MDA20009 - Digital Communities - Mark Pappas

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Week 11 - Social media in China

Its fairly easy to assume that most people who have access to the internet use the well known social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. However this is not the case for a considerable amount of people, 1.35 billion to be exact. Those people live in China. The Chinese government blocks foreign social media, so the people of China cannot access specific sites. 

So yes there is an internet world where there is No Facebook, No Twitter, No Instagram and No Youtube. Crazy right? Not so crazy because through the ban on foreign social media, a host of Chinese, home grown social media sites have emerged and flourished. 

These home grown social media alternatives are experiencing huge growth and popularity. Sites like San Weibo, Tudou, RenRen and Youku similar to western versions of Twitter, Youtube and Facebook but have important differences that nuanced for the Chinese market.

Different websites service different demographics and cultural differences, giving users a more specific and tailored social media experience compared to the generic western versions of social media.

There is a variation of sites that are in a ‘Facebook’ mould in China. Take for example the site, Douban, it attracts art students and those passionate about books, cinema, culture, and music and lets users connect via those similar interests. RenRen is another, increasingly similar to Facebook, that attracts university students who use the platform to connect and interact with classmates. Qzone and Kaxin001 are other social media sites that target slightly different demographic and offer differences in the usability as a result of that difference.

This ban on generic, globalised social media sites has opened the market for a more diverse range sites that offer great differences in the social media user experience for Chinese people. 

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Week 10: Social Gaming

Over the past decade we have seen the online gaming world grow exponentially. Gaming companies have embraced and connected with people’s increasing use of the internet and social media to develop games. 

Player connectivity is the key feature of online gaming. Most online games, particularly the successful ones incorporate the ability for players to communicate, connect and create a community within the games.

This connectivity has become part of the gaming experience. Just thinking about the games i have been playing lately on my phone, i can notice the social connection part of the games.  Family Feud is a game i play regularly, it is based on playing other users in real time and once you finish a game, you are encouraged to share your result on twitter or Facebook or any other social media platform of your liking. You can also view leaderboards and visit player discussion chatrooms. This works into that idea of developing a gaming community for the users. 

These active communities that are formed through online games and player connectivity are by-products of the games. These communities can be either good or bad and some can stronger or weaker depending on the game.

A key example of a game with high user connectivity and interaction is Facebook based Farmville, which is a game created by the online gaming company Zynga.

Farmville takes this online community experience further by incorporating social networking aspects into gaming. 

This community experience is facilitated by the fact that users must engage and connect with other users to develop their gameplay. 

This trend of online gaming incorporated into social media with high user interaction will be developed into the future to further develop that sense of community for users.

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ALS ice bucket challenge info graphic 

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Week 9 : Public health campaigns

Public health campaigns on social media are wide spread with a varying degree of success. Some public health campaigns are considered to be ineffectual for similar reasons discussed in the week 6 post about digital activism. The idea of clicktivism can be related back to public health campaigns.

Take the very popular ice bucket challenge. This campaign was created to raise money for ALS. People online shared videos of themselves pouring bucked of ice & water on their heads to encourage donations to fund research.

The campaign took off, it was all over facebook, twitter, instagram and celebrities were getting in the act. It had gone VIRAL! Linking back the in idea of clicktivism from week 6, the question is... was everyone pouring water on their head actually contributing to donations?

The reality is that majority of people who took part in the challenge did not donate to the charity. But the through this social media campaign an estimated 115 million dollars in additional funds were raised. The campaign’s success will continue to be discussed and debated but you cant argue that in its simplest form it achieved its goal by increasing funding for ALS. 

What needs to be considered is that most public health campaigns have far more complex objectives than just to raise money and awareness 

The task for public health campaigns on social media going forward is to find new and innovative ways to engage social media users in health and wellbeing.

For example, the world lung foundation, released an app on facebook that alllows users to add rotten teeth, throat tumors and other smoking related bodily changes to peoples Facebook photos. This is the type of innovation and creative public health campaigning that can really engage and make a difference in peoples lives.

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Week 8 : Crowdsourcing in times of crisis

Nearly 1 million people are affected by natural disasters around the world every year. I think we can all remember some of the big disasters in recent times.  Nepal earthquake, The Haiti earthquake, Hurricane Katrina and more locally in Australia, the Queensland floods. Why have we had such exposure to these disasters? Social media! When a natural disaster occur people take to social media to share images, information and anything in-between but for social media outlets.....

”With great power comes great responsibility”

Social media has become an integral part of natural disaster response, especially when cellphone communication is down. Facebook has its own feature called safety check, where people can quickly alert friends and family that they are safe. 

Facebook even helped my family make sure my cousin was alive and well in the 2004 Thailand tsunami.

But the real value of social media is in terms of crowdsourcing. In emergency situations, crowdsourcing describes a method of information collection that utilises data received from volunteers to enable stakeholders to participate in disaster response through online forums, such as crisis mapping.

This can quickly map the impact of disasters, provide information on where to target specialised aid relief and most importantly provide information for the future on how to improve urban resilience to natural disasters.

Research found that social capital is the most important tool for developing urban resilience. 

While crowdsourcing is a key disaster response asset there is still a great deal of work to be done in unifying the collection and sharing of information, resources, and plans among relief organisations, governments and other disaster response stakeholders. Open source formats like Ushahidi are the platforms where this development can occur in the future. 

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Week 7 : Social media misuse

When we think of social media and misuse, a million things come to mind. I think everyone has experienced some kind of media bullying or trolling,  i definitely have over my time as a social media user thats for sure. 

I still remember in year 7 on the good old msn messenger, i was speaking to one of my friends; a girl and it was actually her brother on the other end of the computer on her account without me knowing. The private contents of those messages were not so private anymore the next day at school. 

Yes this all seems pretty trivial for me looking back on it, but at the time i felt quite betrayed and taken advantage of. This brings me to online dating websites and the what is known as catfishing someone.

To catfish someone is to “lure (someone) into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona”

I think most people will be familiar with one of my favourite shows, catfish on MTV. A show that is based on the idea of revealing these people that adopt fake profiles who engage in long term, intimate online relationships.

For anyone who has watched the show, you can see how damaged the victims are when they find out about these false relationships. Not to mention the people whose identities have be stolen.  Should it be as easy as signing up to an online dating website, choosing a false picture, type in some fake details and then you are off on your merry catfishing way.

Or should there be increased security measures to prevent catfishing?

Yes we might lose a great TV show :( #catfish4ever BUT we are dealing with peoples lives, some people can devote years to fake profiles. It can destroy them. Maybe its time fingerprint identification for online dating services ? 

The reality is security measures need to be much tougher for online dating and social media. 

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Week 6 : Digital Activism

clicktivism! The oxford english dictionary defines clicktivism as “the use of social media and other online methods to promote a cause”. Basically clicktivism is the idea that people can use social media for a quick and easy way to support and participate in social change. 

Putting aside these rigid definitions, we can understand clicktivism and digital activism through our use of social media. It can be as easy as liking a facebook page that supporting a cause or signing an online petition. 

This can be as simple as going to the Greenpeace website, clicking on the link “what i can do” then clicking on “take action online” ..... then you just scroll through the list of causes and selecting one that takes your fancy. Then all you have to is write your name and click enter. now you are officially a digital activist. 

This method of activism is criticised for creating activism passivity, arguing that people just click and support a cause and then they think the job is done. 

While this criticism might have some form of merit to it in that some people do click and forget, but to simply reduce digital activism to a passive and largely ineffectual process of activist involvement is a huge oversight. 

Digital activism has been instrumental in causing change, raising awareness, changing attitudes, changing beliefs and stimulating public, governmental debate and discussion. Yes different campaigns have had different levels of success, but digital activism is fast becoming an increasingly important tool for facilitating and creating social change.

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Week 5 : The Politics of Social Media

This week, the discussion was based around politics and social media. Without doubt, the use of social media in politics has increased significantly over the last decade. Social media use has become prevalent for politicians in political campaigns, political positioning, image construction and anything in between. 

Recently, social media has played a key role in President Obama’s campaign in the United States in 2008. This campaign was one of the most successful campaigns in political history. Its success was largely due to the way it targeted voters. The aim of the campaign was ‘involvement through empowerment’ (Smith & Aaker 2010). Obama’s campaign was able to empower people to become involved in the political campaign and vote. The landscape for political social media use in Australia is very different because it is compulsory for everyone in Australia to vote. So the task for politicians in Australia through social media is to sway peoples vote towards their party.

Take, for example, the image posted below of Kevin Rudd during his infamous Kevin 07 campaign. The photo accrued 8,000 odd views and more importantly was replicated in various social media outlets and created a great deal of online discussion. This photo was interpreted to be an attempt to become relatable to Australians, an attempt to say ‘hey, I’m human, I’m just like you, I cut myself shaving’. Whether this worked to make Rudd more likeable or whether it increased his votes cannot be known for sure, but it did create much discussion. 

Ultimately though, politicians are not really reaching beyond those that already agree with them (McCosker 2016). This is the concept of ‘homophily’ - the tendency of individuals to bond with similar others (Wikipedia). 

The true power of social media though for politicians is within the data they collect. They use social media as a type of market research where they collect, organise, research data to develop strategies and communication modes to reach voters. 

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Week 4 : Is Tumblr a blog or social networking site?