DIGITAL / COMMUNITIES

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Leading The Wei

There is a commonly held belief that due to its strictly regulated and restrictive online network that there is by extension, no presence of social media within China. However, despite the banning of sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, the nation has seen the rise of alternate modes of connectivity.

One of the most impressive of these is Weibo. With double the amount of registered users then that of the sites that we would consider to be the big players in social media, this Chinese adaptation of a social network proves that the rest of the world have much to learn about the art of connecting. To put it further into perspective, Twitter (2015) boasts a total of 302 million registered users whilst Weibo (2015) has a total of 600 million.

Image Source: Chinas Social Media Boom

Furthermore, the overall general use of the Internet in China is a staggering statistic when stacked up against the rest of the world.

As you can see by the chart above, there is an obvious disconnect between the number of people online in China versus places like Australia.

What is more startling still is the fact that these statistics are 4 years old and as I have come to mention in previous posts, the internet is not the same place it was a decade, a month or even a minute ago. It is fluid and constantly changing in terms of not only it’s content but as a driving force behind alterations in our social behaviours and particularly the ways that we interact with the net. Whilst these statistics are likely to have changed, for Australia, the could also be said for China.

It is a difficult thing to comprehend. When we think about a place like Australia, we think of a place that we would consider to be somewhat at the forefront of modern technologies and particularly something like the Internet and in some ways we are. For example, In China the strict guidelines regarding the use of the Internet and the websites that have been restricted are all the result of government censorship.  Whilst we are yet to have any restrictions placed on our Internet habits (within reason) or to find any social media pages banned, we are obviously still struggling to keep up with the habits of those users in China.

But why is this exactly? Even if we ignore the fact that their population numbers trump ours ten fold, there is still the overwhelming fact that both we and the rest of the world can barely muster the numbers on our own social media platforms to make up even half of what sites like Weibo are achieving.

Perhaps instead, these numbers are in fact a comment on our needs as humans to communicate. For the Chinese, censorship could have easily spelt the end of online communication, however despite it all they have managed to form an incredibly vast network of micro bloggers around the nation and in the process, proving the power of the Internet and the desire for connectivity.

References

Twitter 2015, ‘Twitter Usage’, Twitter.com, viewed 20 May 2015 < https://about.twitter.com/company>

Smith, C 2015 ‘By The Numbers: 40 Amazing Weibo Statistics’, Expanded Ramblings, viewed 20 May 2015 < http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/weibo-user-statistics/>

Chiu C, Davis L, Silverman A 2012 ‘Total Internet Users in 2011’ [Image], Chinas Social Media Boom, McKinsey & Company, viewed 20 May 2015

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The Sadistic Gamer

You boot up the computer, load the game and hit the ‘start’ button. You are suddenly immersed in a first person shooter. Your gun sits out in front of you. A character appears. He seems hostile. You pull the trigger and unload the clip into his realistically portrayed, yet computer generated body.

You feel nothing.

You do it again and again, bullet after bullet, blood splatter after splatter until within 2 hours you’ve taken more lives than the population of a small country. But, why?

Lets start by examining games, both online and off as simulations of reality in varying degrees. They are designed as a sort of hyper reality, where for the duration we are playing them, we are expected to believe in a somewhat abstract manner that they are real places with real characters, telling a real story, much like a film. However, the beauty of a video game is that we have an element of control and this allows us to do things in the simulated world, that we may not want to or be permitted to in the real. I.e. massacring an army.

However, it’s one thing to kill a person in a game where the only thing affected is the algorithm of the games engine, but what happens when there is someone else on the other end? Does the act of killing a computer-generated avatar carry any weight?

I would argue that perhaps at first glance, it doesn’t. I’ve been killed in online games before, sometimes completely unprovoked and I’ll admit at first it can seem personal, but you shrug it off as just being part of the game. But, could it be argued that the weight of this phenomenon is carried out to a far broader social scale.

Image Source: Sims 3

For example, what does it say about us when we spend hours inventing ways to kill the members of our ‘Sims 3’ (2009) families? Families that we have created, mind you. Or what it means for children who are becoming exposed to these technologies, games and by extension, habits at increasingly younger ages.

Perhaps its good.  Maybe, these days, it doesn’t hurt for kids to run down prostitutes in a stolen car on ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ (2014)? I know I did, and I turned out ok.

Or maybe, we don’t need to argue it at all. In many cases, we could say that it’s not worth shielding our youth from the violence of a video game. In fact there may be merit in desensitising them to such content. Ultimately, there is violence everywhere, from newspapers to television and of course films, maybe the onus of an individuals violent streak should instead be shifted on the collective of media that they encounter on a daily basis not just the contents of a video game.

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‘Selfie, Selfie On the Wall’

In a world where mobile technologies have taken monopoly over much of the Internets user generated content, lives have been saved or altered by the presence of concepts such as citizen journalism. It has liberated much of the worlds population, giving them a voice and enabling them to enact change through an extremely powerful, democratic process. But there is something else that has spawned from the depths of this incredibly vast and exciting time of social and techno-cultural change, the Selfie.

Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are visual platforms that are affording us the ability to show everyone how good we look “before Jenna’s 21st”, “how unhappy we are about going to work :(“ and letting us assess the visual aesthetics of our meals. It has become an important element of our modern behaviours and interactions with mobile technologies and has perpetuated a culture of narcissism amongst much of our digital communities.

Image Source: Instagram

Applications such as Instagram play a pivotal role in the dissemination of these images and as a result have lead to a rise of popularity for particular individuals of who may not have achieved such a status, if it weren’t for the presence of this phenomenon. Ana Cheri is one such individual who literally squatted her way to over 2 million followers on Instagram.

Image Source: ANACHERI - Instagram

But how and why does this happen? There is the initial question of the ‘how?’, which can be easily explained by the appealing nature of Ana’s page. Fitness pages (particularly those focused around a woman) are incredibly popular due to the fact that they play on the desires of both men and women. Perhaps women ‘want to be her’, whilst men simply ‘want her’. It’s a very out dated idea but it appears to be the logic behind it.

Secondly there is the question of the ‘why?’. Burgess and Vivienne explain, “changes in media technologies have engendered changes in how we capture, remember and communicate personal images of everyday and family life” (Burgess & Vivienne 2013, p. 280). We need to remember that the selfie, like many other aspect of the digital community, is a medium, a text and a narrative. The Selfie tells others about oneself, what they are doing, wearing, eating, drinking, the list goes on and perhaps we have grown to rely upon that narrative as a means of connection to each other.

References

Vivienne, S., & Burgess, J. (2013) ‘The Remediation of the Personal Photograph’, Journal of Material Culture, pp 279-98

[vicemag]

I took these portraits at various rallies and demonstrations in Baltimore over the weekend. People are literally dancing in the streets, coming together over Marilyn Mosby—the prosecutor who just charged six cops with various crimes relating to Freddie Gray’s death—as a symbol of hope. We’ll see what happens next, but right now it’s hard to describe this moment as anything but positive.

See more

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Crowd Sourcing, Community and Convergence

Perhaps nothing demonstrates the viral and global nature of social media more than crowdsourcing. It’s a phenomena that appears to rear it’s head in times of crisis, when the more traditional means of communication are failing the community. It is the dissemination of a message in a single moment, with power to interact with millions of people and it’s changing the way we engage with disasters.

You could argue that crowd sourcing exists to achieve two things. The first is the role that it plays in warning people of imminent danger, notifying them of natural disasters and updates on emergency services, whilst still acting as a key ingredient in the spread of a particular message.

In any case the lineage that can be drawn through each, is the role of social media. The Victorian Government utilizes mobile technologies with apps such as ‘fire ready’.

Image Source: Victorian Government

Image Source: Victorian Government

Not only does it provide it’s users with the status of fires in their area but also links them to both the CFA Twitter and Facebook pages for further updates on incidents occurring elsewhere. These are of course simple; yet powerful tools when coupled with the power of other forms of broadcast media, specifically radio. In ‘The Twitterisation of ABC’s Emergency Disaster Communication’ the ABC’s national social media coordinator, Ping Lo explains that their traditional means of communication such as television and radio worked closely together with their more modern means during the events of the Queensland flooding.  “Very often social media and traditional broadcast media activities are discussed as separate spheres of activity, whereas in reality, for the ABC the approach is (rightly, I believe) much more blended than that “ (Lo, 2012, p.35).

It is here that we can witness a key example of convergence performing as a conduit to a heighted form of crowd sourcing and disaster awareness campaigning. It is a trend such as this that bridges the gaps between old and new media and in doing so allows for broader and more accessible affordances for the entire community.

References

Posetti, J. & Lo, P. (2012) 'The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication'

Fire Ready – Application -Victorian Government

[vicenews]

We spoke to Kevin Moore, the man who filmed Freddie Gray’s arrest.

This is what he told us.

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The Process of Protest

When it comes to digital citizenship there is perhaps no more important a component then activism and protest. Each of them embodies the fundamental ideas of what it means to be a digital citizen, as they encapsulate the notion of both the democratic and decentralized structures, whilst most importantly highlighting the dichotomy that exists between a governing body (be it social, political, economical or otherwise) and the people.

Activism and protest are terms often assumed to be one thing. Whilst this is not necessarily incorrect it is perhaps worth re-thinking the terms as two steps of the one process, the process of enacting change. For example, protest is the initial objection or disapproval of a particular idea or topic of controversy, such as same sex-marriage. However, activism could instead be described as the action that you take in order to make the change, whether it is in the form of a picket, a march etc. Whilst it would be argued that today, we identify these processes as aspects of the online space, they are of course far from new.

Activism and protest have existed ever since we have lived as civilized groups of people, bound by laws and governed by groups in power. The early 19th century saw the activist movement of the luddites. These highly trained artisans and textile workers revolted against the economical structures of the time when their livelihoods were threatened by the rise of the industrial age. In response to these social changes, they destroyed the factories and the machines they housed.

Image Source: pixgood.com

As the Gerbaudo reading mentions in his opening anecdote, the state of activism has been radically transformed and mobilised by the presence of mobile technologies (Gerbaudo 2012, p. 1). Protest does not remain stagnant in just the real world or the online, but rather moves freely between both. Many campaigns may begin initially, as an offline protest, but the activism moves into the online space with garnering of support via social media pages and the like. For example, Kony 2012 was a phenomenal exemplification of social media activism.  It could be argued that the offline problem was the existence of Kony and all he had been doing to African communities and that through protest and then activism, his actions were then made public and as a result, revolted against.

https://youtu.be/Y4MnpzG5Sqc

KONY 2012 stats as of 27/4/15

So the process of protest has transformed radically. However, we needn’t just think of the online as a form of activism but in its most basic form, it actually plays a large role in the dissemination of a message or protest. It’s in this way that protest and activism function in the same way that it always has for the preceding centuries past, however now, we are able to garner support or opposition on a global scale.

References

Gerbaudo, (2012) Tweets and the Streets

YouTube.com: Invisible Children

Image Source: pixgood.com

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Conflict In Social Media: Why do we love to hate?

It’s an all too common trend with potentially fatal ramifications, yet for some reason, ‘trolling’ and hate comments have etched their way into the cultural norms of the social media landscape.

TV personality, Charlotte Dawson, of whom fought a very public battle with depression, was victim to a barrage of criticism and eventually lost her fight when she took her own life in 2014. Unfortunately, situations like these are all too common for many youths and adults around the world who become prey to the revered ‘cyber bully’.

As Mckosker highlights, YouTube has become the backdrop for much of the Internets trolling efforts (McKosker 2014, pp. 6-7). Many of the YouTube comments on Rebecca Blacks ‘Friday’ (although negative) seem to take on an amusing paradigm of one up-man ship when it comes to who can be more disgusted in her music. It's this sort of conversation that some organisations may come to encourage, as it draws more attention to their content, allowing for the comment section of a video to almost transcend the popularity of the video itself.

Source: YouTube - Rebecca Black - ‘Friday’

But why do these comments exist in the first place?

There’s a couple of contributing factors but the first of which is that the Internet is a public space, or more specifically a public sphere. For centuries public spheres have been the home of debate and a place where anyone in the community can come and voice their opinion free from prejudice or judgement. They were once considered to be town halls and amphitheatres, anywhere a large number of people could come together to discuss certain topics (Gripsrud et.al 2011, p. 2) . It has often been said that the Internet is a modern day incarnation of a public sphere, and whilst that for the most part that is true, public spheres do not allow for vitriolic criticism and bigotry in the same way that a comment section might. It’s the vitriolic, cruel and yet seemingly unregulated nature of much of this online criticism that see’s it lose it’s validity and instead exist as nothing more than negative, hateful drivel. It is also worth considering the ways that this behaviour is perpetuated by the disconnection we associate with the act of sitting on a computer. In a place where anonymity is so easy to obtain, it is little wonder why social media conflicts are so commonplace.

It’s a pervasive notion that the real world and online, virtual world are two different spaces, where in truth they exist as a duality. The presence of one informs the other, and so to, do the actions that take place in either space. Perhaps, for trolls and those who produce these hateful comments, the weight of their online words and actions are not fully realised.

References

McCosker, A. (2014) ‘Trolling as Provocation: YouTube’s Agonistic Publics’, Convergence.

Gripsrud, J., Moe, H., Molander, A., & Murdock, G. (Eds.). (2011). The public sphere. (Vols. 1-4). London: SAGE Publications Ltd

Image Source: YouTube

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The Digital Party: will we always have an online democracy?

It’s hard to deny the obvious relationship that is now shared between politics and the Internet. Whether it’s the backbone of a Presidential campaign like that of Obamas (Jericho 2012 p. 297) or the very selling point of another, such as the NBN, Politics have well and truly infiltrated the space. However when focusing on Australia in recent times, there is an undeniable disparity in what we believe the Internet is affording us, and what it actually is.

Web 2.0 marked the turning point for the Internet; transforming it from a means of browsing and limited communication to the highly interactive network we know it as today. This transformation fostered the rise of participatory culture, where anyone from anywhere could upload content, be it videos, photos, blogs, status updates, tweets or even the humble ‘like’. This saw a shift in the way people use the Internet, turning them from passive observers to fully functioning participants and contributors. With participatory culture, also came the rise of citizen journalism as well as a re-working of our ideas of democracy and views of the Internet as a decentralized structure. Young explains that evidence of the Internets role in democracy was again seen in Obamas 2008 Presidential campaign, where 74% of the US Population was online to contribute and receive information regarding the campaign. This statistic included 55% of Adults (Young 2010 p. 204). That's a relatively solid statistic considering that the Internet was a different place to what it was 7 minutes, 7 hours, 7days, let alone 7 years ago. I was still on Myspace back then and the term viral had only recently been associated with the online space.  Thanks to the social media juggernaut that is Facebook, over 1 Billion people are now connected to the one network, proving a strong platform for politicians to distribute their message.

However it could be argued that the age of online democratization is now dead in Australia, thanks to the Government. With the recent passing of data retention laws in Federal Parliament (2015) the ideas of privacy, democratic and free speech begin to come into question.  With political parties taking to the online world to garner support and disseminate their views, they have established their roles as equal contributors within the fabric of online, participatory culture. This has been what I would argue a positive element of Australia’s social media environment, however much like the way that web 2.0 turned us from observers to participants, data retention laws risk having the government and other political parties manifest from participants into gatekeepers and this is a problem.

When one of our base level rights, such as privacy is in jeopardy, it’s time for us to begin thinking about whether it is occurring in the name of progress or regression. It’s important, because for most of us, to live in Australia is to exist in a duality where real world and digital citizenship share the same interests. Whilst at the moment these laws prove to have little effect on our lifestyles, it is worth considering what future steps may specifically entail and how much we are willing for the government to take before we step in and draw a line in the sand.

Source: https://www.getup.org.au

Reference List

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, viewed 20 January 2013, pp 254 - 278

Young, S. 2010, 'New, political reporting and the internet' in How Australia decides: election reporting and the media, Cambridge University Press, Australia, EBL eBook Library viewed 28 February 2012, pp 203-228.

Griffiths, E. 2015, ‘ Data retention laws pass Federal Parliament as Coalition and Labor vote together’ ABC News, 26 March, viewed 8 April 2015 < http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-26/data-retention-laws-pass-federal-parliament/6351278>

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Tumblr: Blog or Social Network?

Tumblr takes on a Frankenstein’s monster –esque form that sees it transcend the traditional conventions of common social media platforms and blogs alike and instead encompass elements of each.

By existing in both realms, Tumblr affords its users the ability to operate as a free and open space where discussion can be easily accessible as well as being able to cater to both niche and broader interests. This is a characteristic commonly associated with that of a blog but with Tumblrs’ ‘like’ and ‘reblog’ buttons, those affordances are then extended to that of a social network from which other elements can become visible.

There is a notion however, that we have come to associate with social networks surrounding viral content and the ways that the content spreads, an association we haven't yet made with blogs. Facebook has mastered this concept through affording it’s users the ability to tag other users in the comment section of photos and videos. At the same time, the users Facebook friends can see that the video has been commented on, bringing it up in their feed despite not being tagged in the comment itself. This in turn causes a chain reaction where the photo or video may make its way to the news feeds of users hundreds if not thousands at a time.

As previously mentioned, ‘like’ and ‘reblog’ allow for the ideas of social media to inform the mass distribution and sharing of content. However, it is worth noting that the ‘reblog’ button allows for the dissemination of Tumblr content throughout Tumblr but nowhere else. Whilst this is still an effective means of sharing, realistically, the number of Tumblr users is restricted when compared to the numbers of whom use Facebook.

Rettberg explains that whilst there far more people on Facebook and other social networks then there are blogs, almost of our interactions are rooted strongly in blogging practices (Rettberg 2013 p. 14). So although it’s been established that Tumblr as a platform encompasses both characteristics of a blog and social network, the discussion becomes more complex and when we consider the ways that Tumblr traverses the chasms between it and other sites.

Pictured Below is an example of a Tumblr thread that has been screen capped and posted on Facebook. It’s here that we see Tumblr unintentionally take on the mantle of a social network and that idea of being restricted by the number of users begins to diminish.

The world of blogging and social media are differing ideas but ultimately, Tumblr finds its footing, comfortably in each. Tumblr is not necessarily a blog anymore than it is a social network, and vice versa. At its foundation however; it is a community, bound together by common interests and ideas whilst at points remaining separate for the very same reasons.

Reference List

Walker Rettberg, J. (2013), 'What is a Blog' ch1; and 'Blogging Communities and Networks', ch 3 in Blogging. (2nd edn) eBook Library