Digital Communities Blog

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Week 11: Chinese Copycats

Little do people know, China has a online public sphere like us. They still have Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and micro/blogging just all under a different name. In this weeks final blog post, I’m going to discuss the Great Firewall of China and what it means for Chinese Netizens and the rest of the world. 

"If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in." - Deng Xiaoping’s, a paramount leader of the Communist Party of China (Wikipedia 2016).

To begin, let me give a bit of a background on ‘the biggest digital boundary in the whole world’ (Anti, M 2011) that is the Great Firewall of China. It was put in place in 2013 by the Communist Party of China. It’s purpose is to preserve Chinese regime from external influences, and to prevent China's own citizens to access the global free Internet (Anti, M 2011). 

In his Ted Talk ‘Behind the Great Firewall of China’, Michael Anti, a Chinese blogger of twelve years, claims that internet censorship in China is not as suppressive as people think. With over 300 million microbloggers on the Chinanet, there is indeed ‘a pathway of public opinion’ evident in China’s public sphere, despite Chinese official’s dismay (Anti, M 2012). Weibo, China’s translation of ‘microblog’, is Twitter’s clone and can fit up to 140 characters, which is equivalent to 3.5 English tweets (Anti, M 2012). Therefore, Weibo becomes its own media platform, and a media platform that now has 300 million readers. 

The digital citizens of China work around censorship with puns and memes. They’re used to avoid typing sensitive words such as names of Chinese leaders and cities, and instead use alternate words that only avid users of the social media sites would understand. This is much like Westerners use of internet slang such as ‘on fleek’, ‘slay’ and ‘smh’ (shaking my head). 

Here is an example of popular internet meme in China:

Image source: http://blog.ted.com/8-extremely-popular-chinese-internet-memes/

This meme was created when Chinese civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng escaped from house arrest. This meme — a send-up of a Kentucky Fried Chicken ad — began spreading across the Chinese internet. Why? Because while his name, and even his initials, were blocked by the government, the image got through the country’s censors.

In conclusion, some Western people think China’s strong internet censorship is suppression, others think it’s a smart internet policy. I think it’s a bit of both. The Chinese however, have the safety of internet censorship built into the collective psyche of the country and the firewall is the norm for them and as shown in the image above, they seem to be doing fine. 

References:

Anti, M 2012, 'Behind the great firewall of China', TedTalks viewed 18 May 2016  <http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_anti_behind_the_great_firewall_of_china.html>

Wikipedia, 2016, Golden Shield Project, viewed on 18 May 2016, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Shield_Project#cite_note-radiofreeasia-2>.

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Love this! 

[rattrap2099]

#callofduty #halo #halo5 #onlinegaming

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Me if i started playing online games again. 

I’d be so out of my element...

[charliedivine777]

#marthinlutherking #game #onlinegames #onlinegaming

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hahahahaha me back in the day when I played Age of Empires on the PC religiously

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Give one of Pewdiepie’s videos a watch. Guarantee you’ll laugh.

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Week 10: Social gaming: YouTube

The online gaming community take up majority of YouTube’s subscribers/viewers. Out of the twenty five most subscribed users on YouTube, eight of them were video game users. Video game users typically stream themselves playing a video game while humorously and often crudely commentating. In todays Tumblr post, I’m going to discuss how online gaming on YouTube, facilitates digital communities.

Pewdiepie is YouTube’s most subscribed user, with 44 million subscribers. Here’s a screenshot of him documenting a play through of a video game:

Pewdiepie or Felix Kjellberg is a prime example of how ‘player activity and community development...has arisen around key celebrities within the gaming industry’, and how the role of players have created and sustained these communities (MacCallum-Stewart, E 2013 p.166).

In an interview, Kjellberg says, "the loneliness in front of the computer screens brings us together. But I never set out to be a role model; I just want to invite them to come over to my place."

In 2015 The Verge wrote, "love it or hate it, his success — like so many other YouTube personalities — isn't just in playing games but actually connecting and talking directly to an audience.”

Users like Pewdiepie strongly appeal to younger people, or as Google refers to it as, ‘Generation C’ characterised by their habits of ‘creation, curation, connectivity and community’ (Wikipedia 2016). 

YouTube affords online gamers to share their gaming experiences through their videos, comment on each others progress, reveal tips and tricks of the game and just general banter in the provided comment section. There’s a reason why the online gaming community dominate this social media platform: its hilarious, addictive and informs users in a fun way.

I used to be into gaming before I became a teen, which was heavily influenced by my older brother: COD and Grand Theft Auto on the PC and Mario Kart on the Gamecube. Since I stopped, I hadn’t delved into gaming until tonight as I was watching Pewdiepie play ‘Uncharted 4′ for the first time. I forgot how much fun gaming is and he is a lucky guy that he can do that for a living and make millions every year. 

Since creating his channel five years ago, Kjellberg has undoubtedly facilitated the growth of the online gaming community, particularly on the social media platform of YouTube. YouTube has allowed everyday people to game together through the exchanging of experiences and commentary, forming a firm yet open online gaming community. 

References:

MacCallum-Stewart, E 2013, 'Diggy Holes and Jaffa Cakes: The rise of the elite fanproducer in video-gaming culture', Journal Of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 5, 2, pp. 165-182, Computers & Applied Sciences Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 May 2016.

Wikipedia 2016. Pewdiepie. Viewed 15 May 2016 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PewDiePie>. 

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WEEK 9: PUBLIC HEALTH CAMPAIGNS AND COMMUNITIES

NEW DATA, NEW APPROACHES Social media making it easier for researches to get insight into mental health Hey guys, This week I’ve decided to give social media and little bit of a pat on the back as we discussed the niceties its affordances allow aiding mental health and illness. That’s right, I’m going to side with the masses this time and talk about some of the benefits of social media in the field of public health campaigns, as well as general mental health in the community. Mental illness is predominantly something that is hard for individuals to talk about, particularly with those they do not know. This makes for a hard experience to obtain data to research the topic. However, the rise in social media makes collecting data easily obtainable. By searching through hashtags and key terms in status updates, researchers can observe peoples attitudes on mental health. These insights can further help to change the approaches and dynamics of public health campaigns to content that will most likely resonate with viewers. InfoXchange (2015) stated the following on the topic: “The ability to quickly analyse large amounts of online data through algorithms can give meaningful insight into the mental state of individuals, groups, and even entire countries and this can be analysed with relation to time or specific events.” In other words, the data is always going to be there for researchers. Therefore trends can be measured, such as people’s attitudes towards mental illness before and after a celebrity has passed away due to mental illness; it would of coarse be hypothesised there would be some kind of spike in content. Many medical practitioners engage in mental health data research via hashtag searches on social media such as Twitter. Reavley and Pilkington (2014) did this over a seven week period, searching hashtags such as #depression and #schizophrenia in the hopes of finding community attitudes and stigmas towards the two conditions. The pair found that indididuals with mental illness tend to utalise social networks to abtain information, support and raise awareness (Reavley and Pilkington, 2014). From this readily available data set, new approaches are available to mental health practitioners in the support and treatment of those who suffer from a mental illness (InfoXchange, 2015). Campaigns such as the ‘I Will Listen’ campaign are justified online using hashtags and terms that give them the best chance of reaching audiences who need/could make use of them. The campaign that aims for users to let people with a mental illness know that there’s help all around them, can monitor its progress and retract data via its hashtag #Iwilllisten (Yuhas. 2014). This saves time and money on data collection and allows for more to be spent on new, innovative approaches to the treatment of mental health conditions. REFERENCES: • InfoXchange, 2015, ‘Social Media- the good news for mental health’, Retrieved 3 May 2016, <https://www.infoxchange.net.au/news/social-media-good-news-mental-health>. • Reavley, N & Pilkington, P 2014, ‘Use of Twitter to monitor attitudes towards depression and schizophrenia: an exploratory study’, US National Library of Medicine, DOI: 10.7717/peerj.647, Retrieved 4 May 2016, < http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4217192/>. • Yuhas 2014, ‘I Will Listen: How Social Media Can Diminish the Stigma of Mental Illness’, Scientific American, Retrieved 4 May 2016, < http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/i-will-listen-how-social-media-can-diminish-the-stigma-of-mental-illness/>. 

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Another notable benefit of public health awareness spreading like wildfire on social media: the ability to track ‘community attitudes and stigma’ through hashtags.

Lots of data available and quicker to obtain information.

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Week 9: Social media and public health

I was scrolling through my Instagram feed this week (as I do almost every hour of everyday), and this ad, out of the handful that appear on my feed now, caught my eye. 

GoFundMe is the world’s biggest personal fundraising site. 

Sites like these encourage people to open their eyes to the hardships happening around them and to follow them on their journey to recovery. 

GoFundMe is affiliated with Facebook and Twitter so you can share who you’re supporting and see who your friends are currently funding. As McCocker and Darcy (2013) describe, social media is an effective tool to increase user participation. That is why, on each fundraising page that is an option to ‘share’ and ‘tweet’ the fundraiser. 

GoFundMe has adopted a similiar style to blogging, in that a fundraiser has a self-documentation element to it where the hosts health and treatment are charted along the way. In addition, through donations and social media, the page affords digital citizens to connect, share concerns and similar experiences with the hosts throughout the fundraiser (McCosker & Darcy 2013). 

McCosker and Darcy (2008) found that empowerment is a common theme prevalent in illness blogging. Based on research conducted by Kim and Chung (2008),  ’patients who are more involved and participate in their treatment decisions have healthier physical and psychological outcomes than those with less involvement’ (Chung & Kim 2008, p. 297). GoFundMe optimises a patients involvement in their treatment through their own initiative of starting a fundraiser for themselves and educating others in pain and emotional management. 

Jill Cohen’s writes on her cancer blog Dancing with Cancer: “I actually find that getting the cancer stuff off my chest every day helps me live the rest of my life without dwelling on cancer.” 

‘Networked intimacy’ and ‘connected privacy’ (Katzmann 2014) are just some of the reasons people like Cohen, who are battling medical conditions, use blogs to help get them through their journey. The conversations between hosts and viewers that come about through blogging are indeed intimate and personal. It affords sufferers the ability to find people to relate to and I think relating to others through hardships is an important part of the recovery process.

 References

Chung, D. S. & Kim, S. (2008) ‘Blogging activity among cancer patients and their companions: uses, gratifications and predictors of outcomes’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 297–306.

Kitzman, A. (2004) Saved from Oblivion: Documenting the Daily from Diaries to Web Cams, Peter Lang, New York.

McCosker, A. and Darcy, R. (2013) 'Living With Cancer: Affective Labour, Self-Expression and the Utility of Blogs'', Information, Communication & Society 16(8), 1266-85.

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Week 8: Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing has become an amazing form of online humanitarian aid. It’s a faster and more accessible way of disseminating information and raising awareness while also personalising the event through users own experiences and connections with the event. Crowdsourcing during times of crisis has now become routine on social media. The CCI Report on crisis communication (2012) encourages all emergency services to have a presence on social media and ‘develop more comprehensive, flexible strategies for using social media in times of crisis’ (Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Crawford, K., Shaw, F. 2012 p.9).

#BringBackOurGirls was a campaign initiated by distressed citizens of Nigeria to spread awareness of the 276 kidnapped school girls and to also put pressure on the Nigerian government to find them. The hashtag, like many crisis events, are an integral part of crowdsourcing as it combines information together by linking each story. Over the first three weeks of the campaign, the hashtag was used over one millions times. 

The hashtag was an effective medium to spread and collect information from around the globe. 

Those who started the movement are calling on the Nigerian government to get their skates on and build communication channels to regularly brief communities on the rescue of the abducted girls and inform the public on safety measures being taken to protect Nigerian citizens. Their need for a social media presence to educate those effected demonstrates the reliance and effectiveness of crowdsourcing during times of crisis in this digital age. Large audiences around the world now congregate around their screens to get raw and immediate insight into current urgent events, because social media has afforded everyday people the opportunity to become their own journalists and we as a society have come to accept this as the norm now.

References:

Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Crawford, K., Shaw, F. (2012) Executive Summary: ‘#qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods’, pp 7-10. 

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Week 7: Digital Citizenship #3 – Trolling and Social Media Conflict

In our week 7 lecture, Anthony brought up this point: if we are able to misuse something, that means there must be some sort of guide or correct way to use it…

I believe there is a correct way to use the internet. My vision of a correct way mirrors the correct way I believe we should act in the real world - kindness, generosity, empathy, gratitude etc. The difference between the real world and and the internet is the affordance of anonymity on the internet.

Boyd (2014) brings up an interesting point in that social media enhances the visibility of bullying (Boyd, D. 2014 p. 152) but does not increase it. Indeed, there is always an unknown audience to social media conflict; however, I believe it is the protection of anonymity that increases ‘hating’, ‘trolling’ and ‘cyberbullying’ online than you would see in real life.

Here is a collection of tweets Rebecca Black received upon viewing her video clip to her song ‘Friday’. 

To Rebecca Black, these people are anonymous. It is because of this affordance that social media grants users, that people like @ThatBieberDork have the audacity to say ‘go die in a whole bitch’ to her. Users like these get caught up in the power and protection of anonymity that they say whatever they want, regardless of its potential harmful effects. In real life, these people who hide behind social media to say horrible things to people they don't know, would never have gone up to Rebecca Black personally and said ‘go die or something. You are not talented. Or good.’

This is not the correct way to use the internet. I say this because state regulators, technological controls and localised non-governmental educational programs (McCosker, A. 2016) are not in place to bore primary and secondary school students. They are there to educate and prevent as much cyberbullying as they can.

The best and worst thing about the internet is it’s ability to grant people freedom of speech. We cannot change the fact that people will say whatever they want to, to whomever they want to. My suggestion is, avoid the conflict. Social media gives you the option to block, delete, and report for a reason. Be the digital citizen you are and use them.  

References:

Boyd, D. (2014) ‘Bullying: Is the Media Amplifying Meanness and Cruelty?’, in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, pp 128-52.

McCosker, A. (2016) 'Managing Digital Citizenship: Cyber Safety as Three Layers of Control', Chapter 1, Negotiating Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest and Culture, (forthcoming, 2016, Rowman & Littlefield Int., London) Draft.

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Week 6: When does activism become passivity?

With how heavily social media is used, I think it’s extremely important we are using this extremely powerful platform to create change - socially, culturally and politically.

In 2015, Carrie Bickmore won the TV Week Gold Logie award and used the time she had on screen for her thank you speech to raise awareness of brain cancer.

From this, she raised $433,000 for research towards the disease. That is a significant amount. To help promote awareness she asked those listening to use the hashtag #beaniesforbraincancer on social media to spread the message.

15,188 photos using the hashtag were posted on Instagram and its became the top trending tweet in Australia instantly.

Ivan Signal and Ellery Biddle however suggest that, “too often, the medium or the platform or the tool distracts mainstream media. In so doing, they lose sight of the message of the movement: the idea or grievance that’s brought everyone together in the first place (Sigal, I; Biddle, E. 2015).

While 15,188 of us are happy to post a picture of ourselves with a beanie on, it’s easy for society to get caught up on the attention posting a photo to the public can bring. Helping spread awareness is achieved, but I question whether the hashtag was a mere add on and an excuse to post a photo in your favourite beanie. 

The above picture is an example of passivity on social media. It is posts like these that encourage people to criticise the effectiveness of clicktivism, because they see a lack of effort and genuine concern for the purpose of the movement. 

Honestly it’s disappointing and disheartening to see the array of passivity on social media today. When I’m scrolling through my Facebook feed and I see a “Like if you think she deserves a home” attached to a photo of a young homeless girl, I unfollow the page and keep scrolling. Not only does it make me question their genuine heartfelt for the homeless but it shows to me that their priority was to attract attention to their page and rake up likes and comments. 

Unfortunately, passivity is a side-effect of subactivism. I could start a hashtag #nomorepassivity but I’d be waiting for passivity to arise anyway. It’s part of how the internet works and what it beckons in and I’ve accepted that. 

References:

Sigal, I, Biddle, E. 2015, 'Our Enduring Confusion About the Power of Digital Tools in Protest', Fibreculture Journal, 26

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Over 100 million YouTube views on the Kony 2012 campaign video. It made the record for the most viewed video in the shortest amount of time on the internet.

Das a whole lotta awareness.

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Week 5 - Digital Citizenship: awareness vs. action

While the digital divide becomes narrower by the day, more and more of us are becoming a citizen of the digital world. All it takes to become a digital citizen and a part of an online public are through the simple click of a follow, retweet, share and like. Political figures are encouraged to create an influential online presence to build a more personal connection with the public and paint themselves as a relatable character. In doing this, they are reaching out to the hundreds of millions of people using Twitter and Facebook and sparking participation, discussion and brief bonding with like-minded readers who they have never met. I advocate the importance of creating awareness through social media by virtue of hashtags and the ability to share posts, but does awareness always lead to action - the most effective tool of them all?

In Greg Jericho’s book ‘The rise of the Fifth Estate: social media and blogging in Australian politics’, he talks about David Penberthy’s declaration that “real activism required real connections” (Jericho, G. 2012). ‘Kony 2012′ was a social media campaign that raised awareness of the atrocities carried out by Joseph Kony and his ‘Lords Resistance Army’ group. The campaign gained a lot of traction and talk among the public and influential figures such as Oprah Winfrey. The campaign went as far as merchandise being created to help spread the cause. While placing a sticker on the back of your car that says ‘Kony 2012′ and #stopkony builds awareness to some degree, what sort of action is that taking to actually stopping the villain. 

Back in 2012 when this campaign was running, I was at my best friends house just relaxing outside, and the mailman dropped off a parcel for her. She showed excitement as if she’d been waiting eagerly for it to arrive. Inside, was a Kony 2012 merchandise package filled with stickers, a t-shirt, a pen and a keychain worth $20. Did that $20 go towards support the people fighting the LRA or towards manufacturing the merchandise? Who knows. My point is, while sharing videos, ‘disliking’ posts, and commenting or tagging people in posts spreads awareness, the connection is not real - it is simply through a screen. 

Next time you’re scrolling through your feed and you read something you want to see changed, by all means spread awareness by tagging your mates or sharing or retweeting the post, but make that extra effort and write an email or letter, or attend a protest because that is what action is to me and that is what will make the difference.

References:

Jericho, G. 2012 'How many votes are there on Twitter?' in The rise of the Fifth Estate: social media and blogging in Australian politics, Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, Australia, EBL eBook Library, viewed10 April 2016, pp 254 - 278

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Calin you have found the answer to my question !

http://calinblogshare.tumblr.com/post/141705894283/is-tumblr-a-blog-or-a-social-network-site

“But that is exactly what sets Tumblr apart from any other digital community around today, its ability to behave as both while adhering to neither. The best possible label to apply to this platform would be ‘microblogging’, which just leads to more questions like ‘what is microblogging?’ Josh Lowensohn of CNET described it as ‘happy medium between a tidbit posting service, such as Twitter, and a full-fledged blogging tool, such as WordPress or Blogger.”

Microblogging. A much better way to describe blogging and social networks than ‘Blognet’... 

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An accurate depiction of a popular Snapchat user, DJ Khaleed, vlogging their day, experiences and thoughts with an extremely large audience of 2 million people. 

Free and open for anyone to view. Snapchat got it right.

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Week 4 - Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site?

The term ‘blog’ and ‘social network’ in many respects have meshed together over the last year. We are updating our apps regularly and with each update comes a new function. Snapchat allows you to publish an unlimited amount of sequential videos to the public. Well-known Snapchat users use this function to essentially ‘blog’ or ‘vlog’ there day through video and receive hundreds to thousands and even millions of views. An Instagram account is basically like a blog now because a) it gives you the almost same functionalities as a blog does and b) more and more people are getting paid for running their Instagram account - just like bloggers are. Tumblr gives users the same affordances as a social networking site and a blogging site would; however it is the purpose with which you create the blog or social network account that can differentiate the two. 

In her book Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter are Transforming Popular Culture, Mary Cross puts forward that bloggers start a blog for personal expression and to have an audience for it (2011). What prompts connectivity is bloggers reading other blogs with shared interests and commenting on their thoughts and experiences. It is here that the social networking aspect comes into play such as liking, sharing and commenting on posts. 

Eugenia Siaperia discusses in his book Understanding New Media that a want to strengthen existing relationships or rebuild ‘weak ties’ are what generate social networking (2012). Communicating to new or old friends, or acquintances through social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, is more than simply conversing. When you post a photo, share a post, or write a tweet, you are communicating to your audience about your interests, goals, family, friends, occupation etc. The intent of a social networking accounts audience is different to that of a bloggers audience.

Based off my own observations, discussions and readings, the most clear similarities between a blog and a social network site are their strong ability to allow everyday people to connect, collaborate and build a supportive community. An example of collaboration is a clothing brand collaborating with a fashion blog or an Instagram account to help reach a broader audience. In this regard, another similarity is promotion - the bigger the following, the bigger the chance companies are going to reach out to you to promote their service or product. Most importantly, creating a blog or a social network account is free and open to all ages.

I love that Tumblr exhibits traits from blogging and social networking. This is why it generates 555 million visitors monthly as of January 2016 (Statistica 2016). Because of how quickly social networks and blogs are picking from each other and integrating more each others attributes to their programs, I predict in the near future a new term that meshes the two terms together will be unconsciously created. I can’t wait to see what that is.

Blogwork perhaps.. or blognet..

References:

Cross, Mary 2011, Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter are Transforming Popular Culture, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara

Siapera, Eugenia 2012, Understanding New Media, Sage, Los Angeles

Statistica 2016, Global social networks ranked by number of users 2016, viewed on April 3 <http://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/>