Digital Communities Blogs

 There are ranges of online gaming communities that fit different types of personalities. Some people like solo adventure games where they play offline and venture through different challenges to finish the game. Others enjoy games with social interaction like the popular Facebook game Farmville. Tim Le Tourneau the VP of games at Zynga has directed the making of Farmville to include a large amount of social interaction. ‘Social is the backbone of all of our games; the ability to play with all of your friends. That’s what makes these games stand apart. And it really is the thing that we consider first and foremost whenever we are designing a game.’ (Tim Le Tourneau, VP of Games at Zynga)

 This social game that evolved and is profiting from Facebook has formed a gaming community through a large range of networked platforms. With social games such as Farmville you have the ability to choose who is allowed in your farm to help you tend various crops and animals. (Zynga, 2014)

However, in various other gaming communities you don’t get that choose. For example Gaming consoles such as PlayStation, Xbox, and desktop PC’s provide games such as Call of Duty where you play online with other random users from all over the globe. Some users abuse their power of not having to practice face-to-face communication while playing these games, which results in cyber bullying.  Gaming is a massive part of society today; it generates more money than movies. (Brooker, 2009) The main type of game children and young teenagers play are ‘role-playing games’ that support and persuade them to begin a ‘new persona online’. These games are appealing to kids as adolescent as 12 years of age, and almost always have violence and other content for mature audiences. Digital globalization has resulted in children as young as 10 years of age having an iPhone and various other digital devices to use as a kids toy. This creates a younger demographic as a easy target to introduce and interact with cyber bullying.

Without realizing it, these children adapt the violent behavior of certain gameplay into their life, which engages them in cyber bullying and various other violent acts. Most of these games are very realistic and challenging, which makes them highly addictive, resulting in further time to cyber bully.   (Nobullying.com, 2013)

 References: 

Brooker, W. (2009). Camera-Eye, CG-Eye: Videogames and the ‘Cinematic’. Cinema Journal, 48(3), 122-128

 ZyngaNetwork 2012, The Making of Farmville 2 , 5 September, viewed 6 September 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnNKko2ELKQ

 As technology and social media has developed over the past decade, it is very easy to send and share naked photos or videos out into the Internet. This is called Revenge porn. Revenge porn is when explicit photos or videos are distributed online without consent of the subject. The creation of sexually explicit videos or photos may have been made by a partner of an intimate couple who both gave consent for the digital forms of their sex life. However, when couples break up and these videos and photos are still saved it can cause a large amount of trouble.

The easiest way to send sexual photos or videos is by the popular application called Snapchat. It allows you to send a photo or video to any of your friends for up to 10 seconds, and then it will be deleted instantly and not viewable ever again. However, you can screen shot the media content on a smart phone, which makes revenge porn that much existent in today’s society.

 The subreddit r/gonewild is purposely for people to upload self-pornographic images. As the users are uploading anonymously you are uncertain whether it is a female expressing her body or an ex boyfriend leaking private photos. The easiest way to send sexual photos or videos is by the popular application called Snapchat. It allows you to send a photo or video to any of your friends for up to 10 seconds, and then it will be deleted instantly and not viewable ever again. However, you can screen shot the media content on a smart phone, which makes revenge porn that much existent in today’s society. This is called Revenge porn.

(Higgins, 2012) (Jane, 2014)

  References: 

Higgins, G. (2012). Battle of the sexes: An examination of male and female cyber bullying. [online] International Journal of Cyber Criminology.

For a very broad definition, we could explain crowdsourcing as 'the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers' (Merriam Webster Online 2014)

 During natural disasters there are various ways to contact the community, for example during the Black Saturday fires or the Queensland floods in in 2011 social media was used by emergency services to alert the community, and gather/distribute information.

I remember on the day of Black Saturday I received texts from the emergency services department (even though I don’t live anywhere near King Lake) saying if I was in the area of King Lake or surrounding suburbs to evacuate. I find this very logical because I knew of people who don’t live out there but was cycling through the surrounding suburbs who did a ‘u turn’ and headed right on back into the city away from any danger. Before all this technology was utilized the main source of warning to distribute an emergency was a radio.

 During the France shooting a couple of months ago Facebook added a new function on everyone’s profile where you could report if you were ‘safe’ from the terrorist attack. This feature would have made family/friends and loved ones very secure if they knew anyone traveling over in France.

 Even Google launched a site called ‘Person Finder’ which aims to help find loved ones after natural disasters. Like any other emergency services it provided information by individuals and various organizations.

  References:

 Crowdsourcing entry' 2014, Merriam Webster, viewed 3 September 2016,http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crowdsourcing

 Society is currently debating very vigorously regarding the significance of anonymity online. Anonymity is ‘the condition of being ‘anonymous’, “anonymous” is used to depict scenarios where the name of focus is unidentified.

Facebook is one of the world’s largest social media website, founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. It allows everyone to interact with their friends and family and even business associates in an easy, digital way; you update your profile with your personal information, date of birth, full name, where you live, what category of books and television shows you are interested in and more. Facebook is a form of social media that requires ‘real name’ information to be published. However, on the other side of argument are a wide range of different websites including the likes of reddit, Yik Yak and 4chan. These websites believe that being anonymous and having fake information such as a fake name, made up information, and uploads of other users images are important factors in how someone builds an online identity. That forming an identity online is manipulative and up to your own mind to create.

(Nagel, Frith, 2015)

 The popular application Yik Yak allows users to post statements anonymously and then receive thumbs up or thumbs down to see if the public enjoyed your post. The popular online dating site OkCupid prohibits users to reveal their real name, however demands users to upload various images of themselves. Dating sites like this make you wonder if the human race is only looking for attraction rather than personality and love. These sites would not exist if anonymity is enforced. Yik Yak and OkCupid are useful and enjoyable sites, however if users abuse there power that is when anonymity becomes questionable.  

(Nagel, Frith, 2015)

 Reddit, other known as ‘the front page of the internet’ when you search it on google, is a popular website where anonymity is encouraged. The main goal of Reddit is to post links to various news websites, or other exciting content that would amuse the users. The posts get up votes by the public that enjoyed it, or down votes by the public that did disliked the post. All the posts, up votes and down votes are kept anonymous, this is to keep a save place for open discussion. Various subreddits are posted on the site such as ‘r/gonewild’ which is where ‘males rank and comment on female bodies’ (Nagel, Frith, 2015). The posts with the most up votes will be places on the front page of the site generating for views, giving the users what they want the second they open the website.

 Having a place to discuss varies issues and categories anonymously is positive. People discussing their sexuality and how they express themselves without having to reveal their identity for various reasons is acceptable. However, people abuse their power and use it in cruel and disloyal ways.

 Chief Internet Evangelist & Google Vice President Vint Cerf, also referred to as the ‘Father of the Internet’ had an interview with RT America on his views of anonymity. The ‘Father of the Internet’ begins by expressing his opinion  “I don’t believe someone needs to identify themselves in order to use the Internet” (RT America, 2013)

Mr Cerf states that users can create their own identity  “that are convenient” to them- keeping in mine that cyber bullying is a massive issue in today’s society. (RT America, 2013)

Gaming consoles such as PlayStation, Xbox, and desktop PC’s are a large part of cyber bullying. Gaming is a massive part of society today; it generates more money than movies. (Brooker, 2009) The main type of game children and young teenagers play are ‘role-playing games’ that support and persuade them to begin a ‘new persona online’. These games are appealing to kids as adolescent as 12 years of age, and almost always have violence and other content for mature audiences. Without realising it, these children adapt the behaviour of the gameplay into their life, which engages them in cyber bullying and various other violent acts.  Most of these games are very realistic and challenging, which makes them highly addictive, resulting in further time to cyber bully.   (Nobullying.com, 2013)

References

 Emily van der Nagel and Jordan Frith. “Anonymity, pseudonymity, and the agency of online identity: Examining the social practices of r/Gonewild”

 Higgins, G. (2012). Battle of the sexes: An examination of male and female cyber bullying. [online] International Journal of Cyber Criminology.

 Emma A. Jane (2014) '“Your a ugly, whorish, slut” Understanding E-bile' Feminist Media Studies Vol. 14, No. 4, 531–546

 RT America, (2013). 'Father of the Internet' defends online anonymity. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qXozlWy-A8 [Accessed 28 Oct. 2015].

 Brooker, W. (2009). Camera-Eye, CG-Eye: Videogames and the ‘Cinematic’. Cinema Journal, 48(3), 122-128

 Nobullying.com, (2013). The Rise of Bullying in Online Games. [online]

 Sarah Buhr, 2014. “Facebook won’t budge on letting drag queens keep their names,” TechCrunch (18 September

 Digital citizenship is a term that refers to the appropriate and responsible use of new digital technology including social media and their ability to ‘facilitate the membership and  participation of individuals within society’ (Mossberger etal 2008, p. 1).

 Social media is conveyed as a strong tool for activism and change, why?

 1.Connection with others – you can send numerous messages to more people.

 2. Lets users to receive balanced and appropriate news coverage instead of bias news most media outlets produce to receive popular ratings.

 3. Social media accepts people to call out flaws, wrongs and misunderstandings that allow people to improve comprehend others and cultures.

 4. Supporting, organizing and creating hashtag campaigns people around the globe are adapting to getting involved.

 There are different types of activists, and enthusiasts.  Activists use social media to organise strategies.  they stick to a movement until their is change.

 In contrast Social Media enthusiasts also known as clictivism or slacktivisim is where people only sit behind a computer and hit like or posting a hashtag on Twitter or Facebook but don’t really support any campaign and are likely to forget the cause soon after posting.

(Leah Lievrouw 2011, Alternative & Activist Media, p. 2)

 Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C., & McNeal, R 2008, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass

 This week’s blog is on politics, which unfortunately I am not very knowledgeable and interested in, however I do like to keep up to date with various news happening around the world. I tend to only tune into politics when bad stuff in the world goes on.

 Politics within social media has become a bit part of how people get their sources of information today. What I do is I ‘like’ various news pages on Facebook and they post articles of updating news from their website. This is the way I access news, I don’t watch the news at 6-7pm, I just scroll my Facebook newsfeed and let the news find me.

 I studied abroad in America last year when the Sydney Lint terrorist attack went off; and the only news I heard about it was from my Facebook news feed, none of the television news stations aired any news outside of America.

 Another reason why social media is now such a good tool to source news is to target a younger demographic. Think of it this way, when I was younger and didn’t have Facebook or media was not sourced there I had no idea about the news, I was never going to watch the news at 6pm. But, when interesting stories come up and other countries and new inventions are coming out its wash more interesting then the weather and sports updates at 6pm.

 After understanding Young’s reading ‘News, political reporting and the internet' I have thought about online voting and how it could work successfully. The world is rapidly digitalizing so I wouldn’t be surprised if this did begin. A lot of political campaigns are turning to the internet for marketing advantages; having various advertisements to enhance the popularity of the campaign.

 References:

 During week four we are discussing blogging. Varies social blogging platformas embrace various online communities, in which they are defined by a specific category. Users are allowed to connect and interact in terms of special interest, fun, social and informative aspects. (Boyd & Ellison, 2007)

 There are many different social media sites where people blog; Tumblr, which is mainly used for multimedia blogging is both a micro blogging service and social media platform. The use of pictures on Tumblr is much more common than twitter for example, however Tumblr is also used for text content. Twitter is micro blogging social service that has a maximum character count for users tweeting. Twitter is known to be used by celebrities; I would say it is their main social media platform used. Twitter also uses multimedia, however more use of text tweets has been found more popular.  Facebook is probably one of the most popular social media platforms in the world; it is used for networking with friends and family, and also has blogging features (called status updates). Myspace use to be my favorite social media platform back in 2008 or so. You could design your own profile a little like Tumblr and attach a song of your choice to it so when people looked at your profile the song of your choice would play, I loved that feature. Myspace lost a lot of popularity over the years when FaceBook came out, however it does allow you to comment and share text/multimedia in bog form.

 Key word this week is ‘public’, it can be described as ‘a concrete audience, a crowd witnessing itself in visible space, as with a theatrical public’ (Michael Warner, 2002)

 Mizuko Ito puts it like this:

Publics can be reactors, (re)makers and (re)distributors, engaging in shared culture and knowledge through discourse and social exchange as well as through acts of media reception.

(Mizuko Ito, 2008, pp. 2-3)

 References:

Mizuko, I 2008 ‘Introduction’ in Vamelis, K (ed), Networked Publics, MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 1-14.

Week 1:

To begin week 1 of Digital Communities I viewed the video ‘The Social Media Revolution” which showed a large amount of statistics of social media and how society is using it for almost everything. If I stated all the statistics I would be here all day so I will just share a few of them.

 -       1 in 8 couples married in the U.S met via social media

-       If Facebook was a country it would be the third largest

-       80% of companies use social media for recruitment

-       Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S

 The next video I watched was from the social media website YouTube; as you can tell these social media websites are now being used in our education system, even the social media website Tumblr is being used for our weekly blogs. Anyway, this video was on TED-Ed called ‘Connected, but Alone’ with Sherry Turkle.

 Sherry explains how powerful social networking is in todays society. She shows a picture of her daughter and two friends as they hang out together in the living room one day, they all have their heads down looking at their mobile phones.  

Sherry makes some very valid points about how we don’t go looking for news in todays society, the news finds us. This is through various Facebook pages that post totally irrelevant content than what the page is supposed to be.

 I do my own research through ‘Surveillance, big data and democracy’ which stated that the internet stores your search history and uses it as advertising while you use various social media websites. For example the other day I was searching some protein powder on eBay. I then logged into Facebook later that night and up came advertising for not only protein powder but also gym equipment, pre workout power, and various other supplements.

(De Zwart, M, Humphreys, S & Van Dissel B 2014)

References:

 Buzzz Social Media 2011, The Social Media Revolution 2014, 23 October, viewed 26 August 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eUeL3n7fDs>.

 TED-Ed 2013, Connected, but alone?- Sherry Turkle, 19 April, viewed 26 August 2014, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv0g8TsnA6c>.

 De Zwart, M, Humphreys, S & Van Dissel B 2014 'Surveillance, big data and democracy: Lessons for Australia from the US and UK, UNSW Law Journal viewed 20 September 2014

   Week 2:

 For my blog this week I have decided to focus on Eugenia’s reading ‘Socialities and Social Media. I really enjoyed this read as it opened up my eyes to a lot about social networking and our communication with one another. In todays society a lot of people have hundreds and thousands of friends on Facebook, Twitter followers etc, but they’re not really their friends, they’re just Facebook associates or Twitter followers. Just a few years ago the world of communication was majorly different; people would meet and hangout due to their environments such as suburbs or schools, or sporting groups. Relationships were built and sustained by face to face communication and telephone calls (posting letters were also used to keep in contact with friends or family living elsewhere) rather than messaging one another on your smart phone.  Although these are mostly negatives, there are also positives of this recent digitalised world; Video calling programs such as Skype are used for business calls to save companies sending clients all over the country or world to discuss business. Social media allows others to share pictures and videos or their travelling or even day to day lives to the friends and family they choose (this would save time on your holidays from having to call individual friends and family to let them know your safe or what you are doing etc)

 References:

 Siapera, E 2012, ‘Socialities and Social Media’, in Introduction to New Media, Sage, London, pp 191-208.

Week 3:

 This weeks discussion is on comparing Reddit and Twitter. Both these social media platforms I do not use so I have had to do a fair bit of research. I’ve always had Facebook so I don’t see the point of getting Twitter as I don’t have any celebrities or idols in my that I care what they are doing and posting.  Ill explain Reddit in some detail.

 Reddit, other known as ‘the front page of the interent’ when you search it on google, is a popular website where anonymity is encouraged. The main goal of Reddit is to post links to various news websites, or other exciting content that would amuse the users. The posts get up votes by the public that enjoyed it, or down votes by the public that did disliked the post. All the posts, up votes and down votes are kept anonymous, this is to keep a save place for open discussion. Various subreddits are posted on the site such as ‘r/gonewild’ which is where ‘males rank and comment on female bodies’ (Nagel, Frith, 2015). The posts with the most up votes will be places on the front page of the site generating for views, giving the users what they want the second they open the website.

 Having a place to discuss varies issues and categories anonymously is positive. People discussing their sexuality and how they express themselves without having to reveal their identity for various reasons is acceptable. However, people abuse their power and use it in cruel and disloyal ways.

 The subreddit r/gonewild is purposely for people to upload self-pornographic images. As the users are uploading anonymously you are uncertain whether it is a female expressing her body or an ex boyfriend leaking private photos.

 Twitter is very similar to Facebook as you create your own account with your name, photo and bio of information, and then begin to follow other people. When tweeting you have a limited character count that you can post. Twitter is mainly used to see what celebrities are doing in their lives; then you re-tweet their posts and show to your friends who are following you that you saw their post and find it interesting. Basically all you are doing is sharing other people’s information. In my opinion, Twitter overall is a better information distributor than Reddit is.

 References:

 van der Negal 2013, 'Faceless Bodies: Negotiating Technological and Cultural Codes on reddit gonewild', Scan Journal of Media Arts Culture, vol. 10, no. 2, Macquarie University.