Yes

The world in 2020 was hit by a pandemic which took a toll on most countries. Many people suffered from the COVID-19 virus, whether it be from a health aspect or financial aspect. Many lost their jobs and some had to close their business as many countries ordered for a complete closing down of the country in order to reduce the spread of the diseases. As of today, the death toll from the COVID-19 virus is a staggering  5,211,004, a number that is not to be taken. Many health campaigns have been held to spread awareness on the dangers of COVID-19, warning many to keep their distances, to stay home and to only go out if needed, and to always wear their masks whenever they need to go out of their homes for either work purposes or purchasing groceries. Social media has been the platform used to spread these information in order for everyone to see and take action in order to reduce the spread of the disease. In this blog, we will be looking at how social media is used to spread awareness and the obstacles faced when using this platform. 

How social media become the go to platform for awareness spreading

Social media is a perfect platform for many campaigns which are related on giving the public vital information on the COVID-19 virus. Social media plays an important role by providing a platform for health campaigns to easily inform the public about the dangers of the COVID-19 virus. According to Devgan (2021), Active social media users have now passed the 3.8 billion mark which is 9 percent (321 million new users) more than since this time last year. Creating an online health campaign regarding COVID-19 would be easier when done in social media with as many as 3.8 billion active social media users as it is information on how to protect oneself from the virus during the pandemic would be fairly simple as the users will share them through other social media apps. The importance of such a campaign is to ensure the safety of the public during this pandemic, ensuring that people will follow the guidelines on how to stay safe during the pandemic. People are also able to receive instant news about the pandemic, being informed of how many infections there are on a daily basis, knowing hotspots of where the virus is spreading in order to prevent themselves from visiting those hotspots and receiving news from the government on the countries situation. Due to this, the public is easily informed during the pandemic where they are unable to leave their houses very often and can just receive instant news from the smartphones by just visiting social media. 

Issues with using social media as a platform

Although social media was mentioned as a perfect platform for spreading awareness about the COVID-19 virus, there are several issues that surface. The main issues being face is the spread of misinformation about the pandemic, which in turn will cause either many to panic or to believe that the virus is not something to be taken seriously. Fake news vary from misinforming the public of the vaccine, saying that it has life-risking symptoms, spreading fake news about how the vaccine contains microchips in order to control those who are vaccinated and many more. There is also misinformation of how to cure those who are infected by the virus without using modern medicine. According to Fleming (2020),  Examples include claims that smelling sesame and other plant oils, breathing in steam or cleaning the nostrils with salty water can kill SARS-CoV-2 before it reaches the lungs. The spread of inaccurate information can cause the public to panic, as they are unsure on what to believe, with many different claims about the virus. However, action has been taken in order to stop the spread of misinformation to the public in order to make sure the public is well informed with the correct information all the time. 

Conclusion 

Social media is a great platform for health campaigns, with many of the users who would willingly volunteer to help share the correct guidelines for others to follow in order to stay safe during the pandemic. Even though the spread of fake news might create an obstacle for the spread of correct information, it is fairly simple to overcome it by doing more research on the information received in order to not be deceived.

List of reference

Devgan S, 2021, “ 100 Social Media Statistics You Must Know In 2021 [+Infographic] ”, Status Brew, viewed 28 November 2021, <https://statusbrew.com/insights/social-media-statistics/>

China’s laws are quite questionable at certain points. Such as the surveillance system installed all across the country in order to constantly spy on their citizens in order to make sure they don’t end up doing anything fishy, the social credit score system in which I thought was just a joke but is somehow true and is truly scary that the CCP is really controlling their citizens. On paper it sounds like a good concept, making sure citizens don’t commit crime, making sure citizens always abide by the rules and to easily identify anyone with a bad record, however, this takes away the freedom of most citizens, especially for those who have been convicted of crimes that they may have not commit. Is Social activism able to thrive in a country which takes full of control of what the citizens say and do?

What’s going on in China?

As mentioned before, China has implemented a few ‘controversial’ systems like the surveillance system used to constantly watch their citizens and the social credit score system, where citizens are given social credits for being a law-abiding citizen and their social credits are taken away for committing crimes. Those with low social credit scores are blacklisted and are given limitations with what they can do in public. According to Lee (2020), Individuals who are deemed untrustworthy could face a number of restrictions affecting areas including loans, travelling by air and rail as well as education. Social activism in China is very limited in China as whatever goes against the propaganda of the CCP is pretty much Illegal. Therefore, being a social activist is quite a challenge. As seen from the protests in Hong Kong, where it started of by being peaceful and ending up in violence with the protesters not backing down. Things are really not looking pretty in China.

The Great Firewall of China 

If you think China’s social credit system is bad, wait until you see the Great Firewall of China. No we are not talking about the Great Wall of China but China’s censorship of a lot of websites and social media apps. The Chinese government has banned many western websites such as YouTube, most social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and even the internet’s go to search engine, Google. The Chinese government sees western websites as ‘bad’ to the chinese citizens. According to Economy (2018),  At home, Xi Jinping, the current Chinese President, paints the west’s version of the internet, which prioritizes freedom of information flow, as anathema to the values of the Chinese government. China has also created alternatives to these websites and apps with their own versions such as WeChat and Baidu Tieba.

How will social activism prevail in China? 

Even though China’s strict censorship as limited social activism in China, social activists in China have found many ways to tackle the “Great Firewall of China”. One of the few ways is where chinese social activist use code to speak with each other in order to not be detected by the Chinese government. Chinese social activists also use Virtual Private Networks or VPN in order to use blocked sites, however, restrictions have been given towards the usage of VPN in the country. Simply accessing uncensored news has become more difficult thanks to tightening restrictions on VPN use. Nevertheless, partial data from several developers indicate that at least 20 to 30 million people in China jumped the so-called Great Firewall in 2018 (Cook 2018). 

Conclusion

Social activism will slowly prevail in a very restricted country where social activism is pretty much illegal as many of the social activists are protesting against many of the systems and bills implemented by the Chinese Government. However, even with the restriction, social activists have found many ways to tackle the censorship in order to spread the awareness not only to their own citizens but also worldwide. 

List of reference

Cook, S 2018, “ The Remarkable Survival of Free Thought and Activism in China ”, Freedom House, viewed 27 November 2018, <https://freedomhouse.org/article/remarkable-survival-free-thought-and-activism-china> 

Economy, E 2018, “ The great firewall of China: Xi Jinping’s internet shutdown ”, The Guardian, viewed 27 November 2018, <https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-firewall-of-china-xi-jinpings-internet-shutdown>

Politics have never really been a fun topic to talk about especially with those who are very extreme in their beliefs. One wrong word and you will be bombarded with insults and death threats. However, some of us should be lucky to be living in a country where different political opinions are allowed as some countries are not as forgiving if you have a different opinion from the countries main propaganda. Social media is a platform where politics thrive in as the amount of users there are sum up to billions. According to Chaffey (2021), 4.55 billion people around the world now use social media, 400 million new users have come online within the last 12 months. That is surely a very, very large amount of people who scroll through Instagram, twitter or pretty much any social media app. Twitter is one of those apps where politics thrive of the most. Politicians take advantage of these numbers to spread their ideology to the users thus having more people being exposed to politics.  

According to Pew Research (2020),  Previous Twitter analyses by the Center have found that the platform contains a larger share of Democrats than Republicans and in addition to being more prevalent on the site in general, the 10% most active Democrats typically produce roughly twice as many tweets in a month (157) as the 10% most active Republicans (79). However, is this sort of exposure of politics to the public through social media a good thing or a bad thing. 

The cons of politics in social media

Let us talk about the bad part of having politics in social media since it’s more interesting. Politics have always been a very controversial topics which would end up badly when two people from different political sides come at each other in a “debate”. They pretty much just scream at each other and never really come to a mutual respect. Social media has seen upon millions of tweets or Instagram posts which end up being a battlefield users to go against each other, This would create a very toxic environment which started of as an debate which would end up in the usage of inappropriate slurs (how it usually ends up as). Most people fail to learn from another person’s perspective as they truly believe that they correct in every way. The idea of the freedom of speech is to be able to share your opinions in certain topics, especially political ones. However, many people try to shut down others as they believe that their opinions are the only correct ones and anyone who disagrees are considered to be inferior. People should be engaged in a more respectable conversation instead of insulting the other person because their opinions are different. Well let’s be honest, they’ll never come to an agreement if their fragile egos. 

Politicians taking advantage of social media as a platform to spread their propaganda in order to have an advantage in elections is another con of social media politics. This creates a divide among the social media users as they are only exposed to one side of the spectrum. A feature on most social media apps where users are more exposed to posts that they like and therefore this creates am “Echo Chamber” where they are only able to see whatever it is that is related to what they like. Politicians use this to create larges group of social media users who completely agree with them.  Echo chambers create a cult-like following, meaning that politicians will need to exert less effort to reel in certain segments of the voter base (Bromfield 2018). Such a thing is very dangerous as some people would think that other opinions do not matter as they are the only correct ones and politicians have it easy in elections as they have mindless zombies who would vote for them without a thought, Not all of their followers are extreme as some of them respect the opinions of others however there are some that are in denial of anything that goes against their political beliefs. 

The pros of social media politics 

Politics in social media is never always about two people screaming at each other in the comments on who is the better president. Politics in social media creates a somewhat engaging environment where people are able to share their opinions with everyone else. Others are able to learn different perspectives and understand to why some people believe in different ideologies. This is a good practice to gain information and also to be able to respect what others believe in. According to Brodie-Hall (2018), The substantial wealth of social media also allows for a more diverse and open environment for all ages to share and learn. Social media is also used by politicians to inform voters on information about elections and who they are voting for. Politicians can also use social media as a way of gaining feedback from the public in order to improve as a politician. Social media allows the engagement between politicians and their followers and this allows a sort of feedback system where the people who follow these politicians can share their sort of criticism or feedback for the politicians. 

Is social media and politics a good combination?

There are negatives and also positives of bringing the topic of politics to social media. However, personally I think it is somewhat good as many people can gain information from social media platforms based on politics in order to help them understand better about different political ideas and not just stick to their own ideology. Even thought social media is not really a great place for civil conversations as people tend to be hostile when their egos are challenged but not all of them are as bad as the trump supporters who 100% takes advantage of the freedom of speech just to shut down others. Therefore I believe that social media is a decent platform for politics if we just look over the bad parts of it.

This is a very exciting topic to talk about for a gamer myself. “Social gaming” are referred to as games that are mostly from sites such as Facebook, which was quite a popular thing during the early 2010s, with games such as Farmville filling up the spotlight for Facebook’s flagship social game. However, the idea of social gaming itself can also mean other thing such as communities built by many massive multiplayer online(MMO) games such as World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic, or just any online game with a community surrounding it. As we all know, the world was hit by a global pandemic which led many people to be forced to stay at home. As socializing was very limited due to the fact that most people are unable to go outside to socialize, they took the chance to use online video games as a way to socialize with others, causing a growth in the amount of players logging into many online games. We will be taking a look at the growth of “social gaming” from MMO games and other games that have an online multiplayer feature.

The rise of social gaming in the pandemic

The global pandemic is still currently going, however it has recently seen a decline in the amount of infections and deaths worldwide (lucky us) and during the span of the pandemic many of the younger people would use most of their time playing online video games, especially games with a massive community. Games such as Among Us, VRChat, Valorant, CSGO, are among of the many games that have had a growth in the amount of unique players in the past year have since continued to grow. Streaming platform, Twitch, a very famous streaming platform where most gamers would stream their gameplay live for the world to see has also seen a substantial growth in viewers per stream. Discord as well have seen a rapid growth in users as it is one of a few ways gamers can communicate with their friends without using the in-game communication. Discord has grown more than to just become a platform for communication for video games, many of the servers created on Discord are made for gaming communities where people are able to share many things, plan events, watch movies together and can also be used to make study groups.

 According to CBInsights (2021),  As users flocked to online communities during the Covid-19 pandemic, Discord saw usage soar — reaching around 19M weekly active servers and 150M monthly active users (MAUs) as of July 2021, an impressive rise from 56M MAUs in 2019. Discord’s rise to glory was noticed by Microsoft and the Multi-Billion Dollar company even wanted to buy discord from the creators, however, Discord CEO and Co-founder Jason Citron denied the offer.  According to Rosenbaum (2021), He did tell CNBC on Tuesday that there was more than a single offer for his internet chat start-up, which is turning into a much bigger communications phenomenon for voice, video and text.  Many gaming companies have profited during the pandemic as well as more and more players are joining in the gaming bandwagon.

The impact of social gaming during the pandemic

The rise of social gaming is without a doubt caused by the rise of users in many online gaming platforms. Social gaming has provided an environment not just for gamers but for pretty much anyone who would want to join the community. Many users are able to socialize with each other either through video games or online communities on discord servers without the need to have any physical contact. Social gaming is also proven to improve the well-being of many people as they are able to communicate with many people.  For gamers during the pandemic, video games were a source of stress relief (55%) and distraction (48%), the survey found(Snider 2020). Social gaming has helped many during the pandemic, with the reports mentioned before saying that many gamers have used online gaming as a way to help with their stress. Social gaming also provides a way for many people to communicate with their friends even with the limit of not being able to go out of their houses. 

Conclusion 

Social gaming has played a very important role during the global pandemic, with many people using social gaming as a sort of the distraction from the pandemic and also a form of socializing. We have found many alternative ways to cope during the pandemic and social gaming has undoubtedly became one of those alternates. 

List of Reference

CBInsights 2021,” How Community Chat Mega-Platform Discord Makes Money — Without Ad Revenue”, CBInsights, viewed 27 November 2021, <https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/how-discord-makes-money/> 

Rosenbaum, E 2021,” Discord CEO on reported Microsoft bid: ‘We did receive a lot of offers.’ ”, CNBC, viewed 27 November 2021, <https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/25/discord-ceo-on-microsoft-bid-we-did-receive-a-lot-of-offers.html> 

Ahh yes, blogs. Blogs were very popular during the early 2000s till the early 2010s. Tumblr was one of the main platform for blogging, where people were sharing their opinions on different topics. However, the question of whether blogging is now not as famous as more people are engaged in creating 7 to 15 seconds of them either dancing to a trendy song or being self-obsessed about themselves, posting a whole lot of pictures of how they “accidentally” took a picture of themselves looking at the sunset looking all pretty for the internet “clout”. Is blogging really dead? well in this particular blog we will be looking at whether blogging has really lost it’s relevancy in the modern age where people dance for a stranger to press the like button and share them to their friends. So let’s get started

What is a ‘Blog’?

If you do not know what a blog is, you are either very young or you have been living under a rock for the past decade. Well let me just give you the definition of what a blog is. According to Maisha (2021),  A blog is a website or part of a site that contains regularly-updated content about one or multiple topics. So basically blogs were really used for sharing pretty much about anything, from stories, opinions, experiences and many more. The first ever blog was created in the year 1994 and this was a start of a trend that would become popular among internet users during the early 2000s. By the middle of 2006, there were 50 million blogs according to Technorati‘s State of the Blogosphere report(WDD Staff 2011). Wow there were a lot of blogs created back then. Wonder how long it would take to read all of those in one seating. Many people were sharing a whole lot to the public through blogs and in 2007, Tumblr become the go to platform for such activities. 

Tumblr was a website created that was solely used for people to post their blogs for the whole world to see. However, there were other ways that people posted blogs and not just on Tumblr of course. Before the creation of Tumblr people would used websites such as Gawker and Huffington but these websites were mostly for just viewing any blog that came first. Tumblr had a feature where you can choose what you are interested in therefore you are able to read blogs about what you really wanted. Blogs also come in video form, called “Vlogs” which is short for video blogs. Many mainstream youtubers have posted their own vlogs, sharing of their day to day life with their fans or explaining about some topic that they would like to discuss with their fans. So I’ve explained what a blog is an a little brief history about now let’s go to the part where some people think it is becoming irrelevant.

(How Gawker looks like for those of you who are curious)

TikTok, how popular is it?

 According to Doyle (2021),  TikTok now has over 130 million active users in the US. With that amount of users from just one country alone is enough to make it a very popular platform. TikTok has gained this popularity as it revolves around the idea of that 8 second videos are better than a 30 minute video, as users are able to watch as many videos as they can as the duration of each video is very short. Content creators find it easier to squeeze content into 8 second videos and are also able to produce a lot of videos compared to stretching one topic for 10 minutes. However, most of the content is just people dancing to popular songs and these type of videos seem to gain a lot of traction by racking up millions of views. Charli D’Amelio is a perfect example of how creativity is not really that important and why Tik Tok has gained popularity. All she needs to do is to just to look pretty, find any famous song and just dance. 

That’s it. She. Just. Dances.

Sometimes I wish I had the genetics of Charli D’Amelio and just start dancing in front of my phone for 8 seconds and gain 45 million views. Even though tik tok has a lot to offer other than just pretty boys and pretty girls dancing as some users post actual educational videos, funny memes, and their are also those who straight up just post god knows what. TikTok has really become quite a popular platform but is it causing blogging to become Irrelevant? 

Has it really become “Irrelevant”?

The sort of downfall of blogging is really due to the fact that the younger generation really don’t care about reading blogs about “Why is apple pie overrated” or something as social media has taken over the internet in a storm during the 2010s. Instagram and TikTok are platforms that have gained a lot of popularity recently with most of the users being those of the younger generation. In a way, I sort of understand from my own personal opinion as I would rather scroll through picture upon picture or watch short videos of pretty much anything that catches my eyes instead of reading blogs. However, blogging is far from being irrelevant.  Instead of people publishing about their own lives, blogs are now being used by businesses, marketers, and for the publication of niche-specific articles for informational purposes (Hargrove 2021). Blogging is now becoming an important tool in the business field as the blogging that we all know and love has somewhat become obsolete but it isn’t the end of the world for blogging. It’s still alive and well just with a different approach to it. So it is pretty much just personal blogging that has become “irrelevant” but the whole concept of blogging itself is far from it. So final verdict:

It’s pretty much still alive and well just in a different way.

Social activism has been around for quite a long time, with very famous civil rights movements conducted by the man himself Martin Luther King Jr., who fought for the rights of black people in America, Nelson Mandela, who fought against the South African government in a peaceful manner as the South African government was very corrupt during his time as a social activist, and many more social activists who fight for rights. Just recently, many Americans went into protest for the death of George Floyd, who was sadly a victim of police brutality and the black community demand justice for his undeserved death by the corrupt police force. Throughout the years, social activism has helped overcome many social issues in different countries and in this blog we will be looking at the history, impact and importance of social activism. 

History of social activism and protests

The first ever recorded act of social activism was during the 1950s. A civil rights movement was held to battle the segregation of black people in America. Racism was a very serious issue during the 20th Century, even with the civil rights act of 1866 where “all American citizens regardless of color should be treated equally”, racism was still an occurring issue. Segregation of black people was the social issue that limited black people in society, where they were given harsh treatments, black people where only allowed to go to an all black school and are not allowed to enter certain buildings. Social activist Martin Luther King Jr. created a civil rights movement to battle the racial inequality in America and to end segregation against Black Americans. According to National Geographic (2020),  In 1957, Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to harness the organizing power of black churches to conduct nonviolent protests to ultimately achieve civil rights reform

.From their own their have been a number of movements that were created to fight against racism and racial inequality in America, especially with the “Black Lives Matter” movement that was created in  2013.  In response to the 2012 acquittal of George Zimmerman for shooting and killing Black teenager Trayvon Martin, three activists – Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors – protested the verdict on social media, along with many others (Konadu and Gyamfu 2021). Black lives matter has been protesting for the deaths of many innocent black people during the 2010s with the biggest protest being the protest for the death of George Floyd and has seen protests across the country with hashtag #blacklivesmatter seeing an all time high throughout social media. 

The importance of social activism and its impact

The importance of social activism is seen through the results of what social activism has offered. Martin Luther King Jr’s civil rights movement has resulted in the creation of the civil rights act of 1964 and the 1965 voting rights, as Black Americans were given the right to vote and segregation of Black People was abolished (slightly) where Black Americans are now allowed to have the same rights as any other American citizen. This shows the importance of social activism in society which should still be a practice in today’s age as the world suffers through a lot of social issues. Movements such as the #MeToo movements and the Black Lives Matter Movement has shown their importance in society which strengthens the need of social activism in society. The #MeToo movement has helped countless of victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault as these people were able to open up about their experience of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Social media has helped with this movement as the people who want to open up about their experiences tweet it out with the phrase “Me Too’ alongside the #MeToo. This creates the exposure it needs to many others who have also suffered through and created awareness for those who don’t. 

Social Media being a platform for social activism 

Most modern social activists use social media as their main platform to spread awareness of the social issues that they overcoming, asking many worldwide to join their movement. #Metoo and #blacklivesmatter are two of the hashtags which helped spread awareness to many social media users and causing many to join in the movements. According to Pew Research (2020),  As nationwide protests continue over police brutality and the death of George Floyd, the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, which is often used in connection with police-related deaths of black Americans, has been used roughly 47.8 million times on Twitter – an average of just under 3.7 million times per day – from May 26 to June 7, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of publicly available tweets. Social media has been a platform has been a platform for social activism as social activists are able to engage with the community through social media, and social media users are also able to share the experiences and opinions. 

Conclusion

Social activism has it’s importance in society as seen throughout history of how social activism has helped overcome most social issues such as racism, sexual harassment, oppression and many more. Social media has helped social activism grow even bigger. Anyone can be a social activism as long as effort exists in trying to help spreading awareness of the issues.

Fandoms are fundamental in the growth of a rising celebrity, a television series(animated or non-animated) and musical artists. Shows, artists, games and movies can’t just become popular without creating a loyal fanbase. Without a doubt, you, the person reading, are also a part of a fandom as long as you invest your time and money into any of the examples above. Fandoms have their goods, allowing the community to express their liking towards the thing that created the fandom, but with the ability to speak out their mind, however, their are others who take it to the extreme. In this blog, there will be details about the pros and cons of a fandom. 

What’s so good about a fandom?

Well there are many good examples of fandoms crossing the line such as attacking Voice actors just because they voice act a  very hated character in an anime that they like, however, there are also cases of fandoms actually bringing good to either community or particular shows, artists, or games that the fandom is based on. According to Mildenstein (2018),  The most important thing to remember is that fandoms create a social network. Fans are connected with one another through the similarities in their interests, sharing their passion with other fans, and in general being able to communicate with everyone in the community. People become more happier as they know that there are also others who have similar interests with them. Even people who don’t have many friends or are lonely can find a friend through common interest as fandoms connect each of us together through our inner geek and interests (Mildenstein 2018) .

Fans are also allowed to express their passion and love with their creativity. Twitter is a good example of a platform of where fans would share fan art of game characters, anime characters, real life celebrities etc. This in turn would help benefit the creators of such art, giving recognition for themselves as other fans would help share the art around. There are also times where celebrities would acknowledge some portraits of celebrity made by the fan and even compliment them.

If fandoms are so good, why do some people give hate to them? 

Anything comes with pros and cons and fandoms are one of them. Sure Fandoms connect fans with one another, however some of them may connect with each other for bad reasons. There are many examples where fandoms would go to the extremes to spread hate and just to tell everyone how much they hate that particular thing and with a community which may back them up, the impact it has would be detrimental.

There are cases to which fandoms would send death threats to artists, voice actors, game developers for the things they have done. One such example  would be the Steven Universe fandom (an animated show on Cartoon Network),  where bullying led by a handful of people towards others almost led to a suicide attempt of an artist( Ardazon 2020). This example in particular is a horrifying example of what toxic fandoms are able to do. Quite a number of artists have gone through such harassment and there have been cases which led to the artists committing suicide. There are also cases which involve of privacy violation, such as breaking into homes, exposing home addresses, and stalking. Some obsessed fans would go overboard to meet their favorite artist and steal their belongings, secretly creating a shrine to worship them.

So are fandoms good or bad?

In conclusion, fandoms have both their good and bad, however it is neither good or bad, but rather neutral. No matter how moderated a community is there will always be that small group of people in a community who would create negativity inside and outside the community. Fandoms will always have bad people however, with enough good people in the community, it can surely shadow the bad of the fandom. Fandoms create communities where people can come together and make friends with each other, therefore fandoms are not all that bad, even though there are examples of them being straight up psychopaths, however it is not a common thing therefore, it pretty much is on the middle ground of the good and bad and will always be.