Maed

This Tumblr blog contains my work produced for MDA20009 Digital Communities.

[mollyjoneswrites-blog]

Trolling and Social Media Conflict

Anybody who is active on social media wouldn’t be a stranger to the terms ‘’trolling’’ or “cyber bullying.’’ Trolling and cyber bullying are not new concepts, and while social has opened many avenues for communication, it has also bought forward the issues of trolling, bullying and social media conflict. 

While trolling is meant to be looked at as humorous, too often it turns into a negative online experience and gets out of hand. Boyd (2014) argues that “social media has not radically altered the dynamics of bullying, but it has made these dynamics more visible to people.” 

Cyber-bullying and trolling doesn’t only affect celebrities or those living in the media spotlight anymore, but is heavily impacted the lives of young people too. 

Recently, a young girl from the Northern Territory, Australia sadly took her own life after years of online bullying and trolling. Dolly’s parents are now campaigning to start a trust called ‘’Dolly’s Dream’’ to raise awareness of bullying, anxiety, depression and youth suicide. On social media the hashtags #stopbullyingnow and #doitfordolly are being used to spread Dolly’s story and message.

Boyd, 2014), in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-10/dolly-everett-nt-suicide-cyber-bullying-campaign-launched/9317056

[maelynd-blog]

I definitely believe that social media has increased bullying amongst young adults and teenagers. Social media and the “always on” lifestyle mean that people are now in constant contact with each other, and for teenagers it can be a status thing to get lots of likes or lots of shares. Before social media (and mobile phones), kids might get bullied at school, then they’d go home and get away from it... but now it follows them home. And it’s my opinion that people say nastier things more freely in a text message or a FB post, than they would to that person’s face. It’s easier to be mean when you don’t have to see the reaction... just like it’s easier to buy things with a credit card or online than it is to hand over a wad of cash! Technology has made us disconnected, while enabling us to be connected. 

[digibabz-blog]

Social Online gaming

Social gaming most commonly refers to playing online games that allow or require social interaction between players, as opposed to playing games in solitude. (Wikipedia) I must admit I am not part of the 47% of females that play video games, or have partaking in an online social gaming community but I do remember a time when my husband would stay up late at night playing Gears of war against complete strangers in various parts of the world. By playing online games, one can forge new friendships with people in different countries that they might never have met otherwise and engage in ‘incredible collaborative environments’ together (Alexander, 2014).

We humans are playful creatures and gaming provides achievements to the gamer in such forms as rewards, status, competition, and online social collaboration with other people that share the same hobby or interests. They become part of a community and interact in real time, even partnerships, with people they wouldn’t have been able to connect with or feel comfortable in everyday life (Cole, Griffiths, 2007).

With the ease of access to technology and the internet in the 21st century, an online gamer can connect their console or their social profile to internet for instantaneous access to online social gaming communities. In many countries online gaming is tied to youth culture (Jin 2010) What blows my mind is the MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) the virtual realism of online games is quite impressive. In MMORPGs, users compete and collaborate within a virtual universe, often forming ‘guilds’, and begin to work together to achieve shared goals within the game. One such game as the Chronicles of Elyria is named one of the top MMORPGs games of 2018. Which provides a dynamic changing environment relative to a gamers decision and selections. Where a world is run by players, just one of the many few.

source: https://youtu.be/h_ZG22ckzB0

One of the key affordances of use of online social gaming, is the creation and governance of rules within gaming communities. “Game rules are used to establish a field of interaction at once familiar and strange, a deliberately differentiated site for competitive, social, cultural and commercial exchange” (De Zwart et al. 2014, p. 77).  

While gaming can be seen by most as a harmless way to spend one’s time, it can be quite addictive as well. There have been many relationships that have fallen due to how much time one spends online. Which raises concerns on how the real world is seen and behaviours such as anti-sociality. Though they may feel they are not alone as others are online playing. I feel with the stresses of everyday life, some people become gamers to escape reality or the stresses of life and create a world they can control. Doesn’t sound so bad to me but can be an issue when a sense of realism is lost.

ref

Alexander, L., 2014. Are multiplayer really all that social? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/what-would-social-video-games-look-like-gamers

Cole, H, Griffiths, M, 2007. Social interactions in massively multiplayer online role-playing gamers. Pg. 575-583, Vol 10, Issue 4.

Jin, D.Y., 2010. Korea’s online gaming empire. The MIT Press.

[maelynd-blog]

Ooh that game looks good. *twitch*

It’s easy to get carried away with online games. You tell yourself, just one more quest, and oh look, that other quest is roughly in the same area so I’ll do that one too, and now I’ll just collect these materials because they’re here and I’m here and I’ll probably need them anyway... oh look what’s over there, I should go investigate... and now I’m super close to the fast travel spot that I haven’t unlocked yet and so I’ll just go do that... and... so on. Before you realise it, hours have gone by, you’ve completely missed dinner time, and you never even finished that first quest!

When you play a game that you’re really into, the whole world fades away and you don’t even realise that the real world is passing you by. My favourite online games are open-world games, which are by definition a time sink. The world is open and so the game developers fill it with all this cool stuff, and when you’re a completionist like me, well you’ve just got to go and explore it. 

Do online games make people less social? That’s a good question. From experience I can say that it sucks to be the other person in the room (not playing the game). My husband will very occasionally use the headset when he plays Xbox games, and even though I know he’s playing a game, every time he talks I think he’s talking to me. And because the headset is in, I kind of feel that he’s closed off to me. Though I admit that it works both ways... when I used to game a lot, he wouldn’t even bother trying to talk to me when I was plugged in and playing. It can be hard to find a balance when all you want to do is play the game.

[mollyjoneswrites-blog]

Social Gaming

Advances in computers and networking technology have now enabled online games to be played by people on opposite sides of the world, creating a booming online gaming community. To date, there are various online games that allow you to connect with friends, most games are frequently connected to Facebook, or in most current phone game applications, there is an option that connects players to someone unknown. 

One of the best parts about playing board games like Cluedo or the Game of Life is just sitting down and playing them with your friends and family, and having some friendly competition. Now, due to the digital age we don’t need to wait for that experience in person, rather now we can experience the fun of gaming at any time with our friends through social gaming communities. 

The term ‘social games’ refer to games made especially for and profiting from social media sites such as Facebook, an example of this is the game Farmville. 

According to Liszkiewicz (2010), Farmville is a browser-based free online game that is played via Facebook. In 2010, Farmville had a total of seventy million players, with twenty-six million daily players. The aim of the game is to harvest and grow crops to decorate your own farm and interact with other farmers, players are also able to chat to their friends while playing the game. 

I don’t personally play Farmville or many online games at all, other than Words with Friends or Trivia Crack, but I do however see the appeal and benefits of Farmville and other multiplayer games.

 Farmville is a fun alternative way to interact with friends and exclusively your own friends, being able to choose who you invite off your Facebook list, also being able to play the game with friends gives Farmville a competitive advantage over other games. References: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=farmville&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYkvf0vYHZAhWEHZQKHUNbAyEQ_AUICigB&biw=1333&bih=699#imgrc=SX0eIxul9sW7PM:

Liszkiewicz, A.J.P 2010, ‘The Real Reason You Are Addicted To Farmville (And Zynga Is A $5 Billion Company)’, The Insider Australia, 27 April, viewed 22 January 2018, <https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-cleverest-explanation-as-to-why-zynga-is-a-multi-billion-company-you-will-ever-read-2010-4?r=US&IR=T>.

[maelynd-blog]

I played Farmville for awhile, as well as Candy Crush, which is another super popular and well known social media game. In both of these games, you can send things to your FB friends which can help them in the game, so it was beneficial to know people who also played.

I didn’t have many friends who were already playing either of these games, but I soon found that there were FB groups that you could join and post that you needed friends in game, and people would send you FB friend requests... then when you were friends, you could send each other stuff in the game.

I thought it was interesting that people had found a way to connect with others to get these in game benefits, and in a way it was much better than constantly spamming your real friends with game updates (these games tend to share EVERYTHING you do in the game onto your feed).

It didn’t take long before posts by some of these in game friends started popping up in my FB feed, which I found kind of weird. Also the thought of my posted content appearing on their feeds also creeped me out a bit... so it wasn’t long before I unfriended them! Another thing these social games really brought to my attention is the power of micro-transactions. In Candy Crush, you can pay a tiny amount, like 99c, to get a few extra moves or to get a special candy, which is sooo very tempting when you’re 3 moves away from beating a level that you've been stuck on for a week and you’ve only got 1 move left on the clock. I don’t think I ever spent more than $10 total... but if just one million of their however many users pays $10... that’s $10 million dollars that they’ve made! I remember reading something about a young kid who spent a cringeworthy amount of money on a game like Candy Crush, purely through micro-transactions. Because it’s such a tiny amount of money, a lot of players will just pay it as a once-off, and it all adds up to why Zynga and King are so damn rich now.

[davidnorris]

Crowdsourcing and Social Mapping

Crowdsourcing is the process of delegating tasks to a group of people. It can be used to facilitate collaboration between people ordinarily separated by geography. It’s not exclusively an online tool, however it does generally rely on a public audience for contributions. This audience is usually outside of an individual or organisation’s immediate network. The most popular form of Crowdsourcing comes through websites such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo, where people solicit contributions of financial, or moral support such as community votes.

It can be used to collect information such as data and images, which can then be submitted to authorities in instances of criminal activity, accidents, or natural disasters. It helps to create a much more reliable retelling of an incident as it uses multiple recordings of a singular account, sometimes over vast locations (Women’s Rights Campaigning n.d.)

The collection of this data from various points of view can fall into social mapping. Social mapping is about the collection of data of people’s locations. It can also be used to create an online profile of individuals. A person who contributes a picture from a natural disaster zone is a person that is more likely going to need aid. It can also be used to find out how many people in an area are also affected by certain incidents.

Some people are worried about the use of social mapping in marketing. An individual that visits the website of a shoe retailer is clearly in the market for purchasing shoes. By collecting their IP address, other shoe advertisers can advertise their products directly to this individual. This makes this type of data collection a valuable commodity (White 2013).

It can also paint a picture of you and what your interests are. Video steaming service Netflix uses social mapping quite effectively. As Netflix has thousands of TV shows and movies available to watch, it’s important for the user experience to be a pleasant one and therefor Netflix collects data about what you watch and search for. They then compare your history to other users’ history and provide you with recommendations based on other people’s habits. If a user watches American Sniper starring Bradley Cooper, Netflix algorithms will then try to decipher if the viewer enjoys movies about war, or whether they’re a fan of the actor. This is important as a person whose interest is in war movies is unlikely to enjoy Silver Linings Playbook or The Hangover.

The point of social mapping is to enhance society, however in the wrong hands is a tool that could be used maliciously (Vanderbilt 2013).

References

Women’s Rights Campaigning n.d. “Crowdsourcing and Participative Mapping”, viewed 26 January 2018, <https://womensrights.informationactivism.org/en/strategies/crowdsourcing-and-participative-mapping>.

White, M 2013, “Social Mapping: What Is It and Why Should We Care?” MD: Museums and the Web, viewed 26 January 2018, <https://mwa2013.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/social-mapping-what-is-it-and-why-should-we-care/>.

Vanderbilt, T 2013, “The Science Behind The Netflix Algorithms That Decide What You’ll Watch Next”, Wired, viewed 26 January 2018, < https://www.wired.com/2013/08/qq_netflix-algorithm/>.

[maelynd-blog]

Social mapping, and how businesses use “big data” to target consumers directly, is a fascinating topic. I use Facebook on two devices - my personal phone and my personal laptop. Yet I can visit a website on my work computer, and not even 30 minutes later I’ll see ads for that website on Facebook on my laptop. I’m fairly sure I’ve never been on Facebook on my work computer, or if I have, it would have only been once just to check something. But I have purchased things on my work computer and used my PayPal account, or used my Hotmail email to set up an account... so somehow, the Internet knows that it’s me using my work computer.

What does this mean for virtual me? Whoever has collected and collated this digital picture of my web browsing and purchasing habits would have a pretty good idea about me and what my interests are. My data, along with hundreds / thousands / millions of other people’s data, is probably worth a ton of money. I’ve heard it said that data is the new gold, and I’ve got to agree. 

[mrmichaelbaxter]

No ‘Likes’... Just Donations

Keep reading

[maelynd-blog]

My Facebook friends list is full of slacktivists. I know this because my Facebook feed often includes posts asking me to sign a petition because someone else did. I myself am not a slacktivist... I don’t sign petitions, I don’t hit Like, and I definitely don’t share these things.

I don’t donate money either, at least not on a regular basis. I used to have a monthly donation to the Red Cross set up, but I got annoyed because they’d call me whenever they were doing a big drive for donations for whatever catastrophe was happening in the world asking for more money. And they don’t take no for an answer... you say no to $20, they ask you for $10... and then how about $5? They make you feel guilty because you won’t give them more money, but you’re right, it’s not even a Red Cross volunteer that you’re talking to.

You’re not alone in being exhausted by the constant request for donations, it’s overwhelming to walk down the main street and get hounded by people representing so many different charities... and it’s all over social media too. It’s so ever-present that I’ve actually started to tune it out, which is sad in a way, because there’s probably a number of charities out there that would really put my spare $5 to good use. The less charitable charities are making it harder for the rest of them to fundraise money.

[thefoxfiles-blog1]

Kids & adults - no one is safe from social media conflict

Cyberbullying

While bullying was once reserved to the playground, it is now an issue that comes home in the school backpack. Mean, vengeful, cruel acts – whether emotional, or physical, can be considered bullying if they are aggressive, repetitive and highlight imbalance of power (Boyd 2014).

With access to networked devices, cyberbullying becomes a major concern for children and the effects can be devastating, resulting in mental health issues e.g. anxiety and depression, and in severe cases, suicide. Youth suicide rates have doubled over the past ten years, with statistics showing that students who are bullied are nine times more likely to attempt or contemplate suicide (No Bullying 2017).

Teenagers dub it ‘drama’ which Boyd and colleagues describe as ‘performative, interpersonal conflict that takes place in front of an active engaged audience, often on social media’ (Boyd 2014, pp. 138). As identity and social circles are forming, status and popularity become key elements to the social self in the school environment, and it is not surprising that nastiness and bullying arise to upset power balance (Boyd 2014).

Unfortunately, it seems it takes another tragedy before cyberbullying comes to the fore again and campaigns are activated. #DoItForDolly, a campaign encouraging people to ‘speak out, even if your voice shakes’ and seek help to stop cyberbullying, was created after the terribly sad passing of 14 year-old Amy Everett who took her own life after months of cyberbullying (O’Brien 2018). Social media devices accentuate the reach and also immortalise the harmful content, yet because the wounds aren’t physical, silent suffering can be more dangerous. Raising awareness is important, but understanding motives and behaviours behind it more so.

Public Shaming – “think before you tweet”

Children are not the only ones affected by social media conflict. Public shaming is one such example that can parallel the ‘drama’ behaviours of teens.

As a millennial growing up in a digital world, “Think before you tweet”, & “don’t post something you wouldn’t want your grandma to see” became engrained in my internet habits, as a reminder to be cautious when posting online. There are countless stories of quick fingers posting too quickly and the repercussions, although partly brought on by themselves, can be excessive and harmful. Famous Australian swimmer, Stephanie Rice, lost many sponsors and credibility over a homophobic Rugby tweet to her thousands of followers, damaging her reputation, tarnishing her image, not to mention earning her haters and trolls (AAP 2010). On a much wider scale and for a lesser-known person, the case of Lindsey Stone, exemplifies the harm and uncontrollable spread that one ‘stupid photo’ of her joking around in front of a war memorial can do. Lindsey’s friend posted a photo on Facebook and tagged her. Within hours it had been commented on, shared and gone viral in a series of angry posts that even lead to a Facebook page being created to get her fired from her job. Within a day, Lindsey had lost the respect of her family, friends, colleagues and lost her job, which resulted in a year-long bout of depression she is still recovering from (Ronson 2015).

It was disrespectful and silly to post it online, but should she have received this treatment that lead to her depression? Public shaming in this context is anger-driven, but there are many instances where it is much more light-hearted and people are turned into laughing stock and memes without us realising the harm it may causing them. Think before your tweet, but maybe think before you share too…

References

AAP 2010, ‘Stephanie Rice in trouble over homophobic tweet’, Sydney Morning Herald, viewed 19 January <http://www.smh.com.au/sport/swimming/stephanie-rice-in-trouble-over-homophobic-tweet-20100905-14wb9.html>

Boyd, D, 2014, ‘Bullying: Is social media amplifying meanness and cruelty’ in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Yale University Press pp. 130-152

No Bullying 2017, ‘Bullying and Suicide statistics US, Australia and New Zealand’, No Bullying, viewed 12 January 2018 < https://nobullying.com/suicide-statistics/>

O’Brien, K, 2018, ‘Dolly Everett: Mourners gather to remember girl following suiced over alleged bullying’, ABC, viewed 18 January <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-12/dolly-everett-memorial-in-katherine/9323118>

Ronson, J, 2015, ‘Overnight, everything I loved was gone’: the internet shaming of Lindsey Stone’, The Guardian, viewed January 12 <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/21/internet-shaming-lindsey-stone-jon-ronson>

[maelynd-blog]

I think that so often, people post something that they think will be funny to their inner circle of friends, without realising that everything posted online has the potential to go viral.

The story about Lindsey Stone makes me think of one of the readings “Participating in the Always-On Lifestyle“. We are not just always online, but we can also be always on show. You never know when someone is going to snap your photo or record a video... and while you might just be playing around and not meaning any disrespect, certain things do look bad out of context!

[maelynd-blog]

WoW in the Workplace? Maybe not yet. (BP8)

I joined my first raiding guild in World of Warcraft in 2005, and rose through the ranks of the guild from an initiate under probation, to a fully-fledged raiding member, to a guild officer. It was during my tenure as a guild officer where I really began to appreciate the pressure and responsibility of raid leadership.

Source: https://imgur.com/r/wow/B10py

I remember coming across a thread on reddit where people were discussing whether it was appropriate to put raid or guild leadership on a resume, with most of the responders saying that it was a bad idea. Learning guru John Seely Brown states that he would hire an expert WoW player over someone with an MBA (Seely Brown 2016), but not all employers will feel the same way. I believe that an employer would have to understand the complex role of a raid or guild leader before you can understand how the skills that they’ve gained in a game can be used in the workplace.

[Video link here - embedding didn’t work!]

It’s the raid leader’s job to organise the raid, from the initial scheduling, to making sure the group is balanced correctly, to setting the strategy for each fight, to doling out the loot after each successful kill. A lot of the raid boss encounters are quite unforgiving, meaning that if you have just one player who doesn’t do the right thing, it means certain death for the other players. While the group is learning a new fight, the raid leader has to be aware of what everyone is doing, adjust the strategy when needed, and be prepared to manage anyone who isn’t learning or adapting fast enough.

A lot of the skills required for a successful raid leader are equivalent to skills which a good manager needs to have in the workplace. Clear communication, setting guidelines for behaviour, delegating tasks, analysing the group’s performance, managing under-performing players, time management and scheduling are just some of the skills that raid leaders need (Luchelle 2016). The raid leader needs to inspire when times are tough, adhere to the guild’s rules, and make decisions for the betterment of the group. Basically, they need to be a leader!

Torres (2012) writes that while they agree that raid and guild leadership skills such as time management, leadership, and drama avoidance are translatable to valid workplace skills, they don’t believe that applicants should be listing in-game achievements on their resumes. People who don’t play games won’t understand how in-game skills are relevant to the workplace, and it might make a potential employee look bad if they admit just how much time they spend playing a video game. Even though video games are often used as education tools, especially for kids, they have yet to make it as an acceptable workplace training tool.

References

Luchelle 2016, Luchelle's Raid Leadership Guide, World of Warcraft Forums, viewed 24 January 2018, <https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17613201523>.

Seely Brown, J 2012, How World of Warcraft Could Save Your Business and The Economy, 7 August, viewed 24 January 2018, <http://bigthink.com/videos/how-world-of-warcraft-could-save-your-business-and-the-economy-2>.

Torres, R 2012, World of Warcraft skills in the workplace, Engadget, viewed 24 January 2018, <https://www.engadget.com/2012/07/07/world-of-warcraft-skills-in-the-workplace/>. 

[myoungdigitalcommunities-blog]

Games With Friends

In 2017, I was made aware of story that had been picked up by major news outlets. Now, most of the news these days revolves around a seemingly endless stream of Donald Trump tweets and his constant blunders as the president of the United States. So, it was heart-warming to see the story of Spencer Sleyon and his experience playing the online social game, Words With Friends. The story of 22-year-old Sleyon went viral for a very unexpected reason. It wasn’t because of his popularity as a rap artist, it was because of a game, or rather 300-plus games, of Words With Friends that Sleyon has played over the past year or so with an 81-year-old woman, Rosalind Guttman. Sleyon posted photos of the two unlikely friends after their first face-to-face meeting and since then, the post has been retweeted over 240,000 times (Buxton, 2017). The beauty of this story is that, a gaming platform like this, fostered such an unlikely and unexpected friendship between two people who would otherwise probably never have connected.

Words With Friends is an online gaming platform, much like scrabble, that allows the user to connect with fellow gamers, to compete and interact with each other. The platform allows you to connect to existing Facebook friends or use the ‘Smartmatch’ option that connects the player to someone unknown, at random. Words With Friends is not a new, headline snatching phenomenon, nor is it especially ground breaking technology. Since its commercial birth in the 1950s as a technological oddity at a science fair, gaming has blossomed into one of the most profitable entertainment industries in the world (Chikhani, 2015). The mobile technology boom in recent years has revolutionized the industry and opened the doors to a new generation of gamers. Kamenetz (2013) notes, “an overlooked reason for the rise of gaming is that its core audience is getting wider, not narrower”.

Cole and Griffith (2007) sampled a group of gamers to explore interactions that occur within gaming social gaming platforms. The results of the survey found, 76.2% of males and 74.7% of females had made “good friends” with someone within the game. Furthermore, a study by Seay, Jerome, Lee and Kraut (2004) found that in addition to the fun, people often form lasting relationships with the gamers they interact with, stating that 39% of users reported that the social experience was a primary reason for playing the game.

The best thing about classic games like Scrabble and monopoly is that it brings people together around one board. Social gaming platforms like Words With Friends manage to recreate this digitally, connecting people from across the globe that would seemingly never connect otherwise, much like Sleyon and Guttman.

Buxton, M (2017) How Words With Friends Led To One Of The Most Viral Feel-Good Stories Of 2017, Refinery 29, Published: Dec 20. Viewed: 23.1.18 http://www.refinery29.com/2017/12/185761/words-with-friends-spencer-sleyon

Chikhani, R (2015) The history of gaming: an evolving culture, TechCrunch, Published: 31 Oct Viewed: 23.1.18 https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/31/the-history-of-gaming-an-evolving-community/ Cole, H. & Griffiths, M (2007) Social interaction in massively multiplayer online role-playing gamers, Cyber Psychology & Behaviour 10 (4), Viewed: 23.1.18 Accessed from: EBSCOhost,

Kamenetz, A (2013) Why video games succeed while the movie and music industries fail, Fast Company, Publishd: Nov 7 Viewed: 23.1.18 https://www.fastcompany.com/3021008/why-video-games-succeed-where-the-movie-and-music-industries-fail

Seay, F.A. Jerome, WJ., Lee, K.S, & Kraut, R.E, (2004) Project Massive: A study of online gaming communities, CHI ‘04 Extended Abstracts on human factors in computing systems, 24 April 2004, pp.1421-1424 Viewed: 23.1.18 https://dl-acm-org.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/citation.cfm?id=985921

[maelynd-blog]

Aww that’s such a cute story! I played Words With Friends very briefly, but I pretty much sucked at it. I played against my sister who lives in Sydney, and also against my mother-in-law who lives in Adelaide. They met for the first time just before my wedding, and it wasn’t long after that they began to play each other... often playing multiple games at once. My sister would chat to my MIL about how things were going, and she’d be the one to update us about what was happening in my MIL’s life! We got married over 5 years ago and I’m fairly sure they are still playing each other!

[mrsshawworld-blog]

Visual Communities – Create your own digital storyline

Instagram is my preferred social platform. I like that people don’t tend to share their whole life story and I like that the photos are the focus in the content. It’s easy to not have to read the caption that has been written and it’s easy to create your own story from the image that’s been shared. This is digital storytelling. Instagram is an example of a visual community and can be considered as a platform to reflect your own digital storyline. Hand (2012, p.5) says that a visual community includes photos and images that are part of our personal lives and sharing them online can be to represent ourselves and is our own personal communication. The major downfall about Instagram is the ability for someone to create a perfect looking life, without it being perfect at all. The comparison of offline digital storytelling and the online life are now converging (Vivienne et al 2013, p283) and people can manipulate their own personal image and give the public a certain perception. Users can photoshop their images to make their selfies look flawless, to make their waist look smaller and to make their legs look longer. This worries me as what type of perception is this creating for the younger youth of today? I believe it’s sending a message of insecurity and may lead to further issues of not truly loving yourself. Snapchat is another platform I use regularly and enjoy. You can send videos and photos that have an expiry date on them however you can also have conversations with your friendship list. Like Instagram, Snapchat also lets you add filters to your photos but it seems less staged than what Instagram may seem. From my personal experience, Snapchat seems like a more raw image of someone’s digital storyline.

Below is a snapshot of an Instagram page called Fit girls motivation. This page shows images of females who look confident in themselves and how they look, Do they really though? Nobody knows what these girls may experience on a day to day basis. These photos are only one aspect of their life. 

(Instagram, 2018) 

Visual communication has made the ability to connect to people all over the world without saying a word easier. “Publics can now be reactors, remakers, redistributors and can be engaged in shared culture and knowledge through discourse and social exchange” (Mizuko Ito, 2008 page 2). Without someone knowing you, they are able to see part of the story you want to share. Tagging photos and videos is now something we see and do across major digital communities such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. There are two types of tagging available in the digital community, Hash-tagging and tagging. Hash-Tagging means that rather than someone searching for you specifically they can search for the tag you have made and tagging means someone has added you into their content. On a platform like Facebook I have added a function to approve images and posts that I have been tagged in, to ensure that my name does not get associated with something I don’t like. This means that I can control to a certain degree the connection there is to my name.Once again, controlling my own digital storyline.   

References:

Hand, M 2012, Ubiquitous Photography, Polity Press, Cambridge

Mizuko, I 2008 ‘Introduction’, in K, Vamelis, ed. Networked Publics, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p 2

Vivienne, S & Burgess, J 2013, ‘The Remediation of the Personal Photograph’, Journal of Material Culture, vol. 18, no. 3, p283

Image Reference:

Instagram (2018). Fit Girls of Instagram. [image] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/fit_girls_of_ig [Accessed 18 Jan. 2018].

[maelynd-blog]

A great post from @mrsshawworld​, bringing me back to Sherry Turkle’s TED talk from week 1. Instagram is great because you can so easily scroll through people’s photos and stop scrolling when you see something you like. I do wonder how much of the stuff that’s on thereis real and how much of it is clever camerawork or straight up Photoshop editing, and while that can be said about any social media platform, I think Instagram has a higher than average rate for this.

For people who do go to great lengths to make sure their social media content is picturesque, wrinkle and stomach roll free, I have to wonder how much time it takes for them to take a snap, edit it, and share it. Does it become like an OCD tendency that they just can't control? And what happens when someone else shares something that's not 100% flattering? (I'm having visions of these prima donna women having meltdowns because their so-call bestie posted a photo of them with a tiny pimple or something)

I like things to be real. If someone is having a shitty day, let them post about it if they want! Not everything in life is peachy and perfect, and so why should our feeds be filled only with happy and perfect things? If you are wrestling with something in your heart and never see anyone else struggling... then maybe you'll think that there's something wrong with you? How can we make connections when we're only showing the bright and shiny sides of ourselves?

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Social Media and the Fitness Industry (BP7)

Experts say that when it comes to communication, 55% of what we see and absorb is from body language, 38% is from the tone of voice used, and only a measly 7% is from the actual words spoken (Thompson 2011). With over half of what makes up human communication requiring a visual connection, it’s no surprise that social media platforms which focus on photos and videos are seen as essential tools for those wanting to rise to social media fame.

One of Australia’s biggest social media stars is Kayla Itsines, a 26-year-old fitness influencer who lives in Adelaide. Itsines is the creator of the Bikini Body Guide (BBG), an exercise program consisting of 28-minute workouts intended to be completed 3 times a week for 12 weeks (Celeste 2017), and also the SWEAT app which delivers interactive workouts straight to subscriber’s mobile phones. Her original medium of choice is Instagram (@kayla_itsines), where her account has a 8.6 million followers, and she also boasts 17.6 million followers on Facebook. She has managed to turn social media into a very lucrative job, grabbing a spot amongst the top 5 women on the Financial Review’s 2017 Young Rich List (Smallwood 2017).

Source: Facebook

Kayla Itsines attributes her success to social media, saying that “I definitely don't think that I would be in the position I am today without Instagram. Purely because without social media we wouldn't have had the reach that we do.” (Romeo 2017).  

Health and fitness is a huge online industry, but I have to wonder what the impacts are on woman and girls who suffer from low self-esteem in regards to their physical appearance. It has to be hard to see an overload of perfectly sculpted bodies (whether they are real or a product of Photoshop). The reality is that not all women are able to achieve a “perfect body”, and it can be discouraging to be constantly flooded with unreal expectations.

 A major contributor to Itsines’ social media success story is the focus that Itsines and her marketing team places on progress selfies (Romeo 2017). At the completion of each workout, the SWEAT app encourages the user to take and share a progress selfie, which enables the user to look back and see how much their body has changed throughout the program. Successful before-and-after photos of women are posted often on Itsine’s social media channels, adding a community feel to her brand, and showing new visitors that the program can work for any woman in any physical shape. These progress selfies have a number of benefits for the Itsines brand. Current subscribers are encouraged to continue with their subscriptions and may gain enough confidence to post their own progress selfies, and non-subscribers are given confidence that the program works for all body types and may decide to sign up.

Source: Facebook

It’s Itsines’ hope that the future trend for the fitness industry will be body confidence (Dudley-Nicholson 2017), and there are a number of other fitness celebrities jumping on board with this idea. Hopefully this trend increases in popularity.

References

Celeste 2017, Social Media Moguls: How Kayla Itsines Conquered the World – One Burpee at a Time, A Medium Corporation, viewed 23 January 2018, <https://medium.com/rta902/social-media-moguls-how-kayla-itsines-conquered-the-world-one-burpee-at-a-time-d65a90530ba7>.

Dudley-Nicholson 2017, Aussie fitness guru Kayla Itsines says social media needs to stop being unrealistic, hard on women, News.com.au, viewed 23 January 2018, <http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/fitness/exercise/aussie-fitness-guru-kayla-itsines-says-social-media-needs-to-stop-being-unrealistic-hard-on-women/news-story/23c3f0294dca94229dfd216db1b450a9>.

Romeo, C 2017, How Instagram helped fitness star Kayla Itsines build an online community of 7 million, 14 June, viewed 23 January 2018, <http://uk.businessinsider.com/kayla-itsines-global-personal-trainer-fitness-instagram-online-community-social-media-2017-6/?r=AU&IR=T>.

Smallwood, A 2017, How Kayla Itsines built a $63 million empire, News.com.au, viewed 23 January 2018, <http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/fitness/inspiration/how-kayla-itsines-built-a-63-million-empire/news-story/4723348eb597a5f2f2e925eb614f34b6>.

Thompson, J 2011, Is Nonverbal Communication a Numbers Game?, Psychology Today, viewed 23 January 2018, <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-words/201109/is-nonverbal-communication-numbers-game>. 

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Social Media and Crisis Management (BP6)

In times of crisis, being able to send and receive updates in real time becomes incredibly important. The internet provides access to a number of platforms dedicated to these kinds of activities, and existing social media websites are also integrating new features to support people affected by crises.

The asynchronous nature of online communication is well suited to users in crisis situations who may be busy dealing with the crisis or caring for others, and who may have limited access to an Internet connection. Platforms such as Ushahidi (https://www.ushahidi.com/) also provide the ability for information to be gathered from website users, which can be used by local authorities, first responders, crisis workers, and affected communities to focus their aid efforts (Ford 2012).

Alexander writes that social media is used within the emergencies field in seven ways – “listening to public debate, monitoring situations, extending emergency response and management, crowd-sourcing and collaborative development, creating social cohesion, furthering causes (including charitable donation) and enhancing research” (Alexander 2014, p. 717).

There are many positive benefits of using social media to gather data and disseminate information during a crisis, but all parties involved need to be aware that due to the anonymity afforded by the Internet, it’s possible that information shared through these platforms may be false or misleading. The Ushahidi platform was first created to report on human rights violations following the Kenyan presidential election in 2007. Citizens could send in reports via SMS or through a website, and these reports would be seen by people all over Kenyan and also picked up local radio stations (Ford 2012). The need to verify received information arose to combat people who were sending in false information, but the whole idea behind the Ushahidi platform was that it gave voices to people who would otherwise go unheard. The verification process meant that reports which had not yet been verified may have been seen as less authentic or important.

In 2014, popular social media website Facebook introduce Safety Check, which provides users in disaster-affected areas an easy way to let their existing contacts know that they are safe (Gleit et al. 2014). Safety Check uses Facebook’s location services technology to identify users that may be located inside affected areas, and has been used successfully after natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks such as the Paris attacks in November 2015. Safety Check is a great example of how existing social media platforms can add functionality to their websites to support people in times of crisis. One factor which contributes to the success of a social media platform is its popularity, so rather than requiring people to sign up to a new platform during a time when they have many other important things to deal with, it makes more sense to utilise a website which people are already using.

References

Alexander, D 2014, ‘Social Media in Disaster Risk Reduction and Crisis Management’, Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 717-733.

Ford, H 2012, ‘Crowd Wisdom’, Index on Censorship, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 33-39.

Gleit, N, Zeng, S, Cottle, P 2014, Introducing Safety Check, Facebook, viewed 15 January 2018, <https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/10/introducing-safety-check/>.

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The Introvert and the Internet

This post could’ve been written by me!

https://introvertdear.com/news/introvert-social-media-things-that-make-me-uncomfortable/

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Self-Harm in a Digital Age (BP5)

As more and more people embrace the “always on” lifestyle, it is inevitable that many of us will experience some form of conflict in our social media channels. This conflict may come in the form of heated debate, as the more people in a single conversation, the more likely it is that two people will disagree on something, to online “trolls”, users who post content with the sole purpose of provoking others (McCosker 2014).

The term “cyberbullying” is quite often associated with teenagers, but it can be applicable to any age group. An interesting twist on cyberbullying is “digital self-harm”, which was uncovered by an investigation into the website Formspring (now rebranded as Spring.me) where users can post questions and answers anonymously (boyd 2014). This investigation found that in some cases, the inflammatory question had been posted from the same IP address as the answer, indicating that the same person was posting both.

Social media expert danah boyd believes that there are three main reasons why people engage in digital self-harming activities – as a cry for help, to look cool or tough, and to seek compliments from their peers (boyd 2010). While these reasons do make sense (as least to the teenaged mind!), it’s also possible that these activities could misfire if the outcome is not what the poster was hoping for.

The phenomenon of digital self-harm was the topic of a study conducted in 2011 and 2012 on over 600 teenagers in the US, and this study found that 17% of males and 8% of females surveyed had engaged in self-bullying behaviours over social media (Englander 2012). The below graph displays what the study found in terms of the reason given for the self-bullying behaviour.

Why Were You Cruel Online Towards Yourself? (Englander 2012)

The most popular reason chosen was “to get another kid’s attention”, which makes me question why teenagers feel that they need to put themselves down in order to get attention. boyd (2014) writes that humans learn the value of attention from a very young age, from seeing their parents, peers, and popular media fawn over the lives of celebrities. Attention is a valuable commodity, and sometimes it doesn’t matter whether it’s positive or negative attention.

A lot can change in five years, especially in the social media space, but sadly the trend of digital self-harm remains. Another study into digital self-harm was conducted in 2017, and it found that 6.2% of the over 6000 middle and high school aged respondents reported that they had anonymously posted something negative about themselves online (Patchin & Hinduja 2017).

In Australia, the government’s weapon against online bullying and other vicious online activities is the Office of the eSafety Commissioner. In their 2016-2017 annual report, the Office states that they received 305 complaints about serious cyberbullying targeting Australian children (up 63% from the previous year, which was their first year in operation) (Office of the eSafety Commissioner 2016). Other statistics published in the Office’s annual report show that the agency is playing an important role in educating school students and their teachers and parents about positive social media use, but the true measure of the Office’s success will be whether or not they are able to change the culture of Australia’s youth which has always tolerated and sometimes even celebrated bullying long before social media’s existence.

References 

boyd, d 2010, Digital Self-Harm and Other Acts of Self-Harassment, danah boyd | apophenia, viewed 8 January 2018, <http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/12/07/digital-self-harm-and-other-acts-of-self-harassment.html>.

boyd, d 2014, It's complicated: the social lives of networked teens, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Englander, E 2012. Digital Self-Harm: Frequency, Type, Motivations, and Outcomes, Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center, viewed 8 January 2018, <http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=marc_reports>.

McCosker, A 2014, ‘Trolling as provocation: YouTube’s agonistic publics’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 201-217.

Office of the eSafety Commissioner 2016, Australian Communications and Media Authority and Office of the eSafety Commissioner annual reports 2016–17, Office of the eSafety Commissioner, viewed 8 January 2018, <https://www.esafety.gov.au/-/media/cesc/documents/corporate-reporting/acma_oesc_annual_report_2016-17.pdf>.

Patchin, J, Hinduja, S 2017, ‘Digital Self-Harm Among Adolescents’, Journal of Adolescent Health, vol. 61, no. 6, pp. 761–766.

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Social Change via Social Media (BP4)

One of the perks of social media is that everything has the potential to “go viral”. Activists and others who desire social change have taken to their keyboards (and digital cameras) to spread their message, with the hope that their content will be seen by the world. The ease at which content can be shared on social media websites has led to a rise in slacktivism, which is defined as “a willingness to perform a relatively costless, token display of support for a social cause, with an accompanying lack of willingness to devote significant effort to enact meaningful change” (Kristofferson et al. 2014, p. 1149).

When defined in this manner, the concept of slacktivism is not a new one. I remember selling Daffodil Day (Cancer Council) merchandise in high school, and every year around Remembrance Day you can buy poppies. These small tokens can be purchased cheaply and don’t require the purchaser to put in any additional effort other than stopping and reaching for their loose change. Social media has really revamped the concept of slacktivism, and it now costs people almost nothing to hit Like or Share on a Facebook post and this content will be broadcast to all their Facebook friends.

Does slacktivism work? Karen Skinner, the Australian Director of the Change.org website, claims that it does (Gillespie 2016). There have been a number of online petitions created on Change.org which have actually managed to achieve social change, such as one calling for medical cannabis reform, and another calling for education about domestic violence for school students. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find statistics which compared the success and failure rates of Change.org petitions (unsurprisingly the Change.org website only talks about the successful ones!), but I would imagine that for every successful one, there are countless others that fail.

Social media is a useful tool for spreading the word about social and world issues, both by gaining the attention of people previously unaware about the issue, and also solidifying support from existing sympathisers. Technology also allows different kinds of content to be shared, and by attaching a celebrity to the message such as The Farm Project’s video included below (The Farm Project 2017), the message is guaranteed to be seen by a wider audience (this particular video had 28 million views and has only been online for 3 weeks!).

The majority of successful acts of activism still require people to leave their homes to make their voices heard (McCafferty 2011). Social media can play an important role for these acts by allowing interested parties to communicate and coordinate (Gerbaudo 2012), and it can also provide visibility of the group’s actions to those who are outside the geographical area or otherwise unable or unwilling to attend in person.  

It’s important to remember that just getting people to click Like or Share is not really the end goal for activists. What they’re really after is people to donate or join their cause. UNICEF Sweden produced this video Likes Don’t Save Lives to draw attention to the need for people to take actual action.

References 

Gerbaudo, P 2012, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism, Pluto Press, London.

Gillespie, K 2016, The Director of Change.org Australia Explains How Slacktivism Is a Myth, Vice, viewed 1 January 2018, <https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/bnkdad/the-director-of-changeorg-australia-about-medicinal-cannabis-gay-panic-and-the-myth-of-slacktivism>.

Kristofferson, K, White, K, Peloza, J 2014, ‘The Nature of Slacktivism: How the Social Observability of an Initial Act of Token Support Affects Subsequent Prosocial Action’, Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 40, no. 6, pp. 1149-1166.

McCafferty, D 2011, ‘Activism vs. Slacktivism’, Communications of the ACM, vol. 54, no. 12, pp. 17-19.

The Farm Project 2017, Plastic Bottle Addiction, 11 December, viewed 1 January 2018, <https://www.facebook.com/thefarmproject/videos/1588594141176039/>.

UNICEF Sverige 2014, Likes Don't Save Lives, April 23, viewed 1 January 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_M0SDk3ZaM>. 

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Micro-targeting in Politics (BP3)

Social media has greatly changed the way in which politicians connect with their constituents. In addition to providing new pathways for communication, social media platforms such as Facebook enable politicians to gain insights about the people who engage with their posted content. This information can include age, location, and interests, allowing politicians and political parties to identify the demographics of their social media audiences (Jericho 2013).

Businesses have been using these “insights” gathered by Facebook for years to ensure that their advertisements reach their target audiences, and now politicians are getting on board. From the moment a user creates an account, Facebook tracks the posts that they make and all the content that they engage with. From just 10 likes, Facebook can already predict a user’s gender, sexuality, and whether or not they are a conservative (Gartry 2017). This data can be analysed and combined with geographical data to provide a pretty accurate profile for every user, and this information is available to be purchased by businesses and other parties to be used to micro-target content. Micro-targeting not only delivers key messages to users who may be interested in the posted content, but also hides the content from everyone else (Gartry 2017).

The image below shows the way in which social media platforms are able to collate information which assists in determining audiences for micro-targeting, using the Obama campaign as an example (Stanton 2012).

Another factor which social media users should be aware of is that the content which they are being served is often filtered based off their past online activity or the activity of the user’s connections (friends) (Waters 2017). It’s in the social media platform’s interest to ensure that users are only seeing things that they are likely to engage with, and so many have algorithms working behind the scenes to filter out irrelevant posts. As a result, a user’s Facebook feed is more likely to represent the biases and interests of their friends list rather than a diverse view of all the content that’s available to be seen. This is a great example of Cass Sunstein’s viewpoint that social media users exist inside echo chambers, cut off from viewpoints that differ from their existing ones (Siapera 2012).

The generation which is just now reaching voting age consists of young adults who have grown up in a digital connected world, and the one which follows will not have lived in a time where the Internet did not exist (how crazy!). With two-thirds of American users stating that they receive news reports via social media (Shearer & Gottfried 2017), it’s extremely important that politicians and political parties cultivate their social media presence in order to attract the attention of their younger constituents. While I personally don’t think that it’s the duty of a politician to entertain their audience, I believe that posting more personal content will allow constituents to get to know their politicians more intimately, creating connections and possibly even loyalty which will be reflected in the polling booth.

References

Gartry, L 2017, WA Election: How political parties are using your Facebook profile to target you, ABC News, viewed 30 December 2017, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-14/social-media-playing-vital-role-in-wa-election/8268738>.

Jericho, G 2013, Rise of the Fifth Estate: Social Media and Blogging in Australian Politics, Scribe Publications, Brunswick, Victoria.

Shearer, E, Gottfried, J 2017, News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2017, Pew Research Center, viewed 30 December 2017, <http://www.journalism.org/2017/09/07/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2017/>.

Siapera, E 2012, Understanding new media, SAGE, London.

Stanton, L 2012, ‘ObamaOnline07’ [image], How targeted Internet advertising works, The Washington Post, viewed 30 December 2017, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1484w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/04/06/National-Politics/Graphics/w-ObamaOnline07.jpg>.

Waters, K 2017, ‘Secret election weapon’ it may be, but is social media’s role in political campaigning friend or foe?, The Drum, viewed 30 December 2017, <http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2017/06/06/secret-election-weapon-it-may-be-social-media-s-role-political-campaigning-friend>.

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The power of social media is great, but remember that a photo and even a video shows things out of context.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155794068036093&id=669716092

Couldn't get the video link out of Facebook!

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Put Your Phone Down!

Canberra police have started using the motorcycle lane filtering rules to catch people using their mobile phones while sitting in traffic. They scoot between the lanes of traffic and knock on the windows of anyone they catch to ask them to pull over. This morning I saw two people get caught at the same traffic light. What does it say about us that we can’t put our phones down for a 30 minute commute?!