Week 1-3 Intro to Digital Communities & Social media Platforms
What are digital communities? What is the virtual world? What about social media, social networks, online publics?
These are all concepts we will explore and try to define and differentiate between this week. How people use them matters too, how they’ve come to influence different spheres in our lives has dramatically changed over the years with the advance of technology and the availability of Internet in households and workplaces around the globe.
Oxford Dictionaries define ‘Community’ as ‘A group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common’. There exist communities in the digital space, who are related to one another through the use of computer technologies. They connect on social platforms and networks such as Facebook, My Space, Linked In, to name a few. These media are online tools for users to share aspects of their lives, information that they might be equally interested in, updates on news and social problems, etc. Other platforms such as Instagram and Twitter have turned from photo-sharing sites to money-making and marketing devices for large companies which take advantage of selected users’ popularity to promote their products.
While social platforms and networks might have been created to ‘connect’ people and encourage conversations, positive communication and friendship, they are now not what was once intended. Social media seems to ‘rule’ our lives. As Sherry Turkle claims in her Ted talk (TED 2013): ‘We are connected but alone’!
She makes some great points I agree with- that we don’t have to work as hard these days to get to know one another- instead, we can just scroll through a public profile and find out a summary of the information we need about a particular person. We all have a smart phone, a tablet, a laptop. We spend a great deal of time on different platforms, typing our opinions, posting photos to let the world know our lives are great, boasting about holidays and milestones. Yet- when we need to move house or look for a job- there are very few out of our 1000 something friends on Facebook whom we can actually call and rely on to come and help us. I am sure 99 % of people have experienced the phenomenon of going out for dinner and seeing at least one person from the group check their phone instead of making an effort to participate in the conversation.
HEALTH ISSUES RELATED TO OVERUSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA?
As a remedial massage therapist in my spare time, I see patients who are already bearing the consequences of their ‘connectedness’- sore thumbs, early signs of arthritis in their dominant wrist and sometimes even tennis elbow, caused by the constant grip of a phone. Posture and headaches though are the main complaints people come to me with - as they are continuously bent over a phone or staring at a computer- their heads are protracted and shoulders and upper bodies are sore and stiff.
Are there other health related issues? Yes, plenty more :-(
Lack of social skills, mental illness related to physical social isolation, just to name a few!
2 in 3 Australians today are obese:
http://www.aihw.gov.au/overweight-and-obesity/
1 in 4 Australian children are overweight or obese!
These are scary numbers but are they surprising? Children grow up playing computer games and not knowing how to ride a bike, so I’d say - no they’re not surprising.
Here’s a recent video- even more stunning - a girl who has never seen a normal telephone other than a smart phone and doesn’t know how to hang it up:
WHAT ABOUT SECURITY? TRAGEDY FROM SOCIAL MEDIA?
While we’re on the topic of children…. How well do you know who they ‘talk’ to on Facebook or who follows them on My Space, who sees where they ‘check in’ every time they’re on a sleep over or out with friends, or on the way to school?
All alarming questions if you’re not very confident in the answers!
The truth is the news is full of horrible stories about abducted and disappearing kids all over the country, about fake profiles of predators lurking around the World Wide Web and even participating in their own sick closed online communities….
The trouble however can often come from unexpected sources- other children, minors- unaffected by law and standards. I’m talking about cyber bullying! We’ve seen plenty of tragedies following trolling. One that springs to mind is the suicide of Charlotte Dawson, who had a very public struggle with depression and internet trolls. She was sent abusing message on her Twitter account,encouraging her to take her own life.
SO ARE THERE ANY PRO’S TO USING SOCIAL MEDIA?
Yes, definitely! Many businesses and individuals profit greatly from social media use! Here are some of the benefits:
reduced marketing and advertising costs
allowing dialogue with customers through customer feedback and reviews
better networking opportunities
greater traffic to your website
In addition, people who travel often or live away from relatives, have an opportunity to continue being a part of the lives of those who they love!
Social activism is also another positive consequence from the popularity and accessibility of social media! It raises awareness of all sorts of issues and uses the power of the majority to support worthy causes!
We talk about social a lot… What is society? What holds it together?
These questions seemed to also trouble some of the 21st century theorists such as Ferdinand Toennies or Robert Putnam.
Toennis differentiates community from society in an attempt to explain what brings together people who are to a large extent unknown to each other. According to his conclusions and findings, communities are based around a more personal need of being with like-minded people , be it from our neighborhoods, be it from other voluntary activities. Society, on the other hand, is formed when there is a rational motive, trade, commerce, industrialization.
Putner takes a different stand with his book ‘Bowling Alone’. He shares Turkle’s views that we are increasingly disconnected from families, friends, neighbors and democratic structures. His book contains research and interviews of nearly 500,000 Americans and shows we now sign fewer petition, see our family less often or only on major holidays, don’t even know our neighbors in the big cities.
Which view do you share? What do you think is the impact of new media on our interaction and sociability?
What about our culture? We’ve seen many cultures, considered traditional and with long history- like Japanese and Chinese, being affected by the wave of globalization, communication, media access. Mass cultures influencing traditional cultures in a way that changes generation’s interests and opinions!
Here’s a quick video about Hip hop in Japan to give you an idea of how media is making even music and culture uniform!
COMPARING PLATFORMS: REDDIT VS TWITTER; ME VS CELEBRITIES !
For those of you late adopters of technology, let me summarize what each of these platforms is about
Before I knew Facebook or Tumblr, once upon a time, I met an American who couldn’t believe I am not on Twitter! Logically, I HAD to make an account ASAP OMG and LOL with excitement at what was revealed to me on the screen- endless tagging opportunities, hashtags, an estimated 250 000 000 monthly unique users!
Twitter can be described as a hybrid between a book marking site and a social networking site. Plus… you can also blog! You can re-tweet or re-blog others’ posts and tag communities, geographical areas, businesses, anything and everything. You can have a conversation with millions of people while watching “THE BLOCK’ Finale from the comfort of your couch! You can spread content from other platforms like Instagram and Facebook, you can choose to remain anonymous when you talk and post your opinions, you can change your mind and delete content if you wanted to…
So many affordances or in other words features and functionalities, which may or may not be the reason of why some platforms become so popular so quickly and remain popular over others, that shine bright , but die very quickly.
Reddit is almost entirely a bookmarking site. People visit in search of tags and cheap entertainment! Everyone here loves the novelty and discovering new layers of web content! Reddit collects the most popular topics, news, videos out-there and makes them available for you to scroll through.
As Steve Likoski (2015) summarizes:
‘’What they don’t allow you to do:
Twitter: Be anonymous, post more than 140 characters, hide your name, location, images, tweets, videos, your photo - however, all that can be avoided by not using real information or a profile picture. You can’t edit tweets once posted, however, you can delete tweets.
Reddit: Control Reddit’s algorithm, i.e. choosing which content appears at the top of the page - however, you can upvote content one at a time, but depending on the traffic the subreddit gets, that won’t make enough of a difference to shift the discussion.
What’s public, what’s private:
Twitter - Public: Name, picture, location, birth date, images, videos, tweets, friends, favourites, re-tweets, and discussions.
Twitter - Private: Tweets (Only if you choose to become private), discussions, favourites, re-tweets, pictures, videos, and location.
Reddit - Public: Username, karma, subreddits
Reddit - Private: Real name, location, picture.
Features they have:
Twitter: Emojis, vine integration, animated gifs, YouTube and Soundcloud playability within tweets,
Reddit: Communities, linking to outsourced videos, images and websites.
Interactive elements, visual, textual:
Reddit: Costumising your outlook of the website, i.e. directly subscribing to subreddits you’re interested in, affects how the homepage will be. Also, this refers to being a moderator on Reddit, you can modify pages, code themes, change the outlook, moderation tools.
Twitter: Customise profile and settings, videos, gif’s, images, tweets, and more.’’
What does the statistics say:
Twitter is used by 10.6% of all the websites, that is a social widget market share of 38.5%.
W3Techs.com, 25 November 2015
absolute usage percentage market share
Percentages of websites using various social widgets
WEEK 4- TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG
Blogging is writing about one’s own experiences, thoughts, ideas, observations, etc on a platform in a blog. Often people, and myself until recently included, think that blogging is something only few can do- because they have more time, because they’re better at writing, because they are socially awkward and that’s a way to express themselves at the best possible light… Well not quite. Sure, yeah, it does take some commitment but many people choose to blog and they have a perfectly normal social life. In fact it takes imagination, research, commitment and a good audience, so it isn’t as easy as some might think.
What are some key components of a blog?
Introduce yourself.Who are you? Why did you start this blog, what it will be about?
Quality content- you want your blog to be good and successful since you’ll be spending time and effort on it, pick quality information, add a variety of graphics, videos so that old and new readers will be engaged and will keep coming back!
Allow feedback- comments, posts, you want to know if people like what you write, what they don’t appreciate and perfect yourself. Respond to feedback- create conversations!
Keep blogging! Be consistent so that there’s something new always for those who return and expect more content from you!
So that looks like a lot of work… But why should I do it, what can a blog achieve?
Firstly, you’ll move to the new century! Your digital blog will be your diary and instead of hiding it under the bed- it’ll be wide open on the big scary Internet for the world to see. How can this be any good? Well, you’ll get some confidence to be who you are and not be ashamed of it. You’ll meet new people- many will be like-minded and you’ll get their emails, comments , posts. Every positive encounter will give you nice butterflies in the stomach. Next- you’ll become more reflective, a better writer and a more patient artist in a way. you might make some money in the process- here’s a quick tutorial that answers all the how’s:
Apart from making money as an individual, blogging is also used in business and in the mainstream media to highlight social issues, to attract attention to a product or a service that is an innovation in the market, blogging is used even in public relations to create conversation with different publics of an organisation. It is great for gathering feedback, testimonials and managing complaints. So keep blogging because it’s free and can save you many dollars if you listen to your clientele, investors, haters and fans. Develop a personality and you might just develop a brand of your own.
