Digital Communities - Grace Kalinowski

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Digital Conflict and Harassment

With social media growing more and more everyday these days, it unfortunately has come along with the issue of online conflict. This topic of conflict finds itself relating to all thing’s digital citizenship, activism, regulation, platforms, community and inclusion. Due to the conflict taking place through social media, it just goes to show digital citizenship is very much about power and leads to certain users feeling to right to harass someone online.

Due to the extreme nature of some online conflict, it can fall under the category of harassment; a term that includes being called offensive names, being embarrassed, threatened, sexually harassed online and many other serious actions. While some users’ goals of embarrassment and anger out of this is for pure amusement, it can also find itself to be driven by more stern motives such as politics. This harassment and conflict also doesn’t tend to be a one-time event, and unfortunately can be repetitive through networks and organized.

While not all harassing behaviour is confined to anti-feminists, a lot of the time techniques such as doxing (uploading personal information online), image-based abuse such as spreading intimate photos without the owner’s permission, social shaming and intimidation tend to be refined by men’s rights activists (Marwick & Caplan 2018, pg. 544).

Depending on the individual or social group being targeted, online conflict can occur in different ways. Many “studies consistently show that women are more likely to be targets of gendered-based online harassment than men” (Haslop, O’Rourke & Southern 2021, pg. 1420). One of the major impacts of online harassment is the feeling of be ‘silenced’ by the digital community. It can negatively impact the victim’s motivation to further engage with and use digital spaces (Haslop, O’Rourke & Southern 2021, pg. 1421). Studies have proven that young women who experience or even witness online harassment are more likely to self-censor their future online posts to reduce the chances of any further harassment online (Haslop, O’Rourke & Southern 2021, pg. 1421).

Marwick, A E. & Caplan, R 2018, ‘Drinking male tears: language, the manosphere, and networked harassment’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 544

Haslop, C, O’Rourke, F & Southern, R 2021, ‘#NoSnowflakes: The toleration of harassment and an emergent gender-related digital divide, in a UK student online culture’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 1418-1438.

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Social Gaming

Playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. Gaming has been around for decades, however these days on a much larger scale. Through technological developments, the idea of social gaming has taken a whole new direction and is more accessible than ever.

The most common social games include sports, as well as tabletop, board, card and VR games.

While people think of games as a fun hobby to fill time, it actually has a large social side to it. When you think about, you can’t play most games without playing with another person, or even multiple. Back in the 1900’s, local game competitions would take place where people could come together as a social activity and enjoy some competition to earn the highest score. However, that was the extent of it. Nowadays, online gaming is massive and users are able to play with anyone, at any time of the day and anywhere they want, whether that’s in the comfort of their own home or out in public. This new idea of online gaming has broadened the social side of gaming and let’s users feel a sense of social community all around the world.

The way users interact with video games is very much bounded to the notion of community, digital citizenship and participatory culture. In many social games these days, they adopt the idea of your friendships for game purposes. Users are able to do actions such as send or receive gifts to ‘friends’ through the game, which in the end acquires and retains new players in the game. Discord is an online platform that has also influenced the ability to communicate with friends while playing a game. Similar to Discord is a platform called Twitch. This broadcast platform was dedicated to live streams of gaming and has dramatically changed the landscape (Taylor 2018, pg. 3). They also broadcast major gaming tournaments where gamers can log in and watch the livestreams to feel a sense of community. Some of these livestreams bring in millions of views.

These days you find many gaming expos, where thousands of gamers all come together to celebrate and engage in many gaming themed events and conferences. This is one of the largest social elements of gaming these days since all these people are coming together to connect in person. Every year in Melbourne, the annual Melbourne International Games Week expo is held and features a variety of different events for all gamers, from different parts of the world (Keogh 2021, pg. 209).

Keogh, B 2021, The Melbourne indie games scenes, Taylor & Francis Group, Ebook Central (ProQuest).

Taylor, T L 2018, Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, Princeton University Press, pp. 1-23

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The Impact of Snapchats 'Lenses'

This day and age, the term Augmented Reality is becoming more and more popular in the common lifestyle. AR allows users to see the world, however a superimposed version that’s composited with the real world. Although it’s been around since the 1960’s, the large accessibility we now have of it due to the improvements in smartphones has made it more popular. A major timestamp of its growth was the release of snapchat filters in 2016.

In 2016, Snapchats release of ‘Lenses’ allowed users to “apply virtual accessories and modify facial features”. This enabled “users to incorporate augmented reality into their daily sartorial practice and self-representation” (Baker 2020, pg. 208). Since it was becoming part of their daily life, users weren’t aware of the possible side effects that could come with these ‘lenses’. Snapchat was once seen as the anti-photoshop of social media since it used to be just sending filter-less selfies. Users felt comfortable as it didn’t matter how many likes they got and there was no pressure for looking like perfection (Baker 2020, pg. 210). However, since the update of filters, users have a variety of filters to choose from which modify their face and brings back this pressure to met beauty standards every time you send a selfie. This pressure has come to the point where cosmetic surgeons have confirmed that patients have come into consultations saying they want to look like how they do a=in a specific snapchat filter.

In an reading by Rettberg, he suggests that social media is not the kind of filter that removes impurities, but it also shapes them and influences people (Rettberg 2014, pg. 23). So, while these filters may not always remove every impurity, it still affects users’ self-perception and lead to dysmorphia. Many ‘surgery’ filters promote unrealistic beauty standards, and while it is clear they are unreachable, many women still feel pressured to replicate these aesthetics. The term ‘surgery’ filter is similar to ‘beauty’ filters, however refers more specifically to a filter that heavily augments facial features in a way that replicates popular surgeries.

Baker, J 2020, ‘Making-up on mobile: The pretty filters and ugly implications of snapchat’, Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, vol. 7, no. 2 & 3, pp. 208-210

Rettberg, J W 2014, Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves, Palgrave Macmillan, London

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Pornification and Visibility

A common topic that’s always been related to social media is body image and social medias major impact on it. This weeks reading covered all things body image through social media and how it has led to the popularity of body modification and pornification. As well as this, it also touches on the topics of monetization and visibility when it comes to online creators.

Pornification is a term used commonly related to social media where both males and females sexualize themselves in order to gain attraction. It can also be used for marketing purposes, which is seen on many large fashion brands’ instagram accounts. It has been found that women tend to pose in ways hat highlight certain body parts which then leads to a lot of popularity on that post as it gains lots of engagement. While pornification is used a lot of social media to promote many clothing businesses, it’s also used in many other industries such as the nightclub industry. In an article on a research project conducted by Nicholas Carah and Amy Dobson, it was evident that a “hot body” always gained more engagement online than other images. After interviewing a club photographer, they found out that he would be told to specifically take photos only of “hot” girls because boys and girls wanted to go to clubs that had hot girls (Carah & Dobson, 2016, pg. 4). Using conventionally “hot” people to promote businesses is becoming more common these days and counts as pornification when marketing their business.

While some content can easily gain views as explained above, changes to algorithms and policies has left many creators losing visibility. Due to the rise of social media, many people make careers off of it through platforms like YouTube and twitter, going by the title of ‘creators.’ While millions of people around the world consider themselves creators, on very few in the top tiers make economic success (Duffy & Meisner, 2022). On YouTube, research has shown that only the top 3% of channels receive 90% of viewership. As well as this, it’s also been said that in order to make the current median household income, you’d have to be in the top 0.015% of all streamers on Twitch (Duffy & Meisner, 2022). Due to all the new algorithms on social media platforms, it’s getting harder an harder for creators to gain equal amounts of visibility compared to everyone else on the platform.

Duffy, BE & Meisner C 2022, ‘Platform governance at the margins: Social media creators’ experiences with algorithmic (in)visibility’, Sage Journals, vol. 45, no. 2

Carah, N & Dobson, A 2016, ‘Algorithmic Hotness: Young Women’s “Promotion” and “Reconnaissance” Work via Social Media Body Images’, Social Media + Society

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The Slow Fashion Movement

The term slow fashion is becoming even more acknowledged each day that goes by. Also known as circular fashion or thrifting, it’s a term that talks about the need to perform processes in the ever-growing fashion industry sustainably, and to change core values within. These actions lead to more durable garments and get business to focus more on the sustainably made quality of products over producing cheaply and fast. What was once a time where labels would only bring out two collections per year (a spring/summer collection and an autumn/winter one), has now become a period where instead they’ll release anywhere between 50 and 100 mini-collections per year (Domingos, Teixeira Vale & Faria 2022, pg. 1).

While it may seem like this is a newer movement, slow fashion has actually been around for many decades, as early as the 1960’s with counter culture. Other examples include the anti-fur campaign in the 80s and the protests against the unethical working conditions in the 90s.

There are 4 main principles for fashion labels to qualify as ‘sustainable’. These include ensuring their supply chain is child labour free, materials used in the production process should either be not as harmful to the environment, recycled, upcycled or simply more durable, having an ethical and socially responsible production process (including paying workers fair wages and creating jobs in the country of origin by producing locally) and creating long-term relationships within their supply chain as this allows negotiating fair prices/wages and develops strong networks with others who care about sustainable fashion.

The global fashion market is worth around $1.55 trillion US dollars and is predicted to increase by 2 trillion usd by 2026. While it’s such a large part of the economy, many companies within this industry have a negative impact of the environment. Disused and unwanted clothing is creating larger rubbish heaps than ever, with an estimated 11.9 million tons of clothing and footwear being discarded and 8.2 million tons of that ending up in landfill (Brewer 2019, pg. 2). Large companies such as Burberry and H&M who aren’t considered practicing slow-fashion have been accused of disposing large amounts of new clothing that didn’t sell simply due to the pressure to keep up with trends, contributing to the already high levels of waste (Brewer 2019, pg. 2).

Nowadays a lot more customers are becoming aware of these unethical issues relating to the fashion industry and therefore focus more on slow-fashion labels when shopping for clothing. Since they are becoming more attentive to the companies' practices and whether or not they’re ethical, they appeal more to the ones that value their employees and respect their rights and conditions (Domingos, Teixeira Vale & Faria 2022, pg. 10).

Brewer, M 2019, ‘Slow Fashion in a Fast Fashion World: Promoting Sustainability and Responsibility’, Laws,pg. 2

Domingos, M, Teixeira Vale, V & Faria, S 2022, ‘Slow Fashion Consumer Behavior: A Literature Review’, Sustainability,

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Digital Citizenship

Digital citizenship, A term that refers to “someone who, through the development of a broad range of competences, is able to actively, positively and responsibly engage in both on and offline communities, whether local, national or global” (Council of Europe 2022, pg. 11). As most people know, being a citizen of a country gives you certain rights and responsibilities. The same idea applies when talking about digital citizenship. It comes with behaviours, expressions, practises and the rights and responsibilities you would find as a normal citizen. Through the growth of technology of the years, this new concept of digital citizenship is always growing and has shown a real benefit to society in the way that it facilitates membership and the participation of individuals in a society. It can be used to its full advantage, for example with the Black Lives Matter movement, they were able to enhance their messages by effectively using social media to spread awareness more than how it could’ve been if social media didn’t exist (Choi & Cristol 2021).

The terms Platform and Platformisation have significant meaning when talking about social media and the idea of digital citizenship. A platform is something you can build on and grow from nothing. You can innovate it from political aspects (referring to the idea of coming from a place where you want to speak or be heard by other citizens) and architectural (being free for all and suggesting openness as a platform).

Platformisation on the other hand is switching from discussing platforms as things, to instead analysing to platformisation as a process. It looks at how social network sites have now all turned into social media platforms and the growing frequency of this.

The final main topic of this week’s content follows the idea of hashtag publics and their use in activism. These days you see hashtags everywhere, whether its on tv, social media or even an article. These hashtags are a strong ability to create discussion and spread topics sparking conversation. They enable connectivity through similar themes, keywords and events which people of similar interests find themselves viewing as well. Some of the most popular hashtags you’ll see these days include #AusPol, #MeToo, #ClimateChange and #BlackLivesMatter. Spreading these hashtags spreads awareness on these topics which then encourages change.

Choi, M & Cristol, D 2021, ‘Digital citizenship with intersectionality lens: Towards participatory democracy driven digital citizenship education’, Theory Into Practice, vol. 60, no. 4, pp. 361-370

Richardson, J, Milovidov, E 2022, Digital Citizenship Education Handbook, 2022 edn, Council of Europe

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Social media's impact on Reality TV

Reality TV is like the junk food of TV. Fake, trashy and something so bad but you can’t get enough of. Reality TV is one of those genres everyone secretly watches but often feels embarrassed to admit to it. Its been the most dominant form of TV for the last 20 years and features all different sub-genres including dating shows to talent contests.

The availability of social media has changed the way reality TV connects to its audience and has had a huge impact, taking the key aspects of reality tv beyond the tv screen. Since the growth of social media platforms, discussions of reality tv series’ race across multiple platforms which increases engagement with audiences.

Reality TV has begun to be less reliant on tv itself, and instead the way fans engage with the show throughout multiple different platforms separate from the television. This paradox is only the beginning of how much social media has impacted reality tv.

Humour is a large feature when it comes to the social media side of reality TV. You can find fans constantly posting memes and sarcastic commentary relating to recently released episodes (Deller 2019, pg 158) especially on Tik Tok. The idea of ‘viral sounds’ is a key component of the reality TV paradox. Certain ‘sounds’ can go viral on Tik Tok meaning someone has taken a short clip from an episode of Love Island for example and have gone and remade it and posted it on tik tok. These sounds then get spread around and next thing you know it’s been used 120,000 times. This gives the tv show a lot of spotlight even after it has finished airing on TV. It increases it’s afterlife and keeps it relevant, which wasn’t possible before social media came into the equation.

Reality show producers have even admitted that generating audience engagement on social media is a key factor to their strategy of marketing (L’Hoiry, X, 2019). Love island specifically make social media a key focus and they like to create a cycle between social media and television. You’ll find they often post ‘first looks’ on their Instagram page to show and exclusive scene from the upcoming episode, as well as posting memes and polls for audiences to engage with and discuss.

Deller, R, A 2019, ‘Reality television : The tv phenomenon that changed the world’, Emerald Publishing, pg. 153-175

L’Hoiry, X 2019, ‘Love Island, Social Media, and Sousveillance: New Pathways of Challenging Realism in Reality TV’, Frontiers in Socieology, vol 4

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Feminism on Tumblr

Tumblr. Although it isn’t as talked about these days, it still ranks number 10 in social media sites in Australia. Even though the names Instagram and Tik Tok seem to be brought up way more compared to Tumblr, tumblr actually has an impressive 3.7 million users which makes them larger than Tik Tok who only has 1.1 million!

Being established in 2007, Tumblr has undergone multiple policy changes, sometimes clashing with the opinions of users. One of them being the controversial new NSFW (not safe for work) content restrictions introduced in 2018.

“Social media has the potential to form powerful feminist spaces through the use of hashtags.” (Dixon, 2014, Mendes et al., 2018) These encourage women to break the societal beauty standards and instead proudly embrace their own bodies with confidence and empowerment.

One of the main features of Tumblr is its anonymity. There’s no networks of friends, everyone’s account is public and it doesn’t go by real names so it’s 100% anonymous. This opens up the ability to speak freely in a space where there’s no judgement. Because of this, many teenage feminists love this platform as they can speak freely without feeling the possibility of being judged.

Something I found interesting from Keller’s reading was that she had interviewed a girl named Dara whether she’d consider posting about her experience with sexism on a platform other than Tumblr. Dara replied “I might put it on Tumblr because I feel very anonymous on Tumblr and I like that. . . Even though it’s quite anonymous on Twitter, I just feel like on Tumblr, just nobody knows who anybody is.” (Keller, pg 8. 2019) This shows how important the sense of anonymity on Tumblr is and how much of a benefit it is compared to other social media sites.

Another main aspect of Tumblr is its hashtags. Tumblr was one of the first social media sites to use hashtags as a tool to build the sense of community it has today. Common hashtags you’ll find supporting the feminism movement on Tumblr are #bodypositivity and #feminism. When viewing or posting to these hashtags, you are involving yourself of a community filled with other like-minded women wanting to abolish the existing beauty standards. It creates a safe space to feel accepted and beautiful in your own body. (Dixon, 2014, Mendes et al., 2018)

Reif, A, Miller, I, Taddicken, M 2022, ‘ “Love the Skin You‘re In”: An Analysis of Women’s Self-Presentation and User Reactions to Selfies Using the Tumblr Hashtag #bodypositive’ , Mass Communication and Society

Keller, J 2019, ‘ “Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms’ , Social Media + Society, vol 5, issue 3