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Big Data is changing our world - Week 10 Blog Post

What is Big Data?

Big data is an advancing technology trend that opens the door for people understanding the world and making decisions. According to IDC estimates, The data is growing all the time at 50 percent a year or even more then doubling every two years (Lohr 2012).

Improved access to information is also fueling the Big Data trend. For example, government data such as employment figures and other information has been steadily migrating onto the internet. In 2011, Australian government opened the data doors further by starting Data.gov.au, a Web site that makes all kinds of government data accessible to the public (data.gov.au 2014).

Why is the big data so important?

While much of the news about big data and its benefits has come from larger companies, which traditionally deal with larger data sets such as Google, which analyzed frequency of searches for related phrases to help rapidly identify the answers—smaller businesses also have the opportunity to gain benefits from the emerging set of tools that allow them to tap the market.

The data increase isn’t just more information on the same stuff, but entirely new data streams generated by countless digital sensors on nearly everything from shipping crates of goods produced thousands of miles away to location data stored in a teenager’s smartphone.

Linking these sensors and their corresponding data to computing intelligence helps businesses better track shipments, define most efficient truck routes for goods, and target advertising to potential consumers.

The predictive power of Big Data is also being explored in fields like public health, economic development and economic forecasting (Siegel 2013). Researchers have found a spike in Google search requests for terms like “flu symptoms” and “flu treatments” a couple of weeks before there is an increase in flu patients coming to hospital emergency rooms in a region.

Technology is improving Siri, powering driverless cars, improving cancer treatment and even being called Big Brother. But “big data” is what makes it possible, and why it’s so important.

The big data is changing the world

Big data became the industry's hottest buzzword in 2012, but the impact of that technology on our day-to-day lives will be realized for years to come

From healthcare, to sports, to the way we elect a president, big data will make big changes to the way we live our lives. Our ability to manage and analyze the massive amounts of data spawned by new data sources like social media.

There will be many other application and new categories as the tools become more widespread. The powerful concept may revolutionize the planet with tools that can combat poverty, illness and crime while fueling unexpected and explosive innovation. Eventually, every aspect of our lives will be affected by big data.

Reference List

Clark, Dorie. 2014. “Data visualization is the future”. Accessed May6, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2014/03/10/data-visualization-is-the-future-heres-why/

Data.gov.au. 2014. About. Accessed May 9, 2014. http://data.gov.au/about

Lohr, Steve. 2012. “The Age of Big Data”. The New York Times, February 11. Accessed May 6, 2014. http://rkbusinessschool.com/uploads/2_The_New_York_Times_on_The_Age_of_Big_Data.pdf

Siegel, Eric. 2013. “Introduction – The Prediction Effect.” In Predictive Analytics, 1-16. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Inc.

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Social Media :Politics 2.0 - Week8 Blog Post

The indispensable social media

Social networking is a phenomenon of interest to many scholars. While most of the recent research on social networking sites has focused on user characteristics, and the interaction between people, it cannot be underestimate their roles in engaging and influencing people in the democratic process.

Social media mainly indicate the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and which have engaged citizens in civic and political activities. Social networking sites are changing political attitudes and democratic participation of the public. More specifically, the media is being the role to control for demographic variables and the platform of interpersonal political discussion in stimulating citizen participation. The reliance on social networking sites is significantly related to increased civic participation, but not political participation.

The social media is being an indispensable role in the political sphere, to inform the public of the occurrence in order to give publicity to the official political action and educate the public the meaning and significance of facts .More importantly, media is providing platforms for competing viewpoints to unfold and informed public opinion (McNair 2011).

Ukraine's Revolution

Social media played a crucial role in the Euromaidan protests. Beyond providing information on what was happening in Ukraine, they were a place where people could ask for help and organise actions. In fact, a Facebook post which called on people to go to Maidan Square by TV journalist Mustafa Nayem is the trigger of everything(Peled 2014).

A study from the New York University, the Social Media and Political Participation lab (Barbera and Metzger 2014) had been following social media (Facebook and Twitter) activity related to the Ukrainian protests since they began. During the Euromaidan movement, social media were an important tool for organizing protests and exchanging information and which is also the only way to know the truth about the government, chiefly because the Ukrainian authorities controlled most major radio, television and print news platform. Their findings suggest that social media is a pivotal tool throughout those protests as well as supporting the information exchange and disseminate both inside and outside of Ukraine.

Is social media really that important?

It is undoubtedly that social media site is being a major information-exchanging role in the Ukraine riot. But after all, social media was just a tool that the helped the people organize and spread the truth. The revolution was cause by the Yanukovich regime, if they don’t have social media, the revolution would still have happed. Gladwell (2010) has stated that social media is “simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger... It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.” On the other words, social media was just helped the revolution erupt more quickly, but the government is still laid the ground for revolution.

Conclusion

Social media sites provide are more accessible platform for discussion and which fosters both civic participation and political activity. However, the Implications of the results for democratic governance still need to concern the transparency of the dominance party and other factors.

Reference List

Barbera, Pablo and Metzger, Megan. 2014. Tweeting the Revolution: Social Media Use and the #Euromaidan Protests. Accessed May 1, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pablo-barbera/tweeting-the-revolution-s_b_4831104.html

Gladwell, Malcom. 2010. “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted.” The New Yorker, October 4. Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

McNair, Brian. 2011. An Introduction to Political Communication. 5th Ed. London: Routledge.

Peled, Daniella. 2014. Ukraine’s Social Revolution. Accessed May 1, 2014. http://iwpr.net/report-news/ukraines-social-media-revolution

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The Internet is wrecking jobs- Week 5 Blog Post

The era of Technologies

The “technologies of freedom” which Hans Magnus Enzensberger predicted many years ago are now mainstays in the world. The majority of the population is linked with some type of social media. The role of media audiences is shifting from that of a receiver to a producer generating more opportunity and creativity. It is no longer the same as people formerly known —the audience who were on the receiving end of a one-way broadcast media system (Rosen 2006 ). Technologies provide opportunities for users and users can still make choices to spread content and imbue it with new meaning, which will make social, cultural, political, legal, economic contexts shape these processes and add value. It has also led to a significantly controversial issue —whether or not they have become exploited?

Crowdsourcing's Good and Bad

Crowdsourcing is the idea that everyone contributes a little part to the whole work and builds a bigger product. It seems that crowdsourcing is an advantage for users, as technologies are now providing more choices for them. However, it might also be exploitation of these users. Currently, anyone is able to do a paid job online, but this labour is paid on a very low scale. Users are able to contribute to the editing and production and then professional media agencies will pick the best ideas. This is the positive side of crowdsourcing, as it makes the best ideas work. However, it also increases the competition between creative workers.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Many corporations are now using crowdsourcing as their way to make profit, for example, Amazon Mechanical Turk, which is one of the sites of Amazon Web Services. The requesters (the cloud labour, that is, the online workers, of Amazon Mechanical Turk) are able to post tasks known as Human Intelligence Tasks, such as choosing the best among several photographs of a store-front, writing product descriptions, or identifying performers on music CDs. The individuals who provide the information (or the labour) each get a small remuneration. More importantly, as they are in an unregulated labour marketplace, they are not under any labour protection.

The New media labour faceing a difficult situation

Although corporate exploitation of users and employees existed before the proliferation of the Internet, the new media labour now face a more difficult situation, as everything has become commercialised today. The Internet is predominantly capitalist in nature (Fuchs 2014, 102), so corporations can reduce their costs (which include labour costs), and jobs are destroyed. Cloud labour produces surplus value that is appropriated and turned into profit by corporations without paying any wages (Fuchs 2014, 106), and consumers who work for free are extremely exploited.

The new economy and technologies are turning human labour into just another computer process. There are no paid holidays, no sick days and no health benefits in this new “distributed workforce.” There are no unions in the world of “cloud labour”, a class of worker that fits neatly into what some academics have dubbed the “precariat” (Leonard 2013). The Internet can commercialise everything and this means that nothing will be free anymore. With time, people will not participate without payment and information, again, will become a commodity.

Reference List

Fuchs, Christian. 2014. “The Power and Political Economy of Social Media.” In Social Media: An Introduction, 97 – 125. London: Sage Publications.

Leonard, Andrew. 2013. “The Internet’s destroying work — and turning the old middle class into the new proletariat”. SALON, July 12. Accessed March 29, 2014. http://www.salon.com/2013/07/12/the_new_proletariat_workers_of_the_cloud/

Rosen, Jay. 2006. “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” PressThink: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine, June 27. Accessed March 21, 2014. http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html

Suddath, Claire. 2013. “Tesco monitors employees with Motorola armbands.” Bloomberg Business Week, March 13. Accessed March 29, 2014. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-13/tesco-monitors-employees-with-motorola-arm-bands

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New Media Audiences: Empowered or Disadvantaged? - Week 4 Blog Post

Did Internet set us free?

Internet has become indispensable in daily life, it is also shift the public valuation of media audience. Media audience was known as a listener or receiver in the process of communication, the popularization of internet/Web2.0 turns the traditional top-bottom way of communication to a two-way flow of information exchange and allow user to publish their thoughts which is seen as an empowerment of mass audience. However, some see it disadvantaged new media audience as it is another name of consumptive behavior .More importantly, professional media producers still remain in control and exploit user-generated content to make profit.

From a receiver to a producer

The role of media audiences are shifting from a receiver to a producer , it generate more opportunity and creativity. It is no longer the same as people formerly known --the audience who were on the receiving end of a one-way broadcast media system (Rosen 2006). Media Expert, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, predicted many years ago that “Powerful new production tools and distribution channels …are embodying the "technologies of freedom" (Green and Jenkins 2011, 110).”

Social Media make us smarter

Facebook, the greatest advancement in the past ten years, as it pertains to the information and technology industry. An opinion writer, Katrin Benhold said she found “Facebooking teens I met among the 1,280 students [at my old school] are also infinitely more international-minded, flexible and tech-savvy than we were 20 years ago” when she revisited her old school (BBGcommunications 2013). Because of Facebook, not only teens, but all generations are now able to access more information than ever before. They can teach themselves how to bake a cheese cake from a youtube tutorial, attend college classes in an online classroom.Facebook is so influential that commercial producers cannot afford to ignore as Facebook is currently the largest social network with over 1.19 Billion Active Monthly Users.

Professionals still controling us

While the audiences perform are not simply "consuming" content, media producers can still benefit from the new diverse media platform. Users can create their own business to become marketers and self-promoters, such as create a facebook page and be a Youtuber, but professional media producers still remain in control and exploit user-generated content to make profit. Van Dijck and Nieborg point out that “every mouse click or video view is logged and even these inactive lurkers are ultimately generating data to refine content delivery systems or recommendation engines, and ultimately drive up the popularity of online media businesses. (Green and Jenkins 2011, 111) “

Conclusion

Is the new era of media platform another way for users to create their own voice, or they are just becoming part of media products which are controlling by the small amount of people? I personally think that shifting role of media audience is definitely giving people much more freedom and the way professional media producers controlling users is unavoidable. As people’s daily life is going online now, the popularity of online media businesses is consequential. Lessig (2008) said that “More of us do things for other people, even if we do it because it is fun. More businesses find ways to do things for us, because doing so is more profitable for them.” People go online because of different purpose, but mostly because they think it is something benefits to them, business go online as it is considered as a successful model. Business is doing the things to expand and prolong their life, but I believe people can choose to being involved to it or not.

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