whatsupjme

[whatsupjme]

Unlock Your Phone, Access Life

*PING!*

[2021]

I immediately grab my phone to look at the notification that I just received, it turns out to be a Snapchat streak from my best friend that we continuously do for quite a while now. A streak is a feature in Snapchat wherein you and your friends can send each other snaps of your life or whereabouts every day for as long as you want. This has been a daily routine for me and in a way, it keeps me in check of my day starting already.

*PING!*

[2012-2015]

Yes, it is nearly impossible for me to not ignore the sound my phone makes every time since I always have it with me 24/7. I became very attached with my phone back when I was in high school, it was an era of me being addicted to Wattpad stories about my favorite band—One Direction.

*PING!*

[2013]

Then I once again entered a phase where I created a stan account for those British boys dancing above on Twitter because that is what everyone my age is doing. It opened me to a lot of lessons on how to be responsible and civil netizen, just like in real life, the internet can be full of different personalities that I may or may not get along with. The 2013 Jaymee was very focused on her phone, refreshing her feed every 5 seconds to see if any other fan accounts has One Direction updates that will surely have a trending hashtag to follow.

*PING!*

[2009-now]

I made my first Facebook account back when I was around 8 or 9 years old since the platform offered interesting and viral games like the classic Tetris, Ameba Pico Game, and many more. Now, I use it for keeping myself updated on the life of my friends to see how they are doing and post stuff that I want to share to them as well.

With this, I've come to a realization that the reason why most of us these day are on our phones is because this mobile device has provided us easier means of communication that is instant and convenient. And with its emergence with the internet, a revolutionary combination has been born that will forever change the way human beings will live in this planet. Then, modernization even leveled up with the invention of smartphones which is also considered as a computer-phone hybrid since it almost does everything a computer set can do. A smartphone represent two important characteristics of new media:

PORTABLE

and

PERSONALIZED

Especially now that mobile games are gaining much recognition, it ignited more users in being consistently in their mobile phones.

Like how I am very much into Mobile Legends Bang Bang (MLBB), I always make it to a point that I get a chance to play after my classes or school works that I need to get done first. It started when my younger cousins were playing and I got curious as to how the game works. Then they explained the ropes of MLBB, surprisingly, I got so curious that I downloaded it in my phone for the first-hand experience. Since then, I never stopped playing the app but I always make it to a point that I remind myself that I should play in moderation and don't make playing MLBB as a whole day activity.

Mobile phones have caused big changes in our society as a whole, politics have adapted in the algorithm of social media platforms while socio-cultural conceptions have affected almost all generations that have experienced technological modernization. So as much as this highly portable and personalized mobile phones provides us endless content that we can spend majority of our time in, it is still important to assess the things that truly makes you happy and start from there.

—♥

[whatsupjme]

i just want to remind everyone about this tamagotchi picrew i made and please make one it would make me so happy

[whatsupjme]

Published For Modernity

“There is nothing permanent except change.” -Heraclitus, philosopher

When I was a kid, the perfect Saturday morning for me would be waking up at around 7:00 AM to eat breakfast with my parents at the nearest Jollibee store. I would usually order the longganisa meal with egg alongside a piping hot chocolate that will surely fill my appetite and set the mood for the weekend. Another weekend breakfast highlight for me would be the free newspapers that my Dad would always ask for because he’s the type of person who wants to read while dining. For me, I usually get the comics and games page of the newspaper so I could be entertained and keep me busy during the whole morning.

So basically, newspapers have been a very big part of my childhood and how I perceive media and information.

*PING!*

Fast forward to now, this particular sound will automatically alert anyone who owns a smartphone that a certain notification has been received. We all can normally ignore any noise or sound that we may hear but I guess no one would ever disregard this high-pitched sound that signifies a lot of many things which can be a text message, an application update, or it can be a freshly published news in the world wide web. Global news is everywhere — from the front page news read by a New Yorker on Central Park to the website article headline from a mobile phone from Manila.

One can easily say that a new wave of journalism has taken over, the way new media has introduced the power of modern journalism has paved a way for these things to exceed our expectations. However, it would be an obvious mistake to not consider this a completely new phenomenon and to overstate its pervasiveness. Many people tend to have this clouded judgement that global news is both a recent phenomenon and one that we can credit as advances in technology. If we say the term 'news' in newspaper articles or television reporting, then news is only as old as the technologies of press and video, and dates back to the first newsletters that circulated in Europe back in the 17th century.

Following the age of ‘news’ in our society, there’s no doubt that news media has opened more problems that can surely affect journalism. As cited in Siapera (2018), here are 4 crises that journalism in general has to deal with:

Time - the 24/7 news cycle which is never ending;

Money - the role it has to play in everything especially in jobs for journalists;

Autonomy - having said that it is already a known field of work, it tries to dominate other fields as well like science, law, etc.;

Cultural Changes - only the sign of the times will change how news patterns are being told to the general public and such.

Historically, humans have shared and exchanged information about current affairs within and across borders for thousands of years, starting with the news networks back in the ancient Phoenicians. Even without the technological advances of today’s time, news and information can still reach places necessary for the development of our modern society. We live, as media critics like Marshall McLuhan have argued, in a global village.

If news is not a product of modern technologies, it's nevertheless true that technological change has had a dramatic impact on how news is made and consumed:

"...where once we had printed newsletters distributed twice a day, now we have Twitter feeds refreshed twice a minute, and carrying information from an ever-widening array of sources."

—♥

[whatsupjme]

Piece of Thought #1:

"Everyone is entitled to their opinion, maybe, but not to their own truths. And if your opinion falters in the face of facts, and yet you still persist, your opinion then becomes a delusion."

-Gelo Lasin, contributing writer for WeThePvblic.com

A very good read for those who are still undecided on who to vote between the current presidential candidates. I may not be born in that era of Philippine history but I am sympathizing with those who are poorly treated during the Marcos regime, especially during the height of Martial Law. In the world of new media now, every bit of information can be used for different purposes and intentions. As we all know that during election campaigning period, there will be a lot of tale-tells, false promises, and fake news that will spread across popular social networking sites like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. I sincerely advise the person reading this to be responsible enough to educate and enlighten yourself with factual and truthful information. From what I've learned in one of my Communication classes (Writing For New Media), this is a campaign tactic actually used by political candidates to freshen up their image and make other running candidates look as twice as bad. And please, try to convince people you care about the most to vote for a candidate who surely meets the qualifications of the position and has a pure intention to serve the Filipino people.

As a matter of fact, we don't need to born in a specific era to know that the said "glories" and "legacies" of that particular late president is a all just lie—that is basic common sense.

[whatsupjme]

The Poisonous Game of Politics and Social Media

Last blog was all about introducing New Media and I would’ve started this blog post with a quote but who’s going to read the same format all over again right? So I’m going to keep it simple and straightforward since this will be a hefty piece of writing. And no, the blog title is not inspired by the Netflix original K-Drama series. Nope. The topic that I am going to be “talking” about is the different and complicated (for me) side of new media. Politics in New Media is both a blessing and a curse and there’s no in between—both of these dimensions continuously evolve separately but they’ll always be interrelated.

“In my honest opinion, as a Gen. Z millennial, social media has opened my eyes and intensified my interest in politics.”

I think this is also one of the reasons why I pursued the HUMSS strand in Senior High School is because what I watch in news shows is not enough... I need to learn more about it. Also with the changing times, social media has progressed from being just a “socializing” platform to connect with people far from us but an open space to voice out our opinions about everything under the sun.

Based on what I’ve observed, Twitter has got to be the most political social media platform since it is a text-based avenue for people to actually influence and educate on pressing social issues and politics in the form of limited character tweets. This is where users get to be more opinionated and somehow exude aggressiveness in the way they communicate with other users opposing their thoughts. There’s also this phase where Twitter users have this “pa-woke” culture (comes along with Cancel Culture) wherein it’s a toxic and negative connotation on young people expressing their sentiments and pieces of advice about certain issues that they’re passionate about.

Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Youtube are the most heavily-used, popular social media platforms for political campaigns and agendas.

With this data coming from Rappler, these 4 well-known social media platforms are definitely an excellent place to influence Filipino citizens to vote politicians in the upcoming 2022 Elections yet it also poses great dangers and threats of misinformation that can reflect on the integrity of the polls. This particular disinformation gap that can be a great threat to the credibility of #Halalan2022 has become even bigger since more people rely on online resources due to the pandemic-imposed lockdowns. It was also mentioned in the article that since March 2020, 4.2 million internet users have been added to the country’s growing internet population which is why the Philippines is dubbed as the world’s social media capital.

"Never have politician been so accessible to the public."

- Pinar Yildirim, Maria Petrova, and Ananya Sen, authors of Social Media and Political Contributions: The Impact of New Technology on Political Competition

These will result in either testing a candidate’s political fate by being a flop or propelling himself to victory because social media provides better leverage on campaigning and establishing influence over voters and citizens. Just like how Tapsell (2020) described the role of social media in political discourse, campaigns, and the overall election in 3 Southeast Asian countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The current president of the country, back in 2016, Facebook played a vital role in winning the election with a landslide of 16 million votes wherein his media strategy was planned, strategized, and executed by Nic Gabunada which is also his campaign friend in his hometown in Davao.

His PR team applied what is described as a “machine” that consists of “paid trolls, fallacious reasoning and propaganda techniques” curated in “contents” that was exclusively posted on Facebook pages that were not directly linked to any political candidate to expose the shortcomings of the previous administration.

It is also mind blowing that fake stories, posited as the issues of the last president and its government, were used that sparked a lot of “traction” since the majority of people are worried about crime which result in these stories being shared widely.

Now, it made sense to me why people were so amused and hopeful of what the current president has to bring to the nation table of the Philippines—”Change is coming.” Also given that Facebook is the most used social media platform in the Philippines and a whopping 87% of people who are avid Facebook users are inclined more to “trust” information they see on social media than any other reliable source. (Ballaran, 2017) This also the period where the rampant campaigns against fake news is a very hot topic because his campaigning team took advantage of the fact that they are tarnishing other people’s reputations while spreading misinformation doesn’t sit right with me. In my own observation back then, I know that the election campaign period is always so chaotic and toxic because politicians are becoming more deceptive by sugarcoating every advocacy and plan that they have. Unrealistic expectations that are too good to be true that’s why they are people who bite into the trap and vote for undeserving and unprepared individuals to lead the country.

Lastly, based from all the learnings I gained in the past few weeks, I have become more critical in familiarizing myself with potential candidates who will run for the #Halalan2022 in which I want to make a promise to myself that I won’t let myself be fooled by celebrities to famous personalities who turned to politics to save their dying fame. I will vote for the people who I think will slowly help the Philippines regain its power and stability from all the corruption and issues that the country has been suffering for decades and centuries. Most importantly...

I must use my voice in educating and influencing my friends, followers, and other netizens to be responsible enough to register to vote and elect the rightful candidates for a brighter future in our beloved country.

—♥

References

Ballaran, J. (2017, August 29). Online Filipinos trust social media more than traditional media - poll. INQUIRER.net. Retrieved September 30, 2021, from https://technology.inquirer.net/66402/filipinos-online-trust-social-media-traditional-media-poll#link_time=1503991006.

Chua, K. (2021, January 31). Ph remains top in social media, internet usage worldwide – report. Rappler. Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://www.rappler.com/technology/internet-culture/hootsuite-we-are-social-2021-philippines-top-social-media-internet-usage.

Elemia, C., Baizas, G., & Isinika, A. (2021, May 18). Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, YouTube still open for abuse in PH POLLS. Rappler. Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://www.rappler.com/nation/elections/tech-social-media-platforms-policies-abuse-disinformation-polls-philippines-2022.

Petrova, M., Sen, A., & Yildirim, P. (2016, September 9). Social Media and Political Contributions: The Impact of New Technology on Political Competition. SSRN. Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2836323.

Tapsell, R. (2020). Social Media and Elections in Southeast Asia: The Emergence of Subversive, Underground Campaigning. Asian Studies Review, 45(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2020.1841093

University, G. W. (2021, January 30). How social media has affected political campaigns: Gw online programs. The George Washington University Online Degrees. Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://gspm.online.gwu.edu/blog/how-social-media-has-affected-political-campaigns/.

Wharton. (2020, August 17). How social media is Shaping political campaigns. Knowledge@Wharton. Retrieved September 28, 2021, from https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-social-media-is-shaping-political-campaigns/.

[whatsupjme]

[whatsupjme]

Just in case you need a reminder today: USE SOCIAL MEDIA WISELY. 🤓

[whatsupjme]

Be kind to all kinds!

[whatsupjme]

The New Realm of Humanity: New Media

“The new media are not ways of relating to us the ‘real’ world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will.” -Marshall McLuhan, communication theorist

As humanity continues to evolve, one of our distinct capabilities is to adapt to changes and signs of the times. These changes may also be called modernization, technological advancements, and new media—the realm of the internet, computers, networks, and social media are introduced to human beings.

For me, it can be considered as one of the greatest and impactful innovations ever done in history that it has now become the main source of communication wherein it has multiple purposes for human consumption and learning up to the point where new media has been incorporated in our daily lives.

In the time of the pandemic, social media has been the prevalent platform for people to vent out their emotions, transitioned businesses into the online world, and revolutionized the idea of unity and information dissemination in society. New media modified the world into becoming a “global village” in bridging the communication gap between people from end-to-end parts of the earth.

Lucky enough, as a 4th year AB Communication student, I am currently taking up a writing course named Writing For New Media wherein I will be exposed to the possibilities of the craft with an understanding of the varying writing techniques for the greater backdrop of new media. As for what I am doing right now, part of the requirements for this course is for students to explore digital media by creating a decent portfolio of content like short films, blogs, and usage of various online platforms that can help us be better writers of the new generation. To be honest I am very excited to dwell in Writing For New Media because I’ve always wanted to venture into writing to improve my skills in expressing myself and my point of view through writing in which I can share in my social media accounts in the hopes of influencing others in a good way. Being a Gen Z millennial, I was born at the time of the emergence of the internet and digital media that’s why we are deemed as the “tech-savvy generation” wherein, at a very young age, we are introduced to the new technologies that Generation Y (Millennials) made.

Digital media, according to Campbell (2014), is a dynamic blend of technologies and content to build media products made by a team of diverse professionals with technical and artistic skills focused on creating the best user experience. It composes of art, storytelling, software development, user experience, interaction, and project management that enables the world we live in today to continue to adapt to the new technological changes of modernization. From what I’ve learned in class, digital media can also be classified as the “language of numbers” wherein there are 4 main outcomes of society turning towards digital media (Lister et al., 2009):

Media texts become de-linked from particular media.

Information can be compressed and fitted into very small spaces or even accessed remotely.

Access to data can be very fast and also does not have to be linear.

Data can be manipulated in ways unimaginable in the analog media age.

Digital media products, from Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling to eCommerce and Social Media, are everywhere and included in industries like Technology, eCommerce, Health, Environment, Non-Profit, Entertainment, Government, Publishing, Television, and Sports to name some.

Of course, it has positive effects on us since we are the consumers that absorb every piece of information that is presented in the media. But it can also put us at a risk wherein we develop this kind of mindset called Technological Determinism that says:

“Technology determines society.”

Predominantly used as a critic’s term, technological determinism (Dafoe, 2015) is a valuable and prominent perspective that places a greater emphasis on the social-shaping factor of technology to society and humanity’s ability to reform our sociotechnical systems. It posits the idea of technology as a defining dimension of the media as users navigate and shape them to have a broader sociocultural and economic environment that produced them in the first place. In my opinion, this risk can both be helpful and harmful to society because we are our own identity that cannot be broken and modified but we also have to keep in mind that change is inevitable.

In relation to Digital Media, human beings are sensitized to the term “connectivity” and that’s where online media comes into play. Engaging in the internet world has opened a wide array of ways to connect with other people, opportunities, and media in which the invention of computers and mobile phones paved the way for opening us to the new era of technology. The internet is now 40 years old and it is now considered an old invention but when we come to think of it, this is where it all started. Online media, the new invention, now amplifies the degree and improves the quality of connection and communication. Social media, as a branch of online media, utilizes the internet through social connections to improve relationships with other people. Some famous examples of social media are online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and many more. Kaplan and Haenlein’s definition of social media is…

“A group of internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation of User Generated Content.”

From the word itself, social media emphasizes the social, bottom-up, and participatory nature of the internet in which its sole purpose is to provide a communication platform for people to connect with each other to build strong relationships. But in the course of the changing times, social media is slowly being dominated by big media corporations, the use of mass surveillance and algorithmic ordering to customize according to how users interact and utilize respective online platforms for maximization of its effectivity. It has also shifted to incorporating games, mobile phone applications, and locative media like Discord, PlayStation Plus, Steam, and a lot more. As a social media user, I can definitely say that it benefited me a lot for I was able to reach out to people I want to connect with who live in far-fetched places and share a piece of me to the online community as a social person. New media has provided me a new medium to express my thoughts and angst about things in my life that I feel like I could share for other people and users to see that this is a safe space for self-discovery and many more.

But it is not enough that I know little about new media so I have to dig deeper into understanding what is its structure and theories that make many of us hooked in this realm of technology. Firstly, there are 3 approaches to studying new media:

Instrumentalism considers technology as a “neutral” device which heroes a good technology is an efficient technology.

Substantivism uses technology to involve not only societies but our subjectivities and our very being that produces a certain kind of society and human being.

Social Constructivism sees technological outcomes as socially-mediated, pluralistic, and heterogeneous in nature in which societies are embedded.

In class, there were also 3 theories that were introduced to us which are McLuhan, Kittler, and Castells. Marshall McLuhan is famously known for “the medium is the message” in which he is the first theorist to argue the importance of media leads to more radical implications for any extensions of the human senses. He also sees that the media as a medium can amplify or accelerate the relationship between media and people as a way to shape how media can determine what happens to humans. That’s why McLuhan was accused of positing technological determinism. For Friedrich Kittler’s New Materialism and Media Theory, “the media determine our situation” which gives grave importance to discourse and language as instruments to help us understand and process information for the betterment of our living conditions. He also coined the term “discourse networks” as configurations of networks for technologies and institutions to permit a present culture to select, store, and produce relevant information and data. In simple terms, Kittler wants to emphasize that human history equates to the history of technology. On the other hand, Network Theories by Manuel Castells took an empirical take on understanding the changes brought about by new media to contemporary societies with the foundations of new media and technologies. He is the only one that doesn’t stand by technological determinism yet he explains that we have entered a new era, enabled by new electronic technologies, which is called “Space of Flows” where there is no geographical space and time is timeless. Expanding his arguments, he suggests that our societies are “networks” which are interconnected and created a new concept of space.

To be honest, all of them presented very good and applicable ideas but I have to agree with Kittler’s New Media theory since I am a consumer of media that it offers me benefits and new insights on how we are advancing as human beings in terms of modernization. The contemporary society is very dependent on new technologies that it has indeed become a part of their daily lives without realizing that conglomerates and corporations are capitalizing new media platforms to gain more profit. In other words, we are trapped in the hands of big businesses and their motivations to always profit from us and increase their capital by offering us more "undeniable features" of their content.

“They are using us to challenge the traditional media business model by creating a more customized user-generated content as a part of media concentration.”

All I can advise now, to everyone who’s reading this, is to be more smart and cautious in navigating the internet and social media platforms. This new social formation instigated by new media provided us with a realm of new possibilities that can make us feel better and think advantageously. But we must also keep in mind that while we are benefiting from this new era of technology, there are certain inequalities that are still prevalent in adapting new media like the loss of real-life work, minimizing human interaction face-to-face, information overload, capitalism, and marginalization of poor communities. We must move forward as a unified community of human beings caring for one another so let us be wise and responsible users of this new media.

—♥

References:

Campbell, C. (2014, June 23). What is digital media? The Centre for Digital Media. https://thecdm.ca/program/digital-media.

Dafoe, A. (2015, April 14). On technological Determinism: A Typology, Scope conditions, and a mechanism - Allan Dafoe, 2015. SAGE Journals. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0162243915579283?journalCode=sthd.

[whatsupjme]

"If you feel pain, you're alive. If you feel other people's pain, you're a human being." -Leo Tolstoy