Digital Communities

This blog has been made in conjuction with my university class MDA20009 Digital Communties and will follow an indepth analyse into everything around these online comunities. Portions of this site and the works within it are being produced with the intention of critique and/or educational use under Australia's 'fair dealing' exceptions to copyright (Section 40 & 41). However, if you feel your IP is being infringed, please contact my service provider (tumblr) with the appropriate DMCA requests, as I, the single author take full responsibility for the content of this site.

[offbeatchina-blog]

The silk road of censorship

[a-r-a-r-e-g-e-m-blog]

Depending on social media

Until today I had no idea that all major Social Networking sites were blocked in China, although you can use a VPN service to access them the connection in certain areas aren’t always dependable. That actually doesn’t sound like a bad thing, but i’m sure there’s some political reasoning behind it. Can you imagine if that were to happen in America? but instead, there weren’t any loop holes to get around them being blocked. I think a lot of people would lose their minds. No more Instagram, and Snapchat to show off our lives in order to seek validation, and attention, no more Facebook, and Twitter to complain endlessly about what we’re tired of, and share every thought possible that comes to mind, and no more Tumblr to vent, and connect with visual, like minded individuals trying to discover themselves and cope with life. It’s interesting to envision a Society going back to the way things used to be before the rise of Social Media, because I can only remember that time slightly now. 

[itsbess-blog1]

Interesting thought.... If we didn’t have social media how different would the world be?

[wow-confessions]

Whenever my life sucks I start playing World of Warcraft again and again. I haven’t truly been addicted since 2011/2012 but now I’m not the super popular girl anymore(I distanced myself from it because who the hell wants that?) so WoW is here saving me since I no longer have friends except the really cool ones I met in WoW. Whenever I’m upset I sit down and play and it usually rinses off, better than drugs!

[itsbess-blog1]

This is a very interesting look at how people use social gaming to get away from their real life social struggles. 

[chloebennetsource]

“I see a therapist on a regular basis and that has helped me so much. It’s helped me as an actor, it’s helped me as a person. I am a huge advocate for people taking care of themselves mentally. I suffer from anxiety, I’ve had depression, it’s hard. Especially with social media, instant gratification of how you look and getting your self-worth in likes and hearts and retweets. It’s so crazy.” - Chloe for Bello Magazine, November 2016

[itsbess-blog1]

8. China vs America

At the age of 17 I graduated high school after being voted ‘the most likely to become addicted to social media’. To this day I am constantly checking my Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp and many more platforms on a regular daily basis. When I think of social media, facebook is the first thing to come to mind but I want to today examine the global social media landscape and more specifically how China compares to my western ideologies.

For the ease of the comparison I’m going to examine America as the main point of reference for a western country. America has one of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world. As of 2015 GDP sits at $17.97 trillion (CIA World Factbook 2016) and continues to grow exponentially every year. A large percentage of 65% of the population use social networking sites (CIA World Factbook 2016). The major players include Facebook, YouTube and Twitter (Statista, 2016). The main objective in using social media globally is to stay in contact with friends/friends.Although in America their national ideologies play a role in why they consume social media and many now use it as a way of freedom of speech, to keep up with current affairs and also to connect with others with similar interests (Smith 2011). A concern that is common in social media in America is privacy. Facebook is not heavily controlled in the USA but their still remains to be some issues with privacy and the extent consumers ‘see what facebook wants them to see’  (Edgerank 2015).

On the other hand we have China. There is a few major misconceptions when it comes to China’s social media landscape. Many believe that because their is a ban on western social mediums that they don’t use social media but that is NOT the case. By statistic in China young people actually have more friends online than offline (Crampton 2011).  If there is a western social media platform that is blocked, there is bound to be a chinese alternative. Tencent QQ is an instant messenger with the highest market share in China (You Z-Q, Han X-P, Lü L, Yeung CH, 2015) and hosts 830 million users which is more than Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram combined, (Spencer, 2015).  They also have 600 million people using Sina Weibo, which is a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook, and 468 million users on WeChat, which is another subsidiary of Tencent QQ, (Spencer, 2015). From these numbers it is clear that China has a very large social media landscape and it is a clear misconception from the west that they are ‘missing out’ just because many don’t know about the alternate platforms they use.  It could be said that the major issue in China’s social media usage is censorship by the government but many people in China have found a way to get passed this. Many people use VPN’s (Virtual Private Networks) to bypass the ‘Great Firewall of China’ to gain access to western websites.

From examining the two I think it is pretty clear that even though traditional western websites are banned in China, the country still has a thriving social media landscape which is similar to America in the fact they are using it to connect with friends and is increasingly becoming an everyday practice for both countries.

That is me over & out, hope you have enjoyed my posts from the last 8 weeks!

References

Crampton, T 2011 'Social media in China: The same, but different' China Business Review, Vol 38, Issue 1, pp 28-31 viewed http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/social-media-china-business-review/

Smith, A 2011, Why Americans use social media, viewed 16th May 2017, <http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/11/15/why-americans-use-social-media/>

You Z-Q, Han X-P, Lü L, Yeung CH (2015), 'Empirical Studies on the Network of Social Groups: The Case of Tencent QQ,’ viewed 16th May 2017, <http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0130538>

Spencer, J 2015, 2015 Chinese social media statistics and trends infographic, viewed 16th May 2017, <http://makeawebsitehub.com/chinese-social-media-statistics/>

Edgerank, 2015, Edgerank, viewed 16th May 2017, <http://edgerank.net>

Central Intelligence Agency, 2015, ‘The World Factbook: China’, viewed 16th May 2017, <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html>

Statista, 2016, ‘Leading Social Media Websites in the United States, viewed 16th May 2017, <http://www.statista.com/statistics/265773/market-share-of-the-most-popular-social-media-websites-in-the-us/>

[itsbess-blog1]

7. Social Gaming

Okay let’s talk games.

Growing up I actually had no interest in gaming. The most I got into gaming was my Club Penguin stage but that didn’t even last that long. Although after growing up with brothers and living with my boyfriend I feel as though I do have some insight into the industry. I remember when my mum would be calling out to my brother for dinner and he wasn’t able to come as he was doing a ‘raid’ on World of Warcraft or even when my boyfriend has his friends over and they stay up to the late hours of the night versing each other on Rocket League. From these memories whenever I think of gaming, I think addictive.

In 2016 a digital australia report revealed that 68% of Australians play video games and 65% of gaming households own three or more game consoles (Brand & Todhunter 2016). In relation to game play culture, 50% have watched walkthroughs or streamed gameplay videos and 42% have attended a games event  (Brand & Todhunter 2016). An evolution of gameplay has allowed for there to be a rise in a game play culture and making it more than just one sided game but also a social outlet.

Online Video Computer Games (OVCG)

In 1990, the world saw a massive rise in online computer games. These games are played through servers which connect hundreds and thousands of computers together (Williams et al. 2006, pp.6). The games allow for the player to create avatars and offer hours of highly interactive gameplay and development for the player’s character identity. OVCG involve multiplayer game worlds which allow for instant peer to peer communication, either through typed chats or voice over chat (Williams et al. 2006, pp.6). This means players develop a sense of shared community and become known to each other by their avatar's name. Taking a step back from the game, it is insane how social these online computer games can become. In one article about a man’s addiction to world of warcraft, a therapist states that "People play those games often in a desire to meet their social needs," and that "There's a sense of friendship and self-esteem you develop with your team-mates, you can compete and be cooperative. It really feels as though it meets your social needs" (Lush 2011). It doesn’t just stop in the game either, one google search of World of Warcraft and you are flooded with discussion boards, tips and tricks, petitions and apps.

Mobile Gaming

Clearly not everyone has account or an interest in these high fantasy OVCG games but a new era of mobile games has came about. In the past decade, digital games have become a widely accepted media entertainment, moving away from the traditional ‘gamer’ community into mainstream media (Thorsten & Kroger 2013, pp.4). We can see the change in how mobile games are now becoming a part of everyday life (Richardson & Hjorth 2014, pp.1). Even games like Farmville have been hugely successful as they are able to take leverage of one’s social media following. I’m sure most of you have heard of the app Candy crush, it was a game application that reached No.1 on IOS, Andriod and Facebook at the same time (Docktermen 2013). A survey during the time revealed that 30% of players would say that they were addictive and one of the main reasons behind it was the social aspect as it allowed you to play with friends and compete against them (Docktermen 2013).

I find it pretty interesting how this rise in social gaming can be related to addiction. I honestly do think it is a major problem that the gaming community is facing.

Have you ever felt ‘addicted’ to a game?

References

Docktermen, E 2013, Candy Crush Saga, Time, viewed 8th May 2017, http://business.time.com/2013/11/15/candy-crush-saga-the-science-behind-our-addiction/

Lush, T 2011, At war with world of warcraft, The Guardian, viewed 8th May 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/29/world-of-warcraft-video-game-addict

Brand J, Todhunter, S 2016, Digital Australia Report, Interactive Games & Entertainment Association, viewed 8th May 2017, http://www.igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Digital-Australia-2016-DA16-Final.pdf

Williams, P, Hendricks, S, Winkler, K 2006, Gaming Culture, Library of Congress, United States.

Richardson, I, Hjorth, L 2014, Gaming in Social, Locative and Mobile Media, Palgrave Macmiller, UK

[itsbess-blog1]

6. Health Campaigns

In this modern age people can track how many steps they have taken, google symptoms to receive a diagnosis and are even able to track sleep patterns. These services are known as digital health. The definition of digital health refers to a health service/information delivered or enhanced through the internet and related technologies (Eyesbach 2011, pp.1). In 2012 Pew Research Centre did a survey which revealed that one in three US adults have gone online to diagnose a condition and half have consulted their medical professional as to what they found. They also found that 88% of caregivers look online for medical information (Pew Research Centre 2012).

So now we understand what is digital health let's look at it in the case of social media. When I think about digital health I think of the endless fitness apps, the constant monitoring it allows and of course the notorious ‘fitbit’ that seemed to take over the world a couple of years ago but I definitely do NOT think about it relating to social media. Although after a few too many coffees and a little bit of research I realised that there has been various health campaigns launched onto social media that have reached a global audience.

I’m sure anyone that was on social media in the summer of 2014 would remember the ice bucket challenge. For those who don’t remember, people dunked a bucket of iced water over their heads in order to solicit donations before nominating others to do the same to raise money for ALS.  

Various celebrities posted videos and soon enough it became a viral challenge. Although it did go viral, the success of this campaign can be criticised. Time magazine called it “problematic in almost every way”, going on to say that “most of its participants… didn’t mention the disease at all”. On the other hand this viral campaign raised more than 100m in a 30 day period which has allowed to fund various research projects into the disease. So you may be thinking, what is your opinion on this Bess? Well to be honest I remember this challenge clearly and commenting on how the meaning behind it definitely did get lost but I can’t argue with the numbers, if the project managed to raise that amount of money in that short of a  period I would have to say it was successful.

When thinking about it I do think it is very interesting how health organisations are able to bring awareness to various diseases through social media. I guess a major controversial factor is that social media has been linked to mental health issues. So we are advertising health campaigns on a medium where people find social media a major problem for their own health and wellbeing. Behind one post can lie anxiety and emotional suffering brought on by how many  likes, shares and comments they will get (McCosker 2016, pp.1). Health in social media is very controversial and overall digital  health does have various problems behind the concept. I want to know what you think as I don’t have a clean cut opinion on this one, do you think that health campaigns should be apart of social media?

References

Eyesbach, G 2001, ‘What is E-Health’, Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol.3, no.2, pp. 1-2

Pew Research Centre 2012, Pew Research Survey for American Health Habits, viewed 1st May 2017,  <http://www.chcf.org/publications/2013/01/pew-survey-online-health>

McCosker, A. (2016) 'Digital Mental Health and Visibility: Tagging Depression', in P. Messaris and L. Humphreys, Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication (2nd edn), Peter Lang.

Wolf, N 2016, Remember the Ice Bucket Challenge?, The Guardian, viewed 1st May 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/26/ice-bucket-challenge-als-charity-gene-discovery

[itsbess-blog1]

5. Crowdsourcing in Disaster

No matter where you live, natural disasters are apart of every country.Fires rip through Australia’s forests, tornados destruct America and earthquakes give New Zealand the shakes. Natural Disasters are apart of nature and are hard to predict. Recent years has seen the rise of using crowdsourcing during natural disasters. Social media and mobile technologies have transformed the landscape of emergency management.

To further look at crowdsourcing in disasters let's firstly examine what is crowdsourcing?. It can be defined as the outsourcing of job functions to groups of people who operate independently and who are willing to provide their services in exchange for experience, recognition or low rates of pay (Business Directory 2017). Companies are now using social media and internet forums to invite them to participate on specific projects (Business Directory 2017).Now to put this in the case of disaster then it would be using digital technologies like social media or popular crowdsourcing websites to distribute information and manage these emergencies when most other communications are down.

So what is the most common medium in disasters?

Social media is rapidly becoming the primary source of information and intelligence during disasters. When cell phones are down, social media such as twitter, instagram and facebook can still transmit information because a smaller bandwidth is needed for the communication. Social media is currently being used to  gather data to determine situational

awareness and planning emergency response (Armstrong 2015). This technology allows for disaster affect citizens to produce real time, local information on critical events. In 2012 American Red Cross launched its digital operations centre. It is dedicate to being a  social media monitoring platform dedicated to humanitarian relief (Poblet et al. 2015) . More locally, Australia’s Government Crisis Coordination Centre has now started to monitor social media as a new source of data form which allows for crisis coordinators to obtain awareness of developing situations (Poblet et al. 2015) . This idea of crowd sourcing information from social media is becoming increasingly popular and many emergency services now have apps/use social media to release warnings and updates. The U.S Navy is currently funding a software prototype to crowd-source situational awareness during disasters (Armstrong 2015). It is currently in very early stages so the meantime we are using various digital platforms in these situations.

Let’s look at an example;

In Australia the ABC is one of the leading organisations people turn to when facing natural disasters. I am a  Queensland baby and everytime we faced a possible flood or cyclone, the ABC would be the only news we would listen to for its accuracy. In 2012 South-East Queensland faced flooding and Facebook and Twitter played a crucial role in the crisis (Bruns et al. 2012, pp.7). On twitter the hashtag #QldFloods quickly became the main method for people to find out information and pass on the information to others. Users were able to use this hashtag to share photos and bigger media companies like the ABC were able to retweet emergency services updates to reach a large audience (Bruns et al. 2012, pp.7). I actually remember this flooding and how my family used this hashtag and twitter to get information.

On an end note I believe that crowdsourcing during disaster is a positive way to get warnings and updates out.

Do you think crowd sourcing in disasters is positive?

Feel free to reply your thoughts on the matter.

References

Business Directory 2017, What is Crowdsourcing?, WebFinance, viewed 18th April 2017, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/crowdsourcing.html

Armstrong, D 2015, Crowdsourcing a useful tool during disasters and emergencies, viewed 18th April 2017, http://community.iaclea.org/blogs/leland-darryl-armstrong/2014/12/09/crowdsourcing-a-useful-tool-during-disasters

Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods’, pp 7-10. Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Crawford, K., Shaw, F. (2012)

Bruns, A, Burgess, J, Crawford, K, Shaw, F 2012, Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation, viewed 18th April 2017, https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-6273089-dt-content-rid-34295491_2/courses/2017-HS1-MDA20009-220271/Bruns%20Burgess%20%26%20Shaw_Qld%20floods-and-%40QPSMedia_2012.pdf

Poblet, M, Cuesta, E, Casnovus, P, 2015, Crowdsourcing Tools for Disaster, viewed 18th April 2017, https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/caplli/2014/158789/PobletGarciaCasanovas_a2014LNAI-8929p261_posprint.pdf

[socialmediadaily]

[digital-marketing-in-the-ai-era]

People spend around 40 minutes per day on average across Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.

Compare that to:

Instagram—21 minutes

Pinterest—20.8 minutes

Twitter—17 minutes

Snapchat—17 minutes

Ello—13 minutes

LinkedIn—9.8 minutes

[itsbess-blog1]

4. Trolling & Social Media Conflict

In this modern age most people are a digital citizen. Just like everyday life this online citizenship can bring forth a sense of cyber bullying through trolling and conflict. The internet makes it a hundred times easier to bully someone. People are now saturated in cyberbullying 24/7 and it only takes a click of a mouse for someone to write a rude/mean comment. This remains to be a major problem in the internet and I honestly don’t understand why people feel the need to write rude comments or send degrading messages online.

Cyber-bullying includes sending mean message or threats to a person’s email/cell, spreading rumours online or through text and posting hurtful or threatening messages/photos on social networks. On a statistical standpoint over half of adolescents have been victims to cyber bullying, more than 1 in 3 have received cyber threats and half of young adults do not tell their parents they have been victims of online bullying. This can lead to low self-esteem in individuals and lead to various mental health issues (BullyingStatistics 2017). I know that when I log onto youtube and scroll down in the comments I am always so shocked at how much hate there is. Even scrolling through celebrities instagram photos there is always comment after comment of hate so is there actually a system that regulates digital citizenship to help stop cyber-bullying?

The Australian Government has recently started its e-safety website which is all about online safety for children and teenagers. The office is dedicated to helping young people have safe and positive online experiences. They aim to have australian children acting responsibly online just as they would offline. The website contains online safety educations, a complaint service for young australians who experience ‘serious’ cyberbullying and address what illegal online content is (Australian Government 2017). There is various online websites that now help with online bullying and I think it is a great foot forward but will a website ever be enough to stop the large issue of harassment online

In 2015 Cassie Whitehills sister, Chloe age 15 took her life after ongoing physical abuse and cyberbullying. She often received threatening messages that they would report to facebook but as usual facebook would come back saying that it didn’t breach their community standards (Carrick 2014). It is scary knowing that someone could take there life over this online harassments but the big social networks won’t even take the reports seriously.  

Overall I believe that cyber bullying is one of the biggest issues that young adults face on an everyday basis. Even on statistical standpoint it is impossible to know how many people are victims to online harassment due to most people being too scared/ashamed to stand up and let someone know they are a victim. It has been good to see shows like ‘13 reasons why’ and ‘A Girl Like Her’ being produced to bring awareness to this issues and show casing how serious online harassment is. For the future I honestly don’t know how they will tackle this problem but I do know creating more awareness around the issue is a positive start.

So I'll leave you with this question do you think there is a way to control cyber-bullying without giving up our censorship?

References

Australian Government 2017, Office of Children’s E-Safety Commissioner, viewed 17th April 2017, https://www.esafety.gov.au/complaints-and-reporting

Carrick, D 2014, Can a Cyber-bullying Commision Protect our Kids, ABC, viewed 17th April 2017, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lawreport/5286036

BullyingStatistics 2017, Cyber-bullying statistics, viewed 17th April 2017, http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html

[itsbess-blog1]

3. Digital Activism/Protest

As a twenty year old I have found that digital activism has become an everyday part of my facebook feed. To this day I have liked various protests and even gone out on the streets to be involved.

Digital activism also known as cyberactivism can be defined as a form of activism that uses internet and digital media as its key platform for mass mobilization and political action (Fuentes 2017). In recent years there has been a massive rise in using major social networks to protest and facilitate activism. Never before has it been so easy to get the word out about a problem. Anyone who has access to an internet connection has the means to broadcast and protest (Joyce 2010). Although the question remains do these new platforms make activism any more successful than before? In 2010 Joyce, author of ‘digital activism decoded’ stated the question that ‘If a half of million people sign an online petition to end poverty, reduce global warming emissions, or overthrow a repressive regime, what effect does that actually have?’. From my perspective I find this to be a very interesting question in which I will examine further in this post.

Within the context of digital activism comes the term ‘clicktivism which is often termed because people can these days support a cause at the click of a computer mouse. Due to this traditional campaigning organisation such as political parties and trade unions are at all time low for participation (Howard 2014) . This idea contains various negative connotations but I believe this a great point to connect with audiences and has opened up activism to the younger generations who before were fairly disinterested. A great example of a digital activism campaign was the 2015 #MarriageEquality. Following the decision for same sex marriage to be legalised in the UK and Ireland it was celebrated globally through this hashtag. More than 26million facebook users took advantage of the rainbow filters for their profile picture while other networks offered similar features. The hashtag #lovewins was used 284,730 times within the first hour after the decision (Morrison 2015). This campaign became a way for the world to globally recognise same sex marriage and furthermore promote the cause. It opened up the conversation and allowed for millions to show their support.

In 2013 Professor Howard created a study to reveal what makes digital campaigns successful. The study revealed that social networks like facebook and twitter were used in about half of all campaigns, followed by e-petitions, with 25 percent. Furthermore it was found that street protests were a key measure of success (Howard 2013. Getting people moving away from the computer to out on a street is a crucial goal for groups trying to initiate political change.

 In relation to the question Joyce asked in 2010, I would say that digital activism is a very powerful medium but can create the biggest change when combined with traditional activism. In converging the traditional and digital it allows for activism to become more powerful and able to reach a larger audience.

References

Howard, P 2013, When Does Digital Activism Pack A Punch, Symposium Magazine, viewed 9th April 2017, <http://www.symposium-magazine.com/when-does-digital-activism-pack-a-punch/>

Joyce, M 2010, Digital Activism Decoded, IDEBATE Press, New York

Fuentes, M 2017, Digital Activism, Britannica Academic

Howard, E 2014, How ‘Clicktivism’ has changed the face of political campaigns, The Guardian, viewed 9th April 2017, <https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/24/clicktivism-changed-political-campaigns-38-degrees-change>

Morrison, K 2015, Top 5 Social Activism Campaigns of 2015, AdWeek, viewed 9th April 2017, <http://www.adweek.com/digital/2015s-top-5-social-activism-campaigns-blacklivesmatter-lovewins-more/>

[geraltcirilla]

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… They’ve made us a society of stalkers.

Hannah Baker, Thirteen Reasons Why S01E04 (via grounderbellamy)

[itsbess-blog1]

2. Political Engagement

The launch of social media has hugely impacted the political landscape. For once the traditional media outlets aren’t the only ones posting the stories but instead everyday people can go online and post their thoughts and ideas on politicians. In 2008 the Pew Research Centre found that 74 percent of Americans went online in the 2008 presidential election to receive news surrounding it while 13 percent used social media to create their own political content (Young 2010). As a young Australian I commonly use my social media as my main source of news flow. More specifically when election time rolls around, I rely heavily on my social medias to give me the correct information. Personally I believe this faces both negative and positive points.

Since 2009 many politicians have joined twitter, they are currently using it as a medium to broadcast from but are not yet using it to its full extent. A recent study reveals that politicians using social media allows them to keep up with the digital natives (young people) (Jericho 2012) . A great example of this is Obama’s political campaign that used social media as a main strategy. His presidential campaign team made various social media accounts for himself and his wife Michele and even managed to raise over $659 million from online individual contributions (2013, p.8). This is clearly a positive way to help engage young adults in the political landscape although there remains to a few problems when combining politics and social media.

A person's political thoughts can heavily be swayed by social media. For an example many believe that Facebook helped Donald Trump become president. This is due to Facebook's newsfeed algorithm. It prioritizes stories that have you nodding in agreement, while other stories that will challenge your prejudices and worldview are filtered out which results in a filter-bubble (Olsen 2016). Just after the election campaign finished it was revealed that a handful of teens in America were responsible for dozens or more of the inaccurate conspiracy theories that had been going viral, which were all in favour of Donald Trump (Olsen 2016).

In conclusion as a young adult I believe social media is a great way to interact with the political landscape but can’t be the sole medium I use to engage in politics.

References

Jericho,  2012 ‘How many votes are there on Twitter?’ in The rise of the Fifth Estate: social media and blogging in Australian politics, Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, Australia, EBL eBook Library, viewed 01st April 2017, pp 254 - 278

Olsen, P 2016, How Facebook Helped Donald Trump Become The President, Forbes, viewed 01st April 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2016/11/09/how-facebook-helped-donald-trump-become-president/#5a7d3e1759c5

Young, S. 2010, 'New, political reporting and the internet' in How Australia decides: election reporting and the media, Cambridge University Press, Australia, EBL eBook Library viewed 01st April 2017, pp 203-228.

‘Social Media and Politics’ 2013, Mint, 17 April, p.8.

[fullpraxisnow]

By treating access to audiences as social currency, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and just about any widely used social media platform, are designed to incubate cultures of competition. … People start treating each other like ruthless transactions, carcasses to step over rather than human beings actively engaged in dialogue or disagreement. After a while it can feel like survival of the fittest. Sometimes it is. Just as billionaires have enormous resources at their disposal to manipulate the flow of power and preserve market dominance, social currency enables popular web-based activists to maintain dominance over online discourses. So while the visibility social media enables can be a valuable tool for the proliferation of alternative media, marginalized voices, and radical re-education, how that visibility is obtained and maintained can be painfully problematic.

The Virtual Colosseum: Overcoming Social Media’s Dark Side (via fullpraxisnow)

[fionagoddess]

[itsbess-blog1]

1. Is Tumblr a Blog or a Social Network?

If you look at the about section on Tumblr, the platform defines itself as a place to ‘effortlessly share anything’. It further goes on to say the user can share any medium they want while also having the power to customize ‘everything’. Broken down Tumblr currently has 341.9 Blogs, 147.3 Posts and 406 Employees therefore showing it is currently very popular in this digital age (Tumblr 2017). Furthermore to answer this question we need to break down and identify what the characteristics of a blog is compared to a social network.

Firstly let's look at what is a social network is?

In 2007 Journal of Computer Mediated Communication defined that a social network site is a web-based service that allows individuals to (3) construct a public/semi-public profile within a system, (2) create a list of other users with whom they share a connection and lastly view and look through their list of connections (Boyd & Ellison 2007). This is an academic look at the definition but another major defining point of social network sites is they do take a lot of time/work. A recent study pointed out that ‘social media, it’s like  puppy, it’s cute when you get it but then you’ve got to keep it alive’ (McCosker Et Al. 2016).

In light of these definitions of social network sites, it is clear that sites like Facebook and Twitter fit directly into these categories but does Tumblr?. Firstly Tumblr does allow users to create a profile that is public in the website. It also does allow users to follow each other and comment/reblog on their posts which means they are able to share a connection with other users on the website. From analysing this I would confidently say that Tumblr can be categorised as a social network site but that leaves the question is Tumblr both a social network site and a blog?

Let’s examine what is a blog?

The word Blog is short for Web Log and refers to a bunch of entries one posts on a web page. Anyone who can create their own web page and post their own content can create a blog (Tech Terms 2017). Although in this day their is various platforms that have been created to assist people in blogging. Places like Wordpress, Wix and Blogspot exist with interfaces that makes it as easy as pressing publish (Tech Terms 2017). To myself I believe that the word ‘blog’ is pretty broad and simply just means a place where someone can write about feelings/interests.

In relation to Tumblr, The site clearly labels itself as a ‘blog’. The interface of the website allows users to customise and make their own blog. From there onwards it also allows users to write their own posts and publish them. In sight of this I believe that Tumblr is a blog due to this nature. In a sense it very similar to wordpress in the way it has pre-set formats which makes it easier for the users. After defining and examining the natures of both blogs and social networks, I have come to the conclusion that Tumblr isn’t one or the other. Clearly Tumblr is the combination of both a blog and a social network site.

Feel free to comment your thoughts below.

References

Tech Terms 2017, Blog Defintion, viewed 01st April 2017, https://techterms.com/definition/blog

Tumblr 2017, About, viewed 01st April 2017, https://www.tumblr.com/about

McCosker, Anthony, Reid, David, and Farrell, Cathy (2016) Social Media Industries: Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology, http://www.swinmediacomms.net/media/social-media/social-media-industries-report-2016

Boyd, N & Ellison N 2007, Social Network Sites, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications, vol. 13, no. 1, pp.210-230