community goes digital

EVE Online’s Council of Stellar Management sounds like a brilliant idea, where everyone wins. I don’t think I’ve heard of a board so involved in the players’ feedback before this one. The amount of organisation astounds me – flying members “several times each year” (de Zwart & Humphreys 2014) to raise concerns with the owner, Crowd Control Productions. WoW. Although the article goes on to disqualify the governing body of EVE, at least those elected to as spokesperson of the players are held to a higher standard of behaviour; which this article says can help eliminate all kinds of online video game abuse.

Goffman’s concept of moving between different roles in life, or “frames” made a lot of sense to me, and I agree with Pargman and Jakobsson that that same idea can and should be applied to players “She occupies roles of a player (asking for assistance in gameplay), embodied person (attending to everyday needs) and character (fantasy role of witch in a role-playing game)” (de Zwart & Humphreys 2014). I think this is an important point to make, because it highlights that each player has some kind of role in their lives outside of gameplay; they can use the game to blow off steam, where they are encouraged to engage in activities which they would (hopefully) be punished for in real life.

So I guess my point is that I don’t know why the verbal assault has to be present as well… If you’re already murdering a space-pirate surely that’s enough of an outlet. 

In March 2012, then Council of Stellar Management member “The Mittani”, hosted a live-streamed presentation during which he named another player and stated “if you want to make the guy kill himself, his [in game] name is [xxxx]’ (de Zwart & Humphreys 2014). The Mittani later apologised, recognising that he has a different personality outside of the game. However, I find it difficult to believe him sincere, because 5 months later (August 2012) he launched TheMittani.com (Roman 2014). It’s now been rebranded as INN - Imperium News Network - EVE Online News but is certainly still copyrighted to TheMittani.com.

When the game introduced the use of legitimate currency (or “microtransactions), players were not impressed. It was seen as “players being able to buy their way into positions of advantage within the game, rather than achieving those positions through skill”. People actually left the game for this reason, assuming (correctly, according to leaked communications from CCP) that this was not the end of the road for microtransactions (de Zwart & Humphreys 2014).

When I did my Bachelor of Social Science, there was an entire unit dedicated to conflict resolution. It doesn’t surprise me then, that trying to settle online disputes would be an issue – what I studied was for dealing with parties in person, not online, and certainly not when the boundaries of on and offline are blurred and/or overlapping. I’m certainly glad I wasn’t involved in trying to detangle the PLEX/CCP/RMT dispute… I also don’t understand why CCP had no reaction for such a long time.

Anywho, that’s it from me! Thanks for coming, and reading my gibberish. Hope it wasn’t too painful! 

  REFERENCES

Castello, J 2018, Foul play: tackling toxicity and abuse in online video games, The Guardian, viewed 6 February, 2019, <https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/aug/17/tackling-toxicity-abuse-in-online-video-games-overwatch-rainbow-seige>.

de Zwart, M & Humphreys, S 2014,' The Lawless Frontier of Deep Space: Code as Law in EVE Online', Cultural Studies Review, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 77-99.

“Impulse to see our present as already documented”

“Social media promises you an audience”

“Photos that are taken for social networks…. To be shared on social media as opposed to photos that weren’t necessarily with that in mind”

-          Nathan Jurgensen (Farman 2014)

 The quotes above from Nathan Jurgensen got me to thinking, are there other technologies we’ve revisited after basically replacing it? I’m thinking along the lines of the cassette tape iPhone screens:

 Or the new polaroid cameras:

Jurgensen mentions some people wanting to “draw a line between diary writing and a status update…” One being a continuation to the other doesn’t make any sense to my mind! In fact, I’d say it’s more like comparing a shopping list with a newspaper article… The intended audience is either just the author, or a range of people. For diary writing, it doesn’t need to make sense to anyone other than the author. All that matters is that they understand what they mean. A public post is to attempt to make the language as accessible as possible, because you’re encouraging people to read and engage with the content.

Lange’s “Videos of Affinity” pointed out that gaining someone’s attention in person can be quite challenging, and not always successful – it is not, and should not be assumed. Maybe I’m just a bad storyteller (I’d believe it!) but I’ve certainly been in the middle of something and had a sudden realisation that my audience were no longer engaged.

It is interesting to think about attention to a conversation in person versus over video chat (such as Skype or Face Time). If we struggle to retain attention in person, perhaps through a Skype call we’re able to focus more on the other person, because that’s the function of the medium being employed. The medium is the message, and the medium in this case is a video call. If someone’s attention is gone, there probably isn’t anything left to say, and the participants would end the call (in my experience).

Reading about “videos of affinity” it was interesting to see in words what I think we all knew on some level – videos like these are generally only interesting to those with an interest in the people starring. I probably wouldn’t be super keen to watch the wedding video of someone I don’t know… They mean nothing to me, personally (but I’m still happy for you, congratulations).

REFERENCES

Jason Farman 2014, Photography, Self Documentation, & Social Media: An Interview with Nathan Jurgenson, 16 June, viewed 26 September 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnPtZ5lKDHo>.

I got a real kick out of Wikipedia being cited.

 If you’re not familiar with Ushahidi like I wasn’t, basically the Kenyan government shut down the local press after the presidential election result was not a clear-cut matter. Blogger Ory Okolloh began reporting her experiences in Kenya at the time, and asked if people would be keen to create a database to keep track of the death toll. Then a bunch of software people created a map where people could report on deaths as well as other violent acts and human rights violations around them (Ford 2012).

I hadn’t heard of Ushahidi until I read “Crowd Wisdom” by Heather Ford. But it didn’t shock me that with a new platform such as Ushahidi, arose the at-least-internet-years-old issues and concerns around finding credible sources, and knowing how to distinguish them. I tend to regard any crowdsourcing platform with at least a little bit of caution. People don’t always tell the truth about who they are or their intentions on the internet, so why would crowdsourcing be any different? I’m somewhat pessimistic on this topic, apparently… Anyway, while the technology can record, timestamp and publish reports basically immediately, the verification of said report still requires a human element. For example, the Wikipedia page for Ushahidi has issues of its own:

 With the technology available, regular citizens were able to pool their resources and knowledge to build an online database of lost lives, as well as reporting the other atrocities occurring. And though the government wanted to silence these incidents, residents organised themselves to provide updates to local and international audiences. The same technology was used by Facebook about seven years later (von Lünen 2015) when they introduced the “Safety Check”, with which users could mark themselves as safe during a nearby natural disaster (Shust 2014).

  The hashtag #qldfloods was used a whopping 35,000 times on Twitter between 10th and 16th January 2011. If someone wanted to find information, or share it, that was the place to go; these tweets were not only passing on information from previous tweets (retweets made up 50-60% of this number), but also linking to information on other sites (30-40% according to Bruns et al. 2012), which would have been incredibly helpful information for residents in the areas and suggestions on how to be proactive for others:

Queensland Police Service Media Unit were incredibly active on Twitter during this time. The consistent retweeting of their content made them an invaluable and reliable source; they also ensured that any false or misleading information were addressed and corrected where required, which were also “widely retweeted” (Bruns et. al 2012). This is a good example of crowdsourcing, such as the Ushahidi, however the important difference in the case of #qldfloods is that there were ways and means of confirming or contradicting the statements on the internet.

I remember watching the events unfold, and I remember being touched by peoples’ willingness to help others in a time of crisis. I just don’t think that there could have possibly been the supportive response there was without social media.

REFERENCES

Bruns, A, Burgess, J, Crawford, K & Shaw, F 2012, #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods, Arc Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, pp. 7-10, viewed 5 February 2019, <http://www.cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf>.

Ford, H 2012, 'Crowd Wisdom', Index on Censorship, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 33-39.

Shust, J, 2014, Facebook Introduces 'Safety Check' Feature, Continuity Insights, Rockaway viewed 5 February 2019, < https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/docview/1622959169/fulltext/BBD7A02B87C44D8PQ/1?accountid=14205>.

“Participation includes activism, resistance and conflicts…” (McCosker, A 2014)

I couldn’t agree more with this statement. As unpleasant as internet trolls can be, part of having a voice is the ability to use it in disagreement. Bülent Diken is referenced by McCosker, who quotes Diken’s “main principle of life” statement, regarding the “omnipresence of violence in society” (McCosker 2014). And in relation to McCosker’s explanation of Chantal Mouffe’s work, I agree that contest is healthy for democracy. Necessary as well. Trolling, however, is not specifically necessary for democracy to survive. Personally, I like to think there’s a level of civility we could agree on, but that’s misplaced optimism at this point.

McCosker notes that both the Christchurch earthquake and Auckland flash haka “serve as a form of provocation and stimulate passionate responses…” which “cannot be generally disentangled from the video(s)…” and what they represent. Each person would probably have some kind of reaction to either of these videos, but this quote prompted me to question why some of us share these reactions and some don’t? I react to things I see on the internet all the time, but I rarely post my responses. I found this article which explains that when the autonomic nervous system is enhanced, so too are our social interactions – “Simply put, evoking certain emotions can help increase the chance a message is shared” (Association for Psychological Science, 2011). In terms of the examples in “Trolling as provocation”, there is obviously a lot of emotion informing the comments.

In his conclusion, McCosker highlights provocation as an “agonistic sense of searching for an adversary and trying to best them, or at least maintain contact”. My first thought upon reading this was trolls trying to pick fights from the safety of their homes, hiding behind the anonymity provided by the medium of online communication.

danah boyd’s article about bullying points to Dan Olweus’ characteristics required to use the term: aggression, repetition and power imbalance (boyd, 2014). This definition caught me off guard – I had never thought of bullying as having to be repetitive in nature for it to be defined as bullying. The word ‘repetitive’ seems subjective to me, but I guess the only sentiment it really needs to cover is ‘more than once’.

The internet, and social media specifically, does afford more accessibility to communication avenues for communication, so I prepared myself for ‘increased options = more bullying’. Especially considering the range of interpretations that one text-based piece of communication can endure; the tonal ambiguity can lead to the exact opposite of the intended meaning. But according to boyd, this is not the cause of the bullying experienced by teenagers.

Finally, boyd’s interviews with teenagers around the word “drama” was interesting. I particularly liked her explanation of the use behind the word, around it allowing emotional distance from the situation: “Drama does not automatically position anyone as either a target or an abuser.” Thereby leaving no one specific holding the bag or to be stood up to, and no one in particular to feel sorry or stand up for. Everyone wins!

REFERENCES

Association for Psychological Science 2011, Why Do We Share Stories, News, and Information With Others?, viewed 5 February, 2019, <https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/why-do-we-share-our-feelings-with-others.html>.

boyd, D 2014, 'Bullying: Is the Media Amplifying Meanness and Cruelty?', in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Yale University Press, New Haven, USA, pp. 128-52.

‘facebook used to set the date, twitter used to share logistics, youtube to show the world, all to connect people’

I really like this quote, because it demonstrates Marshall McLuhan’s statement, “the medium is the message” (1964). By using platforms I’m familiar with and placing them in context, I find it a helpful quote if I get a bit lost in my brain. For me, it answers the question “What does that mean? How can the medium be the message?”

Evgenyi Morozov’s statement regarding ‘slacktivism’ is quoted by Paolo Gerbaudo (2012) as “an illusion of having a meaningful impact on the world without demanding anything more than joining a Facebook group”. Unfortunately I’m guilty of this, but I’d also point out that it’s not always without impact… For the most part it may not make a big, immediate difference but it’s support nonetheless. Unless they use bots, Facebook groups won’t get to a million likes without a million people liking them. That support can make other people pay attention, including influential people, who can make a difference to the cause.

Youmans and York’s 2012 piece highlighted some of the problems with social media, particularly that those in charge of the platform have full control over user information and can (and have) shared it without permission. This got me worried! They then refer to Howard & Hussain, who pointed out that governments have the ability to deny access to some sites, or even the internet itself. The irony being that they wouldn’t feel the need to do so if they paid attention to the activists in the first place. Then I read this quote: “the state’s power over social media will eventually be seen in the form of content restrictions”. And now I’m terrified! I hadn’t given it much thought, but my first reaction is to hope that another social media site will surface, and will somehow be able to stay out from under governments’ figurative thumbs.

I particularly liked the suggestion that activists could “pressure large social media companies via long-term, iterative, incremental advocacy”. It does sound like something an activist would do! But who knows, if they made a group on Facebook for that, it might get taken down for not meeting the community standards or something…

   REFERENCES

Gerbaudo, P 2012, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism, Pluto, London.

McLuhan, M 1964, Understanding media; the extensions of man, Routledge, New York, McGraw-Hill.

“The belief has been that a YouTube presence is essential if a candidate wants to be noticed and admired by younger voters.”

 If we’re gonna talk about politicians and social media, I have to get one thing out of the way - click this link right here for Barack Obama and Lin Manuel-Miranda. You’re welcome.

 The power of social media can make or break a politician, as Jericho, 2012 highlights in many examples. Donald Trump’s use of social media, though, I find lacking – he uses it as a teenager might have in the early 2000s, calling people liars and boasting about achievements (real or imagined). Below are some of Barack Obama’s tweets, followed by Donald Trump’s under that. The difference in humility is astounding, and frankly if it were possible for me to lose more respect for #45, it would only take a glance at some of the garbage he posts on Twitter.

 ________________________________________________________________

“All that is needed is for the conditions for a revolution to exist. The spark that sets things off can come from anywhere…" Jericho explored instances wherein Twitter was used to organise protests, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement. This and many other mediums allow us to organise, en masse, ways to coordinate and have our voices heard in a meaningful way. In their 2013 study, Thorson et al. pointed out that the Occupy conversation was moved deftly between Twitter and YouTube by audiences leaving comments and sharing resources. Such a massive change from the mediums we used in the last few decades from posters, to telephones to email. The difference with social media is that it is widely available and utilised on mobile devices, and can be reproduced and spread for nothing other than an account and data usage. 

  Malcolm Gladwell was quoted by Jericho, saying that real activism requires real connections. I’d argue that these are real connections, but the individuals just haven’t shared the same physical space at the same time. The connections are real – this is what the internet, and specifically, social media platforms make possible – it’s how a lot of people make new friends or partners in the era of internet ubiquity.

 Young’s (2010) case study of online news providers was quite shocking really, that each of those listed generally have “older, white, male and affluent” audiences. A description which fits majority of our politicians. In Jodi Dean’s lecture (DCU School of Communication, 2013), she said “Just because political news and information become available on a new medium, this does not mean that people without previous interest in politics suddenly become interested”. This leads me to conclude that older, white, affluent males enjoy reading about and hearing from… Well, themselves.

   REFERENCES

DCU School of Communication 2013, IAMCR 2013 Plenary No. 3 - Jodi Dean, 3 July, viewed 26 September 2018, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ABPuNQ6IU>.

Jericho, G 2012, 'How many votes are there on Twitter?', in The Rise of the Fifth Estate, Scribe, Victoria, Australia.

Thorson, K, Driscoll, K, Ekdale, B, Edgerly, S, Thompson, L, Schrock, A, Swartz, L, Vraga, E & Wells, C 2013, "YOUTUBE, TWITTER AND THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT", Information, Communication & Society, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 421-451, viewed 29 January, 2019, <https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/10.1080/1369118X.2012.756051>.

Gillespie’s breakdown of the term ‘platform’ highlights how quickly different types of technology (software and hardware alike) have fit into a single description. It also pointed to the fickleness of the English language; for one word to have so many transformations is quite remarkable to me! This one word describes so many tools with several, varied capabilities which, on the surface, do not seem particularly similar.

One word!

-          a physical platform one stands on to address a group of people

-          a popular style of footwear

-          a website for sharing and viewing videos, photos, music and/or text

Gillespie further delves into the analysis of language in drawing attention to the deliberate use of “you” in YouTube. He highlights how using “you” in the title and catchphrase (“Broadcast Yourself”) creates appeal, because it places the focus on the individual interacting with it. The website offers and encourages users to engage with the posting and commenting functions. I don’t think I’ve personally ever posted a video that wasn’t for uni, but I do use YouTube for music (exclusively… And in an age of Spotify… How embarrassing).

Murthy’s 2012 book “Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age” states that “more than 200 million tweets are sent every day”. This very well may have changed in the last five years, but I would imagine it’s only increased, no doubt in part due to ease of use and depth of reach. Twitter has become somewhat central in political discourse, including world leaders engaging with it in varying respects. Ekman & Widholm (2014) identified ‘public performed connectivity’ as one of three types of conceptual frameworks to apply to the celebritisation of politicians. They stated that “the boundaries between the public and the private become partly dissolved” when politicians participate in social media, making them appear more human to the general public. I remember seeing Barack Obama with a rapping Lin Manuel-Miranda outside the White House and thinking, “when did this guy get cool?”

In Gillespie’s conclusion he states “A term like ‘platform’… is carefully massaged so as to have particular resonance for particular audiences inside particular discourses”. I think he sums it up eloquently here, because while YouTube and Twitter have little in common at first glance, both have given and continue to provide the opportunity for regular people – those of us with little to no influence otherwise – a voice, and therefore the potential to engage with entertainment and social issues alike.

 REFERENCES

Gillespie, T 2010, 'The politics of platforms', New Media & Society, vol. 12, no. 3, Sage.

Ekman, M & Widholm, A 2014, "Twitter and the celebritisation of politics", Celebrity Studies, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 518-520, viewed 10 December, 2014, <https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/doi/full/10.1080/19392397.2014.981038?scroll=top&needAccess=true>.

Social media has enabled, even encouraged smartphone users to be “always on” (boyd, 2012), which has fundamentally altered the way we relate to one another, how we use language, as well as our basic sense of selves. Many people (myself included) experience nomophobia, the “fear of being unable to use one’s mobile device” (Arpaci et al. 2017). The definition goes on to include the “affordances these devices provide”, suggesting that it’s not just not having a phone that’s responsible for the anxiety we experience; it’s what we can do with the phone that we don’t like being without. Personally, I like to be able to find answers to questions I have as soon as I wonder about something. I’ll forget the answer almost immediately, but it’s nice to have the knowledge for 10 minutes or so!

Sherry Turkle speaks about receiving a text as like “getting a hug”. I absolutely agree with her. When I moved to the country, being connected to my friends back in Melbourne via SMS and social media was like carrying them around in my pocket. I could include them in my life through Snapchat, see what they were up to on Instagram. Turkle then goes on to make the point that we want control over how we appear through texting and posting, which struck a chord with me. The amount of time I’ve wasted poring over a post, both for uni discussions and social media engagement, is ridiculous. I’ll overthink what I’m saying and how it’s written, trying to perfect it. And I often bail on posting at all because I can’t get it right. In a classroom or a real life social situation, I’d just make a fool of myself and move on. Turkle goes on to point out that “we use conversations with each other to learn how to have conversations with ourselves”. Applying this to my situation is a perfect way to demonstrate that my social skills won’t get any better without practicing.

Siapera’s statements about individuals being able to join a virtual community “to meet like-minded people” rings very true. In my case it was like-gutted people, because when I was diagnosed with Coeliac disease, it was a Facebook group where I learned everything: available resources, not-so-well-known unsafe food practices to look out for, safe places to eat, recipes for foods I can’t eat anymore, and short and long term side effects. Then there was the support on the page – people who knew what I was going through were (and are) so supportive and understanding. Therefore, I cannot agree with Putnam’s statement of technology, that “the result (of technology) is a society that is not much more than a collection of individuals, meeting and socializing occasionally… Who do not share any strong bonds or any sense of common purpose.” My argument would be that strong bonds can be found anywhere in society, whether a common purpose is present or not. We’re social animals, after all.

Comments welcome! Thanks for reading :)

REFERENCES

Arpaci, I, Baloğlu, M, Özteke Kozan, H & Kesici, Ş 2017, "Individual Differences in the Relationship Between Attachment and Nomophobia Among College Students: The Mediating Role of Mindfulness", Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 19, no. 12, p. e404, viewed 3 December, 2018, <https://www.jmir.org/2017/12/e404/#ref28>.

boyd, D 2012, 'Participating in the always-on lifestyle', in M Mandiberg (ed) The Social Media Reader, NYU Press, pp. 71-76.

Siapera, E 2012, 'Socialities and Social Media', in Understanding New Media, Sage, London, pp. 191-208.