media-psychology-minor-blog

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Social Media and Interpersonal relationships

Sexting: noun, Digital Technology.

the sending of sexually explicit digital images, videos, text messages,or emails, usually by cell phone (Dictionary, 2010).

 Sexting and, more specifically, when it goes wrong gets problematic when the person that initially took the photo is not the sender anymore (Belgian Safer Internet Center, 2016).

 Who’s fault is it then in that case? According to a Belgian research 70 percent out of 3000 students in the age between 12 and 18 agreed upon it is the sender of the sext its fault. Not the ones who made a screenshot or send it to third parties.

Sexting can cause severe damage to youngsters and adults for both sender and receiver. The sender could get a bad reputation that, in some cases, will follow you till the end of time. For teenagers a good reputation is important to feel acknowledged and appreciated by peers. Brake this and real harm could be done.

A receiver who spreads the message could be charged for child pornography when the picture is of someone under 18. Both parties could also be suspended from school and phones will be confiscated.

Experts suggest that it is not unusual for teenagers to share sexting-type content online, particularly when they are in a relationship (BIK Team, 2017). According to Danah Boyd, an ethnographer from the United States, teen sexting is a very rational act with very irrational consequences. But lines are very blurry she indicates. Since we have the ability of uploading and sending our own content the lines between what is sexy and what is sexually explicit have become quite vague.

 Boyd reveres to the age-old practice of “slut shaming” where it nowadays has a new meaning  combined with the spreading of nude pictures of others. In some cases the shaming gets to the point a child commits suicide because of the ongoing shaming.

 How do we stop this?

Boyd and several other support websites note that it is important to educate not only the children, but also their parents, teachers and neighbours on the topic. Boyd gives us five core questions we must consider when reflecting on sexting:

  How old     are the various participants involved? We must think about the subject of     the image, the sender, and the recipient.

How     explicit is the content being shared? Are we talking about bikini photos     or are we talking about depiction of sex acts?

What is     the intention behind the creation of the image? Are we talking about     self-portraits, images created under coercion, or images created without     the knowledge of the subject?

What is     the intention behind the sharing of the image? Is it being shared for a     private sex act or a flirtation? Or is it being shared to humiliate or     shame someone? Or is it being shared for personal profit?

How does     someone feel when they receive these images? Is the recipient delighted to     receive the image or is it received as a form of harassment?

Do you still feel like sexting after this? Several websites noted that when sexting, keep in mind you might want to cover your face. In that way it is harder to point out it is you in the

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Social Media, Personality and identity constructions

Personality

Success

Influencers

Social media influencers (SMIs) represent a new type of independent third party endorser who shape audience attitudes through blogs, tweets, and the use of other social media (Freberg, Graham, McGaughey, & Freberg, 2010). Research shows us that 4o percent of Twitter users had made a purchase as a direct result of an influencer’s Tweet (Newberry, 2017).  For marketers this is great opportunity. On Instagram brands are spending 1 billion dollar per year on influencers.

Celebrity endorsement could be seen as the first form of influencing. But anno 2017 a SMI could be anyone because of the digital age of online connection. Regular people can become “celebrities” with powerfully engaged social media followers (Newberry, 2017).

Marketers are making great use of this. Newberry tells them to think of the SMI as another arrow in their marketing quiver. Take for example DJ Khalid who has over 6 million followers on Snapchat and is dubbed “King of Snapchat” by The Washington Post. The DJ was hired by The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority for an account takeover that brought in more than 350.000 views in the first two day alone. By this they’d reached a far more wider audience and segmented their efforts in ways that would never be possible without the influencer DJ Khalid.

Other influencers could be vloggers on Youtube or bloggers on Instagram. It is a convenient way of marketing for many brands and they are making great use of it.

Failure

Millennials and their identity crisis

“Millennials also are the most attached to social media, with the amusing dichotomy existing in the statistics where the group is the most inclined to post a selfie online, but also the most likely to declare that people share too much on the internet (Moore, 2014).”

Moore wrote an article about the identity crisis of the Millennial, which is caused by a lot more than only Social Media of course but he is right when saying they are very attached to social media. More than other generations born before 1980. Millennials have to put up with a lot of influences and high speed changing technologies. Are they capable of changing alongside with it? A group of researchers found that the use of Social Media has consequences for one’s psychological, emotional and physical well-being and social development (Bolton, Hoefnagels, Migchels, Kabadayi, & Gruber, 2013). Depression and loneliness can be both consequences and antecedents of Social Media use and could lead to internet addiction. This group is also more likely to engage in risky online behaviour and expects their social community will help when things go south.

Identity

Success

Anonymous Listener

This might seem odd whereas the topic is about identity, meaning who a person is or its qualities that makes him different from the rest (Cambridge Dictionary, 2017) but now is anonymous. Its identity is unknown. Precisely this is what could be helpful to many who are surfing the World Wide Web.

An amazing example is the web community 7 Cups of Tea who offer Listeners for free to the ones who need an ear. Found by psychologist in residence Glen Moriarty who came up with the idea of the web community when talking to his wife about how sometimes someone just need someone to listen (Winsby, 2015).

These Listeners are special trained individuals who want to offer their help to people who want or need emotional support. There are special chatrooms for anxiety, depression, disability support, LGBTQ+, relationship support, Share Your Story, family support and teen chatrooms. Listeners jump in and help the discussion stay productive and supportive. Anyone can join.

Being anonymous is what makes this community possible to reach out to when in pain.  Being a Listener means having a great skill, which is used in real life therapy as well: actually hear what the client has to say and give them support to keep going.

Failure

Is it really aunt Marge?

The last time you’ve seen her was at your cousins boyfriends uncles wife her birthday. 6 years ago. You all had a blast. Or was it last week? It doesn’t really matter to the fact that she just send you a message on a Social Network Site:

Help! I’m so sorry to bother you with this and I know it’s been a while since we spoke, but I need your help here. The other day I decided to take a trip out of the country just to brake my routine for a moment. So I went and I’ve been out here for a week, I’ll tell you all about it when I get back, but my bag got stolen!  My phone, cash money, passport! All is gone. So I need your help! Could you please please please wire about 500,- to me so I can get home? Please! You’re an Angel!

Oh poor aunt Marge. What an inconvenienced situation she got herself into.  Or was she? Spoiler: it wasn’t aunt Marge. This is a (fictive) scam message. A Fraudster would hack a Facebook account and send messages to friends or family. Simple phishing software or malware can swipe users’ account information without their having ever known that they were targeted, thus leaving all of the user’s friends and family vulnerable to such attacks (Velasco, 2016). As we have seen in the previous blogpost in the last video (yeah, you’ve watched that one, did you), you were warned on what to do and don’t on the internet. Giving personal information cam seem harmless but is in fact pretty dangerous and can lead to the scamming of your own friends.  

There are many examples of Facebook scams, from suggested job offer posts to secret sister (after secret Santa) scams. All with one goal: purchasing money from unknowing innocent Social Media users. The important key here is the fact that scammers use a fake identity to mislead their victims. Looking from the scammers point of view many cases where a success. Where they did manage to receive money from “friends and family”. But being one of those goodhearted loved ones this is quite a loss.

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Social Media Defined

What is social media? What is the use of social media? Ask uncle google and you’ll definitely receive a great amount of answers and definitions. But which one serves best or is most accurate? They look all alike.

 In the book The SAGE Handbook of Social Media Research Methods edited by Luke Sloan and Anabel Quan-Haase was said: “the term social media has multiple meanings, its definition has become highly contested and it is not always clear what tools, platforms and social phenomena count as social media, though its integration into the daily lives of many is indisputable.” Reading this, it nearly feels impossible to find a right definition.

Andreas M. Kaplan and Michael Haenlein wrote a paper back in 2009 to clarify what social media exactly is. Back in those good old days the use of the Social Media platform Facebook was “limited” to a small group of 175 million users. To put things in perspective: the population of Brazil (in 2009) was 190 million. According to Statista the amount of monthly active Facebook users worldwide in the 1st quarter of 2017 is 1.94 billion. That is quite the difference. How many of these people are in doubt of which tools, platforms and social phenomena count as Social Media? That will probably be hard to find out.

But back to Kaplan and Haenlein, who named their paper Users of the World, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media, which shows us the stage the technology platforms where in, gave us three key points to make a definition:

First, it needs to be published either on a publicly accessible website or on a social networking site accessible to a selected group of people; second, it needs to show a certain amount of creative effort; and finally, it needs to have been created outside of professional routines and practices. The first condition excludes content exchanged in e-mails or instant messages; the second, mere replications of already existing content (e.g., posting a copy of an existing newspaper article on a personal blog without any modifications or commenting); and the third, all content that has been created with a commercial market context in mind.

 Please take a look at this video by Common Craft uploaded in 2008 on YouTube.

The makers of the video explained The People what Social Media is by comparing it to an ice-cream-company-town. Clever.

Making the ice cream became accessible for smaller businesses and even households (the public), the people of Scoopville got crazy creative with their flavours and everyone was able to create it with no commercial market context in mind.  

Scoopville and Kaplan and Haenein are, despite the statement of Sloan and Quan-Haase, able to create quite an understandable definition of the phenomenon. Social Media has to be publicly accessible, stimulate an amount of creativity to create a new flavour and in a certain way unique to others on the World Wide Web.

But, to make this all unsure again, The SAGE Handbook states that our understanding of social media is temporarily, spatially, technology sensitive – informed but not restricted by the definitions, practices and materiality’s of a single time period of locale. How we have divined Social Media in societies has changed, and will continue change (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2009).

And this is what makes defining such wonderful phenomena fantastically amazing. We barely can’t. The constant change of the world and its technology is hard to keep up with. People will always try to clarify The New and Unexpected to The People but will always have to adjust and change. But isn’t that what makes it all so very exciting? Let’s see what cyberspace will bring us in the future.

And because The People will high likely will for ever and always keep using Social Media here is a short video on safety on the internet. No matter what the future brings, safety first.

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Social media and privacy

Privacy is something important to all of us! Nevertheless, sometimes it is hard to know if your privacy is respected online or not. 

Secret Twitter Geert Wilders

Dutch minister Geert Wilders was busted having a secret account on Twitter. He followed Donald Duck and Kim Holland (a Dutch pornstar). It is sad that a minister thinks that it is necessary to have a secret account. It tells us that the public accounts are not sincere. 

(For the Dutch readers) Here is a link of a newsitem covering this subject: https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/politiek/van-donald-duck-tot-kim-holland-wilders-stiekeme-twitteraccount.

Apple VS. FBI

A succes story is the one about Apple VS. the FBI. The FBI wanted Apple to create a backdoor in all IPhones so they could always access phones when needed. Apple said this was not in line with some privacy rights because hackers could use this tool as well. The backdoor was never build! 

Here is a link to a news website covering this subject: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to-know.html

Podcast

For this blog we also made a short podcast about some concerns over privacy on social media. You can find it in the link below.

hppts://www.audiohere.com/nH32OpsJ7ll_jbuE23

What I find strinking about the reactions in the podcast is that both interviewees do not feel save online in terms of their privacy but nevertheless, they still use multiple social media every day. I have to admit I do the same but this is realy something crazy when you think about it.  What also bothered my interviewees is that they don’t know who keeps track of them online. 

A few tips

There are some things you can do!

Instal and use AdBlock

Use different FB groups so only a few selected people can see your posts

Check your privacy settings on every social media account you have

Never place your Phonenumber on FB

Delete your browser historie and cookies often

There is more here: https://www.eff.org/nl/wp/effs-top-12-ways-protect-your-online-privacy

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Social media and politics

Barack Obama

“I'm still asking you to believe - not in my ability to bring about change, but in yours. I believe in change because I believe in you.” 

Isn’t that just one hell of a positive and beautiful tweet Obama sent out the 20th of January? Even on his last day as president he gives hope, inspiration and love! It is almost impossible to hate Obama! His kindness is his trademark and people can live up to that! All his tweets are like this and it is beautiful to see how everyone gets uplifted by this. 

Donald Trump

In comparison we look at Donald Trump on Twitter. As you might know it is not always that positive on Donald Trumps Twitter account. 

“The media will always (ALWAYS) attack @realDonaldTrump, no matter how much he accomplishes. However, their opinions do not matter! #MAGA”

This looks like the complete opposite. The crowd shows that they prefer the Obama tweets. Obama’s tweet got  799.245 “likes” and the one of Trump only got 191 “likes”. This is such a huge difference! The best advice we can give Trump must be: be a little bit more positive please!

Remix video of Donald Trump his tweets

We chose this subject for our mixed video because it was and is stil a super hot topic. Trump continues to get a lot of media attention with his tweets again and again. Why? He know exactly how to provoke a lot of people. That is his power and his weakness at the same time. 

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Social media and education

Nowadays social media are often used as a tool for education. You have a Facebook group for your group assignment and you have to watch YouTube videos to pass your exams. Nevertheless, this isn’t always purely positive. In this blogpost we show you one successful example and one failure.

Cambreur College

This highschool in the Netherlands tried to make a beautiful promotion video for their future students. I think it is clear that when you watch this video you feel a bit akward. Watch it and judge it yourself!

This video went viral in The Netherlands and most reactions were (at least) a bit negative. The makers of this video forgot that most teens don’t like adults who try to be funny and that is exactly what is happening here. They are trying way too hard to make it work. 

SKI Ottogracht

This Belgium school does it very differently. They know what the target audience likes to see and what they think is cool. Besides, they didn’t forget to put in the key believes of this school. In between the “cool” shots they show you the principle of this school who tells what this school believes in. 

The power of this video is the humor they use. It makes you laugh at the stereotypes and the makers of this video know what kids nowadays find “cool” of “funny”. In addition, because this video is bit edgy, it grabs the attention so you will remember it easily!

Here is a list of 10 videos that show how education and social media can go together!

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N9I0yRilVE

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOXPBYx5AOU

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrpx7qr6Ftc

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqSCR3HU4eg

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30gN4-pEZWg

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5KU7x1ujqw

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riZStaz8Rno

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwdFVU-HBfw

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL3OHkkoU1I

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT8ggiYvfaM

The overlaping idea is that social media in combination with education can be a great succes but we are not there yet. These videos can be very useful to improve social media use in a blended learning environment.