The Double Edged Sword

A social media blog that has or can have both favorable and unfavorable consequences.

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Left: The Chinese Youth

Right: The Golden Shield Project/The Great Firewall of China

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The great firewall of China: The world’s biggest digital boundary.

“Big Brother is Watching You.” 

― George Orwell, 1984

China is home to everything large. It hosts the worlds largest population, the largest man-made wall (apologies Trump), the largest basketball player in the world, the largest internet usage base and the largest amount of censorship and restrictions to accompany them. That’s a lot of large! Something you may not know about China is that it is a SICK nation. Syria - Iran -China - North Korea - are all nations that have no access to Facebook. This restricted access not only applies to Facebook, but to all western social media that has the potential to influence the people of China. This means there is no Instagram, no WhatsApp, no twitter. Instead China has established a ‘block & clone’ process where it bans a social media outlet then creates its very own equivalents. These almost mirrored versions have user base’s that far outnumber their Western counterparts. For instance, WeChat, the Chinese-version of WhatsApp holds an astounding 1.08 billion monthly active users. That’s just in one country! This division of the internet has effectively created two hands. According to Michael Anti, on one hand there is the internet and on the other is Chinanet. You make think that because Chinanet restricts access to the vast majority of the internet outside China that it is a dark and desolate wasteland. That is far from true. China’s use of the internet is far more customisable and personable creating new forms of sociality between users and there are massive growth areas in vlogging areas whereby people are making thousands of dollars a week for their posts. There is however a huge issue surrounding surveillance and censorship. The government chooses what we can and can’t see & what we can and cant say. 

The Chinese government claims that censorship will help improve national security, yet how can this be true when Chinese citizens are dying in protest against censorship and control. It is in these moments that the memory of Tiananmen Square start to resurface. It’s quite ironic really, that censorship legislation created by the Chinese Government called the Golden Shield Project, was established to prevent its people from being corrupted by “evil” cultures. The Golden Shield project only gives the Chinese government increased control over its citizens and limits their capacity to debate in public discourse about particular issues by neutralising critical opinion. The Golden Shield Project has helped to destroy Habermas’s Public Sphere.

The governments institutional interference controls the public sphere and shapes the way citizens see a particular political view. The government sees free speech as a weapon and punishes people for posting negative views, instilling fear into citizens so to not express marginalised views against the majority. There have been various cases whereby sites have been shut down for violating their constitution or attacking state leaders. It’s not only sites that get shut down, but our favourite cartoon characters too! After Chinese President Xi Jinping was likened to Winnie the Pooh, all content containing the honey loving bear was taken down.

Who’s it taken down by? The 50 cent army. Hundreds of thousands of people who’s job requires them to scour the internet for illegal content and posts. For each piece they find, they get 50 cents. Yes, China has professional and paid trolls! Within this Orwellian ecosystem, users cannot use profanity or any words that may dismiss the Chinese government. To highlight the pettiness of this, the word ‘disagree’ has been banned from Weibo (Chinese Twitter) and any mention of novels such as 1984 or Animal Farm which paint dystopian pictures of worlds under authoritarian leadership are no longer permitted.

Chinese youth are starting to design their own language to bypass the 50 cent army so they can become involved in shared discourse and speak freely in conversations. They make up a new code with symbols and images to create new forms of communication which can’t be recognised under censorship. Such evasive ways to avoid institutional influence portrays little hope for the public sphere. Why does it need to be this way?

Perhaps the scariest of all the Chinese Governments ploys to take control of its citizens and diminish their ability to voice an opinion in the public domain, is the introduction of a citizen points system. Simialr to a Black Mirror episode which highlights the trepidation of technology and order, China will rank all of its citizens based on their "social credit" by 2020. People can be rewarded or punished according to their scores. Penalties include loss of employment and educational opportunities, as well as transportation restrictions. China’s social credit system has been publicised by the government as a way of boosting trust in a broken society. In reality, all it does is exacerbate and intensify a fundamentally undemocratic system of surveillance and censorship.

China is a case study in censorship. Chinese laws completely abolish the elements required to become an ideal space for a public sphere. Is this just Communism working to demolish democracy? Although the great firewall in China seems to keep growing and the nation seems to shifting into a more and more hyperreal place, the citizens are aiming to counter the control. I hope their protest doesn’t fall on deaf ears.

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Life, Death, & the heart and Seoul of gaming.

Throughout history we have adorned gamers. For millennia people have congregated together in the masses to watch people play. It brings us together, offers us a sense of belonging and shapes our identities. It is because we inherently are players ourselves. We grew up with an instinct to play and explore and this instinct helps us to understand the rules of life and society. Yet, as life and society begin to transform from being traditional analogue to a more digital structure, so do the games we play. The affordances of technology and social media are allowing us to watch, play and interact with gaming like never before. Humanity has come a long way since watching people rip each other apart at the Colosseum. Now we can rip each other apart in virtual reality, shoot hoops or score goals as our favourite heroes, even create our own life in hyper-real domains such as Second Life. The reality is that we all see gaming differently and while analogue games such as football or chess are positively stimulating for the body and mind, their is a definitive double-edged sword when it comes to digital gaming.

The world of digital gaming is a beast. It spans over every nation in the globe and is in almost everyone’s pocket. Gaming comes to life most in the South Korean city of Seoul. It is historically considered the epicentre of the digital gaming world. For years it has been home to events such as the world cyber games and is a true hub for new and upcoming gamers to showcase their skills. Seoul’s infrastructure provides its citizens with the world’s fastest internet connection and an extensively large wifi network which has helped to fortify itself as one of the worlds first “smart cities”. This means that everyone is connected to each other at all times, from your doorstep to your workplace. In many ways this is extremely beneficial as it provides citizens free and unlimited access to information, working towards the actualisation of an ideal public sphere. It also affords citizens the opportunity to utilise high-speed internet to play and compete in almost flag-free gaming conditions with extremely low ping. Such perfect conditions for connecting and playing with one another have produced an environment and culture synonymous with gaming.

Sometimes we push our sociality to it’s limits. The always-on nature of the internet has created a new type of gamer to the point where there has been a symbiosis between man and machine. Internet cafes have become the new parks and playgrounds. Gamers can now access a large network of competitive players where they can play for hours, days or weeks; basically as long as they want before something happens to stop play. Usually this is a disgruntled parent switching off the console, however there was one particular case in Seoul where a gamer died in his seat! What a way to go out! The fact is that digital gaming is highly addictive and can have some serious health benefits. So much so, that addiction clinics in Seoul that have traditionally been for drug and alcohol addiction have been re-designed to cater for the increasingly large influx of addicted gamers. One of the most addicting games that has blamed for negative behavioural change is Epic’s Fortnite. The structural format of the game allows players to engage in swiftly forming multiplayer game modes where there is basically no queue for the next game. There is essentially no pause button. This issue was exacerbated further when Fortnite crossed platforms from PS4, PC and Xbox over to Mobile. Addicts could not escape. There were even cases amongst some schools whereby the wi-fi was being strained due to the popularity of the game!  

By looking at the past and present of gaming, there is no doubt that the future of gaming will be exciting. The aesthetic dimension combined with the notion of virtual reality gaming will take us to places where we can potentially live out very real fantasies. It is scary to think that these games could become so real that we cannot distinguish between what is and isn’t real. Would we eventually choose to the game over the real world? In some instances we already are with some players spending upwards of 12 hours a day practicing on League of Legends. Real or not, gaming greatly contributes to the way we act as people and will have huge implications on our culture in years to come. We may even see it in the Olympics with the birth of a new type of athlete.

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Social media.

A battle.

A fight for the good. A fight for the bad.

We must decide.

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Social Media - A cure and a cause.

Social media’s superpower to disseminate information has been incredible for raising awareness and driving change towards public health issues. Yet while social media is such a strong advocate for improving public health, it is, ironically, one of its biggest detriments - especially in terms of mental health.

In many ways, social media can be praised for benefiting the health of the wider community. Look at campaigns such as the ALS ice bucket challenge and Movember. These campaigns are profoundly successful in capturing a public audience and sharing their key health messages. The ALS viral charity challenge saw videos spread rapidly throughout Facebook and Instagram to raise a whopper $100m in a 30 day period. Pretty bloody popular! The funding helped researchers discover a new gene related to the illness which can help find a treatment. Now this is great for public health don’t get me wrong, but it’s not great when you look at the reason people are donating money. It’s just a quick way for a slacktivist to look cool, keep on trend and throw some ice over yourself.

Movember, the leading organisation committed to men’s health, has a similar problem. A study conducted by QUT highlighted that Twitter users engaging with Movember are quite superficial; caring more about the user activity surrounding the health issue, than the health issue itself. The study concluded that although there were high levels of social media activity encompassing Movember, there was a lack concern towards the underlying health issues. Instead, the world saw low level participation in moustache growing whilst businesses, celebrities and other twitter users seized an opportunity to boost their front stage image through “socially responsible” tweet. But hey, what ever helps you sleep at night. I mean seriously though, has social media made us so vain? Has it shifted our sociality to a point where we think a like or a share is enough to justify us “helping”?

Don’t get me wrong, I think the convergence of social media and new technology to raise awareness, democratise information and enact change is a beautiful thing. I just think user behaviour to exploit a noble cause, isn’t so noble.

If you’re reading this and need a take home for today, this is it: social media itself is a public health issue and is cause for concern.

We have become obsessed with our front stage personas, even more so that of others. Each day we turn to our social media feeds to search for what’s new, what’s hot and watch our friends, or celebs update their stories.This can be extremely hazardous when influencers operating within this health space are preaching unprofessional and immoral advice. Just look at #PROANA, endorsing anorexia as a positive choice. Why are we listening to these people when we can’t trust expertise online? It has gotten to the point where we end up watching everyone else have a life instead of creating one for ourselves. This is proving to have major effects on our mental health.

For instance, there are currently 45% of Aussie teens feel that their peers are having more rewarding experiences than them online. This ‘fear of missing out’ factor, alongside the burnout sensation from being always-on, has contributed massively to anxiety and depression among young users of social media (McCosker). Our attempts to craft our intimate representations of our personal lives have left us with digital scars and mental health issues. With every post comes an anxiety of whether it will be accepted or not. If it is liked or not. If it is shared or not.

It’s not all weary and dreary though. Digital technology can help overcome barriers to help seeking health and support services. These technologies add to our experience of health and help shape a sense of digital community. Online Forums are an old internet technology that enables the ‘good things’ about the internet, such as social support and community. These online forums offer a shared, collective and democratic space where reciprocity flows organically. In this way it is the people that make the place; it is our sociality and the way we operate inside our sphericules that can help heal one another in a digital community.

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There is 2 sides to every story.

Do not trust. Do not be deceived. Do not be gullable.

Instead, seek and find the truth.

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Crisis? Let’s turn to crowdsourcing.

“Technology is not meant to replace humanitarian efforts, it is meant to augment them and make them more efficient and more effective.”

Nathaniel Manning, CEO, Ushahidi

Measuring earthquake activity, designing the Sydney Opera House & saving lives; crowdsourcing has got us covered. What is it? In its most basic form, it is the practice of obtaining information/services through engaging a crowd of people in order to solve a problem. In 1955, one of the earliest forms of crowdsourcing came to light when the Australian government began a contest for the design of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.  The contest turned to designers, artists and engineers - receiving 233 entires from 32 countries.

Fast forward to 2019 and crowdsourcing has got its bread in many baskets. How? Social Media.  The dynamic nature of social media allows people to share brand new ideas, engage with people cross-globally and showcase our skills to the rest of the world; all on a 24/7 instantaneous platform! Coke for instance, turned to its 50+ million crowd through Facebook, asking fans to suggest an invention, cause or social app that could spread happiness. In this way crowdsourcing was brilliant! Crowdsourcing provided a way for coke to be socially responsible and proved to consumers that they were open, transparent and valued their consumers opinion. (All for free!) 

Aside from capitalist schemes to meet marketing quotas, crowdsourcing can REALLY help humanity. Particularly in times of crisis. Take the example of Ushahidi, a platform created to help marginalised Kenyan’s whilst post-election violence erupted in 2007.

Controversial issues were being disregarded and unreported to mainstream media, leaving Kenya in the dark. In response, Ushahidi’s crowdsourcing platform bypassed mainstream media, allowing people to provide real time information and identify key affected areas on a map. This helped emergency services, NGO’s, governments and not-for-profit groups to listen and respond more effectively to the situation at hand. Furthermore, the situation became increasingly transparent and services were able to respond quickly and effectively to save lives and offer assistance. This example is a true testament to crowdsourcing. Riccardi sums it up nicely; “the true power of crowdsourcing; individuals coming together from across the globe, who possess different sets of skills and can work together to solve a complex problem quickly and efficiently”.

As digital citizens we utilise our co-existing sphericules to gather information to help humanity and the overall public sphere. This is how crowdsourcing is effective in shaping our sociality and instilling democracy. Crowdsourcing for just causes helps to improve our sociality and even more importantly, aims to prove a utopian view of social media; where information, equal & protected participation, and the absence of institutional influence create the ideal public sphere.

There is no double edge to the crowdsourcing sword.

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The Trollosphere

OUR SOCIAL LIVES:

FROM private by default, public by effort 

TO public by default, private by effort.

Freedom of speech is one thing, trolling is another. Trolling, simply put, is the act of posting controversial messages in order to get a rise out of someone. It can be quite comical and light hearted, seeing users gain likes and increases in followership after a humorous post, but in the wrong hands it can be devastating and psychologically impactful to the person targeted. Trolling is a SERIOUS issue.

The most serious issue created through trolling is cyberbullying. In a world where our digital life is no longer separated from our real life, it is scary to think that we cannot escape the oppression that reaches us through the online communities we interact with. This makes Dana Boyd’s concept of being ‘always on’ haunting to say the least.  

Online harassment is a regular and recurring theme for 70% of 18-24 year olds using social media platforms. People experiencing this harassment can’t escape it by arriving home and hiding in their room. Those days are gone. Our phone will buzz with a new notification to consistently remind us of what people think of us.

One way to counter this behaviour is to report the person/s responsible to social media operators. However, this is an ineffective approach. Trolls may create fake accounts and persist in harassing their victims. Trolls have birthed a new anonymous form of digital citizen. These individuals will persist in damaging digital communities as they begin to shape a dystopian view of social media.

How are we meant to feel safe in our online community when the platforms that host such bullying will not protect us or take action. Look at the case of Suzanne Fernandes who has been abused online for the past 16 months. She is still receiving threats from trolls from simply trying to stand up against hate-speech (a grass roots method encouraged by social media tech companies). Fernandes stresses the case that social media platforms that host such bullying should be held legally accountable. Governance and control is difficult in the domain of the internet. Especially when new technologies are advancing at a rate faster than law and governing bodies can keep up with.

It’s not all negative however, the wider community has began to take a stand against online trolls. AFL teams Melbourne Demons and West Coast Eagles have targeted online trolls in an anti bullying campaign, calling for lifetime bans on racist trolls. These acts of protest against online trolls reinforce Alec Couros’s notion that online platforms ARE real life and they are augmenting our reality.

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Digital Citizen: To like OR not to like.

The word activism paints many pictures. To some it will paint Martin Luther King delivering “I have a dream” to tens of thousands of people in protest for racial equality. To some it’ll paint persistent vegans who troll farmers and stop traffic on Flinders street station… and to some it will paint the culture jamming scene of infamous “Egg-boy” taking action against Fraser Anning.  Activism has defined many powerful moments in human history, bringing the world to a stand still through driving social and political change. Now with the shear reach and speed that information can travel, we are the most informed citizens in history and we can participate in a way like never before.

For instance, we can become activists from our own home, opting to track issues important to us and form a dialogue with those who feel the need for change. The democratic nature of social media provides everyone a platform to share their voice in the public sphere. A beautiful thing yes, when many people see the freedom to connect as a fundamental human right. It’s not so beautiful when we get stuck in our filter bubble and let our collective like-minded opinions empower our statements. This tends to move away from the discussion and eventually turns us to bias opinion where we may shame others who speak against the natural flow of order.

I’d like to think I sit on the fence with the evolving topic of digital activism. Much like the double edged sword, I see myself as one of meta-activist’s Mary Joyce’s pessimists; it can either be constructive or destructive.

IT HAS DEFINITIVELY CREATED A NEW TYPE OF DIGITAL CITIZEN.

On one hand digital activism has simply re-shaped the way activism operates by utilising different media to organise, enact change and create a new platform for protest. This means information spreads faster and reaches more people in more places. The viral nature of the internet has the crucial and incredible ability to create worldwide movements in minutes.

Don’t get me wrong, it is amazing how the awareness of an issue can be disseminated to the world online and we have the opportunity to make change. What bothers me is the way most of us go about it (myself included). The rise of apparent clicktivism/slacktivism makes us feel warm and fuzzy on the inside by simply liking a specific post or signing an online petition but this requires the littlest effort of all. And it fills a hole we have inside and makes us feel like a good person. Does this mean we are creating change? Sometimes for sure. Look at the ALS ice bucket campaign in 2014 which funded research to find a new gene related to the rare disease. Sure it worked, but only because it was deemed popular by the majority of society and was entertaining to watch people throw ice on themselves.

Did people really care so much about resolving the health issue surrounding ALS or did they send in funds or videos to be accepted from trendy groups. It sounds sad and cynical that this might happen but what about issues surrounding famine, racial persecution or civil war? These issues affect far more of the worlds populace but we aren’t actively seeking to fix those situations because it’s not right in front of eyes and requires more than a click.

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The road from comedian to President: An underdog story

I’ll be honest, I don’t much know much about politics. What I do know however, is that it it SERIOUSLY SHAPED BY THE MEDIA. Especially social media.

From what I understand, this is how it works:

Politicians make decisions that will ultimately define how our country operates. Then as a nation, we rely on mainstream traditional media to set the agenda so we can start a conversation. This last bit gets quite nasty when we are relying on media giants such as Rupert Murdoch to bring biased news to the audience. This type of institutional interference can seriously damage a campaign, lead the Australian people in a particular direction and ultimately sway voter opinion to manipulate an election.

This is why politicians are turning to social media. It offers a creative way to escape the conundrum of traditional media and return control to their message. This can be seen with everything from Clive Palmer’s memes, to selfies from Malcolm Turnbull, to Trump’s twitter account, to Scomo’s newly found Snapchat activation. It is crazy the lengths politician’s will go to gain a positive vote from the public and their associated demographic.

A very notable utilisation of social media for political purposes is the story of comedian and aspiring Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The politically inexperienced comedian, is in the lead after the first round of presidential elections in Ukraine and it can be profoundly attributed to his use of Instagram zelenskiy_official and Youtube accounts. By harnessing the attractive power of social media to bypass the traditional avenues of media and connect directly to his audience, Volodymyr has been able to break down social barriers and create a human touch.

Volydymyr’s substantial accrual of 3.3 million Instagram followers, alongside his media influence from the wealthy oligarch and tv channel owner Ihor Kolomoisky, has helped deliver promise to his campaign through driving coverage to the masses. In this matter we see a very one sided media affair of politics. It is much the same way on our facebook feed. Algorithms are starting to shape the way we see the world, developing our news on the basis of what we like and keeping us within our own filter bubble. I mean, it’s nice to see classic memes and short video comedy so we get our entertainment fix, but how do we know that we are getting all of the information we need? Are we so willing as to let the government make decisions as we sit idly by?

In a world of likes and dislikes, algorithms and punchy memes, it is up to us to be our own media keepers and actively pursue the truth; not just have it fed to us and accept it. (Look at North Korea for crying out loud! Apparently they have the cure for AIDS and Cancer!)

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Tumblr: Social networking site or blog?

Blurred Lines

It can be argued that all blogs ARE a form of social network in themselves due to their ability to interact and connect with wider publics through links, hashtags, images and groups - however these functions act as affordances to the blog rather than a blogs sole purpose which is to deliver dramaturgical content.

This content can be shaped to suit any aesthetic or theme using Tumblr. Users can upload video, generate GIF’s, post photos to share their experience, comment on an issue and basically disseminate any information unto the world that they wish. It therefore becomes a personalised page of self-expression, a website whereby users can shape their online identity and connect with the broader virtual community.

But how is this different from social networking platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter? It isn’t really. I mean these platforms offer chronological content, assortments of pictures and videos & allow people to create posts and comment on other profiles just like Tumblr does, yet we don’t call these blogs.

“A blog, at its most basic, is just a personal home page in diary format” - (Tim O’Reilly). Tumblr still adheres to this basic principle, it’s just that blogging has evolved since its humble beginnings in 1994 with Justin Hall’s Links.net. Fast forward to 2019 and blogging is still blogging, it just had added affordances such as instant messaging, profiles and following links in attempt to create a more holistic experience for the user. Users can see who is online, who’s posted what recently AND who hasn’t. This is not exclusive to Tumblr, many services are increasingly incorporating affordances to become more social. These sites aren’t particularly social networking sites but they do carry a strong social element.

Today, the world over, we are becoming more avid producers of content and more frequently being enveloped in online participatory culture. Through the tool of smartphones we choose to create content for our Tumblr blog or social networking accounts in an effort to shape our identity. These outlets become our stage in which we are to perform (Gaffman 1956). We showcase our edited and meticulously chosen selves to be front-stage, given showtime on our personalised pages. It is an amazing feat to have such freedom of expression when tailoring a page to suit your online identity however there is another edge to this sword… How much of ourselves online is really us? Are we being completely honest with ourselves?

Dana Boyd speaks about the concept of being “always-on”; emphasising how our self-identity is being constructed through accessibility to social and mobile technologies. She explains how we are now more connected than ever before, even when we are sleeping and logged out of all social media we still have a presence as we have breadcrumbs and trails leading from link to link. Tumblr’s app to notify your phone directly, active display, instant messages being forwarded to your inbox and notifications filling up your dashboard is a prime example of this.

The boundaries that define what is a blog and what is a social networking site have become blurred. There are now blue-tick approved celebrities on Instagram whose profession is entitled “Personal Blogger”. Ultimately, at the end of the day, Tumblr operates as an evolved blog with many added social media affordances. So many it can be considered both a social networking site AND a blog.