Kaltham111359

Done by: Kaltham Aldarmaki

ID number: 111359

Date: Tuesday, December 9, 2018 

Mass Communication students involved with extra activities.

Living away from home and dealing with different levels of thinking or cultures affect your previous thoughts in many aspects of life!

Written by: Kaltham Aldarmaki

ID number: 111359

Number of words: 357

Date: Tuesday, November 27, 2018

All 7 topics I had written about before are related to new media issues that helped in Mind realization and critical thinking.

The different subjects –suggested by Mrs Sonia- made me more aware of the most important topics that attracted me to express my opinion started from misleading ads topic to the active issues on social media but ignored by the traditional media.

I found that the most topic I satisfied is (hidden issues but discussed on social media and not addressed by the mainstream media) I chose the case of Khadija, a Moroccan girl who was raped and physically abused by nearly 13 men. I discovered that I tend to social issues more than others and trying to analyze human rights issues while looking at the public's movement in social media sites compared to traditional media.

Many reasons make me feel satisfied with my work are:

-          Topics I interested in.

-          Good searching before write.

-          Accuracy in documenting the sources.

-          Focus on specific angles and avoid confusion.

-          Knowing what I wanna to say.

-          Translate my ideas in a clear method.

The first 3 topics were the worst I wrote maybe because I depend on statistics more than my opinion! Also understanding the topic in wrong ways shapes other opinions that may out from the frame of the primary subject.

Actually, most topics added many experiences for me while using social media and give some lessons like:

-          Don’t trust social media because I sell my personal data by agreeing with terms of services –which I have never read.

-          Quite less of people on social media I can give them “influencer” term while I can find billions of popular –who have a large category of followers.

-          Social media is a fertile environment of misleading ads.

-          Dealing with different cultures doesn’t mean to ignore my real identity.

-          Appearances of people behind screens are deceptive because every user can represent other personality of his/her real one.

Done by: Kaltham Aldarmaki

ID number: 111359

Time of the Audio: 2:32min

Date: Tuesday, Nov 27, 2018

People have many experiences with climate change and how it is affecting the simple or even great aspects of their lives!

For listening 👂 please click on the following link

Done by: Kaltham Aldarmaki

ID number: 111359

Time of the visual material: 1:35min

Date: Tuesday, Nov 27, 2018

In Oman 🇴🇲, not every climate change affects on environment and human negatively but it brings high rates of tourists and that is what would raise the national income !🤩💰.

Written by: Kaltham Aldarmaki

ID number: 111359

Number of words: 288

Date: Tuesday, November 13, 2018

With the high flexibility on social media compared to traditional media, numbers of issues have been discussed by the public.

#كلنا_خديجة was a hashtag active 3 months ago about reaching justice for the young Moroccan victim -Khadija- of kidnapping, gang rape and physical abuse from 15 men.

People started dealing with the issue on twitter platform since Khadija's father reported the police about his daughter condition. #كلنا_خديجة hashtag arrived in Trend to help Khadija get justice, as the pressure on the Moroccan public opinion made the government rush to open the case and investigate the arrest of the accused.

The case of Khadija made an international uproar, not just Moroccan society because it was primarily a matter of human rights. under the hashtag people also discussed the issue of rape and sexual violence against women and its causes. This is what traditional media do not do because it considered these subjects very sensitive. However, in my view, the media should, in all its forms, embrace the problems of the individual regardless of whether the media is an awareness or a treatment tool.

The traditional media in the majority of the Third World countries are loyal to the executive and it is very restricted in terms of the topics it poses to the general public. Therefore, social and public activists resort to the weapons of social networking sites to find the solutions required for any issue. For example, Electronic Extortion issue which spread quickly in Arabs societies.

The following pictures are visual information for an academic reading under the title of “The Clickwrap: A Political Economic Mechanism for Manufacturing Consent on Social Media” which was written by Jonathan A. Obar1 and Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch.

Done by:Kaltham Aldarmaki (111359), Aymen Adil (112834)

Date: Sunday, Nov 4, 2018

Done by: Kaltham Aldarmaki (111359), Aymen Adil (112834)

Date: Sunday, Nov 4, 2018

Number of words: 992

The article was written by Jonathan A. Obar and Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch

Electronic processes require approval from the user and are considered one of the most delusions in digital transactions where rejection or acceptance by simply pressing a button, these clicks serve in fact a function of economic and political type through circumventing the user in a legal way to get consent. 

The clickwrap is a digital prompt that enables the user to provide or withhold their consent to a policy or set of policies by clicking a button, checking a box, or completing some other digitally mediated action suggesting “I agree” or “I don’t agree”. 

The emphasis on clicks as a political economic function indicates that capital production methods are successfully integrated into social media services and have the capacity to manufacture them, opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process.

It directs users away from policies that might encourage dissent and ensure users stay in fast lanes to monetized sections of services. This suggests clickwraps keep users in what might be analogized to “buying mood” and ensuring the “manufacture of consent”. In doing so, clickwraps reveal a political-economic function- discouraging and even thwarting the critical inquiry central to notice and choice privacy frameworks while concurrently, and in the social media context.

Consent consider as the most important legal procedure for privacy on the Internet and for privacy laws, they are legislated according to fair global practices in the information network.

This takes into account the data management practices associated with data collection, organization, use, retention and disclosure. However, there is an exception in the implementation of the law and the approval is not very necessary, but the strongest case of approval is the policy of prior approval, which refers to the "independent statement" by the individual but this consent does not imply full recognition

The use of the Social Media Service where the Terms of Service (TOS) are available through a link provided in an application or on a website constitutes a form of tacit consent, even without access to, reading, or explicit approval of policies

Users are provided with information about data management. The legal terms describing these processes are "notification". In fact, it is also essential to provide privacy and protect reputation, as the Federal Trade Commission once noted, the fact is that the notification must be made before any personal information is collected so that the consumer decides to say any personal information.

A stronger understanding of the role of interface design features such as click operation in maintaining institutional power structures is necessary to defuse and address the challenge. It is said here that the use of a specific mechanism to achieve some form of implicit consent, a click, is a political tactic used by many social network operators to connect users to services, in general, and the sections that generate revenue from those services. , In particular, as soon as possible.

It is also expected that consent will be obtained implicitly, not explicitly, without challenge, and is usually a margin. It represents an agreement. Despite the sensitive nature, service providers often try to achieve a more appropriate form of implicit consent than empirical research. The mechanism used by many social media services for this purpose is "clickwrap" to share personal information.

Method

The section of the survey addressed by this study asked participants to engage with a fictitious social media service called “NameDrop,” with a front page and signup prompts mimicking popular social media services (e.g., LinkedIn or Facebook). As the study was conducted with undergraduate students from a public northeastern US university, 74% of participants chose the clickwrap option which means that 399 of the 543 individuals who took the survey clicked that they agreed to NameDrop’s privacy policy without being taken to the privacy policy page and thus without reading a single word of the policy!

Three themes identified suggest a problematic relationship between clickwrap agreements and social media consent processes: (1) the clickwrap fails to notify users about the consent process, (2) the clickwrap suggests that the consent process is unimportant, and (3) the clickwrap discourages engagement with the consent process.

(1) Clickwrap failed to make participants aware that a consent process was taking place. There appear to be two reasons for this:  the prominence of the “JOIN” button, and the comparatively smaller, less prominent, or even hidden policy links.

(2) Because the policy links are so small, (join) button is more noticeable, there’s nothing that important in the terms of service

(3) It has become instinct to just agree without reading them. Something as a habit.

When people are inhibited, engaged in tangential conversation and educations about data management, they are delayed from reaching the anticipated pleasure afforded by social media. Perhaps this is why participants seem to dislike consent processes so much. Aside from not understanding the implications of ignoring policies, the diversion, if it is noticed, seems pointless and most certainly counter to the reason users downloaded the app in the first place.

Understanding

TOS and privacy policies, are not only present to be accepted or rejected. They often contain information that can be questioned and contact information for individuals and institutions that may respond to those questions. 

Have you ever been asked yourself why you must answer the required information like age, location, hobbies and gender when you join in any application on social media? Where had this information gone? who is benefited? And that information are using for what?  Actually, all of us sell our data for institutions and companies freely at no cost.

One of the most important fields where the personal information of users are used is marketing. Today, we get many advertisements while using social media and that depends on the information we signed at the first time of login. 

written by: Kaltham Aldarmaki

ID number: 111359

Date: October 30, 2018

Jerome Taylor used the platform in an acceptable way as a journalist. He almost shares different features of Twitter and he focuses on stories that are more relevant to audience matters. His account has also a variety of displaying opinion pieces.

He mostly follows his colleagues and news organizations accounts. He often interacts in stories published on human concerns as he keeps expressing his opinion in a comment or quote. Also, his interaction was a little bit limited on his colleagues and their posts.

 Good practices

-          Using the pinned tweet feature.

-          Retweeting daily.

-          Retweeting relevant information which related to journalism.

-          Sharing stories from different life fields.

-          Posting his views about global issues.

-          He shares breaking news with a hook caption.

-          Using hashtags, links and images.

-          Clear language.

-          Short and interesting sentences.

-          Having a large number of followers.

-          Interact with several colleagues’ tweets.

-          Inter into discussions in diverse concepts of cases.

-          Adding links to read full stories.

-          There is a kind of communication between Tylor and his followers.

Bad practices

-          The pinned tweet is from 2016, it is illogical that there are no other worth tweets. He must replace it or put a new one for the same topic he shared.

-          Despite the high number of followers, there are limited reactions from the audience.

Written by: Kaltham Aldarmaki

ID number: 111359

Number of words: 269

Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Everyone can get populism on social media easily because it doesn't matter to be professional in a specific field, there are thousands of accounts and even millions which present messages for followers without previous experienced because most of the popular people work on marketing to have money and they don't care of who believe them or not from social media's users!

Actually, most of these people who became famous on social media don't have deserved content to follow, but the audience is welcoming that in case if famous is satisfying their needs.

Tens of accounts have a biography of fashionistas, makeup artists or models with a large number of followers, I notice that they started to present skin care products without any experience in skin types or its problems, absolutely they are not knowing more than pharmacists or doctors specializing in dermatology. They just play a role as marketing tools for companies because it pays for them for spreading messages not because they are caring of consumer’s skin.

In the other hand, I followed a specialized doctor –haven’t a large number of followers-  who is posting relevant products of different skin’s kinds which several times aren’t related to what the makeup artists or models had published or said. This point confirms that popular people exploit users' emotions for their financial interests.  

The following is an analysis for personal accounts on Twitter, social media influencers blogs on Tumblr and professionals in journalism.

The good and bad practices that professionals in journalism used while using the Twitter platform,  -we were looking to 9 journalists’ accounts- and how they used the content strategies in tweets.

Good practices

-           Criticizing others in tweets without concern, Defending some institutions through tweets and criticisms, Supporting most tweets with photos, hashtags, links, maps and images.

-           Discussing events in a neutral and impartial manner, Using the pinned tweet feature, Retweeting relevant information which related to journalism, Sharing stories from different life fields,  Posting their views about global issues, Sharing breaking news with a hook caption, Clear language, Short and interesting sentences.

-           Interact with several colleagues’ tweets,  Inter into discussions in diverse concepts of cases, Open posts to allow users adding comments, Posting a survey to interaction with the followers, News summary, Analyzing views.

Bad practices

-          Most tweets discussed social issues.

-          Frequently chants on one subject.

-          The pinned tweet is from 2016, it is illogical that there are no other worth tweets. must replace it or put a new one for the same topic he shared. (Taylor)

-          Despite the high number of followers, there are limited reactions from the audience.

-          hashtags are normal –boring-.

-          Lack of using visual information.

Analyzing our personal account:

Strength (Good practices):

-          using hashtags and mentions related to the topic that we tweeted about it.

-          Using the trending hashtags to reach for more audiences.

-          We use the full info in our profiles (bio, location, date of born) and we mention our professional major.

-          We insert multiple pictures with tags for relevant people.

-          Using the pinned tweet. We interact with other people tweets by putting re-tweet and likes.

-          We produce and share topics that related to our major.

-          Many of us interact widely-  with those topics that related to our major as a journalist. 

Weakness (bad practices):

-          Posting video rarely

-          We didn’t ever use Gif picture.

-          The amount of interaction is very low  

-          We have been never posting a podcast

Analyzing Social media influencers blogs

Strength (Good practices):

-          Using Hashtags.

-          We basically use our views and opinion (original content).

Weakness (bad practices):

-          Using links rarely.

-          using picture rarely (only two from us).

Written by: Kaltham Aldarmaki

ID number: 111359

Number of words: 300

Date: October 23, 2018

Everyone can be an activist on social media, but we can't be called anyone "influencer" even if he/she has a large number of followers!. I think it depends on several factors like content (relevant or not), users reactions and publisher’s methods to deliver the materials.    

Shog Al Maskery, Omani YouTuber who have over 72k subscribers. Early 2014, she had published her first video which contains some scenes from London and gave the materials a life by adding music. She continued with that style until she created her own material, shared her own world, added her voice, asked people to join on video and spoke about the idea that she selected. On the other hand, subscribes, likes, shares and comments were coming up! Especially she used English as it Being the universally recognized language.

now, Shoq's channel is one of the best channels in content industry and delivering messages to audience in a creative way , as she is developing her videos continuously through choosing social or cultural issues that society or people are interested in and link it with her personal life, quality photography, clear language (she added Arabic recently), music, a motivating voice, unique ideas.

In my point of view, Shoq's channel deserves followers more than what it has now and she considers as “influencer” for many reasons:

- Her style of speaking isn’t fake but spontaneous and that is what attract people to continue whole videos.

- She concise her ideas in a short time with super content  –all videos between 1 and 7 min.

- People reactions in comments are an evidence that what she shared is relevant with their mentality and age.

-  She creates contents for persuading viewers to change inappropriate behaviours that affect them directly.

ID number: 111359

Written by: Kaltham AlDarmaki

Date: October 16, 2018

Have you ever asked yourself why your personal information required such as age, email, mobile number, date of birth and hobbies when you signed on social media at first time? Who’s benefited? And Where these information gone? Yes you sell your data freely for institutions and advertising agencies.

I asked my aunt, who works in the public prosecution, about the most important cases raised because of the social media. The cases of extortion, which is one of the most widespread issues in the Sultanate due to the misuse of websites despite intensive national campaigns, have been answered. Accessed because of the information they entered when they were registered on the site, so the process became easier to catch the extras.

Written by: Kaltham AlDarmaki

ID number: 111359

Date: October 16, 2018

Khaleej Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper in UAE, it consider as the oldest English newspaper in GCC.

After the information revolution and technological changes, activating news institutions' accounts on social media platforms has become required for keeping pace with development.

Nowadays, success that every news organization is looking for depends on number of readers, viewers and listeners who can be organized and collect by interactive with them on social media easily and quickly.

That is what Khaleej Times (KT) have did to attract people, it have accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Whatsapp, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

Analysis

In this essay, I analyzed Khaleej Times’ accounts in social media by SWOT analyzing

(SWOT= strength, weakness, outcome, what can be learned).

 Strength

- Twitter account has about 371k followers which consider as the highest compared to other KT newspaper’s accounts on social media.

- Newspaper’s identity is clear on bio and using the official logo in profile.

- Using good and attractive hashtags.

- Short sentences with every topic.

- The way of writing is simple and clear.

- Each tweet has a link for the full story in KT website.

- Every tweet contains a picture with high quality that related to the published topic.

- Using questions feature in many tweets as a way to attract readers.

- The news and topics are updating in 24 hours.

- Secure account that drives people to trust in

content.

- On Instagram, they use trading tools which make followers being able to access the KT exact location in UAE.

- Using IGTV feature to share videos more than 1 min.

- Putting most important things in highlight which facilitate scan process for account’s visitors and followers.

- Using story feature to present the worth news with short description including hashtag and there is access to read whole topic by swiping up to the link.

- Posts with a high quality and interesting caption.

- Asking close questions in the story to let people vote (yes or no) as a part of communication with followers.

- Most videos took not more than 10min, that is good for viewers to not feel poring and summarizing topics with heavy contents using music, interviews, clear sounds and exact aspects.

- Number of subscribers and views is high and there is a good number of comments under most videos.

- There is a different in writing style and posts in Twitter and LinkedIn.

-On Facebook application, news posted with more details than Twitter even if the topic was same.

-On Whatsapp, they send worth news’ links with short headlines in one message every day.

Weakness

- Despite the large number of followers, the reaction of Twitter users is very low and we find often 2 or 3 comments.

- On Whatsapp, not send the breaking news in different times; they just depend on what was published in print newspaper once time a day.

- Despite the reactions from audience on YouTube, there is no replies or interactivity from KT account.

- KT stopped publishing in Google+ 7 weeks ago.

- The close Qs feature stopped 19 weeks ago on Instagram, sharing photos that audience and KT employees took more than sharing news, posting the first page -only- of issues daily, not posting news materials, but share them as stories which hide after 24 hours.

Outcome:

- I think Khaleej Times newspaper needs improvement in how letting people interact with content because I observe that there are few likes, comments and shares in every application and that never happen if KT do not respond or interact with users’ opinions.

 - KT must reactivate Google+ account even if it have the lower number of followers, but I notice that people’ interactive in this application is higher than what in LinkedIn!

 - Instagram account is active in a different way, while every application specialized in sharing news, Instagram focus more on pictures that audience share which give impression to visitors that is not a newspaper account –in case there is no related avatar and bio-

What can be learned:

- It is necessary having good information about the organization in bio and putting its official site to allow people to access directly the site. That is what KT have did.  

 - KT newspaper have the same avatar AND username in all platforms. Anyway, having same avatar creates a popular identity with formal character, credibility and regularity. Also, the unity of the material which all accounts are dealt with the same story in their own way.

 - Secure account raises people confidence in organization's materials, that is why Khaleej Times’ Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts have followers over 100K.

 - I learned that every account has its own way of sharing the material because each platform has special features. What published on Twitter not exactly the same on Facebook or LinkedIn in terms of depth in detail and shortening

 Written by: Kaltham Al Darmaki

ID number: 111359

Number of words: 291

Tuesday, 9 October, 2018

Social networking sites have not only been created for communication, but have become a supportive means of learning because of the advantages that traditional education competes with. The academics use them to illustrate the image in a simplified way to their students through pictures, sounds and instructional videos.

Social media is also a primary source for learners. Students can search for information in a short time and on more than one side, as well as raise awareness about the material that student search for because these sites present thousands of searching results.

According to YouTube statistics, more than 1.9 billion users who sign in YouTube platform every month, over a billion hours of video watch every day and record billions of views which mean that millions of users are using YouTube for educational purposes because of increasing numbers of channels day after day.  

Nicole’s study in 2013 showed that universities’ students are the most using social media, where 96% of social media users are between (18-35) years old.

The American experience in using social media as education tool is applied in many schools, public and private institutions, it is widely practiced by teachers and students. A recent study by the University of Minnesota researchers found that 77% of all students enter the networks to learn, develop skills and openness to new perspectives.

According to data collected over the past six months for students aged 16-18, "students who use social networking sites have developed their skills and creativity well" says Christine Greenho.

I agree that social media support education in a positive way, but no one can deny that the students affected negatively when they are exposed a lot of information in a short time and with different aspects in one topic.