Media insights

New media will continuously be the building blocks for the strength of the community or society at large. Digital media and social media have brought about an impeccable way of giving power back to the people, through digital activism and hashtag activism. In 1976 during the Soweto uprising, social media didn’t exist and yet the youth of that context went against the authority and with that although their succeeded it took a lot of lives and also took time for this uprising to actually happen, because Bantu education began in the beginning of the year and they uprised in June, that is an entire 5 months apart and planning for this to happen. Although they shaped the way we learn today and they made our future easier, it indeed took long and also took a huge loss to the black community at large.

Fees must fall uprising is the culmination of 20 years of broken promises. Free education was major campaign commitment made by the ANC in the first democratic elections. The ruling party’s failure to keep that promise, while presiding over an explosion of student fees, have sown the seeds of discontent that has spilled of over to the street, the lawns of the Union Buildings, and grounds of parliament during the fees must fall protest. As a democratic country the government has a moral obligation to provide our youth with the opportunity to gain the skills and qualification necessary to this a winning nation. It is not about handouts, but about investing in the future prosperity of our country

But because of digital activism and hashtag activism, the inaugural #FMF protest spiralled viral within in days of it starting. Because of democracy, it means that the power is in the grasps of those who vote for the authority and in this context it is certainly the community of South Africa. The students waited for about twenty years for the promise of free education to be implemented and that only happened because of the digital activism that occurred. Digital activism is defined as cyber activism, form of activism that uses the Internet and digital media as key platforms for mass mobilization and political action (Juris, Jeffrey S, 2005:4). With digital activism using hashtag it is also needed for us to actually define what hashtag activism is. Hashtag activism is the demonstration of battling for or supporting a reason that individuals are pushing through online networking like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other systems administration sites. This is the sort of activism that does not require any activity from the individual other than sharing or "loving" a post or "retweeting" tweets on Twitter. The term gets its name from the liberal utilization of hashtags (#) that are regularly used to get the message out about a reason over Twitter (Bong, Sasha, 2012: 4). #feesmustfall ran for two years and it looked to directly speak to the government through the institutions that they studied at. It was seen as the biggest student uprising and it was all because of new media and digital activism that ended up happening on every tertiary institution. Hashtag activism gives out one thing that in numbers change is certainly under the horizon. Just like my previous post of fandom and bronies, this is entirely a finessed proof of what large numbers bring with the help of new media and social media in particular. One thing that I have noticed with selfies, fandom and also hashtag activism is that without out social media all these are null and void, but because of them they have been integral to the ideas of new media. The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Social networks are effective at increasing participation by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires.” (Gladwell, 2010: 44). This is what fees must fall hashtag activism showed us, that social network are the new ways of fighting power.

To be honest if it wasn’t for the course I am currently studying I genuinely wouldn’t know what fandom is, I guess it is true you do learn something new every day. Fandom and the concept of the fan is a complex and multidimensional culture that is specific to a particular media text or subculture of a specific time (Stavros et al. 2014:455). In essence it is the community where a large amount of fans speak about a certain series, show or a person. For example lady gaga has millions of fans and there is a lot of communities where their share certain things about lady gaga and praising her.  Because of new media and digital media, the power and control as well as accessibility that a fan now has is being highlighted with the growth of social media platforms like Tumblr and Twitter as well as other internet sharing platforms like YouTube (Stavros et al. 2014:465). Thus speaking about fandom, in particular male fandom in a sense of bronies is indeed needed to clarify masculinity and the changes that bronies are looking to incorporate within masculinity.

Brony fandom is a community of young adult men who declare sincere love for the show My little pony. Although there is a female fandom often called pegasisters, it was indeed the male fans that caught the public attention (Hautakangas, 2015: 112). This caught the public attention because of the patriarchal society that saw masculinity in a different manner, thus the question of interest of these particular fans questioned their masculinity, as to whether they are gay, have a sexual fetish or are they just trolling (Hautakangas, 2015: 112). Because of this fans have to negotiate their masculine identities. Yet what we see here is the fact that the brony phenomenon can be seen as resistance to this internet culture of memes, parodies and trolls which are characterized by irony and sarcasm (Hautakangas, 2015:113), and maybe being different turns into an asset when it is done together (Hautakangas, 2015: 114). A male who is 22 stated that “I had a compulsive need to be manly and he had a shitty past before joining this community, but now he liked it because it cheered him up (Hautakangas,2015: 112). This then means that the ideology of this fandom helps cheer ones mood and also looks to change the way in which we see masculine. When I began to know this fandom and brony, I remember that during my childhood I was also a huge fan of power puff girls and the winx club, as they were nice series, I remember having much interest in buttercup, and sometimes sought to find myself very weird.

I don’t know whether that falls under fandom but it indeed challenges the way in which one sees masculine in this society. This series (the little pony) which is the fandom that this is based on sees the series as really good thus, it is significant that from the point of view of reworking masculine identity because bronies are not disagreeing with mainstream masculinity but rather including new ideas to it. An anti brony stated that “the show is intended for children. It is horrendous”. But one thing this anti brony seems to not understand is that the Brony community have had one thing in common and saw other things in common, which is not only is this show great but it also speaks a lot about how friendship is purely magic.

 Social media therefore strengthens fan identification and raise questions about the changing nature of fandom culture and fan-celebrity relationships in a digital space (Stavros et al. 2014:465). Just like selfies, blogs on Tumblr and social media have been the reason why bronies have caught the public eye so badly. Digital media is the reason why ideologies and terms such as selfies and bronies have hit the public eye so deep, because social media attracts a tremendous amount of young adults and people, interacting becomes a norm and thus certain things which they have in common becomes what their speak about and what helps a lot is the feature that most of these social network has, which is the hashtag. This tool allows you detect the amount of people speaking about a certain topic and there more these people talk about the certain subject the more it trends on that particular social media.

When one speaks of new media, technology takes the realm because of the fact that technology is what has indeed taken the front seat, especially in Media and the society at large. The advancement of technology has thus brought new media, in particular new media which is also seen as digital media. Digital media is defined as an umbrella term for all types of electronic data, and in this post we speak mainly of an electric data called selfies. Because of technology advancement, cameras now form an integral part of smartphones and that’s the main reason why many people use smartphones, not only to access the internet at the palm of their hands, but also to lavish with luxurious selfies that can be posted on social media.

Selfies is ought to be an image of oneself that can be taken with a smartphone or webcam. Its aim is to communicate some sort of message about the self and it has not only become a ubiquitous term, but also has become a common feature of the online everyday lives of most digitally connected people, states Iqani and Schroeder (2016 :405). Selfies can also be seen as visual statements and share them with the virtual global world wide web. Selfies are literally null and void without social media because that is where they can be seen. One particular social media platform is Instagram, a mobile application that allows users to upload photographs, manipulate them with filters and share them with other Instagram users who can comment or like the post (Marwick, 2015: 147). Because selfies and Instagram can mainly be taken via mobile phones, they thus tend towards the documentary because there are present continually as users go about their day to day lives (Marwick,2015: 147). What this means is that unless the mobile phone is low, one can post selfies on a daily to document they lives.

Selfies have not only been about documenting a person’s life but it also has become a culture on its own. Selfie is also known as a self-portraiture which is a genre on its own. The primary purpose of analogue personal photography was to create memory. Lasen and Gomez-Cruz mentioned that hundred thousand family portraits where taken in 1960s and a fewer than a hundred where self-portraits, but however today online selfies are omnipresent. Selfies have become so popular that they are their own culture and genre, this is largely because of the technology that is present today. Ori Schwarz states that because of new technology and digital media which consist of social media, photography has shifted to photographing others for self-consumption to documentation of the self for consumption of others.

The selfie is claimed in three different manners, marketing claim, narcissism claim and also self-expression.  Iqani and Schroeder state that selfies may represent a complete agency of self-expression that is certainly pleasurable and meaningful (2016:412). This then entirely means that the selfie is an expression of yourself and therefore brings some fort of fulfilment within you, for example Kim Kardashian is said to take ridiculously large amount of selfies and many angles looking for the perfect one, it is crazy because she even went as far as photo shopping certain other selfies of herself just to make sure that she gets the correct one, in order to express and satisfy herself. Selfies are seen also as a marketing strategy, firstly with regards to the subject within the selfie, and the sometimes the object used to take the selfie.  Selfies are generally associated with leisure states Iqani and Schroeder (2016 :409), whenever you on holiday, your social network friends have got to know that you out the having a lot of fun, this then means you market the place where you at as well as yourself. Celebrity selfies are theorized as a form globalized self-commodification (Iqani and Schroeder, 2016: 408), like I stated above you clearly do market yourself with selfies, if famous peoples selfies are seen as commodities then should you get famous, even if you not you are marketing yourself to the public. Another form of marketing would be mirror selfies, which is usually taken by people with iPhone, I mean how else would you know if they use a iPhone or not, because generally technology has allowed for one to have a splendours camera in all smart phones. The final claim is of a narcissism claim, which is seen as the unnecessary enthusiasm for or deference of oneself and one's physical appearance (Schank, Roger C., and Robert P, 2013: 14). This is particularly where selfie maniacs can be categorized, these are people who ought to be in love with their self that they constantly post numerous amount of pictures of themselves onto social media every day. Examples of such are Miley Cyrus who was sought to have the most selfies on twitter at a particular stage in time.