The Digital Era

Tumblr for #MDA20009 Digital Communities

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7. The Dark Side of Digital Freedom

With the very concept of the digital public sphere, “’where private people come together as a public’ for the purpose of using reason to further critical knowledge” (Kruse, Norris, Flinchum, 2018), comes a freedom for both sides of an issue to be equally represented.

The online community is the perfect place to express opinions on topics as it allows quick, easy, global access to a variety of people. However, sometimes this freedom can create vitriolic abuse, with the liberation of speech provided by social media allowing for heightened portrayal of hate,  “the internet didn’t create this problem, but it does amplify it” (Ellis, 2020). Through the ability to hide behind anonymity "the… discrete impression management associated with offline, face-to-face communication" (Scolere, Pruchniewska, Duffy, 2018) is lost, allowing these particular harassers or “trolls” the ability to freely express crude notions that they themselves would usually hide in physical social interactions. As such, social media becomes breeding grounds for organised hate to flow towards particular individuals or companies, creating micropublics and coordinated ‘activism’. "The digital platforms as technological structures shape the ways in which online [activities are] practiced and circulated" (Keller, 2019), allowing these hate groups to congregate and target another whom they share passionate opinions on.

Greta Thunberg has been the victim of much of this online harassment throughout recent memory, as she is young and engaged in fighting for climate activism. The online hate community will do anything to discredit Thunberg, calling her a puppet to PR companies, mentally ill and supporter of Islamic Terrorism (just to name a few). This is further propelled by Donald Trump, who called the teenager mentally unstable with reference to anger management issues. Clearly, there is a side of the internet that coordinates with each other purely to push their own agendas, such as anti-climate crisis notions that arise from the severe will to protect industries such as coal and oil that have supported the right winged community for so long. Whilst the online world can often be a great place for activism, engagement and progression, there is always a dark side that must be acknowledged.

 References

Ellis, EG. 2020. Greta Thunberg’s Online Attackers Reveal a Grim Pattern, sourced from  https://www.wired.com/story/greta-thunberg-online-harassment/ Accessed 27/05/2020.

Jessalynn Keller, “Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms, Social Media + Society Volume: 5 issue: 3, 2019.

Kruse, LM Norris, DR & Flinchum, JR 2018 Social media as a public sphere? Politics on social media, The Sociological Quarterly, 59:1, 62-84.

Leah Scolere, Urszula Pruchniewska and Brooke Erin Duffy, “Constructing the Platform-Specific Self-Brand: The Labor of Social Media Promotion”, Social Media + Society July-September 2018: 1–11.

[patrickswinburne]

6. Gaming as Community

Through its history gaming has been able to develop a universally accepted social nature, ensuring players have the ability to compete or interact with each other through the digital technological medium.

Social interactivity between video games and various other digital platforms has always been a large part of the gaming community. This is apparent in its earliest form through game stores being the site of large meetings either designed to trade games or share tips on the game itself. Word of mouth was a massive influence on gaming itself, as players would share glitches, easter eggs and strategies amongst each other. In recent years, the most obvious example of gaming as a social experience is through streaming platforms and large esport tournaments. These places become cultural epicentres for people with similar interests in gaming, allowing them to create a digital community of engagement. “Audiences – and their interactions with broadcasters – were themselves becoming integrated into the show” (Taylor, 2018), demonstrating that the engagement with people through the medium of gaming has always been present in these live events, ensuring the video game remains in its historical field of facilitating social activity.

Further, these livestreaming personalities begin to create brands for themselves, including special chat emotes or merchandise in the form of clothing, pins and more. As such, these streamers manifest a sub-culture within the live gaming community, allowing for their fans to create specific vernacular that utilises the platforms features. For example, Brownman (Ray Narvaez Jnr), a popular streamer on Twitch, has a variety of emotes that his community uses for various purposes. As seen above, the large variety of emotes can relate to different inside jokes shared within the community of moments that have occurred throughout Ray’s streaming career, such as “brownKOBE”. Additionally, they can relate to Ray’s personal life, with emotes of his wife and two dogs, or have variations of popular Twitch phrases, such as clipping (making a short clip of a moment in a stream) or the chair emote (relating to when the streamer is AFK). All of these emotes a purchasable through subscription to the channel itself and used throughout streams to ensure the community has branded specific phrasing to use.

Whilst video games are often looked down upon as the lonesome hobby, it is clear that through various digital modern day mediums they in fact allow for heightened connectivity between people.

References Taylor, TL 2018, ‘Broadcasting ourselves’ (chapter 1), in Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, Princeton University Press, pp.1-23 

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5. Activating the Digital Campaigner

Using Social Media as a platform to further activism and campaigning is an ever-growing trend in the evolving digital era. Political movement is easily facilitated through this tool that spans the globe, allowing various opportunities for anecdotal stories to surface on the highly individualised, personal platforms that exist, such as Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

In his “Theories of Change”, James Whelan provides a formulaic approach to creating a campaign vision, simply “IF” the community takes action, “THEN” change will occur, “BECAUSE” of a factual logic (Whelan, 2020). This provides a clear point of evidence to how these social media campaigns for activism should be run, providing focused motives and a call to action. Perhaps the most difficult part of these campaigns is maintaining a momentum once a following is found, through the economy of clicks, subscriptions, likes, shares and so on. Within this, there is a necessity for a balance of both online and offline activism, whilst a campaigner can be active online, without physical action no real change will occur and the campaign long forgotten.

“A new, politically engaged generation of activists with a slate of creative tactics at the ready" (Alvarez N., Lauzon C., Zaiontz K., 2019) are thus born within this new landscape for activism with easy access to social media. Most pointedly in recent memory, the School Strike for Climate demonstrates this activated youth driven to political action through social media. Greta Thunberg, the face of youth Climate Activism, helped to coordinate a worldwide strike by school students on the topic of climate emergency and inaction of global governments on the issue. As such, thousands of cities around the world were flooded with youth protesting for their future, emphasising both the power and impact of social media facilitating activism, allowing a focused mass to go to action to create change. Further Reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/climate/global-climate-strike.html

References

Alvarez N., Lauzon C., Zaiontz K. (2019) 'On Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: An Introduction'. In: Alvarez N., Lauzon C., Zaiontz K. (eds) Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan

Whelan, James,  Change Agency and director of Community Organising Fellowship, "Theories of Change". www.thechangeagency.org/theories-of-change/

[patrickswinburne]

4. Social Body Image

Within social media consumption and creation, users often find a deep focus upon building an image to show to the world. By building this branded imagery of self, the user can sometimes begin to question their own physicality, leading to vast levels of confidence issues and negative notions on body image.

“Social media and technology are playing a greater role than ever” (Thompson, 2016) in portraying to a mass audience a notion of the perfect, idealised male or female body, furthering issues of body dysmorphia in youth. Through this constant and easy accessibility to the social media sites, such as Instagram, a user is bombarded with images of celebrities and influencers flaunting bodies that are often highly unrealistic to achieve or partially artificial. Technologies such as Photoshop and Instagram filters allow users to depict an image of themselves as something they are not, leading to an audience who wishes to embody this similar look whilst being unable to in all reality. Further, problems of promoters with large followings using aesthetic surgeries, such as plastic surgery, to artificially enhance curves, lips and facial features can often lead to a romanticising of these processes, in turn leading to a heightened number of people using cosmetic procedures.

Anyone and everyone can access images on social media of plastic surgeries and their results, whether realised or not. “According to 2017 statistics… 42% of surgeons report that their patients are seeking aesthetic surgery to improve their appearance on… social media channels” (Dorfman, Vaca, Mahmoo, Fine, Schierle, 2018), demonstrating a severe rise in cosmetic surgery globally as users aim to improve body image to these idolised “norms”. A perpetual loop begins to occur with the rise of procedures to enhance social media image, as users turn to surgical changes and confidently display it online, a variety of viewers then begin to consider doing so themselves. As such, in the digital era, there is a steady incline of unhealthy body image stereotypes being circulated and thus leading to severe mental health degradation, especially within a younger, more susceptible audience who begin to believe these idealised versions of self.

References

Robert G Dorfman, Elbert E Vaca, Eitezaz Mahmood, Neil A Fine and Clark F Schierle, ‘Plastic Surgery-Related Hashtag Utilization on Instagram: Implications for Education and Marketing’, Aesthetic Surgery Journal, Volume 38, Issue 3, March 2018, pp 332–338

Thompson, S 2016, 'How social media is transforming medical care in the developing world' Fast Company accessed 04 May 2020

[patrickswinburne]

3. Social Activism, The Fast Way to Promoting Slow Fashion

As a digital citizen, one can utilise any platform to spread awareness on a pressing issue. This week’s case study is the slow fashion movement, emphasising sustainable growth and fair work over cheap labour and potentially damaging practices.

“Garments act as a vessel of self-expression and create an identity” (Lai, Henninger & Panayiota, 2017). The quote above allows a direct parallel between social media and fashion. This textile industry allows people to demonstrate personality and emotion through a direct visual source, what you are wearing. This goes from such extremes as a baggy hoodie and tracksuit to a suede suit. The same can be said of social media, as “socially mediated self-expression” (Scolere, Pruchniewska, Duffy, 2018), platforms allowing the user to develop identity and portray this to a large following. Through this, it makes sense that the textile industry and social media are closely linked, allowing individuals to utilise the digital medium for expression of both fashion and self.

Within the current socioeconomic climate, issues surrounding the environment become an ever-pressing matter, the younger generation finding a larger voice through the use of social media. These young people exercise this digital citizenship to advocate for a greater future for the environment, social media facilitating this continuation of the slow fashion trend. This is largely seen through various renting pages on social media that allow the users to rent and return clothes, rather than buy and throw them out. This ensures a sustainable product industry. Additionally, influencers like Venetia La Manna employs her own digital freedom to advocate further progression in this slow fashion movement, recently pointing to fair work conditions as an avenue to stop charity t-shirt making in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. La Manna uses the voice given to her by digital media to get a message to her mass following and continue to improve the world. A link to her article can be found below: (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/coronavirus-charity-tshirt-stay-home-fast-fashion-garment-workers-pollution-a9482351.html)

[patrickswinburne]

2. Dual Citizenship, National and Digital

Within every social media platform is the right to express your own perspective and views to the mass audience, which coincidentally is what I am doing today! I, as a digital citizen, am free to use Tumblr as a platform to discuss whatever I want, a liberty that could easily be misused to spread misinformation.

Being a digital citizen allows you much the same liberties of the public sphere, “unlimited access to information and equal, protected participation” (Kruse & Filchum, 2018), ensuring a community that, with platform facilitation, can express themselves freely. In particular, #Hashtag Culture is a way of narrowing down to a particular point of discussion, such as #auspol, which sparks “a lot of very spirited debate” (Mashable, 2018), yet both sides of the debate are given equal ability to be represented. A digital citizen is someone who actively participates in online discussions and allow it to inform their own actions as an individual in society, such as political voting or activism.

This digital citizenship is perhaps most drastically evident within the world of politics, which allows politicians the freedom to express themselves directly to their audiences, especially on Twitter. Tweets from political officials can be quite a diverse range of things, from Pauline Hanson advocating high speed internet for gaming kids in the bush, to more official addresses by people like the Prime Minister in times of crisis. These cases then spur a large manner of reponses from a community, one only has to look at the Liberal parties 50-second video on the government’s response to the Australian Bushfires of 2020 (in an attempt to recover from Morrison’s holiday) to see both sides being represented, one side thanking the government for their effort, the other chastising it. In this case, digital citizenship has allowed a streamlined expression of the public’s views directly to the politicians.

Lastly, pointing to this week’s readings based on the Clinton vs Trump campaign, we see a continued stream of this direct relation between politicians and the public informing activism. The notion of the “amateur… [strengthening] the image of a candidate as authentic” (Enli, 2017) is a continual thread throughout the Trump presidency and has been evident in the past few days with the “LIBERATE” series of tweets. In response, a large proportion of the republican community as begun to protest on the streets the “hoax” of COVID-19, whilst the left winged public have attempted to criticise.

Clearly digital citizenship is always at play on social media as users decide their opinions, values and activism largely off what they see on these sites.

References

Enli, G 2017, 'Twitter as an arena for the authentic outsider: Exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 presidential election', European Journal of Communication, vol 32, no 1 pp 50-61.

Kruse, LM Norris, DR & Flinchum, JR 2018 Social media as a public sphere? Politics on social media, The Sociological Quarterly, 59:1, 62-84.

#auspol: The Twitter tag that Australia can't do without, Mashable March 6 2018 https://mashable.com/2016/03/21/twitter-australia-auspol/#4tvfXtsZUEqV (Links to an external site.)  Accessed 20 April 2020.

[patrickswinburne]

1. Tumblr as a Digital Community

Tumblr is a grand and expansive space to connect with a vast variety of people through the digital medium. As such, it is highly typical of a digital community through its development of various micro-publics and particular platform vernacular.

Tumblr is the place for minority communities, allowing a freedom of expression through the anonymity and lesser restrictions. The public sphere is “a place where private people come together as a public” (Kruse & Filchum, 2018), allowing for sharing of knowledge and perspectives. However, Tumblr in itself is quite drawn to smaller communities and their representation. These are more emblematic of micro-publics, in which people with similar interests gather to discuss their favoured topic. In particular, Tumblr is centered around fandoms, meme culture, photography, art and expression of self. Through establishing such a strong self-identifying community, Tumblr denies an influence from external sources to allow these micro-publics are true to themselves without censorship boundaries.

Tumblr has also developed its’ own particular vernacular, a “unique combination of styles, grammars and logics” (Keller, 2019) that the users employ. This is most evident as almost every tumblr post has an accompanying visual element, either a gif or a photo, and particularly formatted jokes are posted. These can easily be witnessed on Tumblr’s trending page, with multiple photos, gifs and jokes that center around fandoms creating joking dialogue between characters, an example of these formatted jokes. Further, “[posting] content were deeply implicated interplay” (Scolere, Pruchniewska, Duffy, 2018) with the platform is part of the unique experience of Tumblr that allows it to function as a community, in which everyone has freedom of expression whilst also utilising specific slang. Lastly, Tumblr has specific audiences to which people post, facilitating the concept of “courage [in] anonymity” (Kruse & Filchum, 2018) and furthering the development of micro-publics.

Tumblr functions well as a digital community through allowing freedom of expression and platform specific conventions.

References

Kruse, LM Norris, DR & Flinchum, JR 2018 Social media as a public sphere? Politics on social media, The Sociological Quarterly, 59:1, 62-84.

Scolere, L. Pruchniewska, U. & Duffy, B.E. “Constructing the Platform-Specific Self-Brand: The Labor of Social Media Promotion”, Social Media + Society July-September 2018: 1–11.

Keller, J. “Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms, Social Media + Society Volume: 5 issue: 3, 2019.

[patrickswinburne]

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