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WEEK 16 | Inyang Essien

I began this class believing that I knew all there was to know about social media. Just download an application, create an account, and interact. With each class, I was introduced to a new concept involving social media.

    I now understand dynamics of social presence, and how your perception of yourself online varies from the perception that others have of you. These perceptions can vary from platform. Learning that social media is not something that is exclusive to technology was eye-opening. Older generations are convinced that increased cell phone usage and social media relations are due to the growing use of technology. When I learned that social media has been around in several forms for hundreds of years, I was surprised!

    Having awareness of what is happening in social media and what terminology is associated with it, has made me a better version of myself. With this knowledge I am able to educate my peers as well as use social media to its maximum capacity.

    I had a hard time expressing my thought and ideas, as I am a very reserved individual. This course forced me to leave that behind and express exactly what i believe in and how I feel. I enjoyed that. I am learning that I can be outgoing and will continue to use social media to explore that side of myself.

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WEEK 14 | Inyang Essien

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia with an open-source format. “Volunteers” from all over the world are allowed to edit and update information on any of the topics on the site. This can be potentially problematic. Open-source sites can fall victim to individuals who want to post opinions, rather than fact. Most of the errors are caught by designated reviewers. Somewhat similar to Wikipedia is Yahoo Answers, which is a community-driven question and answer site. The answers are written by any and everybody, but there is no mediation. You take what you get when it comes to those answers.

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WEEK 13 | Inyang Essien

WikiLeaks is informative, but not always accurate. Oftentimes, a passion post is submitted and is circulated all over the internet in no time. Our government hasn’t put any restrictions on the site, but it’s not consistent worldwide. China has an ever-growing list of censored sites and WikiLeaks is on the list.

    Limiting free-speech would mean that it’s no longer free speech. Free-speech allows a range of opinions and ideas to be shared, whether positive or negative. The only instance in which “free speech” would be limited is when the statement is harmful or has the potential to do so. Internet bullying, and threats are the biggest examples.

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WEEK 12 | Inyang Essien

Sometimes, social media is creepy. Facebook is very well developed in the creepy department. There is a feature that proactively recognizes your face in photos that were uploaded and suggests that you tag yourself. Sometimes, until you see your face staring back at you in the image, you were completely unaware of its existence on the internet. When features such as these become apparent, shock factor sets in before we must accept it as part of social media.

Facebook is very advanced in surveillance. Let’s say you meet someone at a grocery store and engage them in conversation, but get cold feet and don’t get to exchange numbers, Facebook is there to save the day. By the time you get home, that person will be one of the “friends you may know”. Very creepy, very stressful.

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WEEK 11 | Inyang Essien

Social media is all about who is doing what and who is watching it happen. We follow celebrities to know what they wore to the awards show the night before or to see which new country they’re travelling to. We have issues when Google tells us which restaurant we just walked past, but will still geo-tag our every move. If we cut back the government’s ability to track us, some of those features will not be available for us to use either.  Moderate doses of surveillance.

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WEEK 10 | Inyang Essien

Vimeo is a platform for creators to upload, host, and stream high-quality videos. Per Vimeo’s career page, “You want to do meaningful work in a creative and inspired environment. Join our passionate team filled with brilliant brains (and sparkling personalities).” The page paints the picture of a fun, carefree environment in which people creative people work.

Upon reviewing the job description for “creative lead”, I would conclude that Vimeo is a mostly pleasant place to work. Most of the reviews consisted of no complaints. Current and past workers praised the company culture, benefits, and work, life balance. As far as negative reviews, there was nothing consistent. There were a few scattered reviews pertaining to the commute and not being able to advance in the company. Vimeo was true to their word!

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WEEK 9 | Inyang Essien

WhatsApp is a messenger and Voip service owned by Facebook. It runs on cell phones but can be accessed by desktop as well. Facebook, is a social networking site that services a multitude of features. As owners of WhatsApp, it would be simple to apply some of those features to WhatsApp. China is doing a lot to sensor the sites that can be accessed by their internet, and parts of WhatsApp are on that list. As a user of WhatsApp, I haven’t seen anything that should be censored.

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XTRA CRED  | Inyang Essien

HIPPA is a very serious policy that umbrellas the health system. Disclosure of anybody’s medical condition without their consent is illegal and punishable by law. The same rules would apply online.

    Over-sharing is easy to do on social media. Sometimes something good happens to us and in our excitement, we rush to share with our online friends, sometimes spilling too many beans. Sometimes the over-sharing involves our children. Some parents publicize when their children have misbehaved and what they chose to do to discipline them. Other parents may post embarrassing photos or stories of their children. Although they are just children, we know that everything that’s posted on the internet is here to stay.  It’s possible that one of those posts could negatively affect a child’s relationship or job prospect. It’s important to be mindful of what goes on the internet because of where it could end up.

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WEEK 7 | Inyang Essien

Pepe the Frog is a meme of shaky origins, but great online success. The original “Pepe” differs in appearance from the character we know today. Although the new drawing surfaced around 2009, nobody knows exactly when the first version was created because it was never archived. Today, if you stay on the internet for long enough, you will find a version of Pepe that embodies your mood or elicits some sort of response from you. As of 2016, the meme was added to the Alt-Right database of symbols, yikes. The meme features a frog with a range of emotions that are all relatable; this attributed to the internet success. It became so popular that a hate group decided to ruin it for everybody. Internet popularity is power.

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WEEK 6 | Inyang Essien

Conservative political commentator and former Fox News host, Tomi Lahren, maintains an online presence that both supports her political agenda and insults marginalized groups. She uses lot of hateful and demeaning language to drive her points home. “Trump wants to build the wall to protect Americans and American interests. Democrats want open borders to protect illegals and illegal interests. See the difference? #BuildThatWall“. Tomi’s identity is mostly centered around Conservative agenda.

    On the other hand, Ellen Degeneres, a comedian and television host has a twitter page riddled in jokes, pranks, and motivational phrases. When I visit Ellen’s page, I look forward to seeing something that will make me chuckle. Ellen’s identity is centered around establishing happiness in her viewers. Most of her tweets are video clips of her show. https://twitter.com/TheEllenShow/status/1072628540888104960

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WEEK 5 | Inyang Essien

Artsy is an online source of art collection education. Art enthusiasts, are lovers, amateur artists and even revered artists peruse the site for pieces that capture their eye. There are smaller communities within this community, such as collectors of a specific type of rare art. They all come together to appreciate and purchase timeless pieces.

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WEEK 4 | Inyang Essien

I recall the humorous days of dial-up. The landline and internet were on one line, so there was no way to use them both at the same time. If you were using the internet and a call came through on the landline, your computer would restart! Then you’d find yourself forced to enjoy a few offline rounds of Pinball. Now we have several different ways to use the phone on the internet. You can make phone calls from your Gmail account, call an overseas relative through Facebook, or even Facetime video chat with your Macbook.

  The internet is a networking infrastructure, and the world wide web is a collection of information that can be accessed via the internet. In other words, the internet is the glue that holds everything together, while the web gives you what you need.

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WEEK 3 | Inyang Essien

The upside of measuring social media is the probability of information reaching a large number of people at one time. A movement or event is more powerful when more people are following it. A downside of measuring social media is the pressure to reach a large enough audience. If the goal is not met, it can be seen as failure and depending on the stakes, investments can be lost. When conducting research for social media privacy, one can easily become discouraged upon discovering that there is little to no privacy online.

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WEEK 1 | Inyang Essien

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Week 16 -Isaiah Monzon

Coming to this class i thought that this social media class will be talking about using digital platforms that we use today. As through the readings i found myself finding interesting topics about social media and learning more to it. For example, learning that social media is not just based on digital platforms its a set of practices for using media socially and how information is circulated. I was so used to know that social media was only based on technology and nothing else. What i wanted to accomplish through this course was just learning about any topic that i would know very much knowledge and hopefully use to help others understand. Now i have to keep in mind that i have to keep an open mind and learn the history about whatever topic it is in order to understand it better. For example social media and how the history/technology helped improved social media. I would say i improved a bit because i got into the habit to read more since i wasn't used to reading a lot since we had readings in this course. Some of the concepts that i master would be about the communication model, measuring social media, and learning the history of computer communication. For the communication model i liked how in the interpersonal model it explained how there is norms when we communicate face to face with someone. I related a lot to that aspect because i can see how each individual tries to get information off a person by just asking question and taking the time to now them completely.  A topic that wasn't hard but that made me think about was the topic about fake news. How we see this information and make it to this big story that is not true. We talked about this in class how we have to find the real story about every story and it me think about how do make sure if a story is 100% true. Do we just based it off on websites that we think are a good resources? Just by the name of it? My continued plans for improvement will be just to continue to read more because i do sometimes struggle to understand readings or topics that i may not know of.  

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Week 16: Go Buy A Cow!

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Week 16, Finally: JB & TREZ

Thank you guys so much for making this a fun and interesting semester. You might enjoy this episode of our podcast where we recap this semester and give a few special shoutouts to our class. Hope to see all of you next semester!

*happy holidays*