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a Chinese firewall

China.

Population – over 1.3 billion.

Internet Users - 500 million Internet users, as of 2012 (Ted 2012)

Facebook Users – 0

Twitter Users = 0

Instagram Users = 0

That’s right – despite having more internet users than anywhere else in the world, the people of China do not use Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. This is not necessarily because they don’t want to (a small number of users are using ‘banned’ sites by circumventing Government restrictions with VPN’s or other means) but because the Government blocks access to these sites.

Yet despite having no access to what we perceive to be the most active social media networks in the world, the Chinese people are easily the most social media active in the world – 91% saying they visited a social media site in 6 months in 2012 (Chiu, Lin, Silverman 2012)

What? They don’t have Facebook and twitter but are 24% more likely than Americans to be on social media?

That’s right – but rather than using the same platforms that we have used, China has their own versions. Twitter? Try Sina Weibo. Facebook? RenRen. Youtube? Youku Tudou.

China has these and a whole suite of their own social media networks – they have the most social-media-engaged citizens in the world, and have more actual friends online than offline, compared to their, Asian counterparts (Crampton 2011)

So, it’s clear that, while Chinese citizens don’t subscribe to the same platforms than us, they are certainly not missing the social media wave.

 “rather than eliminate social media, restrictions on foreign websites…have resulted in a flourishing home-grown, state-approved ecosystem in which Chinese-owned properties thrive”. 

Crampton 2011

 REFERENCES

Chiu, C, Lin, D & Silverman, A 2012, China's social-media boom, McKinsey & Company, viewed 5 February 2017, <http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/chinas_social-media_boom>.

 Crampton, T 2011, 'Social media in China: The same, but different, China Business Review, Vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 28-31, viewed 5 February 2017, <http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/social-media-china-business-review/>.

 TED 2012, Behind the Great Firewall of China, June, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_anti_behind_the_great_firewall_of_china>.

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Week 10 – Social Gaming: Playing the Crowd

 Social gaming is a 21st century phenomenon born in the shadow of online social media communication.  It has, amongst many positive impacts, given players of existing games an opportunity to meet and engage with other players and people with similar interests. Stories have even emerged of people meeting in online social gaming environments before meeting in real life and getting married! (Squire 2010). According to a 2014 study, there were more than 23 million individuals were playing massive multiplayer online role-playing games in 2014. (Statista 2014)

 “The stigma around meeting a love interest online is dissipating more and more with every new story of love found in unexpected ways. Online games and virtual worlds are increasingly being embraced as just the right place to nurture new relationships and help couples grow their bond from friendship into something more”

(Morton 2015)

Group G’s great presentation this week (accessible at the link below!) gives some great insights into the positive aspects of online gaming environments.

 https://prezi.com/iw54e79jwyeg/social-gaming/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

In this post though, I’ll examine online gaming communities within the framework of our ongoing digital citizenship discussion – particularly identifying misogynistic attitudes, trolling, and experienced players attacking new players attempting to enter and engage in the community and what is being done to overcome these attitudes in the virtual world.

A prime example of online gaming misogyny is from 2012, when Anita Sarkeesian launched a kickstarter campaign to fund a web series she was creating about Women in Video Games (Unknown 2015). Sarkeesian was harassed and intimidated online by gamers who disagreed with the messaging in her series. (Although the ultimately successful) series was ultimately funded by people who agreed with her!)

In 2014, the social media hashtag #Gamergate went viral after game developer Zoe Quinn was attacked online by her ex-boyfriend and many other members of the gaming community for allegedly trading sex for positive reviews of her games. Quinn was subject to vitriolic hate threats and even a death threat online. Anyone who came to Quinn’s defence was also targeted. (Unknown 2014).

Similarly, new gamer players (Noobs) are often trolled by established players who choose to criticize and intimidate new players rather than educate and help them to develop skills to become a more successful player.

One solution proposed by Will Wheaton (2015) is to ‘remove the cloak of anonymity’ in online gaming thus bringing gaming competition back to it’s origins – healthy competition with ultimate respect for your opposition, win or lose.

As we’ve learnt in previous weeks, positive aspects ­of online social environments are often undone by trolling and inappropriate behaviour. And online gaming communities are not exempt! Cheese (2016) even highlights that there is a community of online gaming trolls who play with the sole intention of trolling with his “Top 5 ways to ruin video games for fun”.

So whilst there are undoubtedly a slew of positive outcomes from the online social gaming revolution, the community has a long way to go to truly embrace and accept ALL people wanting to be part of the community.

 References

Cheese 2016, ‘Trolling Done Right: 5 Ways To Ruin Video Games For Fun’ March 26 2016, Accessed 27 January 2017, Available at: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-every-video-game-troll-needs-to-learn-demonstrated/

Morton 2015, ‘Why Couples Are Finding Real Love in Virtual Worlds’ February 20 2015, Accessed 27 January 2017, Available at: http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/why-couples-are-finding-real-love-in-virtual-worlds?xg_source=activity%23axzz3SmqjWbse

 Squire 2010, 10 November 2010, ‘Happy ever avatar: Couple marry after falling in love in online game before they'd even met’ Accessed 27 January 2017, Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1329250/Couple-marry-falling-love-online-game-theyd-met.html

Unknown 2015 "Opinion: Misogyny in online gaming culture takes a toll." UWIRE Text, 1 Oct. 2015, p. 1. General OneFile, ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=swinburne1&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA430465273&it=r&asid=c7c6cf0938003cf5c010b42cb5f4c67b. Accessed 28 Jan. 2017.

Unknown 2014 "#GamerGate." UWIRE Text, 2 Oct. 2014, p. 1. Academic OneFile, ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=swinburne1&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA384325245&it=r&asid=412aecc883bf7f820a29c51f3abc63e4. Accessed 28 Jan. 2017. 

Wheaton 2014 "PostEverything: Anonymous trolls are destroying online games. Here's how to stop them." Washington Post, 11 Nov. 2014. Academic OneFile, ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=swinburne1&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA389716418&it=r&asid=607ecbd74b213cec5c4cf5a24d1d276f. Accessed 28 Jan. 2017.

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Week 9  - Visual communities and social imaging

Over the last decade, visual communication via social media has become one of, if not the #1 way of communicating on social media, particularly amongst young people. Just ask Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose company:

a)    Bought leading imaging social media application Instagram in 2012

b)   Tried to buy another leading imaging application Snapchat for a reported $3 billion in 2013

Why? A Statista report in 2016 indicated that Facebook and Instagram were the #1 and #2 social media applications used by teenagers and young adults. #3? A fast-growing Snapchat (Statista 2016).

 As visual imagery has become the most popular form of communication amongst young people, it is very important that we consider the pressure that is being placed on young people to look and behave a certain way.

In an interview with Natalie Hollingshead (2016), recovering anorexic Jessie Carlson is an example of the body image issues that can arise from the pressure of looking like everybody else on social media.

 "It's hard. I'm sitting here, three years into recovery, trying to finally accept my body and I scroll through Instagram where there are dozens of the same, perfect size zero girl," she said. "I feel like I'm the only girl on my feed without a dang thigh gap. Or #goals relationship. It can be difficult to feel happy with myself."

(Jessie Carlson, 2016) 

Following celebrities and insta-celebrities in particular can exacerbate the issue, with their perfect lives and perfect bodies constantly delivered to young, impressionable people with filters, Photoshop, and other tools made to give an even bigger sense of superiority. #lifegoals #bodygoals #thinspo

In recent times, a new wave of body-positive “Normal” people getting traction on social media has been a very positive development. Plus-size model Ashley Graham had a break out year in 2016, not only breaking down traditionally impenetrable barriers in the modeling industry, but also using that platform to encourage her followers to love and embrace the body that they have. (Tai 2017)

  Check her out here! https://www.instagram.com/theashleygraham/?hl=en

 Overall, as young people continue to use imagery more and more as their primary method of communication, it is vital that we continue to educate them about the realities V Fiction of their favourite social media celebrities, and encourage a positive personal body image story.

 References

Hollingshead N 2016. 'Thinspiration' on social media contributing to rise in body image issues." UWIRE Text, 24 Feb. 2016, p. 1. Academic OneFile, ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=swinburne1&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA444159784&it=r&asid=41edc586c67e44369cbbd04b56027d11. Accessed 22 Jan. 2017.

STATISTA 2016, ‘Reach of leading social media and networking sites used by teenagers and young adults in the United States as of February 2016’ Accessed 21 January 2017, available at:

 https://www.statista.com/statistics/199242/social-media-and-networking-sites-used-by-us-teenagers/

 Tai 2017, ‘Ashley Graham Kicks off 2017 With a Body-Positive, Cellulite-Flaunting Instagram’ Accessed 21 January, Available at:

http://www.thefashionspot.com/celebrity-fashion/729007-ashley-graham-cellulite-confidence/

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Week 8: Crowdsourcing in times of crisis

During a crisis, timely communication between emergency services and the public is critical to spread information about threats and to advise people of evacuation procedures and advice. 

Historically, this was a one-way communication with emergency services working with news agencies (particularly live TV and Radio given their immediacy) to broadcast information available to the public. This information was limited to that available to the emergency services. 

However, as the Internet and social media have grown in popularity and availability, a new way of sourcing information in times of crisis has emerged – Crowdsourcing. 

“Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”

(Howe 2006)

 The tragic Haiti Earthquake in 2010 presented an opportunity for Humanitarian Crowd Sourcing in a crisis.  During and in the wake of the crisis, local media and radio stations tapped into local civilian knowledge to report on things like roads available for use, where water is available, etc. Information was collected by Text message, phone calls, via the Internet, as well as on foot, while also geo-tagging reports to develop a map of affected areas. Also established was Mission 4636, a crowd sourcing system that was established to connect the people of Haiti with international relief efforts. (Munro 2013).

Crowdsourcing information has also grown as a means of collecting information about ongoing Human Rights issues. The Ushahidi platform was established in 2007 to give citizens a place to report Human Righta abuses and to engage with people suffering similar issues to themselves, and to then work together to establish a more substantive volume of data about abuses  (Ford 2012).

 One of the biggest challenges for Crowdsourcing is authentication of the information posted. Indeed the need for verification was critical for Ushahidi during the Kenyan Crisis in 2009 – vetting information for verification whilst avoiding “silencing” other voices just because they were unverifiable. They established a system where “Verified” statements had a mark attached to them indication as such, whilst still keeping unverified statements on the platform.

 2 solutions proposed in a 2012 report by the University of Virginia (Weaver, Boyle, Besaleva 2012) were:

1)   Rate the credibility of the report based on Geo-location taken from the users mobile device. For example, if somebody is reporting on a flood in Melbourne FROM Melbourne’s CBD, it will be more credible than an information report coming from London.

2)   Allow consumers of the information post to give it a 1-5 star “credibility” rating – the more positive ratings, the more credible it is considered in the community. 

Overall, there have been some great implementations of crowdsourcing in crises, particularly unexpected critical disasters that need the quick attraction and dissemination of information. However, in the case of ongoing humanitarian disasters, there is perhaps more work to be done before the reporting is considered credible.

 REFERENCES

- Ford, H 2012, 'Crowd Wisdom', Index on Censorship, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 33-39. 

- Howe J 2006, ‘Crowdsourcing: A definition’ 2 June 2006, Accessed 18 January 2017, Available at:

http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/2006/06/crowdsourcing_a.html

 - Munro 2013. Crowdsourcing and the crisis-affected community: Lessons learned and looking forward from Mission 4636.

 - Weaver, Boyle, Besaleva 2012. Applications and Trust Issues When Crowdsourcing a Crisis

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Digital citizenship 3: Trolling and social media conflict

#MDA20009 took us into the underground world of trolling and Cyberbullying this week, specifically looking at the impact it has on young people, and what we can do – both from an educations and legislative perspective – to ensure we all have safe and productive interactions online.

 Emilee, Candice, Anita, Jack and I had the pleasure of leading the conversation on the message board conversation this week, see our presentation below!

http://prezi.com/su2p0zowatfq/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

First we looked at what trolling was – per Kluyeva (2013) trolling was created through the technological advancements of Web 2.0 – with people often feigning genuine interest in a topic to join their online community, only to ‘troll’ the forum once they are engaged. 

We looked at Cyber-bullying and the real-life impact it can have on people, particularly young people and teenagers. Whilst statistics show that ‘real-life’ bullying is still more common, there have been increasing reports of real-life impacts of cyber-bullying, with the recent tragic case of Cyberbullying leading to the suicide of 18 year old Brandy Vela (MamaMia 2016)

 My research focused on Government regulation – For many years, conversations and arguments around Government regulation of Online Trolling and Cyber Bullying has presented a debate between protecting Human Rights and Restricting Free Speech. Proponents of increased regulation argue that people should be prosecuted in the same way online as they would in the real world - not hide behind a wall of online anonymity, whilst those arguing against increased regulation argue that regulation threatens the democratic right to free speech.

Existing Media Legislation

The Australian Communication And Media Authority’s ‘Broken Concepts’ report (2013) outlined the limitations of existing media legislation, including the previously distinct definitions of broadcasting methods (radio, television, and telephone) becoming blurred by new online delivery systems. Existing legislation does not recognize Social Networking applications for voice communication, for example.

Social Media Ombudsman

In the lead-up to the 2013 Federal Election, current Independent Senator Nick Xenephon implored Political Leaders to introduce a Social Media Ombudsman, believing it to be a simple matter of protecting freedom of speech. (Xenephon 2013)

“So many social media users in this country feel powerless to protect themselves from abuse, and it’s about time that stopped.”

“A Social Media Ombudsman would be the best way of dealing with it, due to the myriad of platforms and systems that abound.”

“All Australians should be able to express themselves online without the fear of copping abuse.”

(Xenephon, 2013)

In 2014, the Federal and State governments combined to introduce an online reporting system to help the Australian public to report Cyber-crime called ACORN (Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network) (Acorn 2014). However, reporting of trolling and online abuse still reports within existing media legislation.

However, a Social Media Ombudsman for non-criminal activities online has not been introduced.

Children’s E-safety Commissioner

In 2015 the Australian Federal Government introduced the Children's E-safety Commissioner to educate young Australians to have safe, positive experiences online, whilst enforcing the takedown of serious threats, intimidation, harassment and embarrassment targeted at children.

The commissioner provides online safety education for Australian children and young people, a complaints service for young Australians who experience serious cyber bullying, and addresses illegal online content through the Online Content Scheme. (Doran 2015)

What’s happening overseas?

In 2016, updated guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales gave prosecutors the right to prosecute people found to be “grossly harassing” others online just as they would if the harassment occurred offline, including creating derogatory hash tags, doctored images, and inciting people to harass others. However, Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Sanders was careful to stress that it did not mean they could prosecute free speech. (BBC UK 2016)

New Zealand also passed the Harmful Digital Communications Act (2015) under which Internet Trolls found guilty of using threatening, intimidating or offensive language online could be fined or imprisoned (Patane 2015)

"The internet's not an anonymous place where people can post without any consequences. People should think about their own conduct. “

If you are grossly abusive to people, if you are bullying or harassing people online, then we will prosecute in the same way as if you did it offline."

(Alison Saunders 2016)

 REFERENCES

ACMA 2013, Broken Concepts: A 2013 update on the Australian communications legislative landscape. Accessed 10 Dec 2016, Available at.

http://www.acma.gov.au/~/media/Office%20of%20the%20Chair/Information/pdf/ACMA_BrokenConcepts_Final_29Aug1%20pdf.pdf

ACORN 2014, about the ACORN, 2014, viewed 10 December 2016, available at https://www.acorn.gov.au/about-acorn

BBC UK 2016, Internet trolls targeted with new legal guidelines, 10 Oct 2016, accessed on 9 December 2016, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37601431

 Doran M 2015, Cyber bullying: New children's e-safety commissioner to fine social media sites up to $17,000 a day for failing to remove offensive material, 20 March 2015, accessed 10 December 2016, available at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-19/childrens-e-safety-commissioner-to-fine-social-media-sites/6332854

 Klyueva, A. (2013). Trolling. In R. Heath (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Public Relations (pp. 933-934). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Mamamia 2016, Teenager tragically takes own life in front of family after suffering relentless bullying, accessed on 9 December 2016 on  http://www.mamamia.com.au/teen-who-committed-suicide/

Patane 2015, Internet Trolls in Australia: What does the future hold? 4 Aug 2015, accessed 10 Oct 2016, available at

https://macdonnells.com.au/internet-trolls-in-australia-what-does-the-future-hold

Xenophon N 2013, Support Social Media Ombudsman, 4 September, viewed 10 December 2016, available at http://www.nickxenophon.com.au/media/releases/show/support-social-media-ombudsman

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Activism and protest

Digital citizenship 2: Activism and protest

 Social Media has truly been a game-changer for Grass Roots activism. Amongst many benefits, it has streamlined the Organization of large groups of people, eased the distribution of large amounts of information, and given celebrities a platform to involve themselves with causes that they believe in by distributing information to their fans and followers.

Prior to social media becoming a tool for information distribution, it was incredibly difficult for any information to make it into the public sphere. All news distribution was via traditional media – the majority of which were are owned, operated, and represent the political and social perspectives of very few massive companies including News Corporation and Fairfax. If the leaders of those companies

Social Media has also provided a platform for citizen video footage to be distributed to a massive audience, by ‘going viral’. Footage of Eric Garner being held down and choked by New York Police Department officers in 2014 is an early example of cell phone footage being widely distributed online.

(The Guardian 2014)

This is a great example of social media activism, protest, and subsequent awareness bringing about dramatically increased global awareness, but also contributing to actual change with awareness reaching politicians, with a United States Justice Department investigation into Garner’s death ongoing and widespread support amongst politicians including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.

However, there are other examples of Social Media-driven campaigns being just that – Social Media Campaigns. The #Kony2012 campaign brought global awareness to Ugandan war crimimal Joseph Kony went it went viral in 2012. However, one of the big movements of the campaign involving actual action – for the followers to actually activate their involvement and cover major cities with posters of Kony had a paltry turnout (Carroll 2012)

“Kony is so last month”

Anonymous, via twitter

So, with the recent success of several movements, there is no doubt that Social Media is and will continue to be a vital platform for activists looking to spread their message quickly and to a wider audience. This will help bring awareness to causes, but the challenge still facing these activists is to consistently get people to act and react to the causes they support, not just ‘like’ and ‘follow’ them on social media.

References

Carroll 2012, ‘Cover the Night fails to move from the internet to the streets’ 22 April 2012, Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/21/kony-2012-campaign-uganda-warlord. Accessed 2 January 2016

The Guardian 2014, ‘Cover the Night fails to move from the internet to the streets’ 5 December 2014, Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/dec/04/i-cant-breathe-eric-garner-chokehold-death-video. Accessed 2 January 2016

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Socielection

This week in #MDA20009 I’ll focus on taking a look at the different ways in which politicians use the internet, and particularly social media, to connect with younger audiences – you know, the people who don’t watch them spinning their webs (and catching themselves more often than not!) on 7:30 or Insiders every week!

In the lead up to the 2010 Australian federal election, Julie Posetti (2009) wrote an article for the ABC website outlining how social media would become a crucial tool for politicians wanting to engage with their constituents – an avenue that they could no longer ignore.

 “Social Media will need to be taken seriously by all political players at the next election”

(Posetti, 2009)

Posetti even compares the concept of using Social Media to gauge public opinion to more traditional polling.  

Fast forward to 2016, and the 2016 US Presidential election was a fascinating experiment in both political engagement on social media, and polling.

Firstly, incorrect polling was one of the leading conversation points in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s surprise win. I.K (2016) outlines in an Economist article how combined Facebook, Google, and Polls would have accurately predicted 49/50 states correctly – a vastly better result than traditional polling, most debate reviews, and general public sentiment about the election.

In his first interview after Donald Trump himself was also very quick to credit his reach on social media as being a key to his election success. (Stahl, 2016)

“I think it helped me win all of these races where they’re spending much more money than I spent.”

Donald Trump 2016

Trump was incredibly active on twitter throughout the campaign (as he has been for many years) even if some of his content was less favourable than Hillary Clinton’s. Facebook released data suggesting that 3 weeks prior to the election, Trump had over 300 million impressions in a week on that platform alone, compared to Clinton’s 206 million (Fox News 2016)

 In his 2012 book The rise of the Fifth Estate (2012) Greg Jericho discussed the conditions needed for a viral campaign to get traction – particularly suggesting that when conditions for a revolution exist, a spark can be set off that can spread quickly through social media. A good example discussed in the book Is the “We are all Khaled Saeed” Facebook page, which was set up by Wael Ghonim to protest the Egyptian president Mubarek’s regime. The page attracted nearly 222,000 members in a few weeks (and now has over 2 million), and Ghonim was named in Time magazine’s top 100 most influential people in the world for 2011. (Jericho 2012) And Mubarek of course stepped down under the weight of public pressure.

What do you think? What impact can social media having on politics, and who do you know that is using Social media most effectively? and can it really impact an election?

 REFERENCES

-       Fox News 2016, ‘Trump may be lagging in polls, but he's winning campaign on social media’ 19 October 2016, Available at: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/19/trump-may-be-lagging-in-polls-but-winning-campaign-on-social-media.html. Viewed 11 December 2016

 -       I.K. 2016, ‘Where polling failed, Facebook prevailed’ 30 November 2016, Available at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/social-media-and-american-election. Accessed 11-Dec-2016

 -       Jericho, G 2012, 'How many votes are there on Twitter?', in The Rise of the Fifth Estate, Scribe, Victoria, Australia.

 -       Posetti J 2009, ‘Politics 2.0: Your election will be twitterised’ 2 December 2009, Available at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-02/27554. Accessed 11 December 2016.

 -       Stahl, L 2016, ‘President-elect Trump speaks to a divided country on 60 Minutes’ 13 November 2016, Available at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-donald-trump-family-melania-ivanka-lesley-stahl/ Accessed 11 December 2016

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Social Guide to a Social Guise

The first 3 weeks of #MDA20009 set out to bring a level of theorization to the obvious 21st century phenomenon of Human interaction and engagement in the Internet space, particularly via social media. That theorization has already presented some fascinating insights, ideas and perspectives, including a look at the various platforms available, who uses them, and what for.Buzzz Social Media (2013) presents some fascinating facts, including that the 55-65 year old women was the fastest growing segment on Facebook – I thought it was just my mum signing up and seemingly liking every photo that I put up! Edison research from 2014 shows that 61% of people 12+ in America now have their own smartphone, with the biggest growth since their 2011 survey in 55+ and 12-17 age demographics (Edison 2014). A similar study by Influence Central (2016) reports that an astonishing 50% of children sign up for their first social media account before the age of 12!

2014

2011

With the growth in popularity many different social media platforms have launched with a wide variety of affordances - Youtube for videos, LinkedIn for Business, etc -  and some are more generalist social media platforms, such as Facebook and Google+. Some have started with 1 objective and evolved to another to regain relevance, such as Myspace re-focussing their strategy on music and Twitter making a recent move into Live Sports Broadcasting with the NBA. Through the Faceless Bodies reading by Emily Van Den Nagel (2013) and the “What is Twitter” reading by Dhiraj Murthy (2013) we were able to review the effectiveness of Social Media platforms in creating an environment where users can be interactive participants on the broadcast cycle rather than the “one-too-many” model of traditional Television and Radio (Murthy 2013). As Murthy explains, if a tweet gets re-tweeted enough times and by the right people with a large following, it can gain momentum and go Viral. Many companies now produce online content which specific characteristics to help it go viral. Similarly, Reddit is a platform where users can post images, text, video, etc under themed threads where other users vote them up or down to establish a “top posts” list under that thread. As the gonewild case study shows though, the results are very much tailored to what the audience consuming the content likes – in this case, young white, slender females. We have even seen with the recent US election that the easy of sharing can lead to fake news going viral through social media to the point where a huge portion of the population believes it to be true. We also know that curation of social media feeds often reflects a one-sided view, particularly with politics – so a user with particular leanings will get an increasingly curated news feed that supports their existing beliefs, rather than giving them a balanced view of both sides of politics.

So we’ve learnt a lot about Social Media and its strengths and failings – but are the strengths and opportunities it presents enough to cancel out the failings and negativity? Whose job is it to ensure that the content being made available on the internet is factually accurate and balanced?

Check back next week for a look at how Social Media impacts Politics and Civil Cultures!

References:

Buzzz Social Media 2011, The Social Media Revolution 2014, 23 October, viewed 3 August 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eUeL3n7fDs>. Edison Research. 2014. 2014 smartphone ownership demographics . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.edisonresearch.com/2014-smartphone-ownership-demographics/. [Accessed 3 December 2016].

Influence Central. 2016. Kids & Tech: The Evolution of Today’s Digital Natives. [ONLINE] Available at: http://influence-central.com/kids-tech-the-evolution-of-todays-digital-natives/. [Accessed 3 December 2016].

Laerke Spenner. 2014. The use of different Social Media platforms for different purposes. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140921154810-93854683-which-social-media-platform-is-the-best-choice-for-my-business. [Accessed 3 December 2016].

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Meet me here

Hey all! 

I’d introduce myself but, 3 weeks into #MDA20009, it’s clear that you’ll know the true me my stalking my social media. on Instagram you will of course find photos of food, places I’ve visited, and whatever i decide to like that day. Twitter you will find very little (I’m more of a viewer than a creator in the twittersphere!). On Facebook you’ll probably find about the same as Instagram but i have to put photos on both because mum and dad only have facebook and gets angry when she misses out. Snapchat I’ve probably had too much to drink and you’ll see blurry photos of said drinks or those equally responsible for the carnage!

Don’t be a stranger

Tim

Twitter - https://twitter.com/Tim_Keating

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/tim.keating

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cheatingtowin/

Snapchat - Cheatingtowin

#twitter #facebook #instagram #snapchat #somuchsocialmedia #MDA20009