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Week 11 : Social Media with China

Nowadays, social media has expanded worldwide and China has followed the trends of the social media. According to Mckinsey, there are 5,700 of internet users and found that around 95% of users have been registered on social media sites (Chiu, Lin&Silverman, 2012). China is the most active in social media compared to other countries. Below showed that China is the largest population of internet users compared with other cities.

What kind of social media use by China user?

Weibo

Sina Weibo is the most popular micro-blogging site in China that has been released in the year of 2009. Sina Weibo usually explained as the combination of Twitter and Facebook, this two-social website is blocked in China. With Weibo, users can upload image, video, gifs, it is similar to the function of Twitter and Facebook. Then, the user can read other people post, like their posts or re-blog their post without being followed back (Thai, 2018).

Bytheway, I am one of the users of Sina Weibo a few years ago. In my opinion, it is exactly like Facebook but Weibo is in Chinese version. I used Weibo to follow all the artists that I like, see their daily lifestyle, share their posts and comment on their posts.

WeChat

Wechat is known as the all-in-one messaging application which developed by Tencent. Users can do everything they wanted including send money to other people, make video calls, play games, and others. According to the research firm China Skinny state “WeChat touches everything for consumers communicating with their nearest and dearest, sharing their most special moments and buy everything from cinema ticket to taxi rides”. (Heath, 2015).

What is the Great Firewall Of China ?!

According to Lisa Deng (2017), she stated that 50% of application such as Facebook, Google Maps, Instagram, Youtube, and others would not work in China unless you prepared with VPN pre-installed on your smartphones. VPN known as Virtual Private Network used to protect web traffic from censorship, jamming and snooping (What is VPN, 2018).  The tools which blocked all the applications was called the Great Firewall of China. Great Firewall of China was known as Golden Shield Project, is defined as an internet censorship and surveillance project which established by the China government. According to Micheal Anti (2012), said that “the great firewall not only defend the Chinese regime from overseas, from the universal values but also to prevent China’s own citizen to access the global free internet” (Anti, 2012).

Lastly, let me talk about some advantages and disadvantages of the Great Firewall in China.

Create safety environment for the children by blocking inappropriate materials.

Increase privacy by blocking sites which ask for personal details.

Block racist and the pornographic website.

 Decrease the amount of crime on the internet.

Violation of the freedom of speech and the human rights.

Will causes spread the wrong information and blocked the real information from the eyes of the world.

Privacy concern in which China government monitors all the sites where a person visits.

References

Anti, M, 2012, “Behind the Great Firewall Of China”, TED, viewed 18 May 2018, https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_anti_behind_the_great_firewall_of_china/up-next

Chiu, C, Lin, D, Silverman, A, 2012, “China’s social-media boom”, McKinsey&Company, pp1-7.

Heath, A, 2015, “ An app you’ve probably never heard of is the most important social network in China”, Business Insider, viewed 18 May 2018, http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-wechat-2015-10/?IR=T/#wechat-had-600-million-monthly-active-users-in-august-2015-and-only-70-million-of-them-were-outside-of-china-1

Thai, N, 2018, “10 Most Popular Social Media Sites in China (2018 Updated), Dragon Social, viewed 18 May 2018, < https://www.dragonsocial.net/blog/social-media-in-china/>

Vitai, B, 2012, “ The Great Firewall of China: Pros and Cons”,  Blogs, viewed 18 May 2018, < http://thegreatfirewallofchina.blogspot.my/2012/02/great-firewall-of-china-pros-and-cons.html>

“What is VPN”, 2018, ExpressVPN, viewed 18 May 2018,

https://www.expressvpn.com/what-is-vpn

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Week 10: Social Gamer?

What kind of social games did you play??

I used to play Super Dancer Online (SDO) when I still in secondary school. That time is being a trend that everyone might like to play. Let me give some introduction about Super Dance Online(SDO).

So, SDO is an interesting social game that can be integrated with USB dance board. There were fascinating 3D virtual characters, gorgeous dance environments and various of game mode that make this game extremely addictive toward game lovers. The game environment is created by using 3D graphic engine technology. In addition, the dance action of the game character I simulated by a dancer in the real world. So, it orders to meet players from different backgrounds, there were various dance styles are provided. Therefore, SDO has successfully developed a brand of new online concept: the conformity of real world and virtual world, the excellent combination of the visual effect and lifestyle. (Super Dancer Online Extreme,n,d)

What exactly of social gaming?

There were various of definition of social gaming. According to John Romero, a game designer of Ravenwoord Fair, define social gaming as a game taking benefits to your friendship in a meaningful way (Lovell,2011). Besides, according to Heiko Hubertz, the founder of Bigpoint (a free-to-play browser-based games definite social gaming is one of the most interesting game when play with friends and family (Lovell, 2011).

What are MMORPGs?

It is known as Massively multiplayer online games are essentially video games where hundreds or thousands of simultaneous players connected via the internet. About ten years ago, these games are mainly played on personal computers. Due to the technology advanced, all the games can be played on PlayStation 3, PSP, Nintendo DSi and others which have provided Internet connectivity (Majhi, 2011).

Now, we explore the practice of forming rules and regulations and breaking the law in the online gaming community. The paper of Zwart and Humphreys 2014 discuss that typical MMOGs such as EVE online will involve potentially and overlapping conflicting sets of rules. The laws, norm, structure and market are the factors that may affect the regulation. When in the breaking rules, this reading mentions that gamers learn to play and against the code. It is tension between control and creativity that makes the game space interesting (Zwart, Humphreys 2014).

Therefore, I think massively multiplayer online games are becoming more and more popular. This is what these cases mean for us to understand digital communities more broadly. Traditional single-player game is developed into multiplayer online games with your own digital communities, which can include leader boards to their own official game events. The digital community has reshaped the game that connecting players all over the world.

References

Lovell,N, 2011,” What is social game?”, GamesBrief, viewed 10 May 2018, < http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/01/what-is-a-social-game/ >

Majhi, S, 2011, “16 Different Types of Massively Multiplayer (MMO) Online Games”, Dragon Blogger Technology & Entertainment, viewed 10 May 2018, < https://www.dragonblogger.com/16-types-massively-multiplayer-mmo-online-games/>

“Super Dancer Online Extreme”, nd, MMOBOMB, viewed 10 May 2018, < https://www.mmobomb.com/review/super-dancer-online>

Zwart,M & Humphreys,S, 2014, “ The Lawless Frontier of Deep Space”, Cultural Studies Review, vol 20, no 1 , pp77-99.>

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Week 9: Fandom and Fan Activism

What the meaning of fandom?!

Fandom defines as a group of people who admire and support specific entities in popular cultures such as movies, artist, book series, television show and others. Fandoms were grown from original word of “fangirl” that refer to female fans. Harry Styles praised them and said: “Teenage-girl fans-they don’t lie, if they like you, they’re there. They don’t act “too cool” (Wiest, 2017)

What would I be a fan of?

I am a fan of lots of artists. I can be counted as anthomaniac because I always fancy about the handsome or pretty characters after I watched the drama. The artist that I fancy the most called Eddie Peng. He is a Taiwanese-Canadian actor and model. With about 27 million Weibo fans and 3.3 million followers on Instagram, he was known as one of Asia’s most prolific and loved performers (Chen 2017).  

Next, I am a fan of book series which called “The Lying Game”. Honesty, I am a person who does not like to read any novels, but this main page of the novel and the summary of the book attracted my attention.

The story is about a girl named Emma Paxton has grown up in foster care almost in her entire life. One day, Travis, his foster brother discovers a video of a girl which look exactly like Emma Paxton. The problem is the girl inside the video not her at all. So, she decided to figure out who is the girl inside the video (Shepard,n.d). Hence, the story is more toward to mystery style which has attracted my attention to read more. So, I have bought all the books series of the story.

Although I like this book story, I will not participate directly in the community. I just read the post of the community. Below is the website of “The Lying Game” which allow the user to comment and post status.

What is fan activism?

According to Jenkins (2012), he defines fan activism:

“forms of civic engagement and political participation that emerge from within fan culture itself, often in response to the shared interests of fans, often conducted through the infrastructure of existing fan practices and relationships, and often framed through metaphors drawn from popular and participatory culture”. (Vilenchik, McVeigh-Schultz, Weitbrecht & Tokuhama, 2011).

For example, a fan activist Andrew Slack has established the Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) in 2005. The HPA uses the parallel line between the fictional world of content and the real world as a driving force for the action of the citizen. HPA has established a variety of campaigns, raise a lot of money and achieve civil and political goals. As the organization is heavily established in the community of Harry Potter fans and uses the story as a driving force for social action, it is clearly meet the definition of Jenkins. (Vilenchik, McVeigh-Schultz, Weitbrecht & Tokuhama, 2011)

References

Chen 2017, “ Why Eddie Peng is one of the Asia’s most prolific performers”, Style, viewed 10 May 2018, < http://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/people-events/article/2114089/why-eddie-peng-one-asias-most-prolific-performers>

Shepard, n,d , “The Lying Game (book), Fandom, viewed 10 May 2018, http://thelyinggame.wikia.com/wiki/The_Lying_Game_(book)

Vilenchik, N, McVeigh-Schultz, J, Weitbrecht, C & Tokuhama, C,2011, “Experiencing fan activism: understanding the power of fan activist organizational through members’ narratives”, Transformative Works and Cultures, vol.10, pp1-22.

Wiest, B, 2017, “ Psychologists say that belonging to a fandom is amazing for your mental health”,  TeenVogue, viewed 10 May 2018, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/psychologists-say-fandoms-are-amazing-for-your-mental-health

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Week 8: Crowd-sourcing & Crowdfunding

What is crowdsourcing? 

According to Merriam Webster, the definition of crowdsourcing was known as,

“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” (Swinburne, Week 8,2018).

It was sad with endless natural disasters and terrorist attacks around the world, people are started to turn to social media crowdsourcing tools such as Twitter, Wikipedia, Tumblr, Facebook, Ushahidi and others for crisis communication and emergency management. With the continues development of social media, these tools have become more widely used in society. Internet crowdsourcing are mainly positive and useful during the crisis, it also may have negative impact.

Ushahidi is a mapping tools that provide the location of the victims during the crisis events. In the year of 2007, The Ushahidi platform has provided the opportunity to report human right abuse by citizens after Kenya’s presidential election. Initially, the cooperation between Kenya and the United States of International journalists and the software developers developed this software that allow everyone can create their own map site and allow them to post reports to it. There is no doubt that using Ushahidi platform that can change the nature and the speed of political events such as find others who share their work and opinions together in different location which can produce powerful information of the sources. However, the users of Ushahidi will face main choices about what information to highlight and the authenticity of reports after the of user-generated content and the amount of date continues to increase (Ford, 2012).

The social media has become a communication system where allow different people to keep in touch with the geographic system (Communications System, 2018).  In December 2010 and early January 2011, Queensland was hit by a serious flood which make lots of damage toward homes, business and people (Queensland floods facts- December 2010- January 2011).  This crisis had highlighted important role of social media it is because Twitter was trending the topic of #qldfloods where the users can express their concern and acted as participants (The Twitterisation of ABC’S emergency and disaster communication, 2012).

What is crowdfunding??

According to Lucy Bennett. Bertha Chin & Bethan Jones 2015, the concept of crowdfunding is “where grassroots creative projects are funded by the masses through the website”.

The websites of Kickstarter and Indiegogo are a crowdfunding site where the public will visit frequently. It has been steadily gaining the attention of the media and has conducted lot of discussion around the powerful possibilities of this alternative funding method (Bennett, Chin, Jones 2015).

However not every campaign can be success. The most infamous crowdfunding campaign come from Alabama. A woman, Jennifer Flynn Cataldo established GoFundMe event aim to help paying medical expenses that related to her cancer. Before being convicted, she received more than $38,000 in donation. Now, her assets are being detained to pay back the donors. Although this story has a happy ending, cancer scam is very common. Therefore, do not trust that there will be any medical expenses or personal problem in crowdfunding events. It is because hard to verify these costs (Carpenter 2017).

References

Bennett, L, Chin, B, Jones, B, 2015, “Crowdfunding: A New Media & Society Special Issue”, new media & society, vol 17, no 2, p 142.

Carpenter, N, 2017, “The 5 biggest crowdfunding failures of all time”, Digital Trends, viewed 10 May 2018,https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/biggest-kickstarter-and-indiegogo-scams/

“Communication System” 2018, technopedia, viewed 10 May 2018, https://www.techopedia.com/definition/18430/communications-system

Ford, H, 2012, “Crowd Wisdom”, Sage Publishing.

“Queensland floods facts-December 2010-January 2011”, 2011, liberal sprinkles, viewed 10 May 2018, < http://liberalsprinkles.blogspot.my/2011/01/queensland-flood-facts.html >

Swinburne 2018, “Week 8: Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding”, MDA 20009 Digital Communities, Swinburne University of Technology. Learning Materials on Blackboard.

“The Twitterisation of ABC’S emergency and disaster communication” 2012, The Australian Journal of Emergency Management, vol 27, no 1, p34.

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Week 7: Trolling and Social Media

WHAT IS TROLLING? 

Trolling is defines as creating disharmony on the internet that will be causing quarrels or posting information that off the main topic in the online community to upsetting people. Social Media troll is a person who purposely provokes other people through offensive or provocative comments.  Trolls can be found almost every corner of the social web.

Example of real-life social media trolling

Social Media trolling and conflict show on the new feeds every day on social media.  Technology has expanded the visibility of bullying and provided a platform for them to keep bullying. Example, Suzanne Fernandes, a youth worker in London was being threatened when she challenged the racism of someone on social media.  She stated that “It’s been a harassment campaign. There are threats of killing and raping me. There are various accounts send tweets saying that I have 10 days to live and send the image of pornography to me. This has been the bad time of my life” (Laville S, Wong J &Hunt E,2016). Those abuse has been caused in her family because one of the perpetrators got a picture of her son through Facebook and create a fake account by using the picture and send a lurid message.

How to deal with trolls?

1.      Counter Fiction with Fact

If someone is spreading rumors on social media, the best way to deal with is telling the facts with correct information. Example, Apple Company release iPhone 6 not as well as planned. There were some rumors stated that the new iPhone could bend into the pocket with a hashtag #bendgate (Wisuri R, 2015).

Regarding of those rumors, Apple Company chose to solve the problem positively. They admitted that the new iPhone may bend but not usually happen in the normal use of the iPhone.Therefore, they can stop any further disputes.

2.      Use Humor Tactfully

According to Rachel Wisuri, Social Media Examiner stated that humor is the most effective ways to handle trolls (Rampton J, 2015).  For example, Sainsbury, a grocery chain in United Kingdom using humor to stop the trolls when an unsatisfied customer reported that they had purchased chicken which tastes “like it was beaten to death by Hulk Hogan” (Rampton J,2015). Then they replied the customer by using a light-hearted strategy with a similar metaphor. Therefore, Sainsbury successful turned a negative comment into a participation opportunity.

3.      Correct the Mistakes

According to Jeffrey Hayzlett, Author and TV host, he stated that let the person points out the mistake that you have made. Then you should make the proper correction on it and admit that you had to make some mistake (Rampton J, 2015).

Conclusion

According to Danah Boyd (2014), Social Media has not fundamentally changed the dynamic of bullying but it has made it visible for all of the people to see these dynamics. So, all the digital citizen responsible to use this visibility to help the people who calling for attention instead of increasing the punishment to the victim.

References

Boyd D, 2014, “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Yale College, pp152.

Laville S, Wong J, Hunt E, 2016, “The women abandoned to their online abusers”, The Guardian, viewed 23 April 2018,< https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/11/women-online-abuse-threat-racist >

Rampton J, 2015, “ 10 Tips to Dealing with Trolls”, viewed 23 April 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2015/04/09/10-tips-to-dealing-with-trolls/#65e2a59554f4

Wisuri R, 2015, “How to Deal with Social Media Trolls”, SocialMedia Examiner, viewed 23 April 2018, < https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-trolls/ >

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Week 6: Activism and Protest

What is Digital Activism?

Digital activism known as cyber activism, it is a form of activism uses the Internet and digital media as the main platforms for the large-scale of political and mobilization activities. The online activists use the Internet as the function of information distribution it is because it can easily reach a large number of audience across the borders. The tools which used by digital activists are very extensive and keep changing by the rapid development of technology.

The tools used by digital activists are:

1.      Social Networks: websites such as Facebook and Youtube that have the huge number of users that provide advantages to spread the information on the subject, message and support of the political action. Example, the protest in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 that against their governments were promoted via Facebook (Rees A,2015).

2.      Online Petitions: online activism constantly uses a website known as MoveOn.org that allow people to communicate with other worldwide regarding their title and cause. Originally, MoveOn.org was developed by two Silicon Valley businessperson. They send a small petition to some family and friends in the late 90s, request for some support in telling the White House to “move on” from the scandal of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky to more urgent problems that facing by the country (Rees A,2015).

3.      Micro-Blogging: website such as Twitter and Tumblr used to spread awareness of the problem or the event of activists. The function of a hashtag is frequency used as digital tool to expand and spread the message that allows users to post their tweets by entering the specific keywords.

The biggest benefits of using digital tools are the ability to connect with a large amount of community and globalise the goals of a campaign. The online activist can post pictures, information and slogan about the issues and share with friends. Example, there was one biggest digital campaign in recent years to support the Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), known as Lou Gehrig Disease (Rees A,2015). The video shows a huge amount of people including celebrities pour a bucket of water toward themselves before nominating three other people to do the same action. These activities known as the “ALS Bucket Challenges”. Although the challenge had raised about 220 million USD for ALS somehow the main purpose of the activity is buried. It says so because some of the videos of the volunteer did not mention about ALS.

Conclusion

According to Mary Joyce, founder of DigiActive and Meta-Activism Project stated that if the activist’s campaign goals were achieved then the success can be perceived (Rees A, 2015). Although digital activism offers a lot of benefits to campaigner but sometimes has limits on how much effective change it can produce. With this in mind, it is worth to consider that all online activities should combine with offline activities to create greater influences.

Reference

Rees A,2015, “Digital and Online Activism”, RESET, viewed 8 April 2017, <https://en.reset.org/knowledge/digital-and-online-activism>

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Task 2 : Politic and Social Media

What is Politics?

There were varieties of definitions of “Politics”. According to Dahl, he defined politics is a power of one party that can provide influences to other parties, he stated that “A has power over B to some extent that he can get B to do something which B would not otherwise do” (Munro A, n.d).  Besides, According to Harold Lasswell, American Political Scientist, stated that politics is the ability to produce the desired effect on others. It is about “who gets what, when and how “. Lasswell also added clear economic dimension to politics that related to the allocation of resources or decisions on “who gets what”. (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, n,d).

Social Media and Politics

Social media help to make the idea of a “global village” become real. According to Friedman, personal computers and the speed of the cable in a transfer of information has marked modern revolution and almost removed the limitation of space and time (Toivo S,n,d). Example, Barack Obama reach success on social media which attracted large of followers. Obama introduces himself on Twitter platform during his 2008 presidential campaign, the real-time nature of Twitter has helped him communicate with the voters and helped him measure the opinion of voters by responding to his tweets (Beckett J, 2017).  Hence, Obama had successfully introduced himself through the social media platform.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Social Media brings varieties of benefits to politicians. Social media tools allow politicians to communicate directly to their followers in a short time period. It is also allowing politicians to share their goals and belief directly to the followers or voters for making them feel involved with the campaign.

Besides, some activity is known as “money bombs”. “Money bombs” is used to increase large amount of money in the short time periods. They use social media such as Facebook to promote the word and usually throw the money into the specific controversy that emerged during the activity.  Examples, Ron Paul, a popular libertarian who ran for president in 2008 established the most successful money bomb activities by using social media tools (Murse T,2017).

However, everyone that using social media have the ability to upload videos that included negative influences of the politicians. It may destroy the politician reputation due to the negative influences.

In conclusion, there are varieties of advantages and disadvantages for politicians using social media. As a popular character in political industry, they have to write and think wisely before posting their status.

References

Beckett J,2017, “Social Media Case Study: How Barack Obama Became President”, Devumi, viewed 1 April 2018, < https://devumi.com/2017/12/social-media-case-study-how-barack-obama-became-president/>

Munro A, n,d, “Robert A.Dahl”, Encyclopoedia Britannica, viewed 1 April 2018, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-A-Dahl#ref1178984

Murse T,2017,” How Social Media Has Changed Politics”, ThoughtCo, viewed 1 April 2018, https://www.thoughtco.com/how-social-media-has-changed-politics-3367534

Toivo S, n,d, “Social Media-The New Power of Political Influence”, Centre For European Studies, viewed 1 April 2018, <https://www.martenscentre.eu/sites/default/files/publication-files/social-media-and-politics-power-political-influence.pdf >

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica,”Harold Lasswell, Encyclopaedia Britannica, viewed 1 April 2018, < https://www.britannica.com/biography/Harold-Lasswell#ref748748>

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Task One: Tumblr a blogs or social networking sites?

Blogs known as a major phenomenon of digital culture which written by a person or a group of people and regularly published on the Internet however social networking sites defined as a web-based service that creates public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, clarify a list of other users with who they share a connection with, view their list of connection and those made by others within the system (boyd and Ellision,2007). So, Tumblr consider a blog or social networking sites

In my opinion, I considered Tumblr as social networking and microblogging platform. Tumblr not only a place to share daily lifestyle, pop culture memes and GIFs, it allows the user to write long blog posts, share photo and video to all the users. Tumblr allows the user to re-blogging and comments on other users post with shared interest which similar like retweeting on Twitter. Besides that, Tumblr allows crazy customization by providing hundreds of free themes and HTML of the users also can be fully customized.  According to Jen Refat, founder of Craftic, Tumblr allow the user to customize their profile. It is easy to develop and public within a week, built-in social media features have proved helpful in sharing content. Jen Refat also stated Tumblr has DIY and craft community which allows interest-based communities to have a look at it (Driver S,2018). 

Furthermore, we always wanted to search for current trends on social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram. Tumblr also can be used to search for popular posts, trending topics and blogs. Tumblr considered as social network sites it is because of popular Tumblr users able to get lots of engagement from their followers. Examples, if a popular artist makes a post on their profile, it could attract a lot of visitors to comment and repost the content. This is how they interact and communicate with each other through Tumblr. Lastly, there are fandoms everywhere on the Tumblr. Fandoms defined as a huge group of people share the same interests. These interests can include movies, music, video games, comic books and more.

In a nutshell, Tumblr also can be knowns as Facebook 2.0. It says so because Facebook is a social network platform which allows parents, friends, co-workers to communicate and keep in touch with each other’s, Tumblr is a place where younger people express themselves to the social network sites. In common sense, Tumblr and Facebook associated with social networking sites because it is related to have a connection with other people who have similar interest, activities and much more.

Reference

Boyn d, Ellision N 2017, “Social Network Sites “Definition, History, and Scholarship’, Wiley Online Library, Viewed 22 March 2018, < https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x >

Driver S 2018, “Tumblr or Business: Everything You Need to Know”, Business News Daily, viewed 22 March 2018, < https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7455-tumblr-for-business.html>

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Welcome to Corg school. I will be your teacher, Professor Flufflepuff