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@yourthatkate-blog
BYE EVERYONE!
When you finally complete all the assessment for Digital Comms.
But then you realise it’s still week 12 and your life sucks again.
But it’s all over in a week and a half and then you can party
For about a day and then you spend your holidays like
I’ve had an absolute blast guys. Best of luck with the rest of your assessments.
-Kate
When you’ve finished with your Tumblr posts.
“Congratulations! Before you know it, you'll have made a million posts and lost all feeling in your hands.”
Cheers Tumblr, don’t quite see that one happening.
Thank you all kindly :)
WEEK 10: GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA PRACTICE- CASE STUDY CHINA
CALM DOWN, CHINA IS FINE The China-net, media censorship, and ways around the wall Hey all, It’s the last week of Digital Comms Tumblr Posts (a quiet yay anyone?) and the topic is social media in China. My group had the wonderful task of presenting on this topic- Cheers to the five people that showed up to the tutorial. Moving on… There was two videos placed on Blackboard this week, both running on very similar wavelengths in that their explanations of the Chinese response to the “firewall” makes the labelling of the concept quite questionable. A firewall sounds like something that sticks right out; there’s no mistaking it, its there are it’s a big deal. Although the firewall is the “largest digital boundary in the entire world, according to Michael Anti (who is a Chinese journalist, political blogger and this weeks Ted talker) for the Chinese population, “censorship is normal”. It’s a completely different world and the Chinese are not sitting behind laptops crying because they can’t post about political leaders and controversial events. They otherwise create ways around the wall says Anti with a dramatic rise in Puns and memes about leaders and figures they can’t speak directly about online- For example in the controversial image, Tank man (which is the nickname of an unidentified man who stood in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force) the Chinese military tanks are replaced with images of ducks. This image went viral on Sina Weibo simply because it’s entertaining to the public (Mejza, 2014). This is just one example of how the “The comedic meme seems to be the Achilles heel of the Chinese Internet censorship system as its power lies in the assumed rather than the obviously readable” (Mejza, 2014). In other words the Chinese population are not sitting around waiting for Facebook to become available to them and as Duncan Clark (co-founder of BDA China and an “expert on china and mobile”) points out: “Mark Zuckerberg would have face a very uphill battle if he walked into Beijing” (Lee, Clark & Lun, 2013). This is because the Chinese Internet is a whole new world, there’s the Internet as we know it, and then there’s the China-net. Things are simply different. For example Sina Weibo, or the Chinese hybrid of Twitter & Facebook (as well as the most popular social media site in China), turns our version of posting mere thoughts and feelings into a micro blogging platform. This is because 140 characters to us is approximately 30 words but as each character is a word in the Chinese language, this equals 140 words which is quite a considerable difference. And January 28th this year saw Sina Weibo dropping any restrictions on word limits for posts, something Twitter doesn’t yet feel comfortable doing here as it’s a feature that makes it stand out from its major competitor, Facebook (BBC News, 2016). In its last financial report Sina Corp said the 140 character limit has been a “beautiful constraint” however through market research its been recognised that people on sites like Twitter are screen shotting images of text in order to post over the word count (BBC News, 2016). In other words the Chinanet is taking information from our Internet to make there’s better. So to conclude the perception that the great firewall has the Chinese population trapped, suffering in metaphorical handcuffs waiting for the Internet to become available to them, in my opinion, is absolute bollocks.
REFERENCES:
• Anti, M 2011, 'Behind the great firewall of China', TedTalks viewed 20 April 2013 <http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_anti_behind_the_great_firewall_of_china.html>.• BBC News 2016, ‘Sina Weibo ends 140- character limit ahead of Twitter’, Veiwed 10 May 2016, <http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35361157>.• Lee, K, Clark, D & Lun K 2013, ‘How social media is changing China and Asia’, DLD Conference, Youtube videos viewed 3 May 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG3z2ucaR6A>.• Mejza, 2014, ‘Memes vs Censors in China’, US-China Today, Viewed 10 May 2016, <http://www.uschina.usc.edu/w_usct/showarticle.aspx?articleID=19424&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1>.
When people are like “You don’t even have exams.” not understanding what that makes week 11 and 12 feel like.
But first, coffee.
Current Mood
10th of June, come at me
Playing Mario Kart
Me: That's a banana.
Brain: Drive directly into it.
Me: It's the last lap and I'm about to win why would I do that.
Brain: u gotta.
The National Space Invaders Championship held by Atari in 1980 -
via reddit
WORK OR PLAY?
WEEK 10: SOCIAL GAMING, PLAYING THE CROWD
Hi all, Second last blog post and I have to admit, I’m not particularly experienced in or fond of the gaming industry. No, I most certainly do not help the stereotype that all gamers are male in the slightest. I do however remember growing up playing Space Invaders on our old PC computer, and having the occasional game of Mario Kart on the Play Station 4 with my brothers. While all these experiences were purely leisurely activities revolving around entertainment and bonding, the gaming industry, as we know it today has changed in both the horizontal and vertical sense. Vertically, there’s literally more games and mediums to play said games than ever, however, today I’d prefer to focus on the expansion of games in the horizontal sense. Horizontally, the gaming industry has changed dramatically. Today the affordances of games allow any old Tom, Dick or Harry to contribute to a game simply by playing it, allowing for the creators to extract the relevant data. Why bother? Game modders, or those who make changes to games by code and content modification often “take creative risks that the creators eschews” (Goggin, 2011, p. 362). This blurring of the lines between play and providing a free service to game creators is often referred to as playbour. Whether or not this boarders on exploitation is however purely a matter of opinion (De Zwart & Humpherys, 2014). Which brings me to my opinion, which is based merely on a week’s education on the topic so bare with me. I believe that playbour is perfectly acceptable, even beneficial. It can certainly help game developers tweak and adapt games to make them more enjoyable to the public. Furthermore, the use of playbour may very well allow developers to keep the cost of the game down, a win for the public. (Guys, I hear making games is expensive.) As Goggin (2011) explains playbour is purely based on the notion that individuals view the tasks as an extension of play or get some entertainment from them. If they didn’t want to do the tasks they wouldn’t; no money means there’s no contracts, no overbearing bosses, no consequences.
Side note alert!
Just FYI, Goggin (2011) makes an extremely interesting observation that the once segregated spheres of work and play have come together not only in a play-work sense like the gamer example, but too in a work-play sense with workplaces wanting employees to be actively enjoying themselves within the workplace. This is being seen more and more in contemporary workplaces that are set up in a way that fosters fun within the workplace. Google Headquarters is a common example of this with millions of dollars spent in design that prompts “serious play, deep teamwork, and a holistically engaged staff” (Perkins, 2011).
REFERENCES: • De Zwart, M & Humpherys, S 2014, ‘The Lawless Frontier of Deep Space: Code as Law in EVE Online’, Cultural Studies Review, Vol 20, Issue 1, pp. 77-99, Retrieved 10 May 2016, <https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-5545817-dt-content-rid-29072825_2/courses/2016-HS1-MDA20009-213452/de%20Zwart%20%26%20Humphreys_The%20Lawless%20Frontier%20of%20Deep%20Space_Code%20as%20Law%20in%20EVE%20Online_CSR_2014.pdf>. • Goggin, J 2011, ‘Playbour, Farming and Leisure’, Ephemera: Theory and politics in organisation, Vol 11, Issue 4, pp. 357- 368, Retrieved 10 May 2016, < http://www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/11-4goggin.pdf>. • Perkins, W 2011, ‘What schools can learn from Google, IDEO and Pixar’, Fastcodesign, Retrieved 10 May 2016, <http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664735/what-schools-can-learn-from-google-ideo-and-pixar>.
WEEK 9: PUBLIC HEALTH CAMPAIGNS AND COMMUNITIES
NEW DATA, NEW APPROACHES Social media making it easier for researches to get insight into mental health Hey guys, This week I’ve decided to give social media and little bit of a pat on the back as we discussed the niceties its affordances allow aiding mental health and illness. That’s right, I’m going to side with the masses this time and talk about some of the benefits of social media in the field of public health campaigns, as well as general mental health in the community. Mental illness is predominantly something that is hard for individuals to talk about, particularly with those they do not know. This makes for a hard experience to obtain data to research the topic. However, the rise in social media makes collecting data easily obtainable. By searching through hashtags and key terms in status updates, researchers can observe peoples attitudes on mental health. These insights can further help to change the approaches and dynamics of public health campaigns to content that will most likely resonate with viewers. InfoXchange (2015) stated the following on the topic: “The ability to quickly analyse large amounts of online data through algorithms can give meaningful insight into the mental state of individuals, groups, and even entire countries and this can be analysed with relation to time or specific events.” In other words, the data is always going to be there for researchers. Therefore trends can be measured, such as people’s attitudes towards mental illness before and after a celebrity has passed away due to mental illness; it would of coarse be hypothesised there would be some kind of spike in content. Many medical practitioners engage in mental health data research via hashtag searches on social media such as Twitter. Reavley and Pilkington (2014) did this over a seven week period, searching hashtags such as #depression and #schizophrenia in the hopes of finding community attitudes and stigmas towards the two conditions. The pair found that indididuals with mental illness tend to utalise social networks to abtain information, support and raise awareness (Reavley and Pilkington, 2014). From this readily available data set, new approaches are available to mental health practitioners in the support and treatment of those who suffer from a mental illness (InfoXchange, 2015). Campaigns such as the ‘I Will Listen’ campaign are justified online using hashtags and terms that give them the best chance of reaching audiences who need/could make use of them. The campaign that aims for users to let people with a mental illness know that there’s help all around them, can monitor its progress and retract data via its hashtag #Iwilllisten (Yuhas. 2014). This saves time and money on data collection and allows for more to be spent on new, innovative approaches to the treatment of mental health conditions. REFERENCES: • InfoXchange, 2015, ‘Social Media- the good news for mental health’, Retrieved 3 May 2016, <https://www.infoxchange.net.au/news/social-media-good-news-mental-health>. • Reavley, N & Pilkington, P 2014, ‘Use of Twitter to monitor attitudes towards depression and schizophrenia: an exploratory study’, US National Library of Medicine, DOI: 10.7717/peerj.647, Retrieved 4 May 2016, < http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4217192/>. • Yuhas 2014, ‘I Will Listen: How Social Media Can Diminish the Stigma of Mental Illness’, Scientific American, Retrieved 4 May 2016, < http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/i-will-listen-how-social-media-can-diminish-the-stigma-of-mental-illness/>.
Instagram is a platform for people who, if not actively happy, are at least moderately invested in aggregating the happier moments of their life.
Keiles, 2015
Ripper quote from the lecture yesterday
WEEK 8: CROWD SOURCING IN TIMES OF CRISIS RADIO STILL KING Afternoon folks, Well wasn’t this week so naturally a disaster maybe we should all post something about it on Twitter? Sorry, that’s the best I can do on this dreary hump day afternoon. Moving on… While this week was all about praising social media and it’s affordances that allow for the dissemination of information in a crisis, the ABC, or Australia’s “official emergency broadcaster” deems radio to still be the primary source of communication in a disaster (Posetti, 2012, p. 34). But, why? I can hear all you media kids asking… While social media affords the posting of information to large audiences, it has many limitations surrounding its breadth and integrity. Algorithms are in place making information only visible to those who are in constant contact with the user, limiting the mediums ability to label itself a one-to-many medium, or a broadcast medium. Not to mention radio can often be the remaining source one might have in times of need. This gives the medium reason enough to sit highly upon its throne as a resilient, durable (to an extent of coarse), far-reaching technology that makes use of wireless signal allowing for a portable device for the user (Posetti, 2012, p. 38). Social media could very well be cancelled out due to an overload in traffic as well as issues with signal due to the location and/or the physical lines being damaged. Smartphone batteries too will hinder the user in times of disaster, with the new Apple Iphone6 lasting the user a mere 10 hours and this being advertised as “long battery life” (Buckles, 2016). Since its birth in 1920, radio as a medium has always embodied a tell-it-how-it-is way of broadcasting. This can be seen in the famous Orson Wells War of the Worlds disaster of 1938 where people believed a script being read as actual reality. In later years Welles revealed in many interviews that while the broadcast caused mass hysteria in viewers, it made him a little happy to teach listeners a lesson about believing everything they hear on the radio (Schwartz, 2015). However, the broadcast resulted in new radio regulations (such as channel identification every half an hour) that put it back on the map as a medium you can trust. Furthermore, it’s in these times of crisis in which people arguably need their information to come from a credible source the most. This is where radio could often have its time in the limelight. According the ABC, “the message is clear… and the audience has a reasonable idea of what to expect” (Posetti, 2012, p. 38). Face checking occurs to uphold the reputation of companies and journalists, whereas online you might get fact checking in the form of ‘my mate’s cousins dad worked with a guy who used to live in the town that the fire’s in’. References: • Buckles, B 2016, ‘Business Smartphones With the Longest Battery Life: 2016 Edition’, Business News Daily, Retrieved 27 April 2016, < http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7200-smartphones-best-battery-life.html>. • Posetti, J & Lo, P 2012, ‘The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication, The Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Vol 27, No. 1, Retrieved 27 April 2015, < https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-5545813-dt-content-rid-29072878_2/courses/2016-HS1-MDA20009-213452/Posetti%20%26%20Lo_Twitterisation%20of%20ABCs%20Emergency%20%26%20Disaster%20Communication_2012.PDF>. • Swartz, B 2015, ‘The Infamous “War of the Worlds” Broadcast Was a Magnificent Fluke’, The Smithsonian, Retrieved 27 April 2015, < http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/infamous-war-worlds-radio-broadcast-was-magnificent-fluke-180955180/?no-ist>.
ABC national social media co-ordinator, Ping Lo was asked questions for AJEM about ABC’s experiences during the Queensland Floods.
I found this question quite interesting as it focuses on how aspects of Twitter can be problematic in times of crisis.
Thanks Brooke, great to see other people swaying away from technologically deterministic approaches :)
Coming back to work after a long weekend.
How I feel today.
WEEK 7: TROLLING AND SOCIAL MEDIA CONFLICT (DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP WEEK #3) TOP DOWN PROCESSING Why we shouldn’t rush to third party organisations to deal with trolling Hey all, Week seven and we’re finally at the tail end of our three-week mini digital citizenship course. What have we leaned so far? To recap, week one (or week five in Swinburne terms) equalled the logistics of digital citizenship and how online participation could lead to political engagement that is more likely to resonate with the younger generation (AKA us). Week two (or six) spurred discussion around the affordances of social media, such as hashtags and search functions, allowing for a vocal balance in social activism. The use of such affordances allows one to reach contacts beyond their immediate networking group and makes it harder for the ruling regime to dominate. Now to this week: Anthony, while delivering this week’s lecture reminded us to constantly take the benefits of social media with a grain of salt, and to be careful not to dive straight into approaches that may be deemed technologically deterministic. This is something I wish to discuss today in response to this weeks topic of Trolling and social media conflict. My tutorial group this week discussed what measures they would each put in place or already existing protocols they would follow in order to decrease the high amount of trolling and cyber bullying that transpires online. Cyber bullying can include anything from hurtful messages, imitating others, excluding others, humiliating others as well as nasty online gossip and chat (Children’s ESafety Commissioner, 2016) The same responses occurred over and over again: • Report it to Facebook (or the site’s administrator) • Tell a parent/teacher • Ignore it And Finally: • Report it to the Children’s E-safety commissioner In theory, this seems like a wonderful idea, being able to direct children to a higher entity to deal with their problems and kicking those trolls to the curb. However, there’s definitely massive downfalls in directing children to a third party which include: • You must first go through the site administrator; In order to make use of the Children’s E Safety Commissioner you must first go through the sites administrator. Using Facebook as an example, they first have to bypass the trolling as not harmful enough to act upon, and only then can the defeated child may go to the E Safety Commissioner. • You are making children dwell on a horrible experience; by placing a requirement for the victim to do all the work as far as flagging posts, stating what sort of harassment it is and what severity level the trolling resides at, is a process that lengthens out a traumatic experience the child would most likely rather avoid. • There’s a time delay; Going through the site administrator means one is guaranteed a response in 24 hours; often this isn’t quick enough and the bully has moved on to someone else or other forms of trolling. With less than 12 months in operation, it’s yet to be determined how effective the eSafety Commissioner is when dealing with a tidal wave of complaints and assessing their individual merit, especially when there are so many different ways children bully one another (Turner, 2014). It too often becomes much easier for the victim to take matters into their own hands, responding to trolls off the cuff, getting frustrated and emotionally defeated with no third party that can give them the quick, worry-free response they deserve, one that is not subjective to the particular staff member they get on the day. References: • Childrens eSafety Commissioner, 2016, ‘Cyber bullying’, Office of the Childrens eSafety Commissioner, Retrieved 19 April 2016, [https://www.esafety.gov.au/esafety-information/esafety-issues/cyberbullying] . • Turner, A 2014, ‘Children’s e-Safety Commissioner aims to clean up the net, yet again’, Sydney Morning Herald, Retrieved 23 April 2016, [http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/gadgets-on-the-go/childrens-esafety-commissioner-aims-to-clean-up-the-net-yet-again-20141203-11z8l3.html] .
