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The power of China

On 11 November 2016, or otherwise known as Singles Day (1111), I purchase about $200 SGD worth of clothes on Taobao because of the 24-hour Singles Day sales. During this period, the prices of most of the items were slashed by 80-90 percent as a marketing strategy. I have then contributed to the 17.79 billion USD gross merchandise volume on Taobao. That was 2016. In 2017, the gross merchandise volume jumped to 25.3 billion USD (Statista, 2018).

This drastic growth of e-commerce in China is caused by the increasing popularity of the Internet, as well as the advancement of online payment systems and reliability of logistic services. E-commerce companies in China are starting to rise and compete against western companies such as Amazon and they have been successful (McKinsey & Company). Indeed, social media has played a huge part to boost Taobao’s sales as users are able to share about this promotion on days leading up to Singles Day. In a survey of about a thousand consumers in China, about 70% of them indicated that they had delayed their planned purchases for electronics and apparel until Singles Day in order to enjoy the promotion (Weinswig, Forbes 2017).

Not forgetting the growing number of social media users in China, boasting a total of 513 million Internet users as compared to 245 million and 101 million users respectively in the United States and in Japan in 2011 (Internet World Status). If any marketing company wants to tap into this huge consumer base, they have to look into the demographics of these social media users. 40% of these Chinese users are aged between 25 and 34. Also, social media plays a huge role on consumer decisions in China, where a product or service that has been mentioned online on social media sites will be deemed as more credible and hence more likely to be purchased. This is part of the culture of China as the Chinese trust the word-of-mouth from family, friends, and authority rather than information from advertisements (McKinsey & Company). So with this, I guess the idea is to create a product that appeals to 25-to 34-year-olds, sponsoring celebrities to use the product and give appraisals on social media in order to further influence the social network community, and let everybody else do their job. Bang on!

Originally posted by sunn-set

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MapleStory and me

The only times I’ve been a proper gamer was when I was 10 to 15 years old, where online gaming was a huge part of socialising with friends from school, since social networking sites and chat applications were not as full-blown yet. I remember coming home from school and immediately switching my desktop on, met my friends in the virtual world and going ahead to complete quests or train our avatars together while waiting for our other friends to log on. I would not say that I am a pro gamer because I always find myself taking much more time to level up as compared to my friends.

MapleStory was a huge part of my gaming life. It is a free-to-play, 2D MMORPG that is very popular in the Southeast Asia. Players get to decide the ‘job’ of the avatar at the start of the game which includes archers, magicians, warriors and assassins, and like most MMORPGs, the aim of the game is to be as high level as possible by defeating monsters and developing your avatar’s skills. Along the way groups of players can form ‘parties’ to hunt monsters and share rewards. Trading is also common to purchase rare items using the online credit: mesos. In addition, there is also a “Cash Shop” where players can purchase flashy outfits, rare weapons, or even pets for their avatar using real money.

This is what the Cash Shop looks like:

Personally, I spent about $20 on my avatar, and that to young Chloe was a painful hole in my pocket and sufficient for the game. Told you I was never a real gamer. I bought a pet panda because I have always wanted to experience having a pet (this is what I found interesting as something that I desired for in real life could be translated into the virtual world). But I immediately regretted it because I had to spend a bulk of my mesos on pet food and medication, when I could have bought more potions for my avatar instead. I also remember seeing advertisements on newspapers where people are selling 1 million mesos for $1. I was tempted but did not want to go through the trouble.

Look how cute the panda is!

Such microtransactions, or using of real money to trade, tends to disrupt the balance of the game as players can buy their way into positions of advantage, rather than through skills (De Zwart & Humphreys, 2014). Powerful weapons and clothes with better ‘stats’ can be bought with real money and with them, avatars can kill stronger monsters one with normal weapons and clothes will have difficulty killing. However, as one of the avenues of income for the game creators, such systems will most likely continue.

I also found the extensive relations to this game interesting. Hundreds of forums were created for discussions such as the best ‘stats’ for a certain job, guides for quests, recommended training grounds, etc. Myself relied heavily on these forums to develop my avatar when I found them in the later parts of my gaming life. What I loved best was that people started making lyric videos for songs using their MapleStory characters, otherwise known as Maple Movie Videos (MMV) and uploaded them on Youtube. I will end off with an example video of the MMV, which I found hilariously cute. Enjoy!

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The answer to worldwide healthcare

I am very prone to injury. So yes, personally, I have been looking up online for various rehabilitation methods and further preventive measures recommended by professional trainers who put up such information on the Internet. Although some of the information I have learnt were afterwards dismissed by doctors and physiotherapists I have consulted, I am still thankful for the immediate answers that were available and that assured me of healing prospects for my injuries when I sought for them. It is like a promise made by the Internet that, whether or not it serves what we really need, still gave us the hope that we needed at that moment. This is the effect of the power of the evolution between public health and the Internet has on the digital communities.

83% of Internet users seek health information online (Zickuhr, 2010). Using the Internet to search for health information have come in third place after browsing social networking sites and general search (Fox, 2011). Needless to say, the accessibility and speed provided by the Internet have proven much convenience in gaining more information about a certain illness. Part of the resources of information found online include blogs. There has been an increasing number of cancer blogs as doctors and patients continue the labourious war to find the cure to cancer. Other than the technical health and medical information, these blogs provided the writers with an outlet for self-expression of personal feelings when battling against the symptoms and inconveniences the illness has impacted on their body and everyday life (McCosker & Darcy, 2013). Some even include sensitive experiences such as menstrual issues and handling of adult diapers, causing a phenomenon of a ‘networked public intimacy’, as termed by McCosker and Darcy, which allows readers to have relatable and meaningful revelations as they encounter such blogs.

The Internet has paved the ways for people with illnesses to communicate, share information and provide emotional support with one another, empowering us to be competent social actors and be more involved in our own health care (Chung and Kim, 2008). Even if the information is not for personal use, knowledge can be gained to learn how to treat others as well. In Santiago, Dr. Camilo from the regional burn care unit was able to get the necessary information online to build skills and treat young patients to prevent scarring and loss of motor skills of their burnt limbs. This information was provided by Facebook through Physicians for Peace (PFP), the global healthcare training non-profit organisation (Thompson, 2016).

The role of social media and technology in sharing healthcare information globally is growing greater than ever. This may be the answer for information to reach out to health care personnel in rural countries, a patient who has just been diagnosed with cancer, or even to the girl who has just fallen over her bicycle.

 References:

Anthony McCosker & Raya Darcy (2013). Living with Cancer, Information Communication and Society

Thompson, S (2016). ‘How Social Media is Transforming Medical Care in the Developing World’, Fast Company. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/3057869/how-social-media-is-transforming-medical-care-in-the-developing-world

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crowdsourcing promotes amateurism

An interesting strategy was used by Red Sports (Singapore) to update their 28,700 followers on Instagram about the scores and stories of the national games occurring at many different venues in Singapore. As one of the major national sports journalism company in Singapore, Red Sports reports stories and photos of inter-school games of all levels – primary, secondary and inter-varsity. Earlier this year, a post was uploaded to invite readers – players, teachers, friends of players, etc. – to send in team photos with details about the game stage, winning team and game score to the editorial team where the latter will then post them on the official Instagram page @redsportssg. This method of crowdsourcing was implemented as Red Sports had announced that they had insufficient photographers to cover all the games happening, and the players themselves (or the people closest to them) have the ability and accessibility to report the information required. This was the post requesting for submissions from their online audience:

The reaction was massive. 3 days later, Red Sports posted another announcement that they have received an influx of pictures and is working to get all of them up onto their page. As expected, ‘amateur journalism’ is beginning to show as low-pixelated photos started flooding the account page. Here are some examples of the team photos posted:

As compared to the type of photos the Red Sports editorial team provides previously, or currently, with the games they have managed to cover.

Red Sports had also posted an announcement to gently remind their audience to send captions with the proper punctuation, capitalisation and grammar (since our adopted national language, Singlish, greatly compromises on these aspects of the English language) as that would help escalate the updates on the account. I did find it amusing that such a simple campaign is teaching the audience proper English as well 😊 

In general, it is obvious that Red Sports has chosen to let go of the semi-professional journalism image to better cater to their audience. I agree that this is what the audience need – ie. people who are interested in the results of the national season but do not have immediate access to information. As part of the audience group, I do like to receive information in real time, or as soon as possible, instead of waiting 4-5 days for the editing of videos and summaries to be completed. More sports competitions get coverage as well, such as the three-team round robin handball competition for secondary schools, as compared to previously when only the more popular ones such as Track and Basketball get covered. However, I do appreciate the continuous effort by the editorial team to cover major events and capturing timeless moments of perseverance and celebration.

Red Sports has indeed utilised social media well to connect with like-minded others to achieve a common goal through this method of crowdsourcing. Following the definition provided by the Merriam Webster online, where crowdsourcing is ‘the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers’, we will indeed begin to notice how social media has been employed to expedite this process, and other information-based processes, in our society.

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is that bullying?

I was trying to think of an example when I was ‘cyberbullied’ to share. It was nothing much really. I was 13 years old then, just started secondary school and the world was in the midst of shifting from phone messaging to instant messaging (IM) online. All we had to do was create an account on MSN Messenger, add your friend’s email, and tada, I can talk to the person using my Desktop and save on my (very limited) message count on my phone plan then. This is a picture of how the application looked like:

So what happened was that I was in a group conversation with my classmates online, and I decided to leave the computer on when I went to the shower as I did not want to go through the trouble of exiting and being invited again. When I came out, my mother was staring at the computer screen and asking me ‘Chloe, what is gang bang?’. I immediately shooed her away from the screen and scrolled through the conversation in the group. The following conversation happened (based on my memory, and with many more short forms used) and my mum had been typing under my account.

Boy A: chloe you want to be gang bang Boy B: HAHAHA! Girl C: wait I thought she was showering… Chloe: what is gang bang? Boy B: she’s not! you liar! Boy A started explaining what gang bang, or being raped by multiple people, means in his own terms Chloe: i am her mother Chloe: i am going report you Boy B: oooo scary Boy A: sure like we believe you

Well, I was pretty embarrassed then of what my mother had done, due to the societal requirements faced by teenagers to be cool in order to fit in and that was not my definition of being ‘cool’. She immediately told me to leave the chat group and not talk to these boys again. Of course, I understand now where she came from as she just witnessed what she thought as cyberbullying and did not want her daughter to go through such an experience. I knew my male friends did not actually mean what they say – they just thought it was ‘cool’ to know the meaning of such terms and used them to show their ‘knowledge’. I remembered that I was not bothered by their comments at all.  

This incident coincided with a point made by Boyd, 2014, who states that there is a vast difference in which teens and adults perceive conflict. Parental surveillance on their children’s social media activity often led to witnessing various forms of meanness and cruelty. They may not be able to differentiate between a snide comment posted online as a joke and an intentionally cruel jab (Boyd, 2014). Many will jump to conclusions and see their children being victimised, complicating how parents understand bullying.

The term ‘bullying’ has been used loosely by many and not understood properly, causing the masking of many more serious behaviours that should be addressed. With the rise of social media increasing the visibility of such bullying cases, we need to find interventions for those who are really crying out for help.

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Social media's influence on activism

With the rising age of technology, we have observed evolving structures and organisation of activism activities happening around the world due to the diverse use of social media by activists to spread their cause. They not only used social media to disseminate information, but as a means of mobilisation and choreographing the physical assembling of otherwise dispersed and individualised groups. (Gerbaudo, 2012)

Techno-pessimists believe that social media only provide weak, fleeting ties which are unsuitable for revolutionary action. (Morozov, 2011). It only promotes ‘slacktivism’ which creates an illusion that participants are making an impact to the world – by just joining a Facebook group, or adding a filter to their profile picture. This is not surprising in our current contemporary society which allows dealing with others without having to fully engage with them. (Gerbaudo, 2012)

However, one cannot discount the fact that the nature of social media inherently affords a channel of mobilisation. Gerbaudo describes online relationships as dynamic and complex, like liquid, allowing ‘soft’ forms of leadership using participatory style of interactions, and hence complements existing forms of gatherings. It is a vehicle that provides common identifications to trigger emotional impulse through words and videos, and when engaged appropriately, used to transform them into political passions.

The 2011 Egyptian Revolution is one example of a movement organised, with the aid of social media, by activists to oppose against the ruling of the President Mubarak’s dictatorship ruling. The hashtag #Jan25th was used on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and other photographic sites such as Flickr to disseminate real-time information to the protestors to join the demonstration on Jan 25th on Tahrir Square. As a result, a crowd of 80, 000 was gathered in Cairo on that day, showcasing the mobilising power of social media in facilitating strong but flexible connections. (Mason, 2010)

Similar social behaviour seems to be happening in Asia as well. In 2014, many spaces and territories in Hong Kong were occupied by protestors during the 79-day long Umbrella Movement. They demanded for universal suffrage and to allow Hong Kong citizens to run for the local elections. The surprising factor? An 18-year-old boy, Joshua Wong, was one of the prominent leaders who spearheaded the movement. Having joined a student activist group for three years, he led the Hong Kong Federation of Students in a political demonstration in front of the government building in Hong Kong on 26 September. The movement was named Umbrella Movement because instructions were passed on to the protestors to bring along yellow umbrellas – partly as a symbol and also to protect themselves from the pepper spray used by the police during earlier protests. Over 100, 000 people participated in the protests at any one point of time and I bet my hat that social media was outrageously used to spread the word about the Movement, seeing that youths were involved as well.  

Here are some pictures from the movement. Thought it looks too pretty for a protest.

Although the Yellow Umbrella Movement did not achieve its objective of making any changes to the political system, Joshua Wong reflects that seeds were planted as thousands of students became politically interested because of the occupation. I thought that this is an example of the impact social media can make to the younger generation. Indeed, social media has the power to unite people despite diversity.

references:

Gerbaudo, (2012). Tweets and the Streets.

Mason, Choudhury, Hofman, Watts (2010). Inferring relevant social networks from interpersonal communication. WWW '10 Proceedings of the 19th international conference on World wide web. Pages 301-310

Aldema, Candela (2017). Joshua Wong: The teenager who defied China. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/teenager-defied-china-150925085531871.html

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who can relate to this? ;)

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Politics and social media

Being an exchange student from Singapore, most of the context and case studies will be related to my home country as I am more familiar with them and I would also like to make use of this opportunity to investigate the use of social media in the different aspects of my community.

Singaporean netizens love to post their opinions online, usually on Facebook. Political affairs are, naturally, hot topics on the Internet as well, especially during the General Election held every four years. The President, Prime Minister (PM) and Ministers of Parliament (MPs) all have active Facebook accounts that updates daily. What seems like a good move to connect to their citizens proved to be a double-edge sword as many netizens poured their dissatisfaction into the comments section, some of them seemingly based on their feelings rather than actual facts.  

In 2011, Tin Pei Ling was introduced as the youngest candidate for the General Election. Then 27-year old quickly became a subject of controversy as personal pictures from her Facebook page were circulated online, where netizens doubted her competence in handling the job as an MP, alongside with her ‘extravagant lifestyle’ as assumed from a picture of her posing with a Kate Spade bag (above). Netizens were also suspicious of her credibility in becoming an MP as her husband is a civil servant of high authority.

Another Internet saga happened last year when the current President, Mdm Halimah Yacob, had a walkover to become Singapore’s first female president during the Presidential Elections as the other candidates were unqualified. Netizens were furious about the changes in the criteria for the elections and therefore resulting in their inability to vote due to the walkover. However, they chose to release their unhappiness on Mdm Halimah, finding biased fault in every part of her speech although she is actually a capable leader.

Given such circumstances, one would imagine that these two women will live in their shadows for the rest of their term. But according to their Facebook pages, which are regularly updated almost every two days, netizens seem to have softened and offered kind words and encouragement to these two leaders. It seems that Singaporeans like to actively seek to be informed about the works of their leaders and can give credit when its due. Some even poke harmless fun at Yam Ah Mee, the Returning Officer for the General Election 2011, who amused many by remaining monotonous and expressionless while reading the 24 batches of results. Fans even released remixes of his voice on YouTube. This is my favourite version 😊

With that, it is safe to say that politicians definitely know the way to get the attention of Singaporeans – through social media. This is the reason why Lee Hsien Yang, the brother of the current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, posted about his disagreement with his brother’s use of authority with regards to their late father’s property on his Facebook page only recently last year. He was aware that it would stir up a commotion within the netizens which was what he wanted to achieve – to garner distrust for the government. This family feud proved to be yet another epic political saga and with more to come as I am confident of the endless number of mistakes humans can find faults with.

As for me, call me ignorant but as long as Singapore stays safe and corruption-free, I am contented 😊

 References:

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/conscience-clear-tin-pei-ling-20110414-001731-974.html

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/tin-pei-ling-victim-gutter-journalism-20110330-014441-579.html

https://mustsharenews.com/halimah-yacob-speech/

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Is Tumblr a blog or a social network?

Let me first start by being boring and systematic by listing out the definitions of these two terms, courtesy of Google:

Blog - “a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.”

Social Network - “a dedicated website or other application which enables users to communicate with each other by posting information, comments, messages, images, etc.”

According to these definitions, Tumblr would definitely fit nicely into Social Network as we are most familiar with Tumblr being used to post/repost images of exquisitely-arranged brunch plates, quaint handicraft, favourite quotes with beautiful landscapes as the background, basically anything that is aesthetically pleasing to the eye - even up to the point when friends would show me pictures and ask “Isn’t it Tumblr-worthy?”

However, a quick search for the most popular Tumblr websites on Google shows results that are interesting and somewhat unconventional. Some sites that I found interesting include Twitter: The Comic, which showcases the interpretation of some famous tweets by comic artists, bringing colours and life out of words. Literary Starbucks does up a series of imaginary scenarios of what would happen if classic characters, such as Captain America or Harry Potter, orders from Starbucks. Also, If Paintings Could Text depicts hilarious quotes from pictures if they could communicate, which I found very amusing imagining the deadpan characters speaking them. All these Tumblr websites are curated by different, individuals (or groups) who see things with differing perspectives from the mainstream. They have used Tumblr as a platform to share their own imagination, be it through literal or pictorial means, mostly without motives of making profits. These blogs usually have their own fanbase and they usually persevere to keep producing content for them, other than enjoying the process as well. There are also, of course, a few favourite Tumblr blogs which collate hilarious images and GIFs, usually around a certain theme, that attracts a group of like-minded Tumblr users and repost them into their own blogs.

With that, I would say that the structure social network of Tumblr can be described as different clusters of nodes, where some clusters are larger than the others, but with some connections between clusters. This represents how Tumblr is a platform that allows people of similar interests to congregate together and interact with one another, while also holding views that are contrasting of those in other clusters (for example, not appreciating the jokes the authors have made out of famous art pieces in If Paintings Could Text).

In conclusion, I think that Tumblr is more of a social network rather than a blog as it allows users to creatively use the functions to appeal to different groups of people rather than the usual text-and-image-style provided by blogs.