#prosumerism

[majorstudymica]

Major Study Forefront #3: How to Make your Mark - Successful Artists and Branding.

In the previous post, I elaborated on one notable product within today’s animation industry; I made use of reviewing SpongeBob SquarePants (1999-present) as a strong example of success from creative marketing.

As previously stated, the remarkable outcomes that SpongeBob SquarePants had achieved throughout decades since its first debut has been theorised to be caused by successful marketing through the power of synergy, now made even more available and achievable by the current uses of Media. For a studio like Nickelodeon / Viacom, this is a rather easy feat to achieve - especially with a product with high ratings and companies with high reputation.

So, if high-esteemed ‘big shots’ like Nickelodeon can pull this off, is it possible for anyone to create a strong, long-lasting branding and survive the rampant market that is prevalent in the entertainment industry? As an artist, it is essential to adapt to the constant change of the market if I want my work to thrive and make an impression; good drawings alone won't do that for me.

So I looked into market research - specifically for individuals within the art community who have well-rounded knowledge and experience in commercialising their work as an independent brand. In other words, I have observed freelance artists whom are currently thriving on their respective platforms.

This post will be the second part to exploring good practices of creativity and theories behind the guide to successful branding. This blogpost will refer to some theoretical perspectives behind the rise of big artists on social media and their renowned works as freelancers, as well as taking in any tips provided by said artists.

Two artists who I will be examining are Lois Van Baarle and Vivienne Medrano, also known by their social handles (loish / @loisvb on Instagram and Vivziepop) (figure 1 and 2).

Figure 1

Figure 2

Both artists are renowned individuals who had set the path of successful career through prosumerism - each achieving a minimum of 1 million followers online through utilising user generated content (UGC) tools provided by major brands such as Instagram, Youtube, Patreon, and so on.

[jsenholzi-blog]

Journal Entry - 10/16 Prosumerism

What exactly do we sign up for when we register to social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. While these platforms seem like harmless ways to share information with close friends and family, we are often unaware of just how much we are actually sharing. In chapter two of Estee Beck’s Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance Beck discusses just how much we are giving to large corporations and companies that benefit from the sharing of social media through processes of prosumerism and digital algorithmic surveillance.

Prosumerism is a term that was coined by Alvin Toffler in his 1980 work The Third Wave. In this work he described the development of civilization through three different “wave” periods: The agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and the informational age. It is within this third wave that we find the use of the word prosumerism. In this wave, consumers would take on the labor roles of the previous two waves and begin to do things on their own. This is where the “do-it-yourself” mentality was born and inventions such as IKEA’s build-your-own furniture, self-service gas pumps, ATMs, and self-checkout stations began to rise in popularity.

Prosumerism was revered as a method of empowerment and individualism. With the help of rhetoric and composition, students are encouraged to become creators in digital mediated spaces. These content creators when using open source are able to provide content for the use of inquiry and information. Unfortunately, prosumerism is often used as a means of exploitation and economic gain. Businesses will purposefully capitalize on prosumerism to have their consumers provide free labor for the company.

Prosumerism also plays a large part in capitalism of social media through the use of digital algorithmic surveillance. Companies such as Facebook will use algorithms that track the wants and needs of its users. In the case of Facebook, everything you click, share, like, sell, etc… will contribute to the different advertisements you may see. This is used as a way to make users provide their own advertisement, enticing the user to buy a product similar to their own interests. Along with this, many of these ads can act as a way to influence users as to what to buy. The more a user is exposed to a specific object they are conditioned to want it.

The internet and social media is a dangerous thing. As technology increases, it seems that the consumer does more and more within a society. As we dive further into the informational age, people are becoming obsolete. Every day more and more of our information can be found online and thanks to technology we don’t even need to physically input it anymore.  This is why it is always important to understand the dangers of technology. Understanding it will allow us to use it to its fullest potential without jeopardizing our freedoms and security along the way.

For my rhetorical models I chose to use linguistic and visual. These two modes compliment each other nicely an always work well together. The linguistic model is always helpful when expressing the general idea of the post as well as provide insight into the heart of the content. The visual mode was used for strictly humorous purposes. The content in this section is rather dense and the visual aspect helped break this up and make it easier to read. 

[robhorninginternalexile]

heroes of human capital

In this post, in the context of whose work has been deemed “essential” (i.e. which workers are necessary but interchangeable), Will Davies discusses the impact of society having shifted from the perspective that work is “alienated labor” compensated by wages to the view that work is a matter of leveraging “human capital” for a rate of return. He draws on philosopher Michel Feher’s ideas to outline some of “the ethical and political implications for a society made up of human capitals” — that is a society where people are mainly investment vehicles in their own eyes as well as that of the state and potential employers. 

Feher points out that, unlike the relation of liberal subject and labour, there is no alienation involved in the marketing of human capital. As human capital, we must identify wholly with our work, both paid and unpaid. We must demonstrate passion for what we do, as a means of marketing it and achieving income for it. An entrepreneur may have no income, but they are never unemployed.

“Do what you love” becomes less an aspiration than a command, a threat, a monkey’s paw fulfillment of what Boltanski and Chiapello in The New Spirit of Capitalism called the “artistic critique” of capitalism — that the work it extracted was personally unfulfilling on a creative or spiritual level.

One of my main claims over the years is that social media is a primary vector for this switchover to the “human capital” structure of feeling — that platform profiles encourage us to think of identity production as a long game rewarded with measurable rewards of attention, opportunity, and even money on occasion. They conflate identity with a flaunting of one’s capabilities to an audience, with one’s availability for projects, which ultimately is a matter of one’s availability to the network.  

A new kind of identity has emerged from this, stabilizing in the form of the influencer, who monetizes the appearance that their life is nothing but commercialized self-representation. As Davies notes,  

human capital depends on being credit-worthy, both in the conventional financial sense (of being able to repay loans) and in a broader reputational sense of having a credible, optimistic vision of oneself and the future (as with a brand). Perhaps the ultimate manifestation of this logic is the Instagram or Youtube star, who lives their entire life around a logic of human capital appreciation via cultural credibility and authenticity.

Influencers are bound to the logic of the various metrics social media afford, whether or not these are public-facing or are a matter of behind-the-scenes contracts and pay rates. The various metrics begin to appear as a measure of the authenticity of the personality involved — they are “credit ratings” in the sense of measuring how believable their performance of themselves appears, which is indexed to how much commerce it pushes. 

The content that influencers produce for their channels are performances and advertisements at the same time. They are not “about” anything other than the opportunity for the influencers to be rated. Influencers are under pressure to continually produce this content on an accelerating schedule to demonstrate that willingness to be rated, to show their confidence in their own value. That confidence in turn supports a broader confidence in organizing our aspirations around human capital formation. Influencers are role models who glamorize a life of credulous opportunism, or if you are less skeptical, of entrepreneurial striving as a lifestyle devoted to authenticity.     

In the introduction to Emotions as Commodities, Eva Illouz argues that in contemporary society, “authenticity is taken to be one of the most powerful performances of the self through objects. Authenticity is the experience generated by the co-production of emotions and consumer practices.” That is to say, authenticity, once framed as the antithesis of market behavior, now requires consumerism to structure it. It emerges from how emotions are felt to appropriately correspond to commodified “experiences.”

Influencers perform that correspondence, allowing those who watch them to experience more emotionality themselves. They are unflaggingly optimistic about the capabilities of consumerism to support a sense of life’s meaningfulness. 

Influencers model “authentic” consumption but the authenticity is guaranteed by the underlying structure of “human capital,” the imposition of economic stakes. It’s not just a matter of consuming properly, but of making your consumerism productive — that is what makes it “authentic.” 

Consumerism is understood as identity production (the ”prosumerism” of old), which is understood as human capital formation. “Authenticity” is the banner under which all this self-valorization flies, and “real feelings” are the promised payoff, while you are waiting for all that human capital to actually see returns.  

[merithewc-blog]

Journal Post 10/16

Chapter 2 of “Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance���, it talked about sharing on social media. The article talked about how our social media activity dictates how a feeds show. So it takes what we like and share and next time we go on that social media we see a lot more posts of things we have an interest in. It can be a frightening thing that what we post on social media is saved into data bases that people can get a hold of and know pretty much everything about us and that can lead to major problems. I feel that us as a society have to be careful what we put out there because something we post that is sensitive information can land in the wrong hands and could cause major problems in our lives. 

In the video, Danah Boyd is a researcher at Microsoft and the Founder and CEO of the institute of Data and Society. She talked about how social media manipulates what people see. She discussed how conspiracy people manipulate how information on crisis’ are spread and makes everyone go crazy researching things. Also talked about the measles outbreak in New York City that caused a lot of people to go frantic and research how to stay protected and what to do. She explained how search engines get manipulated and can show false information or beliefs out to the public and having them believe in fake news. How social media platforms amplify these crisis’ and trick users to stay on them and research false information believing it is all true. So you cannot believe everything you read on the internet is real. We need to be cautious of who is relaying the facts whether they are a reliable source or not.

In this post I used the rhetoric strategies of linguistic and visual. I used the visual gif of fake news since it ties into what was discussed in Danah Boyd’s video. I used the strategy of linguistic to relay my thoughts and ideas of this information.

[emmyduggan]

10/16 assignment

As we have discussed throughout the semester, everyone is on some form of social media whether it be Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The article Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance had some very interesting points when it comes to social media. It all started in 2004 and there was a social media platform called Friendster, basically like today's Facebook, where you could connect with friends, post whatever you wanted, and make connections. This was a big start to how social media came to be. Prosumerism was a big theme throughout the reading and how there are 3 waves to prosumerism. The first wave was during the agricultural revolution, the second wave was during the industrial revolution and the third wave is the information age. These waves were created and advanced to expand and increase social order. The third wave is where we are now, the do it yourself era. There are so many ways to do things yourself as you can look anything up on the internet and figure it out. When you get something that you need to build, there are instructions that come with it so you don’t need to go and hire someone else to do it for you. People go on social media to buy things and look at things and that is where things get a little creepy. There is an algorithm that is used to determine how much time you spend online, what you look at, what interests you, etc. and then that is all you see. Sometimes you don’t even have to look something up, you could just talk about it, and the next time you open social media, there it is. In the video, the main topic was about false beliefs and with this mixed in with social media can make the world a scary place which is why you cannot always believe what you read on the internet. Everything can be swayed some way or be biased and misconstrued that you don’t know what to believe. The main points here are that social media is much bigger than we think, we use it more than we realize, and we need to not be as consumed with it as we already are. The world is so much bigger than what we think the world looks like on a tiny little screen.

I used visual and linguistic because I like to express myself through words and then use a visual to depict what I mean. I used this GIF because it goes with the theme of false belief and how people can use social media to create a facade and act one way than they do in real life. There is so much more to people than what they post on social media and everyone needs to realize that. 

[kimmie2williams2]

10/16 Journal

Social media today and the internet create false belief in people. There is a quote out there that I know most people have heard “Do not believe everything you see on the internet.” These articles that we had to read for this week explain the “false/fake” in everyday life. In Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance is mostly about how social media consumed us in everyday life. This product social media has taken over our lives and consumed us within it. Social media is known as being a place to interact with other people and show services and good within it. This article opened my eyes by showing me that usually when I am talking about something I then open a social media app and it shows what I am interested in. This interaction states in the article that it comes in waves. The first wave is understanding the culture associated with it and the second wave is understanding the public and what is around. The third wave is referring back to the first wave. This is all shown when more people engage with social media making more data and more advertisement to consume the audience. Social media is associated in everyday life and it keeps consuming us within it.  

The video with Danah Boyd is a researcher at Microsoft. Danah Boyd is a senior researcher at microsoft and founder of the researcher institute data and society. 

Topic in this video that was discussed was “How media manipulators are responsible for mass shootings and other crises. She discusses how after the Shooting in EL Paso media manipulators may be responsible for these shootings. Digital media amplifies and spreads false information creating a false belief. False belief causes doubt and doubt causes to ask questions. Anyone in the world has the ability to learn a set of techniques and amplify in a hyper networking media ecosystem. Things/ Questions/ Ideas on search engines have been manipulated because people have been optimizing the search results. Most people believe what they see on the internet because it is on the internet this relates back to the quote I said in the first paragraph. Most ideas are amplified to create false belief and even if its not true it is made to be true so the audience believes it. 

Overall, even if we do not want to face it social media and the internet has consumed us within it. False belief are always being created. Data can be used in the most beneficial ways but it can also be used in the most abusive ways possible. We always just have to be aware what is being seen and if it is true or false. 

For this journal post I used visual and linguistic for my two rhetorical strategies. I chose to use linguistic because it helps myself explain what my thoughts are through words and putting them down so others can see. I also used the visual rhetorical strategies to help explain my thought process while readings these readings for this week and help explain my journal. I used this GIF because I feel it explain and shows that false belief is being created and it is lying. When I was doing these readings for this week Pinocchio was the first idea that came to my head so that was the GIF I chose. 

[bakerbutcherlondoncalling]

10/16 Tumblr Post

Estee Beck’s “Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance” goes into detail about aspects of Digital Media like sharing, the act of how people connect thoughts modes like social media and labor being compared to old self-made websites from the 1990′s. People can essentially create their own products with digital media in the form of Prosumerism. Another topic is the “filter bubble” which in a way prevents users from going out of their comfort zone and reinforces existing beliefs. Overall, this passage was a bit of a tough read but turned out informative.

Danah Boyd’s post has a harsh truth to it, one about the power of digital media. It is so easy to believe something you see online just because other people believe it. A major topic is how ignorance can be actively seeded to advance an agenda with fake information. Plane crashes, “Crisis Actors”, and massive conspiracies in general. I recognized some events like the infamous “Pizza Gate” where a gunman actually showed up at the restaurant. A major focus is on the current “Trump Era” and all its fake news and how hard it is to separate fact from fiction, as terms like “Fake News” can show. Manipulation of information like this may very well have fed the sick thoughts of the El Paso shooter into doing what he did. The news industry is going to take years to regain the publics trust as Boyd herself has said, and she is very well right. 

This visual gif shows an unlikely alliance: Humans and dinosaurs working together to hunt a common enemy. This working together could be compared to shooting.

Watch Jurassic World, it is awesome.

[rachellynnneff-blog]

10/16 Writing Journal

In Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance, we read chapter 2 which starts out talking about sharing and what that exactly means! Social media pretty much encourages us to share our lives on the internet; even if it’s not entirely true. We are also slammed with ads as well! Beck describes it in three waves. The first talks about how we understand culture. The second deals with understanding the general public which leads into the third wave which talks about labor practices. All of the waves connect to each other, and the more we share, the more that is collected!

In the video with Danah Boyd, she speaks about how she believes media manipulators may be the cause for the El Paso shooting. Media is known for spreading false information, but not everyone is aware of this. Nowadays, people believe anything they read if they think the source is “credible”. What’s even worse is that ANYONE can lie on the internet, it’s not limited to news sources, so if a false topic gets a lot of support from unknowing spectators, it makes it seem even more real.

I chose linguistic as my main mode because I love being able to effectively share my ideas! I chose visual as my second because I found this gif really funny and think it ties my ideas together!

[buckminster]

About the “Delete Uber” thing…

“[…] Deleting Uber is an easy way to participate in the resistance against the xenophobic hellscape wrought by the Trump campaign without having to sacrifice much in way of time, energy, and resources. That doesn’t mean the action bad. After all, nothing this day and age sends a stronger message than money (whether we’re giving it or denying it) and we slacktivists got Uber to form a $3 million legal fund for drivers affected by the immigration ban. And then, of course, there’s Lyft’s ACLU donation, which—though undoubtedly motivated by the bottom line—will go on to do very good things. And all of this was accomplished in the span of a weekend, just because some of us deleted our apps.

But for those of us who live in areas with multiple transit options, our conscious consumerism should not end there. Let’s not forget that it was the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) that showed real solidarity during the JFK protests this weekend, and not for the sole purpose of commercial gain. They have, with no uncertain terms, spoken against Trump’s disgusting Muslim ban and continually speak out for New York’s immigrant workforce.

Speaking on Democracy Now!, Bhairavi Desai of the NYTWA stated, “We were outraged by the so-called executive order. We are a workforce that is largely Muslim and Sikh...Across the country there were similar solidarity strikes by drivers. It was an act of solidarity, it was an act of consciousness.”

Desai added: “This an impoverished workforce, largely because of companies like Uber. When workers are kept poor we’re fragmented and it’s and harder take action. We are proud of of our members who stood united in the face of injustice.”

So rather than switching your alliance from Uber to Lyft or any other rideshare start-up, be smart and promise your brand loyalty to no one. It’s the drivers who deserve your support, whether they work for a rideshare app or a unionized cab company or something in between. No PR boon is worth your unquestioning support. Instead, keep speaking out for drivers’ rights, support the bravery of the NYTWA, and keep fighting for the immigrants that face unconstitutional detainment at our nation’s airports.”

in “It’s more complicated than Uber vs. Lyft”, Madeleine Davies for Jezebel

Integral article, here:

http://jezebel.com/its-a-more-complicated-choice-than-uber-vs-lyft-1791784214

[rwilson32]

Journal 10/16

In today’s society, everyone is pretty much hooked to their smartphone which is basically a tiny computer in our hands; we have access to so much information with the touch of a finger on our screen yet we do not always stop to think about who is watching us and if they are influencing what we see. While social media and the internet in general is a place to interact with people, advertise different things that you want out there and get information, it can also be the root of many of our issues. Big companies are able to spread lies and how we will believe them because we are so consumed in social media. Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance showed me something I already knew: we are basically being listened to and manipulated. In the video, Danah Boyd speaks about how the people who manipulate media can easily put it out there and twist it and cause doubt in the audience that can be used for their gain. This can be dangerous because people who pay for advertising can begin to put their own message out there and persuade people to think a certain way or to maybe do something they would not have thought to do before seeing this advertising on social media. Especially in the younger population with growing up with social media, they may think they know what they are viewing and who they are talking to and do not think that they are being persuaded in any way when in reality, all of their thoughts and opinions do not come from genuine sources and they can be misinformed.

In this post, I used linguistic and visual as my modes. I used linguistic in my journal describing how social media has taken over. I used visual with the gif above because so much of what we read today is lies and people can only take so many until they get tired of them. 

[abriannakillino]

Writing Journal 10/16

In the video”Dana Boyd on the Spread of Conspiracies and Hate Online” , and the article “Estee Back Ch.2 SUSTAINING CRITICAL LITERACIES IN THE DIGITAL INFORMATION AGE: THE RHETORIC OF SHARING, PROSUMERISM, AND DIGITAL ALGORITHMIC SURVEILLANCE″, they both talk about how social media outlets and search engines are ways that individuals get the information that they are looking for. In the video, Dana Boyd mentioned how Youtube is the main way individuals under 25 get help with things that they are struggling with. Some things that she mentioned that they use it for homework, tying a tie, or to figure out a problem. I found it interesting because I, like any others thought that Google would be the main search engine. Another thing that Dana talks about is  about how small towns or cities become known. She mentioned that after a horrible event happens, people will find ways to put that town or city basically “on the web map”. 

I chose this gif because I believe it goes along with the concept of the individuals who create content to put those small towns and cities on the map when something horrible happens here. 

In chapter 2 of Estee Beck’s book, it mentions how the social media outlets works with advertising companies to bring ads that would interest the individuals that search for certain things on the interesting. I found this interesting because as I am scrolling through my social media outlets, there are always ads on things that I either search about or for. I always wondered how these social media outlets know things that interest me when I typically do not search for them on the outlet. Estee talks about how there is a range of monitoring systems on the outlets that helps bring the ads to the outlets. 

I chose this gif because it shows how a system, which goes with how the advertisers have a system on what ads to show individuals. 

[cmisuraca211]

10/16

Social media is everywhere, you can’t name one person without social media. the first thing i do when i wake up is automatically check my social media it’s part of my routine. social media helps us stay in touch with people from present to past. Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age talks about how the filtering systems meaning if you look up something up it automatically comes up on majority of your social media. say i look up a pair of vans on the internet if i go on instagram the same shoes come up. i find this very weird because it’s as if someone is watching every move you make on your phone. although social media is very useful to get major topics across it can be very dangerous. the evolution of the world wide web turned internet in the 1990s prosumerism and is continuing to expand. to conclude this major topic be aware of next time your on social media and see if your most recent search pops up.

for this i used linguistic and visual to express my thoughts about this topic of social media

[kaylafposts]

Journal 10/15

In Sustaining Critical Literacies In The Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance by Estee Beck poses questions about the meaning of sharing through social media platforms. “Is the sharing of thoughts, videos, music, another such digital compositions the sole purpose of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and SnapChat?” Beck questions the true purpose of sharing through social media platforms and what their main purpose is. It is discussed within the work that on surface level it seems as though that theses platforms aim to bring people together but in reality as people interact on these platforms they become the products of social media though surveillance and data tracking, “As people produce and consume content in Web2.0 spaces, they also become the users and products of social media because of the range of data tracking and surveillance technologies monitoring and recording user actions.” I wholeheartedly believe this statement to be true after browsing different websites for new jewelry. I shortly after log into my facebook account and it can’t be coincidental that the same exact product I was shopping for appears in the add section. I was more worried than confused because I felt as though my privacy was invaded but, it seems as though this happens regularly than I thought. 

This section of the book also discusses Prosumerism From the Industrial to Information Era, Open Source and Commodity Prosumerism in Web 2.0 Spaces, Digital Algorithmic Surveillance and Sustaining Critical Literacies in Social Media Spaces. Out of all four sub categories the one that has resonated with me was Digital Algorithmic Surveillance. Digital Algorithmic Surveillance describes how surveillance technologies use information to achieve certain results, “…describes how surveillance technologies store, categorize, and sift through complex datasets through step-by-step procedures for specific results.” The example previously mentioned about Facebook showing the jewelry products I was just browsing the web for perfectly aligns with this sub category. Within the section it discusses how tracking technologies like cookies and peoples web browsers and computing machines are essentially used as algorithmic surveillance which now makes sense of how facebook knew the product I was looking for. Overall I’ve learned that despite technology and or social media being  apart of our daily lives one needs to look more into how “sharing” really affects us. 

I used this gif to explain how everything on technology or social media platforms is being monitored and take into account. 

[ronnstark]

Pre-Tumblr 10.15.19

Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance written by Estee Beck explores the developmental process of prosumerism that began in the 1980’s and its transformative influence that exists in modern times. Prosumerism is a form of “hacking” process that was developed by major and powerful corporations in order to monitor, track, record and gather information of online users. By doing so, these companies would create a massive database that through the use of strategical algorithms would exploit a consumer, customer, everyday online users’ desires, wants and needs.

Alvin Toffler, who is the American author that Beck references in the article as the developer of Prosumerism, describes the formation of Prosumerism in three waves of hierarchy that progress throughout a civilization’s development. Each wave represents a forward movement in society that seeks to establish social order and is influenced based on the political, economic and social (ideological) apparatuses of the time. The first wave begins with what is called the agricultural revolution that took place after hunter-gatherers settled and thus “land” became the basis for economy, life, culture, the opportunity to start a family, and politics. The second wave further expands on the previous wave once the foundation of the common public becomes the ruling domain and is then heavily influenced by mass industrialization and consumption. Centralizing governments arise in conjunction with the economy and the introduction of skilled laborers paves the wave for the third step. The third wave combines the labor practices of the first and second waves with the notion that people should have a “do-it-yourself” mindset and could perform specialized labor tasks on their own. This feeling of empowerment that the population would develop, brings to life the concept of the “prosumer” which is a person who produces labor to consume goods and services that are also available in the marketplace.

What has become of this in modern times is that as technology advanced and so did its popularity in usage synthesized with everyday life, corporations collected data and information from social media sites through legal monitoring efforts in order to market their products to consumers (the people, us). Beck’s whole purpose of addressing the information in this article is so that civilians and the people of society be educated about these exploits. That teachers, professors, scholars and educators throughout the United States as well as globally, begin to teach students the awareness and importance in how they are monitored by corporations and businesses that only seek to manipulate their desires and interests. Privacy is no longer relevant as the everyday usage of social platforms increases and thus allows the collection of personal data.

To further support the urgency for people to “wake up” and to understand what is really occurring when someone is using an online social space, the researcher Danah Boyd in her interview on the spread of conspiracy theories and hate online, discusses how digital media amplifies and spreads false information. Media manipulators can twist the truth of events occurring by simply making something popular and believable. Manipulating a story through the use of multimedia modes such as photoshopping or grouping texts with certain visual effects, can cause a person to believe false information.

My personal take with this article and in already acknowledging that this exists and is a real thing, is to become motivated to look and seek out physical information that has not been tampered as easily as information originating from a digital source. While there is truth online and valuable information, search engines are designed to find what appeals to me the most and in that sense, I may not be receiving the full picture of the subject I am researching. Overall, people need to be aware and have some desire to research any information of what is occurring politically on the surface and perhaps in the underground of the United States and in the rest of the world.

I used the multimedia modals of text and visual to describe in word what I thought about the article and to visually paint a reference of what popped into my head while reading it! 

[mandyfineeee]

10/16 Writing Journal

Social media can be a really good outlet, but it also can reflect a “false” life. So much is available on the internet, and everyone has access to such a thing.

In Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance, it discusses how people are consumed into a product, this product being social media. Social media is a space for human engagement with services and goods. This immediately made me think about how when I open Instagram for example, it is always full of Ads and people trying to sell items. It is described in waves. So the first waves had to do with understanding the culture and the second wave had to do with understanding the common public and expanding on that and the third wave had to do with the labor practices and referring this back to the first two waves. The more people who engage in social media sites lead to more consumer data for collections of advertising and so forth. It is important to allow people to know this. Social media is in everyone’s life and the public should be aware of this. With this awareness, the rhetoric of sharing can change the culture.

In the video, Danah Boyd is a researcher at Microsoft. She discusses how after the Shooting in EL Paso, how media manipulators may be responsible for these shootings. Digital media amplifies and spreads false information. Anyone has the way of learning how to get their information, their stories and more across the media. It is much simpler than it seems. Most people don’t trust the government. This was an example she discusses. Most people believe what they can see. So, in news for example, if they see people discussing certain topics and they can see pictures and so forth, they are more likely to believe this because it is a “fact”, right? Even if it is not true, if it is made out to be, people will be more likely to believe it. The media is an ecosystem, and everyone and anyone can interfere with it.

To sum this all up, media has different outlets for different reasons. However, everything on social media is not always true. Anyone can manipulate, express, sell, and act differently amongst social media. I know personally, on my social media, I only post the “good” things, and that is just a small example of the other side of reality versus social media.

I used visual and linguistic for my two rhetorical strategies. By using linguistic text, I can better explain my thought processes and how I interpret what I have read, but when I add the visual aspect, in this case, a gif, it makes the post more interesting and appealing to the eye. The reason I chose this gif is that these two outlets discuss how social media and everything on it is not always true, and I feel like his gif really expresses that thought.

[joshkeller13]

Journal Post 10/16

In the chapter “Sustaining Critical literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance” and the video clip with Danah Boyd both basically talked about how social media and search engines may have more power than you think. It's crazy to think about how social media and search engines can manipulate people's thoughts and choices in life by simply giving false information to get them into using their platform more to do more research on something that could have caught their attention. In the video, Dianah talked about Youtube and how its the place for people to go when they have questions or if they want to look something up; some of that information is manipulated to satisfy the person looking for it. Another thing that Dianah said that really stuck out to me was that these platforms can pick key terms/words that were used in the last search you did and find other ads or websites with those keywords in it to sort of loop you into believing that information that keeps popping up. It's just mindblowing on all the things they do to try and manipulate the way people think or state their opinion. With that Dianah summed it up to say that when those people go on google or bing so search that “news” they heard that they are basically just getting conspiratorial content instead of the proper info that they should know.

I used visual and linguistic for my rhetoric strategies, I used visual (GIF) to show what I am talking about and then I used linguistically to help me state my opinion.