Calcee Preston

Once upon a time, in the land before Facebook and Twitter, it was considered stupidity to not know the difference between there, their and they’re. Ok, so this was only 10 years ago. However in today’s online society, it is now considered uncool if you use proper grammar and punctuation when communicating with friends. Lyk U totes get wot im sayin’ rite??? This is until you hit the real world outside of social media and high school, where punctuation and grammar is needed to help you get a job or into your preferred course.

This week’s lecture focused on New Media Communications and how it has affected our everyday practises. Naomi Baron suggests that ‘there are two fundamental changes which affects the new language technology.’

Firstly, ‘We now have the growing ability, using communication technology, to assert control over when we interact with whom.’ In this mythical place before Facebook and Twitter, we use to run to answer the phone. It didn’t matter what we were doing, we would stop, to talk to the person on the other end, because a phone call was once considered to be important and you never knew who was on the other end. It was a prestigious item to have and would only be used when needed. But now it is just another form of communication which we can use to talk to our friends, family and strangers who we met online and totes thought they were gawg so they can call us anytime. When a phone rings, it isn’t the automatic reflect to answer it straight away, but we see who is calling and decide whether we want to talk to them, Lyk sriusly I chat with mum yestday, im still kicking so Y ma home grl woryin sooo much.

Secondly, ‘the transformation concerns the amount of writing we are now doing and what effect quantity may be having over quality.’ Each piece of literature written online slowly becomes more and more illiterate. Words are being abbreviated to the extent where you can write an entire sentence without using a grammatically correct word. 4 xmpl, OhhMerGerd Ma Boyfee totes havin a prty 2nite, cya laterz gurlfrand. Emoticons have become an acceptable method of text, being used to describe one’s reaction through text without having to establish their face expression. However, they have become more than the emotions of one, but are now used to keep a dead conversation going with a simple J reply to any message.

I believe new media is ruining communication due to poor grammar and the ability to ignore ones we don’t want to talk to, even if you should respond to them. It has recently become acceptable to talk through text in everyday life. Abbreviations have become actually words spoken rather than the grammatically correct words. It won’t be too long before erry1 is talkin’ lyk dis.

Calcee Preston

References

Baron, Naomi. 2008. “Chapter 1: Email to Your Brain: Language in an Online and Mobile World.” In Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, 3-10. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This week’s lecture discussed how New Media Enterprises work, and the question was raised; Are these companies and corporations exploiting us for their own benefits?

In some ways they aren’t, we choose to use these tools and sites for entertainment and knowledge, so why should it be a problem for the enterprise to make some money from us. Especially since, they have provided us with a network for free.

However, some users seem to think they are being exploited, and their data is used for the wrong reason. This is kind of true, although it is usually easy to identify when you are being exploited and if a site is being used for evil. We all know not to click on ‘Congratulations! You are our 100,000 viewer. Click here to claim your free iPad’ so why do people think they are being exploited when a company says, ‘Have you ever wanted to see live surveillance footage, well now is your chance to work like part of the government and notice if anything abnormal is happening at the boarder’. If one isn’t intelligent enough to realise this is a scam for you to work for them for free, you are not going to realise you are being exploited until a friend/college has told you it is. So why would you be annoyed at someone who has provided you with some fun on a rainy day or during your lunch break at work. Especially since there are people who are actually being exploited and forced to work in horrifying conditions.

Have you ever heard of the saying “I have put my blood, sweat and tears, into the project…” Well technology manufacturing companies have done exactly that. Not their blood, sweat and tears, but the blood, sweat and tears of many under paid, over worked, suicidal attempting workers. Foxcomm, the manufacturer for the world’s leading technology company, Apple, is considered the world’s worst corporation. Thousands of employees are working in extremely harsh environment, with unpaid, forced overtime. The founder of Foxcomm, Terry Gou, believes a harsh environment is a good thing, and no mistake should go unpunished. This type of leadership has leader to several successful suicides each year. **Please note: This type of environment would be evident in most technology manufacturing companies, however, Foxcomm is known to be the worst.** So, the next time you complain about your phone, tablet, or computer is ‘so last year’, take a minute to consider the people who have physically made these technologies for you.

In conclusion, I do believe New Media Enterprises exploit the factories workers who physically make the products, however I disagree with the idea users are being exploited and their data is being used for the evil or to empower the corporation.

ReCAPTCHA. “Digitalizing books, One word at a time” accessed 23/03/2014 http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore

Chan, Jenny. “iSlave”. New Internationalist Magazine. Issue 441. Accessed 24/03/2014 http://newint.org/features/2011/04/01/islave-foxconn-suicides-workers/

Zittrain, Jonathan. 2009. Minds for Sale (video, 1hr 16mins). 16 November. Available at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2009/11/berkwest

Everyone has the ability to become famous. At the click of a button, you could be helping one on the path to success or destroying their chances. Every like, view, comment, and share has an effect on the possibility for content to go viral.

As defined in Spreadable Media, “Media Viruses spread through the datasphere the same way biological ones spread through the body or a community.” For example every time you share an image or clip, also known as a meme, on a social network, you have advertised this content to your hundreds of online ‘friends’ globally in the time frame of a few seconds. Thus like a viruses infecting the body of an organism and spreading from one organism to another, the content is affecting our mind before being shared through our networks, to another user who will be affected by the same content in simular or complete different way. Not only is this content available to people anywhere around the world, it can also be edited by users to create an extension of the viral for a different personality group.

We all know of the Overly Attached Girlfriend (OAG), and how she appears on our newsfeed every day, with a different humorous quote written about being, well an overly attached girlfriend. But how many people really know how she became an internet phenomenon. Laina Morris, aka OAG, started her way to fame with a fan parody film clip, to Justin Bieber’s Boyfriend. The film was uploaded to Youtube and shared with her Facebook friends.

One of her friend’s believed her creepy face was a little to creepy too be keep to herself and created a meme with a still from the clip, with the new lyrics of the song. This was great publicity and free advertisement for her Youtube channel which now has over a million subscribers and the original film clip has 16 million views. However, publicity didn’t stop here. The still from the film had change with numerous creepy, clingy, and stalker-ish types of messages which now flood our newsfeed on a day to day basis, which has made some users believe the meme was created first and Laina has thrived on the free publicity. However, this conspiracy is incorrect.

http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/memes/best-overly-attached-girlfriend-meme 

So in conclusion, I believe new media, has allowed us to spread content in a positive way. Nobodies, can become producers of the content we consume online. This isn’t just a positive for the producer but also for the community space which this information is shared. Because OAG, Youtube has made a profit from each view on Laina’s channel, sicne advertising has become current on most Youtube videos. This is the idea of Hybrid economics, where one can contribute to the fortune of another. Some believe this is a bad idea, since the producer isn’t gaining any profit from the advertisement, however, many do not consider the fact the producer has a free space online to store/share their talent. 

In modern society, new media allows one to edit and reform their selves at the click of a button. New media is the evolution of communication into the technological era. It has become such a large part in today’s society, thus now it is consider ‘invisible’, as we know longer know life without the online network. Considering the World Wide Web is 20 years old, the latest group young professionals, the crossover of Generation Y and Z, have grown up with New Media and the ability to access all information needed whenever and wherever they are. This is seen with both positive and negative views.

New Media has allowed us to have a self online, whether it is our real self or what we aspire to. Mark Deuze’s Media, Culture and Society states “Media become the playground for a search for meaning and belonging” I believe this suggests we can create an identity which we one day hope to become. Instead of oneself sharing who we are and where we stand, we can present the self we hope to be in the future, allowing our goals, dreams and aspirations to be shared with others. This can be seen as a motivational tool for some as the world knows who they aspire to become allowing one self to pursue their dreams with the help and support of their online peers.

However, a self online can be viewed as a negative for some. People can create a fake identity to hide behind as they influence the life of others. Cyber bullying is a common occurrence of one showing a fake self online to hide their true identity as they attempt to destroy the life of online peers. Fortunately for the victim all data written online, whether it is still accessible to all users or deleted by the primary users has been saved by larger corporations and/or businesses. This idea of cyber bullying and big data will be expanded on in the weeks to come.  

I would like to finish with the concept there is no such thing as privacy now, and once one fact about you is available for others, you will always be online, and won’t be able to change the way it is. There are methods to keep minimal of your true self online, however in nowadays where new media is part of who we are, it is impossible to keep yourself completely free of new media world. It was once believed everyone will have fame for 15 minutes of their life, however this concept has changed to the idea everyone will only have true privacy for 15 minutes of their lives (Zizi Papacharissi and P.L. Gibson, 2012).