MDA20009:Digital Communities with Bek Bell

There has been a great deal of mystery for some time shrouding the use of the internet, and further the use of social media in China. People like us, hailing from the Western World have always assumed that people in China are severely missing out on activities which we are able to do so freely. Although in some ways this statement is accurate on a broad scale in relation to censorship issues in China, when it comes to Social Network Sites, China has been able to deliver some highly popular alternatives.

The Chinese Government has allowed the use of sanctioned social networking sites that can only be accessed within China, allowing users to connect internally and appeasing some dissatisfaction in regards to people’s abilities to network. Crampton (2011) says that for people in China, connecting with other Chinese people is a top priority, access to the internet and social networks has opened up a stream of information to people that has been unimaginable for quite some time.

The monopolisation of state-approved social networking sites all but guarantees their popularity, given China’s massive population and yearn for information; we can start to see that perhaps our understanding of their social media landscape was ill informed.

“Numerous factors help drive Chinese, more than other populations, to engage in social media. These include rural-to-urban migration that has separated families, the loneliness of the one-child generation, and a distrust of information from government-controlled media.” (Crampton, 2011)

Most studies have found that people in China, almost spend more time on the internet than other countries with similar populations. Linkfluence reports that “With 91% of internet users frequently using social media, (against 67% in the US), Asia presents an unmissable opportunity for digitalised brands…” Linkfluence are an organisation with offices in China and Singapore who offer services to businesses stipulating they enable them valuable insight into how they can breach this previously impenetrable market space.

The illusion and veil that surrounds the internet and social media use in China really demonstrates the success of the regime that is being enacted by the Government in China. One of the most well-known blockages of information to Westerners is China’s incapability to view information on the pro-independence activism that took place in Tibet in 2008. Tibet was invaded by the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1950, the act was called the liberation of Tibet and Tibetans have tried to combat the repression of the Chinese ever since the initial invasion. It is particularly important for the Chinese Government to maintain the belief in their own people that Tibet is happily under Chinese rule, just like everyone else.

“To Americans and other Westerners, it might seem odd that Internet censorship is still possible at a time when YouTube, satellite TV and online chat rooms produce an overwhelming flow of real-time news and data. Yet authoritarian regimes from Cuba to Saudi Arabia to Pakistan rely on a mix of sophisticated technology and old-fashioned intimidation to ensure that dissent can be repressed, even in the Information Age.” (Wiseman, n.d)

To look at the broad issue of censorship in China would require much more time and would far exceed the word count than this blog could afford. In talking positively about the Chinese availability of their own social networking sites we are not diminishing the larger issues at hand, merely recognising that things are different than in our own Western world.

References & Bibliography

Chiu, C, Lin, D & Silverman, A 2012, China's social-media boom, McKinsey & Company, viewed 3 February 2017, <http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/chinas_social-media_boom>.

Crampton, T 2011, 'Social media in China: The same, but differen't, China Business Review, Vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 28-31, viewed 3 February 2017, <http://www.thomascrampton.com/china/social-media-china-business-review/>.

CNN, 2012, "Timeline of Tibetan protests in China", viewed 3 February, 2017, <http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/31/world/asia/tibet-protests-timeline/>.

DLDconference 2013, DLD13 - How Social Media is changing China and Asia, 7 February, viewed 3 August 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG3z2ucaR6A>.

Forsythe, M 2017, "China Clamps Down on Online News Reporting", Nytimes.com, viewed 3 February, 2017, <https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/world/asia/china-media-sina-sohu-netease-phoenix.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FInternet%20Censorship%20in%20China&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=collection&_r=0>.

Freetibet.org 2017, "Tibet's history | Free Tibet", Freetibet.org, viewed 3 February, 2017, <https://freetibet.org/about/history>.

Linkfluence, 2016, Top 10 Chinese Social Media, viewed 3 February, 2017, <http://linkfluence.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/top-10-chinese-social-media.2-2.png>.

Greatfirewallofchina 2014, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/>.

Simon, D 2017, "China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works", Washington Post, viewed 3 February, 2017, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinas-scary-lesson-to-the-world-censoring-the-internet-works/2016/05/23/413afe78-fff3-11e5-8bb1-f124a43f84dc_story.html>.

The Great Firewall of China 2013, Open Democracy viewed 3 February 2017, <https://www.opendemocracy.net/china-correspondent/great-firewall-of-china>.

This week we touch on the very interesting topic of social gaming. Talking about games is something that always excites me as I have always both enjoyed playing games as well as had an emotional connection to them. Wait, what? Everyone has different interests but nothing I think is stranger to people when someone says they have an emotional connection to games.

Do you watch TV or movies? Of course you do, and have you ever watched one that moved you or made you feel something? Yes. Did you feel invested in the narrative and the characters and did it devastate you when you watched The Notebook (2004) and you realised that the story about Allie and Noah was their story? Of course it did, if it didn’t you aren’t human! (Or you’re a bloke who is angry that his partner is making him watch The Notebook again.)

Games and gaming worlds are as immersive, if not more, than TV and movies, when you add the element of socialising and you start to do the math, it becomes no surprise that games, such as social games played through SNS and MMOG’s mean a lot to people.

Social Games: are games that people play through their social media sites in and outside the boundaries of their immediate network. Games such as Farmville (Zinga 2014) or Candy Crush (King 2012), which people have integrated with their social network sites (SNS), are more appropriately referred to as social network games by some industry members (Lovell 2011.)

MMOG or MMORPG: This means Massive Multiplayer Online Game or Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.

In a position paper that my team wrote last year when we focused on the cultural significance of games we discussed the following;

Although legally classified under the same grounds as Film and Television there is a distinct difference in the way computer games are appreciated in society as a creative industry. The most common argument is computer games are categorised as having a violent effect on players. Yee (2012) identifies in his article these ideals are perpetuated by the mass media and Dr. Chris Ferguson of Stetson University says that these causal studies have no legitimacy, and are rejected by American courts in every case. Video games are a culturally significant part of the 21st century (Keogh, 2012.) The introduction of progressive technologies through new devices and online access has cemented their use within our current media landscape; however, it is still underrepresented culturally.

I know that I personally have made some wonderful connections through online gaming; in my time when I would socialise on Xbox Live, I met some fantastic people in Australia and overseas, who I still talk to on Facebook today. I also look at my brother, who has struggled to socialise due to having severe ADHD and learning difficulties, for these reasons my brother completed schooling in an alternative setting. Games for him have always been an avenue where he can exert energy, express himself and an environment where he is not judged for his social disabilities but rather as a person as a whole. He is also a fantastically gifted gamer!

I think it is clear that games mean a lot to me personally, as well as other emotional factors such as the example I use with my brother. I look at gaming environments and I see a place where anyone can thrive, if they choose to, where perhaps in the ‘real world’ they have struggled. As I touched on last week in relation to the work of Nathan Jurgenson, I really do believe that the idea that there is an online and an offline world is a fallacy.

Although my emotional connection to games may see me talk about them very idealistically, I can recognise that it is not always peachy.

“Game rules are used to establish a field of interaction at once familiar and strange, a deliberately differentiated site for competitive, social, cultural and commercial exchange.” (de Zwart & Humphries, 2014)

Rules in games are established to both serve a legal purpose as well as establish a code of conduct for players to act under. Think about when you purchase a ticket to a sports game, your ticket purchase means you accept the terms of service and code of conduct for both a legal purpose and a social purpose. Whether at the stadium, or playing online everyone has the right to be comfortable.

I want to know have you ever experienced or seen people acting anti-socially in an online gaming public? Whether you play games personally or have seen a YouTube video of such, please sure your experiences!

References & Bibliography

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.

Keogh, B. 2012 'Freeplay reminds us videogames matter: the ‘culture’ debate is over, The Conversation, viewed 30 August 2016, <http://theconversation.com/freeplay-reminds-us-videogames-matter-the-culture-debate-is-over-9825>.

King 2012, Candy crush, [iOS game], King, Stockholm.

Lovell, N 2011, ‘What is a social game?’, GamesBrief, viewed 22 January 2017, <http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/01/what-is-a-social-game/>.

Yee, N (2014) How The Media Consistently Gets Games Wrong, The Huffington Post – US Edition, viewed 15 September 2016 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-yee/video-games-media_b_4572231.html>.

“The history of photography as a field of material cultural practice is replete with such moments.” (Vivienne & Burgess, 2013)

Society has always been obsessed with both the still and moving image, the image is magical, it captures a moment of time or moments of time so that we can revisit them repeatedly. From the commercialisation and availability of the portable camera by Kodak to the readiness of Web 2.0 our obsession with the image and the ability to archive or create immediate ‘moments’ has reached a point where there is concern that we are obsessed with the images we can create of ones self.

It is the area of immediacy that appears to cause the most concern, where the time to take and produce a moving or still image no longer exists with the use and wide availability of mobile phones and mobile internet. Lange (2009) discusses the ‘Ninjas & Knights’ example in relation to videos of affinity on YouTube, in her consultations with the boys that created the content they noted the reasons for wanting to share the content through YouTube as a matter of convenience. They don’t have to go through arbitrary methods of distribution to send this video to their immediate social networks, they can simply say to people they do, or don’t know “hey, take a look at this.” This notion can be applied easily to any user-generated content through various social media sites, the aim is for it to be shared immediately and conveniently.  

I engage highly with Instagram as I have always had an interest in art/photography and enjoy both the creative imagery that is shared on Instagram as well as amateur accounts, which share photos of food, home décor, recipes etc. My account and interests have developed steadily over time; I manage a personal account and have also maintained an account called Moderately Busy & Healthy, which is linked to my blog (which was previously a Media Project.)  

See a screenshot of my Instagram profile below for some quick stats on my level of engagement.

“Everyday interactions are filled with constant micro-negotiations for attention.” (Lange, 2009) Maintaining a followership outside of your immediate social network is arguably just as difficult on Instagram as the face-to-face interactions we attempt to have every day. There is no guarantee of holdings ones attention in a conversation just as there is no guarantee someone who has liked your photo before will like it again.

Now more than ever control of our image is both in and out of our reach, we work hard to build and sustain our image, however our perceptions of self can just as quickly be shattered when we are tagged in a photo or an image is shared against our ‘will.’

Nathan Jurgenson (2011) writes extensively against what is referred to as digital dualism, the notion that we can live in an online (virtual) and offline (real) world is becoming decreasingly so and as Jurgenson (2011) writes it is a fallacy. Indeed online we do try our best to mould ourselves but ultimately most of the behaviour we exhibit and share online is the direct result of real world actions, they may just not be as pretty in the flesh. Take myself for example; I often post pictures of food that I eat with a particular interest in donuts, it brings me pleasure to share the foods that I am enjoying but I never post a picture of me physically eating one. Does that mean that the donut exists in the virtual world but the consumption of it in the real? Sounds strange to me.

“I am proposing an alternative view that states that our reality is both technological and organic, both digital and physical, all at once. We are not crossing in and out of separate digital and physical realities, ala The Matrix, but instead live in one reality, one that is augmented by atoms and bits.” (Jurgenson, 2011)

Let me know what you think, and what social media sites you engage with and whether your interests in the visual publics are about more than just taking selfies!

References & Bibliography

Herrman, J 2014, ‘Meet the Man Who Got Inside Snapchat’s Head’, BuzzFeed, 28 January, viewed 15 January 2017, <http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/meet-the-unlikely-academic-behind-snapchats-new-pitch#3dlvjg2>.

Jason Farman 2014, Photography, Self-Documentation, & Social Media: An Interview with Nathan Jurgenson, 16 June, viewed 15 January 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnPtZ5lKDHo>.

Jurgenson, N 2011, Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality, Cyborgology, viewed 15 January 2017 <https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/02/24/digital-dualism-versus-augmented-reality/>.

Lange, P 2009, ‘Videos of Affinity on YouTube’, in P, Snickars & P, Vonderau (eds), The YouTube Reader, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, pp. 70-88.

In times of emergencies and crisis, a fundamental issue that operates alongside the crisis is our ability to communicate and have access to timely and accurate information. With the rise in the capabilities in Web 2.0 and our continual and ever-rising use of social media sites, we have as noted previously seen rises in citizen journalism as well as the crowdsourcing of information and social mapping.

In discussions with Ping Lo, The ABC’s national social media coordinator during the both the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires and  2011 Queensland floods she discusses the challenges of balancing providing both timely and relevant information to their social media followers.  

“It became evident to the broader organisation that employing well-organised social media could have a profound impact in an emergency situation.” (Lo, 2012)

Citizen journalism: Where average citizens have become more active in the creation and sharing of user generated content to form information on current affairs.

Crowdsourcing: In this context, crowdsourcing seeks to gather information and data on current events and crisis situations by sourcing it from third parties such as people in real time.  

Social Mapping: A way of using data collated from various sources to map locations of events, services and other important information in times of crisis.

I will draw upon my own experience for a moment during Snowstorm Jonas, a blizzard that hit NYC in January of 2016 and battered much of the East Coast. Being an Australian in a snowstorm is the perfect example of a fish out of water; I had never even seen snow before I went to the USA let alone being in the middle of a blizzard. We had both run out of data and could only rely upon Wifi to get accurate and up-to-date information, in the terminal our flight was due to depart there was no free Wifi available! This situation highlighted to me our reliance on technology to get access to information, although the mainstream news gave adequate updates we struggled to find information that was specific to us.

Although I am not comparing what happened to us in NYC to what occurred in Kenya in 2007  but when Ford (2012) discusses mobile (50%) and internet (10%) penetration in Kenya I feel I can comprehend the situation a little more. With no mobile or data services available to us for a period of 16-20 hours and no access to accurate information in this time it felt like a blackout.

Ford’s (2012) concerns on verifying and authenticating information drew a lot of curiosity for me, because, as she discusses if it is up to one person to authenticate and verify information you create another gatekeeping scenario. If people are untrustworthy of mainstream media sources because of the prominence of news selection bias, you run the risk of creating the same kind of disparity towards projects such as Ushahidi.

In Macnamara’s (2013) article he relevantly points out that (full quote posted in previous post) Pierre Levy’s notions of the ‘collective intelligence’ has become an even-footed challenger to the long standing ideal of professional intermediaries or ‘gatekeepers.’ I believe this is because our awareness and opinions of traditional media conglomerates is changing, and when receive real-time updates from either media outlets or the general public they feel more authentic.

Macnamara (2013) also introduces the idea that there is a rise in apomediation, or apomediaries that act as agents to help us bypass the gatekeepers of information. Torrey (2016) explains the term by breaking down the prefix ‘apo’ which is Latin terminology to mean ‘to stand by,’ the apomediary will stand by you and guide you through disseminating information that you seek on the Internet.

I think that inaccurate reporting during live news exists no matter what platform it is delivered by, we have seen evidence of this during the manhunt for the real Boston bombing suspects. It only took a few hours and the power of the internet (namely reddit investigators) to deliver both the incorrect and correct suspects.

Some questions to get you thinking about your own ideas and opinions in the matter…  

Do you think the importance of current and up-to-date information trumps the importance of ensuring that the information is authentic or verified? Think of this in an event like the Haiti earthquakes.

Time is everything in times of genuine crisis, but does access to immediate information make us more impatient?

Is apomediation helpful in access to information? Or does it make us less independent on being able to do our own research?

References & Bibliography

'Boston Marathon bombings' 2014, Wikipedia, viewed 10 January 2017, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombings>.

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

Glance, D (2011) The future of news: crowdsourced and connected, The Conversation, viewed 10 January 2017<https://theconversation.com/the-future-of-news-crowdsourced-and-connected-4276>.

Macnamara, J (2013) Google’s map of North Korea stirs social media passion and tensions, The Conversation, viewed 10 January 2017 <https://theconversation.com/googles-map-of-north-korea-stirs-social-media-passion-and-tensions-11858>.

Madrigal, A (2013) #BostonBombing: The Anatomy of a Misinformation Disaster, The Atlantic, viewed 10 January 2017 <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/-bostonbombing-the-anatomy-of-a-misinformation-disaster/275155/>.

Poblet, M & Casanovas, P (2012) Crowdsourced crisis mapping: how it works and why it matters, The Conversation, viewed 10 January 2016 <https://theconversation.com/crowdsourced-crisis-mapping-how-it-works-and-why-it-matters-7014>

Postetti, J & Lo, P (2012) The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 34-39

As we come back after the holiday break we move into the topics of trolling and social media conflict, negative behaviours that are often exhibited on social media sites which draw copious amounts of media attention.

Easy A - a seriously underrated movie that better understands conflict better than most.

Our Definitions

Internet trolling: Often people who partake in internet trolling are also referred to as trolls themselves. Internet trolling involves using many forms of anti-social behavioural tactics such as posting spiteful, inflammatory or irrelevant comments to garner an emotional response from other people participating in the online public.  

Agnostic Pluralism: Where we accept that conflict is unavoidable and instead of focusing on the negative actions we use it to create and generate positive discourse contrary to the matter.

And a side note: I prefer to refer to bullying as demonstrations of anti-social behaviours as I believe as Boyd (2014) discusses that the term bullying is actually quite difficult to define, and has a vastly different meaning to many individuals.

I have found what danah boyd discusses in It’s Complicated (Boyd 2014, p. 152) which I have posted a quote in its entirety below, to best reflect my overall feelings about the behaviours we see demonstrated, particularly by teenagers on social media. Ultimately, anti-social behaviours such as bullying and abuse tactics have not fundamentally changed, although the public and some parliamentary figures are acting as if it has and are panicking.  

Fuller (2014) notes the reason for this widespread panic aptly by stating that parents of teenage aged children are approximately a generation and a half behind this ‘always on’ culture. This means that the people part of this generation do not fully understand or agree on the crux of the problem, which is why we are seeing more people persecuting social media sites rather than the individual.   Don’t get me wrong, I will not pretend that with the existence of a variety of social media sites and networks that bullying and other behaviour have not become more pervasive. The ‘always on’ lifestyle means that where you used to be able to effectively shut off from abuse, now you can be subject to torment and trolling on a constant basis.  

“Name-calling, threatening, saying that she was going to get smashed, things like that ... We had reported a couple of posts on Facebook, and they'd as usual come back saying that it doesn't breach their community standards.” CASSIE WHITEHILL, SISTER OF BULLYING VICTIM

To use myself as a known example, the behaviours that Cassie describes are not indifferent from the type of bullying I was subject to when I was 12 and 13. I am not trying to take away from the tragedy that is Chloe’s passing by drawing a connection, as reading more about this case study deeply saddens me. The root of the problem is not social media though; it is the behaviour of these girls who continuously tormented Chloe until she simply could not take it anymore.

The threat, which was the tip of the iceberg for poor Chloe, was that the girls who targeted her at the shopping centre on the fateful day threatened to post a video of the incident on social media. To analyse this act in relation to what McCosker (2014) discusses would the upload of this video have resulted in any agnostic pluralism? Would the cruelty of what happened to Chloe have been enough for people to say, well hang on a minute girls, this has gone too far?

I think that we don’t spend enough time educating and fostering positive behaviours early on, these girls have potentially been exhibiting negative behaviours for years before they began targeting Chloe. In my experience in working administration in Primary and Secondary Schools these young people are not mindful and do not think deeply enough about the consequences of their actions. This idea is reinforced by Boyd (2014) and her research partner Alice when looking at the case study between Ashley and Abigail and the way the family tends to focus on Abigail’s positive behaviours and Ashley’s negative behaviours.

I can only hope that these girls that targeted Chloe are deeply remorseful for what they did, and if they are not, there is a deeper emotional/psychological problem than social media. As danah boyd (2014) says if you take pleasure in this you are more likely a sociopath. If we continue to shift the blame from the individual to the technology, I think we will see more people who are incapable of exhibiting positive behaviours and recognising there are consequences to their actions and finally being able to take responsibility.

We cannot change what happened to poor Chloe, but if we cannot recognise as Boyd (2014) says that our current approaches to these behaviours aren’t working we will not be able to aide in the education and prevention of the mental health issues that are plaguing some young people as a result.

For more reading on Chloe’s Law see here. Vale.

References

Howard, J (2014) Sister’s sad loss sparks Chloe’s Law campaign to tackle bullying, The Mercury, viewed 29 December 2016 <http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/tragic-familys-crusade-against-bullying/news-story/4a2b3a7b395263a1a5cfb7676d9db61c>.

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.

Fuller, G (2014) 'Cyber-safety': What are we actually talking about?, The Conversation, 27 February, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://theconversation.com/cyber-safety-what-are-we-actually-talking-about-23505>.

Hope, E (2013) Tragic family's crusade against bullying, The Mercury, viewed 29 December 2016 <http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/tragic-familys-crusade-against-bullying/news-story/4a2b3a7b395263a1a5cfb7676d9db61c>.

Law Report (2014) Can A Cyber-Bullying Commissioner Protect Our Kids?, Radio National, 27 February, viewed 29 December 2016, <http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lawreport/5286036>.

Please watch this video with Simon Sinek (2016) where he discusses the many challenges and issues of millennials, what is particularly relevant to what we are discussing in various topics across Digital Communities is that more now millennials are not able to acquire or maintain genuine relationships. More people from our generation suffer from anxiety and have a low level of resilience and ability to cope with the pressures that afflict them, so they hide their insecurities and turn to social media, which Sinek compares to a drug.