Vanessa Teo NM3205 Blog

[vanessateo3205]

Relationship Tracking: Commodification of relationships and intimacy

The reading that intrigued me this week is ‘Relationship Tracking and the Technicity of Intimacy’ written by Alex Lambert. Through analysing the mobile phone application “PplKpr’, he explores how the growing market of self-tracking applications have evolved to include social relationship surveillance and the quantification of intimacy within social relationships. He claims that while users may see self-tracking applications as assistance in alleviating our labour of measuring and assessing their social relationships, the reality is rather the opposite: these relationship tracking applications only create more labour by putting users in a place where they are compulsively disposed to questioning and quantifying the quality of their social relationships. This is because intimacy itself is a multi-faceted and complex issue that resists quantification because of how it is fundamentally subjective and self-reflexive. Lambert concludes that intimacy is after all ‘an eternal mystery’, one that technologies have proven to be incapable of detecting and measuring. Additionally, he brings in the idea that where intimacy is concerned, techniques that technologies use to quantify an individual and their relationships will be influenced by calculated cultural norms and socio-political structures, which means that there will be inherently biased calculations in their algorithms. As these applications get commercialised and distributed to global markets, it would simply be unreasonable to assume that every user would view the concept of intimacy and regulate their social relationships the same way. Therefore, he posits that the relationship tracking technology simply perpetuates an obsessive, compulsive attitude towards the mystery of intimacy through encouraging people to engage in excessive evaluation and quantification of intimacy.

Firstly, I agree strongly with Lambert’s criticism on of relationship-tracking technologies. Personally, I view the growing market for self-tracking applications, especially relationship-tracking apps, as commodifying one’s emotional health. By promoting people to track their emotions through monitored social interactions, I see this as a form of surveillance over one’s personal life. Why should we provide such information, about whom we are meeting, where we are meeting, and how long we are meeting, to corporations who are collecting and analysing this data? We are allowing ourselves, our relationships to be commodified. By collecting our data through these apps, these corporations will be able to collect big data that they are able to capitalise upon (e.g. a lot of people have reported going to this shopping mall for a date, and happy emotions have been reported there, the corporation can then sell this information to advertisers who are targeting couples). This means that we are essentially creating labour as we engage in these relationship-tracking applications.

Additionally, I am of the opinion that technologies and algorithms are incapable of defining a ‘healthy’ relationship. I am repulsed by the way PplKpr operates, especially their claim that the application is able to assist the user in curating a more intimate social sphere, improve their emotional health and intimacy and hence lead a healthier life. I find the most problematic their feature of ‘automatically blocking and removing contacts who elicit negative moods’. Firstly, the algorithm’s understanding of intimacy and relationships are superficial. The application focuses on encouraging positive moods and people with positive moods, yet also encourage users to actively shun people who instigate a negative emotional response from the user. The application fails to consider how social relationships are not always smooth-sailing. The most important people in our lives: our families, significant others, close friends, and our relationships with them contain of a good balance between positive and negative emotions. While there may be periods of intensive negative emotions, the solution of ‘blocking and removing’ are the opposite of a useful feature in helping the user regulate their intimate relationships. The agency and choice to respond to these situations should solely lie in the user, instead of relying on technology to mediate our relationships. Why should we let technology dictate how we regulate intimacy in our relationships? Negative emotions are not always a bad influence on social relationships, they can have the potential to strengthen social relationships. Over-relying on the concept of technological solutionism where we use technology to dictate the management of intimacy proves to be problematic. After all, intimacy and social relationships are a self-reflexive issue, and we should not depend on technologies which only attempt to quantify the unquantifiable.

[vanessateo3205]

Tinder and Social Media Racism

This week, I would like to engage in the paper by Corinne Lysandra Mason, ‘Tinder and humanitarian hook-ups: the erotics of social media racism’. The author examines how Tinder acts as a socially mediated digital dating space where intimacy and racism are expressed and intertwined. As digital spaces are imbued by inequality that exists in the physical social landscape, socially mediated digital spaces like Tinder have the power to reinforce social hierarchies of race in the world of digital romance. In particular, the author focuses on the phenomenon of the Humanitarians of Tinder, where mostly white men and women display pictures of themselves in humanitarian projects, engaging with members of the ‘third world’, holding or standing near racialized children. The author describes this as what critics call a generation who shows off their selflessness as a questionable ethic, with a ‘do-good-get-laid’ mentality to create an aura of benevolence that makes them more attractive to potential partners. By including racialized children in their profile photos, The author posits that these volunteer Tindertarians are reinforcing the idea that whiteness is an aspiration and fantasy, because of the cultural dominance that is represented through their photographs of volunteer work, hence further highlighting the idea of a racial hierarchy within their society. Volunteering to help members of the third world, their racialized bodies and the clear racial divide hence ensures the erotic possibilities of desiring whiteness. This notion of desiring whiteness is further maintained within the community, where white people are seen as morally superior (due to their humanitarian volunteer participation), and hence, superior partners for the other white people. Hence, the author highlights how the Humanitarians of Tinder create a racialized representation of racialized subjects as a backdrop to each individual’s eroticization through highlighting the desire and fetishes of having relationships with ‘the other’, while maintaining the racial hierarchy that exists within the society.

Despite having no experience with Tinder, this reading has made me realise that the usage of racially charged photographs may shape one’s perception of one’s desirability on racial lines, be it subconsciously or consciously. When we encounter shared photographs of someone during humanitarian work in third-world communities, be it on social media or on dating platforms, we often do not see it through the lens of racial discrimination, because more often than not, the virtuous and moral aspects of the photograph appeal more to us. This is the exact reason why people use these photographs on dating applications. As we engage with information of others, we often process and interpret information with selective attention: we see what appeals to us the most, which is the fact that they appear to be kind because they participate in voluntary work, offering their time to assist the less fortunate. However, we often do not consider their intentions behind sharing such photographs with strangers on dating platforms. Since profile pictures are self-curated information, it would be problematic to simply assume that it is an accurate representation of one’s identity. However, on a digital space where not a lot of information is offered about the particular person in question, we are forced to perceive what we see as a significant part of their character. Additionally, the digital space bombards us with endless information. Even if we swipe left to reject a particular candidate, there is always another candidate recommended for the user. This means that impressions and decisions are made in mere seconds, and so is the subconscious priming of racial divides.

This incident of sharing pictures of oneself engaging with humanitarian work made me think about the portrayal of one’s benevolence in my community. When I step into the community to participate in voluntary work with less fortunate members of my community, I fondly recall a voluntary experience I had at TOUCH community services at a childcare centre in Bishan, and how we would snap photographs of fun moments where we played and interacted with the children. However, I remember the teachers reminding us after each session not to upload these pictures on social media or share them around, because of the issue of confidentiality and protecting the identities of the children in our photographs, which we abided by. On the other hand, I also observe my friends going on overseas humanitarian work, such as travelling to rural cities in China or Cambodia where they share their humanitarian work experiences openly on Instagram, including many pictures and videos of the children involved, with no form of censorship. The stark contrast in the way the issue of confidentiality and protection of identity is being handled in both cases are startling. I question why the people who share these photographs and videos of third-world children on social media do not question how these materials may compromise the children’s confidentiality. Why do we consider the issue of identity and confidentiality when it involves people within the Singapore community, while we do not offer the same amount of respect and consideration when dealing with people from third-world communities? I believe my friends involved in these were not entirely conscious of the implications of their choices of sharing selective experiences online, but nevertheless, this is an interesting observation of mine that makes me wonder how information shared online always tends to  have racist undertones that are shaped by our subconscious understanding of racial hierarchies present in our societies.

[vanessateo3205]

Twitch and The Gaming Industry

In the reading by Burroughs and Rama, the authors examine the convergence of gaming and virtual worlds facilitated by the streaming industry. Especially within the recent years, both the gaming and streaming industry have observed a rise in popularity globally, as games are becoming increasingly regarded as a virtual social space because it is a platform through which users can gather virtually and interact freely in the online community, transforming it into a participatory environment, mirroring social realities through an online cultural experience. The authors posit that streaming is a medium through which the boundaries between communication, social communities, and gaming environments are blurred, converging the social and commercial aspects of both the streaming and gaming industries. Hence, the streaming industry further blurs the boundaries between the production and consumption of gaming and virtual worlds, where we must examine game-streaming industries in order to tease out how audience adoption and participation becomes a critical mode of spectatorship, participation and play. The authors study Twitch as one of the most prominent live-streaming platforms that offers any user an opportunity to kickstart their own game-play streaming career, with promising monetary benefits through large amounts of audience engagement and spectatorship. Therefore, by encouraging Twitch streamers to establish their own audience participatory community through live-streaming gameplays, the platform essentially bridges the gaps between the real world and the virtual world, further enhancing the appeal of live-streaming consumption among global audiences. Hence, the authors highlight the significance of streaming in gaming culture and how it has encouraged broader adoption of live-streaming as the dominant mode of video game consumption.

I couldn’t agree more with the authors and the points that they have raised on how live-streaming gameplay has become the ‘trend’ of video game content consumption. Personally, I am an avid user of Twitch, where I watch Twitch streamers play a variety of games, from Among Us, to Valorant, to Grand Theft Auto. (I tend to follow a few streamers and watch them stream any game, because personally it is the social appeal that motivates me to use Twitch, rather than an interesting game) Firstly, Twitch has gained so much popularity in the industry of streaming, mainly due to its many affordances that encourage an active participatory culture between streamers and viewers. It is exactly this participatory culture that blurs the boundary between gaming environments and real-world communication and interaction. Whenever a user purchases a subscription from a streamer, there will be a real-time notification on the streamer’s monitor that says ‘so-and-so has subscribed!’ and this notification prompts the streamer to read it out, thanking the subscriber for their participation. Additionally, there are even Tiers of subscription that count as a form of donation (Tier 1 is the cheapest at a few dollars, while Tier 2/3 tend to cost 50 usd), and with each donation, the user is able to write a short personalised message to the streamer. Personally, I follow a Twitch streamer called Sykkuno, and I recall that it is precisely the appeal of inducing an emotional response from him that motivates users to subscribe and donate to his channel. Whenever he receives donation, he would go “Oh geez, that’s a whole bunch of money! I could buy one days’ meals with this, thank you so much (insert name).” Consequently, the comments would be flooded with comments from the audience, advising him to eat proper food, instead of cheap microwaved food, which he previously mentioned, makes up the majority of his daily consumption. The comments would steer the conversation topic mid-gameplay to food, where he casually describes the meals he has eaten prior to streaming. It is observable how streamers are able to use the affordance of Twitch to earn income, exploring their own methods to further drive monetization from their audience base. Through engaging their audiences in conversation related to the real-world while simultaneously gaming, Twitch streamers are able to create an environment right in between the virtual and the real world.

Another interesting point of discussion that I would like to engage in, is the feature of proximity chat, available on most games that Twitch streamers play on stream. Proximity chat is a feature that mimics how sound travels in real-life, but in a virtual gaming environment. Proximity chat affects the audio within games, such that when another player is coming closer to you, their voice gets loud, and from the direction from which they are coming. The further they are, the softer their voice. Proximity chat feature hence bridges this gap between the real and virtual world, making virtual spaces feel much more physical. Greater awareness of distance proximity within games allowed players to make sense of their virtual environments through audio cues that allowed better visualisation, and voices were consequently less disembodied. This means proximity chat hence allowed users to perceive virtual environments in a physical sense. Therefore, for both the streamers and their audiences, integrating voices with virtual spaces increased player and audience immersion as it bridges the gap between physical and virtual worlds. One such game that has skyrocketed in popularity following the introduction of this proximity chat feature is Among Us, one of the most highly streamed games on Twitch. It is one of the most appealing among Twitch audiences because it is inherently more of a social experience than a video game. The mechanics of the game revolve around in-game social interaction: moving around, killing players, group discussions. The audiences enjoy not the excitement of gameplay, but rather observing the social interactions between the players, as well as social interactions with the streamer as they interact with their audiences mid-game.

Hence, the cultural content both produced and consumed within the virtual borders of the streaming platform highlights how audience adoption and participation have become a critical mode of spectatorship, participation and play.

[vanessateo3205]

Cultural Capital and Social Hierarchies (Vanessa Teo)

The reading I found fascinating and thought-provoking this week is the chapter by Webb, Schrirato and Danaher, “Understanding Bourdieu”. The authors discuss Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of the cultural field and the habitus. Through defining the cultural field as a fluid and dynamic series of institutions and rules, as well as the interactions between institutions, rules and practices, the authors discuss how a cultural field can produce and authorise social discourse and activities. The transformation of cultural products into cultural capital occurs when cultural products are distributed unequally to people across social classes, hence demonstrating how cultural capital acts as a social relation within the system of exchange. Therefore, according to Bourdieu, cultural capital is defined as culturally-valued taste and consumption patterns that are informed by one’s social class within the system of exchange. When consumers across different social classes adopt these tastes and consumption patterns as well as social norms and rules, a habitus is created and established, where we subconsciously operate with these underlying cultural expectations and standards, responding in social and cultural contexts, informed by the socio-cultural lens with which we see the world through. Although our cultural history, values and dispositions allow us to respond to cultural rules and contexts in various ways, our responses are largely determined by our cultural identities. As such, as we move through various cultural fields, we tend to incorporate our cultural values into the habitus. This is explained by Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘bodily hexis’. While we may view the body as separate from the self, one’s identity is largely a product of one’s culture and habitus. Additionally, he explains how the upper social classes make use of cultural capital to distinguish themselves from the rest of society, reinforcing the social class divide across these cultural markets. I agree with the authors that this habitus which has been created and established by social hierarchies in turn determines the social norms and rules as well as our cultural scripts and informs our cultural expectations, standards and taste. The members of the upper class tend to establish their higher social standing among other society members by forming exclusive social practices and behaviours. This is observed globally, across various cultures, demonstrating how members at the top of the social hierarchy have the power to distribute cultural capital in the system of exchange. One such interesting phenomena is both the western and eastern concepts of tea time. In the western culture, since older times, the aristocrats have established a culture of consuming high tea, creating their own set of ‘high tea etiquette’ with very specific ways of holding the tea cup, posture when sitting, as well as even considering putting the pinkie out when drinking tea a rude gesture. The artistocrat’s tea etiquette focused on tea time as a luxurious course fit that emulated the royalty class’s traditions and practices. Similarly, the Chinese concept of tea time came about because tea used to only be consumed by the wealthy classes and royalty due to limited transportation of tea within China. Tea-drinking practice was established as a tedious and complicated procedure that involved 24 different luxurious utensils, becoming a traditional that was only accessible to people who could afford to obtain all the cutlery, and had sufficient resources to consume tea. Additionally, Chinese traditional tea-drinking also included the teaching of the Confucianism philosophy, with the practice of only filling 70 percent of the cup, leaving 30 percent empty to represent the space available to be filled up with more knowledge. In ancient China, education was only available to people in the higher ranks of the social hierarchy, entrenching the whole tradition, as well as the concept behind tea-drinking, as an exclusively high-class tradition. It eventually becomes a pipe dream that the masses yearn to achieve, but are limited by social immobility due to social class discrimination that only becomes more reinforced by these class markers. These social norms, rules and practices are hence crafted by members at the top of the social hierarchy who established these practices using cultural capital as an effort to distinguish themselves from the masses. Although these traditions have been established thousands of years ago, they are still regarded by present society as clear class markers, and are even still regarded as significant aspects of culture and cultural identity. The Chinese are still being identified globally as ‘tea-drinkers’, with our elaborate tea drinking process as an integral part of the Chinese identity, despite the irony being that in the ancient times, majority of Chinese people could not even gain access to these cultural capital. Hence, this demonstrates how the upper class members, due to their ability to manipulate the distribution of cultural capital, are also able to reconstruct cultural identity and societal rules and practices in the cultural fields.

[vanessateo3205]

The Sharing Economy (Vanessa Teo)

Ravenelle defines the sharing economy as ’peer-to-peer’ firms that connect people and form a sense of community for the purposes of distributing, sharing, and reusing goods and services, hence creating opportunities for new labour markets, generating more opportunities for entrepreneurship and income sources for the masses. She categorises activities in the sharing economy into four distinct categories, namely the recirculation of goods, increased utilization of durable assets, exchange of services and sharing of productive assets. She introduces the concepts of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft – Gemeinschaft refers to the construction of community social relations which build trust, while Gesellschaft refers to superficial relations geared towards business aims, where community trust and spirit deteriorate. While the sharing economy appears to be geared towards fostering community spirit through communal sharing of resources, she argues that the sharing economy hides the fact that it is indirectly the cause of social issues. She posits that the consequences of the sharing economy, though at surface level seem to achieve well-intended objectives, have led to negative externalities such as labour exploitation and the casualization of labour which results in increasing social inequalities due to the encouragement of the social polarization of minority groups in societies. Firstly, I agree with Ravenelle that the sharing economy has evolved to become highly dependent on reputation metrics such as reviews and profiles. In fact, it is through reviewing a fellow user’s profile on the sharing economy that users can form a comprehensive impression of the user before deciding if it is feasible to engage in a financial transaction with them. Personally, reviews of users inform me about the reliability and quality of their services and products. When I browse through Carousell looking for second-hand items, I find myself more inclined to deal with sellers with better ratings, as consistency in ratings signal a higher possibility of a fuss-free transaction. This highlights that people involved in the sharing economy see trust as a fundamental factor they consider before participating in the exchange of money for goods and services. Businesses in the sharing economy also fuel this idea that there is a natural initial lack of trust between users, and that trust must be earned in the form of credibility metrics. This blurs the line between the sharing economy and traditional business economy. This is most apparent in Carousell’s recent introduction of the Carousell Protection scheme, which allows buyers to pay Carousell instead of the seller directly, in case of disputes over the conditions of goods and services. The money will only be released to sellers when the buyer approves and is satisfied with the condition of the item bought. This function was welcomed by a large portion of Carousell users, who felt that the sharing economy environment on Carousell was one such that sellers of second-hand goods may not be truthful at all times, due to difference in perspectives of the conditions of an item - a seller may tend to overvalue their second-hand goods and downplay the defects, while buyers tend to be more critical of the conditions of the items they buy, resulting in a general distrust. However, I disagree with Ravenelle on her argument that the sharing economy is the direct cause of the trust divide among community members. Although mistrust is observable on sharing economy platforms due to users’ engagement in platform protection/refund schemes, I believe it would be an overgeneralisation to pin the blame of distrust on solely the sharing economy. As with all transactions related to money and goods, the history of scams in our community naturally result in people becoming more guarded and distrustful of both sellers and buyers. According to an article by The Straits Times, commerce scams rose by 19% in 2020 as compared to 2019, reflecting the prevalence of criminal behaviour. As consumers who are interested in making rational choices and purchasing our money’s worth of good and services, I believe it is only natural that trust is something that must be built and earned through credibility ratings, in this current digital age where it is easy to fall prey to e-commerce scams. In fact, I believe that sharing economies, such as Carousell, include the reviews and protection scheme to facilitate trust-building and hence foster community spirit through communal sharing. In the current time where society is becoming more pessimistic of the e-commerce climate due to the climbing e-commerce crime rates, positive reviews and credible profiles act as a form of reassurance for potential buyers. Carousell rewards sellers and buyers with a Verified Badge upon SingPass identity verification and phone number verification to ascertain users’ identities. I believe that it is only though allaying the anxieties of users that we can begin to build trust and community spirit between community members. 

[vanessateo3205]

Calibrated Amateurism: The Influencer’s Secret To Fame

Abiden explains the concept of calibrated amateurism in a way that I have never considered about before. He analyses the social media behaviours of influencers and categorises them into two types of content: anchor content and filler content. The anchor content is the heavily curated, edited and produced content that they are primarily famous for, showcasing their talents in the arts, uploaded every once and then. Yet, these influencers are able to sustain their audience’s interest and attention with the ‘filler content’ in which they share seemingly unfiltered, unedited, raw snippets of their authentic lifestyles. This is especially apparent in the case of family influencers whose content are meticulously planned to oscillate between high quality and high production value of anchor content, as well as filler contents of impromptu filmed footage that craft a natural, appealing image that is allows audiences to feel that the influencer is a relatable, authentic figure. She supports this with studies of family influencers who have gained the admiration of their audiences, earning love, support and even envy of audiences who wish to emulate the family, whose family dynamics they deem as idyllic, simply through the documentations of their lives through content on social media platforms. Moreover, Abiden discusses the issue of the exploitation of children in influencer families as free digital labour, by exploring the families’ justifications that their children are not subject to free digital labour. Through exploring these aspects of how family influencers juggle between media content, their online personas and their authentic selves, Abiden explores the extent of which social media platforms depend heavily on the attention economy sustained by audience power. Firstly, I do agree with Abiden that influencers use their filter content to sustain engagement with the audience through presented a more informal, unfiltered image of themselves in between every anchor content they produce. This is what Abiden terms as calibrated amateurism, a ‘practice and aesthetic in which actors in an attention economy labor specially over crafted contrived authenticity that portrays the raw aesthetic of an amateur’ (Abiden, 2017). In these filler videos, there are notably lesser layers of editing that takes place (as compared to the more refined, carefully produced anchor content), but also intended and staged un-cut scenes included in the final product that mirrors an editing style of an amateur. This is, more often than not, intended by the influencers to brand themselves as a more human and thus relatable version of themselves to their audiences. Similarly, I have been unconsciously favouring a Youtuber, Edward Avila, mainly because of how genuine and unfiltered he always seems in his video. He is a beauty youtuber and vlogger who shares on youtube both beauty product reviews and informal vlogs of his life. He has a unique style of editing, such that his ‘filter content’ is always part of his ‘anchor content’. Take for example, in almost every formal makeup review video (his anchor content), he would intentionally leave in bloopers and awkward moments in conversations, even zooming in onto comedic facial expressions to over-emphasize the comedic factor in his videos. Take for example this moment in a recent video, where he was doing a formal demonstration for a makeup brand he was endorsing, but chose to leave in a clip of the makeup products falling over dramatically. This invited expected amusement from the audience, where the comment section was filled with comments about the situation, turning it into a further discussion point and receiving more likes, comments, and attention from his audience. Additionally, he would also film videos where he would just be casually talking to his audience, even promoting beauty products while emphasizing that he was not receiving their sponsorship, while zooming in on humorous facial expressions of disdain or amusement. This is Edward’s unique style of content creation, creating pockets of comedic moments for audiences to have a glimpse of an ‘authentic persona’ to engage their attention. 

While I believe that Abiden’s research on family influencers have justified that there was no exploitation of children as free digital labour as there was consent and enjoyment in the process of content creation, I believe the concept of allowing children to be content creators is fundamentally problematic. Firstly, children who have been influenced by their families to become influencers may not have had a concept about what being an influencer entails at a tender young age. They can be easily manipulated by their parents to pursue this line of work simply because it is what they were exposed to growing up, rather than purely their own agency and desire. One such example is the youtuber, known as Venus Angelic. At a young age of 12 in 2010, her mom created and managed her youtube channel, where she went viral for her ‘How to Look Like a Doll’ video, making makeup tutorials where she intentionally made her voice sound more child-like to complement her doll-like image. However, in 2014, after being separated from her mother after family issues, her content on youtube suddenly changed drastically, she dropped the doll-like concept she had gone viral for, much to the confusion and surprise of her audience who adored her for her doll image. The anger her audience felt upon realising that the doll image of Venus was not her true identity earned a lot of criticism from the audience. This prompted Venus to reveal that she was forced by her mother to cosplay as a doll for content, as well as the physical and emotional abuse she received from her mother as she was forced against her will to follow her mother’s wishes as her mother had full control over both her social media content and her living circumstances, leaving her unable to detach herself from exploitation and abuse. This drives home the point that there will always be a concern that children are easily exploited by their parents as digital free labour against their will, and yet their family circumstance does not allow them to extricate themselves from the situation. The fact that likes, comments, views and subscription count are the currency of the attention economy may lead to influencers and content creators who are motivated more by the money and audience attention than the wellbeing of their children.

Reference: Abidin, C. (2017). # familygoals: Family influencers, calibrated amateurism, and justifying young digital labor. Social Media+ Society, 3(2), 2056305117707191.

[vanessateo3205]

Blog post 4: Commodification of Cultural (Vanessa Teo)

In the article by Horkheimer and Adorno, the authors argue that capitalism has invaded the modern society to the extent that culture has been commodified and transformed into a key instrument for the market forces of capitalism. The authors posit that since capitalist companies run and sustain the media industry, the culture industry has also consequently been morphed into an  economic tool, and hence leading to uniformity of media that is solely profit-focused. This means, in order to maximise profits and returns, the media industry has been streamlining the production of media content to the mainstream preferences of audiences, further entrenching the homogeneity of media produced globally. Through breaking down and analysing the sections of the media industry and the different forms of art, from music to film, Horkheimer and Adorno highlight how the capitalist economy has been sustained by the consumerism culture that plagues the media industry. Due to the extent to which culture is enmeshed with the economy, the authors argue that the media industry is simply a capitalist system that sells mindlessly reproduced, repetitive culture to apathetic crowds seeking amusement.

I agree that with the commodification of culture in the media industry, it is inevitable that the products of the media industry have been inundated by uniformity. In striving to cater to and sustain a large customer base, media and cultural content producers end up repeating and repackaging previously used content, especially content that is popular among potential consumers. This is seen in American pop culture, which has been reduced to a common formulae for money-making success, respecting the thirty-two bars or the compass of the ninth (Horkheimer and Adorno, 2012), which illuminates how while songs tend to sound similar, even classified now as ‘mainstream music’ because of how widespread and identical sounding the music that falls under the same category is. This phenomena is observed, especially with the arrival of the Hallyu wave that is taking the world by storm. K-pop, representative of Korean culture, received global recognition and success, and has also created a population desperate to consume content and music that conforms to K-pop culture. The concept of synchronised choreography, coupled with catchy electro-pop music, has been the well-known formulae of success for K-pop groups, and hence a hallmark of K-pop culture. This is reproduced over and over in the K-pop industry in Korea, catering to a global audience that immerses themselves in this culture and specific music genre. The ever-enlarging international appeal of K-pop groups, coupled by the success of K-pop group BTS, has lead to entertainment companies in Japan and China emulating Korea’s formula for economic success by creating identical boy bands to BTS with similar music and dance concepts. The most controversial part of this particular case was about how their clothing style, member roles (e.g. 4 singers and 3 rappers) were even identical, highlighting just how individualistic style was negated in this ‘imitation’. While this initially lead to a lot of backlash regarding lack of creativity and originality, the backlash eventually quelled due to the lack of outright copyright issues and the boy groups received public adoration and economic success like the companies had originally planned. 

This strengthens the authors’ argument by illustrating how the media industry caters itself to a mindless population through conforming to an atypical culture, leading to a largely homogenised media industry void of individual style. While imitation and repetition is initially criticised, it is, after all, what drives the economy. The economic success of repetition in the global media industry to sustain and expand their audiences highlight yet another growing concern: cultural homogenisation. Cultural homogenisation is potentially dangerous as it threatens to erode unique national identity and culture. Cultural homogenisation is a process through which audiences are vulnerable to as the process through which the audience’s preferences are homogenised and mainstreamed is often subtle. The unassuming masses often do not realise how the media content that they are exposed to in their daily lives are subconsciously homogenising their media preferences. This alludes to the perspective that while the media industry is dependent on the economy, the capitalist nature of the economy may erode cultural diversity in the media industry. Hence, it is crucial to monitor the intersections of the culture industry and capitalism to ensure that the media industry is not supported by the capitalist economy at the price of culture erosion. References: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/2150759/k-pops-global-success-sparks-surge-asian-copycat-groups

[vanessateo3205]

Mobile Media Blog Post (Vanessa Teo)

The article by Hjorth and Pink has an interesting title: New visualities and the digital wayfarer. It is intriguing that the authors have coined the theoretical construct ‘digital wayfarer’ to describe a user of locative media and their role of reconstructing and representing the digital and non-digital world. The term digital wayfaring stood out the most to me as it highlights how the digital world is entwined with our material physical everyday life, yet also keeping a focus on how we, the media users, have a critical role in utilising our portable media to make sense of our reality through redefining and constructing new places. Hjorth and Pink explore how places are constructed and interpreted by the mobile media user who captures pictures of their physical contexts and environments, contributing to the rich digital world of visualities and socialities of place and place making. As mobile users are perpetually on the move, the authors posit that these digital wayfarers interact with their physical environments, capture photographic representations of them and connects the materiality and sensoriality of the experienced physical world with the digital experience. The authors bring in the theory of place in order to conceptualize phone photography as co-constitutive and interpretation of place. As people traverse through physical spaces, they utilise digital photography, to render, represent and share the digital visuality of spaces to the physically absent audiences, configuring a new sense of place. Hence, through demonstrating how mobile users constantly oscillate between their digital and physical worlds in their lives and daily experiences of place-making, the authors illuminate the theory of how movement is central to the way we experience, construct and interpret our media. This article has prompted me to examine how I have been transformed into a digital wayfarer whenever I am equipped with my mobile phone. After some observation of my daily media usage, I realised that I mainly use social media applications on my phone, and notably 40% of my phone screentime is on Telegram. With a plethora of text messaging platforms available for users to chose from such as Whatsapp, Line, Messenger, Kakaotalk, I personally prefer to use Telegram as my main channel of socialisation with my friends. Upon further analysis, I realise that it is the video message recording feature of Telegram that I particularly enjoy and hence I prefer Telegram over the other messaging platforms. For those unfamiliar with the Telegram messaging application, here is a simple introduction.

In the image on the left, at the top right part of the keyboard, there is a button that allows users to record videos instantly. By holding down the button, a video in the form of a circular video message will be recorded and forwarded to the receiver within seconds. This feature remains one of the most well received by users due to the convenience of recording your environment and instantaneously sharing it.

In this instance above in the image on the right, I was unwrapping my friend’s package for her, as it had been delivered to my house, yet we were unable to find time to physically meet. I used video messages to share the unwrapping process with my friend. I was able to transform this from a personal experience into a shared experience for the both of us. This video message feature eradicated the boundary between physical absence and presence, as it created a new form of co-presence in the digital space on the messaging application. Recording these ambient video messages allowed me to share this special moment with her – the excitement of opening up a package and unwrapping the product inside. My friend and I may be located physically apart inside the comfort of our own homes, across Singapore from each other, but we were simultaneously inhabiting the virtual space, and we shared the excitement and this experience. As this is a convenient and easy-to-use feature, I find myself reaching for the video record button every now and then whenever I am on the go and want to share my life with physically absent friends. This reflection has made me realise how locative media has integrated into my personal world and how my social practices have merged with the way I utilise technology.

[vanessateo3205]

Domestic Media - Blog Post (Vanessa Teo)

This week’s readings are eye-opening as they probed me to explore and think critically about how the ubiquitous TV set sitting around in nearly every household’s living room has such a significant impact in our lives despite sometimes becoming a wallflower during family gatherings. Spigel introduces the TV as a spatial apparatus that blurs the line between private and public spaces, where live transmissions from television broadcasts have the ability to turn “there” into “here” for its viewers on a daily basis, making virtual presence feel more like a physical presence for its viewers. Spigel also analyses how the television has disrupted traditional forms of intimacy in households and forced people to rethink the gendered spaces of their homes. Most intriguingly, Spigel demonstrates how the function of the television has changed over the years of modernisation, starting from being a symbol of modernity and social mobility in the early years of invention. This symbol eventually transitioned into a site of display of family history and cultural heritage for most households, becoming the central point of the house where the family congregates. Specifically, Spigel posits that the TV is able to blur the line between the private and public space because it serves as a threshold technology that transgresses the public and private space, producing new forms of sociality. The TV is also capable of bringing the public world into the private world, removing the need for physical travel. Indeed, this phenomena is observable in our present time society.  In 2020, the annual Singapore National Day Parade shifted from a physical live performance to a fully live broadcasted show on television, where spectators were not allowed due to social distancing efforts during the pandemic. The televised live broadcast created a new form of sociality for our nation, bring the nation together in a creative new way through the NDP Virtual Choir.

Singaporeans were encouraged to submit video recordings singing We Are Singapore and Home in order to participate in the National Day Parade. The virtual choice acted as a platform for Singaporeans to contribute to the celebrations and connect with each other and celebrate in the safety and confort of our homes. I fondly recall sitting in front of the television watching the live broadcast of Singaporeans from all ages and walks of lives, singing together. It may have been just a single short video, but the fact that it was a national broadcast created a pseudo-physical experience of togetherness, and it was indeed a heart warming experience to observe how the television became the medium through which Singaporeans were united virtually nevertheless. This demonstrates how the television, by bring the public world into private spaces, is significant to nationalism as it is able to construct a national identity and promote national unity. This proves that the television is a media space that is ideal for cultivating national culture. I agree with Spigel that the television definitely plays a significant and even irreplaceable role in our public and private lives, even if we have previously taken the television for granted as a part of our living room in nearly every household, which Spigel describes as television fading into the background as an ‘ambient’ experience due to how central it is to our daily lives. On the flipside, this is because the absence of the a television in any household would be deeply felt, as if the living room is incomplete without a television set. Similarly, the absence of a televised national broadcast of the NDP 2020 would have been deeply felt by Singaporeans. I believe the central role of the television in households will not change even in the generation to come. The possibilities offered by the media spaces created by television are endless, as television is part of the feedback loop of activities between humans, artifacts and technologies that construct our social reality and culture. (Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-ndp-virtual-choir-public-how-to-submit-12839776)

[vanessateo3205]

NM3205 Blog Post Week 2 (Vanessa Teo)

In the article ‘The social world as communicative construction’ by Couldry and Hepp, the authors argue that media and their infrastructures are becoming increasingly integral for everyday communicative practices, constructing and sustaining the social world. The social world is mediated and mediatized, its dynamics and structure changed and constructed by media. In turn, the communicative dimension of our society’s practices is critical to how the social world becomes constructed. Therefore, human communication practices, construction of the social world, and the dynamics and structure of media are 3 aspects interdependently shaping each other in the endless loop which is human communication.

Specifically, the authors posit that while media and their infrastructures are becoming increasingly integral for everyday communicative practices, for each individual in the social world, ‘directly experienced social reality – the reality of the face-to-face situation – is the core of our experience of the social world’ (Couldry and Hepp, pg 46).

Regarding this argument, I suggest a qualified disagreement. From 2020 and up until the present, the Covid 19 pandemic continues to affect the amount of face-to-face interactions we engage in daily, placing limits on face-to-face interactions we can experience without endangering our health and others. This is happening on a global scale never seen before. From lockdowns overseas to the Circuit Breaker in Singapore, our face-to-face physical social contact with the community has been greatly reduced beyond individual will and control. This also consequently means that our social world is now mainly shaped by our usage of technologies as forms of communication. We turn to Zoom as a platform for online conferences, converting our workplaces and social worlds to online resources because thankfully, media offers us the possibility to communicate over time and space in spite of the occurring pandemic. This helped us to sustain social relations as individuals, as well as businesses for organizations. Singapore saw a major shift in the overall balance from direct communication to mediated communication as the regular means of sustaining social relations. Live virtual tours, which have been hardly included in our social practices, became the reality that took the place of physical learning journeys for primary schools students who have to turn to exploring Singapore through a virtual tour. This is a clear indication of a major change in human practices and even greater mediatization of our social world in the context of the pandemic.

However, I acknowledge it is undeniable that face-to-face social interaction still remains as a huge portion of our social world. Globally, we observe negative impacts on mental health due to isolation and loneliness of social distancing, where face-to-face contact with other members of society is restricted. Even through online meetings, many feel that they are unable to build quality social relationships. This highlights the sheer importance of face-to-face un-mediated communication in building and enhancing social relationships, which constitute a core part of our social world. Therefore, while the social world is constructed through media and technologies, face-to-face un-mediated communication is also fundamental to our social world.

References: Couldry, N., & Hepp, A. (2017). The social world as communicative construction. Chapter 2 in The mediated construction of reality. Cambridge, UK;Malden, MA;: Polity Press. Pp. 15-33.