MDA 20009

Digital Communities

[hubertpohhh]

Global Social Media: Eritrea

Many may not heard about Eritrea before and so do I. Therefore following my curiosity, I am about to find out more of Eritrea as in the location, the internet access and the people. Eritrea is located in the north east of Africa on the Red Sea surrounded by neighbour countries like Djibouti, Sudan, Ethiopia with the population of over 5 million. The country is listed as the most isolated place on earth in term of internet connections, in other word ‘The Africa’s North Korea’. The internet access in this country is fully controlled by its government and it is the only African country to have no privately-owned media (BBC News 2019). The internet censorship and surveillance has got to another level here in Eritrea. It is also voted as the tops list of most censored countries in the world overtaking China, North Korea and any others (VOA News 2019). According to a list compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (n.d.), the following are the ranking of top 10 most censorship countries:

Eritrea

North Korea

Turkmenistan

Saudi Arabia

China

Vietnam

Iran

Equatorial Guinea

Belarus

Cuba

In Eritrea, internet access is all government-controlled and less than 1% of the population reportedly go online. All non-government controlled media is banned. There is no room for freely reported news and the media are subject to the whim of the president. According BBC News (2019), the government has held a monopoly over broadcasting since independence as well as shutting down all independent media since 2001. Its exceptionally limited internet access has caused unconvience to its people as well as there are no connection between the citizens and outside world. Do the government actually cares about their citizens feelings in term of freedom? The answer could be no because citizens could not have knew their news are being censored. Citizens might still lived under the rock where they know nothing about internet, digital media, and so on. Are the government being selfish or they are hiding somethings fishy? It remains a unanswered question.

Why do some countries censor the internet?

In this 21st century, where digital media is almost everything in our daily life, current technological movement gives the impression that the internet is unrestrained but imagine people or the whole country’s media is totally censored by its government. Well, there are countries like that, citizens has no access to internet, to social media, to the world. The common reasons behind are always related to politics to completely controlling what information citizens have access to. But unlike any countries, Eritrea has the strictest law on censoring the country’s internet which allows governments to be able to hold greater over what people say and do, and often, how they vote (Open Access Government 2019). Access to information throughout the country is also hurt by a prohibition against mobile Wi-Fi, and means Eritreans are only able to access the internet via slow dial-up modems, which could account for the very low access rate of just 1%.

Not only that, North Korea with the dictatorship of its supreme leader Kim is known to have a extremely strict censorship rules over its country. With the government able to take strict control over communications, all media outlets are owned and controlled by the North Korean government. As such, all media in North Korea get their news through the only government oriented platform; Korean Central News Agency. All news, information publish by any North Korean media has to go through and get its information from Korean Central News Agency. It is believe that the reasons are mostly because of its propaganda as back in the days to prevent conflicts with countries like China, Russia and South Korea (Veronica 2016, vol.37, pp.46-50). In addition, it also helps to prevent any distribution of digital media files hence it also prevent the loss of control in term of digital media distribution and also easier for tracking (Schiess 2017, pp.4).

People Republic of China, one of the biggest censors of the internet and uses a vast digital barrier nicknamed “The Great Firewall of China” has implemented the similar concepts across its country as well and significantly stepped up its game starting from 2012 when President Xi took place. The government censors content for mainly political reasons, but also to maintain its control over the populace. The government maintains censorship over all media capable of reaching a wide audience. This includes television, print media, radio, film, theatre, text messaging, instant messaging, video games, literature and the internet. However unlike others countries, China has also developed its own national social media or internet platform to benefit its citizen which are mainly allowed to use only in China. Social media apps such as WeChat, Sina Weibo, Tencent QQ, DouYin and many more.

Do citizens have a choice on censorship? Does this means they have no rights to oppose?

Censorship appears in most countries whether it is seriously carried out or not. Even country like Malaysia has its own censorship on internet websites as well. Malaysia ban most of the pornography websites which prevent citizens to gain any access to any of those websites which could potentially harm the younger generations or any individuals. Back to Eritrea, personally from my point of view, people living there do not get a choice to decide in fact they have to follow whatever their government said to stay tight with their legal rules and regulations. They are put in a situation whereby they can only listen to orders from the government and do not get freedom from there.

Well, there are exceptional cases where citizens tries to disobey the rules set by Eritrea’s government on censorship media. As of 2018, at least 16 journalists were still behind bars or imprisoned in Eritrea. I believed with the advancement of technologies available these days, it could be getting easier for people to break the wall, oppose the law and reach for the outside world. Virtual Private Network (VPN) is one of the ways for any individuals to use and have access to the internet browsers. 

List of References:

BBC News 2019, ‘Eritrea profile - Media’, viewed 6 June 2020 <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13349077>.

VOA News 2019, ‘Eritrea Tops List of Most Censored Countries’, viewed 6 June 2020, <https://www.voanews.com/africa/eritrea-tops-list-most-censored-countries>.

Committee to Protect Journalists (n.d.), ‘10 Most Censored Countries’, viewed 6 June 2020, <https://cpj.org/reports/2019/09/10-most-censored-eritrea-north-korea-turkmenistan-journalist/>.

Open Access Government (2019), ‘Why do some countries censor the internet?’, viewed 7 June 2020, <https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/countries-censor-the-internet/58366/>.

Veronica, M 2016, ‘Propaganda and Censorship: Adapting to the Modern Age’, ProQuest, vol.37, pp.46-50, viewed 7 June 2020, <https://search.proquest.com/openview/69209b239e82cd368d45cc68d1c62c09/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=32013>.

Schless, N 2017, Governmental Control of Digital Media Distribution in North Korea: Surveillance and Censorship on Modern Consumer Devices, ERNW GmbH, pp.4, viewed 7 June 2020, <https://mirror.adversec.com/dprk/docs/governmental_control_of_digital_media_distribution_in_north_korea-nschiess.pdf>.

[ebonw]

Public Health Campaign

Social media is one of the best way to share news nowadays especially when you are trying to alert people. As long you have any electronic devices, the message can reaches out to you anytime. In Malaysia, social media is helping the government to update the citizens for the latest situation of Covid-19. Our Director General of Health and Prime Minister been trying to use YouTube to hold live preferences to pass on country’s decisions. Newspaper authorities been using Facebook to post e-news using official accounts.

But in the same time, pandemic of COVID-19 runs across the globe not only in Malaysia. So what impact has social media had, good or bad? In a good side, numerous articles or news about the number of people being affected by illness including location and targeted communities. These news do help people aware of how the situation. Education articles about symptoms and safety precautions such as social distancing are spread through social media too.

Unfortunately, there’s a bad side of the affect that social media brings especially fake rumors. Indeed, social media is good in spreading information, but it doesn’t matter when it comes to positive or negative news. “Pandemic of misinformation” brings panic to the world. According to Pew Research Center studies, this phenomenon had made nearly two-thirds of Americans said they had seen made-up news and information. And the social media is the culprit. The massive misinformation and disinformation online is garbling the accurateness of public health guidance.

Ubiquity of social media has made it easier to spread or even create COVID-19 falsehoods, making the work of public health officials harder

Until now, the diseases had opened up an entirely different problem: the life-d angering consequences of supposed cures, misleading claims, snake-oil sales pitches and conspiracy theories (AFP 2020). Let’s narrow down into health precautions. Advice such as eating garlic, consuming anti-malaria drugs, drink more warm water etc. Maybe even more endangering rumors flushed into an individual social media. In Iran, a fake remedy of ingesting methanol has reportedly led to 300 deaths and left many sicker. Some people may ask why are these people trusting these rumors than the official public campaign?

“People are hungry for information, hungry for certitude, and when there is a lack of consensus-oriented information and when everything is being contested in public, that creates confusion among people. Especially during a crisis, public health communicators have to be seen as credible, transparent, and trustworthy. And there, officials are falling short”

— Kasisomayajula Viswanath,  Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communication at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Even there’s some minor degree that these rumors involved political will. You can’t underestimate a human instinct to live and survive. People can sometimes lean too heavily on traditional journalism which are written by people’s will. Those reporters may have no medical knowledge or health training to identify the accurateness of the myths, methodologies and researches

The right to freedom of expression and information includes the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds through any media,Nalini Elumalai, programme officer of international human rights organisation, Article 19 (Malaysia chapter).

Governments have the right to concern about the false information and myths circulating online and should be developing effective policies to counter misinformation (Jun 2020). Criminal measures and custodial sentences need to be considered as the last resort to punish these sources of fake news.

References

https://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-medias-role-in-the-coronavirus-pandemic-02296280

https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2020/04/19/want-to-win-covid-19-fake-news-war-make-information-readily-available-human/1858143

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/05/social-media-used-to-spread-create-covid-19-falsehoods/

[hubertpohhh]

Awesome read for the weekends. We learn more about social media and covid-19 through this blog!

[hubertpohhh]

Social Gaming

What is Social Gaming?

A social game generally define as a tabletop or video games that allows and require social interaction between players as opposed to games played in solitude. However, defining social gaming isn’t that straight forward. As we can see, social gaming started took off on Facebook few years ago, that was the golden moment of social gaming (Buff 2018). Below are the following types of social games:

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

This particular Nintendo’s Switch game is one of the biggest hits in gaming industry in year 2020 so far. Imagine 13.4 million copies were sold by gamers worldwide within 6 weeks after its launch (Reich 2020). It is a social friendly game designed for gamers to communication, work and play together. The game require players to complete certain tasks such as catching fish or bugs, planting money trees or selling fossils to earn coins and visiting other islands or completing activities. Players can also visit their friends houses or site without real travel which makes it more fun among friends and families.

2. Habbo - Virtual World

Habbo or previously known as Habbo Hotel first started in the year 2000 with over 278 million account users created throughout 150 countries. It is a software product for digital communities; a social networking site for children and young teenagers; a playful and non-violent virtual world where parents can trust their children to be reasonably safe which target its market to teenagers aged between 13 to 18 (Johnson & Toiskallio 2007). Habbo allows users to create their own character and design hotel rooms, meet new friends, chat with other players, organise parties, look after virtual pets, create and play games and complete quests.

3. Sansar

Sansar is a social, massively multiplayer online game which is developed by Linden Lab, the maker of Second Life. It is also a collection virtual reality (VR) game where gamers need to put on their equipment in order to enjoy the game (Takahashi 2019). Just like Second Life, Sansar is also powered by its users. Players can create their own worlds, events, and even quests. They can then invite friends to come and play or they can go in and explore the world created by others. When an individual log in, they will enter a social hub where you can meet friends or enter different worlds through portals.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Social Gaming

Online gaming nowadays is indeed very popular especially to the youth of today’s generation. With over thousands of online and offline games available with different variety such as arcade, strategy, simulations, social games and so on. One of the pros for social gaming is that it allows gamers to improve their social interaction capacity. Players will also be required to communicate with one another in order to achieve a common goal or have a good fight. Hence social interaction between one another is much needed for a better operation creating more fun (PC Dreams 2016).

However, there are few disadvantages that could listed out as well. The negative side is that social gaming or any other gaming could lead to extreme addiction causing children, teenagers, youngsters to abandon their studies and eventually affect the results. Video games are highly addictive, which lead kids to avoid some social situations, hamper studies sand display social phobias. Video games playing is known to increase depression and anxiety in kids. studies proven that addictive games have the same effect on the brain as drugs or alcohol (Goodlife 2019).

How do gamers make money out from gaming?

In 2018, it is believed that gamers has spent an estimated of $135 billion on gaming. Some gaming enthusiasts have turned playing video games into a full-time job that can earn some of them millions of dollars before age 30 (Geeter 2018). Esports and live streaming at this moment is two big ways for gamers to earn their money from gaming. Attending competitions as a professional gamers could help you in earning another is play gamers could upload or stream their play styles on YouTube or other platforms to earn a living. For example, founder of Razor Tan Min-Liang has designed one of the most globally remarkable gaming equipments for gamers and earning huge money from there. This shows that the number of gamers worldwide are increasing sharply on curve. However, gamers usually earn big when they win a certain competition and getting a huge prize pool. The following games including Dota 2, Counter Strikes: Global Offensive, PUBG and so on. Not only computer games, somehow mobile games does have its own competition and prices as well. This are the reasons why professional gamers and getting more and becoming more famous nowadays.

Are gaming communities becoming less about play and more about monetisation? 

In this 21st century, gaming industry has become a platform for creators or gamers to earn a living, making money out from gaming. According to Portugal (2018), gaming has find its new ways of monetising them and enticing players into spending ever more money. Since then, manufacturer of games are just focusing on making money from players and less on the effectiveness or creativity. 

In my opinion, gaming should always stays on the positive side which means that it should not be monetisation. Games are known as a method of releasing stress from people especially male hence people approaches to play some games for relaxing their minds. If gaming needed large amount of money and it is addictive, it would not let people feel relief in the meanwhile people would stressed out due to having financial issues. In the end of the day, this would not be a solving problems for mens anymore. To me, there are many ways of doing business and making money, gaming could not be the best way as it is meant to be for people to forget about the reality world perhaps consider charging an extremely low fees.

List of References:

Buff, C 2018, What exactly are social games and what makes them different?, Medium, viewed 30 May 2020, <https://medium.com/buff-game/what-exactly-are-social-games-and-what-makes-them-different-e24623382558>.

Geeter, D 2018, Here’s how gamers make money, CNBC, viewed 31 May 2020, <https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/16/esports-twitch-youtube-gamers-fortnite-gaming.html>.

GoodLife 2019, The Advantages and Disadvantages of Playing Video Games, viewed 31 May 2020, <https://goodlife.luluhypermarket.com/en-ae/electronics/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-playing-video-games>.

Johnson, M & Toiskallio, K 2007, Who are the Habbo Hotel users–and what are they doing there?, ResearchGate, pp.1, viewed 30 May 2020, <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228952170_Who_are_the_Habbo_Hotel_users-and_what_are_they_doing_there>.

PC Dreams 2016, Advantages and disadvantages of multiplayer online games, viewed 30 May 2020, <https://pcdreams.com.sg/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-multiplayer-online-games/>.

Portugal, L 2018, Evolution of video game monetization: from Premium to Games as a Service, Video Game Business, viewed 31 May 2020, <https://www.lucienportugal.com/evolution-of-video-game-monetization-from-premium-to-games-as-a-service/>.

Reich, H 2020, Animal Crossing New Horizons explained, from basics to villagers, mushrooms and the Damselfly, ABC News, viewed 30 May 2020, <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-30/animal-crossing-new-horizons-villager-tier-list-mushrooms-museum/12300244>.

Takahashi, D 2019, Sansar gets revamped with avatar editor, a new core world, and corporate partnerships, Venture Beat, viewed 30 May 2020, <https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/24/sansar-reimagined-with-avatar-editor-a-new-core-world-and-corporate-partnerships/>.

[hubertpohhh]

Fandom

What is a Fandom?

Fandom or known as fan culture is a term which can describes communities built around a shared enjoyment of an aspect of popular culture. For example, movies, sports, music, bands, TV shows and many more. The word ‘fandom’ refers to a collective community of active fans. According to Deperna (2019), fandom not necessary to have its own particular fields, it could be as simple as wearing a costume of its own favourite characters or so during a party. In this modern digital era, impact of the digital revolution upon fandom has grown largely due to the growth in every possibly fans community (Person 2010, vol.8, pp.84). Today, people are gathering its communities which shared the common interests and literally almost everything has a sort of fandom going on. In short, being a part of a fandom means being a part of a community.

As human beings, non of us are strangers to being part of the community. We all have the psychological need to feel safe, respected and wanted. So we form social relations with other people usually based on our values and beliefs. It used to be that our communities were always based on our physical proximity to one another. Now, with the growth of mass media, you can find communities of people separated by vast distances who build social structures based on  their common interests in similar content. When it comes down to it, almost everyone’s a fan of something, right? Then how does fandom work? Who run these communities, and what makes them different from my neighbourhood book club? For the answers to these questions, there is one man to turn to. Henry Jenkins has been studying fandom for decades. His first point about fandom was that it constitutes a kind of alternative social community for people. 

Fandom on Social Media

Fandom can gather and be at anywhere, whether is through meeting face to face or connecting with each others using online methods. But research shows that younger generations tense to use more apps for communication than the senior members perhaps a new way of life for the young adults. The following platforms are:

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Tumblr

YouTube

And many other ....

These are all the common and popular one among others social media platforms. Fandom will usually post some photos, videos or stories of their favourite. For instance, I have a friend who was a fan of K-POP artists like BlackPink from Korea. Thus, Twitter allows those fans to view their activities or even consider joining the fan pages on Twitter to receive the first hand story. There are also live steam available on to catch the latest news or performances of their favourite bands. For some artists, fan activism is the key for their success (Derseh 2019).

However, there is always a dark side of each social media or in particular fandom. We all have to faced the truths that when there is someone who likes, there will be someone who dislike, is a vice-versa. Same goes to fans, there are toxic-fans as well on each social media where they comment or post on something offensive towards the character of a person or so on. In cases like this, social media platforms act as a communication side for them to criticise others. For example, the actress from “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” was abused by its Star Wars’ fans for dislike of her character in the movie (Coyle 2018). 

Not only that, in the case of YouTube, an influencer creating daily vlogs on his YouTube channel received tons of criticism after updating his vlog containing suicide human’ bodies. His one wrong action has costs up to his life on YouTube and leave him no choice but to quit his YouTube or vloging career. Losing all his fans which he has build for years of hard work. Fandom is as important as a family in this story. Without supportive fans, mountain of army would have drop to zero.

Is fandom a friendly space for a Chinese/Malaysian/ Southeast Asian fan?

Yes. Definitely. It is a community program for everyone to joins regardless of your colour, religion, nationally, gender, age and so on. As long as you are a fan for a particular item such as movies, sports or even political activism. Fandom is a social community where people of the same interests group together as one and share their experiences, stories to their friends or fans. However, with tons of illegitimately going on around the world, nothing could be totally free from social friendly that include fandom. Fandom communities may not always be friendly where it remains an inhospitable space for some people due to the subversive and liberatory media space (Booth 2018, pp.330). 

For example, I am a Chinese, a Malaysian, I am personally a hugh fans of ‘Too hot to handle’ TV show. I been following them since day one. And among our group of fans, we have friends from all over the world including African, Australians, Malaysians, and many others. To me, so far it has been very friendly towards our group of fans. Nothing discomfort that would bothered me at this moment hence I would strongly suggest everyone should have its own group of fans. Something you would look forward to either a comic character or so.

List of References:

Booth, p 2018, ‘A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies’, Wiley Blackwell, pp.330, viewed 24 May 2020, <https://books.google.com.my/books?id=yDJKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA330&lpg=PA330&dq=Is+fandom+a+friendly+space&source=bl&ots=sk7rJb4rm9&sig=ACfU3U3V5SFBxqDoOa-wKeMbfrk34nh5lw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjl4ayRwMrpAhUNWX0KHTW3AnAQ6AEwC3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Is%20fandom%20a%20friendly%20space&f=false>.

Coyle, J 2018, ‘Abusive messages show dark side of ‘Star Wars’ fandom’, APNews, viewed 24 May 2020, <https://apnews.com/bc5d266df1234314923e38e4873788c0/Abusive-messages-show-dark-side-of-%27Star-Wars%27-fandom>.

Deperna 2019, ‘The Fandom Dictionary’, Vocal, viewed 23 May 2020, <https://vocal.media/geeks/the-fandom-dictionary>.

Derseh, M 2019, ‘Social media in fandom’, Medium, viewed 24 May 2020, <https://medium.com/meron-d3r53h/social-media-in-fandom-9f1382d76eb8>.

Pearson, R 2010, ‘Fandom in the Digital Era’, Popular Communication, vol 8, pp.84, viewed 23 May 2020, <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15405700903502346>.

[junelllee]

#3 Activists and Protests

What is digital activism?

What is digital activism? According to Fuentes (2014), digital activism refers to the action of using the internet and social media as the key stages in forming powerful campaign to bring about social or political change, as known as cyberactivism. With several successful cases, one of it is #IceBucketChallenge which I would like to talk about later, digital activism has proved its power in mobilising politics and engaging to protesters. Where activism happens online through social media, the protests can be highly spread all around the world and most importantly, it can reach the people from countries with highly monitored public spaces or under military control (Fuentes 2014).

#Hashtag?

What is #hashtag? As I gradually immerse myself in the world of social media, this sign slowly grows familiar to me and I have learnt the power of hashtag. Hashtag was first used on Twitter on August 23 of 2007 by Chris Messina and according to him, “the very ephemerality of hashtags is what makes them easy and compelling to use in a fast-moving communication medium like Twitter” (Cooper 2016). Nowadays, hashtag has been widely used in the social media as it allows people to reach posts that are related to their interests. By clicking a hashtag, people can now easily find and join the interested conversations with other social media users who share the same interests (MacDonald 2017).

  The rise of # in activism

After seeing the power of #hashtag in social media, the activists of movements and protests have slowly engaged to the use of hashtag in activisms and protests. The term “hashtag activism” was first being mentioned by The Guardian in 2011. In that year, the corresponding activism engaging the use of hashtag is the #OccupyWallStreet protest, which concerns about the economic inequality. The hashtag activism is increasing year by year, and has proved its successfulness, including #Kony2012 (occupied 66% tweets between March 5 to March 12), #BlackLivesMatter (52,000 times being shared on Twitter), #BringBackOurGirls (2 million times being retweeted on Twitter), #YesAllWomen (hashtag being used more than 1.2 million times on Twitter), #IceBucketChallenge and more (Chubb 2018).

The #IceBucketChallenge

“The Ice Bucket Challenge has raised an impressive amount of money and awareness for motor neuron diseases like Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). In just one month, the ALS Association has received $80m in donations” (Chamary 2014).

This successful activism was created on July 2014 with the purpose of raising the awareness and funds for ALS. People who accepted this challenge would need to follow rules as follows: pour yourself with a bucket of ice water, whilst being filmed and post it online, tag someone to pass on this challenge (Chubb 2018). This is the first hashtag activism that I had took part without even knowing the definition of ‘hashtag activism’. This event was growing bigger and bigger even celebrities (Justin Timberlake) and world leaders (former US President George W. Bush) were joining, filming themselves and helping in fund raising (Condon 2014). I remembered that time even the K-pop idols that I followed on the Instagram were also accepted this challenge.

Good or bad?

However, is hashtag activism happening on social media really good?

A Scottish teenager’s death revealing the potential dangerous after taking part of this Ice Bucket Challenge. According to Chamary (2014), two physiological responses including cold shock and diving response will occur when one soak in cold water. This autonomic conflict causes abnormal heart rhythm which can occasionally leads to sudden cardiac death. Apart from raising the awareness and funds from the public, it seems that the founder of this activism does not realise the danger of this challenge, similarly, the social media users often will easily follow the activism through hashtag blindly.

Augenbraun (2011) stated that all that technology, including hashtag and social media can be a useful tool to spread the awareness of activism and protests, it cannot be an alternative to the traditional, exhausting physical meetings or campaigns. The engagement of social media and activisms are only to raise the awareness of the public, people would still need to act accordingly, such as concern on the needs, reach the same purpose, trust-building as well as convince whoever needed to make the political or social change to happen.

Reference List

Augenbraun, E 2011, ‘Occupy wall street and the limits of spontaneous street protest’, The Guardian, 29 September, viewed 21 April 2020, <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/29/occupy-wall-street-protest>.

Chamary, JV 2014, ‘The ice bucket challeng can kill. Here’s why you’re doing it wrong’, Forbes, 25 August, viewed 21 April 2020, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2014/08/25/ice-bucket-challenge/#65b9353932d5>.

Chubb, H 2018, ‘Hashtag activism: a timeline’, Marie Claire, 24 May, viewed 21 April 2020, <https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a20886254/hashtag-activism/>.

Condon, S 2014, ‘Ice bucket challenge: more than just “hashtag activism”?’, CBS News, 21 August, viewed 21 April 2020, <https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-bucket-challenge-more-than-just-hashtag-activism/>.

Cooper, BB 2016, ‘The surprising history of Twitter’s hashtag origin and 4 ways to get the most out of them’, Buffer, viewed 21 April 2020, <https://buffer.com/resources/a-concise-history-of-twitter-hashtags-and-how-you-should-use-them-properly>.

Fuentes, MA 2014, ‘Digital activism’, Encyclopeida Britannica, 25 June, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-change>.

MacDonald, J 2017, ‘The importance of hashtags: know where, why, and how to use them’, Business 2 Community, viewed 21 April 2020, <https://www.business2community.com/social-media/importance-hashtags-know-use-01837644>.

[hubertpohhh]

Great blog here about activism, protests and the #hashtags for you to read.

[hubertpohhh]

Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding

What is Crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing can be defined as the practise that involves obtaining work, information, or opinions from a large group of people through internet, modern technology and social media (Hargrave 2019). This allows companies to reach out the world for more employees or people.  Crowdsourcing has become a popular method in this century due as it helps to raise capital for various projects. The advantages of crowdsourcing is that it is fast and reliable, cost-saving and ability to look for skilful and professional workers. In short, crowdsourcing is the collection of information, opinions, or work from a group of people, usually sourced via the Internet while seeks information or work product.

What is Crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding can be defined as the use of small amounts of capital from a large number of individuals to finance a new business venture through social media and crowdfunding websites (Smith 2019). This allows investors and entrepreneurs to enter and have the opportunity to increase entrepreneurship by expanding the pool of investors beyond the traditional circle of owners, relatives and venture capitalists. Crowdfunding works as a forum to anyone with an idea to pitch it in front of waiting investors and created the opportunity for entrepreneurs to raise. One of the most popular ones are Kickstarter, Indiegogo and so on which attracts hundreds of thousands investors alone.

In an era filled with fake news, what effect can this have on crowdsourced information?

With the advancement of technologies and modern media nowadays, more users are taking businesses online and plenty of informations are online as well for users to search and learn. However, this also lead to fake news where fake informations or unreliable sources are put into online websites confusing everyone. According to Carufel (2019), fake news is not a new problem but it has rapidly grows up after crowdsourced has been put in use and affecting everyone’s life. Leading misinformation is definitely one of the biggest impact for fake news on crowdsource because information shapes our world view and we make important decisions based on information resulted impacts including financial, health or many others.

Would you like to rid the internet of false political news stories and misinformation or in other word fake news? Well, recently research has shown crowdsources may be a way to tackle fake news and stop the spread (Dizikes 2019). It has now known as the best weapon in fight against fake news.

Can crowdfunding actually overtake traditional funding mechanisms for the creative industries? 

Yes and it has already been proven successful. Let me explain, crowdfunding has become a significant way of funding independent film or relavent industries etc. The modern world is here, traditional methods might disappear one day hence upgrading creative industries is a must as well. According to Hobbs, Molesworth & Grigore (2016), crowdfunding is avaliable when you are online, is save time and engery, as well as the next generations are all moving towards it. Therefore, more and more ventures start to launch projects on crowdfunding platforms. To gains the youngesters’ attention while beneficial at the same time. Slowly crowdfunding will overtake the traditional funding mechanisms hence every individuals will have to brace for the impact and start learning, get used to it.

List of References:

Hargrave, M 2019, ‘Crowdsourcing’, Investopedia, viewed 16 May 2020, <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdsourcing.asp>.

Smith, T 2019, ‘Crowdfunding’, Investopedia, viewed 16 May 2020, <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdfunding.asp>.

Dizikes, P 2019, ‘Could this be the solution to stop the spread of fake news?’, World Economic Forum, viewed 17 May 2020, <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/want-to-squelch-fake-news-let-the-readers-take-charge>.

Carufel, R 2019, ‘fighting the spread of fake news—why crowdsourcing is effective’, Agility PR Solutions, viewed 17 May 2020, <https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/fighting-the-spread-of-fake-news-why-crowdsourcing-is-effective/>.

Hobbs, J, Molesworth, M & Grigore, G 2016, ‘Success in the management of crowdfunding projects in the creative industries’, ResearchGate, pp.146-166, viewed 17 May 2020, <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291362981_Success_in_the_management_of_crowdfunding_projects_in_the_creative_industries>.

[hubertpohhh]

Public Health Campaigns & Communities

Public health connect all of us together, it is science of protecting and improving the health of people and their communities where they live, learn, play and work. This work is achieved by promoting healthy lifestyles, researching disease and injury prevention, and detecting, preventing and responding to infectious diseases (CDC Foundation 2020). Experts, professional doctors ensure to prevent problem from happening by providing educational programs, conducting research and so on to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy. They also track diseases outbreaks such as MERS, SARS, Ebola, H1N1 and many more. In general, public health helps save money, improves our quality of life, help children thrive and reduces human suffering.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. It can be define as a type of virus that causes diseases in humans and animals and affecting the respiratory system. The outbreak was declared as a pandemic in early March by the World Health Organisation (WHO) however the viruses was first discovered during the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China. According to Ducharme (2020), SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is thought to have first jumped from an animal host to humans.

As of today, with over 4 millions cases worldwide, a quarter of million of deaths and affecting more than 212 countries and territories and still growing, COVID-19 is surely a serious issue everyone is looking at right now. Developing vaccine or cure is still ongoing and expected to be release after the year 2020 hence the only protection now is to ensure a clean hygiene to prevent infection.

However in this 21st century, it is believe that most citizens in every parts of the world has been notify by the outbreaks and has stay vigilant. With the technologies around us, the use of traditional and new media such as Facebook, WhatApp, Twitter, newspaper, Television and so on news has spread within days or hours. This has definitely bring our life easier and protected. But is social media functional in your home country as spreading information?

Is social media useful in spreading information on COVID-19 in Malaysia?

First of all, Malaysia has so far done a very good job on handling the pandemic. According to Diam & Ting (2020), Chinese healthcare experts are impressed with Malaysia’s capability in containing the spread of the virus. The doctors, nurses and all medical team has put efforts and try their very best in maintaining the COVID-19 outbreaks. And Malaysia’s health director general has awarded among one of the top doctors for his strategies in tackling this pandemic by the Chinese TV (Babulal 2020).

In this pandemic, social media has played a significant role in keeping the virus away and protecting the lives of Malaysian citizens. It used to spread important information regarding to our health. For example, the health ministry government official Facebook page will host a daily press conference on the reported cases to update all citizens. Not only that, they provides important details on COVID-19 for viewers. Ministry of health (MOH) has recently launched a mobile app functioned just like a social media for fellow Malaysian to track the infected areas as well as locations and so on.

Not only that, Instagram helps with creating and promote awareness of COVID-19. #StayAtHome were used frequently in Instagram’s stories or posts and is the favourite among many Malaysians. Many users were influence by that and hence has raise the awareness to top priority.

Whatsapp; one of the most regularly used social media application in Malaysia has also put into function as friends can now send items including news, information, or others about COVID-19 to their contact’s friends by communicating with each other.

Personally I think social media has worked well regarding to any issues and not just during this pandemic. In this modern centuries, social media can be one of the most important tool for everyone in term of communication hence it is the indispensable technology for everyone today especially younger generations. Traditional media such as newspaper and television may still be useful for older generations but not for the young ones. The new era is here therefore everyone should be prepare and embrace for the change.

List of References:

CDC Foundation 2020, ‘What is Public Health?’, viewed 8 May 2020, <https://www.cdcfoundation.org/what-public-health>.

American Public Health Association, What is Public Health? on September 2014, viewed 8 May 2020, <https://www.apha.org/what-is-public-health>.

Ducharme, J 2020, World Health Organization Declares COVID-19 a 'Pandemic.' Here's What That Means, Time, viewed 8 May 2020, <https://time.com/5791661/who-coronavirus-pandemic-declaration/>.

Coronavirus, World Health Organisation, viewed 8 May 2020, <https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus#tab=tab_1>.

Diam, N & Ting, LW 2020, Chinese experts impressed by Malaysia's handling of Covid-19 [NSTTV], New Straits Times, viewed 9 May 2020, <https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2020/05/589140/chinese-experts-impressed-malaysias-handling-covid-19-nsttv>.

Babulal V 2020, Dr Noor Hisham among world's leading doctors in fight against Covid-19, New Straits New, viewed 9 May 2020, <https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2020/04/584682/dr-noor-hisham-among-worlds-leading-doctors-fight-against-covid-19>.

[hubertpohhh]

Activism & Protest

What is activism & Protest?

Well, activism in other word called protest which are able to consider as an action or activity involving groups of personnel or community in relation to direct social, political economic, environmental reform issues and so on. People who involved in those activisms are known as activist and we can often found that they have the identical goals to achieve which they desire to make changes in society. According to Martin (2007), activism can easily differentiate into types, from public conversations to enormous protests, from polite requests to objectionable interference, and from peaceful protests to violent attacks.

When 1980s, activism and protest has slowly gains its popularity throughout the public citizens around the world whether is in related to politics, social, environmental issues or not. Take an example, Mahatma Gandhi being a social activist leads India’s independence movement against the British rule (A&E Television Network). This includes Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others are one of the successful and well known activists the has contributed to change the world as well as led the civil right movement among nations (Lewis & Carson 2020).

However, in the 21st century, the advancement of modern technologies has significantly shows improvement on activism and protest in many ways. According to McNulty (2019), crowd of activism has grown larger in size with the help of social media and youth activism is on the rise as well around the globe. With Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other digital platforms available, spread of news and informations turn effortless and in light speed. Users or viewers can quickly receive notifications about the latest issue on activism and protest. As compared to the 1980s era, where neither social media or digital technologies are a thing yet.

How digital media affects activism & protest?

People especially youngsters use digital techologies or social media to influence more individuals in this era. As I mentioned above, the following applications allows citizens movement to communicate faster and able to deliver key messages to large audiences (Pathak 2014). In this modern age of technology, social media are among one of the widely used digital media for social movement including activists and protesters. With that, digital technology connect people to form groups and forums ranging from political to social issues (Gangopadhyay 2014).

The use of Hashtags in digital media activism & protest

Digital media activism and protest has been popular since awhile hence there are plenty of cases regarding to that. And protester or activist often uses hashtags symbol to identify the events. The examples are as follows:

#COVID19

#trumpprotest

#globalwarming

#berih4.0

#freedomhk

          And many more.....

With these hashtags, people are able to debate, discuss and comment around with one particular hashtag and also to make people aware of social and political issues. Hashtag activism is a way to expand the usage of communication and make it democratic in a way that everyone has a way to express their opinions. This shows that with internet connection, online every protest or activism can be done in possible and it has slowly overtake the traditional methods.

#ClimateChangeOnline

Greta Thunberg; a young activist whom gained worldwide attention using new media by promoting the view that humanity is facing an existential crisis arising from climate change. She is calling on other young climate activists to avoid big protests and move their demonstrations online amid efforts to contain the novel coronavirus (Calma 2020). On Twitter, Thunberg asked people to join a digital strike by posting a photo of themselves along with the hashtag #ClimateStrikeOnline. Just as she does when it comes to climate change, Thunberg urged people to “unite behind experts and science” to address the current public health crisis posed by the novel coronavirus.

List of References:

A&E Television Network, Mahatma Gandhi Biography 2019, Biography.com, viewed 23 April 2020, <https://www.biography.com/activist/mahatma-gandhi>.

Calma, J 2020, Greta Thunberg urges climate protests to move online because of coronavirus outbreaks, The Verge, viewed 26 April 2020, <https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/11/21174674/greta-thunberg-coronavirus-climate-change-protests-online-covid19>.

Gangopadhyay,S.(2014)Introduction .Digital Media: Emerging Issues KolkataSuhrid

Lewis, D & Carson, C 2020, ‘Martin Luther King, Jr. AMERICAN RELIGIOUS LEADER AND CIVIL-RIGHTS ACTIVIST’, Britannica, viewed 25 April 2020, <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther-King-Jr>.

Martin, B 2007, ‘Activism, social and political’, Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, pp. 19-27.

McNulty, J 2019, Youth activism is on the rise around the globe, and adult should pay attention, says author, UC Santa Cruz, viewed 25 April 2020, <https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/09/taft-youth.html>.

Pathak, JP 2014, ‘Digital activism through social media; its applicability in creating political awareness in India’, Netaji Nagar Journal of English Literature and Language.

[hubertpohhh]

Political Engagement

Politics is everywhere and every country needed political figure. But what is politics? It can define as the activities of the government, members of law-making, organisations, or people who try to influence the way a country is governed (Cambridge Dictionary 2019). And political engagement refers to activities done in large scale or mass public in term of politics. For example, protests, general election, political campaign or petition and so on. These are the events direct related to the public or citizens in a political engagement way.

How social media affected politics?

In this 21st century, social media has proved that it is a very important tools to our daily life as well as very functional in term of advertising, announcing, and son. Hence, politics is not excluded. In fact, it has changed a lot about politics particularly in Malaysia.

In the last general election, some propaganda was promoted and broadcasts through the use of social media. Such as, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and so on. It can be found not only through the traditional banners but with the help of social media. And it was proven to be effective and cost saving by using modern methods. For younger generations, some traditional methods may not be as useful hence a new approach is needed and better for advertising. 

Not only that, social media spread news quickly like wildfire. It can cut short the amount of time needed and provide efficiency. Social media is now a serious factor in political campaigns and in the way people think about issues (Satterfield 2016). It is believed that social media is slowly taking the world and leading ways to a modern generation era.

Is politics just about governance, or it is more?

Well, governance generally approaches power as distinct from or exceeding the centralised authority of the modern state. According to Sen (2016), governance refers to the capability of the state to provide public goods and how the state intervenes in encouraging or discouraging economic activity by various different actors. However, politics does more that just that, in fact generally political, social, economics and cultural issues are all consider to be the job scope.

When does social movements become about politics? Should it become politicised?

In the beginning, social movement is meant to be a socially gathering to object to situation or issue they disagree on. Group of people will gather and take action to notify them and hopefully matter would be resolve as soon as possible. However, things started to politicised in the late 1800s where effects has shown more positive or responsive towards political events.

Personally I would think that social movement can become politicised but not fully or completely in result it will destroy the main purpose and become more aggressive in a way. Being politicised is not bad in a sense that, member of public, people would be able to understands more about the political situation in one country. For example, Bersih 4.0 which was happened in 2015 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was considered the largest political gathering or rally in Malaysia at that time. People around the world gathered or following the news of what is happening. The objective behind was to demand the Prime Minister of Malaysia to step down and have a clean election (The Strait Times 2015).

Social movement is not necessary about politics. Sometimes it can be about climate change which are relatively famous in these days. One of the famous one is Greta Thunberg; a young girl aged 17 bring climate change issue to the next level, protesting and announced all over the world climate change is real. Take an example, Greta lead a group of Bristol to strike on row over college green damage (BBC 2020). Activism works as well, she put up rallies for Uk school strikers (Pheby 2020).

In conclusion, politicised social movement is not a wrong thing however the volume should be controlled and under surveillance. Government will need to take care the safety, rules and regulations of these activities. Most importantly, a peace rally is not prohibited and should be allowed by the authority. Any social movements are included.

List of References:

BBC News, ‘Greta Thunberg Bristol strike: Row over College Green damage’, viewed 18 April 2020, <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-51696203>

Pheby, J 2020, ‘Activism work’: Greta Thunberg rallies in UK schools strikers, The Jakarta Post, viewed 18 April 2020, <https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2020/02/29/activism-works-greta-thunberg-rallies-uk-school-strikers.html>

‘Politics’ 2019, Cambridge Dictionary, Cambridge University Press.

Satterfield, H 2016, ‘How Social Media Affects Politics’, viewed 18 April 2020, <https://sysomos.com/2016/10/05/social-media-affects-politics/>

Sen, K 2016, ‘Governance, politics and growth’, GSDRC, viewed 16 April 2020, <https://gsdrc.org/professional-dev/governance-politics-growth/>

The Strait Time, ‘What you need to know about Malaysia’s Bersih movement’, viewed 16 April 2020, <https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/what-you-need-to-know-about-malaysias-bersih-movement>

[hubertpohhh]

Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site?

Tumblr was founded in the year 2007 and from then onwards they planned to be different from others such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and so on. Tumblr wants their customers or users to experience different methods of expressing self by posting etc. Hence, Tumblr are meant to serve many purposes to satisfy the needs and wants by its users.

Well, What actually is A Tumblr ???

Tumblr can considered as a blog as well as a social network site. It can basically function both simultaneously as user needs. Well, this can also considered as one of the benefits of Tumblr therefore a lot of bloggers have recently switch their blogging platform to Tumblr. It is much more convenient for users as it kill two birds in one stone. 

Tumblr is a free blogging platform that aims to make posting and sharing effortless at anywhere and anytime. It also a user friendly platform as it allows users to follow each others, share posts, comment and communicate with them by using Tumblr.

Blog Platform:

According to Stringfellow (2013), there are a lot of of benefits to brands considering Tumblr to host their blogs. Tumblr works just like the usual blog websites as well. It allows users to write story, updates about themselves freely onto the public. Well, Tumblr has gained some popularity from fellow regular bloggers especially the teens bloggers due to the creative touch on this app. Is easy to use and a lot of new features which attract young audiences’ attention.

Social Networking Side:

Not only that, not just bloggers, social media users were also shows interest in having Tumblr. Well, unlike any other platforms, Tumblr allows you to post a wide variety of content types ranging from text and photos to video, audio and links (Honeysett 2020). Users can interact with their friends using Tumblr, a better and more convenient way of doing nowadays.

Basically, Tumblr functions like a multi purpose tool as it does almost everything every social media platforms do. For example, blogs, social networking, communication, interaction and so on.

It is the combination of two hence Tumblr is gaining popularity or guests from its both sides. And average users are increasing rapidly each day, overtaking the top blogging platform in future.