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Digital Citizenship and Conflict

In the Digital space there is an unfortunate truth that is the same in the real world, wherever you go conflict can occur and there can be a few rude people who aim to offend for their own particular reasons. it is not uncommon to see insults used over several platforms ranging from, sexiest, racist and bullying nature. This large issue is particularly prevalent within the younger generations to the point where it is now commonplace for schools to give lectures on cyber bullying and the effects it can have. Although this issue is not only limited to younger generations as it is all the more common and more public to online influencers consistently harass other large influencers in the hopes of garnering more attention to themselves and create a bigger following off drama. Lastly, a true tragedy is the threat of online sexual offences to women in particular are under threat of sexual predators in online chatting spaces as there is the ability to remain anonymous giving the predator a false sense of power and ability to act inappropriate around women on line without proper consent. On the more fortunate side this issue is being pushed more and more to the forefront allowing for better reporting solutions to be raised.

References Ostini J & Susan Hopkins, S 2015 'Online Harassment is a Form of Violence' (Links to an external site.), The Conversation 8th April

Vitis, L & Gilmour, F 2017, Dick pics on blast: A woman’s resistance to online sexual harassment using humour, art and Instagram, 1st ed, Crime Media culture, Singapore, viewed 16 May, 2021, <https://swinburne.instructure.com/courses/33896/pages/week-10-readings?module_item_id=1919468>.

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Digital Citizenship and health education

Social media has been a common place for many communities to socialize and in doing so it has also become a place of education with the unfortunate cases of misinformation set aside, the digital space has been used to put forwards education on major issues. One of the major health issues raised in the digital space is health, obesity being one of the biggest first world issues, it was bound to occur within the digital world. Firstly, Health awareness campaigns have done there best to reach out to digital citizens through the use of ‘trends’ and ‘hashtags’ with one of the most effective campaigns ‘World heart day’ a health goal aiming to reduce the amount of  cardiovascular heart disease cases by 2025 (Howard 2018). By creating a hashtag they are better able to communicate with the digital citizens by using the most effective methods, which is translating from a normal tv advert to a social media like post, going through platforms such as: Twitter, Reddit, Instagram and more, using ‘Hashtags’ and ‘Trends’.

https://youtu.be/kDmx4jMT6NY References Howard, A 2018,'10 effective public health social media campaigns' Strategic Social Media Lab accessed 10 Jan 2019 https://strategicsocialmedialab.com/10-effective-public-health-social-media-campaigns/

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What is digital citizenship?

A Digital Citizen, is best explained by splitting the name in half, beginning by looking at ‘digital’ which is better explained as digital space, ‘Digital spaces refers to what is displayed on the screen of a digital device (e.g. laptops, computers, tablets, or smartphones). What can be displayed in digital spaces is vast and diverse, and can take countless forms.’ (Guzzetti & Lesley 2015) and then looking at Citizen ‘ a person who is a member of a particular country and who has rights because of being born there or because of being given rights, or a person who lives in a particular town or city’ (Cambridge 2021). Continuing, the term Digital Citizenship is in reference to a person within the digital sphere who is accustomed to a particular social sphere of the internet, engaging in politics, society and/or socialization through the web. Although a Digital Citizen can be defined as someone participating on the internet it is a quite diverse in the type of citizens participating, ranging through the different websites and platforms to the way people spread or communicate their beliefs in one idea or another. Twitter is a great example of how diverse a digital citizen can become, using a biography to show who they are and what they support, and being able to promote their ideas or allegiance to an idea through posts and hashtags. Lastly, still looking at Twitter within Australia for Digital citizenship, there has been a notable rise in activity politically with the use of the hashtag #AUSPOL, meaning Australian politics, showing in 2016 between February 21 and March 21 alone there was 760,000 tweets using this hashtag. (Bogle 2016)  A Digital citizen is someone who actively socializes amongst the online space for individual reasons and can be assigned to one group or multiple.

References Bogle A, 2016, ‘#auspol: The Twitter hashtag Australia can't live without’, Mashable, 21 March, viewed 20 May 2021, <https://mashable.com/2016/03/21/twitter-australia-auspol/> ‘citizen’ 2021, Cambridge Dictionary, Online edn, <https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/citizen>.

Guzzetti, B, Lesley, M, TM 2015, Handbook of Research on the Societal Impact of Digital Media, 1st edn, IGI Global, IGI-Global.

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How does Tumblr function as a digital community?

Tumblr, a massive social media platform housing multiple Cliques, hosting over five-hundred and twenty million blogs on a international scale. The platform strives to be a communication hub connecting people to their similar groups being able to express themselves through media: Text blogs, photos, Quotes, memes and more, staying true to their mission statement ‘Tumblr is where your interests connect you with your people.’.

Furthermore, Tumblr due to design has housed many online communities, providing a safe place with anonymity, allowing these groups to freely express themselves, discuss pressing issues and socialize. One group that stands out strongly is the LGBTQI+ community, and it was with Tumblr and other social media platforms that would allow this group and many others to express their grievances socially and politically. This platform would allow marginalized groups to reach out to larger groups easily online as in a Social networking study by Pew Research Center it showed that in 2012 alone 50% of the  said they used social media and 80% of people aged 18-29 using social media, the data showing how more and more people would grow up to hear the voices and grievances of these communities. (Pew Research Centre, 2012)

Secondly, the platform has also given awareness to many cultures, which may lead to some under looking the fact that Tumblr is a online culture of its own, with its very own language and difficulties, commonly identified by the use of one singular meme.

(A Tumblr Book, 2020)

This meme has been used throughout the site continuously on Tumblr due to the core users familiar with the site easily seeing the difference between themselves and new users due to the slight complexity of the websites features and  unspoken rules. The culture also being a liberal/progressive one due to the Tumblr’s branding and its reliance on pseudonymity. (A Tumbler Book, 2020) References:

McCracken, A., Cho, A., Stein, L. and Neil Hoch, I., 2020. a tumblr book. 1st ed. [ebook] Michigan: University of Michigan Press, pp.6-14. Available at: <https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/x346d608w> [Accessed 23 March 2021].

Pew Research Centre 2021, Social Networking Popular Across Globe, Pew Research Centre, viewed 24 March 2021, <https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2012/12/12/social-networking-popular-across-globe/>