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A very intriguing academic journal published by Stanford University in the US. It delves into the impact of media censorship in China. They conduct an experiment with providing citizens with access to an uncensored Internet and measures the effects of its impact. Worth a read!
!984 by Olivier Bonhomme
Michael Anti (aka Jing Zhao) has been blogging from China for 12 years. Despite the control the central government has over the Internet -- "All the servers are in Beijing" -- he says that hundreds of millions of microbloggers are in fact creating the first national public sphere in the country's history, and shifting the balance of power in unexpected ways.
An interesting TedTalk if you want to listen to an in-depth discussion on the Great Firewall of China!
Global social media practice in China
The Great (Fire)Wall of China
It is a known fact that conversations about the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and domestic police brutality are never to be taken place online or offline in China. Any content regarding the Taiwanese government, sites dedicated to religious content, the Dalai Lama or even pornography is also completely prohibited.
Nonetheless, the governmental oppression on its citizens does not stop there…
The Great Firewall of China (GFW) is part of China’s ‘Golden Shield Project’, carried through by former leader Deng Xiaoping, and mainly focuses on Internet security, control and censorship. It blocks famous foreign websites including Facebook, Twitter and Google in main land China (Bu, 2018) in an attempt to prevent the sharing of information that could threaten national security, disclose state secrets, or damage the government’s reputation.
There is a common misconception in the Western World that the Chinese are illiterate on social media due to the restricted access of Westernised social networking sites. This is not so accurate.
China has their own ‘copycat platforms’ that are domestic sites that act similarly to their international equivalences. This includes sites such as Ren Ren mimicking Facebook, YouKu like YouTube and Sina Weibo like Twitter. In addition to China’s 513 million Internet users (Chiu, 2012), the country also has the world’s most active environment for social media with almost 300 million people using it (Chiu, 2012).
Is an Orwellian dystopia becoming a potential reality?
In Season three of Netflix’s original Black Mirror, the episode Nosedive showcases a world where people rate one another from one to five stars based on their individual interactions they have with each other. This in turn, determines ones socioeconomic status. The main character’s obsession with her score leads to mishaps and shows a reduction in ratings.
Although this is a fictional television concept, this nightmare is already on its way in becoming a reality and glimpses of this Orwellian dystopia is happening right now. The surveillance and government oppression is not just apparent in its Great Firewall, it can also be seen in China’s Social Credit System that is on its way in being implemented.
The Chinese government is currently building a social credit system to rate its 1.3 billion people on how trustworthy they are. The score will take into account their social behaviour, such as spending habits, with a goal for its citizens to take greater responsibility for their lives (Ramadan, 2018)
Assigned to each individual person, Beijing plans to implement this social credit score (SCS) by 2020. This could mean implementing a negative reinforcement response if an individuals score is low such as punishment with slower internet speeds or even denied access to public transport and travel. The way China’s citizens portray themselves online will evidently impact their social credit score and adds to a future of an even more oppressed society.
With the impediment of freedom of speech and restricted access to international content and communication, as well as a potential for a social credit system, where will China be in 20 years time? Will China be surveilled and censored even more? Will there be uprisings and protests? Only time will tell...
References:
Bu, R. (2018). The Great Firewall of China. Retrieved from http://campus.murraystate.edu/academic/faculty/wlyle/540/2013/Bu.pdf
Chiu, C. Davis, L. Silverman, A. (2012). ‘China’s Social-Media Boom’, Mckinsey & Company, pp.1-7
Ramadan, Z (2018) "The gamification of trust: the case of China’s “social credit”", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 36 Issue: 1, pp. 93-107, https://doi.org/10.1108/MIP-06-2017-0100
I used to wear three Tamagotchi’s on a lanyard like this at school... wow.
Social Gaming: Playing the crowd
Games can be understood as cultural artefacts, industries, social communities, material cultures and media practices. It can take the form of various convergent formats-computer, mobile, online and consoles. (Cunningham et. al, 2014). This expansion of the gaming industry has allowed for increased levels of cultural, technologic and economic convergence.
Whether you’d be entirely immersed in the fantasying realm of World of Warcraft or glued to the Nintendo DS playing Mario Bros, we’ve all most definitely had a gaming phase. For reasons of escapism, breaking away from the tedious day-to-day activity or community, where socialisation amongst other gamers can take place, people play games for a variety of different reasons. Just like any other hobby, interest or activity; gamers can feel as though they belong in a community.
People can escape their physical lives and pretend to be someone completely different (Suzor & Woodford, 2013, p.2). Whilst this freedom for escapism can be largely positive, it can also allow for harmful activity to occur. Sexual predators can use chatrooms and hide behind characters in games such as Minecraft, Counter-Strike, Eve Online and World of Warcraft as a gateway for grooming and luring in children.
A widening in gamer demographics but…misogyny?
In an age of cross-platform convergent and divergent media (Jenkins, 2006) where games are transitioning into shining in the limelight and dominating creative industries, demographics of games are also shifting to include a wider gap of ages and genders. This is definitely a shift in player inclusion, however gender inequalities such as the representation of females in games and blatant misogyny is continuing to happen.
I have two teenage younger brothers who thoroughly enjoy playing video games. Having to watch them play hyper-masculine content that is unfairly portraying women and having to have a passive voice about it actually sucks.
Alongside the lack of inclusion of female first person characters in games such as GTA V or Assassin's Creed Unity, the sexual objectification of women in games is very much a real issue. Lara Croft, the action hero of war, is the leading female protagonist in Tomb Raider. The 2013 video game, developed by Square Enix in May 2015, portrayed a hyper-sexualised version of Lara Croft, rather than focusing on her strength and heroism, evidently to simply please the male eye.
I don’t want to ramble on too much... but having her depicted with a voluptuous body with large breasts wearing revealing attire obviously pushes for sexualization and an ideal female body type.
And I won’t get into discussing the prostitutes and sex dolls in Grand Theft Auto…
So, now I pose this question to you…because the reality of games is entirely digital and virtual, does it make these instances acceptable? And how can you govern and discipline the behaviour of someone online?
References
Cunningham, S & Turnbull, (2014), The Media & Communications in Australia, 4th ed, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, p. 189
Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A.J. & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education For the 21st Century. Chicago: The MacArthur Foundation. http://www.newmedialiteracies.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf
Suzor, N, Woodford, D (2013) , Evaluating Consent and Legitimacy amongst Shifting Community Norms: An EVE Online Case Study, Legal and Governance Challenges, Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Volume 6, Number 3, September ed., Queensland University of Technology.
In 2014, R U OK? travelled the length of Australia to share the power of conversations in changing lives. This is the story of the people they met on that jo...
Genuine responses from real Australians discussing how impactful the question ‘are you okay?’ was to their lives.
Public health campaigns & communities
Can we always trust the internet?
The ability for anyone to simply hop onto the internet and google check their medical symptoms is both a blessing and a curse. It can most definitely turn people into hypochondriacs and lead them down a dangerous path of self diagnosis. Most often than not, the internet will have the worst possible answer and people seem to immediately convince themselves that they have pancreatic cancer.
In all seriousness, the ability to acquire medical information instantaneously is incredible and social media platforms allow for this information to be proliferated. People around the world are publicly sharing large volumes of personal information about their health and the health of their communities (Hout, 2013).
Around 83% of internet users seek health information online (McCoster, 2015) making it the third most popular use of the internet after social networking sites, email and general search (Fox, 2011: 2). Although an exceptionally useful tool, with the sheer quantity of people going digital for information regarding their health, we must question the legitimacy and credibility of these online sources.
Take Belle Gibson, an Australian health blogger who fraudulently stated she had donated significant income to charities, forgone cancer treatments and overcame multiple forms of cancer with the diet and healing methods she followed. Meanwhile coincidentally promoting her app and book ‘The Whole Pantry’...
The mass dissemination of information online allows for information about health and mental health to be easily known and accessible to the public, creating instant awareness. Mental health is evidently a touchy subject due to the unnecessary stigma that surrounds the topic, however I firmly believe that speaking openly about it on social media aids to diminish the stigmatisation.
An example of a successful public health campaign focused on mental health is ‘R U OK’ which spreads awareness about suicide prevention. ’R U OK’ is a non-for-profit suicide organisation that was founded by Gavin Larkin back in 2009. The creation of the organisation was prompted by the suicide of his own father back in 1995.
The organisation works with experts in suicide prevention and mental illness (R U OK, 2018). Over a five year period from 2012 to 2016, the average number of suicide deaths per year was 2,795 (ABS, 2012). ‘R U OK Day’ is a national day celebrated in Australia to remind people to ask their family members, their friends and their co-workers the question, “are you okay?” in a meaningful and genuine way. The success of the campaign can partially be accredited to the celebrities that have endorsed it such as actors Hugh Jackman and Simon baker, actress Naomi Watts and gold medalist Libby Trickett.
But, I can’t see it?
Because we humans can’t physically ‘see’ mental illness for the obvious reasons of it having no external manifestations, people tend to invalidate other people. I’m not talking about the physiological effects that often come with these illnesses such as anxiety directly relating to difficulty breathing or depression causing insomnia. I’m saying that hypothetically, if everyone who had a mental illness had a, say, a broken leg… would they be taken more seriously?
The answer is sadly probably yes.
It just goes to show the importance of having these platforms to be able to spread awareness about health and aid in the destigmatisation of mental illness.
References:
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2012). Suicides, Australia, 2010. Catalogue No. 3309.0. Belconnen, ACT: Commonwealth of Australia. Accessed May 3, 2018 from: http://abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/mf/3309.0/
Fox, S. (2011) The Social Life of Health Information, Pew Research Centre, Washington DC.
McCosker, A (2015), Digital Mental Health and visibility: Tagging Depression, located in P. Messaris and L. Humphreys, Digital Media: Transformations in Human Communication (2nd edn), Peter Lang.
Kass-Hout, A, Alhinnawi, H (2013), Social media in public health, British Medical Bulletin, Volume 108, Issue 1, 1 December 2013, Pages 5–24,
R U OK? Retrieved May 10, 2018, from https://www.ruok.org.au/
Public Health Campaigns and Communities By Harriet Witherow, Saskia de Wolf, Grace Kane and Issy Wilson
Group presentation on the positive impact of public health campaigns, spread on social media focusing on mental health.
Crowdsourcing" has, virtually overnight, generated huge buzz, enthusiasm, and fear. It's the application of the open-source idea to any field outside of soft...
An interesting explanation on Crowdsourcing on YouTube from the very individual that coined the terminology.
Crowdsourcing in times of crisis
The development of new media technologies has undoubtedly helped the world become more interconnected and globalised. Despite people being hundreds of kilometres apart from each other, its quite incredible that technology allows its users to communicate almost instantaneously at the click of a button!
This allows for huge numbers of people to come together to reach a common goal. However, large communities of people had come together to do this even before the internet was even invented…
An example of crowdsourcing of long ago was in the early 19th century by Yale science professor Denison Olmsted. On November 13th 1833, a deluge of meteors occurred which travelled more than 72,000/h (Littmann and Suomela, 2014).
Olmsted recorded these instances and published an article in the local newspaper, asking people who had seen it to respond with precise facts. The scientific breakthrough that followed was largely accredited to the amount of people who responded to his report.
The term ‘crowdsourcing’, coined by journalist Jeff Howe in 2006 and was initially defined as a “method for recruiting and organising ad-hoc labor, using an open-call for participation” (Howe, J, 2006) and used in a business context. Now, the term is a lot more versatile. It can be used to refer to a large number of people who are working together to reach a common goal involving electronic communication networks (Littmann and Suomela, 2014).
Facebook and Twitter played a detrimental role in the South East Queensland floods crisis in 2011 in “disseminating and sharing crisis information and updates from state and local authorities” (Bruns, A.,2012). People who kept up to date with these updates received information on road closures, flood warnings and offers of assistance.
#qldfloods became the most used Twitter hashtag with more than ’35,000 tweets’ were sent between 10-16 January 2011. The hashtag mainly focused on sharing situational information, advice, news and reports. Twitter seemed to mainly help with fast communication of information and Facebook more so with lengthy, detailed information.
Ping Lo, the ABC’s national social media co-ordinator provides three tips for organisations using social media in emergency communications
1) Be strategic and plan ahead
2) Build awareness internally and externally
3) Consistency is key (Posetti, 2012)
Now you can see how crowdsourcing is a "powerful tool for mobilising the public” (Schimak, Havlik, & Pielorz, 2015) with the rise of social media platforms. It’s truly incredible what the human race would be capable of if we all united and worked together.
In a perfect world, imagine what we could be capable of. If every single human picked up a piece of rubbish, imagine the difference it would make to the planet!
References:
Executive Summary: ‘#qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods’, pp 7-10. Bruns, A., Burgess, J., Crawford, K., Shaw, F. (2012)
Howe, J. (2006). The Rise of Crowdsourcing. Wired, 14(6).
Littmann, M. and Suomela, T. (2014). Crowdsourcing, the great meteor storm of 1833, and the founding of meteor science. Endeavour, 38(2), pp.130-138.
Posetti, J. & Lo, P. (2012) 'The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication’
Schimak, Gerald & Havlik, Denis & Pielorz, Jasmin. (2015). Crowdsourcing in Crisis and Disaster Management – Challenges and Considerations. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. 448. 56-70. 10.1007/978-3-319-15994-2_5.
Björn Neukom
anonymity
Trolling and Social Media Conflict
The ability for individuals to remain anonymous over social media is both a blessing and a curse. Anonymity has traditionally been recognised as the “inability of others to identify an individual or for others to identify one’s self” (Christopherson, 2007).
A positive of anonymity over social media includes the freedom for self-expression, whereby individuals are able to share personal information, ideas, beliefs, viewpoints etc without a fear of discrimination or backlash. There is a freedom for open discussion about sensitive and taboo topics and even an allowance for people to report injustices or activity that is against the law.
All of these positives, however, has its relative contras.
The blanket of anonymity allows room for hateful comments and rude condemnation. Xenophobia, defamation, cyberbullying and bigotry can occur without any form of consequence.
Although the ability to be anonymous online would nevertheless increase the likelihood of individuals acting on the topics mentioned above, it is evident that these things occur regardless of whether the person remains anonymous or not.
Spring.me who merged with Twoo, previously recognised as FormSpring, is a question-and-answer-based social network launched in 2009 that allows individuals to post anonymously or non-anonymously on another person’s profile. This website caught the attention of many of my friends and acquaintances in high school as it allowed users to express anonymous opinions and ask questions publicly.
https://www.twoo.com/?utm_campaign=springme_cobrandreg
As you can imagine, hormonal teenagers mid puberty+ anxt + social media = cyberbullying.
I luckily steered clear of creating a profile for myself as I saw the hurt resulting from the hateful messages and harsh commentary being sent to my fellow companions.
Golf-Papez (2017) defines Trolling as deliberate, deceptive and mischievous attempts to provoke reactions from other users and can be considered as “consumer misbehaviour”.
Trolling can range from ‘sophomoric pranks to identity-based harassment to online impersonation to political activism to straight forward racism and misogyny’ (Phillips, 2014)
This is due to the fact that individuals who engage in trolling (i.e. trolls) are ‘unwilling to cooperate with the service provider, other customers, industry regulations, and/or laws’ (Bitner, Booms, & Mohr, 1994).
Although with this being said, I doubt the individual who is using hateful rhetoric or purposely provoking someone is primarily thinking about abiding by internet laws.
So... how do you stop a troll?
Evidently, it’s very difficult to do so when the individual is hiding behind a screen. It also depends what type of trolling behaviour was conducted…
Defamation; the action of damaging the good reputation of someone, can prompt the seeking of legal advice.
In regards to inappropriate material classified R18+, you are able to report to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) who can review classification complaints and inquiries.
References
Bitner, M. J., Booms, B. H., & Mohr, L. A. (1994). Critical service encounters: The employee’s viewpoint. Journal of Marketing, 58(4), 95–106
Christopherson, M. Kimberly, (2007) The positive and negative implications of anonymity in Internet social interactions: “On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog”, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 23, Issue 6,
Maja Golf-Papez & Ekant Veer (2017) Don’t feed the trolling: rethinking how online trolling is being defined and combated, Journal of Marketing Management, 33:15-16, 1336-1354
Phillips, W. (2014). To fight trolls, focus on actions and context. The New York Times.
‘i am a man’ - american civil rights protest, 1960s
