Anastasia Malan

As we all know a little a bit about China’s internet security system, it is rather an interesting topic to study instead of disturbing given all the excessive violation of privacy that the people of China are experiencing. Most people would probably disagree with what China are doing to protect their people from danger, but, there is bits and pieces of what they are doing does benefit the people. 

In this week discussion, I would like to focus on their social credit systems. Before that, I will talk a little bit about what kind of security camera they are having to aid them in making this credit system a success. China was known for their surveillance system that was placed all over the county. It is not just a normal surveillance system but the one with artificial intelligence that can detect the emotion of the people, monitor the movement and activity or the people as well as equipped with everyone personal data. 

According to Ma (2018), it is in China’s plan to rank all of their citizens based on social credits where the citizens can be rewarded or punished according to their scores. It is of course easier said than done, but, lets just relate it to a country who faced a lot of social problems through out the years. It is rather difficult to supervised our citizens as there are millions of them in a country. Its impossible to allocate authorities at every corner of the country to keep the country safe and peaceful. 

In my opinion, China’s security system at some point does keep their citizens safe. Taking into consideration their social credit system, it is a great way to shape a culture among the citizens to act in a proper manner. For instance, social credit will be deducted when parent buys alcohol in the store. As we all know, consuming alcohol is never a good practice which can lead to more social problems in a family or the country as a whole. With this system, it can prevent their people from becoming an alcoholic and value their life and health more. Besides that, it teaches their citizens to be more responsible and rational in making decision in their everyday life. 

On the other hand, with this credit system, it also train the citizen to become a responsible citizens especially when it comes to being committed to important task such as paying bills. With the rewards given, citizens will become more committed in paying bills, therefore it does not cause troubles to anyone. For instance, in Malaysia, a lot of organization incur losses due to unpaid debt by some irresponsible citizens. 

It is a very simple system to follow and an effective way to curb social problems. So, would it be the answer to the future?? hurmmm.... 

It depends, for me, technology can be very useful at times especially in this modern era. However, excessive use of technology, over depending on technology, can also bring harm to the people and country as a whole as we are humans, we’re different. Forced to act in a certain way with strict surveillance can limit us from being normal and may stresses our mind to some point of time. It may  be an answer to the the future, but in a different industry that could use some AI help to be efficient and productive. 

source: 123RF

As you can see, the picture above shows the very beginning stage of playing when we were still a child. The activity of playing games were introduced to us since we were kids to developed the our very basic skills. According to Ginsburg (2007),  by playing, children’s cognitive ability, physical movement, interactions and emotional well-being can be developed and improves. Besides that, playing aid the brain development of a child because while playing, they tend to discover new things along the way and learn problem solving skills which will develop new competencies that increases their confidence. 

As stated by Ludens (1938), it is a free activity with some sets of boundaries that promotes some sorts of social grouping among children, where everyone get together during their free time to play. However, day after day have passed by, the concept of ‘play’ were taken into another level which is also known as video gaming among children, teenagers, young adult or even adult. 

So, how does video gaming improves social skills and creates a gaming communities itself? 

Most games nowadays allows player to actually have conversation with each other through the writing/audio chat features that most games have these days such as PUBG. Free Fire Minecraft, Clash of Clans and more. A gamer can be anywhere they want at any time and still be able to play together with their friends at the same time. It also enable gamers to collaborate with other gamers  where eventually improves their social skills and form a community among themselves. 

source

Monetization? How is it a thing right now? 

In my opinion, YouTube is that one app that I will spend most of time with every single day. Not specifically watching video games but is aware of the excessive amount of gaming videos, tutorial and so on. The video content can be contrast very clearly of the differences between a gamer youtuber who play because they love to play games and a gamer youtuber who play just for the sake of earning money. Due to that, I think that the community is now consist of increasing numbers of members that are money-centered instead of being in the communities for the game itself. 

Other than that, e-games that organized huge battle with astronomical amount of money prizes does also attracts many of the new gamer into the industry. It is not so much about the game anymore but the money where children dropped out of school for that, parent were left confused whether to let the children to stay in school or to master the game and earn the money(better than any decent job could offer), affecting the mental health of the gamer and more. It creates some sort of addiction in within a person and it should stop. 

Who is responsible tho? 

The creator? The government? 

It is unreasonable or irrelevant that most people are depending on the game creator itself or the government to solves this game addiction problems that most children faced. There are a lot of things that both parties had done to encounter this issues, for example,there are consoles designed to be functioning only for a certain of time, control access to certain content and so on. The government had also imposed age limit to enter a cybercafe which is 18 years old an above and children below  the age of 18 years are allowed but with parent guardian. 

For me, after went through a discussion with my fellow classmates and lecturer, I've come to thinking that parent really is the first person who should regulate the time spent on games by their children. I mean, who bought the device? The parent. Who paid the telco bills/wifi? The parent. Who is the nearest to them? The parent. There’s a saying that says “ It’s better to start young” which I agreed upon as parent should set an example for their kids to follow. Parent should set boundaries to let their children knows the limit and encourage them to experience the outside world as well. 

As you can see from the video, the staples center was packed with the fans of The Ace Family (sold out in 3 minutes), a youtuber, from all over the world for the basketball charity event hosted in LA, California. 

Before going through more examples of fandom and activism, lets understand a little bit more on the academic aspects of fandom. Jenkins (1992) says that it is a form of social community, where Hills (2002) stressed that its an obsession towards a particular person, shows, bands, music and more.  Most of us who are in the fandom communities, it always feels like we have multiple identities for different things that we’re fan of or even our own self in real life. As stated by Jenkins (1992), we negotiate our multiple identities with who we are and how we would act with different group of fans. 

Fandom as a community itself consists of different level from more of reception to critical and interpretive practices where fans started to learn to be a fan. it goes on to be a consumer activism (e.g. boycotting things their fandom does not like, joining a campaigns) to getting involve in production of fan fiction and fan art. Lastly is to participate both online and offline. 

From the video above, it shows that the fans get together at staples center to support The Ace Family event regardless of how expensive it may cost them or how much difficulties they might go through in order to just be there. It all started from YouTube where The Ace Family built this fan communities of theirs. It is all about affordances where the digital technology allowing us to shared our interest with other people. Which I agree with Jenkins, Ford and Green (2013) it is rather spreadable than viral as I discover The Ace Family from a friend of mine where she shared their videos in Facebook and I seems to love their content.

Besides turning on the notification on YouTube (so that i wont miss their recent upload), I followed them on Instagram and I followed most the fan accounts about them. Their videos are funny and enjoyable to watch, they spread positivities and always is very supportive of their fans. It was a very positives community, can get to know other people with the same interest, eventually it allows interactions among different people from country. Everyone participate in doing something that The Ace Family had organized, for instance, charity event 2 years in a row (cant wait for next year tho). 

However, sometimes, fans has acted way to far by invading their home, mobbed them in public and more. It is all healthy and calm at first until they've become more established with over 17 millions subscribers. The video below shows few of their fans invades their privacy and property which make them feel overwhelmed(especially their kids) and unsafe especially when they were still recovering from their old house robbery. The fans.. should really educate themselves about boundaries. Hurmm.... 

This video shows how anxious Catherin Paiz is by the crowd but trying to remain calm and be nice with the fans. 

The old house (moved out due to the robbery)

The new house (moved out to another new house)

Crowdfunding 

Crowdfunding is defined as a way for someone, businesses or even government to collect funds or capital from different people with mutual interest towards the project (Smith, 2019). This helps many small businesses out there that does not have an easy access to any fund from financial institution out there. Crowdfunding can be carried out by donating online through designated websites such as Kickstarter, Gofundme and Indiegogo. Usually, crowdfunding by a certain organization or institution will has its time-frame and purpose to start the crowdfunding. 

For example, last year, Malaysia new government decided to crowdfund from Malaysian or anyone to help them recover Malaysia’s debts that has reaches up to 1 trillion ringgit. It all started when a Malaysian sent a letter to the government office together with RM25 in the envelope saying that it is his contribution to help the government of paying off the debts. The letter went viral on social media and everyone started to support the idea and the Malaysia Ministry of Finance (MOF) started a crowdfunding account for that matter called Tabung Harapan. The crowdfunding process started on 30th May 2018, ended on 14th January 2019 with a total funding of RM 203,292,117.41. 

The amount that was collected may not give as much impact to a RM1 trillion debt for Malaysia but it helps the government to cover little by little of the debts. Social media is in fact a powerful platform to spread news, to gain support or to spread awareness about something important. This process was done with so much transparency that it increases Malaysian’s trust to actually contribute to it. MOF has done a good job in updating how much and where the money funded is going. 

Crowd sourcing

Crowd sourcing on the other hand is when it involves the participation by different group of people who is interested in voicing out their ideas, opinion, information in order to complete a task that they have mutual interest in (Hargrave, 2019). It is a voluntary process where anyone can take part in as well as paid contribution as a freelancers. 

The benefits of crowd sourcing is that it allows an organization or any institution to gain different ideas or views from different people with different expertise. In fact, many great ideas doesn’t just come from one single person but a team that connected different suggestion to create a more quality solutions. Besides that, crowd sourcing ideas is less costly and can be done faster when there are a good number of participants. 

For instance, Malaysian MOF encourages the people to take part and actually have a voice in preparing the 2020 budget (Tan, 2019). Malaysian can give suggestion on how or what can be included in the budget before the official presentation. It is a smart moves by the ministry as the people is the one who actually experiencing the impact of previous budget. The budget would be more effective when it is actually plan based on the real situation faced by the people. For example, it will be a waste of resources when the government provide more  funds for something that does not need much funds in the beginning. 

In real life, when we encounter toxic people with nothing but negativity in them, we can and able to avoid them. In the digital world? unfortunately its nearly impossible to do so. Many people nowadays have so much free time that they are always on the internet, it almost feels like they were born and raised there. Hats down to those who use social media for good cause and not something else such as trolling others, sharing fake news and spreading hate and all. 

Awareness after awareness that has been shouted out, acts after acts that have been amended, all those efforts, interventions, trolling in social media still carries on every day, not in a slower phase, but an increasing phase. People tend to believe that they have the rights to voice out opinions but failed to distinguish constructive opinion with hatred, negative and hurtful critiques.  

Back in the days, trolls are known as a creature who lives in the dark caves waiting for opportunity to steal from the people. Unlike those trolls, social media trolls acts more or less the same way but hiding behind their computer with fake identity commenting and judging about the people there barely know (Moreau, 2019).

Hanson (n.d.) says that trolls are consist of keyboard warriors trying to make mean comments, making everybody feel bad about themselves. Not just causing trouble for other users, trolls also create conflicts by making defamation statement, provocative statements about business, public figures and especially government to sparks conflicts among everyone. Most trolling are done in social media platform such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Trolls will try to find anything that can be made as an issue to starts arguments and conflicts. 

Recently, the suicide case of Sarawak Swimmer, the late Ayrton Lim blows the internet with the shocking news. It was said that he has been struggling with depression for days and decided to take his own life. Trolls, as usual, will always speculate news and spreading lies regardless whatever the situation is. It was unknown on who spread the fake news of his Girlfriend and best friends making out with each other that caused all this to happen, It is sad enough for them to lose Ayrton, but to be accused of something that is so absurd and disturbing makes it all more difficult to go through this difficult time. 

His girlfriends faces a lot of backlash from the people she barely know, hate comments,curses by curses, that she eventually leave social media. Even when it involves death, trolls are still there doing their job without feeling bad about it or thinking about the possible consequences that their statement may cause.

Governance? Does it exist? if it does, does it even works? 

As we all Malaysian knows, religion related issues is one of the problem in Malaysia that the discussion will always take place in social media. Trolls always find the needs to sparks the conversation with racist comments acting as a representative from a specific religion group to starts argument and conflicts. We dont even know for sure which religion is he/she practicing, but with their provocative statement, everyone will freak out and start to response. 

MCMC, a government body, has done their very best to overcome this problems and social media conflicts caused by the users. MCMC started to work with PDRM in hunting down those who spreads fake news, making defamation comments and more to tackle this problems for what it has done to the victims mentally and physically. It has come to a point that this problem affect the well-being of the community in Malaysia (Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission, 2019). 

MCMC launched a website called sebenarnya.my to help Malaysian in checking whether the news they read on social media is genuine or fake. This doesnt stop trolls from spreading fake news but it allows Malaysian to be more careful about what they share on their social media platforms. It is obvious that  no governance can help in stopping trolls but MCMC and the governments continuously trying to educate the people by actively raise awareness on this matter.  

When we hear the word activism, most of us will picture an individual or a group of people being passionate about what they are concerned about. We will somehow picture Greta with her informational speech on climate change, we will picture Ellen speaking about its okay to be yourself and LGBT doesn’t harm anyone in any ways. Activism, in my opinion, I believe that it is the very first stage of protest which stats and facts were made available for everyone to see, understand and digest thoroughly. It does not involve the meeting of hundred thousands people in front of the parliament building but simply the voice of an individual who care about something and is willing to spread more awareness and at some point do something about it to change the situation. 

Lets take Greta as an example for activism. As we all know, she was in the highlights over social media and other media for her UN speech about the climate (Milman, 2019). Everyone had tried to raise awareness about climate change for the longest time but eventually does not receive a lot of response from the people. For whatever reasons, we don’t know why and where things went wrong that less people care about the climate change. Until recently when Greta speaks up at the UN summit. Facts were spilling out of her mouth like a broken pipe, celebrities reacts, politician reacts, other activist reacts but most importantly, the public reacts to it. It all started from this

to this

source: Jessica Corbett, 2019 

in a very short period of time. This protest were participated by adults, children and more in front of the Swedish parliament building every Friday (Corbett 2019). 

Protesting about certain things is a big help in voicing out our concerns and most importantly to actually be heard by the authorities who plays a big role in changing the situation. Protest for a good cause that will actually grow outcomes for a better future regardless of which issues that were brought up. It might not work as planned, it might have cause negative impact towards other thing, but.. 

It gets clearer day by day that social network platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on holds the most audience in any country. The time spent by the audience on these platforms could benefits everyone from every sectors be it professionally or casually making it the best place to spread news and awareness. Almost everyone in the world, Malaysia specifically, have the access to the internet and is a user of these platforms. For instance, political engagement by the politician with the people through this platforms has gone so far that politician sees the need to convey their ideas, plans and actions on social media to reach their people.

Audience statistics in Malaysia:

credit to: Simon Kemp , 2011

Lets focus on Malaysia perspectives as an example on how political engagement through social networks were carried out. Recently, the newly appointed Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr Mahathir, has lifted out the powers of political parties that have their controls on media to allow press freedom on whats happening in the country and to avoid manipulated news shared to the people (Tan, 2018). This action done by Dr Mahathir changes Malaysian political engagement with the people to a whole different level. The people now can freely express their feelings and opinion to the politician or whoever through the platform which more audience are reached with just a tap on the screen. 

Most of the time, people are likely to depend on the news that they heard from another party online that they wasn't sure about the validity of the news either. This naive actions could lead to misunderstanding and risky distribution of fake news as well as changing the mindset of the people without having the courtesy to actually check the genuineness of the information. As stated by Taufiq Ahmad, Aima Alvi and Mihammad Ittefaq (2019), social media has huge potential for manipulation of news to manipulate publics’ opinion.  This problem has risen the need for politician to actually convey the news themselves to increase the credibility and it all started when John Edwards filmed himself voicing out to the authorities out there on helping the victims of hurricane Katrina on sites. 

As a citizen of Malaysia myself, I wasn’t aware of what is happening with the politics in Malaysia. I am not even aware about the paid internship plan suggested by our Minister of Youth and Sports, YB Syed Saddiq recently. I was well-informed about the subject matter when he posted on Instagram (i happened to be one of his followers) informing the interns in Malaysia that the bill has been successfully passed in the parliament and funded by the government. This shows how social media reaches more audience than the traditional way of reading papers. The video below was posted on instagram by YB Saddiq on the paid internship program. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Syed Saddiq (@syedsaddiq) on Sep 25, 2019 at 3:50am PDT

On the other hand, we barely know what is happening in the parliament, what has been done, planned and what hasn’t been done by our representative, our ministers. We are unsure whether our government are doing their job as they should or just playing games with the people. The initiatives taken by Dr Mahathir with his Twitter and Instagram account allows us, the people to actually see and indirectly participate in shaping our country. For instance, Dr Mahathir continuously post on his social media platform on what is going on in the parliament, what they are working on for a better Malaysia. This method does not only reach astronomical amount of audience but also increases the confidence of the people with the government ruling the country. Transparency can also be achieved when reporters weren’t given the chance to manipulate the news in the favor of other party or self gain. 

To wrap it up, social media has very much impacts how political engagement could work in this modern era. It connects the people of a country or even the world as a whole in a way that no physical interactions needed. The bottom line is, it will be a more effective way of communicating and cooperating with one another if it was use responsibly with care, good intentions and for good cause. 

Blogging was first introduce by Justin Hall in 1994 where most post about his personal life and interests were visible for public to see, as mentioned by Rettberg (2013), its basically a public diary. Blogging is where individuals in the virtual community prefer to share stories, knowledge,interest and opinion publicly without having the worry of other intervention or limit and usually is lengthy. The freedom of speech was awarded to bloggers unlike other platforms which only allows certain word limits with certain acceptable guidelines. Moreover, a blogger can stay anonymous while blogging. Most platforms consists of users that is not so into wordy expression post like most bloggers do and that is where the communities and communicative capitalism begin (Dean, 2006, p. 52). 

A blog does not require any compulsory direct interaction between two person for it to be a blog.The audience for blogs works differently compared to other platform where not much interactions are actually visible. As mentioned by Boyd, invisible audiences is also known as audience regardless whether they are interacting with each other or not. The main focus when it comes to blogging and all that matter is the content of the blog. It is a personalised page for bloggers where they posted their preferred content that was not willingly accepted by other platforms (Fink & Miller, 2013). 

Social network on the other hand shares the same concept but with different content and audience concept where the audiences can be a reactors, re-makers and redistributors of a content shared.In my point of view, social networking is when we are able to communicate, interact personally and engage with other users. For example, In Facebook, most user’s post got reacted, commented and shared by friends or public audiences. Facebook enables all those features to encourage engagement among users, most specifically, by using Facebook messenger. 

Therefore, is Tumblr a blog or a social networking platform?? 

It is safe to say that Tumblr is a combination of both blog and social network with all their features that allows interactions between bloggers. For example, the chat and commenting features that allows bloggers to communicate. However, Tumblr is more to the blog’s side where no matter whatever features added to encourage communication, bloggers seldom communicate on the blog post itself and continues posting lengthy preferred content without concerning what people think should be posted.