In the booming era of social media, the pressure of physical beauty is becoming more and more serious. Inherently, beauty standards are more often turned biased than ever. Along with the appearance of aesthetic labour which promote ‘too perfect’ templates of the beauty standards, for the sake of monetization. In the meantime, this movement would be likely to cause extreme distress between controlling real life and online appearance. Hence, Body Dysmorphic Disorder presents.
1. Body Dysmorphic Disorder and its symptoms:
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), or body dysmorphia, is a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance. These flaws are often unnoticeable to others. People of any age can have BDD, but it's most common in teenagers and young adults. It affects both men and women.
BDD might be recognized by given symptoms:
worry a lot about a specific area of your body (particularly your face)
spend a lot of time comparing your looks with other people's
look at yourself in mirrors a lot or avoid mirrors altogether
go to a lot of effort to conceal flaws – for example, by spending a long time combing your hair, applying make-up or choosing clothes
pick at your skin to make it "smooth"
Overall, BDD can immensely affect our daily life. BDD is also reported as the cause of depression, self-harm and suicide thoughts.
2. Treatment:
Talking therapy called cognitive behavioural therapy is actually the most suggested method for BDD patients. In case of more severe symptoms, antidepressant medicine (SSRI) would be offered by CBT.
However, in terms of public cognition, prevention is better than cure. Greater regulation of public health campaigns by online influencers is needed. Control of false ideas of unachievable and unhealthy beauty standards is also necessary. By that, the unwanted consequences will be resolved.
References:
Mavroudis, J 2022, ‘Lecture 6. Digital Citizenship and Health Education: Body Modification on Visual Social Media’, MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning materials via Canvas, Swinburne University of Technology.
In this contemporary time, the booming of social media has resulted an immense priority of internet users for a beautiful digital self. As a result, beauty filters are created
Beauty filters are the products of Augmented Reality (AR), which serve as a ‘digital mask’ to add virtual items to an actual individual’s face or the surrounding environment. There are mainly two sources for these filters:
Built-in social media filters (E.g: Snapchat, Instagram, Tiktok, etc.)
Beauty app filters (E.g: Facetune, Meitu,etc.)
However, the question of whether beauty filters provide more pros or more cons is still debatable.
1. Filters’ advantages:
As aforementioned, beauty filters allow users a more beautiful digital appearance. Filters support us in improve our physical look regarding our own beauty standard. Hence, it boost one’s confidence, against the self-insecurities with their own idealisation purposes. Nonetheless, the use of filters might be just to satisfy the ‘like-worthy’ of the physical aesthetic standard of platforms like Instagram.
However, by hiding their self-insecurities, beauty filters’ users might shape a negative self-esteem and a false perspective of their face and body, the confidence by that will be negatively influenced.
This could lead to a serious consequence of a term called dysmorphia, which makes people strongly desire to change their appearance to meet with the standard of the virtual filters.
In other words, although beauty filters play in indispensable part in the current media era, in case of mass usage, its affects might cause unwanted consequences, both mentally and physically.
References:
Arrouf, E 2018, ‘ON THE RADAR: Meitu, world’s #1 Beauty App’, LinkedIN, 27 February, viewed 14 March 2022, <https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/radar-meitu-worlds-1-beauty-app-emilie-arrouf/>.
Caldeira, SP, De Ridder, S & Van Bauwel, S 2020, ‘Between the Mundane and the Political: Women’s Self-Representations on Instagram’, Social Media + Society, vol. 6, no. 3, p. 205630512094080.
Javornik, A, Marder, B, Barhorst, JB, McLean, G, Rogers, Y, Marshall, P & Warlop, L 2022, '‘What lies behind the filter?’ Uncovering the motivations for using augmented reality (AR) face filters on social media and their effect on well-being', Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 128, 107126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.107126
Miller, L 2022, ‘Lecture 7. Face Filters’, MDA20009 Digital Communities, Learning materials via Canvas, Swinburne University of Technology, viewed 14 March 2022.
Mosley, T 2021, Beauty filters are changing the way young girls see themselves, viewed 9 April, 2022, <https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/04/02/1021635/beauty-filters-young-girls-augmented-reality-social-media/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWhen%20I’m%20going%20to,fix%20certain%20parts%20of%20you.%E2%80%9D>.
Nowadays, live streaming has become more popular than ever, covering a wide range of industries, including sports events, concerts, video games to other activities such as politics and news. Live streaming has become a worldwide trending media format. And that is also the case in Vietnam.
1. Impressive statistics:
Only appearing in Vietnam for number of years, however the streaming industry has achieved some remarkable results:
- In the end of 2020, Vietnam on average saw about 2.5 million livestream sessions per month – including 70,000-80,000 daily on Facebook and 2,000-3000 on e-commerce platforms with the involvement of more than 50,000 vendors across the country
- As many as 25 million Vietnamese users streamed YouTube on connected TVs in May, the highest rate in the Asia-Pacific region, YouTube revealed.
- in June 2019 that Vietnam has among the largest number of people in the world watching live game streams.
Furthermore, in Vietnam, the two most successful streaming fields are live gaming and live shopping. In general, Vietnamese spend 3.1 hours per week watching other people play video games online, 3.1 hours watching esports tournaments, 3 hours watching traditional sports on television, and 3.4 hours watching traditional sports online.
Other streaming services, such as video and music streaming, also presented impressive statistics:
- In Vietnam, revenue in the video streaming industry (SVoD) increased 3.24 times in 2021 compared to 2017.
- The music streaming market revenue reached 7 million USD in 2017 and doubled to 15 million USD in 2020
2. Reasons for streaming booming
- The pandemic of Covid19 changed people's life habits and their working and entertainment styles. Vietnamese people are no exception.
- Influenced by Chinese streaming trend: “From previous trends, we can see those that take place in China commonly take place in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia in the following two or three years,” said Nguyen Hoa Binh, chairman of Nextech Group
3. Game streaming community
Despites activities for a long time by household names, the Vietnamese game streaming only reached its peak during the pandemic period.
The gaming community in Vietnam is tend to be described with features like swearing, hilarious, not serious and sometimes even idle, regarding the older generation’s perspective on video games. As a result, the community was first not well welcomed by a lot of audience.
One of the most serious case was the time VTV, Vietnamese national broadcasting, delivered accusation on various streamers for going against Vietnamese habits and customs by their actions, namely streamer Do Mixi.
Regarding such incident, Do Mixi has publicly apologised and stated a call out for the whole gaming community to become more responsible regarding their positions.
After such revolution in the gaming community, the Vietnamese audience has been more opened to the streaming community.
References:
Iris 2022, Streaming in Vietnam Report | Iris Marketing Agency, iris.marketing, viewed 10 April 2022, <https://iris.marketing/streaming-in-vietnam-report>.
VCCI 2020, Live streaming becomes a growing livelihood in Vietnam, VCCI, 11 January, viewed 8 April 2022, <https://en.vcci.com.vn/live-streaming-becomes-a-growing-livelihood-in-vietnam>.
VnExpress 2021, Vietnam leads Asia-Pacific in streaming YouTube on TV: report - VnExpress International, VnExpress International – Latest news, business, travel and analysis from Vietnam.
According to research, the Americans buy a new piece of clothing every five days, on average. It is also reported that 90% our clothing is thrown away before it needs to be. Zara, the leading enterprise in terms of fast fashion, is said to produce about 840 million pieces of clothing for sale in its 6,000 stores around the world each year, mostly by workers whose wages are below the poverty line.
Inherently, in this contemporary time, Slow Fashion is a needed next movement in the fashion industry, to counter the damaging influence of fast fashion.
1. What is slow fashion?
Slow Fashion is an approach to producing clothing which takes into consideration all aspects of the supply chain and in doing so, aims to respect people, the environment, and animals. It also means spending more time on the design process, ensuring that each piece of apparel is quality made.
More and more brands are pushing back the fast fashion and focusing more on ‘slow fashion’ producing clothes with trendless designs and premium, long-lasting quality.
Slow fashion is surely a difficult objective to achieve, as by spending more time for the design and producing process, along with more qualitative materials, the costs of these products might be very costly. However, brands are giving a lot of efforts to accomplish such crucial values
To create a more sustainable fashion industry, 3 factors are recommended:
Consumers need to actively become more curious and intentional with their clothing purchases
More regulation, accountability, and transparency in the fashion industry
More media attention and awareness to brands that are doing good.
2. Movement in Vietnam
Regarding the Slow Fashion movement, both the customers and manufacturers are becoming more aware with changes in habits and business.
On the one hand, among Vietnamese young people, wearing secondhand clothing is now a popular trend. Secondhand clothing is famously known for affordable price with diversity of models. In big cities of Vietnam, consumers can easily visit several ‘vintage stores’ for this type of clothing. ‘Go hunting’ in secondhand clothing markets is also a favourable activity of Vienamese youngsters as well. To explain such movement, the love for secondhand clothing might be resulted from the current indie and hip-hop cultures among the youth in Vietnam.
On the other hand, a lot of clothing brands are aiming for the sustainable fashion. Local slow fashion brands in Vietnam shows impressive quality in not just the usage value but also the cultural adaptation, by knitting traditional patterns or utilising ethnic techniques in producing.
Overall, the future of slow fashion in Vietnam seems to be very promising
References:
Chua, JM 2019, Fast fashion companies like Zara, Boohoo, and H&M are bad for the environment and economy, Vox, Vox.
Encircled 2022, Circular Fashion at Encircled, Encircled.
Marquis, C 2021, What Does Slow Fashion ‘Actually’ Mean?, Forbes, viewed 10 April 2022, <https://www.forbes.com/sites/christophermarquis/2021/05/14/what-does-slow-fashion-actually-mean/?sh=614d25a373b4>.
VTV 2022, Đồ secondhand - Xu hướng mới của giới trẻ, BAO DIEN TU VTV, viewed 10 April 2022, <https://vtv.vn/doi-song/do-secondhand-xu-huong-moi-cua-gioi-tre-20220113185408079.htm#:~:text=v%E1%BB%87%20m%C3%B4i%20tr%C6%B0%E1%BB%9Dng.->.
Cyberbullying is bullying with the use of digital technologies. It can take place on social media, messaging platforms, gaming platforms and mobile phones. It is repeated behaviour, aimed at scaring, angering or shaming those who are targeted.
Its examples can be refered to action such as:
spreading lies about or posting embarrassing photos or videos of someone on social media
sending hurtful, abusive or threatening messages, images or videos via messaging platforms
impersonating someone and sending mean messages to others on their behalf or through fake accounts.
Cyberbullying is becoming more and more frequent, it can happen to anyone regarding gender, race, age or any given background. In the booming era of social media, cyberbullying is surely a critical issue for any establishments. Most importantly, children and young people are the two targets that requires more attention.
To deal with such problem, technology companies are increasingly paying attention to the issue of online bullying. The companies have introduced crucial methods to solve the problem and better protect their customers. New tools, specific guidance to report, information hub are presented. However, it is true that more is needed, and if the companies do not live up these responsibilities.
2. Facebook guidelines on cyberbullying:
According to Facebook, they are aware of the presence of cyberbullying and guarantee serious policy regarding any harassment and bullying actions.
In terms of policy, Facebook presents a list of forbidden actions with 7 tiers and detailed Community Standards.
For further support, Facebook also provides a Bullying Prevention Hub, partnership with Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Blue Dragon and other respected social organisations. A wide range of information and resources are also provided within the website.
Nonetheless, in Vietnam, it is reported that Facebook just recently updated a list of abandoned key works that might leads to sight of discrimination and bullying. Despites its valuable objective, the words’ list seems to cause pretty much inconvenience for Vietnamese users. In other words, although cyberbullying is a crucial duty, it is needed for Facebook to also consider carefully about policy that might degrade the users’ experience.
References:
- Facebook 2022a, Bullying and Harassment | Transparency Center, transparency.fb.com.
- ― 2022b, How to Handle Harassment and Bullying on Facebook and Instagram, Facebook for Business.
- ― 2022c, Safety Center, Safety Center, viewed 10 April 2022, <https://www.facebook.com/safety/bullying/>.
- UNICEF 2020, Cyberbullying: What is it and how to stop it, www.unicef.org, UNICEF.
According to Helmond (2015), platformisation is the transformation of social network sites into social media platforms ... the rise of the platform as the dominant infrastructural and economic model of the social web and its consequences.
According to Chia et al. (2020), platformisation is also defined as a concept to describe the growing integration of digital platforms’ business models, infrastructures, algorithms, and the practices around them into every facet of society.
Overall, the term ‘platform’ can be explained in numerous meanings: something to build upon and innovate from (computational); a place from which to speak and be heard (political), etc. (G
Currently, platformisation is also applied in various fields, namely game development, digital market, human resources, banking, etc.
2. Advantages and disadvantages of platformisation
Advantages:
+ Allow easy control for digital economical concept (digital marketing, SEO, e-commerce site, etc.). By that, users can simply make use of data for promotional tasks.
Disadvantages:
+ Potential breach of information: Privacy and security are not guaranteed by any parties, which leads to potential drawbacks of violate personal information privacy
+ Users become target of biased althgorithm: Consumerism, Political Biased Content, Bad internet use experience, etc.
References
- Chia, A, Keogh, B, Leorke, D & Nicoll, B 2020, “Platformisation in game development”, Internet Policy Review 9.
- Gillespie, T, 2010, 'The politics of “platforms.”', New Media & Society, 12, p.347-p. 364, doi:10.1177/1461444809342738
- Helmond, A 2015, ‘The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready’, Social Media + Society, SAGE journals.
Reality TV is an unscripted program including ‘ordinary people engaged in unscripted action and interaction’ (Nabi 2007), leading to ‘hypervisibility, coalescing over-the-top emotions with behavioral transgressions that promise the thrill of unpredictability within the security of televisual contrivance’ (Kavka 2018). Unlike other traditional television formats, reality shows are immensely welcomed thanks to its wide presence in various media platforms and its communal values. Indeed, due to the advancement of social media, contemporary reality television present various digital publics resulted from their online fandoms, where fans freely discuss about their preferred topics and sometimes, talk about political issues which might leads to political changes.
However, in Vietnam, due to the lack of forum using habits, digital publics are hardly be formed within the Vietnamese digital community. This writing will discuss about the wannabe digital publics of Vietnamese reality TV.
1. Political discussion from a reality show: Controversial opinion in Hanh Ly Tinh Yeu
Although Vietnamese Reality TV doesn’t have that many micro publics like forums and blogs, we still have a big public, the whole internet community, aka the netizens. The whole social media in Vietnam is already a public itself, and whenever something controversial happens, in recent years, very active political discussion among the Vietnamese users is perceived.
It is the case of the dating reality show Hanh Ly Tinh Yeu, regarding the broadcasting, a male participant from Hue had shared some very subjective and sexist perspective of ‘willing to get divorced if his wife cannot give birth to a boy’. The statement had been widely discussed on social media, a lot of dispute and criticism had been occurred. Later on, both the director of the show and the participant himself has had to publicly apologise (Thanh Nien 2021).
Overall, a political discussion has been presented under the topic of gender equality.
2. How does social media affect the Reality TV industry in Vietnam?
Vietnamese audience has been long familiar with the free-to-air television products, which resulted a very interesting case in terms of program broadcasting. Regarding the booming of social media, TV producers are demanded to quickly adapt and broadcast their programs in up-to-date platforms
In most of other markets, if a TV show was the household and leading program in the industry, the producer would likely to acquire viewers to pay for the online access of the given show through their SVOD or streaming services.
However, citing the case of Rap Viet, the recent leading TV show in Vietnam still had to publish their programs not just on TV but also on social media, which is Youtube, and its own application service, all for free. Nonetheless, Rap Viet even produced numerous mini-series on Youtube about the exclusive vlogs of the contest journey and daily life of their contestants.
In other words, Vietnamese audience seems to financially benefit a lot from their media consumption habit, which is surely an immense obstacle for local distributors.
References:
- Kavka, M 2018, ‘Reality TV: its contents and discontents’, Critical Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 4, pp. 5–18.
- Nabi, RL 2007, ‘Determining Dimensions of Reality: A Concept Mapping of the Reality TV Landscape’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 371–390.
- Thanh Nien 2021, Du xin loi nguoi dan Hue, chang trai trong ‘Hanh ly tinh yeu’ van bi ‘nem da’, Thanh Nien, 04 December, viewed 8 April 2022, <https://thanhnien.vn/du-xin-loi-nguoi-dan-hue-chang-trai-trong-hanh-ly-tinh-yeu-van-bi-nem-da-post1407740.html>.
Tumblr – A self-oriented, yet socially valued digital community
Founded in 2007, the microblogging website Tumblr is no doubt one of the most successful social media platforms ever created. Tumblr stands out from other rivals, not only with its special concept of ‘dashboard’ and ‘tagging’, but also with its ‘self-oriented’ vision, which results a unique community for users.
Compared to other platforms, Tumblr represents some exclusive attributes:
Tumblr is a ‘rabbit hole’:
In her analysis of Tumblr, Cho (2015) referred the website to a ‘disorienting’ experience, a ‘massive churning machine of evocative photos’ where there was ‘no clear way to traverse or search the network’. Indeed, in an interview, Amanda Brennan, Head of Content Insights and Social at Tumblr, proudly praised their recommendation algorithm: “And then when you follow something from a recommendation, it flips over and says “here’s five more blogs,” so it’s a constant rabbit hole.” (McCracken 2020). However, this refers only to the diversified content of the platform, not an accuse of its probability of propaganda and advertising.
“Tumblr really allows someone to lean into their fandom and the social issues they care about in the same breath, at similar volumes and with the same voracity.” - Amanda Brennan (McCracken 2020).
Tumblr allows anonymity:
“You don’t tell people your Tumblr URL, you aren’t logging the banalities of your day—you aren’t even you.” - Elspeth Reeve (Reeve 2016).
On Tumblr, staying anonymous, users are free to express any idea ‘without fear of it going on permanent record’, and to start several accounts of ‘each slice of personality’ (Reeve 2016). As a result, the anonymity feature not only allows a sense of freedom, of power and of respect on the platform, but also encourages users to show their true selves.
Tumblr is a self-oriented community:
The whole system of Tumblr is based on tags, aka users’ interests. Right at the beginning of creating an account, you are already asked to choose your topics of interests, with a diversified list including every aspect from art, culture to politics, or simply hobby. Moreover, those tags from Tumblr also offers a variety of fandoms from every pop culture existed. The aforementioned anonymous trait also adds up for this self-oriented specialty. As opposed to other online social platforms where people connect with friends so they might stay secretive and private regarding their interests, Tumblr users mainly communicate with 'people like me' (Byron et al. 2019). Therefore, anyone on Tumblr can find their own micro communities and proudly present a part of themselves.
“You can come to Tumblr and not feel weird because you like this anime that no one has ever heard of,…” - Amanda Brennan (McCracken 2020).
Tumblr is socially valued:
Unexpectedly, the self-oriented trait itself is the foundation of Tumblr’s social orientation.
“Tumblr has really empowered people whose voices are otherwise marginalized and given them a place to find their community and build their own kind of world.” - Amanda Brennan (McCracken 2020).
Giving an anonymous and personalized platform, Tumblr truly allows every individual a sense of power, of respect and of originality. Inherently, Tumblr’s developers actively ‘acknowledge fandom and validate it’, by taking part in the fandom themselves and generating the rankings of fandom called Fandometrics (McCracken 2020). Nonetheless, as people come visit Tumblr to discuss whatever they find most passionate, social issues are likely to be one of their topics of interest.
Overall, offering endless list of topics, staying anonymous, self-oriented and bringing valuable social changes are all the distinctive characters of how Tumblr functions as a digital community. Despite of its problem with copyright infringement and its debatable 2018 censorship adjustment (which I hope to have chances to talk more about in future posts), it is possible to say that Tumblr stays as one of a few social media platforms successfully maintaining a digital community that fairly meets the ideal concept of the term ‘public sphere’.
'Habermas ([1989] 1991:27) defines the public sphere as a place where “private people come together as a public” for the purpose of using reason to further critical knowledge which, in turn, leads to political change.' (Kruse et al. 2018).
REFERENCES:
Byron, P, Robards, B, Hanckel, B, Vivienne, S & Churchill, B 2019, ‘"Hey, i’m having these experiences”: Tumblr use and young people’s queer (dis)connections.’, International Journal of Communication, vol. 13.
Cho, A 2015, ‘Queer reverb: Tumblr, affect, time.’, Networked affect, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
McCracken, A 2020, ‘Going Down the Rabbit Hole: An Interview with Amanda Brennan, Head of Content Insights and Social, Tumblr’, in A McCracken, A Cho, L Stein & IN Hoch (eds), a tumblr book: platform and cultures, University of Michigan Press, Michigan, pp. 37-48.
Kruse, L, Norris, D & Flinchum, J 2018, ‘ Social Media as a Public Sphere? Politics on Social Media’, The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 62-84, viewed 12 February 2022, <https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2017.1383143>.
Reeve, E 2016, The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens, The New Republic, viewed 12 February 2022, <https://newrepublic.com/article/129002/secret-lives-tumblr-teens>.
