Digital Communities @embblog-blog - Tumblr Blog

After engaging with material regarding China and their social media use, I truly must be living under a rock or am simply oblivious to my surroundings to not have been informed about The Great Firewall.

I have learnt that not only are the digital citizens of China not permitted to access...

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The general consensus of the topic regarding 'The Great Firewall of China' is that we all have felt we were living under a rock not to have known about this before! According to the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, China has the largest recorded number of imprisoned cyber-dissidents in the world. The offences they are accused of include communicating with groups abroad, signing online petitions and calling for reform and an end to corruption.

Astonishing a government can have control over what has become a progressively significant tool for modern communication.

Blog 8 - Social gaming: playing the crowd

The introduction of technologies, such as social media,into our society has enabled us to be able to connect with people on a worldwide scale. MMORPG’s – (Massively Multiple Online Role-Playing Games) have seen people from a large number of different cultures unite to perform a task together (Moverly 2012). While the benefits of the willing engagement of players result “in community status” (deZwart & Humphreys 2014), it can be argued that this ‘virtual’ sense of community has come at the cost of us losing our ability to socialise in the real word (Moverly 2012).

Siapera (2012, p.191-208 ) states that

“the existence of virtual communities in social media may imply that we are becoming more social as a society however, these groups usually contain a selection of people who possess the same closed minded view on a particular topic and the groups tend not to interact with each other. Users ignore the diversity the online virtual communities display as a whole and instead have the tendency to stay within the confines of their own community”.

She continues further on to say that

“virtual reality is a symbol of growing isolation” and “even as we walk among other people we are increasingly alone, increasing isolated and retreating to the worlds offered or created by new media”.

The lack of social interaction that can arise from excessive time spent on gaming can have long term social consequences (VideoGameAddiction 2014). These MMORGs such as “World of Warcraft” and “Eve” allow players to behave very differently to their real personas, and conduct in behaviour far outside what is acceptable and legal in society. “Eve”, released in 2003 and with over half a million players currently subscribed, awards murder, sabotage and piracy (deZwart & Humphreys 2014).

A great deal of research has gone into the effect of gaming, especially on youth, with an increasing number of studies into the positive effects of gaming. Although there is evidence to suggest some amount of gaming can improve cognitive abilities, the overwhelming data seems to suggest the social disadvantages of too much time spent gaming far outweigh the positives.

The following article lists some positives and negatives associated with MMORG’s, with alarming information stating that “Video game addiction is now taken so seriously by psychologists and psychiatrists that it was recently considered for inclusion in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) as a diagnosable psychiatric disorder” Anderson & Warburton (2012, p. 59) . It later states that children playing at this level of addiction “causes damage to family, social, school or psychological functioning” Anderson & Warburton (2012, p.60). The full results from research conducted are contained in this article extracted from the book ‘Growing up fast and furious: Reviewing the impacts of violent and Sexualised Media on Children’- http://public.psych.iastate.edu/caa/abstracts/2010-2014/12AW.pdf

References:

Anderson, C & Warburton, W 2012, Chapter 3: The impact of violent video games: An overview in Growing up Fast and Furious: Reviewing the Impacts of Violent and Sexualised Media on Children, The Federation Press

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

Moverly, D 2012, The Effects of Gaming on Socializing, Social Behaviour and Making Friends, Altered Gamer, viewed 6th February 2015, http://www.alteredgamer.com/worst-pc-gaming/50292-the-effects-of-gaming-on-socializing-social-behavior-and-making-friends/

Siapera, E 2012, 'Socialities and Social Media', in Introduction to New Media, pp 191-208

VideoGameAddiction , Social Consequences of Gaming Addiction, viewed 6th February 2015, <http://www.video-game-addiction.org/social-consequences.html>

jacquiii33-blog

(Image source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ellens-oscar-selfie-beats-president-3201446)

Wait…Let me take a selfie!

This is a common hashtag used on photographs on a Saturday night and a common quote used before leaving the house (within my social circle anyway!). This is...

embblog-blog

I have had The Chainsmokers' song in my head all week!!!

Here's the link for anyone who doesn't know what we are talking about:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdemFfbS5H0>

Blog 7 – Visual communities and social imaging

We live in the age of the selfie. Weather a harmless fad or a dangerous sign of our growing narcissism (Day 2013), there is no denying the popularity of the smart phone self portrait.

Marketing executives have seen this boom in popularity of the selfie as an opportunity. Personal care brand Dove began to look for a way to revive the brand when it was becoming overshadowed by competitors. A study of more than 3000 women in 10 different countries revealed that less than 2% of women considered themselves to be beautiful. Dove saw this as an opportunity to move beyond advertising the product’s features alone and to start a conversation about the perceptions of beauty (Bahadur 2014).

As part of their “Campaign for Real Beauty”, Dove released a short film titled “Selfie” – view the film here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFkm1Hg4dTI>. The film involved a number of young women and their mothers who had been asked to submit selfies using no filters or edits. The selfies were then enlarged and displayed in a gallery available for positive comments by the other participants, the result being that the insecurities of the physical attributes of some were what others deemed beautiful.

The campaign has formed a connection with women worldwide, sharing their thoughts and emotions and aiming to build confidence, which is the heart of the brand’s strategy (Bahadur 2014). ‘Selfie’ has had over a million views and has contributed to Dove becoming a more relevant and profitable brand.

Charities have also benefited from the popularity of the Selfie. The #nomakeupselfie campaign started trending in the UK when women began posting barefaced selfies on Facebook and Twitter and encouraging other to do the same with the hashtag #nomakeupselfie, while making a donation to cancer research. The campaign was not found by Cancer UK, but grew organically and raised £8 million in 6 days. Harpal Kumar, Chief Executive Officer of Cancer Research UK stated:

“we don’t receive any government funding for our research and so it is phenomenal to think that the generosity of the public is enabling us to fund critical research that we didn’t have the money for 6 days ago. Being able to fund more trials will bring forward the day when all cancers are cured” (The Guardian 2014).

The campaign quickly went viral and spread to enormous popularity in Australia, raising almost $2 million in 24 hours alone (Cleo 2014). It was criticized for being more about vanity than practical and useful action, but the Institute of Fundraising noted that combining popular trends with fundraising is a successful way of reaching young and untapped audiences who wouldn’t otherwise think about a particular charity or cause (BBC News 2014).

References:

Bahadur, N 2014, Dove 'Real Beauty' Campaign Turns 10: How A Brand Tried To Change The Conversation About Female Beauty, Huffington Post 2014, viewed 10th 19th December 2014, < <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/dove-real-beauty-campaign-turns-10_n_4575940.html>

‘Cynthia Wade Provides A “Selfie Perspective on Beauty’ [image], Sootonline 2014, viewed 14th January 2015, <http://shootonline.com/news/cynthia-wade-provides-selfie-perspective-beauty>

Day, E 2012, How selfies became a global phenonomen, The Guardian, viewed 25th January 2015, <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/14/how-selfies-became-a-global-phenomenon>

‘No-makeup selfies raise £8m for Cancer Research UK in six days’, Thu Guardian 2014, viewed 14th January 2015, <http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/25/no-makeup-selfies-cancer-charity>

marlodigicomms-blog

After several weeks of reading about social media and digital communities being used somewhat inappropriately to troll, bully or protest, it was nice to, this week, study the usage of social media in a positive context.

Crowdsourcing

The most well-known example of crowdsourcing to date in...

embblog-blog

The following blog mentions 'Social Mapping' which I did not include information on in my own blog this week. Social mapping brings together amateur video, photography and information during disasters to deliver knowledge to the public, however the valid point is made that as the number of users increases, moderating the site becomes increasingly challenging. In further research of this topic I came across a report produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation, based on a workshop held in Geneva in 2012, to identify the best practices and paths to overcome the main challenges of using social media in crisis communications. Read the full report here: http://www.oecd.org/gov/risk/oecdworkshoponinter-agencycrisismanagement.html>

Blog 6 - Crowdsourcing in times of crisis

Crowdsourcing:

“the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers” (Merriam Webster Online 2014).

As the population grows, natural disasters like earthquakes, floods and fires impose increased challenges on public health and safety and welfare. Crowdsourcing during these times can provide real-time data, enabling quick responses during times of crisis (Tierney 2014). Social media as a crowdsourcing mechanism provides important new communication pathways, some of which could be used to assist people on an individual level (Gao et al. 2011).

Australia’s official ‘emergency broadcaster’, the ABC, helped pave the way to making social media a routine work practice through their use of Twitter in Victoria’s 2009 ‘Black Saturday’ bushfires. Donaldson (2014) states in his article: “In 2011, the states emergency services integrated social media and website emergency feeds, meaning website updates are automatically posted to Facebook & Twitter. They have also introduced systematic monitoring of incoming information, giving a clearer picture of how information is being interpreted, and allowing for real-time changes in messaging as well as providing a greater number of citizen inputs on fast-changing situations on the ground, such as bushfires”. Read the full article – ‘In times of crisis, agencies need to speak on social media’ here: <http://themandarin.com.au/2195-times-crisis-agencies-need-speak-social-media/?pgnc=1>

The Black Saturday Bushfires killed 173 people, injured 414 people, destroyed 2,100 homes and displaced 7,562 people (Black Saturday Bushfires 2015). The following link shows a civilian's first hand perspective on the enormous ferocity of the blaze.

“Black Saturday Bushfires at St Andrews Vic Australia” <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3dPIVvkJ28>

As citizens expectations grow, the government needs to continually monitor social media use to effectively manage crises. In an online interview with the ABC’s national social media co-ordinator, Lo (2012) stated: “it is possible [for organisations involved in emergency communication to avoid social media] but it is unadvisable. To avoid social media is to be missing an ever increasing and vital portion of the puzzle”.

References:

Black Saturday Bushfires 2015, Black Saturday Bushfires, viewed 24th January 2015, <http://www.blacksaturdaybushfires.com.au/>

'crowdsourcing entry' 2014, Merriam Webster, viewed 9th January 2015,<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crowdsourcing>.

Donaldson, D 2014, In times of crisis, agencies need to speak on social media, The Mandarin, viewed 9th January 2015, <http://themandarin.com.au/2195-times-crisis-need-speak-social-media/?pgnc=1>

Gao,H, Barbier, G, Goolsby, R & Zeng, D 2011, Harnessing the Crowdsourcing Power of Social Media for Disaster Relief, University of Arizona, viewed 9th January 2015, <http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA581803>

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

Tierney,T 2014, Crowdsourcing Disaster Response: Mobilizing Social Media for Urban Resiliance, viewed 23rd January 2015, <http://www.europeanbusinessreview.com/?p=4911>

abpositivelydigital

Circa 1993, my final year of elementary school in small city Canada, a group of students, including myself, designed a notebook titled ‘The Slam Book’. Essentially, it was a book with one page per student in our class. The name was written at the top and the rest of the page was free for comment...

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Loved the personal insight included in the following blog re 'The Slam Book', which reminded me of 'The Burn Book' featured in the movie Mean Girls (see link: <http://meangirls.wikia.com/wiki/Burn_Book>).

Your admission of this proves exactly how bullying as changed and evolved over time, with the volume of online bullying, in my opinion, far outweighing the volume of real life bullying due to the advantage the online bully has of remaining anonymous. The sheer volume of online bullying has added new words to our language (Troll) and new laws to our legal system (see link: <http://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/4259/internet-trolls-can-be-prosecuted-under-australian.aspx>).

Blog 5 - Trolling and social media conflict

Internet ‘trolling’ refers to offensive online behaviour, often with the ultimate goal of gaining attention. It is a form of manipulation, often in jest and for the tacit fun of online community members (Donath 1999). Trolls intend to embarrass, anger and disrupt, usually for amusement at the expense of the victim (Dahlberg 2001). Urban dictionary gets to the heart of what many agree is a fair interpretation of the term, with their top rated definition of ‘trolling’ being described as: “Being a p*^%k on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because hey, it’s the internet and you can” (Urban Dictionary 2004).

The rise of social media use has prompted concerns about cyberbullying and trolling. The current ‘Commonwealth Criminal Code Act’ part 10.6 is used to prosecute individuals who are ‘trolls’. This law prohibits offensive online behaviour used to menace, harass or cause offence to the reasonable person (FindLaw Australia 2015) however, these laws are not currently effective in prosecuting all perpetrators of online offences such as trolling. Police officers at State and Federal level are not committed to perceiving these offences as serious as they actually are with the potential to harm individuals (SBS 2013).

The rise in social media has also helped to feed the public’s obsession with obtaining information about celebrities. When people become famous they are often objectified, discussed and ridiculed with little consideration for the ramifications, and this puts enormous pressure on these people’s lives (Boyd 2014). TV personality Charlotte Dawson told 60 minutes in 2012 how a hate campaign on Twitter prompted her to attempt suicide – see link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3sUT2ifDAM. She was targeted by a stream of abusive death threats including “please go hang yourself”, stick your head in a toaster”, “kill yourself” and the like. Dawson explained it was the relentless and vicious messages that finally broke her, saying “they got the better of me and they won” (Herald Sun 2012). Dawson was found dead from suicide in her Woolloomooloo home in February of 2014, after appearing earlier the same week on Network 9’s A Current Affair and Network 10’s The Project talking about her experiences with cyberbullying and twitter trolls (News.com.au 2014).

(Wilson et al (Eds) 2013) suggest:

“trolling has perhaps displaced pornography as the obscenity which underwrites the demand that the Internet be brought under control”.

Instances such as the tragic death of Dawson indicate that a review into the inadequacy of Australian laws is required, along with a greater amount of resources into detecting crimes.

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.

Dahlberg L 2001, ‘Computer–Mediated Communication and the Public Sphere: A critical analysis’. Journal of Computer Mediated–Communication, vol. 7, no. 1, viewed 11th January 2015, <http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol7/issue1/dahlberg.html>.

Donath JS 1999, ‘Identity and deception in the virtual community’, in MA, Smith & P, Kollock (eds), Communities in Cyberspace, Routledge, London, pp. 27-58.

FindLaw Australia 2015, Internet Trolls can be Prosecuted under Australian Law, viewed 5th January 2015, < http://www.findlaw.com.au/articles/4259/internet-trolls-can-be-prosecuted-under-australian.aspx>

Herald Sun 2012, Charlotte Dawson: How the cyber trolls beat me, viewed 10th January 2015, http://m.heraldsun.com.au/news/charlotte-dawson-how-the-cyber-trolls-beat-me/story-fnbk7kwa-1226463900647?nk=3f39ab19488df680eed29cb4e8760e60

News.com.au 2014, Charlotte Dawson foubd dead after long ad public battle with depression, viewed 5th January 2015, http://mobile.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/charlotte-dawson-found-dead-after-long-and-public-battle-with-depression/story-fn907478-1226834561969

SBS 2013, ‘Trolling laws’ inadequate, lawyer says, viewed 5th January 2015, <http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2012/10/16/trolling-laws%E2%80%99-inadequate-lawyer-says>

Urban Dictionary: trolling, UrbanDictionary.com, viewed 10th January 2015, <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling>

Wilson, J, Fuller, G & McCrea, C (eds) 2013, Trolls and the negative space of the internet, Fibreculture Journal, Issue 22, viewed 22 September 2014, <http://twentytwo.fibreculturejournal.org>.

valerialeek

WEEK 6 - Digital citizenship 2: Activism and protest

(Sea Shepherd 2014)

With the introduction of social media, organisations have had opportunities of reaching a global audience which wasn’t possible before. Before the introduction of the internet, we were relying on the information provided by the media in the form of newspapers and radio. We weren’t sure, however, that we were getting the real deal - that is, the truth.

The truth is something the media has never been capable of doing as it was overshadowed by the big corporations and THEIR meaning of truth. We were unaware of what was really happening around us and in this day and age, us as inhabitants of planet earth, want more. We want more control over what we know and what we should know. But it’s not easy.

Social media provided an outlet for organisations and non-for-profit to turn the blind eye into a fully functioning one, and allow us, the outsiders, to know the real truth. But what is the REAL truth? It is our right to know. To know what’s really happening outside our four walls.

"Sea Shepherd", a non-for-profit organisation aiming at protecting our waters from the unnecessary killing of marine life (and particularly whales), have a major social media presence which means that more people know about what they do and support their work in their current active campaigns. This way, they can raise awareness, get people involved and raise some much needed funding for their adventures.

Author Malcolm Gladwell argues that: "People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the internet came along. Barely anyone in East Germany in the 1980s had a phone — and they ended up with hundreds of thousands of people in central Leipzig and brought down a regime." (Engadget 2011)

I disagree.

Social media has become the main platform for the marginalized Arab masses, because it enables them to express their frustration and send their message to the world in defiance against censorship, which is widespread in the Arab world. This is the perfect example of everyday activism.

Though the social media-organized protests in Egypt were not as peaceful as the ones in Tunisia, they successfully led to the ousting of a dictator, Hosni Mubarak. The movement began on Jan. 25 2011 (spurring popular Twitter hashtag #Jan25) and lasted until Feb. 11, when Mubarak finally agreed to step down.

The power of social media has definitely taken on some intricate challenges over the years and the future looks brighter and brighter for all of us, just looking for the real TRUTH.

embblog-blog

The following blog on Activism and protest brought to my attention the 2011 ousting of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarah. I researched the topic further to reading this blog and came across an interesting profile on Hosini Mubarah, detailing his ruling of Egypt for almost 30 years before he was swept from power in a wave of mass protest (See link: http://bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12301713 ).

The is an extraordinary example of the capacity of social media to give power to civilians to make their country a fairer and safer place to live. Further readings on the #Jan25 campaign and its humble beginnings can be found at the following website, its well worth the read (See link: http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/06/jan25-twitter-egypt/ .

beingwired

Tomorrow: @Houseofcards. No spoilers, please.

- @BarackObama (Twitter, 2014)

(Greysaber, 2013)

In 2007, President-elect Barack Obama sourced out the best of the best in order to instantly engage millions upon millions of supporters through social media platforms and...

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When considering how successful politicians are in their use of social media, I agree with the statement in the below post - 'many politicians have Facebook or Twitter accounts but do not make personal efforts to create posts written by themselves and not their office'. President Barak Obama has succeeded in popularity through acknowledging his office are responsible for managing political issues however, his own tweets are all signed personally "BO". As stated in my own blog on Politics and Civil Cultures, 74% of internet users in the United States went online during the 2008 presidential election to get information relating to the campaign. Obama's social media success contributed to the highest percentage of under 25 year old votes since exit polling began in 1976.

Blog 4 – Digital Citizenship 2: Activism and Protest

activism*

*the doctrine or practice of vigorous action or involvement as a means of achieving political or other goals, sometimes by demonstrations, protests, etc. (Dictionary.com 2014).

or slacktivism*?

*the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem (Urban Dictionary 2013).

In 2012, Invisible Children launched Kony 2012, an online campaign aimed at stopping the Lord’s Resistance Army in Africa and making their leader – Joseph Kony, famous enough to be captured and arrested. The group were hugely successful in creating awareness of their campaign – with over 1 million views of their half hour YouTube video in under a week, breaking all records at the time (Truthloader 2013). See link – Kony 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

(News.com.au 2013)

Founder Jason Russell appealed to the masses through creating feelings of empowerment, with messages such as “Who are you to end a war? I’m here to tell you, who are you not to?” (Invisible Children 2012).Despite the success of the YouTube video, Joseph Kony still remains free today.

Invisible Children raised 20 million dollars through their campaign, however the portion of that amount spent of finding Joseph Kony was somewhat dwarfed by the amount they spent on promoting themselves (Truthloader 2013). In depth analysis suggest Invisible Children’s story was over simplified and even offensive in its portrayal of Uganda. Ethiopian-American writer Dinaw Mengestu stated:

“to claim [the children] were invisible because a group of college students traveling through Uganda happened to stumble upon a war they were too ignorant to have known of before going to the region is, to put it mildly, patronizing” (Testa 2014).

Many people who may had thought they were empowered through sharing the message online were confronted with the realisation they in face had little part to do with a project which had no significant outcome.

(Stanton Marris 2014)

So what exactly was it that made the Kony 2012 campaign so incredibly popular? A study conducted in Canada over household internet use asked respondents whether they felt their internet use extended their “possibilities for action in the world” and whether it made them feel “empowered.” Extractions taken from their responses included the following statements:

“Oh for sure. There is no question. You know before—I mean, I knew something was going on out there… now I am part of this”

(Fiona 56, Lawyer)

“In terms of personal growth I’d still be at the Neanderthal stage if it hadn’t been for the opportunity that I’ve encountered online… this is how I give back to society”

(Esther 47, Farm Wife)

(Bakardjieva 2009).

Referring to the communitarian view of citizenship, I believe that the Kony 2012 campaign captured people’s interest on a deeper level than seeing the capture of Joseph Kony, and appealed to their need to define themselves as a member of a community, partaking in a moral and cultural agreement over shared values.

References:

Activism: Define Activism at Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, viewed 16th December 2014, <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/activism>

Bakardjieva, M 2009, 'Subactivism: Lifeworld and Politics in the Age of the Internet', Information Society, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 91-104

“Empowerment” [image], Stanton Marris, viewed 18th December 2014, <http://www.stantonmarris.com/tag/empowerment/>

Kony 2012, Invisible Children, 5 March, viewed 8th December 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc>.

Remember Kony 2012? Well, its 2013. What happened? [image], news.com.au 2013, viewed 8th December 2014, http://www.news.com.au/world/remember-kony-2012-well-its-2013-what-happened/story-fndir2ev-1226550575923

Testa, J 2014, Two Years After KONY 2012, Has Invisible Children Grown Up? , Jessica Testa 2014, viewed 8th December 2014 <http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/two-years-after-kony-2012-has-invisible-children-grown-up?>

Truthloader 2013, Joseph Kony 2012: What happened to Invisible Children? – Truthloader, 5 March, viewed 8th December 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okmswBs4rdg>.

Urban Dictionary: slacktivism, UrbanDictionary.com, viewed 16th December 2014, <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=slacktivism>

Blog 3 – Digital Citizenship: Politics and Civil Cultures

Politics and Civil Cultures looks at how politicians and political parties use social media platforms as tools for communication and to aid in political campaigning. In researching this topic, we contemplate the link between democratic political media systems and social media.

(SocialAppsHQ 2013)

It’s easy to support the claim that the internet was a democratising force in the 2000s. Research shows that 74% of Americans internet users went online during the 2008 presidential election to get information relating to the campaign. This was 55% of the entire adult population, and their use wasn’t purely to view existing information. 13% of adults used the internet to create their own political content and 14% used social networking sites to obtain political information or take part in the political campaign in some form (Smith et al. 2009).

At the same time in Australia, traditional media companies were remodeling their websites to include a greater emphasis on audio and visual design and to promote user interaction. In 2007 the ABC website featured interactive tools to follow campaigns online and the opened a site allowing users to contribute and leave comments - See link: http://www.abc.net.au/news/your-say/ .Other media outlets used blogs, online polls, quizzes, games, voting predictors and the like (Young 2010).

Despite the increasing interaction, one view put forward by political science professor Jodi Dean is that

“democracy is a powerful political ideal, one that is materialised by social media technologies that let us cover over our current political impotence and imagine ourselves as active political participants” (DCU School of Communication 2013).

Dean introduced the idea of communicative capitalism - the merger of democratic ideals and capitalism (Kubitschko 2012). This idea suggests that global information and financial networks offer various lifestyles with which individuals can experiment and be unique, however these unique identities are extremely vulnerable and incapable of establishing a position from which they are able to make sense of their own experiences and place in the world. (DCU School of Communication 2013).

(featurePics.com 2009)

The idea of democracy involves communicative freedoms of speech, and this circulation of communication and media chatter are somehow supposed to impact political parties. However, due to the massive amount of networks of global communications, governmental actors are relieved from the obligation to respond on an individual level and engaged debates are non-existent (Dean 2005, p.58-59). I believe through overuse of social media, the actual messages being made are overlooked. Just like the article I referred to in my first blog regarding the “typical” teenage girl’s obsession with the number of ‘likes’ and comments received on their personal posts, (see “Blog 1 - Introduction to Digital Communities & Social Media) it is not important what has been said, but only that something has been said at all.

References:

DCU School of Communication 2013, IAMCR 2013 Plenary No. 3 - Jodi Dean, 3 July, viewed 1st December 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ABPuNQ6IU>.

Dean, J 2005, Cultural Politics, Volume 1, Issue 1, Berg UK.

Illustration of Democracy Word Cloud (image), featurePics.com 2009, viewed 13th December 2014, <http://www.featurepics.com/online/Democracy-Word-Cloud-1338971.aspx>

Kubitschko, S (2012) 'Critical media studies in times of communicative capitalism: an interview with Jodi Dean', PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication 4(1) (June): 39-44

Smith, Aaron and Rainie, Lee (2009), “The Internet’s role in campaign 2008”, Washington DC, Pew Internet and American Life Project, Pew Research Centre http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/6-The-Internets-Role-In-Campaign-2008.aspx

Social Media Monitoring (image), SocialAppsHQ 2013, viewed 13th December 2014, <http://www.socialappshq.com/blog/2013/10/09/social-media-monitoring-and-political-parties/>

Young, S 2010, 'News, political reporting and the internet', in How Australia Decides, Cambridge University Press, Victoria, Australia.

jacquiii33-blog

This is my first blog for the semester, apart from the images I have been sharing. I am going to briefly look at a few different points covered within Digital Communities and how I have gained a greater understanding of the power of social media and how it used as a great tool within society for a...

embblog-blog

I like how this blog is clearly written in the first person. I tried to do so in my own blog, but I find the way jacquiii33 has presented it is much more successful than my own attempt! Very interesting that Facebook gathers data in order to aim certain advertising towards users. I found another blog detailing how 105 advertisers have done just that on FB – here is the link, its quite a fascinating read! - http://socialfresh.com/facebook-advertising-examples/

eatsleep-blogrepeat-blog-bl-blog

In my own experience, I don’t follow politics on social media. My observation within the last week has given me a clearer understanding of how leaders interact with their followers to gain trust and more importantly their vote.

At the end of the day, the size of one’s Twitter...

embblog-blog

A visually appealing blog with the use appropriate pictures and key words and phrases in bold. A point made that captured my attention was “At the end of the day, the size of one’s Twitter following is irrelevant. It may look good at first glance but it pales into insignificant when measured against real, honest and genuine online engagement” (Jericho 2012). A really interesting point which I think is the polar opposite of how the younger generation view social media platforms – as shown in a link I posted in my blog from week 1 –http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/teen-iphone_n_3322095.html

Blog 2- Social Media Platforms

In researching the politics of social media platforms, Tarleton Gillespie’s “The Politics of Platforms” asks “How do sites promise to be everything and not everything at the same time”. For example - YouTube promises to be everything by claiming to be a platform to be heard for amateur users, a platform to be seen for advertisers, a platform for distribution to it media partners however, merely a platform to law makers (Gillespie, T 2010). It seems they aim to be a structure which facilitates without making choices regarding content, implying they are not accountable for what is shown on their site.

Another question posed by Gillespie was “how do (sites) intervene with what they provide, under what justification, and with what implications”. Facebook promises users ‘the freedom to share whatever they want’ but intervenes with its own provision with a clause in its terms of service which states “you shall not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence” (Gillespie, T 2010). Of course this notion is supported by the vast majority of all social media users however, who is responsible for governing what fits into the described categories? Facebook ran into trouble when they started removing images of women breastfeeding due to the rule ‘no nudity in photography’ until users started protesting about the longstanding cultural debate of breastfeeding in public being acceptable – see link (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2812558/Facebook-removes-mother-s-picture-touching-moment-breastfed-premature-baby-daughter-user-calls-offensive.html). Many sites are now adopting a reactive rather than proactive approach to governance of their content, where users are given the responsibility to ‘flag’ images they deem inappropriate.

Self-governance of sites is not the only way in which users are becoming more involved in social media. A host of affordances have been adopted, one of the most notable being Twitter’s “hashtag”, where users devised their own system of linking tweets and making them searchable by placing the now widely used # (hashtag) in front of a word or phrase. (Murthy, D 2013).

Last week I imposed a challenge upon myself to switch from texting to talking in an attempt to benefit more from companionship and less from technology. As I was wrapping up my blog I received a text from my hairdresser reminding me of an appointment the following day, to which I confirmed via text. I then sent her a text when I was running late to the same appointment the very next day. At the appointment after a brief conversation I have to admit I was relieved when she moved onto the next client as I finally had a chance to check my Facebook which I hadn’t checked all day. I then had a conversation with friends via Messenger organizing a future catch up. I wonder at this catch up, how long it will take for us to stray from engaging directly with each other to bury our heads in our i-Phones, to update our status, ‘check-in’ at our current location or maybe add a group selfie. Stay tuned to find out how the event unfolded…

References:

Gillespie, T 2010, Tarleton Gillespie on The Politics of Platforms, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, viewed 22 September 2014, <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/luncheon/2010/01/gillespie>

Osborne, L 2014, Facebook removes mothers picture touching moment breastfed premature baby daughter user calls offensive, The Daily Mail, 29th October 2014, viewed 19th November 2014 <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2812558/Facebook-removes-mother-s-picture-touching-moment-breastfed-premature-baby-daughter-user-calls-offensive.html>

Murthy, D 2013, Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age, Polity, Cambridge.

Blog 1 – Introduction to Digital Communities & Social Media

“I share, therefore I am” (Turkle 2013).

An interesting view displayed in Sherry Turkle’s “Connected but Alone”, displaying modern society’s increasing dependence on social media. As of January 2014, statistics show that 89% of Australians use social media and of that number, 81% use Facebook (Australian social media use January 2014). Many of us would argue it is a way of keeping in contact with our family and friends, a platform in which to create new relationships or join groups of like-minded individuals, or a means of rekindling lost or forgotten friendships.

While this may be true for some, this weeks’ study of Digital Communities & Social Media asked us to consider if social media gives us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship (Turkle 2013). Modern generations have become obsessed with the number of ‘likes’ received on shared statuses and photos – see link (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/teen-iphone_n_3322095.html). The notion that people would rather text than talk leads us to the assumption that people crave control and have become uncomfortable in situations they feel loss of control, such as talking in real time and not having the opportunity to prepare a cleaned up version of conversation.

The existence of virtual communities in social media may imply we are becoming more social as a society however, these groups usually contain a selection of people who possess the same closed minded view on a particular topic and the groups tend not to interact with each other. Users ignore the diversity the online virtual communities display as a whole and instead have the tendency to stay within the confines of their own community (Siapera, E. 2012).

Reflecting on the introduction to the study of Digital Communities I ask myself the following – is social media taking us places as a society we do not want to go? Are we sacrificing real relationships in place of virtual popularity? As a challenge to myself this week I am going to aim to switch from texting to talking in the hope of benefiting more from companionship and less from technology.

References:

Turkle 2013, Connected, but alone? April 2013, viewed 7th November 2014 <http://bit.ly/VhYg6X>

Australian social media use January 2014, 3RDSENSE, viewed 7th November 2014 <http://bit.ly/Y2T5to>

Bosker, B 2013, What really happens on a teen girl’s iPhone, viewed 19th November 2014 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/teen-iphone_n_3322095.html>

Siapera, E 2012, 'Socialities and Social Media', An Introduction to New Media, pp 191-208

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