Social Flux

Doing a media and communications degree at Swinburne because why not? #yolo #swaggy #sorrynotsorry #douevenlift

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[Censored] the Chinese Government!

I had no idea of the humungous difference in the social media life in China and greater Asia. The influences of censorship, the use of $40 part-smart phones used as the primary device for internet connectivity and even cultural differences such as what one gentleman said in the video used in the lecture, the Chinese are much more concerned with shame rather than guilt. 

I had an idea previously of the censorship that the Chinese government enforced on the internet to some extent, and I was aware that the Chinese used very different social media platforms than us, however I very much thought that these different platforms were a result of the censorship of sites like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. I never thought that these sites may have emerged completely naturally because of different cultural norms and ideas. I think the example of the fact that the limit of 140 characters on twitter means a completely different thing to English speakers than it does to Chinese speakers is testament to these huge cultural differences. English speakers can write one to two sentences with 140 characters, whereas the Chinese have the ability to write whole paragraphs of meaning within 140 charaters. This enables a completely different use to sites like twitter, and perhaps makes it irrelevant to the Chinese for one reason or another and gives Chinese sites, that understand the culture, the ability to flourish.

I do think that censorship has a huge impact on how the Chinese population use the internet. Because most of the more widely used social media sites in China are actually Chinese, I think it enables the Chinese government greater power to monitor and censor those who they believe are using it to undermine the state. Because of this, I think it is truly commendable that young users are still using these sites to speak out against wrongdoings by the government using secret language, such as the use of the llama as a "F*$k your mother" to the government. This is a wonderful testament to how people can react to being censored, and a great example of how useful the internet is in aiding people in coming together as activists against a regime. 

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Moss deals with a fire in the IT department.

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Disaster Relief and the Internet

I once read a story, I have no idea if it is true but it was about a small village living on an island with a two hills, one was smaller whilst the other was much larger. There was a legend passed down in the form of song in this village that every villager knew, about a tsunami that had washed over the village a very long time before. The legend told that when the tsunami hit, the villagers headed to higher ground, some to the small hill, whilst others went to the much higher one. The song ends in the tsunami washing over the smaller mountain, yet not being large enough to wash over the second mountain, sparing the villages who sought refuge there. The whole town knew this song and passed it down for generations until one day another tsunami hit. All the villagers quickly fled to the higher hill and escaped the tsunami, watching it wash over the smaller hill.

  I think this story is a fantastic metaphor for how we now have the ability to use social media. We have the ability to immediately share our own experiences to help others, on black Saturday, regular civilians tweeted the exact location and movements of the fires, enabling those who lived in towns close by to evacuate on time. Experts also have the ability to quickly communicate how changes to wind patterns or other weather could affect the fires and who they will effect. I believe we are at a turning point where it is possible for us to have the most immediate disaster communication ever where people can work together to help others and others are always aware of disasters whether they’re tuned in to what is happening or completely unaware. However this has the potential to backfire as well. Because of the introduction of filter bubbles to social media sites like Facebook, and search engines like Google, we are increasingly being only exposed to things that we want to see, rather than things we need to see. In terms of disaster notification this could become a serious issue in the future as people no longer watch television or listen to radio, through which disaster information can be broadcast in an emergency.

  I think the emergency information broadcasting over social media is a huge step in the right direction for disseminating information, but I don’t think it can be relied upon to the extent that we have relied on television and radio to spread the information in the past. I think if we are going to rely solely on the internet in the future to spread emergency information, we need a more forceful way of disseminating the information which people can not simply miss by not jumping on Facebook for a day. I think this could be possible, because although people don’t always spend time on social media everyday, it is getting to the point where we are almost always on the internet, and so if we could forcefully push alerts to devices connected to the internet, I believe we could provide a much more effective form of disaster communication.

I've also posted a 30 second video from the U.K. television show the IT crowd that deals with emergency relief in a ridiculous but hilarious way.

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Gaming Communities

Computer game communities are a subject that's pretty dear to me. I first played an online game when I was in around grade 5 in primary school (approx. age 10). I've played pretty much every single type of online game from MMORPG's like Runescape (the awful free flash game that started it all) which eventually elevated to paying for a World of Warcraft subscription for several years. Whereas i've also been very invested in the culture of Counter-Strike, an extremely competetive first person shooter, as well as the more casual call of duty games. I've also dabbled in some Starcraft and Dota (as well as league of legends) however as soon as I recognised the amount of time needed to get good at such games I quickly gave up. 

I never really became truly invested in the community aspect of online gaming however until the point where I discovered World of Warcraft at age 14. It began with a 12 day trial CD in which I played through the first few levels not realising that most of the hundreds of characters around me were people. Upon discovering this I immediately told my friends. I still remember walking into Darnassus (the night-elf capital city for the uninitiated) and being assaulted with the rantings of the trade channel. People sold and bought items, found groups for quests and guilds to raid with, most of which went over my head at the time, but I knew i'd found something special. A few weeks later and I'd finally got into the swing of things, I could understand the lingo, the humour, and I was able to look and find groups for dungeons with confidence of what my role was within the group. Although the dungeons were very formulaic, they usually require one class, the tank, to take most of the damage that the enemy does, one healer, to keep everyone alive, and three main damage dealing classes that do most of the damage, it still promotes a huge amount of team work within a group of usually complete strangers. This quickly can create close friendships between people that normally would not interact through the sheer fact that a dungeon cannot be completed alone. 

I've grown up with these games and taken a lot of the benefits of being in these communities with me. Although I haven't been able to keep any of these online friendships together over this time, a lot of my offline friendships now rely quite heavily on online games. I currently play in a competitive team on the first person shooter game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with a few of my high school friends. We rarely see each other outside of the game, usually maybe about once a month, however the fact that to be on the team we have to at least play our league matches once a week and generally try to hop on every night to practice we have built a strong group bond. We each keep up with the competitive scene and keep an eye on the counter-strike subreddit in order to look for helpful strategies and tips to improve our teams standings in the online leader board and spend hours talking over and practicing these strategies in order to replicate them without mistake. We've formed such a strong friendship bond within this game that it becomes difficult to talk about anything else, even when we're out at a bar or a party with other friends. It's addictive to be involved in such an expanding and changing community, with the game being updated by the developers weekly to balance the many different guns and maps, which can sometimes drastically change the strategies that can be used within the game. 

One thing that is particularly interesting about Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the fact that the developers interact directly with the community through the subreddit for the game. Ideas are often posted to the subreddit and implemented to the game days later, with acknowledgement to the original poster of the idea. I think this is a vital part of why the game community is growing so quickly and it's a very exciting time to be a part of the community. 

I Could write forever about my experiences within games and interacting with the communities on them, it seems that the idea of gaming communities has been growing exponentially in the last few years and I'm incredibly excited to see where it goes in the future. I'm definitely going to be following along every step of the way.

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The NSA, Government Surveillance and #omgselfieslol

Banksy

My generation is one of the first that has grown up with cameras pointed everywhere. We saw the fall of film and the rise of digital photography and phone cameras becoming more and more prevalent in society. Everyone seems to be okay with the fact that CCTV is everywhere and people are constantly filming each other without the knowledge of the person being filmed. Has nobody read 1984? 

The thought of having no escape from being watched frightens me immensely. I'd hope that nobody would want to, but it's becoming easier and easier to watch people or a specific person constantly. Someone with nefarious intentions could take advantage of any one of us because of this thing we call "camera consciousness". I feel as though this whole idea of camera consciousness is just being fed to us to slowly turn us into a submissive group of sheep that don't want to step out of line because we're being watched. Street Artist Banksy in the photo i've posted above created this piece of street art earlier this year thought to be made in response to the recent developments regarding Edward Snowden's  release of goverment surveillance information. Although looking at this piece I believe Banksy only partially shares my point of view. The fact that he portrays the government listening in on a crappy little phone box makes me think that he believes the information the government collects about us is uselessly mundane. Although this may be the case currently, if ever there came a time when the government suddenly tuned into a dictatorship- hey it has happened before- we'll all be screwed.

On the topic of Snapchat, i've never really understood the appeal. For the longest time I didn't bother to install it, however i've had it for a few months now and still don't really see the point. From what I understand, you're meant to feel free to send photos of whatever you like because the photos you take are only in existence for a few seconds. This makes sense to me, it's a solid rule, but in practice it doesn't work. Snapchats can be saved with apps, they can be screen shotted, and a system of trusting that your friends won't save your photos is deeply flawed. At least in my circle of friends. 

John Herman in his article attempts to argue the benefits of Snapchat as a form of communication, but I can't help but feel that good old fashioned text based or vocal communication works one hundred times better. Or maybe I just don't like taking pictures of myself.

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Finer Points on Trolling

When I was around the age of 14 (yes, that young) I discovered this site on the internet www.4chan.org/b/. It was word of mouth that spread this site around, although i'm not sure about how influential this site was to others, but it certainly made an impact on me. /b/ has become more recognised in the mainstream recently but back in those days it felt like the most rebellious thing to be doing at the time. It wasn't that I liked everything posted on the site, most of it I was physically repulsed by, but the fact that these things could be posted with no consequences. 

One of the things that I took guilty pleasure in watching take place however were the mob style antics that just did the most ridiculous things. An example, so that I don't seem like a complete creep, that is clearest is when /b/ decided to start calling up starbucks cafe's asking about their newly implemented birthday cakes that they had in stock. Unfortunately for the employees of Starbucks, these cakes did not exist. However after receiving hundreds of calls across the United States requesting cakes and asking why they didn't have any in stock, some frankly hilarious recordings of the calls started popping up. Starbucks managers demanding to know where the false information about the cakes was coming from, exasperated by these seemingly clueless customers that couldn't seem to comprehend they'd gotten the wrong information. Some even believing after enough callers that somehow the head office had failed to inform that specific cafe in the chain about the fact that they would be starting to sell birthday cakes.

Although this harmless example of a "troll" showcases that a wholesomely good time can come from /b/, there are also many other examples in which clear victims reside and the actors on /b/ are clearly causing harassment. Tracking down people to their home addresses, calling their homes non-stop, causing people to cut off their home and mobile phone lines and in extreme cases move away from their homes all because of a stupid comment they made on the internet. Harassment can often go way too far without people realising it when each person only contributes slightly to it. 

Trolling can be harmless fun, creating a team effort to do something just for laughs. However it can also turn quite quickly into a malicious harassment that can cause a person or group of people a significant level of distress.

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Like this blog post to end poverty!

Activism and the internet have gone hand in hand since the very early days of chain e-mails "raising awareness" of serious issues that need to be addressed. However only in recent years has gained any traction as something that can do something other than raise awareness towards any particular issue. I'm definitely not under appreciating the importance of awareness as a step towards taking action towards fixing an issue, but it is a comparatively small step when compared with taking physical action to improve the situation. 

Some of the benefits the internet supplies us with in terms of activism is it can mean we have the ability to start something on our own. We don't need help from journalists or famous individuals to begin to make change. Anyone can make a public page on Facebook with information regarding an issue and you even have the ability to receive donations online through sites like paypal. Although this also increases the chances of a page being legitimate.

Even back before the internet, false charities, or causes were created attempting to scam those who were easily convinced into donating. This has only become more prevalent with the tools we are given to begin our own movements and organisations for such a low cost. Any weary internet user will very rarely donate to a cause, only after researching it heavily will any truth stated by a cause website be accepted. 

There are many causes that have truth to them and which mean well, but make fabrications in order to make the truth easily digestible to the average person. The Kony 2012 campaign that became popular on social media in March of 2012 is a good example of this as although child soldiers and warlords being legitimate issues in parts of Africa, the film depicts killing Kony as a solution to the issue, which is a wild simplification. This has been labelled as "slacktivism" by criticisers who argue that while the campaign did raise awareness, and despite the funds raised for the cause, no end to the issue would come from it.

This idea of slacktivism is interesting to me, it means to donate or share or "like" an issue online to simply feel as though you are contribution to the solution of an issue. It frustrates me deeply that people are happy to assume the end to an issue just because they hear no more of it. I guess this is the way the internet works though, and people are learning to exploit it better everyday.

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Politics 'n' Civic Cultures yo!

Social media has begun to shape our society in many different ways, one of those ways being politically. Social media as a political tool has been used by grassroots groups to raise awareness or to bring people together over an issue. We saw the impact this could have in 2012 when the #occupywallstreet movement circulated the globe. Millions of people came together over social media, twitter and facebook, to protest against the unneeded influence of corperations on the government in the United States. This sparked huge protests breaking out not only on wall street but in cities across the world. Although not a huge amount of progress was made on the issue, this ability to bring an issue to the attention of such a huge population of people hints at a massive potential for social media politics in the future. How much sway social media could have on politics however at this point is still unknown, politicians are only beginning to use social media to their benefit and many voters are too out of touch with technology to be impacted by politician's social media use. I'd like to see politician's becoming more active online in the future, but I still may not pay any attention to them if they did. I am without a doubt part of the generation that requires entertaining stimuli to become invested in something like politics. I am ashamed of this as I know that infotainment is ruining the concept of objective news but without entertainment, news, especially political news quickly becomes boring for me. I liked that Obama's campaign tried something different, and I saw many of the viral videos that sprung up around his campaign. Despite not knowing very many of his policies at all, I became invested in wanted him to succeed. It's interesting, how I can become a fan of a politician and say I would vote for them, despite not being familiar with anything they aim to do. It's eery how easily people can be won over by entertainment. It reminds me how quickly Hitler became revered by a large population of Germans, despite his radical views and intentions with the German state. I don't want to be a sheep, following fancy viral videos and entertaining political figures because I understand the harm it can do to democracy. I don't however, want to be bored trying to deconstruct boring political garbage to work out who i'd like to vote for. If the future does become ruled by an evil dictator, I just hope we have hoverboards.

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WTF is Tumblr?

I've never used Tumblr as a social media platform before, however it seems in terms of the page customization and social profile it's a mesh between what myspace used to be in its hayday and facebook. After beginning to trawl through the depths of this site I'm weary of how much I should invest into it. I can't stop laughing at an animated gif of cindarella with a stupid look on her face that in all rights should not be funny at all. I think this website is much too inline with my sense of humour for me to traverse it. It's strange to me after becoming so familiar with reddit over the past few years to see these singular pages of content posted by one person instead of the democratic content filter that lives on reddit. After setting myself up a cool little profile I'm confident that none of my friends will be able to find me on tumblr, which I think is a good thing. Whenever I find out people have a Tumblr page nobody seems to want to tell me what it is. Is it becoming a trend that we only let strangers see our creativity on the internet? Is it deemed arrogant to promote your tumblr or youtube videos to your friends on facebook? I know that at least on reddit, there seems to be some fo-pa arising where when you post a video or something else you created, that you include that you are "shamlessly self promoting" as if it's a bad thing. I'd rather post a video I made myself than have someone else post it and receive all the credit for my work. I haven't made anything that i'm proud of creatively recently, but maybe this tumblr can be my outlet to "shamelessly self promote" the stupid shit I come up with in my spare time. The Tumblr community seems like just another vast space filled with micropublics about mostly meaningless dribble created for comedy, however in my limited time spent starting to browse through it i've rediscovered an old friend's photography page, and it's quite amazing. His site is http://jacktoohey.tumblr.com/ if you'd like to have a look, his photography to me celebrates being a teenager and really nails the joys of weekends spent in highschool with friends. Although what do I know about photography. Anyway, I'm going to keep sifting through different tumblrs and see what else I can find of value on this site. Sean.