Emily Dainton

Language and New Media 👀

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Do you agree with this?

We’re always being told that our generation are on our phones too much and we can’t function without them. But could it be considered that we’re just making use of the technology that older generations have provided us with?

[jess-a-barnes]

I kind of agree with this yeah, because I do think that people find themselves looking at their phones when they have nothing to do.  But they are also used as a barrier to sort of maintain someone’s positive face, I guess.  By looking at your phone when someone sits next to you on the train is just a way of letting them know that they don’t have to talk to you.  They might not have had any intention of looking at it then.  It’s just sort of the modern day book or newspaper which is easier to carry around.  And because the world is always moving and new things are always happening, people’s phones are where they get a lot of their info in order to keep up with everything.  It’s increasing communication- making it asynchronous, as well as also being a way of avoiding people. 

[connectchloe-blog]

The intertextuality of this photo is great, a photo of a post-it note! Growing up my parents didn’t use mobile phones it was only me and my brothers who did.. so they had no understanding of what it was like to own one and therefore didn’t like us using them much around the house. However, since they both got mobiles its been a different story! It’s now us ‘children’ who can’t seem to hold their attention for long before their phones steal their eyes, dinging away with emails and texts. I think this is very reflective of how older generations will often criticise what they don’t understand, and also how technologically capable the younger generations are! 

[lisanewmedia]

I can definitely relate to the photo above! I always find myself on my phone when I’m doing nothing or when I’m bored in the library. Obviously I’ll try refrain from using my phone but I can’t help the thought process of “replying to one message won’t hurt…”

I agree that our generation is constantly being told we’re on our phones or social media too much, but it’s ironic because the most users on Facebook are people over the age of 40? So, although we’re supposedly always on Facebook, in terms of age demographic, those who are between 40-60 actually use it more than people of our age!

I also agree with Chloe’s point, that now that our parents or older generations are getting into technology more and more, it’s harder to keep them away from it! I constantly find myself struggling to get my parents to engage in conversation with me, because they’re too busy staring at their phones. However, it questions whether adults would’ve been this reliant and obsessed with technology if it had been this developed when they were teenagers?

[emilylnm-blog]

I have recently been staying with my family in Dorset and it was very interesting having dinner with them. My younger brother thought it was acceptable to pull his phone out and check the football scores mid-meal. He did this because it has never really been an enforced rule within my household. However, the reaction in this household was very different. My auntie said to him ‘we don’t do phones at our dinner table, you’re setting a bad example for my girls’. 

I guess there is a time and a place!

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Trying to be thinner than a piece of paper is a worrying new craze

The latest in a seemingly endless series of bizarre Chinese beauty fads on social media is also surely the most dangerous yet.

We often talk about memes and virality and how it’s so easy for posts to rapidly spread all over the internet and gain attention, but to what extent is this a good thing?

 #a4waist definitely seems a step too far in my opinion. Memes can be great when they’re raising awareness or spreading jokes, but encouraging unrealistic body types is dangerous use of social media, with no thought towards the potential harm it could cause.

[lisanewmedia]

I completely agree! It’s stuff like this that can make the internet quite a worrying place. It makes me question who even comes up with a ‘craze’ such as this? Who woke up one morning and thought that everyone should be thinner than a piece of a4 paper?

Although these crazes are worrying, I’d say the most worrying thing is the attention that they are receiving and the fact that people are genuinely attempting to change their bodies for these online crazes. Sometimes what people post on the internet don’t realise what an impact it can have on friends, family or even strangers.

[emilylnm-blog]

This reminds me of the ‘Kylie Jenner lips’ craze... people were sucking extremely hard into plastic bottles and plumping their lips out. It was horrendous. There were stories of people who had burst blood vessels and severe bruising. 

[lisanewmedia]

Multi-Communicative Chats

The main concept of Skype is to be able to do video calls with people from all round the world and stay in contact with your loved ones. Although this is what skype is advertised for, it’s not what it’s limited to. On skype you can also type messages whilst on video calls, you can just have a voice call and type without the use of a camera. This shows the different possibilities of chats just available on Skype and the ways in which you can combine these different methods.

This can also be done in Whatsapp individual or group chats, I find that my group chat with all my best friends from home always incorporates a variety of methods. We use text most regularly, as well as emojis and now the microphone option to send voice notes over snapchat seems to be very popular within my group chats!

This is also on Facebook as well, Facebook have had the option to video call someone within chats for some time now, which suggests that social media platforms are constantly encouraging others to bring new ideas to the table.

[emilylnm-blog]

Another great one to use is Zoom! They are also extremely helpful for conference calls or other business purposes! you have the option to ‘screen share’ as well which is very useful. In fact, I believe we have used this regularly for our English revision!

[jackynewmedia-blog]

I think this image is so cute. Last Christmas my Nan taught my other Nan how to text and she’s literally so proud of herself and thinks it’s very clever. But by the time she’d learnt this, we had well advanced into snapchat, Instagram and Twitter. Technology advances so quickly that if you’re not on it right away it can easily become daunting and so much to catch up on. I think my Nan will be happy just texting, as her phone doesn’t even have an Internet function and she still prefers to use the landline.

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I recently had this experience when my mum added my grandparents into our family Facebook chat. I was talking to her on the phone the other day and mentioned that they never actually say anything in reply to messages. She told me they love seeing what we’re all up to, but thought it was just something for them to read, and that they didn’t even know that they could type a reply. I find it so funny to think that they’ve just been silently reading for all this time,, and I can’t wait until they actually send their first message now my mum has shown them how to!

[hollymedia2-blog]

My grandad was beyond excited when he went to a fancy dress party, dressed as the old guy from Up (he had balloons and everything). He later found out that a younger girl at the party had put a photo of him up on Facebook. He had rang my dad to tell me that I could see how good his costume was on “facetube” and that he was now having lessons on how to use “facetube.” My dad and I didn’t really feel the need to correct him that he was confusing Facebook and YouTube together, because we just found it hilarious how grandad was only just understanding a social networking sites that’s been around for 12 years. I guess you are never too old to join in on social networking sites and learn new things, even if they aren’t exactly the latest platform of socialising.

[emilylnm-blog]

I had a similar situation with my grandparents! My mum and dad had gone away on holiday and so my grandma (who also lives with us) was talking to me asking if i’d heard from them at all. I said to her ‘no but the villa looks lovely’ and she said ‘how do you know that?!’ (in complete amazement). I told her i’d seen a picture on Facebook and she couldn’t believe it.

[connectchloe-blog]

No more paper homework

As James Paul Gee advocates in “GOOD VIDEO GAMES AND GOOD LEARNING” games can be highly effective teachers. Maybe instead of homework there should be a role-playing simulation game enrolled across schools where students get to take on ‘personnas’ i.e a scientist and the teachers can set questions/formulas based on the week’s learning and if the student is correct their scientist character gets to level up / buy new lab equipment with point earning etc? I know it would have motivated me more back in secondary school! 

[hollymedia2-blog]

I would have loved this in school, mainly because I was rubbish at science! I do think adding a virtual gaming system into education would benefit a lot of students and make learning things fun for those who struggle to focus on just a text book. I know I always revised better playing games on BBC Bitesize, as the activities made me remember things in a different way to just reading and then rewriting.

[emilylnm-blog]

I agree with this! In school we had the odd one or two maths sites where we would complete a series of games online. They were so much fun, and really encouraged me to learn. 

[hollymedia2-blog]

I can’t believe they are making horror films based on Facebook friend requests, this is even worse than that Skype horror movie that came out a few years ago. This just demonstrates the power of social networking in our lives, that not only do millions of people use it, but producers can see opportunities to make films that will make you question how scary the Internet can be. Would you go and watch a film like this? Would it make you think twice about who you are friends with on Facebook?

[emilylnm-blog]

I think there are perhaps two arguments to this.

One the one hand, if these films are designed to highlight the importance of being careful online and the dangers of social media, then I think it is a good idea.

But unfortunately it’s probably more likely that they have made a horror film about social media because its the most significant way of targeting our generation. The thing that we best relate to!

[jess-a-barnes]

This meme shows that obviously people think that there is something wrong with our generation and is notorious I guess, for being constantly online.  I know that this generation’s online presence is a lot more prominent than it would have been thirty years ago- but is this necessarily wrong?

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Maybe our posture has deteriorated, as this meme points out, but it does not factor in that potentially our minds are more open thanks to these new mediums!

[emilylnm-blog]

I personally think that our generation would really struggle to live without our consistent use of technology. I don’t believe that it is humans themselves that are the problem, but the technology advancements around us that leave us no choice but to confide in them.

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Question of the day 😂

[lauren-gordon-blog]

I think this is why our module is so fascinating! It points out that by definition new media will inevitably become old media. Everything is so fast evolving.

[emilylnm-blog]

I was looking back at my ‘myspace’ account the other day. I was solidly laughing for about 5 hours. Its crazy how fast technology develops, and how quickly new inventions replace the old. However, i’ve always found it really difficult to think that Facebook will ever be old news. Maybe it is a social media platform that just serves every purpose and targets every demographic?

[emilylnm-blog]

Its really horrible the recent terrorist attacks on places like Paris and Brussels. But isn’t it lovely how much social media users show their support for it? The new profile picture displays that were created after the Paris attacks showed millions of people putting the colours of the french flag in front of their profile picture. The same thing has happened after the recent Brussels attack. 

It created such support in that people are happy to cover their selfies, with something much more moral. 

[jackynewmedia-blog]

I loved this yak when I saw it on yikyak! It shows in the program to awkward pre-teen kids who don’t know how to talk to each other, so it’s meant to be funny and ironic. However now it’s used as a meme I think it’s because the harsh reality is becoming increasingly true. Nowadays I think teenagers find it harder and harder to talk to each other because they’re so used to chatting online and hiding behind a screen where they have chance/time to think about their response without seeming weird or awkward. This was highlighted in our video project about tinder when the interviewees said it was easy to hide behind a phone and can seem so much more fun. A ‘hahahahah 😂😂😂😂’ over text in real life is more often than not just more air being blown out your nose than normal, as a lazy laugh.

[emilylnm-blog]

I find this quite a funny topic because I was with my friend the other day, when she was going out to see a guy that she’d been talking to. We had a conversation about him and she said ‘this is the first time i’m going to meet him’. Yet she seemed to know EVERYTHING about him! Turns out she had been talking on snapchat to him for over five months but hadn’t found the guts to go and meet him! It shocked me how content she was to have a relationship merely behind a screen! 

[lisanewmedia]

The Social Psychology of the Selfie

Whether you post your own "selfie" shots on the social web or not, you'll find the format is sitting on top of fascinating psychological trends.

I’m sure a lot of you are suckers for a selfie every once in a while. Although ‘selfies’ can be portrayed as vain and arrogant, on the other hand I think ‘selfies’ represent self love, confidence and representation of yourself. And really, what’s wrong with loving yourself? This article introduces interesting points based around selfies and why people post selfies.

This article also introduces the main point I’m going to try portray in this post. The article raises the point that self image is important and it’s how we define ourselves, which brings me on to the point of how do we define ourselves in different situations? I know for a fact that the way I present myself for Saturday Union is very different to how I would present myself in an interview. Does this make me a fake person if the representation of myself can vary so regularly? I personally don’t think so, as I believe everyone has different representations of themselves that they want people to see - and this is the same case with social media. There is a representation and online presence that we choose to put online for whatever reason and therefore choose to also not post certain content for other reasons.

[emilylnm-blog]

I absolutely LOVE this article! When we see serial selfie posters on Instagram, we automatically assume that they are - as you said - ‘vein’ and ‘arrogant’, BUT for the majority of people, this article represents their idea of a selfie. My instagram page only has one selfie on, as I do not like posting them. I always feel as though it has to meet a particular standard before it becomes ‘Insta-worthy’. But admittedly, if you were to scroll through my camera roll, there are plenty of selfies! When I look back at them, it always brings a smile to my face. It makes me feel pretty. So in many ways I agree with this article, it does encourage body confidence. 

[lisanewmedia]

So now that I’ve gotten your attention! (Excuse the really awful attention-seeking method there)

We follow trends such as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, raising awareness for ALS and trying to promote it. That’s a side of the internet that I find beneficial as it raised awareness, but on the other hand we post those videos to get likes of us embarrassing ourselves. I hate to say it but the online craze to raise awareness for ALS was to write ALS on a piece of paper and post it online, do you really think as many people would’ve gotten involved? It’s a shame because it raised so much awareness and I’ll admit that I even posted a video too, but it makes me question if other methods would’ve been as successful.

It’s not just trends that are used to gain attention, if we think about all the content we post, such as pictures onto Facebook and Instagram, I’m sure everyone would prefer to receive more likes than no likes. Does this suggest that just because Annabel has posted a picture from Saturday Night Union that she wants attention? I suppose not necessarily, but realistically if a user thinks it’s a nice picture then surely they’ll want likes to reassure themselves? It’s a shame that ‘likes’ could change the way we see what we’ve posted.

[connectchloe-blog]

Since Facebook’s launch in 2004 there have been 1.13 trillion likes, and there are 4.5 billion Facebook likes every day and each minute there are 3,125,000 new likes… Insane. Liking is a form of human acknowledgement which is important in the online world because it gives what we post online a purpose and a value - so if your photo doesn’t get any likes its as though it has no value! The like button also helps us to affirm who we are by showing what we are interested in, so it helps us to give ourselves an identity in a ‘fake’ world which is also important to achieve! 

[lisanewmedia]

I completely agree - I always like things on Instagram or Facebook that I can relate to or appreciate and therefore agree with my ‘online identity’. 

It’s a shame though that if you uploaded what you thought was a really nice picture, and it received no likes you may end up deleting it and losing confidence in yourself, like as you said you may feel like it has no value!

[emilylnm-blog]

I can’t believe how many people actually ‘buy’ likes now. You can purchase an app that you pay a small amount of money for a large amount of likes. Its as if apple are promoting this idea of creating a fake profile. People are so obsessed!

[emilylnm-blog]

All social media platforms appear to have different purposes but with several similarities in content. 

If i go on Facebook and browse my news feed I can see my posts from auntie about how good her girls holiday is, my friends status about their dinner in las Iguanas, or several ‘happy birthday’ posts on my sisters’ friends wall. If i then go on Instagram, I will see a photo from my auntie’s holiday,  a picture of my friends dinner in Las Iguanas, and several collage’s of my sisters friend. 

Social media platforms really do overlap, and if they keep creating new ones, we will  run out of things to say!

[emilylnm-blog]

More than half of children use social media by the age of 10

Facebook tops the list of sites that children sign up to under-age, with 52 per cent of eight to 16-year-olds admitting they had ignored the official age limit.

Age has always been such a grey area when it comes to social media. There aren’t really any proper enforcements with age restrictions. 

I remember one year I was sitting at home when my friend text me saying ‘is it your birthday today?’ I asked her why she thought that and she said ‘well because everyone is posting birthday messages on your Facebook timeline’. It was only then that I realised it was because I had joined this particular social media site before the age of 16 and had set my birthday to a completely random date to pass through security. 

Personally, I think that given some of the horrific stories about young girls groomed online, I think that online social media sites should enforce more strict security, so that only children who are 16+ can access these sites. 

What age do you think kids should be allowed to use sites like Facebook? I’d love to get some other opinions!

[emilylnm-blog]

Can We Auto-Correct humanity?

Think about how much time you spend using technology. Online? On your mobile? I find myself torn between two sides of an argument here.

The video suggests that we spend too much time using technology, communicating electronically, rather than the traditional face-to-face conversation. He suggests that we simply cut our hours down, rather than stop using altogether. 

But this video itself I find extremely contradicting. He is spreading  his message to a large amount of people; but not through word of mouth communication... through the power of youtube - an online video site. I think that nowadays, one of the only ways in which we can communicate is through technology. Our current generation do not like to ‘stay put’. We like to run our lives whilst travelling the world. We would struggle as a society to run our every day lives through writing letters and face-to-face conversations. 

I tried to devise a list of how many things is use the internet for in my every day life: 

- To find my work rota online for my part time job - To access my lecture timetable  - To check my emails  - To communicate on social media: twitter/facebook/instagram - To make these blogs that i’m writing - To arrange meetings with my lecturers 

And these are just to name but a few. 

I would very much find it near impossible to restrict my use of technology. It is such a huge part of our generations lives. We are a ‘techno generation’ and I beleive that as technology develops, we will continue to decrease our abilities to communicate elsewhere. 

[hollymedia2-blog]

This advert came up on my Facebook and really made me think. I never even considered that emojis are sexist, because although there are now options for different races, why are there not different gender options? Why isn’t there the option to have a girl doing the sport or profession? 

I really like this campaign for #LikeAGirl because it highlighted to me an issue with emojis I never even noticed, but am now supporting and would like to see changed.  Since all of us use emojis on a daily basis do you think there are there other issue with emojis you would like changed?

[chomskyluvr69-blog]

I think this is really important point. It’s probably an issue that most people don’t give a second thought to which makes it even clearer how overlooked gender roles are in our society. I just had a look at the emoji options (I have two android devices so they use android emojis but I am able to use iPhone emojis in the Telegram app):

Now, I don’t know if the options for iPhone users are different, but whilst I can select the skin tone of an icon by holding and selecting, the options given here seemed a bit random to me at first glance. However, if we consider that the nature and purpose of the emoji is to serve as a graphic contextualisation cue (although this label is subject to criticism, an issue that I may explore further in another post), it becomes apparent that emojis are actually significant social and cultural markers. 

If we take the example above, for instance, we can see that  the options available for female representation are limited. If we read the emojis as reflective of our society, it tells us that women have the following options: to be a princess, bride, dancer, haircut receiver or a massagee(?) - which is all well and good if you feel a bizarre leotard-wearing PlayBoy-esque bunny dancer is a decent representation of how you see yourself, but what if I want to use an emoji to represent myself as a professional? 

Okay, at this point I should address the issue of gender presentation: I am not suggesting that long hair = woman and short hair = man, but there have been several attempts by the designers (Willem Van Lancker) to feminise the long-haired emojis. 

Firstly, the princess emoji has defined lips. It’s subtle, and I didn’t notice until I opened the screenshot to examine closely, but this only makes it more ridiculous as it’s a feature that someone somewhere made the actual active decision to include. It didn’t happen by accident. There will have been meetings about those lips. Those lips will have been discussed over SmartWater© and croissants. Again, I am not saying that lip definition = woman, but it is a cultural marker of femininity, the same way kids cartoons that depict romantic relationships between two animals often add bizarre eyelashes and anatomically chest-swelling to “girl” animals, just so that the audience knows that the animals are definitely straight and definitely not gay. That’s just how fragile heteronormativity is.

Secondly, most of the long-haired emojis are wearing pink. On the 5th row, we can see that the kissing couples are “colour coded” according to the archaic notion that pink = girl and blue = boy. Whilst pink+pink and blue+blue options are available, presumably to represent gay and lesbian relationships, the emojis attempt at inclusivity continues to reinforce binary gender presentation. It’s a step in the right direction with regards to inclusivity, but it’s none the less problematic, so excuse me if I’m a little hesitant to award Van Lancker a gold star for effort.

[lisanewmedia]

I don’t really think about emojis that much in detail to notice if there’s a lack of genders or anything, but I suppose the equal balance between emojis would be nice if I really thought about it. Although, I did see an article on facebook the other day about how people are trying to get more female emojis including emojis around the time of the month and mood swings. Firstly, is that necessary? And secondly, is that all women are recognised for is periods and mood swings haha

[emilylnm-blog]

I too was extremely shocked when I saw that you were now able to choose the skin colour of the emoji. And it always angers me that the female emojis are all dressed in pink... I don’t even like pink.

[emilylnm-blog]

Really.... does anybody actually beleive this?

I’m quite a fan of online news stories, and can often be found browsing through articles about clothing, crimes and much more. But our facebook news feed now seems to be a stream of shared links to ‘news stories’ about complete and utter crap.

I came accross another one the other day entitled ‘man swalled whole by giant snake’. The problem is, although I know that this is totally made up by some internet freak that has way too much time, I still feel the need to click on it. Because what if it is true?!

I sometimes feel as though the the use of the ‘share’ button in association with news and events has totally shifted in purpose and meaning. It seems now that stories are merely for the purpose of entertainment, rather than information.

However, i’m torn between my two opinions here, because the other side of me finds these links absolutely hilarious and really does serve to kill a few hours on a quiet evening.