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[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>.

[junelllee]

Interesting sharing :D

[junelllee]

#7 Social Media and China: A Case Study

What is The Great Firewall of China?

In 2000, Fang Binxing, the “Father of the Great Firewall” was the person who started the government’s technological efforts. A transformative software, “Golden Shield”, was developed by Fang in the late 1990s, the software allowed the government to conduct inspection of the received or sent data as well as blocking of destination IP addresses and domain names. At that time, the Chinese government support the effort of Fang by setting new laws ensuring that people accessing to China’s internet are under Chinese regulations. Nowadays, the Chinese government strive to unify the political values, ideals and standards between the virtual world and real world. Capital is significantly invested in technological upgrades to control and censor content and new regulations are passed to punish people who did not comply to the laws. As what mentioned by Xi Jinping, the freedom in the information flow of the western Internet is opposite to the Chinese government values. As China establish their own internet ecosystem within the country, the government need to maintain the benefits that internet brings, which is commerce and innovation, at the same time, preventing the technology to accelerate changes in politics. Meaning that, the Chinese government the costs in terms of government credibility, economic development, development of civil society as well as creative expression. However, the internet still remains powerful for the people of China to constantly seeking for social change and human rights (Economy 2018).

The Internet Ecosystem building up the Great Firewall

China is one of the countries that has their own internet ecosystem and the only country that entirely excluding Google, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter from their vocabulary. People who stay in China is unable to access the platforms as mentioned just now. With that, the equivalents in China see their opportunities and quickly grasp the chance to become innovation leaders in China. Not merely copy the western platforms or social medias but position themselves in a unique way in the market. The members of Chinese internet ecosystem included TikTok, Weibo, WeChat, AliPay and more. However, big companies such as Facebook and Google still aim for the large market at China. Recently, Facebook has been striving to establish a local ‘sanistised’ version of Facebook in order to reenter much developed internet ecosystem of China. On the other hand, Google has also work for a censored version of the search engine that complies to the environemnt to be reestablish itself in China (Infographics: Chinese interney ecosystem and stats 2020).

The Social Credit System

The social credit system of China aims to create a database that controls the actions and behaviours of the people, enterprise and government across the country in real time. This system assists the government to establish a high-trust community where the members follow the regulations by ranking their behaviour and assigning social credit scores which then turn into a variety of incentives and punishments (Koty 2019). With the official guidelines in building the social credit system, China wishes to expand the coverage of the social credit system to the whole country by this year, which is 2020. However, there are voices mentioning that the system is lack of regulations in the governance. There are cases where abuse occurred, and punishments being assigned too broadly for “uncreditworthy” behaviour. Unfortunately, currently there is no solutions for the systems. Behaviours including blood donation, eating on the subway and jaywalking have been added by some local systems to influence the assignment of scores however some of the behaviours were facing negative responses online. Therefore, the Chinese government would need to monitor the social credit system by connecting the system to the current legal framework in order to maintain the legal environment (Abacus 2019).

Reference List

‘Infographics: Chinese internet ecosystem and stats’ 2020, SAMPi, viewed 7 June, <https://sampi.co/chinese-internet-ecosystem/>.

Abacus 2019, ‘China’s social credit system shows first signs of abuse, report says’, South China Morning Post, viewed 7 June 2020, <https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3041520/chinas-social-credit-system-shows-first-signs-abuse-report-says>.

Economy, EC 2018, ‘The great firewall of China: Xi Jinping’s internet shutdown’, The Guardian, viewed 7 June 2020, <https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-firewall-of-china-xi-jinpings-internet-shutdown>.

Koty, AC 2019, ‘China’s corporate social credit system: what businesses need to know’, China Briefing, viewed 7 June 2020, <https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-corporate-social-credit-system-how-it-works/>.

[junelllee]

#6 Social Gaming

What is Social Gaming?

The practice or activity of using social media as platform to play online game can be defined as social gaming (Social gaming 2020). A few examples of well-known social games including:

FarmVille

It is a social game on Facebook and obtaining 10% of all Facebook users to become the players. The game is mainly about building farm and harvesting crops. Players are able to play with their Facebook friends to assist in the farm’s productivity (Schreier 2011).

Zuma Blitz

It is an addictive ball matching game developed by PopCap Studios. Zuma Blitz is easy and fun to play. The constantly updated ranking in its scoreboard leads to high intention of the players to compete with their friends to score better scores, and this keeps the players hooked on the game (Schreier 2011).

Words With Friends

Words With Friends is an online Scrabble which allows the players to play 24/7 with their friends, rather than a computerised opponent, on Facebook whenever and wherever they want. The successfulness of this social game is that it is a classic game that players need not learning new or complicated rules (Schreier 2011).

What makes social games interesting?

Progression and Freshness

A successful social game is able to engage players over time with core gameplay that is endless repeatable. Besides, the developers will need to add new content to the game constantly with a very disciplined release schedule and a fast pace in order to maintain the freshness of the game. This will stick the players to the game and give them fun with a mix of short- and long-term goals as well as rewards after completing the tasks (Swallow 2013).

Value and Fun

Other than just playing the social game, the game developers will need to generate fun and intrinsic value to the players. Providing fun in a game can be the best monetisation strategy, as players are willing to pay if the payment options will lead to a higher level of fun game experience. Besides, players are able to gain social value when they play games on social media with their friends, due to the competitive nature of game (Swallow 2013).

Fair Mechanics and Monetisation

A successful social game can gain profit. Therefore, incentivise the players to pay for more interesting options after consuming a free playing experience is one of the strategies to monetise the social game. Although allowing the players to proceed or succeed in the game only after spending their money leads to monetisation, this will lead to long-term drawbacks and reduce the players’ retention rate (Swallow 2013).

Familiarity

As users want something they associate with, game developers should ensure that their content is accessible and can be easily understood by the players. Social games with simple rules allow the players to invest little in learning the game basics and increase the familiarity of the game to the plyers. Besides, social games with location-based feature allow the players to play with their friends without boundaries and have the chance to get know of the rest of the world. This feature also enables the developers to enhance its engagement and marketing with the players (Swallow 2013).

How social games are making changes to the world?

Aside from enhancing the gaming experience, incorporating social good into the social game could reduce the guilt of spending too much time on games. In addition, taking part in generating positive impact to the real world while playing game transform the definition of gaming into something meaningful to the society. On the other hand, donating while playing games prevent donor fatigue caused by the NGOs traditional way of fundraising (Swallow 2013). One of the gaming companies, Sojo Studios, which developed social games such as WeTopia and Joy Kingdom, turn the points earned by the players into real-world monetary donations that benefits several charities. For example, WeTopia has bring tangible change by encouraging the players to play while helping out the children whereas Joy Kingdom concerned on animal charities by donating to help the pets and animals globally. Fifty percent of Sojo Studios’ profits were donated to charities including The Humane Society of the United States, Children’s Health Fund, Save the Children and Best Friends Animal Society. Furthermore, Zynga is also one of the social game companies that contributes to be socially accountable to the public. Zynga has run approximately a hundred of in-game campaigns that mainly aimed for social good. As a result, there were 3 million players contributed in the campaigns and raised $15 million from the players. One of the campaigns, namely Oh, What Fun! Campaign has warmed the children in need across the US with nearly 60,000 toys and books by having the players to buy in-game virtual goods. These show that social games have the ability to connect people and assisting one another in the real world across boundaries.

Are gaming communities becoming more monetisation and toxic?

Monetisation

Games nowadays are designed in a way where players will need to make in-game purchase or microtransactions in order to proceed the game or obtain the accessibility of the features or currency within the game. Research shows that some in-game purchase systems are unfair or exploitative which uses maximising profit by exploiting the players within the game but offer limited or even no protections for them (King et al. 2019, pp. 131-132).

Toxicity

Yes, gaming communities are toxic. According to Smith (2019), it is difficult for gamming industry or law enforcement to wholly eliminate criminal interactions. An example for criminal interaction is when one player intimidates to threat or hurt another player. Another example is a 41-year-old who allegedly using the game Fortnite to commit crimes such as child pornography, unlawful sex and other related crimes with underage players. Legal parties should eliminate all the ambiguities in the legal system and plays a role in enforcing the law to protect the players in this online gaming era.

Reference List

‘Social gaming’ 2020, Lexico, viewed 28 May 2020, <https://www.lexico.com/definition/social_gaming>.

King, DL, Delfabbro, PH, Gainsbury, SM, Dreier, M, Greer, N & Billieux, J 2019, ‘Unfair play? Video games as exploitative monetized services: and examination of game patents from a consumer protection perspective’, Computers in Human Behaviour, vol. 101, pp. 131-143.

Schreier, J 2011, ‘5 top social games and why they’re so successful’, Mashable Australia, viewed 29 May 2020, <https://mashable.com/2011/02/15/top-social-games/>.

Smith, N 2019, ‘Racism, misogyny, death threats: why can’t the booming video-game industry curb toxicity?’, The Washington Post, viewed 30 May 2020, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/02/26/racism-misogyny-death-threats-why-cant-booming-video-game-industry-curb-toxicity/>.

Swallow, E 2013, ‘How social games are changing the world’, Forbes, viewed 28 May 2020, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2013/03/23/social-games/#60ea1edc377e>.

Swallow, E 2013, ‘What makes a good social game?’, Forbes, viewed 28 May 2020, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2013/03/07/social-gaming/#4f8509642ed0>.

[changsiying]

#7 Social Gaming

What is Social Gaming?

Social gaming refers to ‘the activity of playing online games with other members of the same online group’ (Definition of ‘social gaming’ 2020). According to Paavilainen et al. (2013, p. 796), social gaming can be defined as the gaming industry that plays video games on social networking services such as Facebook. The most popular category of apps on the site is gaming, which launched in 2007. Social games are distinguished by five factors (O’Neill 2008):

(1)  Turn-based: Playing games with other players on the platform is also considered social, allowing users to take turns while playing the game.

(2)  Awareness of other people’s behaviour in the game: A behaviour that allows the user to interact more with the game by performing an action in the game and then sending a notification to another player.

(3)  Casual: Designed for casual or casual gamers.

(4)  Multiplayer: In social games, for a game to be considered social, it must allow two or more players to participate.

(5)  Social platform-based: Most social games originate from social media platforms, which provide simple communication for players in the game or platform.

Social gaming brings positive changes!

Social gaming has changed the world in positive way. 

For example, WeTopia encourages players to play for a good goal. The game had some good results in 2012, such as providing 1 million days of school for Haitian children and 45,000 meals for children in Las Vegas. 

In addition, in October 2012, Joy Kingdom provided 53,000 bowls of food to cats and dogs at an animal shelter (Swallow 2013), successfully helping pets and animals around the world.

However……

Gaming communities have toxic environment!

While some games allow anonymous play, most games on social media platforms, such as Facebook, are linked to players’ profiles. This makes sexism against women, gays, bisexuals, and so forth toxic, and if players don’t play well, their gender or ethnic minority can be used against them. The claim against these players is that they belong somewhere else or that they should be doing something other than playing games, because games are supposed to be for men and young boys (Reymann-Schneider 2019). 

Research shows that many video games stereotypes and content about women may encourage sexism. The argument against women is that they belong in the kitchen, because women are not considered competent enough to play games. The gaming culture has also influenced LGBT players, who are known as “broke back mountain,” which means “stupid gay people”, forcing players to quit the game (Riedel 2018). 

In addition, women are often underrepresented in video games. They are described as attractive people, sexual objects and indecent people. Women are depicted as sexual objects by displaying revealing clothing or partial nudity (Dietz 1998). In a systematic analysis of 47 randomly selected games, the female characters wore low-cut costumes and could see their cleavage (Beasley & Standley 2002).

Game or monetization?

With the emergence of more and more online games, new monetization strategies have been developed. Some games offer a monthly subscription to play on the game server, and paid access to premium content for the experience is considered a microtransaction. The gaming industry is estimated to be worth $90 billion, of which 70% of android-based games and 80% of iOS games are being monetized (Gough 2020). Game monetization has already affected the game community. When game monetization dominates, users or players will feel no reason to buy the game, because it has no value and is just used to make money (Nikita 2015). 

In my opinion, the gaming community has become more monetized than playing games. Most players buy items from the game to enhance their experience, but most do so for self-satisfaction and to show off to other players. It’s not so much a question of play as of how much things cost. On Youtube, for example, players can upload a video of themselves chasing objects in a game so that they can play a smooth game on the screen.

  Reference List

Beasley, B & Standley, TC 2009, ‘Shirt vs. Skins: Clothing as an indicator of gender stereotyping in video games’, Mass Communication and Society, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 279-293.

Definition of ‘social gaming’ 2020, Collins Dictionary, viewed 28 May 2020, <https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/social-gaming>.

Dietz, TL 1998, ‘A examination of violence and gender role portrayals in video games: Implications for gender socialization and aggressive behaviour’, Sex Roles, vol. 38, no. 516, pp. 425-426.

Gough, C 2020, Gaming monetization-statistics & facts, Statista, viewed 29 May 2020, <https://www.statista.com/topics/3436/gaming-monetization/>.

Nikita, K 2015, Monetization in games,  Lahti University of Applied Sciences, viewed 29 May 2020, <https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/95966/Kononov_Nikita.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y>.

O’Neill, N 2008, What exactly are social games?, Adweek, viewed 29 May 2020, <https://www.adweek.com/digital/social-games/>.

Paavilainen, J, Hamari, J, Stenros, J & Kinnunen, J 2013, ‘Social Network Games: Players’ Perspective’, Simulations and Gaming, vol. 44, no. 6, pp. 794-820.

Reymann-Schneider, K 2019, How to deal with a toxic gaming culture, Deutsche Welle, viewed 29 May 2020, <https://www.dw.com/en/how-to-deal-with-a-toxic-gaming-culture/a-50075300>.

Riedel, S 2018, How LGBTQ + people are trying to fix toxic gaming culture, Them, viewed 29 May 2020, <https://www.them.us/story/gen-con-gaming-culture>.

Swallow, E 2013, ‘How social games are changing the world’, Forbes, 23 March, viewed 29 May 2020, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2013/03/23/social-games/#24c294a2377e>.

[junelllee]

#6 Fandom

What is fandom?

According to Gray, Sandvoss and Harrington (2007), almost everyone is a fan of something, including me. I used to be a K-pop fan who constantly checking on the social media to acquire the latest news and updates of the K-pop idols. Checking Twitter for updates used to be one of the favourite things I do after coming back from secondary school, because there were a lot of users who also are the K-pop fans existing in the online community to interact with, which is also known as fandom. So, what is fandom? Fandom is a group of fans sharing similar enthusiast of someone or something and plays a role in providing an alternative social community (Jenkins 1992; Fandom 2020). It also explains ‘a love relationship between the self and an object of fandom, whether that object is a show, movie, book, sport, team, league, band, genre, product, brand, person, activity, or idea’ (Kresnicka & Pappalardo 2017).

Fandom in the entertainment industry

Is fans and fandom important in the entertainment industry? Definitely. An anthropologist working in the entertainment industry stated that the industry is now shifting its language and targeting for fans rather than just audiences or viewers. Strategies to marketing nowadays drives both breadth and depth of engagement. In addition, the players in the industry even concern not only on the management of fans but also how to relate and learn from the fans. The significant shifting is due to the advancement of technology. Besides, fandom also shapes the physical environment of the entertainment players via merchandise, fan art, collections and other fandom-related objects. To maintain a good relationship with fans, the players within the entertainment industry should consider several aspects including be real, understand the underlying drivers of fan relationships, effective communication, keep things balance and most importantly handle the tough times with honesty and respect (Kresnicka & Pappalardo 2017). A good example showing the power of fandom is when a K-pop group named BTS became one of the top 10 in the Billboard 200 Chart after receiving 300 million votes from their global fandom (Blake 2018).  

Are fans weird and overly?

A term ‘sasaeng fans’ explains how the went over the relationship of love and obsession which suffocate their K-pop idols. A few examples can be drawn from Koreaboo’s article stating that the fandom of Korean boy group EXO was attempted to kidnap the group. It is mentioned that the sasaeng fans had rented a van which was similar to EXO’s van and parked at the slot where EXO’s van would normally park. EXO did not notice and was heading to the sasaeng fan’s van but luckily was stopped by their manager (13 extremely disturbing stories of sasaengs that went too far 2018). Another example showing that fans are weird is when a 19-year-old bought a French toast that was left by Justin Timberlake with a single bite missing on eBay for over a thousand dollars (Raymond 2012). These examples stated prove that fans are actually weird and overly.

The dark side of fandom – toxic fandom or anti-fandom

Anti-fans, who are completely opposite to the normal fans that help to promote content, are those who strongly dislike something but still interested in spending time to criticise or mock it (anti-fan 2020). To be worst, the affordance the social media provides enables the anti-fans to directly send hate to their targeted celebrities. A case that happened last year that shocked the entire K-pop industry is the suicide and death of South Korean singer and actor, Sulli. The reason of the tragedy is due to mental issue caused by the attack of anti-fans through malicious comments on her Instagram posts and the failure of the management agencies to protect their celebrity from the toxic fandom (McCurry 2019; After death of K-pop’s Sulli, calls to strip cyberbullies of anonymity – from fellow singer and victim Solbi, music industry and fans 2019). This tragedy shows the dark side of fandom where anti-fandom or toxic fandom also holds a certain power and proves a horror fact that they can cause fall of a star.

Reference List

‘13 extremely disturbing stories of sasaengs that went too far’ 2018, Koreaboo, 11 October, viewed 22 May 2020, <https://www.koreaboo.com/lists/13-disturbing-stories-sasaeng-fans-went-far-1/>.

‘After death of K-pop’s Sulli, calls to strip cyberbullies of anonymity – from fellow singer and victim Solbi, music industry and fans’ 2019, South China Morning Post, 18 October, viewed 22 May 2020, <https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3033397/after-death-k-pops-sulli-calls-strip-cyberbullies-anonymity>.

‘anti-fan’ 2020, Your Dictionary, viewed 22 May 2020, <https://www.yourdictionary.com/anti-fan>.

‘Fandom’ 2020, Cambridge English Dictionary, viewed 22 May 2020, <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fandom>.

Blake, E 2018, ‘The strength of K-pop fandom, by the numbers’, Forbes, 4 April, viewed 22 May 2020, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilyblake1/2018/04/04/k-pop-numbers/#5ce058cb48ab>.

Gray, J, Sandvoss, C & Harrington, CL 2007, Fandom: identities and communities in a mediated world, New York University Press, New York.

Jenkins, H 1992, Textual poachers: television fans and participatory culture, Routledge, New York.

Kresnicka, S & Pappalardo, D 2017, ‘Building brands by relating to fans’, Variety, 24 July, viewed 22 May 2020, <https://variety.com/2017/tv/news/troika-fandom-building-brands-1202502009-1202502009/>.

McCurry, J 2019, ‘K-pop under scrutiny over ‘toxic fandom’ after death of Sulli’, The Guardian, 18 October, viewed 22 May 2020, <https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/oct/18/k-pop-under-scrutiny-over-toxic-fandom-after-death-of-sulli>.

Raymond, AK 2012, ‘Thirteen weird (or expensive) things that fans have spent major cash on’, Vulture, 17 October, viewed 22 May 2020, <https://www.vulture.com/2012/10/13-weird-pricey-things-that-fans-have-bought.html>.

[junelllee]

#5 Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding

What is crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing refers to a way of sourcing for job, information or opinions from the communities who share their ideas through the internet, social media, and software applications. An example of crowdsourcing is the traffic apps where users can observe the traffic through the app as a platform to provide and also receive real-time traffic updates mutually from a large group of people (Hargrave 2019).

What is crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding involves using the accessibility of social media and websites to source for small amount of funding from a huge number of people to finance a novel business venture. This is to expand the entrepreneurship by increasing the pool of venture capitalists beyond the traditional investors (Smith 2019).

In times of need (social or political), can social media movements like #pulangmengundi (crowdsourcing and crowdfunding transportation to mobilise youths to vote) benefit communities? 

The #pulangmengundi hashtag activity was a social and political movement trending on social medias (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc.) during the 14th General Election. It was started by concerned Malaysians that wished to assist other Malaysians especially the youths to travel home to vote on 9th May 2018. (#PulangMengundi n.d.). The crowdsourcing and crowdfunding activities involve in this movement included carpooling services and travel subsidies that aims to help those who have no transport or could not afford the transportation fees. This movement was a success as according to #PulangMengundi (n.d.), there were 7,000 car-poolers connected, RM75,00 funds pledged by the public, and RM30,000 raised for Persatuan Belia Harmoni Malaysia, which provide bus rides for the youths (Harmoni Malaysia 2018). 

Consequently, 82 percent of voters voted during the election, which is the second highest ever despite that 9th May 2018 was a weekday. The successful result of #pulangmengundi shows that social media movements aiming to crowdsource and crowdfund is beneficial to the communities.

How crowdfunding helps in the cultural and creative industries? 

Cultural and creative industries traditionally is funded by wealthy individuals, companies or the public. With crowdfunding, the cultural and creative project sponsors’ leverage is lower as anybody is able to donate small amounts to a selected project. This certainly saves time and is more convenience than the traditional way in getting financing for cultural and creative industries because crowdfunding provides a simpler and more open means compared to the traditional ones. The internet provides an open platform for a cultural and creative project to get funded as the details of the project are able to be posted online and well informed. Moreover, the platform owners, such as Ketto, a platform allowing people to raise fund for, can charge for a commission of the collected sum (Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding in the cultural and creative sectors 2016). Take Ketto as an example, the commission charged of the collected sum is 4.5% of funds raised for the individuals and 5% of funds raised for the NGOs (Ketto 2020). Furthermore, crowdfunding helps in reducing the risks for the creators as the cost for the projects is able to be shared among the creators himself and the other fund contributors. Another benefit is that it assists in speeding up the project’s progress as social media provides the platform for the distribution and promotion to be done online. As a result, projects under the cultural and creative industries such as music projects, dance performances, video games,  journalists’ work and more are able to survive with the help of crowdfunding by preventing them  to be overlooked by mainstream media (Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding in the cultural and creative sectors 2016).

Reference list

#PulangMengundi n.d., Malaysians helping Malaysians to vote, #PulangMengundi, viewed 13 May 2020, <https://www.pulangmengundi.com/>.

‘Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding in the cultural and creative sectors’ 2016, European Parlimentary Research Service Blog, 24 February, viewed 14 May 2020, <https://epthinktank.eu/2016/02/24/crowdsourcing-and-crowdfunding-in-the-cultural-and-creative-sectors/>.

Hargrave, M, ‘Crowdsourcing’, Investopedia, 8 July, viewed 13 May 2020, <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdsourcing.asp>.

Harmoni Malaysia 2018, Sumbangan diperlukan untuk bantuan mahasiswa pulang mengundi, 27 April, viewed 13 May 2020, <https://www.facebook.com/beliaharmonimalaysia/photos/a.228383310662572/1007855852715310/?type=3>.

Ketto 2020, How crowdfunding works?, Ketto, viewed 14 May 2020, <https://www.ketto.org/crowdfunding>.

Smith, T 2019, ‘Crowdfunding’, Investopedia, 26 June, viewed 14 May 2020, <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdfunding.asp>.

[changsiying]

#4 Public Health Campaigns

What is Public Health and Public Health Campaigns?

Public health means ‘the science of protecting communities and improving their health through education, policy development and research to prevent disease and injury’ (Careers in public health-what is the definition of public health 2020). The definition of public health varies from person to person. Whether you enjoy crunching data, conducting laboratory or field research, developing policy, or working directly with people to help improve their health, there is a place for you in public health. As a public health professional, you can work around the world, dealing with health issues in entire communities, and influencing policies that affect the health of societies. Public health involves the application of many different disciplines such as biology, mathematics, public policy, sociology, computer science, medicine, business, education, engineering, psychology and others.

Public health campaigns is defined as promoting public health and preventing the spread of dangerous health risks as an integral communication function of modern society (Cengage 2020). Public health campaigns include the strategic dissemination of information to the public to help populations fend off imminent health threats and adopt health-promoting behaviours (Cengage 2020). In general, the purpose of these activities is to raise public awareness of important health issues by educating specific groups. Health campaigns are generally designed to raise awareness of health threats and target audiences to act in support of public health. For example, public health campaigns often encourage target audience members to adopt healthy behaviors to combat serious health threats. These behaviours can include adopting a healthy lifestyle, including exercise, nutrition and stress reduction.

Is Social Media Useful in Spreading Information on Covid-19 in Malaysia or Your Home Country?

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or WhatsApp are useful for spreading information on Covid-19 as people can update the information through social media with just a click. Also, people use social media to raise the awareness in term of Covid-19. For example, people recorded video which about how to wash our hands on Facebook and there are a lot of pages on Facebook helps to tell and deliver the information regarding Covid-19 for the users. 

Besides that, Instagram also came out with “Stay at Home” sticker to raise the users’ awareness. On some social media platforms, people can find Hashtags like #GumaMurugo, #StayHome, #StaySafe, and so many others (Karuhanga 2020, p. 1). However, social media also brings disadvantages in spreading information on Covid-19. It is difficult to stop social media spreads the fake news. 

Easy to spread, hard to stop. As with other misinformation that spreads easily on social media, there are often no filters to determine if the information is accurate. Despite a joint statement from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter and YouTube promising to work together to combat misinformation, it is still spreading as fast as the actual coronavirus (Suciu 2020). Even before the pandemic, social media platforms were under pressure to address the spread of fake news and misinformation, but now things seem to be getting worse and worst (Suciu 2020). 

Besides that, Cristina Tardaguila, deputy director of IFCN, pointed out that fake news can sometimes lead to tragic consequences, such as an incident reported in India in February (As Covid-19 spread, fake news on the virus rises 2020, p. 1). 

Tardaguila said that in the Chittoor incident, a 50-year-old man, a father of three, hanged himself after mistakenly believing he was infected with covid-19 (As Covid-19 spread, fake news on the virus rises 2020, p. 1). Although technology makes it easy to share these “news”, Malaysians should be aware to click “share” or “send” as it is a crime under Malaysian law to disseminate or share unverified/false news (Fake news and Covid-19 2020).

Social Media Engagement: Importance for Public Health

The following features make social media a viable channel for public health communication efforts (Heldman et al. 2013, p. 3):

1.     Social media works best when combined with traditional public health communication channels.

2.     Through social media, we can target and reach different audiences.

3.     Social media allows us to share public health information in new spaces.

4.     We can listen and gather feedback in real time.

5.     Social media allows us to increase our direct involvement.

Challenges in Social Media Engagement for Public Health

There are also some challenges which will be addressed in the public health community, such as (Heldman et al. 2013, p. 3):

1.     Message control lost.

2.     Move to “direct consumer engagement”.

3.     Resource allocation (currency and personnel).

4.     Assess the impact on public health outcomes.

Reference List

‘As Covid-19 spread, fake news on the virus rises’ 2020, The Star, 7 March, p. 1.

‘Fake News and Covid-19’ 2020, Donovan & Ho, 26 March, viewed 9 May 2020, <https://dnh.com.my/fake-news-and-covid-19/>.

Careers in public health-what is the definition of public health 2020, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, viewed 9 May 2020, < https://www.publichealth.pitt.edu/careers/what-is-public-health>.

Cengage 2020, Public health campaigns, Encyclopedia, viewed 9 May 2020, < https://www.encyclopedia.com/media/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/public-health-campaigns>.

Heldman, AB, Schindelar, J & Weaver, JB 2013, ‘Social media engagement and public health communication: implications for public health organisations being truly “social” ‘, Public Health Reviews, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 1-18.

Karuhanga, J 2020, ‘Covid-19: how Rwandans are using social media to raise awareness, enforce lockdown’, The New Times, 4 April, p. 1.

Suciu, P 2020, ‘Covid-19 misinformation remains difficult to stop on social media’, Forbes, 17 April, viewed 9 May 2020, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2020/04/17/covid-19-misinformation-remains-difficult-to-stop-on-social-media/#416f1b4f4819>.

#MDA20009 #DigitalCommunities #Week7

#PublicHealthCampaings

[junelllee]

Great sharing!

[junelllee]

# 4 Public Health Campaign

What is public health campaign?

In present day society, public health campaign is deemed as one of the essential communication tools as it serves purposes of enhancing public health and controlling the spread of dangerous health risks. In order to ensure the objectives of public health campaigns are conveyed to the public effectively, a combination of theory and practice in communication shall not be compromised. This is due to public health campaigns are carried out in a broad set of health-specialized activities which communication strategies are involved when relevant health information is distributed to certain groups of public (Public health campaigns 2020).

Self-injury and Project Semicolon

Self-injury (SI) involve the non-suicidal actions which intent to damage individual’s body tissue by burning, cutting or hurting themselves. Studies found that people injure themselves to cope with negative emotions. This happens in all age groups, however especially frequent among teenagers, with a percentage of 13-17% (Seko & Lewis 2016, pp. 180-181). Project Semicolon is a public health campaign that concerns about the self-injury (SI). The objective of the organisation is to assist individuals in preventing suicide as well as to raise awareness and educate the public regarding the prevention of suicide of themselves or others (Project Semicolon 2017). It involves the movement where people post a photo showing semicolons on their skin, either with a tattoo or other non-permanent means, to share their recovery from suicide stories (Bolton 2015).

SI and Project Semicolon on Tumblr

Tumblr is a social media and microblogging platform and is popular among 13-24 years old teenagers, which is the age group at high risk of SI. The community guidelines of Tumblr have added one policy that fights “pro-self-harm” blogs by declaring the remove of blogs which are not compliant to the policy. Moreover, further actions such as automatic alert and censoring SI content have been taken by Tumblr. When users searched for keywords that are related to SI on Tumblr, automatic alert will pop out, which contain the information including crisis line telephone number and URLs to SI treatment and crisis intervention services. Besides, Tumblr censor the SI content from the users and staff members’ reports by using the blog-by-blog basis approach. These all shows that Tumblr is a platform that plays an active role in spreading the self-care message across the communities. 

On Tumblr, people support the Project Semicolon by posting their tattoo images on their blogs, with stories narrated the journey of themselves recovering from personal struggle and pain. Project Semicolon and the photos showing semicolon tattoos are able to widespread among the communities on Tumblr through hashtag and with the help of the anti “pro-self-harm” community guidelines (Seko & Lewis 2016, p. 189).

Reference List

Bolton, D ‘People all over the world are getting semicolon tattoos to draw attention to mental health’, Independent, viewed 9 May 2020, <https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/people-all-over-the-world-are-getting-semicolon-tattoos-to-draw-attention-to-mental-health-10365313.html>.

Project Semicolon 2017, About Project Semicolon, Project Semicolon, viewed 7 May 2020, <https://projectsemicolon.com/about-project-semicolon/>.

Public health campaigns 2020, Encyclopedia.com, viewed 9 May 2020, <https://www.encyclopedia.com/media/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/public-health-campaigns>.

Seko, Y & Lewis, SP 2016, ‘The self—harmed, visualized, and reblogged: Remaking of self-injury narratives on Tumblr’, New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 180-198.

[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>.

[junelllee]

#2 Social media and Politics

Politics has always been a serious topic to talk about. What is politics actually? According to Politics (2020), politics is ‘the activities of the government, members of law-making organizations, or people who try to influence the way a country is governed’. Politicians, corruptions, parties, wealth… without further understanding, one is difficult to participate into political topic discussions. However, when politics meet social media, the users on social media can easily join the discussion which leads the political topic to become the trend of the day.

The power of social media in politics

Social media now has a great impact on politics. One of the impacts is that politics now can be directly contact with voters (Murse 2019). Social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, has now become tools for the politicians to engage directly to their voters. This allows the politicians, even the presidents or prime ministers of countries to shape their own personality through the social media, for example, Trump has a high level (93%) of Neuroticism shown in his Twitter personality (MacLellan 2017).

The other way how social media changes politics is that social media allows politicians to observe and weigh the public opinion on an issue or controversy. Through the social media platforms, the response of the public regarding any policy statements or moves by the politicians and campaigns can be clearly seen even without the politicians doing a thing. As a result, politicians can observe the needs and wants of the public and alter their campaigns or moves based on the real time response without hiring expensive consultants (Murse 2019).

One of the phenomena that I have observed when the magic of social media exerts in politics is when our former prime ministers Najib Razak use social media to rebrand himself and change his image among the users.

How Najib Razak use social media to change his image among the users?

After the 14th election of Malaysia in 2018, the first new government was born in 60 years. Along with the election, the next focus of all Malaysians falls on our former prime minister. Not surprisingly, Najib was charged with 42 counts regarding power abuse as well as money laundering (Edwards 2019). However, the statistics showed that there is a massive growth in the followers of Najib’s Facebook page, which is 72,654 fans by month, increasing from 3.9M to 4.1M of fans in last 6 months (Najib Razak Facebook statistics 2020). Why is this? This is because through social media, he successfully changed his thief image into a self-styled “King of the Trolls”, where he uses modern and sarcastic language to criticise the current government (Edwards 2019). In February 2019, he was being doubted by the DAP politician on his academic credentials, Najib responded by changing his profile picture into a picture where he was wearing a cap and a gown in the 1970s along with the caption ‘Kalau tak gunting rambut. Boleh jadi macam saya dulu ni. On tak on?’ (Razak 2018). 

As a result, Najib had won support from the users by gaining 48,000 reaction and 2,300 shares of the photo in less than one hour. Despite the alleged offences relating to the IMDB scandal, Najib has winning support from the users through the social media (Daud 2019). This proves that Najib is winning the Malaysian’s heart and rebranding himself as an entertainer through social media.

Reference List

‘Politics’ 2020, Cambridge Dictionary, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/politics>.

Daud, S 2019, ‘Ex-M’sian PM Najib Razak claps back at critic who doubted his graduation from university’, Mothership, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://mothership.sg/2019/02/najib-razak-graduate-university-nottingham-malaysia/>.

Edwards, S 2012, ‘Najib Razak: how malaysia’s disgraced former leader is using supermarkets, mopeds and selfies to rebrand himself’, The Conversation, 21 January, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://theconversation.com/najib-razak-how-malaysias-disgraced-former-leader-is-using-supermarkets-mopeds-and-selfies-to-rebrand-himself-111793>.

MacLellan, L 2017, ‘How Trump’s twitter personality compares with 105 business leader’, according to data scientists’, Quartz, 6 August, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://qz.com/1043550/data-scientists-compared-trumps-tweets-with-business-leaders-from-elon-musk-to-oprah-winfrey/>.

Murse, T 2019, ‘How social media has changed politics’, ThoughtCo., 29 August, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://www.thoughtco.com/how-social-media-has-changed-politics-3367534>.

Najib Razak Facebook statistics 2020, Socialbakers, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/facebook/pages/detail/157851205951?url_key=najib-razak>.

Razak, N 2019, Najib Razak, 5 April, 8:38 PM, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10156897666570952&set=a.294787430951>.

[junelllee]

#1 Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site?

Breaking down the question, what is blog? What is social network site? What is Tumblr? And most importantly, is Tumblr a blog or a social site?

What is blog?

First of all, what is a blog? A blog is ‘a type of website where the content is presented in reverse chronological order (newer content appear first)’, blog content is referred to as ‘entries or “blog posts”’ (What is a blog and how is it different from a website? (explained) 2019). From the lecture slides of this unit, blogs are deemed as the representation of self. Blog allows people to form an online identity where people manages their online impressions by themselves. This can be divided into two parts: fronstage, where people perform themselves through blogs or social media platforms, and backstage, which is a private area where people can rest from online performing themselves as well as plan what to perform next.

What is social network site?

The definition of social network sites (SNS) is a web-based services which provide individuals with the ability to create a public or semi-public profile in a platform, the ability to connect with other users as well as the ability to view and manage the connections of themselves and others within the system (danah boyd & Ellison 2008).

What is Tumblr?

According to how Tumblr introduces itself, Tumblr is a place where users connect with other users by sharing their interests. It was founded in 2007, headquartered in New York, and the CEO is Jeff D’Onofrio. This platform system built to enable users to express themselves (post text, pictures, GIFs, audio, videos, live videos and others), to be themselves (customise colours, fonts, layout and topics) as well as to connect with other people (hashtag and reblog). Until today, Tumblr consists of 495.2 million of blogs (Tumblr n.d.).

Why separate blog from social network site?

The similarity of blog and social network site is that both allow users to share their views and opinions with their followers. However, differences occur between blog and social network sites. A blog is a place where people create their own contents, where there is no competition when someone follows the link to a person’s blog. In this sense, stronger community can be built between author and readers. On social network sites, people tend to build a larger, but weaker community. The more the users a person is following, the smaller the chance to see all the posts posted on the timeline (Guberti 2013). So, the question is, is Tumblr a blog or a social network site? According to Explainer: what is Tumblr? (2019), while Tumblr enables people to share anything (text, photos, quotes, links, etc.) from wherever you are, including browser, phone, desktop, email and more, it can be described as ‘microblog’ where it a cross between SNS (Facebook, Twitter) and a blog. Most importantly, no matter it is a blog or social network site, Tumblr has successfully achieving its goal of connecting people with similar interests all around the world.

 Reference List

‘Explainer: what is tumblr?’ 2019, Webwise, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://www.webwise.ie/parents/explainer-what-is-tumblr-2/>.

‘What is a blog and how is it different from a website? (explained)’ 2019, WPbeginner, 1 March, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/what-is-a-blog-and-how-is-it-different-from-a-website-explained/>.

danah boyd & Ellison, NB, ‘Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 13, pp. 210-230.

Guberti, M 2013, ‘The difference between blogging and social media’, Marc Guberti, 31 July, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://marcguberti.com/2013/07/the-difference-between-blogging-and-social-media/>.

Tumblr n.d., About, Tumblr, viewed 15 April 2020, <https://www.tumblr.com/about>.