DIGITAL communities

A blog about digital communities, social media platforms & practices with the occasional processed meat or cheese appreciation post.

[teganpea]

Censorship, fat cat politicians and an unlimited supply of cheese and salami

How often have you posted a political rant or linked, liked or shared negative information about the current government or particular political parties? Lord knows I have! Ok imagine then living in China, where there is no Google, Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. Did I hear someone say apocalypse? Calm your jets and stress less, the people of China do have these things, yet their own version and heavily censored.

Google= Baidu

Facebook= Renren

Twitter= Weibo

Youtube= Youku

These alternatives are all part of the internally run web that is China’s Internet. So pretty much China’s government didn’t like the idea of servers not being located in the country so the created the Great Firewall. Nothing gets in nothing gets out (figuratively speaking).

This firewall and internalized Internet allows the government to track everything and anything that gets posted, viewed, shared and liked. Total control of the Internet. It seems such a strange concept, as our own Internet is so uncontrollable.

As you can imagine that with everything being monitored there must be some restrictions. You’re right. The presidents name cannot be searched through search engines either can certain officials. Anything even slightly offensive or negative said about or towards the government then the person responsible can guarantee that there will be repercussions. This strict censorship has lead to innovative Internet users to come up with code names for anything from political leaders names to swearing.

Yet this strict censoring can be utilized and become an incredibly powerful tool. There are 500 million Internet users in China, the biggest in the world. 300 million of them use Weibo, that number is the equivalent to the population of the United States of America. When there was a horrific train crash and a Chinese politician tried to cover it up the censoring was relaxed and for the first time in Chinese history people spoke out against the government namely this particular politician which intern lead to his dismissal. It wasn’t only the public who were sick of this particular person so were his colleagues. By loosening the censorship not only were the public able to voice their political opinion but the government used the people power to their own ends.

The unique situation in China isn’t all bad however. If you’re a business and you’re advertising on social media chances are you are seeing fantastic returns. A staggering number of Chinese Internet uses respond to advertising on their social media sites, especially if a peer has recommended the brand through social media.

So pretty much free speech isn’t really encouraged, unless the government wants you to have it. But online shopping is. I don’t know how I’d cope going from being able to post whatever I want to being censored, but I do love online shopping, throw in an unlimited supply of cheese and salami and they might just have a new citizen!

[teganpea]

Crowdsourcing in a crisis and the day I got a free twiggystick.

Crowdsourcing in times of crisis in recent years has become increasingly important with the first major case being Mission 4636. During the crisis in Haiti in 2010 people stayed connected and instead of sourcing information from authorities they relied on personal contacts to stay informed about the changing situations. Local radio was also an integral part of people’s survival. Radio stations invited people to call and relay information like fresh water supply centers, food distribution and missing persons.

  Mission 4636 was essentially a free phone number provided to the Haitian population as a way of giving aid organisations real time information along with local knowledge. People were able to text in information and within 5 minutes their messages were “translated, categorized, geo-located and streamed back to the responders” (Munro, 2010). Mission 4626, was established by aid workers both local and international, along with volunteers before transferring control to organisations within Haiti. This new way or acquiring and filtering information was crucial to the recovery efforts.

  Since Haiti in 2010 no crisis crowdsourcing has been as influential, yet that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been as important. Many people during crisis alerts rely on new media for updated reports because it can be instantaneous unlike other older avenues. The use of twitter and a common hashtag can provide people with on the scene information. Facebook can be another useful platform where authorities’ can upload information and provide feedback to questions. In Australia bushfire are prevalent and a lot of people source their information on evacuation and safe zones from Facebook and other social media sites.

  The understanding that crowdsourcing is an essential part of information collecting and distribution in times of crisis is not so much a breakthrough as it is obvious. Locals know their communities and regions better than any organisation, so the enlisting of their help in times of crisis, to me, seems like a no-brainer.

  Also my apologies on the lack of processed meat appreciation posts lately, but you will be happy to know that today while shopping with my housemate the lovely girl at our local Coles gave us free, yes I said FREE, twiggysticks. What a good egg she is! Definitely will be recommending her for some kind of employee award!

  Reference:

Munro, R, Crowdsourcing and the crisis-affected community, Stanford University

[teganpea]

When did a troll stop becoming a fictional being and become real?

I consider myself extremely lucky that I haven’t been subjected to THAT much bullying in my life. I mean back in secondary school anyone and everyone was free game for some kind of bullying or harassment. But I don’t believe it had any lasting impact on me.

  Throughout my teenage years social media was just becoming popular and important to young peoples lives. MSN messenger was massive during my teens and chat rooms were frequented. Though I tended to just chat with already established friends, occasionally searching for someone new to talk too. I started to use Facebook when travelling in 2007 so a year after I finished school. I am so thankful that Facebook was still an emerging platform; there could have been some very incriminating photos of me uploaded. But this raises the issue that since social media has become such an integral part of our lives we feel we should share EVERYTHNG from our lives. The good and the bad.

  Young people are utilizing this medium to satisfy their insecurities, posting pictures of themselves in the hope of being validated by their peers with likes. I have a friend actually, who uploads photos of herself, in what I can only describe as a cry for attention. Yet the responses that these acts ignite can make the person feel far worse than before they posted that photo or status. I am neither condoning nor condemning these actions these are just what I have seen first hand.

  I think the idea around bullying and cyber bullying needs to be clarified. From the research that I’ve done there seems to be a misconception of what bullying actually is. In the academic world the most commonly accepted definition of bullying has three components:

-Aggression

-Repetition

-Imbalance of power

  So this means that one off offences, or a disagreement between former friends doesn’t really fall into the category. The media also has a hand in this misconception of the word bullying, by using it as an umbrella term for everything from harassment, stalking too abuse. Interestingly Danah Boyd notes that it’s adults who use the term more loosely and that teenagers understand what the term means and apply it correctly.

  Cyber bullying is normally between people who are familiar to each other. Trolling on the other hand is something completely different. Trolls deliberately set out to anger and upset an individual, who generally is unknown to them. One troll describes the process as “If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.” So pretty much if you see a comment that seems outrageous, absurd, and angers you greatly chances are someone has deliberately written it in the hope of catching their next unsuspecting victim.

[teganpea]

That one time Fishville ruled my life.

So my online gaming experience is extremely limited. Unless you count that month a few years ago when Fishville ruled my life. Not my most proud moment but hey that twelve-step program really helped. I also once tried playing Call of Duty but I couldn’t work out the X Y perspectives. I knew I had to shoot something because the enemy was closing in but, I was trying to shoot while I was looking up into the sky and running around like a chook with its head cut off. And that pretty much concludes my online gaming experience.

Researching for our in class discussion today my eyes were opened to the world and industry that is League of Legends. The only other contact I had ever had with this game is the occasional status on Facebook from one of my friends asking his mates to go online and play, and even then I thought LoL was just the acronym for laugh out loud.

I don't know if it's a generational thing as to why I am not a gamer or if it has something to do with my gender or just lack of interest into the field. When I was younger the only gaming console we had was a hand me down Sega Master System and later in my teen years a hand me down PlayStation. Playing online was never an option.

  Yet currently League of legends, an online game, has 27 million people playing it daily. That’s more that Australia’s population. My first thought of the stereotypical gamer is an acne-covered recluse who lives with their mother. I seriously doubt that 27 million people fit that description, which indicates that online gamers, and their community, are just like any other community, made up of a variety of different people.

  With that number of people playing and not too mention the amount of people who tune into the playoffs and grand finals, which last year was 32 million, just for the grand final, it indicates that online gaming is on its way to becoming more mainstream and influential. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next five to ten years, will League of Legends remain the dominant game in eSports or will another game emerge replacing it as it replaced World of Warcraft.

[teganpea]

Hi my name is Tegan and I'm a Snapoholic

I think I came late to the Snapchat party but I am now that one drunk friend who keeps annoying all the other partygoers with my mindless dribble. In photo form. I was recently back in South Australia and I was speaking to a friend who I messaged and arranged to meet up with, the first thing she said to me was “It was weird getting an actual message from you I’m so used to receiving your Snaps”. I knew that I was a serial Snapper but I hadn’t even clicked that I prefer communicating through Snapchat.

The conversations I have with people are generally me pulling a horrendous face with my friends reciprocating, or I receive a Snap of someone enjoying themselves while I’m at work so I’ll send one back of my best Grumpy Cat impersonation. The conversations are never very long but they don’t need to be as the expression on my face conveys exactly what I’m trying to say.

One of the aspects of the App that I find most attractive is the time limit of the images. It’s comforting knowing that I can send a hideous photo of myself to a friend and that they can only see it for a maximum of ten seconds, but when I receive a notification of someone screen shotting one of my photos my stomach fills with dread. Lucky I have some pretty Rad friends and they haven’t used them to bribe me to do anything. Yet.

The fact that I and most likely many other people utilize Snapchat for conversation is indicative of how important an image is in this digital age. Society is obsessed with the perfected image; selfie after selfie is taken trying to find the perfect angle to create the perfect image. Speaking from my own experience the amount of likes I have received for a written status on Facebook compared to a photo is phenomenal, and then it is a certain type of image as well. What I consider a good photo, say a photo I have taken with my nephew, may only attract 20 likes, yet a photo of me dressed as Amy Winehouse fetched 70. People don’t really care what you have to say, if you look ‘good’ then that’s all that matters.

Society is camera conscious, I had an epiphany about 4-5 years ago, that maybe having all those drunk photos on my Facebook aren’t a good idea, maybe they could come back and bite me on the arse one day when I am applying for my dream job. Since then I have taken down most of the most incriminating ones and made everything on my Facebook private for only my friends and my eyes to see. But even with this precaution some damage has already been done. When Googling myself images come up from social media sites which have been dormant for, wow I can’t believe I’m saying this, ten years. Forever on the Internet without my control over them. It’s a very scary thought!

From these experiences I am very conscious of what images I put on my social media sites. I think more emphasis on educating younger people on the importance of preserving their image is needed. Yet as for Snapchat I will continue to send Snap after Snap of the worst angled, ugliest expressions Snaps to a select few of my closest friends, trusting they wont ever blackmail me with them.

[teganpea]

#IstoppedKONYandHELPEDoverthrowTUNSISIASgovernmentWHILEcuringCANCER

Activism and social media do they mesh well together or are they a hindrance to one another.  How many times have you conceded a 'like' to a ‘worthy cause’ slipped one to a ‘stop the whaling’ campaign or shared a story about a social issue that’s trending? These little likes and shares make us feel good about ourselves. That’s our good deed done for the day, now we can continue our day guilt free that we didn’t give our spare change to the homeless man down the street. The issue surrounding this topic is because we’ve given a 'like' to these causes that’s where our support stops.

During the last couple of weeks I for one have had my news feed clogged with #nomakeup selfies raising awareness for breast cancer. I’m glad that so many people took time out of their day to post a not so flattering picture of themselves but an issue raised was that along the way the meaning behind the picture was lost. Some people were posting these pictures without linking the breast cancer page or encouraging people to donate. The idea behind the picture was to raise money and awareness so in hindsight the cause was somewhat lost in the social media world.

The meaning lost through social media raises the issue of slacktivism which is described by Oxford dictionary as "Actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement, e.g. signing an online petition or joining a campaign group on a social media website". So pretty much the majority of society are lazy activists, they care but opt for the easy way out by surrendering a like or share.

Some campaigns have utilised social media to great advantage like Kony 2012 but when it came down to physically making a stand and rallying the public the momentum dried up pretty quickly. Twitter and social media were  important tools utilised by activists during the Arab Spring rebellions in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, these platforms allowed people to spread information which would otherwise be censored by the government. Social media is an excellent tool for raising awareness and the spread of information. The problem with it is if it requires too much participation then we're out. 

By the way the Amatriciana pasta I had on the weekend was out of this world.  

[teganpea]

Social media, Obama and a craving for twiggy sticks.

  The 2008 presidential campaign could be labeled as the first social media campaign as suggested by Hesseldahl, MacMillan and Kharif. Obama saw the possibility of impact that social media could have and utilized it to his best ability and ultimately his success. Why then haven’t Australian politicians done the same? Could it be that the majority of votes lie within the baby boomer demographic who aren’t as tech savvy as their younger counterparts or is it because voting is compulsory in Australia so the need to attract people to vote to begin with is a non issue.

            As a Gen Y I collect most of my news from the net, I have the ABC app on my iPhone and follow ABC and other news providers on twitter. I also follow Adam Bandt the federal member for Melbourne and the deputy leader of the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party on Facebook. So it’s kind of clear where my voting preferences lie. I think that a lot of my Gen Y ‘classmates’ would gather most of their news and in particular political news from the same avenues, which is all the more reason for politicians to tap into the resource that is youth.

            In recent weeks however we have seen a politician utilize social media to his best advantage and reach over 800 000 people on YouTube alone and countless people on Facebook through shares and comments. Scott Ludlam the Greens senator for Western Australia delivers a speech to the Prime Minister Tony Abbott ‘welcoming’ him to visit his state. His calm demeanor and steady voice only intensify his words that outline all the faults in the government’s current actions. Due too 1400 votes going missing from WA during the federal election last year the state is forced to go back to the polls. Ludlam delivered his speech in an important time for the state. The results from the polls will indicate if he was successful in his attempt to enlighten the public of what he see’s is wrong with the current government.

            For politicians to be successful in engaging with the whole of the Australian public they need to utilize all the resources at their fingertips, this includes social media. Speaking for myself, I would look more favorably on a candidate that embraced social media, not just used it as a platform to reiterate their policies. Sharing information that people can relate too, humanizing them, like if they enjoy eating twiggy sticks, for which I have a craving for right now. So ponder away on my words, or not you really don’t have too, while I go get my twiggy stick fix.

Hesseldahl, A, MacMillan, D, Kharif, O 2008, 'The vote: A victory of Social Media, Too', Bloomberg Business Week, 05 November, viewed 1st April 2014

[teganpea]

Tumblr, salami, cheese and little kids acting like detectives.

Ok so lets jump right into it shall we? I spend conservatively at least 2 to 3 hours on social media a day. Half an hour when I wake up (with the brightness on my phone turned down to one percent as to not aggravate my barely awake retinas) 15-30 minutes on public transport (depending if I miss my connecting train) 5-10 minutes when waiting for Adam at the coffee shop and then sporadically throughout my day when I am in lectures, tutorials and procrastinating. Oh and at least 30-45 minutes before I go to bed. But do I use Tumblr? Not until I had to for this assignment. So as I am being asked to write this blog it got me thinking why Tumblr?

            The site itself states it lets you share anything, and I think it means anything. I was speaking to my friend from Adelaide and he said he uses Facebook to keep in contact with family and friends, Twitter for gossip and occasionally news and Tumblr for porn. I didn’t even realise that it COULD be used for porn, but then that just could be my country girl naive-ness showing. Tumblr combines microblogging with social networking, I was reading up on ‘what is Tumblr’ and Doug Aamoth (2013) describes it like this:

  “If you want to write a several-thousand-word opus about something, Tumblr isn’t the place to do it. If you want to share a moving picture of a little kid acting like a detective as quickly and easily as possible, Tumblr is a good place to do it. That’s the microblogging aspect to Tumblr. Then, other Tumblr users who like moving pictures of little kids acting like detectives can follow you on Tumblr so they’re sure to see every moving little-kid-acting-like-a-detective picture you post. That’s the social networking aspect to Tumblr.”

  Yes before you ask I then proceeded to look up moving pictures of little kids acting like detectives. I think Tumblr is in some way unique as you can use it in anyway you please. You don’t have to post you can just consume or you can post about anything and everything you want. Like I said in my about section if there is a way I can incorporate my love of cheese and processed meat into digital communities, social networking and media platforms I’ll do it, even if I just explain that while writing my blog I am currently chowing down on salami and salad sandwich. So if you love social networking, microblogging, cheese and processed meat you’ve come to the right place!

       Aamoth, D 2013, ‘What is Tumblr’, Techland Time, 19th May, viewed 30th March 2014 http://techland.time.com/2013/05/19/what-is-tumblr/

[teganpea]

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