sageseulgilee-blog

[sageseulgilee-blog]

Week 10: Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing could be one of the most beneficial activity of the internet. Howe defined crowdsourcing as 'the coming together of people to perform tasks, usually for little or no money, that were once the sole province of employees' (Howe 2008 pp.8).

Example of crowdsourcing would be Wikipedia where anyone can participate to complete the encyclopedia, so the contained information is actually broad and detailed. iStockphoto is a new form that photographers whether professional or amateur can upload their stock images. This enabled both creator and consumer benefit - photographers can create income without hunting their customers, and consumers can purchase images at a low price. And also, there are other formats like crisis communications. Queensland floods is the crisis that had a lot of involvement. Hashtag function helped gather all relevant information tweeted by users. Major media and government organisations tweets were not the only main source, but the people in that area also conveyed live news through twitter. There were over 10,000 twits and 50-60% of tweets were retweets, this proves that how twitter users actively engaged with spreading the news. From this case study we can learn how social media can play an important role in an emergency situation (Bruns et. al, 2012, pp. 7-10).

Crowdfunding is another way of showing the bright side of social media. These days, crowdfunding project of startup company is common. Due to the transparency of the internet, it is difficult to remove all the records so the history and progress. The unique concept of crowdfunding is that a small startup company can find their investors with ideas easier than the traditional investment (Cumming & Hornuf, pp.19).   

 In my opinion, these right function of social media can continue change the world we live. I think we should develop the good side of the internet to make our lives better.

Reference

Bruns A, Burgess J, Crawford K, and Shaw F. #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods. Brisbane: ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, 2012.

Cumming, D, Hornuf, L 2018 The Economics of Crowdfunding: Startups, Portals and Investor Behavior, Palgrave Macmillan

Howe, J 2008 Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business Random House, New York

[sageseulgilee-blog]

Week 7: Trolling

We have studied mostly positive function of online community in this subject. This week, we had a look the dark side of the online community which is ‘trolling’. Bullying used to exist in physical forms but now it happens in different forms online. According to ReachOut Australia, cyberbullying appears as messages, image and video formats through: text messages, social networking site messages, emails. Worse cases could be account hacking and stealing accounts to pretend the original account holder. These are not easy to deal with because on the cyber society, medium spread fast by sharing and in majority cases initial starter left anonymous. Moreover, once medium were delivered, they could be stored in different places which make it more harder to delete completely (ReachOut.com).

Young age students are the vulnerable group in the online society. According to research on teenagers social media usage, teens mostly start using social media at age of 9, use instagram, snapchat and youtube. The top scored answer from ‘Least liked characteristics of social media question’ by middle schools students was ‘Mean people, bullying/criticize’ (Martin et al 2108 p.221).

A case study about cyber bullying in high school shows why students are exposed more in a vulnerable situation. As students have different developmental differences, younger students seek help from their parents or teachers while middle school students find assistance from friends or try to handle their own. Moreover, the cyber bullying may lead to physical harm and also affect negatively on victim’s relationships with others. However, as teachers, stakeholders in the school take these seriously as they tend to focus on student fights. And these physical fights also can cause further cyber bullying (Kiriakidis & Lakes 2013 pp.105).

On the bright side, even though it’s only a small number, there are good trolls exist on the web. Similar to the social activists we have studies last week, these good trolls post about findings of other social media users money laundry, non-tax paying by checking shopping, receipt, travel photos exposed on their instagram. These may lead to legal actions, however, we realise that posting one’s luxury life is not always be liked by people but this could be a strong evidence of illegal action.

In my opinion, school teachers and stakeholders must educate students about digital citizenship as a mandatory subject. As kids start using social media from very young age, the importance of using the internet according to guidance so they will be a mature digital citizen as grow up.

References

ReachOut.com 2019 What is cyberbullying? Viewed 1 Feb 2019  <https://au.reachout.com/articles/what-is-cyberbullying>

Kiriakidis P, Lakes D 2013 A Case Study of Student-to-student Cyber Bullying in one High School, Revista Romaneasca pentru Educatie Multidimensionala, 2013, Volume 5, Issue 2,December, pp: 101-118

Martin, Florence; Wang, Chuang; Petty, Teresa; Wang, Weichao; Wilkins, Patti. Table 11. Least liked characteristics of social media by middle school students Journal of Educational Technology & Society Palmerston North Vol. 21, Iss. 1, pp.213-224.

[sageseulgilee-blog]

Week 6 : Activism and protest.

In the previous week, we have covered ‘digital citizenship’ which has slightly different definition to the original meaning of ‘citizenship’. As there have been ‘activists’ in our history whose contributed changes to the world, there are also ‘activists’ in the digital society. Similar to the society, these activism and protests sometimes involved with politics, or purely generated by people who are interested. We can find there are more various and audacious campaigns are introduced due to the anonymity of the internet.

Culture jamming concept was firstly found in the mid 1980’s and then developed by Mark Dery. He claimed culture jamming as ‘ads, newscasts, and other media artifacts with subversive meanings; simultaneously, they decrypt them, rendering their seductions impotent (Day pp.504).’ Billboard banditry, subvertising and media hoaxing are some examples of culture jamming. Adbusting, same as subvertising, is one of the form of culture jamming. Difference between propaganda graffiti and this is that culture jamming and subvertising usually illustrate radical and liberal points (Anderson & Herr 2007 pp.636).

With the development of media technology, culture jamming also has been changed to a new form ‘Meme’ in the social media world. News spread online, and people read the news and create new memes with their own opinions and share the meme fast.

From my point of view, all these changes will bring a positive change. Kony2012 is a campaign that shows how today’s small activist campaign can turn into a massive campaign regardless of its outcome. Even though the campaign did not achieve the initial aim of capturing Joseph Kony, the campaign itself is recognised as a successful campaign based on results: for instance, in 2017, they Kony2012 spent donated US 1.7 million for their program (Kony2012), and the amount of donation is considered to be quite large as the campaign is online based, also not running by a famous organisation like red cross. On the other hand, some argue that the campaign is not quite successful campaign and I would like to find reasons from these facts: the campaign is considered using slacktivism meaning ‘low‐risk, low‐cost activity via social media, whose purpose is to raise awareness, produce change, or grant satisfaction to the person engaged in the activity’ (Rotman et al 2011 pp.280). Slacktivism is usually not not successful is because users usually do not have enough power to affect decision makers (Chazal, Pocrnic 2016 pp.105). Despite of these, I still value how one small online campaign attracted viewers and made them to become digital citizens whose actually participate to try to make changes.

Reference

Anderson & Herr 2007 Title: Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice Sage publications Thousand oaks

Chazal N, Pocrnic A 2016 Kony2012:Intervention Narratives and the Saviour Subject International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 01 March, Vol.5(1), pp.98-112

Day A, 2016 Culture Jamming and Media Activism A Companion to Popular Culture John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Kony2012, 2019 Financials, viewed 1 Feb 2019 <https://invisiblechildren.com/financials/>

Rotman D, Preece J, Vieweg S, Ben S, Yardi S, Pirolli P, Chi EH and Glaisyer T, 2011, From slacktivism to activism: Participatory culture in the age of social media CHI '11 Extended Abstracts on human factors in computing systems 07 May 2011, pp.819-822

[sageseulgilee-blog]

W5: Digital Citizenship

In week 5, we have covered how politicians use social media. As the usage of social media platform is growing rapidly especially among young generation, we have come to realise the power of spreading messages over the internet. Traditional media platforms such as television or newspaper were the only one way communication which the sender cannot see the response immediately. However, on social media platforms readers can reply to the post to give their opinion so the message sender can see the responses. We can find the powerful impact of social media from Oscar Morales facebook page case. In January 2008 he decided to create a facebook page called ‘one million voices against FARC’ which is to protest the military arm of the columbian communist party. In a month of time the page helped gather about ten million people marched in protest against FARC (Jericho 2012 pp. 255).

Due to this nature of the system, politicians use the social media proactively with strategy. Twitter, instagram and facebook are the great tools and also hashtag function helps find posts that have similar interests. For instance, when search hashtag #auspol on twitter, we can instantly find out related posts. Politicians use this not only for the elections but also to promote their activities and appeal people to join. On the other hand, on this digital citizenship world, number of followers or shares does not mean that the politicians would receive same votes on elections when it comes to an election. According to the research on the US presidential election with perceived media influence. There were two expectations with voting efficacy and media influences and perceived media influence was not a significant predictor of actual voting (Hoffner & Rehkoff 2011 pp749).

Along with this trend, according to the Australian Government Office of Esafety Commission defined digital citizenship as ‘confident and positive engagement with digital technology’ (eSafety 2019). We expect digital citizens to engage positively, know the online world and choose consciously. I agree with the idea that as a digital citizen we need to look at things carefully by research, reviewing, testing and refining. There are numerous sources on the internet which sometimes can be hard to notice whether the information is genuine. Especially with politics, it requires extra attention to make a fair judgement. In my opinion, we must see the facts not only from one side but also other side to check thoroughly. Thanks to the development of technology, now we can cross check by checking both political parties social media pages, or even joining their activities on live by watching through social media platforms. And I believe these conative activities would bring positive results to the society.

References Office of the eSafety commissioner 2019, viewed on 1 Feb 2019 https://www.esafety.gov.au/education-resources/classroom-resources/digital-citizenship

Hoffner, C, Rehkoff, R, A, 2011 Young Voters’ Responses to the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election: Social Identity, Perceived Media Influence, and Behavioral Outcomes Journal of Communication, August 2011, Vol.61(4), pp.732-757

Jericho G 2012 How many votes are there on twitter? Rise of the Fifth Estate : Social Media and Blogging in Australian Politics Scribe Publications Pty Ltd.

[sageseulgilee-blog]

Week 10: Social Gaming

In the last week of this semester, we have covered ‘social gaming’ - how people change their characters, personality online. Online gaming, especially massively multiple online role-playing games brought issues as people get to ‘interact’ online like our daily life to play games. Users make societies, alliance, join together to defeat enemies that cause argument. Johan Huizinga (1955 p11) suggested a theory ‘the magic circle’, how people change physical, mental boundaries when playing a game. Even though this theory was introduced about 60 years ago, I totally agree with the concept. Johan might have found people behave differently when they play games like chess, the theory still implies and more implies when we play a game online as we do not physically contact with others. With game characters and avatar, users have a different personality to the real-world which could lead to cyberbullying, scamming.

Moreover, because the nature of multiple online role-playing games based on grows their own character with items. Games are created to encourage users to purchase virtual goods. These virtual goods are important on the online worlds as “objects take on meaning based on perceived status, scarceness and emotional value” (Greengard 2011 pp.19). The problem is that users can trade, monetize virtual goods with extra fees. Due to the nature of the virtual community scam and fraud between users have been reported frequently.

As there have been similar concepts games made, users acknowledge the need for setting up governance, because originally online game terms and conditions do not cover player-to-player interactions or disputes.

‘EVE online’ is an interesting example that shows how the virtual community sets up their own governance. Fraud, Ponzi schemes, corporate raiding, and theft scams happened to EVE (De Zwart, M, and Humphreys, S 2014, p.78). Platform managers banned users according to their terms and conditions, and the scandal was being discussed between users. From this case, in my opinion, I agree to Suzor’s point that even though its an online world, consent of participants must have arbitrary power to protect the interests of participants (Suzor 2010).

Our lives are not apart from the online worlds anymore. Social media, internet are not the only elements we use for our everyday life, online games occupying a major part of our leisure times, acknowledged as one of the sports. With the change of the view of online society, I think we should find ways by giving an opportunity to the cyber citizens to build our online society more healthier.

De Zwart, M\ and Humphreys, S The lawless frontier of deep space: Code as law in EVE online [online]. Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, Mar 2014: 77-99. Availability: <https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=225934593111540;res=IELLCC> ISSN: 1837-8692. [cited 27 Jan 19]

Greengard, S 2011. Social games, virtual goods. Commun. ACM, April 2011, 54 (4), 19–22. New York, NY, USA, ACM

Huizinga, J 1949 Homo Ludens - A study of the play-element in culture Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd Boston

Suzor, N. (2010). The role of the rule of law in virtual communities. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 25, 1819.

[sageseulgilee-blog]

Week 9: Visual communities and social imaging

We live in a time when we can take photos and share media online immediately. Unlike times that people relied on professional photographers, arrange a special day to take a photo, and print out, share physically with family and friends. Development of internet reshaped our lifestyle.  Moreover, we do not need a photographer to take a photo, instead, a handy camera on the mobile phone made the ‘selfie culture’. This new culture is lead by the ‘millennial’ generation whose are children of the baby boomer generation (Stein, J 2013). 

They were raised to improve self-esteem which could improve narcissism as well. Selfie shows where they have taken the photo, how their feelings were at the time that was taken. Instead of posting a planned, well organised photography, selfie shows personality. Selfie culture is not only the one ubiquitous photography has developed, but videos also developed as we now are able to make videos easily just like taking a selfie. Videos do not need to be professionally taken just like selfies are taken instantly. 

Creators make videos with a lot of different subjects such as ordinary days, something that they are interested. We call the famous creators as ‘influencers’ and usually they just expose themselves as they are. It is not like acting in the movie, but showing their life and character as is. Viewers react on the ‘unplanned, unexpected’ theme that they never encountered through traditional media. In the online world, they can communicate, give feedback to the creator and the feedback would be considered for future works. This personal interaction is an important factor of affinity. We can see the majority of youtube influencers answer to the question from the previous video to communicate with their subscribers. Like Lange (2009, p74) said, “Internet and youtube have fundamentally changed distribution options from that of small-scale home mode viewing to global sharing and exchange”

Another good example of ubiquitous photography is Snapchat. This application takes a unique concept that messages are deleted once receive reads from both send and receiver as well as from snapchat server. It was popular among teenagers due to the ephemeral nature of application so they can communicate without parents censorship. To summarise, technology development enabled us to communicate with each other with images not only text. This made a new culture such as selfie culture, and influencers, especially on social media. The new culture shows the different model to the traditional media like movie or broadcast, as viewers and creators communicate each other and have an affinity.

**

References

Lange, P 2009, ‘Videos of affinity’, in Snickars, P, The Youtube Reader, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, pp. 70-88

Stein, J 2013 ‘Millennials: The Me Me Me Generation’ Time 21 May, viewed 2 January 2019 <http://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/>

[sageseulgilee-blog]

networked individualism

In week 2, we looked into Tonnies’s theory. Tonnies argues that society’s existence based on people’s need of association with others. He found different forms of sociality, one is a community and the other one is society. Firstly, the community is something that naturally made or with one’s decision. This includes family, friends and neighborhoods. On the other hand, society defined as ‘instrumental association leading to certain goals’.

However, nowadays, some people argue that society is complex, hard to divide into only two forms. As the society changed from village to urbanisation (Siapera, 2012) through industrialisation, we can foresee that the form of community would be reformed through digitalisation.

In the past, people could have been connected only in person. The advent of telecommunication enabled us to communicate remotely, however, that was a still expensive way. Since the internet came into our life, we have numerous ways to communicate and it brought us a new form of community.

Some argue that virtual communities come together on the basis of sharing information, ideas, feelings, and desires. Facebook is the one of a good example of digital community. The site started to connect people who already know each other but became one of the most famous virtual community in the world. Facebook users share information and ideas by posting their stories. These days broadcasting companies are posting news on Facebook and receive reaction that shows viewers feeling towards the other stories.

Others point out that virtual communities are different from the old communities when it comes to ‘physical proximity’. I agree that the lack of physical proximity will cause less strong bonding than old society.

With this new shift, networked individualism came out. In this new society, people connect to each other based on similar interest, yet directly. This is also beyond locality, so each individual takes an important role for connectivity.

In my opinion, this networked individualism is an important concept for the new online society. Now we can choose where we want to belong to. No only Facebook pages but there are other sites such as reddit where people talking about same preference, knowledge. People sometimes show different personality and specialty online. And that is why we can call the online groups as a new form of society.

Siapera, E, 2012 ‘Socialities and Social Media’, Understanding New Media, Sage, London

[sageseulgilee-blog]

Are we connected but alone?

I am taking 'Digital Communities' this teaching period, and we started week 1 with Sherry Turkle's TED talk 'Connected but alone'. Even before watching the video, I was able to assume that the point she will try to make, and also where this unit will drive to. 

We live in a world where people are connected more than before via the internet. Free chat applications enabled people to talk whenever wherever, and social network sites helped us share everyday life, news faster than ever. However, it did not take long for us to realise that the new technologies make us not only connected but also be alone. We text, email and use social media at the breakfast table with family, even when we are with our friends to 'chat'. This sounds like almost everyone communicate online. According to the research, for instance Facebook, currently about 60% of Australians are using (Cowling 2018). Social media like Facebook, users share stories, photos and also chat online.

In the past, technologies were only medium to make our life easier. Originally people posted their stories to share with others specially with the ones live remotely. Nowadays, no matter how we live close, we use social media to communicate. Moreover, posting, sharing is not about to express my feeling but now we post to have a feeling - means, I share therefore I am (Turkles 2012).

People react on feedbacks of their posts, and that they hide from negative comments. The only response to the message they want to reply. Judge other’s life based on their social media post and make themselves lonely by comparing life showed online.

In my opinion, this is the stage where people are ‘connected but alone’. We are connected more than ever, but there is no meaningful ‘face to face conversation’. Some businesses allow their employees to work from home as a working environment is not different to when they are in the office as they would communicate via Skype and email anyway. We can be selective when it comes to conversation or communicate with others. For example, if someone is not willing to engage with others, he or she can choose to communicate with them only via technology. We can also be selective on viewing other’s posts that possibly hurt our feeling.

On the other hand, it is true that the internet and social media made society get connected faster which brought good results such as posting live videos at earthquake to the world so people on the otherworld become aware of it.

I think we should discuss the topic more often that Turkle pointed out so we make a better, healthier online environment where not many people feel alone.

Cowling, D, 2018, Social Media Statistics Australia, Social Media News, October 2018, 1 November, viewed 1 December 2018,<https://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-october-2018/>

TED-Ed 2013, Connected, but alone?- Sherry Turkle, 19 April, viewed 1 December 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv0g8TsnA6c>.