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Global Social Media: China

China is now the world's number one economy in terms of size” (Worstall 2014). Today, China is a conversation everywhere, even in university. Starting from his prowess in global competition within commerce, to their intelligence taking opportunities in the development of technology and the internet. Every social media platform designed, China has its copy with We Chat holds number one with 1 billion users has registered to the platform (Chernavina 2019). Those platform that are created beyond China, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube “are banned in China” (Crampton 2011). However, I have a friend who owns accounts for those banned platform 

The picture above shows typical day of an active We Chat User, imagine how incredibly amazing it was that the application was able to record that behavior of yours for a whole day. I would say, social media could be dangerous too because we are giving them information about us and finally they are able to control us.

Then, we have “Tik Tok”, one of the most successful app from China that succeed to enter US downloaded by teens for more than 110 million times. According to Harwell & Romm (2019), “with its blend of goofy memes, fast-twitch skits and chart-topping earworms like “Old Town Road,” the app has quickly become China’s most successful social-media export abroad and a global phenomenon, installed by 1.3 billion users around the world”. That was such an excellent accomplishment for the country.

China: the social credit system

In 2014, the state of China announced their ranking system which will be made to monitor every single person’s behavior in the country and it will be called “social credit system”. This system is predicted to operates 6 years after it announced which is the year 2020. This system is known to record someone’s behavior and be given score that could go up and down accordingly (Ma 2018). This remind me of the “Black Mirror” movie about citizens that are given profile and their behavior is recorded. Also, stars ratings is given according to their behavior. In my opinion, this could very helpful for government in order to minimize the criminals and to keep the country safe. But it means citizens have minimum privacy. The data information that will be collected by the system eventually will be expensive to some special group of people. If the data spreads to another country, this could be dangerous for China itself. Somehow, this adoption would need time to be perfectly adopted by people in China, especially remembering the number of population in China is huge.

 Is China’s AI technology the answer to the future? 

“China was only good at copying and bad at innovating is simply wrong” (Webb 2018). We are living in millennial era, where everything should be fast and instant, especially those who was born in this era, everything goes easily for them. So, I think in future, people will demand more and more convenient access to everything. Therefore, the business will make that happen and people would only have to pay. Artificial Intelligence is also one of the key success that a lot of country are studying to create something new for the future technology.

List of References

Worstall, T 2014, China’s Now the World Number One Economy and It doesn’t matter a Darn, Forbes, viewed 20 November 2019, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/12/07/chinas-now-the-world-number-one-economy-and-it-doesnt-matter-a-darn/#47cf70cd39fc>.

Chernavina, K 2019, Top 20 Chinese Social Media Sites of 2019, Hicom Asia, viewed 22 November 2019, <https://www.hicom-asia.com/chinese-kol-top-10-social-media-platforms-they-use/>.

Crampton, T 2011, Social Media in China: the same but different, China Business Review, viewed 22 November 2019, <https://www.chinabusinessreview.com/social-media-in-china-the-same-but-different/>.

Harwell, D & Tomm, T 2019, TikTok’s Beijing roots fuel censorship suspicion as it builds a huge U.S audience, the Washington Post, viewed 22 November 2019, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks-beijing-roots-fuel-censorship-suspicion-it-builds-huge-us-audience/?noredirect=on>.

Buttler, B 2019, From TikTok smash to Billboard record-breaker: How ‘Old Town Road’ gamed the system and won the summer,  the Washington Post, viewed 22 November 2019, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/from-tiktok-smash-to-billboard-record-breaker-how-old-town-road-gamed-the-system-and-won-the-summer/2019/08/21/7d355fc8-bf66-11e9-a5c6-1e74f7ec4a93_story.html?utm_campaign=16ecbcc15d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_09_11_04_47_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_source=CNN%20Media%3A%20Reliable%20Sources>.

Ma, A 2018, China has started ranking citizens with a creepy ‘social credit’ system - here’s what you can do wrong, and the embarassing, demeaning ways they can punish you, Business Insider Malaysia, viewed 22 November 2019, <https://www.businessinsider.my/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4/?r=US&IR=T>.

Webb, A 2018, China is Leading in Artificial Intelligence and American Businesses Should Take Note, Inc, viewed 22 November 2019, <https://www.inc.com/magazine/201809/amy-webb/china-artificial-intelligence.html>.

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Social Gaming

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Playing games is very interesting for some people, but not all people. Games itself was exist for a long time ago. Before the social media platforms exist, games is already created by human because it is relaxing and fun.

Social media platform such as Facebook, to be “ the most popular category of applications on the site “ for gaming (O’Neill 2008). To be honest, I played games on Facebook when I was younger. The game name was “Millionaire City”, I played it every single day. It was really fun and time consuming for sure.

“Play — or free, unstructured time in the case of older children and adolescents — is essential to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth” (Walker 2018). Some people have thoughts that playing games is such a waste of time and unproductive, especially among the kids who don’t want to study because of playing games. When talking about “play”, we always refer to children. In fact, that is not wrong, children likes to play and they do need “play space” (Abernethy 1974 p.311).                             

Research on two different groups between people who play or do not play games is significantly different after Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) test. Groups of gamer who play games for at least 30 minutes per day show growth in the cerebrum, right prefrontal cortex and also the cerebellum. Those are is for memory formation and strategic planning and motor skills (MPG, 2013).

Are gaming communities becoming more toxic environments for some (e.g. women, LGBT communities, ethnic minorities)? 

Games, however, are fun activities for all people, be it small children, teenagers, adults, men or women. Likewise gaming community can be founded with any kinds of participants. Yee (2006) mentioned that “ online games promote sociability, communication, and collaboration amongst players”. Based on real story, a lot of female gamer reported their experience of being harassed while playing online. This is because the online gaming is “predominantly used male participants“ (McLean & Griffiths 2018). 

List of References

O’Neill, N 2008, What Exactly are Social Games?, adweek, viewed 11 November 2019, <https://www.adweek.com/digital/social-games/>.

Walker, MH 2018, The Benefits of Play, psychcentral, viewed 11 November 2019, <https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-benefits-of-play/>.

Abernethy, WD 1974, Concepts of Play, JSTOR, viewed 11 November 2019, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1475892?seq=1>.

MPG, 2013, How Video Gaming can be beneficial for the brain, Max Planck Gesellschaft, viewed 11 November 2019, <https://www.mpg.de/research/video-games-brain>.

Yee, N 2007, Motivations for Play in Online Games, Liebert  Publishers, viewed 11 November 2019, <https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2006.9.772>.

McLean, L & Griffiths, MD 2018, Female Gamers’ Experience of Online Harassment and Social Support in Online Gaming: A Qualitative Study, Link Springer, viewed 11 November 2019, <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11469-018-9962-0>.

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Fan Communities & Activism

Each of us is a “fan”.

 You might be thinking of the fan in your house that gives you fresh air during the hot weather. But no, we are going to talk about fan in term of “person”. Fan or we can call it “admirer”, because a fan is someone who admires something or someone that they’re really interested in.

Each of us has at least one thing that we really like. For example, I really like Taylor Swift. I like her songs, her personalities, and everything about her. So, I am considered as a fan too. 

FAN COMMUNITIES

To like something alone sounds uncool. So, people are gathering together to build a communities. A group of people with the same interest are coming together in one group to share their feelings or stories to each other in the community, then we call it “Fan Communities”. Social media is one of the platform that people used to gather people so they can talk or share at anytime and anywhere. Therefore, the people inside the community could be from anywhere from around the world.

Fan communities examples:

1. Harry Potter Alliance

I am pretty sure, most of us have heard of Harry Potter movie. It is a British-American film series based on the eponymous novels by author J. K. Rowling. So, basically, the fans of the Harry Potter Movie have decided to build a community called “Harry Potter Alliance”. According to Sarner L (2016), “ The Harry Potter Alliance is a nonprofit organization that is geared towards getting Harry Potter fans involved in activism. “

By the year of 2010, the community brought together a bunch of leaders of the fan community including YouTubers and young adult authors to raise money for disaster relief in Haiti. This was right after the earthquake down there. They ended up being able to raise $123,000 — five cargo planes full of supplies to Haiti.

2. Invisible Children

Invisible Children (IC) is a movement built around a documentary movie describes the long running civil war in Uganda, especially on the hardships of child soldiers conscripted into the Lord’s Resistance Army. Their focus is to raise awareness of the war in Uganda and urging the US government to pass the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act.

In the term of “fan activism”, Unlike HPA, that is popular for their culture texts, IC has their activist goal and build a fanlike public around the documentary media. The members of IC are active members with high enthusiasm for the community. they also practice collective consumption and production around the IC media products.

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Crowdsourcing & crowdfunding

This is such new term for me, it’s gonna be my first time talking about this topic.

 According to the New York Times, “Crowds are a hit. Millions of people, connected by the Internet, are contributing ideas and information to projects big and small. Crowd-sourcing, as it is called, is helping to solve tricky problems and providing localized information. And with the right knowledge, contributing to the crowd — and using its wisdom — is easier than ever.”

In fact, crowdsourcing is not a new concept. The concept has been applied by most of us, we just never directly mention the term “crowdsourcing and crowdfunding”. To do crowdsourcing, we need more than a person, which means similar to what we called “crowds”, we need “crowds” so that we can call it “crowdsourcing”. 

Crowd-sourcing is very important on the internet level. If we look at the communication system and network structures, we depend so much on particular people to do something. It was because the economy and industry has changed. People who are in the gaming and government are the one who give information and to make the crowdfunding. Therefore this information is not coming from the one particular level or group, but it could come from the people that join the protest and obtain information in the streets then share it through internet.

Four types of network: Centralized network, Decentralized network, Distributed network & Social media network

The centralized network is the network which the information comes in one source. As long as you can connect to the internet, the information you get will come from one source. On the other hand, decentralized network is all about shifting data, so when we download something on the internet, they will receive internet data from us as well. In this case, if we shut down one circle, we can still have the information by joining the other circle.

The third one is distributed network, this network refers to any kind of metrics that computers can change the way they distribute the data and information. While the social media network is the platform for information flow, communication, reaction and other forms of action.

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

According to The Star Malaysia (2018), #Pulangmengundi was a hashtag that once popular in 2018 as the top Malaysian trending topic in Twitter. It was started on April 13 and surprisingly reached to 25,000 website visits after three days. 

In my opinion, there is no direct benefit that the communities receive from the crowdfunding as this looks like charity and patriotism for the country. Election day is an important day because it is the day for changing to choose a better leader for the country. Having citizens that unable to go home to vote lets communities that cares of the country issues to make this works. However, the communities eventually received lots of appreciation and honor from the people that got help.

In an era filled with fake news, what effect can this have on crowd sourced information?

Nobody likes being lied to. Nobody likes fake news. However fake news is unavoidable, it comes in many forms from Articles, pictures, videos and audio clips (Bradbury T 2019). News is supposedly coming from reliable sources such as what we know from a very long time is BBC News, New York Times, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and etc (Price D 2019). If we ever found fake news, surely it was not coming from the right sources. 

In this case, crowdsourcing takes a big shot to blame. It has poor quality entries for every information that the crowds shared, it may come from their head without any proper research. The discussion could lead to wrong direction and ended up talking out of topic. Tragically, it happens all the time. However, everything is the same, every information that we read from the news should be taken seriously. We should never believe the information until it is valid enough for us to share.

Therefore, this is the end of the blog today, hopefully you understand a little bit more than yesterday. See you next week!

[mithchint]

Trolling & Social Media Conflict

WHAT IS TROLL???????????????????

The word “Troll” first introduced by the movie “Grimms' Fairy Tales, Lord of the Rings”, it’s the “hangs out under a bridge” type of troll (Coding Horror 2015).

Troll itself refers to someone who argues a particular topic by posting a provocative posts or irrelevant messages online (Computer Business Review 2019)

According to Rouse M (2019), “Trolling, in the context of the web, is the act of responding to online content or comments in a purposely disruptive fashion. The name arose as a reference to the way that online trolls try to lure victims with comments in the same way that fishers use bait and specially crafted lures to catch fish. Another reference is to the mythological troll, a hideous creature that lurks in dark places waiting for prey.”

However, Trolls are everywhere on social media, you can always find them in the comments.

Is social media trolling ever a productive practice?

Trolls’s intention is to ruin someone’s life and be happy about it. But as long as we do not pay attention to them, they would be tired trolling themselves. In fact, this effort can affect someone’s mental health. 

Why? Because someone that receive a lot of hate comments from trolls will be eventually involved with anxiety and depression. This has been part of the social media in a negative way, where people throw rocks at things that shine. It was still something taboo in some countries, but it has raised the awareness of young people about mental health in the present.

Besides, trolling around the social media would be a threat for a business too. It could badly affect their reputation and slowly have their sales minimized. 

With a total population of 7.3 billion people in the world, 3.17 billion are internet users (Hanson J, n.d). Social media often become the platform of conflicts & contentious politics (Zeitzoff T 2017). At the end of the day, social media trolling is never a choice of a productive practice.

List of references 

What is troll? 2015, Coding Hrorror, viewed 26 October 2019, <https://blog.codinghorror.com/what-is-trolling/>.

What is trolling  2019, Computer Business Review, viewed 26 October 2019, <https://www.cbronline.com/big-data/>.

Zeitzoff T 2017, How social media is changing conflict, SAGE journals, viewed 26 October 2019, <https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022002717721392

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Activism & Protest

Hi Hi!! Come back again with me!!

This week we’re gonna talk about Activism and Protest. 

First of all, what is activist and activism? 

According to Cambridge Dictionary (2019), activist is someone who believes that they can change some issues in social or political to make a change and takes part in activities such as public protests while activism is the action. Talking about activism and protest,

Has anyone heard of Hong Kong protests???

It was booming on social media when it first started in June against proposals to allow extradition to mainland China. Hong Kong’s anti-extradition bill protests are making global headlines (BBC News 2019).

Social media itself is a platform that used by activists in the protests regarding political systems. It was because it allows to constrain collective action from the tools provided (Youmans W & York J 2012). 

Then, what was the proposed extradition law about?

In international law, extradition itself is a process of one particular country in order to fulfill the request of other countries about returning a person back to their home country after a crime committed (Andreopoulos G, n.d). The proposed extradition law refers to extradition of suspects to mainland China that caused many Hong Kongers angry and started the protests against the bill (The Guardian, 2019).

Incident in Hong Kong happened because most people own a smartphone which means enabled them to find each other to spread words through their social media and give their opinions through comments on Twitter. The news about the protest was spread all over the world just by looking at the hashtag on Twitter that posted by thousand people both protesters on the street and protesters that stay at home (Gerbaudo P 2012).  

Even, Andy Lau, a famous Hong Kong actor offered support for the protesters from outside the government headquarters (Zhao S & Lee A 2013).

So, what does the participation of famous people mean?

According to The Perspective (2019), a single endorsement of one celebrity would boost around 4% of product sales. It means the same way is going to work to boost the social responsibility. In this case, by supporting the protesters, celebrities are giving their voice not to government. Whatever their voice is, it will be at risk because it shows to whom they have their side on. Not giving their opinion about it is also called ignorance by many people. 

In my opinion, celebrities has a big influence for many people, especially to their own fans. So, for celebrities to give their voices about one particular issue in a country should be in a good consideration, understanding, and they also have to at least know who they are supporting and what is going on. To celebrities, if their motives were only to look good in front of their fans, I do not think that is a good idea to participate but if they really care about the issue, it means they should read more about the issue therefore , they will be able to give their right opinion about it.

List of References

The Hong Kong protests explained in 100 and 500 words 2019, BBC News, viewed 23 October 2019, <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49317695>.

Youmans WL & York JC 2012, Social Media and the Activist Toolkit: User Agreements, Corporate Interests, and the Information Infrastructure of Modern Social Movements, Journal Comunication, viewed 23 October 2019, <https://swinburnesarawak.instructure.com/courses/839/files/73198/download?wrap=1>            

What are the Hong Kong protests about?  2019, The Guardian, viewed 23 October 2019, <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/10/what-are-the-hong-kong-protests-about-explainer>.

Gerbaudo P 2012, Tweets and the streets: social media and contemporary activism, Pluto press, viewed 24 October 2019, <https://swinburnesarawak.instructure.com/courses/839/files/73199/download?wrap=1>. 

Activist 2019, Cambridge Dictionary, viewed 23 October 2019, <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/activist>.

Zhao S & Lee A 2013, Andy Lau among celebrities to add support to last night of HKTV protest, South China Morning Post, <https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1340143/andy-lau-among-celebrities-add-support-last-night-hktv-protest>.

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Political Engagement. *read me!!!*

Politics?!! Boring....

Well... no!! if you read more about it!

I used to have that kind of attitude, I didn't care anything about politics. Of course because I was a kid lol

I remember it all too well, when I was 5, politics is all about president and government. Parents and other relatives would go for the campaign and I didn't think they knew what they were doing. Although I was too young however I supported the one my family chose at that time, President elections, like I knew what I was doing. I believe a lot of people just follow other people when they did have to choose the president.

From not care to care

Then time goes by, there was a big news about this person. An Indonesian politician, his name is Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, people called him, Ahok. That was something new to our country, well, how could I know? Because at that time, so many people talked about him. He was everywhere on the phone and TV.

He is my inspiration to study more about politics. One of the lesson he learned from his dad is "If you want to help many people, you cannot just become an entrepreneur, you have to become the politicians, because by becoming the politicians, you ruled and you can do right thing and help many people at the same time."

Now that you know how I am interested in politics. Let's dive more into it!

Moving along with 20th centuries, where social media consumes a lot of our energy and time. We can see politicians did not want to stop trying. Many politicians is seen playing their role and building their image on social media. Social media is a almost perfect platform for politicians to spread their purposes. Not just it creates a huge audience but it gave power and voices as well. Politicians see it as an opportunity.

“For many politicians, Twitter and Facebook have become merely places to broadcast from; for others, it’s a place where they can joke with journalists.” (Jericho, G 2012).

To be honest, I love how social media helps me to get more information about what is going on in my country but it could also irritate me because it has power. I once signed for a petition where a girl was bullied and the tweets was really bad. What makes me upset is that was all for viral and not 100% truth. Then, I realized, how powerful social media can be, it really depends on the users. We, as the users must be careful and have to read a lot.

Same thing, to the politicians, if they use it for a good purpose, sharing truth and transparency on their social media. It's good to have them involved in social media.

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Is Tumblr a Blog or a Social Media Site?

Hooray! The day has come and I don't know where to start lol.

Before today, I have always wanted to write a blog! I was thinking blogs are cool for those who loves to write and I am one of those who loves writing. I usually write in my diary and keep it as private as possible. Wait.. Is this actually a blog? Because I am writing on a Tumblr...

People are questioning,

"Is Tumblr a Blog or a Social Media Site?".

Now that's interesting!

I believe, the term of "blog" has been heard by most people in the world, but what is blog really?

According to Cambridge English Dictionary, "Blog is a regular record of your thoughts, opinions, or experiences that you put on the internet for other people to read." On the other hand, "Social Networking Site is a website that is designed to help people communicate and share information, photographs, etc." Both have a quite similar meaning because both are social platforms that allow people to share and get information.

What about Tumblr?

Personally, I don't really use Tumblr because my friends are not on it. As I installed it now, I find out that Tumblr is a very interesting platform because there are so many things I can find and of course, blogs too. I have used Instagram all my life and it's not as interesting as Tumblr can be. Why? In this case, Tumblr is giving access to people to read our blogs that we write at the same time allowing people to like, comment, follow, and etc too. It's like the updated version of Wordpress and Blogger.

Let's see through the other social media, Instagram for instance, it's only for pictures and pictures only. People barely read on Instagram. Because Instagram is known for sharing pictures and moments. Facebook is another, it's all about videos and old friends. People barely used Instagram nor Facebook to write a blog. Because it wasn't the intention of the creator in the first place.

But on Tumblr, you can find people with intention is for writing and sharing things only and using it as a platform to stay connected with friends and other people that have same interest with them.

So, what left to say?

Tumblr is both blog and social media site.

Thank you for your time reading this. I really appreciate that! Have a nice day!