Digital Communities Blog

I just cleaned up my room as Melbourne is in spring now, and summer is approaching, very soon. And I accidentally found my secret box which has all of my pictures, drawings, thoughts and hand writing letters i have kept for years. I found myself on a quiet place at my house. Morning sunlight shone throw the window. I tilted my head back, breathing the fresh breeze of spring. My memories jumped up and ambushed me as each page was slowly opened...

I saw me as a 18 year-old kid in my hand drawings. I was with my friends, siting on a big bench in campus till late night. I was seeking for advices as I was deciding to drop off my current university and start over in another country. We were discussing and gazing at other groups of student playing basketball. The weather in early autumn was still generally quite hot and humid. A brisk wind blew throw my hair, going with the delicate fragrance of milkwood pine flowers. Under the weak light radiated from the street-lamps, all I felt was the excitements and curiosity, wondering "Will it be ok?".

The notebook brought me back to the atmosphere at the airport before I went to Melbourne. The airport was thicken by people. My family and friends are all there. My mom was busy taking care of me. She talked faster, and did things faster. She carefully double checked my luggages, wrote the name tags, and didn't forget telling me to stay safe and asking me to keep updating her once i arrived. My dad cried his eyes out. His big dark eyes got flooded in tears. My dad tried hard to wipe them away, pretending like he was ok. His voice cracked. I had never seen him like this before. I knew that I love them immensely! I appreciated all of my friends who came, they gave me hugs, gifts and blessing. I put one of my friend's letter carefully in the back of a notebook. The paper has turned into ivory colour and the dark navy letters have gotten faded away because of time. I remember I bursted out at the first time I opened it, and I still cry now, after these years. For a moment, I realised that we all need family and we all need friends.

My notebook is stuffed with full of thoughts. I says pretty much of every new things I had experienced and the new people I had met. I wrote about the strange summer sky in Melbourne, which made me wait till late to see the blue sky turned pale blue and finally transformed into dark navy. I wrote about how excited my Japanese friend was when she firstly tried my Vietnamese food and how I felt when I tried hers. I wrote about my beloved room mates, and I wrote about how lucky I am to have them. I was so graceful about being surround by great people, that believe it is unable to express my feelings by words. I gave my classmates at uni my drawing as the gifts, hopefully, they would remember me as the way I do. Everything seem so vivid to me as I feel like I got back in time.

Fashion is such a vital part for human life, or at least for human spiritual life. We spend time and efforts on keeping up with the latest trends, making the success of fast fashion. Fashion, as a result, becomes “the world’s most polluting industry” (Brewer 2019, p. 2). The direct response to this is slow fashion, in which mindful manufacturing, fair labour rights, eco-friendly fabric and long-lasting garment are dignified.

We all need a massive source of stimulus to form a strong influence, strong enough to make the changes. Within digital era, people connected with others. On digital platforms, we are able to have mutual connections or uni-directional connections, while some others perform as connectors (Adi 2018, p.107). Social media influencers are counted as connectors, who strongly direct number of connections come across a node and make influences. The bigger the nodes are, the stronger influences are created!

Take Tiffany Ferguson, an influencer performing on both YouTube and Instagram, as an example. Tiffany has started her Youtube channel since 2011. Her channel mainly focuses on discussing topics related to social issues. Through public video, Tiffany has shown her own opinions toward slow fashion and educated people about the pros and cons of using eco-friendly garments. At the moment her channel reaches about 700,000 followers. Influencers, like Tiffany, are believed to impact positively on persuading people shopping garment habits.

I would say social media influencers are and are going to be an important trigger to persuade people going for sustainable fashion. There are more and more influencers stand for sustainable fashion in the market. With the current efforts against fast fashion, hopefully, pollution made from fashion is going to be reduced significantly in the future.

References

Brewer, M 2019, ‘Slow Fashion in a Fast Fashion World: Promoting Sustainability and Responsibility’, Law, Vol. 8, No.4, pp. 1-9.

Since this blog is formed as a space about Digital Community, discussing about Gaming Communities is a must! They are widespread, complex and have a massive influence. This post is all about Gaming Communities

In a bizarre way, games bring users together, gradually formed a long list of digital communities. Social games take advantage of the player’s existing social network (Paavilainen et al. 2013, p.3), attracting billions of users. Social game allows players to communicate and interact with others regardless of locations, genders and ages. Plus, our play and gaming are always inextricably linked to our everyday lives. Our identities, bodies, and social and political worlds are always tied up in games. Various range of topics are being discussed while the game is on. According to Taylor (2018, p. 14), some of most important political and critical conversations are found in game platforms. Thus, gaming communities have more abilities of creating influences beyond gaming things.

Meanwhile, Live Streaming is another aspect of gaming industry, which is believed to contribute affects on current society. Live Streaming has developed as a fulltime job, attracting a numourous audiences by these activities of publishing gamers' play. While playing their game, streamers might mention about games or their own opinions toward everyday life topics. These informal conversations generate either negative impacts or positive impacts, depend on what streamers' opinions are and how many followers they get. In positive way, these influeces might have high potential to narrow the gender gaps and ease social conflicts. In contrast, live streaming is able to be a trigger of racisim, sexist and rising social conflicts.

Gaming industry is predicted to be more popular in the future. With the ongoing development, gaming communities might generate positive impacts, creating more values. However, it aslo optains potential risks of harming our society.

References

· Paavilainen, J, Hamari, J, Stenros, J & Kinnunen, J 2013, ‘Social Network Game: Players’ Perspectives’, University of Tampe, Vol. 44, No.6, pp. 1-27.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the prettiest of them all?'

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As I mentioned in the previous post, microcelebrity effects form an invisible beauty pageant within social media. Body modification is taken as one of an immediate solutions of changing physical appearance. Digital face filter might be counted as another solution, but in a “healthier” way, by putting digital ‘mask’ on users' faces in a way that is reactive to facial expressions, movement and other stimuli (Azuma 1997, p. 355). The question is “how does digital face filter impact on us?” We like using filters. Filter is used virally in most of social media platforms, ranging from Instagram to Facebook to Snapchat. Initially, filters are used with good purposes of making us look better, with simply assisting us in removing pimples and face scars, which is convenient since it obviously helps in reducing time for making up. We are still ourselves but in more beautiful versions. We feel beautiful and confident! I always believe that every single of us has desire of being beautiful, becoming more beautiful, or maybe being admitted as a beauty, and we have the rights for it! Yet, what if we overuse facial filters? In the long run, overusing filter is able to cause the tool to work differently, in a way more negative way.  According to Coy-Dibley (2016, p.4), women are embraced by social standard and urge to get social acceptance. Well, since filter is being a popular tool, it has been being continuously improved, picturing users with unattainable beauty. In addition, facial filters are highly promoted in social media. We everyday passively observe beauty influencers online, like Kim Kardashian, who is famous for her appearance, posting their own images with beauty filters. As a result, we are unconsciously pushing the bar of expecting beauty standard higher, setting a hard game for ourselves to get in! Furthermore, due to the lift in beauty standards, more pretty filters appear in the market. The gap between us in reality and us in social media is being broadened. There is only one way to reach these “new” beauty standards, using facial filters! Well, we rely on them! Filters causes us insecurities (Barker 2020, p. 215). Overusing filters makes users get familiar with "online appearance". While seeing the differences, the disparity is inevitable! People end up being forced to use social media filters. It is the endless loop!

Oh my~~ In the end, I personally still believe that there is nothing wrong with using filters on social media! Users, like us, just need to be smart, avoiding negative effects caused by them. Keeping in mind that we are beautiful regardless of with or without facial filters <3

Undeniably, current beauty standards have been lifted far from what we knew in the past. People are being pushed to follow up those unattainable beauty standards. So, what drives us to have such intense desires? I would firstly blame on microcelebrity for inflaming all of these unachievable beauty standards. Microcelebrity states behaviours of presenting “oneself as a celebrity regardless of who is paying attention” (Marwick 2013, p.144). As the users, we are (somehow) being put into an intensive competition, craving for a “perfect body shape”. We daily see Instagram influencers posting pictures of themselves with a hot body, big lips, high cheeks, straight nose, curvy body, etc… And, yes, those posts affect us! We unstoppably compare ourselves with famous influencers, sneaking into their profiles and putting effort on changing physical appearance to be one of them, one day. The research shows that women present themselves online with a more highly sexualized version of themselves (Mavroudis, 2020). Social media does a great job of stimulating us to keep following up the trends by giving us like and comment features. As a result, we feel important and dive deeper in! Furthermore, there is clearly that economic factor needs to be counted as involving in promoting body modification. Hot body image is embedded with nightlife promotional via social media (Carah & Dobson 2016, p. 1), directly impacts on aesthetic labours.  With appearance of new beauty standards, aesthetic labours are required with the new requirements of body imaging works. Come into the picture, plastic surgery has been seen as an immediate solution. There are 523,361 posts of #plasticsurgery, 224,235 posts of #facelift and 138,259 posts of #rhinoplasty found in 2017 (Dorfman et al. 2018). Social media, like Instagram, are being a great channel for education with the assist of hashtags tool. Users are able to easily take research to understand the process as well as risks hidden behind. However, while being expose to mass media, users is likely to engage themselves with unknown surgeon, putting themselves in dangers. Ultimately, functioning as a digital community, social media, such as Instagram, is the root of the ongoing rise in demand of body modification. Yet, it also play a critical role in educating users about plastic surgery.

Digital citizenship term is used to feature how a citizen applies digital technologies and social media to participate with society and politics on any level. Current ongoing media ecosystem has shifted the way citizens engage with politics and social issues, making it become such a thing in the 21st century!

With the growth of platformisation, contemporary era has registered changes in political engagement and digital citizenship. Citizens are able to contribute to political activities, such as voting, activism or discussing the debateable topics, online, instead of involving in political events in person. However, its advantage is much more than just bringing a more convenient platform. Vromen (2017, p. 4) argues that how social media impacts on politics has been being more widespread and important than the internet itself. Social media is viewed as the fastest source of news to follow up without editorial media. As a two-way communication platform, social media allows both politicians and citizens to expose their opinions and thoughts. Politicians and citizens are also able to easily find the information since mutual concerns are themed up by the assist of hashtag.

For example, in 2015, Hillary Clinton informed people about presidential candidacy decision by a Tweet on her personal account ‘I’m running for president. Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be that cham-pion. – H’ (Enli 2017, p. 53). Within the election campaign, a cluster of hashtags were used to keep her supporters following up, namely #hillary2016, #hillaryforamerica, ect… It is less challenging for politicians to listen and estimate the public’s attitudes toward their election campaign.

The advantage of digital citizenship is also shown in the most debatable topic raised in 2020, #blacklivematter movement in America. The movement is about mistreatment of black people from a white police. The topic has gotten the contribution of people regardless races, location, religion. People around the world has had chances of showing their opinions and contributing to reduce racism. 

Since social media is such an open space to chuck in thoughts, ideas with emotions, it might be unhealthy sometimes. Especially, political topics are always being sensitive to touch on. Different group of people share different opinions toward an objective, negative effects is inevitable created online. According to Bogle 2016 citizens are likely to experiences some unexpected sprinkling of expletives, sexism and abuse. In conclusion, featuring as 2-way communication space, social media has brought advantages in maximising communication quality, allowing citizens to spread their thoughts to build a better community. The value brought by digital community are undeniable, however, some drawback included. Citizens is recommended to be smart while having political engagement online to reduce negative effects.

References

·      Vronmen, A 2017, Digital Citizenship and Political Engagement the Challenge from Online Campaigning and Advocacy Organisations, Palgrave Macmillan, London.

·      Enli, G 2017, 'Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider: exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in 2016 US presidential election’, European Journal of Communication, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp 50-61.

Reality TV has been through a long journey of being the most popular form of television programming for the past 20 years, coming in different types. Current ongoing media ecosystem distributes Reality TV to audiences via a variety of channels, making them even more popular. Everyone watches Reality TV and discusses about it!

What makes Reality TV become so widespread? Simply, because human was born with curiosity. Reality TV shows reflect “ordinary” people and emphasise the “ordinary everydayness” (Skeggs 2009, p. 627), giving audiences the opportunities of escaping into other people’s lives, allowing them to relate their own experiences and bringing enjoyment by letting them see others’ problems.

Every change start with a rumor! By engaging with informal conversations about “ordinary” things, the insight of what matters to human life are revealed and discussed (Graham et al. 2011, p. 23). The idea of focusing on ordinary and un-fiction kind of things has let these programs sneak into our society, gradually creating impacts on our society in every single life aspect by creating Digital Publics. For example, RuPaul’s Drag Race Reality TV show aired in 2009 has shown the visibility to the issue relating to LGBT community (Brennan et al. 2017, p. 4). Those informal discussions bring the public new understandings toward LGBT community, regarding to queer history, culture and identities. RuPaul’s Drag Race is likely to become a queer pedagogical platform.

Reality TV shows are also claimed to offer a communicative space in which everyday political talk is triggered. Take Big Brother show as an example. With the participation of George Galloway, a British member of parliament, the show has triggered a bulk of political talk, consisting of animal rights, health and the body, gender and sexuality, through telling the show’s participants experiences through their everyday topics (Graham et al. 2011, p. 27). The political topics triggered by the show are getting discussed in every conner on social media.

To sum up, Reality TV are performing as a fandom which does have function in serving new acknowledge, trigging political talk and gradually contributing positively to create changes in society.

References

· Skeggs, B 2009, ‘The Moral Economy of Person Production: The Class Relations of Self – Performance on ‘Reality’ Televesion, The Sociological Review, Vol. 57, No. 4, p626-644.

· Graham, T & Hajru, A 2011, ‘Reality TV as a trigger of everyday political talk in the net-based public sphere’, European Journal of Communication, vol. 26, no.1, pp. 18 – 30.

We, the modern citizens of the 21st century, have more chances of sharing our thoughts and listening to others with the help from social media, like Tumblr, because of its function as a digital community. Like other social media sites, Tumblr offers a virtual space in which users are allowed to share their thoughts through the posts and comments. However, Tumblr distinguishes itself from other online platforms by presenting its image as a more anonymous space with no required personal profiles and no public “friends” information (Keller 2019, p. 7).

As a digital community, Tumblr is an online platform for deepest thoughts. We all know that people engage with social media in different ways. Some internet users are keen on revealing themselves to the world by words. Their visions, ideas and thoughts are reflected via blogs. On the other hand, the rest of us are just craving for information! We love viewing other thoughts and new ideas by communication. This is where Tumblr is designed to come into the picture. Yes, Tumblr is anonymous! With Tumblr, you are able to engage with whatever you love, and you can be whoever you want to be. Tumblr would be a perfect choice to spill the tea without fearing of judgment (Reeve, 2016)!

Tumblr has built a positive digital community. A wide range of debatable social topics/issues are discussed on the site. For example, young people use Tumblr as a popular platform to practice feminism (Keller 2019, p. 7). Tumblr is a lot safer compared to Twitter, although Twitter focuses on hashtags to spread the messages. Why? Because, again, Tumblr is anonymous, meanwhile, Twitter users have risks of being more publicly visible while spreading the message of feminism (Keller 2019, p. 7).

To sum up, Tumblr has successfully differed itself form other virtual online spaces and has functioned as a positive digital community.  However, I personal believe that it still contains some potential risks if there are no restrictions applied.

REFERENCES

·       Keller, J 2019, '"Oh, She's a Tumblr Feminist": Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls' Social Media Feminisms', Social Media + Society, pp. 1- 11.