Digital Communities

The Race Debate

This morning I read an article in ‘The weekly Review’ a magazine which is distributed to Banyule residents within Victoria: it was called ‘No place for racism’, it talks about small pockets of westerners ‘being unaccustomed to different cultural expression, having taken advantage of our liberties and using them to belittle and stigmatise other cultures and traditions, as in the recent burqa debate’. And it is these groups that put a bad name to Australian ‘multiculturalism’. The author talks about Australian citizens, and that no matter their background or religion, having the right to dress, practice their faith and behave as they please, free from religious persecution.

‘During the Cronulla riots of 2005, a drunken group of ‘hooligans’ claimed they were “saving” a 14-year old girl by tearing off her hijab’ – did it not occur to these men or others like them, that forcibly removing this young girls hijab is the equivalent of forcibly lifting up and/or removing a ‘white’ girls dress and therefore assault. Did they not consider the implications of that girl’s punishment for removing her hijab involuntary/voluntary in direct conflict to her faith? And that this new ‘law’ of preventing these women of wearing their hijabs or burqas is the equivalent of saying the new-age religion cannot wear crystals and hippie cloths, and Christians cannot wear their ‘cross’ as a tattoo or jewellery.

It’s common stereotype that westerners think that these cultural women are ‘forced’ to wear a hijab and they have an intense desire to “save” these women. However, some westerner, myself in particular think that some ‘burqa/hijabs’ are really pretty. We only object to the extreme religious faiths where the women dress in black from head to toe from the age of 12, sometimes younger and lack proper education, voice and are ‘house slaves’. But these actions and faith is all that these women know and that their style of dress and religion is designed to keep their ‘sinning’ non-existent, according to Christian faith. The non-revealing clothing compared to western women reduces the statistic of one in three Australian women having experienced physical and/or sexual assault.

My mum recently talked to a cab driver about westerners thinking that other races/cultures are coming to Australia and taking ‘white’ employment opportunities. However; she said that this wasn’t true, that westerners think that they are ‘above’ and are too ‘stuck up’ in their ways to consider driving a cab either as a job or for extra cash, that it was “beneath them”, and yet it’s westerners who prostitute themselves and seek money from ‘drug-lords’, let me ask you a question: For extra cash, would you rather drive a cab, become a prostitute or gamble with your life to seek cash from the ‘mafia’?

On the chance of sounding like an non-multiculturalist person if the Chinese are allowed ‘china towns’ at the centre of ‘white’ communities and middle-eastern are allowed middle eastern clustered suburbs like northland and Preston where these places scam, take advantage of and treat westerners as the minority through showing preference to their own ‘race’; then why is it considered unethical/moral for westerners to have ‘white’ only communities, housing and community sites just like they do? And, when we go to their countries and are expected to follow their ‘rules’ and dress codes’ (women having to ‘cover-up’ and be escorted by a male’) do they then come to Australia and not follow our customs? But then Australia doesn’t have dress customs…

Australia is not a racist county because that implies that a culture and/or race has permanently lived and originated from this continent. The westerners migrated from Europe as convicts or free citizens, just as other cultures migrated to Australia, the only difference being the time at which they migrated. It’s considered that the ‘Aboriginals’ would be the Australian permanent race; however they migrated from Papua New Guinea. Australian culture is multiculturalism. Have a look at this link (https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/why-both-sides-are-wrong-in-the-race-debate/) about ‘Why both sides are wrong in the race debate’ – on whether race has no biological validity and that human races are in-fact sociocultural constructs.

 Sources:

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/has-django-unchained-sparked-any-racial-debates-for-you-guys.452812082/

http://italianoht.global2.vic.edu.au/celebrating-harmony-day-and-multiculturalism-at-holy-trinity/

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/our-values-or-go-home-costello/2006/02/23/1140670207642.html

http://monash.edu/news/show/australias-multicultural-success

Global Social Media: Case Study China

Within my previous post, ‘Digital citizenship 3: Trolling and social media conflict’: I stated that governments should not be able to get ‘permission’ to intercede within digital communities for the purpose of ‘anti cyber-bulling’ monitoring, because they would then legally and ethically control our ‘freedom of speech’ within protests of the current affairs of our governments. However, the western countries should consider themselves lucky as ‘The Great Firewall of China’ prohibits Asian citizens to use western social media networks and has created their own exactly for this purpose; the increasing size of the government censors, site monitors and pro-government users make sure the government is cast in a positive light. 

The Western assumption that Chinese citizens are missing out of the social media revolution as a consequence is untrue. 90% of Chinese youth are online and 75% of these youth are under the age of 30. The country takes on the ‘copycat’ notion because they’re not focusing on ‘radically new’ innovations, there taking the best from western social media (Facebook, Google) and improves and puts together designs for better versions. As a result, their youth are not ‘desperately’ waiting for a chance to use western social media platforms. China’s current generation is the first generation of non-Chinese obedient consumers, they’re concerned with their identity ‘who am I?’ that the western youth take for granted. There interested in social media that will help them explore the identity concept and because of the censorship, have developed their own visual and personal language to communicate that the government doesn’t understand.

Social Gaming: Playing the crowd

Until recently, the vast majority of research by psychologists on the effects of ‘gaming’ has been on the negative impact towards individuals and society; the potential harm relating to violence, and depression. Researchers based their arguments around the media’s attention towards youth who played violent video games and reaped mass killings; such as the Columbine High School slayings 1999 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School 2012. However the nature of games has changed, becoming complex, diverse, realistic and social in nature with positive relations towards video games; cognitive, motivational, emotional and social attributes.

Cognitive: faster more accurate attention allocation, higher spatial resolution in visual processing, enhanced creativity, and superior mental rotation abilities of memorisation and analytical skills.

Motivational: persistence, continuous effort engagement towards success and achievement, and relentless goal reaching.

Emotional: mood management, higher emotional control, positive enhanced emotional states, broader number of behaviours, and building of social relationships.

Social: cooperative, competitive and higher quality and quicker decisions towards leadership and trust decisions.

However, despite the positive attributes towards social MMORPG (Massively, Multiplayer, Online, Role-playing Games), addiction is the predominant issue faced in today’s cultures. Through the aid of ‘crowdsourcing in times of crisis’ journalism and networking, I found an article about a Chinese father who hired in-game assassins to continuously kill his sons avatar to reduce his game time and reengage him in the real world (http://geekologie.com/2013/01/going-the-distance-father-hires-in-game.php).

Visual Communities and Social Imaging

Digital communities have different social media platforms orientated towards specific media forms (networked visuality) and visual publics (imaging communities): video or vlogging (YouTube), art (Deviantart), photography with digital cameras (Tumblr, Pininterest), and selfies with mobile phone cameras (Snapchat).

Of particular importance were the revolution of personal and social imaging; the context underlying and the culture of photographic portrait vs selfie portraits. Personal photography with digital cameras was traditional in the experience of close networks (family) working as a tool to achieve 'social cohesion’ (representing and assembling togetherness), in the process of being there together for photos. The rise of selfie culture doesn’t necessarily mean sharing them on social media: it’s been argued of the difference between the culture of taking selfies (exploring and admiring the depth of self in an ‘image’ driven world, and the culture of sharing (or over-sharing) on social media. In this context, immediacy is taking over displaying and archiving, the visual modes of expression, sharing and communication. The number of anxieties, difficult ethical and legal issues regarding user control over our own image (reputations and photos) has also been raised, particularly in the form of tagging.

Crowdsourcing in times of crisis

In times of national and international crisiscommunication systems and social media servers go down and lag when needed the most; requiring a collaboration of professional organisations, emergency services, individuals and society expertise. Digital Communities (social networking platforms), mobile devices with GPS apps, crowdsourcing systems and web based systems (Wikipedia) enables various audiences to create, understand and evaluate past, current and potential crisis’s for proficient emergency management and responses (Pipek, Liu & Kerne 2014).

Crowdsourcing is "the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers" (Merriam Webster Online 2014)

Crowdsourcing was originally developed as a business solution, the next technological evolution beyond outsourcing (Sutherlin 2013). ‘Outsourcing’ being an open invitation for proposals or solutions to a problem, issue or social need; relying heavily on distributed expertise and amateur production (Jeff Howe (Wired) 2006).

Personally I think the government should formulate communication channels within social media as minor emergency services and to obtain truthful information: particularly in the case of the recent Charlie Hebdo magazine Paris attack by al-Qaeda-linked gunman killing 12 civilians and a cop (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30708237). This french satirical magazine ‘the great white knights of the freedom of the press’ printed cartoons featuring the controversial Muhammad, inspiring the ‘three days of terror’. While authorities and the media are claiming that a cop got shot in the gunman’s escape from the shootings, unprofessional sources have uploaded a slow motion video that inspires much controversy as to whether or not the cop was actually shot (http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2ee_1420714352).

Digital citizenship 3: Trolling and social media conflict

Evidently social media experts have definedtwo types of ‘users’ whose end outcome is the bulling and public (social) humiliation of other ‘citizens’:

1. Trolls are an online ‘subculture’ who seeks to deliberately incite emotional distress by intentionally violating social norms and provoking outage, taunting or harassing individuals through their behaviour and commentary (Doyle el al. 2014).

2.  CMC; users who construct the identity of a person wishing sincerely to be apart of an online community, but whose real intentions are to disrupt normal discussion for the purpose of their own amusement (Klyeva 2013).

However, I think CMC users are a direct influence of troll ‘subculture’ as they started out with pure intent and unconsciously ‘flipped a switch’ in the trolling direction, as if being confronted with cyber bullying aimed at another person, found it amusing and eventually succumbed to ‘revealed their true colours’.

Although new forms of drama find a home through social media, teens’ behaviours have not significantly changed. Social media has not radically altered the dynamics of bullying, but it has made these dynamics more visible to more people- It’s Complicated (boyd 2014: 152).

A popular debate in digital communities is whether trolling is a product of society seeking impact through social media conflict or social media impacting on society. And it’s true that while social media has aided trolling on a larger global scale and the user with the troll aimed at them can’t escape public ridicule because the digital age users leave permanent footprints within cyber-space. What’s not often pointed out is that our society will always find a means to bully another, social media is just their ‘murder weapon’ and is more effective with the anonymous feature. The public publicly humiliated and bullied others in the past, as they do now and will do in the future. The people responsible for this either don’t care about or don’t have the psychological ability to look and feel their actions from another person’s view point which is predominantly in young people.

Trolling is often in the form of images and with a single caption and because digital communities are used to communicate worldwide – by the time I receive or see a troll; I ‘like’ it because I do not connect it in context to another person being bullied, I like it because it’s either insightful, amusing or truthful and I can relate to it, but to the person the troll is aimed at or tagged in, I’m just adding to its publicity. Take for example Tony Abbotts and Justin Biebers related images below; while I personally don’t like either of the two, Tony Abbot was one of those young school boys with the career dream of ‘I’m going to be president’ that everyone laughed at because no one believed it and they thought it was adorable. But he did achieve his goal and as a result he is publically ridiculed (image) because his personal ‘perception’ towards a better future is not what other people think of as a better future.

There are those that believe that social media is a tool to protest and raise awareness for the misconducts of others; which is often in the form of communicating to others with trolls, while other groups believe that the government should be able intercede and monitor social media to be able to reduce bullying. However, if the government gets ‘permission’ to intercede on within digital communities, then they’re receiving permission to control ‘freedom of speech’.

 Image sources:

https://www.facebook.com/therebelcircus/photos/a.519639714741404.1073741828.517549624950413/913986961973342/?type=1

https://www.facebook.com/fortafy/photos/a.214260291923805.64431.213950138621487/1107424099274082/?type=1

Activism & Protest

While social media empowers those who are already active, in some cases it’s merely creating the impression of activism. The internet has been a useful tool in recent social change because ‘outdoor activism isn’t for everyone; while others dedications to online causes may well be real. However this doesn’t change that study has found, the majority of people who "like" a Facebook page for a cause don't follow up that gesture with a donation. Return rates for charities and campaigns on Facebook can be a tenth of those for traditional routes such as mail solicitation. While millions of people have passed the 500-friend milestone on Facebook, giving them a potentially powerful network to broadcast over; by changing their profile picture, sharing videos and articles and keeping in touch with charities by liking their pages to raise awareness. Other social networks allow for a certain anonymity or fame in protesting; portrayed through Culture jamming and Adbusters. Making a difference seems easy in the digital age but researchers fundamental question is - Is their contribution any deeper than a click’?

This online passivity has direct correlation towards the aggressive treatment of the more forceful activists, injures from police weapons; batons, tasers, tear gas, steel caped boots and not to mention the violence from other protestors isn’t inspiring people to get up and say what they know is right. The consequences might not be just for themselves, i.e. jail or overnight detention, it might result in newer enforced laws, which affects a larger audience. The government doesn’t allow the freedom of active protest and speech. The idea of passivity comes forward in the reasoning that while a cause is on the forefront of the consciousness, they will do what they can, no matter how small – the problem is when this awareness starts to wane, either through to many other distractions or lessening publicity. While social media has its limits, it does allow for international publicity rather than just fixed to one country. The ‘word of mouth – world of mouth’ has a permanent data storage system (nothing is ever truly deleted) and so posts can be reviewed endlessly.

  References:

Media Network Blog 2014, Online activism: it's easy to click, but just as easy to disengage, The Guardian, viewed 22 December 2014, <http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/mar/14/online-activism-social-media-engage>

Swinburne Online 2014, Week 6: Digital citizenship 2: Activism and Protest, Swinburne Online, viewed 22 December 2014, <https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-4565102-dt-content-rid-23595134_2/courses/2014-SO3-MDA20009-200988/UnitLearningMaterials/Week_06.html>

Politicians VS Social Media

‘The online world which knows no barriers; it’s important for politicians to be active on social media to be in touch with the concerns of the constituents. However they must consider their actions offline to ensure fluid transfer of information via the virtual world and reality’. There seems to be more risks of politicians using social media than opportunities. Particularly because no matter how many followers, viewers and likes they receive, it doesn’t translate to votes – if they wanted them to, then an online voting system needs to be configured.

Apart from the ability to ‘connect with a wider and younger network of supporters’ the repercussions of political candidates, senators and the Prime Minister reading through an ‘onslaught of amateur political commentary’, diminishing and offending public scrutiny comments and the ware of being made fun of not only destroys candidates reputations, but their chance at successful campaigns and could also lead to long/short term health and mental health based illnesses like; stress and anxiety, heart attacks, depression and eating disorders as a start.

This leads to the question on whether the Prime Ministers are blogging themselves, with their own thoughts and time or are their secretaries/administrational pools responsible. With the exception of Barack Obama (I’m focusing on Kevin Rudd/Tony Abbott), Kevin Rudd’s ’07 Campaign’ was led by a team of social media experts who had the convenience and aid of data mining. Rudd did not post himself – eliciting false advertising of a PM campaign purpose, a suable offence to businesses particularly because only 14% of the population trust advertising and the campaign is putting a bad name to it. The most successful method of attracting a younger following was posting ‘selfies’ of their everyday lives (tweet pic of Rudd’s shaving cut). This alludes to the ‘us’ marketing factor and denotes that Kevin Rudd has authority over certain everyday aspects of their lives.

In relation to the accompanying image: “Everyone has a voice and the internet lets us express them”, these informal troll’s “produce common and collective information and communication mesh, through which affects and ideas circulate”. Social media bags Politian’s and Politian’s bag social media (“I invite the media to grow a pair, and if you can’t, I will lend you mine”), like life and any other form of communication, there relationship is give and take.

  References:

Team B - MDA20009 Digital Communities 2014, Social Medias Role in Modern Politics, Prezi, viewed 22 December 2014, <https://prezi.com/9g74vmc5qah0/digital-citizenship/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy>

Swinburne Online 2014, Week 5: Digital citizenship 1: Politics and civic cultures, Swinburne Online, viewed 22 December 2014, <https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-4553828-dt-content-rid-23519620_2/courses/2014-SO3-MDA20009-200988/UnitLearningMaterials/Week_05.html>

Comparing platforms: My use of Facebook vs Tumblr;

For the sake of positive networked publics and dana boyd’s blurring of public and private blogging: My FB account; which in simple terms is my reality, both with Bridging capital and Bonding capital, is why apart from basic information about myself, I will almost never post anything on FB, 1. because nothing can ever truly be deleted, and 2., It’s none of everyone’s business what my ‘inner’ thoughts are. Sometimes (via my Tumblr account) a Bridging audience is better, it’s completely separate from my life, I don’t know anyone and no one knows me and I can post anything without the fear of being socially shunned; because certain posts will only be noticed by ‘the kind of public that comes into being only in relation to specific texts and their circulation within cultural groups’. (Michael Warner, 2002, ‘Publics and Counterpublics’ in Public Culture14(1) 49-90; pp. 49-50). 

Introducing Digital Communities

Statistics or definitions, mind blowing or ‘next please’; I find myself wondering where to start this post, particularly because there are about 20 other students all writing the same stuff. As it’s not a matter of the content, it’s how well we write the content (modification of Eric Qualman’s quote).

So I will start with the Check off list and the easily skipable section – aka definitions:

Social media; is the many relatively inexpensive and widely accessible electronic tools that enable anyone to publish and access information, collaborate on a common effort, or build relationships.

Social networks; provides web services which facilitate users maintain a ‘public or semi-public profile within a bounded system’ and through which they can articulate a list of other users with whom they have a connection.

Virtual community; a social network of individuals who interact through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to purse mutral interests or goals.

Smart mobs; a group that, contrary to usual connotations of a mob, behaves intelligently or efficiently because of its exponentially increasing network links, enabling people to connect to information and others, to perform a task allowing a form of social connection.

Digital communities; a virtual reality based in social media and networks that allow users to act as an information system; where they can post, comment on discussions, give advice or collaborate.

Networked publics; a linked set of social, cultural, and technological developments that have accompanied the growing engagement with digitally networked media. There are two types of networked publics; Unmediated; are areas that have boundaries which are structurally defined, essentially, the audience has to be present in order to witness an action. Mediated; are technologies like TV, radio and internet, for example, a secondary audience that can witness reproductions of an event as much as they like.

Online publics; promoting the concept of interactivity, building on prior mass communication where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify problems, and through that discussion influence political action. For example, a matter of what people are doing with online media technology than what these technologies are doing to people.

Digital society; a modern, progressive society that is formed as a result of the adoption and integration of information and communication technologies at home, work, education and recreation. E.g. the people connected to electronic and digital devices which usually depend or rely on those devices to do something.

  And onto the goodies:

Eugenia Siapera ‘Socialites and Social Media’ notes Boyd’s (2007a; 2008) logic that ‘the pressure more and more people feel in order to join such online networks and to use social media is mounting, confronting people with a dilemma; either participate or risk becoming invisible’. And in relation to Erik Qualman’s quote, ‘We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is on how well we do it’ and statistic’s regarding  ‘word of mouth vs world of mouth’, 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands and 78% of consumers trust pier recommendations vs only 14% trusting advertisements goes to show that Sherry Turkle’s ‘Connected, but alone’ is floored in a few of its views, that digital communities do benefits businesses and doesn’t note the fact that ‘social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate’.

Ferdinand Tönnies; Community (Gemeinshaft) and Society (Gesellshaft), and Robert Putnam’s ‘Bowling Alone’ in regards to societies two defined connections through community and now social media; Bridging capital and Bonding capital insinuates that the digital society is comprised of a collective of strangers and disconnection. However, this doesn’t take into consideration studies by Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe (2007) as well as Choi (2006 in boyd and Ellison, 2007) and boyd (2008) that ‘most online networks are extensions of offline networks of preexisting friends’, ‘ and social media ends up locking people into pre-existing networks, effectively creating enclaves, ending up with at best keeping social capital stable’.

Statistics shows that Facebook tops Google; if it was a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest, 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily and 96% of social networkers and 40% of internet users being millennials (according to marketing logistics are the most tech savvy with way of life – leading to larger and attractive market). And being that Facebook led an increase in bridging social capital than bonding capital. Bridging being week ties, acquaintances, friends of friends and work contacts while Bonding was close bonds, friends and family; blurring the boundaries between public and private. But not the Internet at large, just mainly FB, because talking to people online rather than face to face is easier and not disconcerting. And therefore all three main activists for digital communities being a source of disconnection and strangers were right to question; considering the studies undertaken.

I think what will help in the disconnection/strangers debate is the identification of Affordances and whether as a collective these help or hinder growth. Affordances being; the properties of an object and the person, its relationship between the object, the person, and what the person can do with the object. For a start there is increased education performance with online students, a large library of sources that you don’t have to travel anywhere to gain access to or even for less concern of teenage parents, the overtaking of pornography as the No.1 activity on the web. I also think that we should be more concerned with the next generation (Gen after Gen Y (millennials)) of being completely immersed in technology and soon, digital communities. I have 4 young cousins between the ages of 2 and 10, 3 of them have an iPhone and iPad each, the oldest also has a Mac and the youngest knows how to use them. They are growing up surrounded in technology and it’s just a matter of time before they start using social media. As it is they already use YouTube on a daily basis, the 2nd largest search engine in the world.

  References:

Siapera Eugenia 2012, Understanding New Media, Swinburne Online, viewed 21 December 2014, http://bit.ly/1p7Ujhe

Learning Materials 2014, Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Swinburne Online, viewed 21 December 2014, <https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_157089_1&content_id=_4436526_1>

The social media revolution 2014, Swinburne Online, viewed 21 December 2014,<http://bit.ly/1jX4W0W>

Don Norman 2011, Affordances, Swinburne Online, viewed 21 December 2014, <http://bit.ly/1BA7sEE>

Digital Communities 2011, Communities that develop on the Internet, Creative Teaching Site, viewed 21 December 2014, http://www.creativeteachingsite.com/teach10.htm

Corporate Communications 2013, Social Media, ETH Zurich, viewed 22 December 2014, <https://www1.ethz.ch/hk/services/socialmedia/index_EN>