manchester-benefit-concert-fundraising/>.

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Australian Human Rights Commission Help

What happens with cyberbullying?

A lot of people can view or take part in it

It is often done in secret with the bully hiding who they are by creating false profiles or names, or sending anonymous messages

It is difficult to remove as it is shared online so it can be recorded and saved in different places

It is hard for the person being bullying to escape if they use technology often

The content (photos, texts, videos) can be shared with a lot of people

This content may also be easy to find by searching on a web browser like Google.

What does cyberbullying look like?

Being sent mean or hurtful text messages from someone you know or even someone you don’t know

Getting nasty, threatening or hurtful messages through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, or through sites where people can ask / answer questions like Formspring or Internet forums

People sending photos and videos of you to others to try and embarrass or hurt you

People spreading rumours about you via emails or social networking sites or text messages

People trying to stop you from communicating with others

People stealing your passwords or getting into your accounts and changing the information there

People setting up fake profiles pretending to be you, or posting messages or status updates from your accounts

Feelings you may be having if you are being bullied:

Feeling guilty like it is your fault

Feeling hopeless and stuck like you can’t get out of the situation

Feeling alone, like there is no one to help you

Feeling like you don’t fit in with the cool group

Feeling depressed and rejected by your friends and other groups of people

Feeling unsafe and afraid

Feeling confused and stressed out wondering what to do and why this is happening to you

Feeling ashamed that this is happening to you

Being safe from bullies online:

Do not share your private information like passwords, name and address, phone numbers with people you don’t know. This can also include sharing of photos of yourself, your friends and your family

Don’t respond to messages when you are angry or hurt - either to strangers and also to people you know. This will often encourage them to continue or increase their harassment of you

Log out and stop messaging if you feel you are being harassed

Remember you have the option to block, delete and report anyone who is harassing you online and on your mobile

Find out how to report bullying and harassment on each of the different social networks that you use

Keep a record of calls, messages, posts and emails that may be hurtful or harmful to you

Remember to set up the privacy options on your social networking sites like Facebook in a way you are comfortable with

(https://www.humanrights.gov.au/cyberbullying-what-it-and-how-get-help-violence-harassment-and-bullying-fact-sheet)

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#4 #cyberbullying

I’m going to start this post off with some hard to swallow facts about cyber bullying:

One in five Australian children aged 8 - 15 has experienced cyberbullying.

Three-quarters of all Australian schools reported cyberbullying last year — with an average of  22 complaints every year in a secondary school.

That’s the equivalent of an entire classroom of bullied students per school.

Cyber bullying can include:

Harassment – sending ongoing abusive, insulting or unwanted messages. Tormenting someone with hateful and hurtful text messages, emails, posts or instant messages that offend, humiliate or intimidate. Flaming/Trolling – disagreements online between 2 individuals using aggressive and or abusive language, gradually resulting in others joining in. Denigration – spreading lies, rumours or gossip about someone to damage their reputation or friendship. Impersonation – pretending to be someone else by posting and sending inappropriate material online i.e. saying things they wouldn’t normally say face to face. Outing And Trickery – placing someone else’s information online without their consent. Trickery is persuading someone into providing secrets or embarrassing information and then placing these online. This could be done through a fake website, profile or by editing someone’s own profile. Exclusion – deliberately excluding someone from an online group or excluding them from activities because they have not participated in an online activity. Cyber‐stalking – following someone through cyberspace and repeatedly harassing or denigrating them which may raise significant fear in the individual. Moving with them to different sites or applications and posting threatening messages. Sexting – sending or posting messages, videos or photos of sexual nature. It’s illegal to post pictures or images of another without their consent and or if the individual is under 18 years of age. Pornography – possession and manufacturing of pornographic images and videos of an individual under the age of 18 is illegal and is covered by State and Commonwealth Laws.

Cyberbullying in Australia is AGAINST THE LAW. 

This video shows the ways thats cyberbullying can happen in a high school situation. Posting videos online that engage with bullying other people is called CYBERBULLYING and is taken just as seriously as face-to-face bullying.

Cyberbullying is a topic that honestly breaks my heart when I give it too much thought. Ignorance can be bliss, but this topic is so complex and devastating that it can literally kill people. The complexity of this topic can be met with a dramatically simple explanation and rule - DO. NOT. BULLY. If you would not like something done to you, then please refrain from doing it to someone else. If something makes someone uncomfortable in ANY way then STOP it IMMEDIATELY. 

Defining Bullying in a Digital Era

Scholars have been defining bullying over the last four decades. Swedish psychologist Dan Olweus created the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP), which is now used by many educators. In his scholarly writing, Olweus has described bullying with a variety of words, but the three components listed are generally associated with him and generally used by those implementing OBPP. The three components that Olweus saw as central to bullying in particular: aggression, repetition and imbalance in power. He argued that youth aggression was bullying when the situation involved all three components. Those who subscribe to Olweus’s definition view bullying as a practice in which someone of differential physical or social power subjects another person to repeated psychological, physical, or social aggression. This matches the stereotypical case of bullying involving a big kid repeatedly physically tormenting a little kid or a popular teen repeatedly spreading nasty rumors about an outcast (Boyd, D. 2014). 

Cyberbullying exists over a variety of networked publics and can affect its victims in a variety of ways. There is no formula for cyberbullying, and unfortunately this means there is no formula to combat or prevent it. Social anxieties exist within us all and create a platform that allow others to discriminate, bully, tease and exclude. The ability for internet users to stay anonymous contributes heavily to the notion of online trolling. Users feel that they are safe and protected behind their screens. In some cases this is true, however Australian laws protect victims of cyberbullying as follows: 

“The Commonwealth legislation governs online stalking and harassment behaviour. The crimes legislation amendment (telecommunications offences and other measures Act) – (No. 2) 2004 makes it a crime to use a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence. The alleged individual could be found guilty under – 474.17 A (1) if:

(a) Person uses a carriage service;

(b) Does so in a way (whether by method of use or content of a communication, or both) that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all circumstances;

Menacing, harassing or offending;

Penalty: Imprisonment of up to – 3 years”

(Bully Zero Australia Foundation).

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.

Bully Zero Australia Foundation. (http://bzaf.org.au/cyber-bullying/)

Cyberbullying youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKA1KzwyhtU)

Olweus, D. and Limber, S.P., 2010. Bullying in school: Evaluation and dissemination of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 80(1), pp.124-134.

Jenny Ostini & Susan Hopkins (2015) 'Online Harassment is a Form of Violence', The Conversation, Apr 8 - What do you think?

McCosker, A. (2016) 'Managing Digital Citizenship: Cyber Safety as Three Layers of Control', Chapter 1, Negotiating Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest and Culture, (forthcoming, 2016, Rowman & Littlefield Int., London) Draft.

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp_LoZUEOf8)

A great video that demonstrates the power of online activism 

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#3 #clickhereforchange

This post will focus on two main concepts of online activism:

Clicktivism is considered the use of digital media for facilitating social change.

The premise behind clicktivism is that social media allows for quick and easy ways to support an organization or cause.

Clicktivism is not exclusively the support or promotion of a cause online; it is the use of digital media for facilitating social change and activism.

More often than not this takes the form of supporting and promoting a cause on social media, but it can also include a whole a range of activities, for example:

Examples of online activism causes:

Clicktivsm has created an online culture that from the outset seems very inclusive and effective. However, once given some more thought, clicktivism has created a platform to passively interact with these causes.

This is enabling our digital culture to engage with important issues on a level similar to how we engage with our Facebooks or Instagram.

It’s becoming too easy to ‘post’ or ‘share’ something about a worthy cause from the comfort of your own bed and never give it as much as a second thought.

Ultimately we need to ask ourselves is this a productive form of activism?

Is it raising awareness for these causes? or is there really no awareness being raised at all, and rather a false sense of achievement from self gratification.

change.org

Change.org is an organisation putting clicktivism at the centre of online activism. However criticisms of the integrity of this type of activism can be questioned – are they encouraging people to take action in support of a cause or passively click a link.

change.org can definitely be used to raise awareness and provide a way to show that people support this cause however for all the passive activists out there this is simply another page for people to feel like they are making a difference, when in the grand scheme of things, they’re not.

I actually went on change.org last week to see what it feels like to join the petition lists. Boy, I tell you what? It felt great! Although deep down I knew I was only another number, and most likely completely insignificant and irrelevant - I tried not to think about this and think about all the change I was participating in.............. 

Slacktivism

The new phrase of ‘slacktivist’ has been coined when approaching the topic of online activism.

The debate about the value of online activism came in the wake of the Arab spring.

Some people saying social change in countries such as Egypt, were due to the powers of social media. But others have used campaigns like Kony 2012 to argue that it spawned meaningless actions of change over social media. "The way we define slacktivism is when the consumer is willing to make small tokens of support," says Kate White from the University of British Columbia.

"When the small act of token support is very public in nature and people can kind of signal to others that they have already helped the cause they actually aren’t more likely to help later."

What the research says is that public displays of support like pins and stickers and Facebook 'likes' make us feel like the job is done. When in actual fact it's always time and money that gets anything done - not raising awareness.

However, digital communities can create a wonderful platform to begin to raise awareness or spread the message to a large audience, nevertheless we need to remember to actively pursue ways to show support to these causes outside of our social media accounts.

ragdollparade:

Actions speak louder than like buttons.

- via the Occupy Wall Street facebook page.

References:

Gerbaudo, 2012 Tweets and the Streets

Lafi Youmans, W & York, J 2012 ‘Social Media and Activists Toolkit’, Journal of Communication, pp 315-329

Sigal, I, and Biddle, E 2011 ‘Our Enduring Confusion About the Power of Digital Tools in Protest’, Fibreculture Journal, 26 Change.org (https://www.change.org/p/praying-the-gay-away-nearly-killed-me-outlaw-conversion-therapy?source_location=discover_feed)

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Political freedom of speech??

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#2 Politics and Civil Engagement

He didn't...... Did he??

Yet again I’m left cringing as I ask myself this question scrolling through Facebook while eating my breakfast before work in the morning. Not again.... I think, why does he do it to himself?.

Social media has become an important platform for political engagement with mass audiences. This particular platform allows for political messages to connect with a larger and younger audience. Barak Obama’s 2008 campaign has been referred to as the first ‘social media election’ (Enli, G. 2017. p.51)

As seen in the video above, social media can be used as a tool for electoral campaigning. This ‘Obama girl’ video was released in 2007 after Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was announced.  Although Obama’s campaign team denied any involvement in the creation of the video (Gibson, John. 2007, Fox News Channel) it does make you wonder if they were telling the truth… this sort of engagement with social media plays a major role in electoral campaigns as content such as this attracts interest from a wide variety of potential voters.

In a later American presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton and her team chose to use Twitter as a platform to announce her presidential candidacy.

***CLICK ME TO SEE HER TWEET***

In the past, presidential announcements were usually made in a press conference or relying on mainstream media to share the news (Eni, G. 2017. p.53). In conjunction with this Tweet, Clinton released a YouTube video titled ‘Getting started’:

This sort of political engagement is an important strategy as this content is presented completely biased and supportive of their own political parties, as opposed to mainstream media which can present information in any negative or positive way that they please (Young, S. 2010. p.220).

This can largely be manipulated by civil ownership of media outlets. High concentration of media ownership can lead to:

·       A lack in diversity of ownership

·       A lack in diversity of views

·       A lack in the notions that form democracy

A good example of this can be seen in Julia Guillards 2010 Australian electoral campaign. The bashings that she received in Australian mainstream media undeniably put pressure on her campaign. As the newspapers and media outlets criticised her it was clear that a high concentration of Australian media was owned by a supporter of the opposition.

lol.

Hashtags can also play an important role in politics on social media serving as a platform to create communities (Jericho, G. 2012. p.302). Civil engagement with politics has broadened as the online communities that connect through hashtags has grown. 

#auspol - for example has created a vast only community that allow Australian Politics to be seen as accessible and engaging to the every-day person. With a simple google search, it is easy to stay up to date with Australian politics and current events taking place within it. 

Political and civil engagement with social media has grown over the years, being used as a means of advertising, campaigning, researching and discussion. How will we see ourselves engaging in 10 years time? Only time will tell but for now let us pray that Trump finds his brain..... 

References:

Enli, G 2017, Twitter as an arena for the authentic outsider: Exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, European Journal of Communication, vol 32, no 1 pp 50-61.

Gibson, John (2007-06-14). "'Crush' Video Good for Obama". Fox News Channel. Retrieved 2008-11-05.

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.

twitter.com. 2018. #auspol. [ONLINE] Available at: https://twitter.com/hashtag/auspol?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag. [Accessed 8 April 2018].

YouTube. 2018. Crush On Obama - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU. [Accessed 8 April 2018].

YouTube. 2018. Getting Started | Hillary Clinton - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uY7gLZDmn4. [Accessed 8 April 2018].

Young, S. 2010, 'New, political reporting and the internet' in How Australia decides: election reporting and the media, Cambridge University Press, Australia, EBL eBook Library viewed 28 February 2012, pp 203-228.

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1# Blog or Social Media?

Tumblr, alike to many other digital networking sites serves a wide variety of purposes to its users. 

When I was about 14 years old I remember creating my first Tumblr account. I mostly used it to re-blog images in the hope to create a cool, trendy and ~*~emotional~*~ page that made me live my teenage angst to the fullest. 

E.g...

For all I remember I had the happiest childhood..... but I had to keep up the facade haha

Wilken and McCosker explain that the need for individuals to ‘produce, stage and cobble together their biographies’ (Beck, 1994. p.13) means that they are continuously ‘inventing’ themselves (p.291). I think my deep desire to assert my social status as creative and troubled through my Tumblr posts became evident as the amount of users grew rapidly. 

Tumblr is special in the way that it allows both the concepts of blogging and social media to connect and form a hybrid social media blogging site. Tumblr specifically can be used for many different things such as:

·       Writing blog posts

·       Posting images

·       Writing blog posts with pictures 

Similarly to other social networking sites, Tumblr allows for individuality as it demands a certain left of self-disclosure and exposer (Wilken & McCosker, 2014. p.292). Wilken and McCosker in their article ‘Social Selves’ discuss concepts around networking, self-expression, identity narratives and the ways in which social media engages them. Each social media site involves these concepts to a different degree. Although all public profiles demand for a level of transparency behind each page’s creator (Boyd, 2014. p.76), Tumblr is able to differentiate itself through its ability to conceal the authors identity. 

Social media and blogging can often be seen as similar resources serving similar purposes. However, to directly address this week’s topic ‘Is Tumblr a blog or a social media site?’ one must acknowledge the notion that Tumblr enables a degree of privacy to it's authors that other sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram do not. 

While considering Tumblrs comparisons to other social networking sites, similarities can be drawn between the following:

·       Ability to follow/unfollow other accounts

·       Private messaging

·       Curating a look of your page

·       Personally overseeing what information is/isn’t shared

Some factors that are considered unique to Tumblr:

·       A focus on image based content 

·       The ability to combine image based content as well as text 

·       The ability to pursue Tumblr as either a networking site OR a blog

·       Privacy of the author

·       Editing/choosing themes for your layout

The lists could go on, however after well considered research and thought, I don’t see a reason why Tumblr needs to be categorised into either rigid answer but more so seen as a platform that transcends the limits of either category to work harmoniously as both a BLOG and a SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE.

References:

Boyd, D 2014 ‘Participating in the Always On Lifestyle’, in Mandiberg (ed) The Social Media Reader, pp 71-76.

Siapera, E. (2012) ‘Socialities and Social Media’, in Introduction to New Media, pp 191-208.

Van Dijck, J (2013) ‘Engineering Sociality in a Culture of Connectivity’, pp. 2-23.

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

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