ourdigitalwhat-blog

[ourdigitalwhat-blog]

Post 7: What is social gaming? Is there such a thing?

Gaming has had a huge stigma around it and is generally considered to be one of the more anti-social activities one can participate in however as time has moved forward this could not be more wrong. Gaming in todays world is one of the most social interactions an individual can experience with modern video games such as FIFA and Fortnite allowing players to connect with their friends or strangers and play the game with or against all the while participating in conversation. Before this type of technology was brought into the market, in order to game socially, players would have needed to be in the same room playing off the same console, but this is no longer the case with the online world being able to connect us with friends and strangers through an activity such as gaming at just the click of a button. However, as I mention strangers it is typical that we wont get along with everyone. This is where gaming can become more antisocial, players can often be heard abusing one another for events that take place inside these virtual simulations. This can often result in making users feel unwelcome in the online gaming community and those who do the abusing feel free to continue as they are hidden behind a username and can therefore remain faceless. In every medium of communication there will always be those who ruin it for the rest of us by alienating and abusing people who are simply doing something they enjoy. Although there are certain actions that can be taken by the developers of these products in order to combat online abuse, the problem is too big to control as it is impossible to ban every user that breaks the rules. This takes away from the sociality that is supposed to be experienced through online gaming, and also is not the intended use of the voice chat features, these actions make gaming less social.

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Post 6: Is social media detrimental to mental health?

Something that has grown more and more prevalent as social media has grown is the constant comparisons we make of our lives to our peers on these sites. Not only this but we now place so much value in metrics such a followers and likes that it can result in us being so caught up with chasing the numbers that we forget to actually live and enjoy moments we experience but instead only worry about getting the perfect shot to post online to make our lives look better than they actually are.

That’s the main issue I see, its so easy to trick people online into thinking your life is absolutely perfect through the perfectly curated selection of posts on ones Instagram, because that’s no every day life its just the highlights that have often been shot at every angle with every type of lighting, and then heavily scrutinised before posting to ensure we only show the best of ourselves to our online followers. What this creates is a completely unrealistic expectation for where we should be in our lives when we compare ourselves to others. We end up focusing on what we appear to be doing rather than what we are actually doing. This constant cycle of comparisons to others can result in some feeling as though they are not keeping up with others in their age group, not only this, but having everything we post open to judgement from others who hide behind anonymous usernames it can often be overlooked how much this effects our state of mind, with some getting caught in the numbers game while forgetting to actually live their life.

[ourdigitalwhat-blog]

Post 5: Crowd-sourcing and avoiding real crisis?

The Notre Dame fire this year, while tragic placed questions in my mind as to whether we as a society have our priorities in the right order. The destruction of the ancient building saw over 160 individual GoFundMe tributes set up and within a matter of days billions of dollars raised in order to pay for the repairs. While this shows how people can really come together to provide aide when tragedy hits, I can’t help but think. it was just a building, there are millions of real people who have to fight for survival in war torn or 3rd world countries that could be helped so much by a similar response from those of us who are more fortunate.

This ties into my previous post on activism and how social media has somewhat weakened the message due to how easy it is to jump on the bandwagon of a popular or up and coming cause. It happens with everything from sports teams to the activism I talked about before, some people just want to be seen as a part of something, so they appear to be doing the right things to their social circle. Maybe some of those who were so quick to give money in support of the Notre Dame fire just did it because it was what everyone else was doing and they needed to feel as though they were on the right team.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fantastic that people were able to come together and raise that much money for the repairs of what is a significant historical site to some, however it does beg the question, why aren’t issues like poverty, education and clean drinking water hit with the same momentum? Is it because they’ve always been there, and we are just so used to them?

[ourdigitalwhat-blog]

Post 4: Troll in the dungeon!?

No, not from Harry Potter, instead what I’ll be discussing here is the internet ‘’troll’’, and how they are able to cause chaos from behind the safety of a computer screen and an anonymous username. The act of trolling can be hard to define specifically as it can range depending on the context of what is happening, however generally speaking it is the act of deliberately leaving insulting messages in order to annoy others on the internet. Most of us would have come across a troll at one point or another on our internet journeys, its hard to understand exactly why they do it, do they have some motive or belief that drives them or are they simply bored individuals with too much free time who get a kick out of pushing other people’s buttons, it’s definitely a difficult concept to get my head around.

Trolling is truly one of the most negative aspects of social media with these kinds of people terrorising those who simply want to converse with others online about things they may have a difference of opinion on. If you’re one of those people and are looking for a serious debate with someone who has a different opinion to your own I for one wouldn’t recommend the internet be where you start unless you have thick skin and can simply ignore these people, you’re most likely going to have a rough time finding what you’re looking for. However, for some to be unable to interact with others without being completely horrible, most of these trolls get some kind of sick satisfaction from making others miserable. I don’t understand why as I’ve always been a firm believer that we should always treat others how we would want to be treated ourselves.

Until next time. Play nicely.

[ourdigitalwhat-blog]

Post 3: Hashtagvism?

Many aspects of the world have been severely altered by the prevalence of social media, this post takes a look at activism and questions whether it is more or less effective as it once was. Think back to how activism was undertaken before social platforms, the effort that it took to organise a big enough platform to get your voice heard took weeks, months or even years before their was any significance to the movement. This time seems an absolute world away however it has only been recently that the power of the hashtag and social media has been truly unleashed on the world. No longer is months of planning, advertising and content distribution required in order to promote a cause or issue, now we can see movements begin to take shape overnight and have a bigger impact than ever before. All it takes is a simple hashtag that can catapult a movement into the public domain.

A great example of this in action is the Black Lives Matter campaign that was kickstarted after the gunning down of a young black man by policeman in the United States. This movement was the biggest throughout 2013 with outrage flying due to the continuous mistreatment of young black people through racial profiling and police brutality. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag began to take off after the news story on the young man who was killed by police made headlines. The movement allowed for rallies and protests against the police mistreatment of black people to be organised within hours thanks to the ease of the hashtag sorting posts that were relevant to the cause. This example illustrated how easily a movement could be started by something as simple as a viral post.

There is always however going to be a downside to the faster approaches to activism that we have today. As previously mentioned, before social media it was seriously difficult to bring awareness to an issue in order to inflict change, therefore it took real grit and commitment from those who were pushing the change, you had to really want it. Now we see the quality of a movement can deteriorate through what is known as ‘’Slacktivism’’ due to how simple and easy it is to show support for a cause as you don’t even have to leave the house, you can do it during the commercials on television, it’s never been easier and can therefore sometimes result in the movement not being taken as seriously.

[ourdigitalwhat-blog]

Post 2: How social media has influenced politics

My aim for this post is to assess how the relationship between social media and politics has come about and how it has changed the way politicians behave towards the voter.

One of the factors I see that stands tall when it comes to the development of these relationships is the shift on platforms such as twitter and Facebook, no longer focussing on personal information but mainly on public news. This became evident in 2009 when twitter stopped asking its users ‘’what are you doing?’’ and instead ‘’What’s happening?’’, small changes like this have had a big impact over the last ten years.

This is because politics is no longer fed to us through the selective pipeline of mainstream media and we are now free to establish our own opinions about those who represent us and their policies. Politicians now recognise this as well and have therefore had to apply social media as a crucial integration into their everyday work as a representative, they are now required to speak to their constituency with a more genuine and personal connection, which in turn allows us to hold them more accountable than ever.

Politicians have had to learn that traditional advertising methods like television, radio and print aren’t enough to get the job don’t anymore and if they wish to remain competitive, they need to establish better relationships with those they represent.

Social media has also allowed us to participate in mass discourse on political issues, for this reason many believe that this has actually prompted the return of Habermas’s public sphere. The public sphere can be defined as ‘’when private people come together as public’’. We see these community discussions on sites like reddit happening every day. These are places where private people can remain more or less anonymous through the use of a username rather than their actual name allows us to still participate as a private person in a public debate on current issues.

[ourdigitalwhat-blog]

Tumblr: Blog or Social Media?

From my perspective I see Tumblr as a micro-blogging site, like a more cut down version of a website, with a more visually appealing trend through the use of gifs, quotes and video. It does however have aspects of social media embedded within. These include the ability to subscribe to other Tumblr blogs and be notified when they are updated. Similarities can be drawn between Tumblr and more mainstream social media however, the ability to share posts from others in the form of a ‘reblog’ is identical to the ‘share’ and ‘retweet’ functions on Facebook and twitter. The way that posts are sorted on your page and can be resorted. So, it really begs the question, even though sites like Instagram, Facebook and twitter seem worlds away from Tumblr, are they really? And is it possible to be seen as both?

Blogs are generally understood to be personal web pages authored by a single individual and made up of a sequence of dated entries of the author’s thoughts that are arranged chronologically (Fujiki, Nanno, Okumura, 2005). This is one of the key elements of Tumblr and how it has distinguished itself from all the previously mentioned sites, the ability to showcase a more creative side and with the amount of html customisation Tumblr allows to an individual user’s homepage really allows users to make it feel like something of their own. Whereas social networking sites have been defined as an online platform that allows users to create a public profile and interact with other users on the website (Technopedia, 2018), from this we can gauge that Tumblr possesses elements of both a social networking, or social media site and also a blog.

So, Tumblr, is it a social media? Or is it a blogging platform? In my opinion, due to this network possessing key features of both, yet somehow still being different from the rest, I’m saying both. I’m going to close out my first post, in a very typical yet appropriate way, with a gif of a Mexican girl talking about tacos.

originally posted by TNW95