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Cultural life and digital media

Fundamental to the understanding of the concept of culture is that it refers to the way of life of a certain group of people. This means that it is an aspect of various faces of a people’s life. However, in making a relation between digital media and culture, this post will narrow the focus to mainly two ideas, of streaming music, meaning listening to music on the internet and online shopping. First, the reason for choosing to focus on music is because it plays an important role in various cultures of bringing people together. According to Thomes (2013), online music service corporations have monopolised this new way of listening to music since physical sales of music have dropped significantly at the turn of the 21st century. By monopolising this new way of listening to music, which operates digitally, digital music service corporations such as Spotify utilised digital platforms to sell this music (Marshall, 2015). Spending huge amounts of money to promote music streaming sites, such corporations also use social media sites to promote artists whose music they are selling. Because, today’s youth spends a lot of its time online, irrespective of their ethnicity they normalise the act of listening to American artists music. Due to there being so much American music on the phones of the people who consume music and on the radio, when you listen to artists from South Africa, sometimes is difficult to differentiate between the music of both artists from this side and USA because it sounds similar or the same. This is also due to unconsciously internalising things from the music they consume.

On the other hand, the easy access people have to music has also changed the way they listen to it. Unlike in the past whereby people had to queue at music stores just to get their hands on the CD of their favourite artists, these days because there are so many artists and the industry is saturated, people listen to an album for about a month and starts searching for something new to listen to. This has been evident from my personal life and those of my peers. Although the availability of music digitally has made it convenient for people to access it and on the other hand anyone being able to put their music online, it has however decreased the quality of music that is available. It has negatively affected the culture of people appreciating music and this could be one of the reasons for the record sales drop. For instance, in South Africa the last artist to have sold enough records considered gold status in hours was Brenda Fassie until the break of Zahara. Zahara’s success is due to her originality that is hardly found in the music, it is mostly found on digital spaces as artists try to make songs similar to the big songs playing on the radio in the country or trending on social media. 

Second, digital media has changed the way people engage with consumption spaces. Instead of going to shopping malls to buy groceries, which also leads to watching movies and other things that take place in such spaces, online shopping has changed the culture of society of going to malls and enjoying such consumption spaces. This does not however take away the fact that many people still go to malls for shopping but it makes a point that shopping has been made easy for professionals with busy schedules. Whatever the type of clothing or food they are looking for it can be found on the internet. For instance there are online clothing stores like Spree and Superbalist which deliver your goods at your doorstep. According to Haubl and Trifts (2000) online shopping stores have been designed in such a way that what appears on the screens of shoppers is according to their preferences. In support of the claim made by Haubl and Trifts, Lee and Lin (2005) state that the design of online shopping stores contributes to the satisfaction of customers. For instance, when you log in on the website of Spree, there are categories such as men, women, shoes and so forth. This is not like going to the mall and having to go through clothes that do not fit your style before you find what you like. Online shopping has made shopping to be efficient unlike it is traditionally thought of as something done the whole day. Shopping being made by society to seem as appropriate when only done by women, men can do shopping too online without the knowledge of no one. Therefore online shopping can be seen as redefining gender stereotypical practices as men can spend time online sourcing for clothes and sneakers.

On the other hand, according to Miyazaki and Fernandez (2001) governments have alerted people about the risk of security when it comes to online shopping. They state that both, new and old users of internet shopping are at the risk of being scammed online. However, seeing the success of online stores such as Superbalist and Spree, it seems that people are not as afraid of online fraud as they continue to buy various things online. There are many other online shopping and selling outlets such as eBay; however the difference with eBay is that your account details are not required. Although it is a valid point to be taken into consideration that one runs at the risk of being scammed by engaging in online shopping, online shopping seems to have been something unavoidable since everything was being digitalised. The selling of music on digital spaces comes after the phenomenon of online grocery shopping. This is proven by Haubl and Trifts (2000) writing about it in the year of 2000 which presents the idea that it was something that had been happening for some time whereas online music corporations such as iTunes started in 2001. The government in South Africa has since 2016 required every individual to be given access to online shopping by their banks before making any purchases online for safety purposes.

Bibliography

Haubl, G. and Trifts, V., 2000. Consumer decision making in online shopping environments: The effects of interactive decision aids. Marketing science, 19(1), pp.4-21.

Lee, G.G. and Lin, H.F., 2005. Customer perceptions of e-service quality in online shopping. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 33(2), pp.161-176.

Marshall, L., 2015. ‘Let's keep music special. F-Spotify’: on-demand streaming and the controversy over artist royalties. Creative Industries Journal, 8(2), pp.177-189.

Miyazaki, A.D. and Fernandez, A., 2001. Consumer perceptions of privacy and security risks for online shopping. Journal of Consumer affairs, 35(1), pp.27-44.

Thomes, T.P., 2013. An economic analysis of online streaming music services. Information Economics and Policy, 25(2), pp.81-91.

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Well, online fraud was unavoidable. You pretty lucky if you ask me, you could have been a victim of a heist. Atleast this way, no one gets to see anyone. 

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‘‘Whose Job is it to do the shopping? Men or Women?’‘

The One who needs the clothes!

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The Political Life and digital media

The aim of this post is to show how digital media is in relation to political life be it from an individual’s perspective or from a society’s perspective. In achieving this objective the post will focus on digital surveillance. According to Lyon and Zureik (1996) surveillance refers to the collection and assessment of personal data. They state that this can be practiced by the government and other digital media corporations. In contemporary society the digital media corporations referred to by Lyon and Zureik include a variety of corporations such Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp to mention a few. People knowing so much about how to create content that engages the audience and what does not work on social media, one might expect them to also know that their digital media activity is constantly under surveillance. However, the sad truth is that many people who use different forms of digital media on a daily basis have so little information regarding their online regulation. On the other hand, this could be as a result of digital media corporations not being transparent with their customers as it is argued by Keller (2016). 

Keller (2016) argues that in the past Facebook used to engage in the collection of data, based on the location of people’s smartphones without any restrictions whatsoever regarding what can be done with that information. However, due to Facebook being challenged on the basis of people’s information security, Facebook has become a bit transparent about the fact that people’s information will be used or sold to advertising companies. Hence when one is online, one would sometimes see adverts that are aligned with what is mentioned in their interests section or pages they liked on Facebook. As Keller further state that although people have  come to know what is being done with their information however not having any control on how it is used, this could be seen as another form of exploitation as they are not paid from the money Facebook makes from their information. On the other hand, with digital corporations having access to all of your information, this undermines the idea of online privacy since your information is just another commodity available to be sold to anyone who can afford the price. For instance, on a small scale, a person who just started a business and wants to promote it online can run a Facebook advert. When they check the analytics and insights they can see who liked and engaged with their post. By doing this they are given access to the information of the people in the catalogue of the interests wanted by the advertiser even if some of those people’s accounts have high privacy settings. Based on this understanding, the idea of privacy is highly contestable when it comes to digital media. 

Uldam (2016) holds that, any kind of surveillance is often used as a means of control. This is true given the algorithms used by social media sites particularly Facebook as mentioned by Keller (2016) that they are also used for social experiments. In one case Keller states that Facebook used a tactic during the elections in the USA which resulted in more than three hundred thousand or more people showing up at voting stations to vote. In this way Facebook had so much control in influencing how people thought about voting. Although people did not know that were subjects of an experiment, from the perspective of Keller’s argument, Facebook could be seen as a necessary evil. The reason for this is that it increased democratic participation in the American society since voting is central to a regime being considered to be democratic or authoritarian (Heywood, 2013).

With the newly found knowledge that all individuals are under the surveillance of digital corporations and that the government also has access to my online activity, it somehow makes me to be self-policing. For instance, due to there being instalments of CCTV cameras in Johannesburg CBD, crime rate has decreased significantly. This is fundamentally due to people being aware of the fact that they are being watched (Wakefield, 2014). There is more scepticism concerning what I post, how and when I comment. Not that there is anything illegal that I partake in online but the thought of being watched lingers in my head and now I can anticipate what kinds of adverts might appear on my timeline.

Surveillance being part and parcel of digital media as relating to politics, from a perspective of pure politics surveillance in digital media is practiced by government as mentioned above. Yuan-zhao and Zhong (2004) state that the internet in China is offered by the Chinese government and the corporation in charge of giving people access to the internet is called ChinaNet. This means that ChinaNet collects personal data of individuals on behalf of the government. The government is always up to date with the online activity of its citizens. Unlike in other parts of the world such as the United States of America where capitalism is rife, privately owned digital corporations like Facebook can be said to be collecting data for their own economic interests but obligated to give it to the government when necessary as argued by Keller (2016). However, in China the government is hands on when it comes to the surveillance of its citizens. This is to a certain extent problematic as Uldam (2016) states that social media is used for social mobilization. In countries like China whereby the government has full control of the internet, challenging power from above using social media can be difficult since the government can shut down the internet if it feels threatened. By virtue of this, as compared to South Africa whereby social media was central in the recent student uprisings (Bosch, 2016), with the understanding of how the internet works in China, it seems highly difficult for there to be a similar use of social media. This in conclusion, shows digital media can help in reordering structures of society in particular changing the status quo.

Bibliography

Bosch, T. 2016. ‘Twitter activism and youth in South Africa: the case of #RhodesMustFall. Information, Communication & Society, published online 16 March, pp. 1-12.

Heywood, A. 2013. Politics (4th edition). New York: Palgrave Foundations.

Lyon, D. and Zureik, E. eds., 1996. Computers, surveillance, and privacy. U of Minnesota Press.

Keller, A. 2016. ‘Is Facebook evil? The Technoskeptic, https://thetechnoskeptic.com/facebook-evil1/

Uldam, J. 2016. ‘Corporate management of visibility and the fantasy of the post-political: Social media and surveillance’. New Media & Society 18, pp. 201-219.

Yuan-zhao, M.I.A.O. and Zhong, M.E.N.G., 2004. Resolvent of Two Connections to Carnets and ChinaNet for Campus Network [J]. Computer and Modernization, 1: 1-20.  

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When you thought you did a good job at censoring the information you posted online but now you’re just like Justine, a trending hashtag. 

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When you dont have the same problems as the rest of the world because China censors your whole life. 

[digitallyyours-world-blog]

When you find out that facebook is making money off the information you provided to them but you’re still a broke student.

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Personal life and the digital media

In showing how personal life relates to digital media, I will specifically focus on digital dating. Not only will this piece of writing point out the good about digital media when it comes to people finding dates but it will also point out the bad that comes with it. It will look at a dating site called Tinder. According to Duguay (2017) Tinder is a dating application designed for heterosexual beings that are looking for potential dating partners. Its success is also due to the time of the smartphones, in which people can do most of their interaction with the outside world from the comfort of their homes. According to Suatter et al (2010) digital dating refers to using websites that will provide you with the data of people who have the potential of being your partners that you can be in contact with. Digital media has transformed peoples personal lives with regard to dating in a tremendous way as people had to go to places such as bars and restaurants to meet new people. However, with the introduction of this form of digital media, relationships are formed even before people physically meet. This links with Castell’s (2013) idea of time and space contraction in a sense that people do not have to travel long distances to interact with others.

From the above-mentioned idea of space and time contraction, digital media in relation to relationships is convenient. Although it might sound like a weak argument to make, especially with the negative side of Tinder, such digital platforms offer a sense of security for all people who use it as they do not have to always physically meet in order to know about the character of the person at the other end. According to Merkel and Richardson (2000: 187) ‘‘internet-based ‘chat rooms’ where people find others to converse with, the ubiqu’ity of the internet in contemporary society is quickly becoming impossible to ignore’’. This is true especially considering that most of the youth have centred their lives on their smartphones in which most of their information is stored, especially in their social media sites accounts. By going through a person’s social media timeline you can get a feel of whom or what kind of a person they are. This brings one to the idea of authenticity which has been an issue when it comes to digital dating.

Duguay (2017) holds that Tinder requires one to have a Facebook account in order to use the application. The importance of providing one’s Facebook information or linking their Facebook with Tinder account is to ensure authenticity, making sure people are who they say they are. However, I find this to be problematic due to so much fraudulent activities online. There are many fake accounts on all social media platforms be it Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, even on Tinder. The Tinder system is flawed and puts people in danger as it only requires an active Facebook account to be linked with Tinder to verify authenticity. Authentic people go on Tinder to find someone whom they can build a relationship with, while there are those who succeed, there are still many of those who fail. The failure does not only end with them not being able to find their perfect match but in many instances, it ends with female user being sexually harassed, violated and trafficked. According to The Huffington Post (2014), in Ireland there have been many cases of sexual trafficking due to females falling prey to those who have used fake accounts on Tinder. Due to such instances, the question becomes how do social or digital media corporations ensure the safety of users? Even if it might be suggested that people use their identity or social security number, this will inevitably put their personal security at risk.

Merkel and Richardson (2000) argue that the internet has brought about and promotes a new civilization. This form of civilization they state, it exists on the computer screens. With the current society that has come to use their smartphones for almost everything that requires digital media, it is safe to say this civilization exists on their smartphone screens. This has had a significant impact on the relations of people since interactions have started predominantly taking place online. Social relations have become liquid to a point whereby online interaction has become blunt and disrespectful. For example, on the Instagram page called Tinder Nightmares, screenshots of conversations people had on Tinder show how social relations especially online, have lost so much value in that a big number of men get on digital platforms for sexual pleasures. There is a screenshot of a conversation whereby the male figure started a conversation by saying ‘‘wanna fuck?’’. Unfortunately, this is not the only case where it has been reported or exposed. Women are prone to sexual harassment online, it has become more common than one thinks.

If women are not being sexually violated or harassed on tinder, they are being trafficked. According to the UN’s Global Report on human trafficking as stated in The Huffington Post (2014), 58% of all cases are of sexual trafficking and mostly are women who are implicated. In as much as it is not every woman who gets on Tinder that gets trafficked, Tinder as a digital space which is easily manipulated like other social media sites, especially regarding authenticity, has made room for women to be criticized based on how they look an made to feel as if they worth less and do not deserve to be loved. In one particular case, a guy starts a conversation with a woman by making negative remarks about her breasts as it seen in this screenshot.

In conclusion, it is important to mention which people are most likely to use dating applications like Tinder. According Suatter et al (2010) any individual that is looking for a partner is at the risk of using digital dating applications. However, the catch is that he or she must have internet access and digital gargets that enable him or her to get on these platforms. It seems to me that digital media also has a sense of class, not everyone can afford to use it. For example, people always talk about how Instagram uses so much data and that most of the posts are about people showing off their perceived ‘‘expensive lives’’.

Bibliography

Castells, M., 2013. Communication power. OUP Oxford.

Duguay, S. 2017. ‘Dressing up Tinderella: interrogating authenticity claims on the mobile dating app Tinder’. Information, Communication & Society 20.3.

Merkel, E. R and Richardson, R. A. 2000. Digital Dating and Virtual Relating: Conceptualizing Computer Mediated Romantic Relationships. Family Relations. 49: 187-192.

Sautter J. M., Tippett R. M. and Morgan S. P. 2010. The Social Demography of Internet Dating in the United States. Social Science Quarterly. 91: 554-5

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When you just met someone on Tinder and they drop the sex bomb.

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Not every inbox chat on Tinder ends in honeymoon, so people fall prey to human traffickers.