Digital Communities

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A Brief Look at Social Media in China

I have to admit, prior to the introduction of this module, I knew very little about the social media landscape in countries outside the western world. China in particular, which is obscene- considering it has the world’s largest Internet base of approximately 513 million people.

  Not only does China have the world’s largest Internet base, but not surprisingly the world’s most active social media ecology. More than 300 million people use it, which is roughly the combined population of France, Germany, Spain and he United States.

  However, unlike countries like France, Germany, the US, UK and Australia, platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube do not exist in China. This is due to the implementation of Internet censorship by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). There are more than 60 Internet regulations that have been implemented by state-owned companies and organisations, which block not only website content, but track the access of individuals. American platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were blocked by the PRC in 2009. According to Amnesty International, China “has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world” (Global Internet Freedom Consortium, 2005).

  Despite all this, China has an array of exuberant, home-grown social media platforms whose affordances, which were/are often more, advanced than in the West. Chinese users to embed multimedia content in social media more than 18 months before Twitter users could in the US for example.

  What I find to be most fascinating though, is what these exuberant, home-grown social media platforms are and how these social networking platforms are being used. YouTube, YouKu and Todou, for example. In the West, visual-imaging social networking platform ‘YouTube’ is predominately used to post and share short videos of cute animals or domestic bloopers. Chinese platforms YouKu and Todou however, are filled with professionally produced programs, which often replace the American equivalent of television stations. Because the only real media that the Chinese had access to prior to social media was pre-filtered and state-run, social media in China offers an alternative news source filled with user recommendations/ opinions etc. that the public is less sceptical of.

[northeastmda20009]

Everything recreation drugs represent in the US (and here)—escapism, socialising and a means of becoming a fantasy creature is embodied in South Koreas Gaming culture.—-Groom

Legalities, norms and rules are a debated topic from the internal and external aspects of gaming. South Korea’s parliament aims to put new laws on gaming in the hope to control the gaming companies but in this culture pro gaming is seen as fame and fortune.

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Second Life

Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. Since the launch of the program on June 23 2003, over 16 million accounts have been opened. In a 60 day period, an average of 75 000 people log on and spend approximately 100 minutes “inworld” per visit. This figure is significantly greater than those seen with popular social networking sites, which powerfully demonstrates the high level of engagement users experience with the game.

  When a user signs up and installs the program, the user interacts with other users through a graphical representation known as an avatar. The user has the ability to be anyone or anything. From vampires and Jedi Knights, to pop and porn stars. The possibilities are endless; the only limit is you.

  The entirety of the site is made up of user-generated content, with Terms of Service in place to ensure that users retain copyright for any content they create. Users can start their own businesses (and make real money), get married or divorced, study at university and/or commit crimes.

  Users often describe the online world found on Second Life as a “life simulator” as opposed to a game. In fact, the world of Second Life has its own currency, ‘the Linden Dollar’, which roughly converts to around $1 (USD) and ‘real life’ politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy for example, have run political campaigns on the site. The program is really what it says it is and for many people that’s what its used as; a second life.

  We all know what happens and what’s expected of us in the ‘real world’, but what about in a complex online world like Second Life? What sorts of behaviours and practices are considered norms in the online virtual communities? And how do they differ from ‘real life’. Should they differ from ‘real life’? Especially when ‘real life’ politicians campaign online and a virtual world currency is in place that converts to a USD dollar? Are the ‘community guidelines’ that are currently in place sufficient? Or do ‘real life’ laws and regulations need to be implemented into the game?

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Happiness= Reality- Expectations

Towards the end of last year, I read an article on Generation Y Yuppies and their experience of unhappiness linked to a simple formula: Happiness=Reality-Expectations. The article was written by ‘waitbutwhy.com’ and published by Huffington Post. The article provoked much discussion and soon trended across an array of social media sites and user profile networks.

  The article touched on the characteristics and experiences of generations prior to Generation Y- specifically the Baby Boomers and The G.I. Generation (“The Greatest Generation”) and how people’s perceptions of careers, expectations and self-entitlement had evolved throughout the decades.

  The example used to illustrate the content and context of the text is a character called “Lucy”. Lucy’s parents were born in the 1950’s (Baby Boomers) and were raised by members of the G.I. Generation (“The Greatest Generation”), who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II. They were focused on economic security and raised their children to build practical, sensible careers so that they could have a more rewarding and stable career. They were told that there would be nothing to stop them from securing their career goals, but had to put in hard years of work to make it happen. Lucy’s parents did better than they expected and felt optimistic.

  Fast track to Lucy’s generation, her parents raised her with much optimism about the future. She was told she was “special” and could achieve whatever she wanted, almost as if it was her right. This resulted in her having a somewhat inflated view of herself and faced the world with much disappointment when she didn’t seem to live up to her own (and peers) expectations.

  The article introduces the concept of “Facebook Image Crafting” in relation to how users have created an environment for themselves, which is carefully constructed to present an ideal portrayal of an individual’s identity. The problem with this is that it’s not realistic. People only publish and share content that will highlighttheir best moments/ achievements- otherwise known as “humble bragging”. If someone is tagged in a photo and doesn’t think it fits with their online aesthetic, they can hide it through the “untag” affordance Facebook offers. This goes for other digital communities evident in Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Flickr etc.

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A take on life without our devices and social media

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The 'Twitterisation' of Emergency Communications

When I was about eight years old, my family and I were woken up and told to pack our bags and head to higher ground. The little Western Australian rural town we lived in had seen two full days of relentless rain and was flooded. 

My mother and sister and I left the town, while my father worked within a subgroup of the S.E.S to assist the local council in making sure that people were safe and infrastructure was secure.

When communication technologies blacked-out, my mother and sister and I had absolutely no idea where my father was or what was going on with any of our peers and friends. This was pre- smart phones and accessible Wi-Fi. At this point in time we relied on reception signals and had none for three days. People were in an absolute panic. Nobody knew where their children having sleepovers were or what roads to higher ground were accessible.

Although a very small-scale example compared to a lot of crisis’s happening the world, it is still interesting to compare and contrast how the situation may have been managed and received in the new information-technology era we live in today. 

 University of Canberra social media researcher, Julia Posetti, talks a lot about the emerging role of social media in emergency communications in her journal article ‘The Twitterisation of ABC’s Emergency and Disaster Communication’ featured in The Australia Journal of Emergency Management, February 2012. A report released in January 2012, #qldfloods & @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods (Bruns, Burgess, Crawford & Shaw), highlights the importance of social media, particularly Twitter, in the role of emergency coverage and public support. The two accounts that were the most visible and effective during the floods were the Queensland’s Police account and ABC’s twitter account @ABCNews. Through effective social media content and strategy development, these two accounts were able to disseminate useful and verified information in an incredibly timely manner to an exceptionally large reach of groups and individuals.

 The result and crunch of this so-called ‘Twitterisation’ of emergency communications, is collective action. Think of the example I shared in my first few paragraphs. Families didn’t know where their children were, community members didn’t know where to access high ground. There were people who had returned from holidays and were completely unaware of what was happening in their town. If information were disseminated in a timely manner with a mass reach, what difference would this have made?

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PROTECTION VS FREEDOM OF SPEECH

“People do have a right to be bigots. In a free country people do have rights to say things that other people find offensive or insulting or bigoted” Attorney- General George Brandis

Over the past couple of weeks there has been a lot of talk and debate around the Abbott Government’s plan to fulfil an election promise and introduce legislation to repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. The first of the laws to be introduced into parliament will be the laws that make it unlawful to offend and insult people because of their race.

Although I 100% believe that people should be entitled to free speech as a basic democratic right, I also believe that a line needs to be drawn from a legislative point of view in order to protect people from racial abuse and hatred.  I don’t think that there is any democratic merit in allowing that sort of abuse and there is just absolutely no place for bigotry or racism in our society. It is a tricky one though! I still think that people have the right to express whatever opinion they may have, but if in a hate/racist nature, such opinions should definitely not be condoned or defended.

This sort of leads me to the idea of cyber-bullying and ‘drama’ as explained by danah boyd in ‘It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens’. There has been a lot of hype in and panic in the media lately regarding social media and the supposed increase in cyber-bullying and trolling as a result of these sites. What danah talks about dismisses this idea of an increase in bullying, but a heightened visibility. What she does say though, is that the heightened visibility can significantly increase the emotional duress of a bullying incident. The idea of ‘trolls’ and the debate as to whether or not they should be monitored is also discussed- particularly on the subject of maintaining freedom of speech.

Again the idea of protection/tolerance vs. freedom of speech is asked.

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COLLECTIVE ACTION

From the sites of Cairo, Barcelona and Madrid- the year 2011 saw the rise of multiple social movements where activists utilised social media to bring about collective action.

According to author Paolo Gerbaudo, social media allows for the process of symbolic construction of public space, which revolves around an emotional ‘scene-setting’ and ‘scripting ‘ (Alexander et.al, 2006: 36) of participants physical assembling. This practice is seen “in directing people towards specific protest events, in providing participants with suggestions and instructions about how to act, and in the construction of an emotional narration to sustain their coming together in a public space” (Gerbaudo 2012 p. 13).

So, although social media platforms may not be a force in them selves for revolution, which terms such as the ‘Facebook Revolution’ suggest, social media is a highly effective tool in bringing people together and organising collective action. It has a huge influence in the ability to disseminate information on a mass level, much like traditional media such as posters and flyers once used in the past.

In my own experience of digital activism, I can most relate to the theory denounced by Belarusian scholar Evgenyi Morozov known as ‘slacktivism’, or activism for slackers. I, like many others have clicked ‘like’ on a Facebook site or been part of a group that has used social media to unite members, plan actions or develop petitions, but on an active social and political level? have contributed minimally. I can therefore understand why negative connotations of ‘clicktivism’ are evident. However, social media shouldn’t be seen as a way to replace real-life interaction in a revolution, but as a way of enhancing interaction and/or organising action.

Although cultural jamming can be a problematic process because much of the content is covered by copyright, “cultural jammers”, vandals or activists can negotiate copyright material as part of the Creative Commons project. A project launched in 2004 which “aims to build a distributed information commons by encouraging copyright owners, where appropriate, to licence use of their material through open content licencing protocols” (Creative Commons Australia).

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Thunderclap

Thunderclap helps groups of people share a single message all at once.

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POLITICS AND THUNDERCLAP

If there is anything to be learnt from recent worldwide political campaigns, it’s that reaching out to target publics online is not only important, but also essential. From the 2008 Barack Obama Presidential Campaign, to Kony 2012- the use of social media in political campaigning has been an incredibly powerful and vital force in disseminating information across an exceptional range of networks.

  According to the Pew Research Center, nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) of American Internet users went online during the 2008 presidential campaign to take part in, or obtain updates about the progress of the campaign. This was 55 per cent of the entire adult population!

  Although the success of these kind of political campaigns (2008 Barack Obama Presidential Campaign and Kong 2012) was heavily influenced by the effective use of social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, a relatively new ‘crowdspeaking’ platform, Thunderclap, is definitely worth a look.

  Launched in 2012, Thunderclap is ‘crowdspeaking’ platform, which can do what for your messages on Twitter what ‘crowdfunding’ platform Kickstarter does for spreading your ideas. Get enough people to support your message by a certain time and your message will be ‘Thunderclapped’ (automatically re-tweeted) by every one of your supporters at the same time! Imagine what impact the effective use of a tool like this would have on future campaigns? If only Obama had his at his disposal. “ Twitter is a wonderful way to say something, but it’s a difficult way to be heard” Hashem Bajwa (Thunderclap CEO). This’ flash mob’ style of message dissemination is the platform’s greatest affordance and what separates it from other social media sites. It enables people to not only express an idea, but to be heard on a mass level.

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Everything is connected

WHEN dozens of countries refused to sign a new global treaty on internet governance in late 2012, a wide range of activists rejoiced. They saw the treaty, crafted...

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