Digital Communities

In late 2012 China began enforcing a country wide firewall to block websites that the government did not condone. China’s communist state means that the image of their dictator is very important to them and something that they aim to protect at all costs, even through the ban of non governmentally approved social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. “They want people to see the President as above them and that his power cannot be questioned” (McDonell 2017). It is for this reason that information sharing sites such as these, based on user posts are blocked since they have the potential to initiate free speech against their leader. 

These strict regulations make it seem as though it would be difficult for advertisers to target audiences in China since they’d have to use non traditional social media marketing methods when trying to reach them. Although websites most commonly used in western regions of the world such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are not available in China, 95% of the population living within Tier 1/2/3 are registered on a social media site according to Silverman et al. in their article “China’s social media boom”. The study revealed that “in general, the Chinese populace is skeptical of information from news sources and advertising; people rely more on word-of-mouth from friends, family, and key opinion leaders, many of whom share information on social media”. 

In addition to this, it was revealed that Chinese internet users actually spend more time online than their American and Japanese counterparts who are not under a firewall. Therefore, are we safe to assume that the firewall hasn’t as much impact as we here in the West assume? 

Having gone through our teen years during the birth of social media, we saw the rise of social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and we grew with them. But for a community that never grew a dependency on these sites, it is no surprise that other social media sites became what they depend on in the absence of what had been blocked. It is clear that for the Chinese community, the firewall has not deterred them from the use of social media or communication and instead has allowed them different avenues for communication; Qzone, Weibo and Renren. 

Me: Very true, so we should-

People: We should ban kids from the Internet! No games, no youtubes, no googles!

Online gaming has exploded in the last 10 years. And I’m not talking about the spaceships. With developments in graphics, the internet and gaming consoles game developers have been putting a lot more research into understanding these communities and how they operate.  EVE Online, a spaced themed MMOG affords it’s users the ability to “escape their physical life and pretend to be someone completely different” (Suzor & Woodford, 2013, p.2). The game developers have structured the platform so that each individual must complete some work within the player council in order to play the game, in this way the developers have caused the game to be very developed and run. The community that plays the game also helps to structure how the games rules will work.  

“Game rules created by developers in the establishment of an online digital game space intersect and overlap with rules created socially by players, with cultural norms emerging from within the game space and from the contexts of play”. (Zwart & Hymphreys 2014).

It seems now that games have a very community centred approach unlike how they used to. Compare early video games such as Pacman, Super Mario Bros or even Spyro to the mass majority of games in the market now. The main difference is that the most popular games now are all community centric. They are built upon online interactions and team building. Game developers have realised that a “user becomes not only a player, but a new personality, and yet their same embodied person all in one” (Zwart & Hymphreys 2014). This means that people who find it difficult to connect online will find it easier to connect through an avatar online. 

Furthermore, the building of these types of communities has lead to the rise of gaming influencers; people who vlog their gaming and give recommendations based on their opinions/experiences. 

pSocial media affords us the ability to access information for anything, whether it be the weather, who won the football or what symptoms belong to which illnesses. With the rise of websites such as Health Line and Beyond Blue, any person is able to google symptoms they have been experiencing and is able to self diagnose based on what they read online. Google affords us hundreds of websites that include quizzes made to help you self diagnose yourself with mental illness. The question though is: are these types of 5 minute mental health quizzes helpful or detrimental to our well being? Well, there are 2 ways that we can look at this. 

Firstly, we can see these online diagnosis’ as a way to validate feelings that may have made people feel that there was something wrong with them. Being told that there is a cause for the way that you are feeling can often bring a sense of security and relief, especially when these websites often have information regarding treatment of any one illness. Furthermore, for people struggling with mental health issues, there are many online communities for other people who are also struggling. For example, ‘mental illness memes’ is a Facebook group with over 11,000 members made for people to laugh over shared experiences regarding their issues. Facebook groups and subreddits are examples of people being able to bond through their shared experiences and to tell their stories of recovery as a way of inspiring those still struggling. 

However, another way of looking at it is through the dangers of romanticising mental illness and wanting to become a part of that community. Milner talks about the indie imaginary and how this aesthetic is used as part of the self harm campaign to bring this community together. However, the issue here is when people that belong to the indie community without any mental health issues see this, they may feel that, because of its romanticised nature, struggling with depression or anxiety is a requirement for being a part of this indie community. Connecting the two has the potential to blur the boundaries and create more illness where there is none. Similarly, the use of online mental health assessments means that anyone who possesses some characteristics of an illness, can adopt any that they are missing after having read what the requirements are for diagnosis even if only subconsciously. 

Merriam Webster dictionary defines crowdsourcing as the practice of obtaining needed services or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community”. They discuss online crowdsourcing as a way to solve a crisis through the use of financial insentives or donations. An example of this can best be seen in the 2011 #qldfloods whereby the hashtag was used over 35,000 times to help disseminate information regarding the crisis. This allowed the QLD government to effectively reach its audience and amplify its message as well as to establish its account as a permanent means of crisis communication after gaining traction. 

Similarly, we’ve seen crowdsourcing at whole new levels go viral under the hashtag #prayforparis or #jesuisparis. After the 2015 Paris attacks claimed the lives of 129 people, more than 70 million people posted on Instagram in support and 6.7 million tweets being posted within the first 10 hours of the news. Similarly to the QLD floods, the #prayforparis hashtag allowed new outlets to quickly and effectively disseminate information to all those interested in the developments as well as Facebook allowing users within the area of the crisis to check in and notify friends and family that they were safe. The online crowdsourcing was a phenomenal success in terms of numbers, but what did it achieve practically? Well, as a result of the hashtags virality, Islamphobia throughout all western countries grew to its highest since the 9/11 attacks. 

Even more so, France itself recieved a huge decrease in tourism to the region as a result of the widespread fear of another attack. This in particular was especially harmful for the tourism industry there which accounts for 7% of economic activity. 

What is online bullying? Well, according to Danah Boyd in her book ‘it’s complicated: the lives of social networked teens’, bullying is the combination of aggression, repetition and imbalance in power. Anthony McCosker in his studies on online bullying revealed that “Among 18-24 year olds, 70% report being the target of at least one of the categories of harassment queried”. However, Boyd brings to light that in a lot of cases, what is being defined as bullying by adults as bullying is generally what teens describe as drama unfolding. Basically, teens are using social media as a way to watch drama unfold and to keep up with the different ebs and flows of their social circles at school. In a lot of cases this means being involved in Facebook fights for example or participating in sub tweeting each other. 

“This does not mean that Facebook creates gossip. Rather, someone seeking to spread a message can easily leverage the affordances of networked publics to do so” - Danah Boyd

Danah explores how these dramatic fights are normal for teenagers and how they are most likely influenced by the drama that they often see in the media and through celebrities that they follow. 

The most interesting part of the article for me however was the part where Boyd talks about the exchange of gossip as a form of social currency at another’s expense. This can also often come in the form of popular memes online. Boyd uses the example of the Star Wars Kid and how it “exemplifies how mass public shaming is a byproduct of widespread internet attention and networked distribution”. But we can see this same pattern being repeated all over whether it is through Mark Zuckerberg, the “I’m gonna say it” kid or the Yodelling Walmart Boy.  “Social media is situated within an attention economy in which technologies are built to capture and sustain the interest of users” - Danah Boyd. In this economy the exchange of memes at the expense of other people rarely has any cost as a result of the anonymity of online posting. Once an image has begun to go viral there is little to no consideration for the person at the receiving end of those jokes. It is difficult to empathise with an image within a joke on screen. 

Paolo Gerbuado in book titled ‘Tweets and the Streets’ talks briefly about the notion that protests and revolutions can not just be tweeted but must happen in person, he references the ‘Arab Spring’ protests and how one female while witnessing a police officer attacking a protester takes a photo and tweets it. He discusses the possible outcomes of her tweet and how it is not inherently activism if it did not help to incite other people to join the cause. Depending on the content of her tweet this female simply might have been partaking in “slacktivism”.  Gerbuado describes slacktivism as ‘feel good activism that has zero political or social impact”. However, depending on who the girl was, what her following was like and the content of her tweet this image might have had a lot of impact. The point is, regardless of whether it did or did not have an impact - it had the potential to. 

Societal values are broken into 3 categories: opposing, emerging and dominant. The trend we tend to see is opposing values becoming more popular and emerging until the point that they become the dominant societal value. Social media activism allows for the widespread dissemination of information, news and opinions. If social media activists are able to congregate together and put forward their opinions on social and political topics in a way that goes viral, these once opposing societal values have the potential to attract attention and grow into dominant values. Furthermore, the more influential any one particular activist is online, the more influence they have on their followers - further allowing them to shift public opinion on any one topic. 

“As the communication landscape gets denser, more complex, more participatory, the networked population is gaining greater access to information, more opportunities to engage in public speech, and an enhanced ability to undertake collective action (shirky, 2011)”

One can not expect to change political or legal issues without first changing the dominant public opinion surrounding the topic. Our laws and regulations are directly influenced by our societal values and in this way social media activism has the biggest potential to influence the new generation of adults online in this way. 

During the 2016 United States election, both candidates Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton used social media as a means of leading their campaign. A 2017 study published by the European Journal of Communication discusses the social media strategies of both parties, including their use of Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram. The research suggests that a candidates image is the most important factor during a campaign, and with the introduction of social media - this is easier than every to manipulate and curate through your own accounts. Therefore careful selection of posts are more important than ever to a candidate not only during an election but for their entire digital life. Creg Jericho brings attention to a quote by Obama saying “whatever you [post], it will be pulled up again somewhere later in your life”. Politicians are now having to be more cautious than ever in regards to what they post and what posts still exist on the internet to be used against them during their career. However, one politician seems to have taken another tactic. 

Current US President Donald Trump seems to be taking a PR tactic whereby he tweets whatever comes into his mind, and in a way this fits into his branding. Primarily as the TV show host of The Apprentice, Trump was always very outspoken and generally impolite with his choice of words, for him to completely change his branding and persona for the purpose of an election would see him appear as fake, changeable and therefore untrustworthy. The social media campaign of Trump centred around him being the ‘voice of the unheard’, and in this way it fit into his previous social media and branding strategies. He was to represent the central part of America many had described as forgotten with regards to marketing. Therefore seeing him speak his mind so blatantly seems to be a purposeful PR tactic aimed at appealing to these people with strong unbudging opinions. And it seems to have worked, seeing as he won. Trump used this branding in a way that allowed him to overtly attack his opponents without fear of reprimand from his PR team and to ignite conversations whereby he was the topic. 

This article discusses his Twitter tactic.

Similarly, some people believe that Trump garnered data from countless Americans via the use of Cambridge Analytica data. The psychographic profiling of a mass number of American’s would be the backbone to shape the Trump campaign and could not have happened without the use of social media for the means of collecting data. Cambridge Analytica is currently under fire for the improper and illegal collection of data through Facebook’s platform.

It begs the question though, how much of politics is a candidate stepping forward and trying to find whats best for a country and how much of it is just collecting data, guessing what the majority want and projecting that through your campaign to come into power. 

Tumblr, what is it? Well, as users of this platform you probably already have some sort of idea, at least of what it means to you. Lifewire discusses the 2007 debut of tumblr as a part blogging tool, microblogging tool and social community. Therefore it is safe to assume that the platform itself can actually be considered both depending on user experience. Tumblr affords it’s users to create specific blog posts (such as this), to microblog through the use of text posts or image sharing as well as the ability to reblog and share other users posts therefore creating social networks. Where Tumblr stands apart from other blog sites and websites is it’s ability to do both. Users are able to become part of micro-communities both through the use of hashtags like other platforms such as Instagram or Facebook but also in their affordance to follow certain blogs dedicated to topics of interest for that user. 

There really is a community for everyone on this platform. There are blogs dedicated to different tv shows, different aesthetics, fashion, memes, mental illness, astrology and even porn to name a few. The level of specificity of these blogs in question allows users to truly feel that they are a part of something. In addition to this, users who are not confident content creators can still partake in the blog communities in the curation of content; reposting content relevant to their blog. It is in this way that Tumblr acts as a social network. Similarly, the ‘ask’ function and direct message functions allow users to connect and meet each other from across the globe. 

Tumblr user hellotailor talks about how you can use tumblr to communicate with other users and make friends through the platform. Being a long term user myself, I have too made a close friend through tumblr messaging from Ireland who I visited this year. Tumblr affords its users the ability to connect with other users with similar interests by providing a culture where messaging strangers through the platform is accepted and encouraged. Unlike Instagram and Facebook, the majority of your follower base on Tumblr will be full of strangers that you do not know, or other users that you mutually follow and have met through the site. The microblogging tool and anonymity of the usernames creates a culture whereby users do not compete with their friends for followers and likes but can freely post and reblog their own interests. 

Tumblr is an absolutely unique blogging/social network hybrid that little to no other platforms can mimic.