Ivy Thuy Pham

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[ivythuyphammda2009]

Politics and civic culture

Behind any successful (election) campaign, there is always a huge effort to engage with target publics via many mediums. In such, social media is being increasingly used to raise awareness of causes, run campaigns and as a place where people from all walks of life can gather and discuss the issues that they care about (936 Drive, 2013).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vrczoLm7Es

That is such a new, very new and very interesting knowledge/ experience for people coming from “different world” like me and it is the time to learning something new. In my very limit knowledge regarding politics, this post simply demonstrates a key point that I believe it is closely relate to my major.

It says that social media given publics a space to get involved in discussion and then forms public opinions. In other words, a dialogue has established between voters and candidates. But in what extent public opinion is really change or affect candidate election campaign which aims to gain more votes? In fact, different from traditional model of communication where people obtain information from one vital source, social media such as Facebook and Twitter has introduced a new model – two-way communication. Nevertheless, Grunig & Hunt (1984) had separated two different type of two-way communication: asymmetric and symmetric model. Looking further in definition and characteristic of two model, election campaign is more likely deployed two-way asymmetric communication which also known as ‘scientific pursuance’. Take a close look on what Tony Abbott promised during his election campaign and the cuts in health and education in federal budget 2014 recently, it is just a great example on how he sharped and tailored his message to persuade publics in short-term attitude change in order to (obviously) gain more supporters. Some would say that Tony had broken his promise, but he could argue that people just misunderstood his message.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/no_health_education_cuts_in_budget_rraVfCpwjHpJ9dOuXzbsCN

In the TEDTalks ‘How social media can make history’ of Clay Shirky, he mentioned quite amazing example about how Obama engaged with his supporters via social media platform as a two-way symmetric communication, especially through myBO.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASZJE15E0SY

Very clearly, Obama replied “I have considered the issue. I understand where you are coming from. But having considered it all, I’m still going to vote the way I’m going to vote. But I wanted to reach out to you and say, I understand that you disagree with me, and I’m going to take my lumps on this one.” Clay mentioned that although the messaged did not please people, everyone in that group realized that Obama had never shut them down. Nobody in the Obama campaign had ever tried to hide the group or make it harder to join, to deny its existence, to delete it, to take to off the site. They had understood that their role with myBO.com was to convene their supporters but not to control their supporters.

It is no doubt to say that social media could allocate power to political parties. However, in order to gain the trust (as well as support) of publics in long-term basis, two way communication should adopt in appropriate way.

[ivythuyphammda2009]

Crowd sourcing in time of crisis

ABC has been making significant changes to adopt various type of crown sourced information in its reports of recent crises such as Queensland floods and Black Saturday bushfires. Starting in the 2008 brushfires, the network quickly recognised the advantage of social media in timely updating emergency situations. They then utilised various established news accounts across multiple countries, channels and divisions on the major social networks to fill the public in what happen in time of disasters. The result was, needless to say, more comprehensive and instant insight of the provinces.

The social media is, owing to its natures, usually considered unofficial and less creditable source. However, upon acknowledging the vitality of the mass’s communication, ABC has been embracing the social network as one of their main channel, apart from TV, radio and such, especially in disasters’ bulletins in which sometimes timeliness, not reliability is the key. The national broadcaster does not use social media as a supplement to traditional ways of broadcasting but a standalone platform which, alongside the web and on air programs, offers higher broadcast availability and instant feedbacks from the audience. ABC editors think the most effective way to get community responses is to make concise, to the point questions and more importantly, information has to be consistent as well as updated. Although it is indeed a challenge, they managed to maintain a huge number of followers as a very active community.

ABC also experiment new approaches, among them, the most prominent could be the crowd-mapping platform Ushahidi, a software system built to gather information in crisis area from multiple sources: SMS, email, online form and tweet. While this use of social media show a positive result: the site of Toowoomba flood alone served 230,000 visit over 24 days of the incident, ABC apparently had not expected people to not only visit their map because of curiosity but also be engaged as they did. Ushahidi is a potential software which has been increasingly popular, most recently their creators has been working on a computer algorithm that help summarise and verify information to make the platform even more reliable and useful.

[ivythuyphammda2009]

Activism and protest

Clicktivism is a blend of words click and activism. In the light of this, clicktivism is just a form of activism in which conventional methods of communication e.g. telephone, word of mouth, etc. are replaced by social media. Of course these actions are largely conducted online via Twitter or Facebook to galvanize protests, facilitate boycotts, and sign petitions for example. It may look as a powerful tool which could deeply affect politics and social changes. However, Gladwell (2010) argued that social media (and clicktivism) are never going to change anything if they do not relate to the world offline. In other word, he believed that social media and/or clicktivism are just a virtual communities in which without any real actions or actual causes they (online users clicking or supporting campaign) won’t be harmful for and/or make any change in a real world. Gladwell also pointed out that clicktivism, in fact, minimizes people’s perception of activism to a mere click, giving people a shallow sense of participation with no incentive to take further action (Flaim 2013). He maybe either right or wrong.

Right?

Technically, social media relationships are built around ‘weak-ties’ or friend of friend of friend. Once your friend support and click to join an activist group, Facebook updates on your newsfeed. You, because of curiosity of what and why you friend support that group, then also click to obtain and ‘follow’ a trend. The more friend of yours ‘like’ the group, the more likely you are going to do the same thing. From this point, that is not because you are really concern about the social issues or problems, you become an online activist or clicktivist just as a result of curiosity and friend’s effect. I experienced the same thing when clicked and supported Avaaz without any knowledge about this organization and of course I failed to follow or participate in rallies or any kind of actions. So clicktivism does not work in my case.

Wrong?

An incredible instance of heroic clicktivism successes was Arab Spring; or

A father avenges his daughter’s wrongfull death via massive online petition (135,000 people stood behind his cause and signed the petition). President Obama the signed a law that stipulates health coverage for the victims; or

More closely to Victoria, Australia, Burger Off campaign has been running for 2 years and hasn’t stopped yet even McDonalds already launched the 24h restaurant in Tecoma last month. Online activist not only attracted more than 90,000 people signing petition but also raised the money to send their representatives to Chicago to take the campaign to McDonalds’s headquarter in USA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU02im37AdM#action=share

In short, some people dismiss this sort of online activism, or clicktivism, as lazy, disengaged or even pointless, but the bottom line is that it’s catching on because it has proven to effect change. Meanwhile, while at all online petitions and campaigns produce direct results, at worst they help spread awareness and empower people who otherwise might not have the channels to support or promote a cause (Holmes, 2013) Thanks to social media, now anyone with an internet connection can help to do it easily and quickly, simply by sharing information about the issues they believe in with their friends and peers.

[ivythuyphammda2009]

Games are being played by young male people? It used to. Generally games are for everyone. Before, game inventors developed offline games and online game on the ground of reality of men’s role such as building things up, bringing heavy things, and fixing things. Nowadays when men and women is equity, game changed. More and more women and elder are playing games. Female game players account for 47% of U.S gamers and the older is over 50 occupied 29% (Galarneau, 2014). Most of trendy games women and old generations are interested in are sports games or games stereotyping family life, country life and city life, fashion, cooking such as Farmville, Barnyard, SIM, Cosplay etc. The game developers had more attention to create a game interesting and suitable for all generations to maximize their market share and last the average life cycle of a game or can say a version of game. http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2014-global-gaming-stats-whos-playing-what-and-why/

Online games are more socializing? Although most of us see that it is the deeper connection between words “online games” and “socializing”, offline games are never put aside when social game is mentioned. It is fact that almost socializing through games these days derived from online games because of the increase of spending daily time on the devices like smart phones and tablets. You can play with another player even he/she can be different corner on earth, or even you have never met each other before. Online games are really powerful in connecting, then socializing. In sum, your connection now is the world, not your neighborhood.

Social game is real communities? You are missing a life in Candy Rush on Facebook. Your friends have given you a hand to save your life in second later. That’s quick and so socializing. However, that “SOS” is a click on notification board. The question is that will happen in the real world with that fast speed and right solutions. It is very tough in the real life for sure. The other shortcoming of communities in games is that over-reacting gamers sometimes applying the game social hierarchy or games rules to life. These gamers are “hooligans” in the game world. We are growing up and living with games even they are online or offline games. Also, we are getting addicted more day by day. In simply speaking, games facilitate us closer by decreasing the space. We are part of game communities by chance or with purpose. The communities bring the socialization in some levels. It is said that social game is a platform for connecting people, but to criticize “Building stronger communities”

Consequently, social games are more and more developing and changing in structure of player and types of games. It is definitely channel of socialization in the modern world. However, the solidity of the game communities is a controversial matter.

[ivythuyphammda2009]

Trolling and Social media conflict

Everybody must still remember the case of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager who committed suicide after incessant sufferings online (Grenoble, 2012).

I was really antagonized and irked after reading this article. As a digital citizen, she just utilized the Internet to meet and talk to new people. However, this innocent action unintentionally led to bad people’s misusing social media against her. The man who had contacted her on Facebook cast a slur on her by forwarding her naked photo to everyone. To be honest, after this case, cyberbullying is indeed an anathema to me and I strongly believe a law should be ratified to govern and regulate social media use.

In fact, not only commoners like Amanda suffer from cyberbullying, but celebrities as well. Recently, former Australia’s Next Top Model judge Charlotte Dawson was found dead at her home in Sydney.

http://stcommunities.straitstimes.com/tv/2014/02/23/former-australias-next-top-model-judge-charlotte-dawson-found-dead-her-sydney-home

In 2012, she was hospitalized after Internet trolls had sent bullying messages to her when she participated in an anti-bullying programme, which is kind of ironic. Speaking of cyberbullying, it is a mistake not to mention South Korea. A number of stars also took their lives due to acerbic online comments. For instance, Choi Jin Sil, South Korea’s Julia Roberts, committed suicide after prolonged online gossip about her personal life (Veale, 2008)

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1847437,00.html#

As a matter of fact, since 2007, South Korea has enforced a law to control cyberbullying by preventing Internet users from hiding their identities. Nevertheless, its effect is still in doubt when the number of suicide cases has not fallen. In view of the situation, the South Korean government, besides the current law, has lately launched another programme to enable parents to get an alert whenever their kids receive a suspicious message (Arrouas, 2014 http://ti.me/1o6r0fK)

In my opinion, these laws and campaigns might affect netizens’ privacy and anonymity. However, they are still necessary because teenagers, mostly victims of cyberbullying cases, are considered minors and should be protected. Therefore, for the sake of safeguarding children, the future generation, from losing their lives by cyberbullying, Australia should consider adopting these laws and programmes to try curbing the situation. 

[ivythuyphammda2009]

[ivythuyphammda2009]

First blog post after years

It was 2006 when I first realized a presence of blog. And yes, it looked trendy, fresh also weird at first. Taking me too much time to understand and familiar myself with some terminology like ‘post’, ‘status’, ‘comment’, ‘entry’ or struggling to post an entry, how to customize site and so on, blog eventually was a part of my life. The entries had increased rapidly from the day I started blog, from once a week to once a day even three post a day . In retrospect, I couldn’t imagine how can I write and share that much pieces of my life ONLINE. It sounds ridiculous to admit that I was addicted in blog for at least 2 years. Thanks to the closure of Yahoo!Blog, I ran away from blogging after attempting some other sites (Myspace, Multiply, Wordspress) but none of them satisfied me.

BUT, NOW I HAVE TO START BLOG AGAIN… in an English version (the most terrible thing!!), under new platform called Tumblr and luckily it will be written and examined from a different perspective of mine, professional angle indeed. Just give me some limit spaces in this first blog to express/recall/share my own feelings, thoughts and experience since I met and used BLOG.

Blog itself is not harmful. It is a place for sharing, like a diary. I agree with the expression of Mary Cross in “Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter are Transforming Popular Culture” (2011, p.50). He mentioned “…blogs satisfy a basic human desire for self-expression and, at the same time, the basic human desire to be heard, to have an audience. In this regard, blogs are not the new kids on the block, just a 21st-century version of the 18th-century coffeehouse conversations…”  So, if I wrote blog with the purpose of satisfying my self-expression and being heard as a basic human need, what have I done wrong?

From my observation when reviewing previous blog usage, a majority of entries tended to express depression rather than happiness. Almost mentioned sundry matters which did not contribute much to personal development even self-confidence. Moreover, continuous updating posts and sticking my nose in other’s business really pulled me away from real life situation also tore me away from outdoor activities. It consumed time, wasted of my effort, limited face-to-face connection. My experience with blog was so bad. That is why I want my next experience with blog change differently in which I could stay positively, give more insights and express my-online-image professionally.

I also need to confess that I’m not either a tech-savvy or always-on person. I indeed prefer face-to-face communication and teaching style. However I am trying to be not behind others in somehow. :)

Welcome to my new version of blog via Tumblr and enjoy my ‘wonderful’ writing skill.

PS. I am more than happy if I could start Tumblr in my own language although I do understand this is how I could improve English and to be professional ;)

[ivythuyphammda2009]

Testing

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