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Week 10 – New Media, Big data and telemetrics

Everything you do generates data

The Title speaks for itself; everything you do produces data. One of the videos that I watched about big data states that data is collected every second. “Everything” involves clicking on a website, making a purchase, turning a light bulb on and off. Therefore, it can be seen that a lot of things in our everyday life creates data.  IBM say that every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – so much that 90 per cent of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone (Runciman, 2014).  Today an unprecedented amount of data is being produced at greater speeds from a larger number of sources, and there are complex new data types to deal with (Karena, 2012).

While journalists are embracing social science techniques, social scientists are undergoing a fundamental shift in the ethical structure that has defined the moral use of these techniques (Fairfield & Shtein, 2014). Much of social science ethics focuses on rights and responsibilities toward the individual human participant (Fairfield & Shtein, 2014). Therefore, the amount of data produced each day does create ethical issues and challenges for companies. Big data can be misused through the abuse of privilege by those with access to the data and analysis tools (Runciman, 2014). This can cause private information to be leaked and can cause security problems. With all the data generated every day, how can we be certain that it is not misused and our information is managed responsibly? An example of misused data and leaked information is the 2006 Netflix incident. They released an anonymised database of 100 million movie ratings and offered $1 million to the first team who could use that data to "significantly improve" Netflix's recommendation algorithm (Walton, 2014). Using publicly available user ratings in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) for fifty Netflix members, researchers were easily able to identify to a statistical near-certainty two users in the Netflix database (Walton, 2014). Big data can cause big issues when it comes to privacy. The data can create ethical issues with companies and users need to be aware of these issues. However, so much data is being collected so it can be a challenge to ensure these incidents never occurs.

    Bibliography

Fairfield, J., & Shtein, H. (2014). Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Exploring Questions of Media Morality. Big Data, Big Problems: Emerging Issues in the Ethics of Data Science and Journalism , 29 (1).

Karena, C. (2012). Top 6 big data issues . Retrieved May 11, 2014, from The Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/top-6-big-data-issues-20120816-24a6w.html

Runciman, B. (2014). Big Data, Opportunities and challanges . United Kingdom: BCS Learning and Development Ltd.

Social Media, the key to power

  This week was all about new media and its engagement with politics. Social networking revolutionises politics, however the area that I’m focusing on is the empowerment of society to participate in political issues that affect them. This idea is referred to as activism and mobilisation. This is known as counter-power/resistance organised through social movements and facilitated by new media and networked communication Castells, 2012). This communication collects forces and mobilises crowds, creates a sense of togetherness and provides a space for discussion and debate (Castells, 2012). Activism is the use of direct, often confrontational action, such as a demonstration or strike, in opposition to or support of a cause (Language, 2009).

  An example of this is the Arab Spring revolutions in 2011. The Internet and its tools of social media have been heralded as instrumental in facilitating the uprisings (Storck, 2011). Egyptian activists used social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and weblogs as tools for organizing and generating awareness of political mobilization, in the uprisings that took place in Egypt in January and February 2011 (Storck, 2011).  Is social media the new key to power? It empowers communities and gives the marginalised a voice.  Social media is changing the face of activism. Another example is the London Riots…

Political issues that affect citizens can cause riots because media allows them to feel powerful and join forces.

  As stated in the weeks reading, the networked population has grown from the low millions to the low billions since the rise of the internet (Shirky, 2011). 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). Therefore, there is more access and engagement with politics and the issues in today’s society, allowing the marginalised to form together and have a voice. It is somehow giving people power that they never thought they’d have. We have the opportunity to disagree and voice our opinion and what we think is right and just.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6S8iQ5KSkU

  Bibliography

Castells, Manuel. 2012. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Language, T. A. (2009). Activism . Retrieved May 2, 2014, from The Free Dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/activism

Shirky, C. (2011). The Political Power of Social Media. Retrieved May 2, 2014, from Foreign Affairs: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media

CMC Blog Post 

Developments in computer networking over the last decade have provided language with a whole range of new spaces in which to work and place (Pemberton & Shurville, 2000). This week was all about communication and how it is mediated through the new media environments. New media create new forms of communication; each medium both enhances and restricts different aspects of communication (Pemberton & Shurville, 2000). Communication such as hashtags, media environments and visual interaction shape today’s society online and offline.

Mediated communication known as the face to face communication, was always the known form of communicating to many people, due to the fact that we are all brought up in a society that socializes with friends and people on an everyday basis offline. My job at Boost Juice consists of customer service, which means communicating to hundreds of people daily, known as mediated communication. However, due to developments in technology and the access to new media content such as social media sites, chat rooms etc. In today’s world we can communicate with our friends and family online, but also the people all over the world.  The development of the Internet and computer mediated communication (CMC) may be one of the most significant influences on higher education in the last 30 years (Hendley, 2000). 

As stated in the lecture, advantages of CMC include connection and intimacy across time and space (Valentine, 2006), as you are able to stay in contact with people around the world due to new media environments. However, there are issues in the development of CMC. Socialising online to people you’ve never met can be a risk as the internet can be shallow, untrustworthy because of the inadequate interactions, identities and relationships. Online communication can also cause language erosion, spoken and written. This is due to abbreviations, such as LOL, btw and OMG, punctuation and spelling and symbols.  

Examples of Computer Mediated Communication are Facebook and Twitter. New CMC tools develop rapidly and their impacts can be unpredictable – technologies and services that show great initial promise may either completely fail to catch on or be quickly toppled by competitors (such as Friendster, whose initial popularity was quickly eclipsed by MySpace and Facebook), while another product getting off to a slow start may become a mainstay of the digital arsenal (Twitter, for example) (Kelsey, 2012).

   Bibliography

 Hendley V. (2000). 30 years of higher education.AAHE Bulletin, 52(7), 3–8.

Kelsey, S., & St. Amant, K. (2012). Computer-Mediated Communication: Issues and Approaches in Education (pp. 1-324). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:10.4018/978-1-61350-077-4

Pemberton, L., & Shurville, S. (2000). Words on the Web: Computer Mediated Valentine, Gill. (2006) ‘Globalizing Intimacy: The Role of Information and Communication Technologies in Maintaining and Creating Relationships’, Women’s Studies Quarterly 34(1/2): 365-394.

How will people access media content in the future?

Why buy a CD, when you can purchase the particular song you want online, read a newspaper when you can access the news online. There are various modes of transmission allowing us as the audience and users of media to access entertainment through our phones and computers in which we have access to 24/7.  New media has altered the consumption and production of entertainment and news and is reshaping the practices of journalism, television, film and music. In todays society, almost everything can be accessed through mobiles and computers, an example is iTunes; where movies, music etc can be purchased and viewed, all without physically touching a tv remote or a magazine, it is all because of new media.

This week’s topic was new media and the entertainment industry. As stated in the lecture, there are 10 propositions in new media entertainment, however I will only be focusing on the concept known as convergence. Convergence is known as the new media entertainment that provides multitextual engagement opportunities (Dwyer, 2010).  We live in an age of media convergence, where new devices and services are making it possible to access seemingly infinite volumes of media content from around the world (Healey, 2013).

Convergence is all around us – mobile phones with video, radio and the internet, radio over TV platforms and the internet and TV over mobile platforms including digital radio, and the Internet – all facilitated by the move to digital technologies (Dwyer, 2010).  New media has altered the consumption and production of entertainment content. Is this creating a threat to old media?

Media audiences in the modern world have a crucial role in creating and distributing content. New media entertainment involves fans in audiences in new ways. An example of this is the popular website known as Youtube. From the second reading set for week 5, YouTube clearly represents a disruption to existing media business models and is emerging as a new site of media power. As stated in the reading, Youtube clearly represents a disruption to existing media business models. Because it is emerging as a new site of media, this is creating and being positioned as a threat to old media.  The link attached shows a video that has been submitted on the infamous website ‘Youtube’ for audience entertainment. However, it is in fact a factual video explaining the idea that new media is reshaping the entertainment industry and how we access their content. Convergence is affecting us, as we can now access an ever-increasing pool of content and services via a range of different devices and platforms (Government, 2011).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM8dLz-nmlw

Bibliography

Dwyer, T. (2010). Media Convergence . McGraw-Hill Education.

Government, A. (2011). Convergence Review. Retrieved June 6, 2013, from Australian Government: http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/137270/Convergence_Review_Emerging_Issues_paper_PDF,_707_KB.pdf

Week three of Internet, Self & Beyond was all about the creation and consumption of new media content. Consuming new media content is referred to as participation (lecture slide), therefore this makes us all the consumer audience of all media today. A term that stood out in this topic was ‘spreadability”; audiences plays an active role in ‘spreading’ content (Green and Jenkins 2011, 116).  We spread content through sharing articles, videos etc (new media content); by clicking the mouse, our Facebook friends are accustomed to view and pass it on to their followers, making content easily accessible through media. 

In today’s society, we can create our own media content, due to the fact that it is more accessible because of smartphones and laptops. Everyone has a voice, whether a comment on a post, sharing something through social media or even creating individual content; also referred to as a ‘produser’ – a user and creator of content. One of my good friends has created her own YouTube channel called AshandJ2011. Ash states, “ I created this channel in May 2011 to post videos charting the progress of my pregnancy in order to gain/ give support to other young mothers out there and so I could remember my pregnancy in years to come” (Jackson, AshandJ2011, 2011). Since 2011, AshandJ2011 has uploaded 281 videos, has 3590 viewers that have subscribed to her channel and every video posted receives over 1000-6000 views; however this channel overall has had 1,721,539 (Jackson, AshandJ2011, 2011). As well as a YouTube channel, Ashley also created a Facebook, where 1,017 users have liked and 41 are discussing the page (Jackson, 2011). YouTube has free access and is the platform for entertainment, sharing information etc. As well as Google, YouTube has “all the answers” and contains everything and anything, for example: makeup tutorials and even how to talk to guys. I am guilty of selecting the content that has more views over others, as well as more ‘likes’. Therefore, it really does show you how much power the audience really has over the successfulness of new media content.

https://www.youtube.com/user/AshandJ2011

https://www.facebook.com/AshandJ2011

Due to the unlimited access to media through smartphones and laptops, audiences are able to view, speak and create new content on social media and access to other websites. The audience holds to power to determine the amount of views and comments that the new content receives because of spreadability. This is made possible due to Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. As Tim Berners-Lee said, “We ought to be able not only to find any kind of document on the Web, but also to create any kind of document, easily.” (1999, 182), meaning that as well as having access to the unlimited amount of content on the internet today, we also have the power to create and produce our own content which voices our personal beliefs and comments. Media audiences play and “active role” in spreading content and their choices and actions (sharing, subscribing etc) determines what gets valued(Green and Jenkins 2011, 116).

Bibliography 

Berners-Lee, Tim. 1999. Weaving the World Wide Web. London: Orion Business Books

Green, Joshua and Henry Jenkins. 2011. “Spreadable Media. How Audiences Create Value and Meaning in a Networked Economy.” In The Handbook of Media Audiences edited by Virginia Nightingale, 109-127. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.  

Jackson, A. (2011). AshandJ2011. (Facebook) Retrieved March 18, 2014, from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com

In contemporary democracies, privacy is recognized as a basic human right – the “right to be let alone,” as defined by the landmark Warren and Brandeis (1890, p. 195) Harvard Law Review article (Papacharissi & Gibson, 2011).  However, in today’s society there is difficulty in separating our public and private information due to the access to social media sites, as well as modern media and the ever growing of advanced technology, which is becoming more difficult to keep up with. In regards to the topic in week 2, it was the public and private discussion in which I found most interesting, due to the fact that I can relate it to my own personal experience and community experience.  Google search was the activity conducted in the tutorial and every student typed his or her name into the search engine.  Overall, every person found their Facebook page even if the privacy settings were set; I found my account and my personal details such as birth date and gender were stated. As stated in the lecture “Facebook’s very purpose challenges conventional notions of privacy (Goldie-Raynes, 2011), therefore the privacy settings don’t in fact protect us. “Shareability”, meaning that networks encourage sharing instead of withholding information (Papacharissi & Gibson, 2011). In relation to my own social networking accounts, sharing my personal details, information and opinion is recommended. As Papacharissi said, without information flowing between individuals, the network becomes a static asocial environment (Papacharissi & Gibson, 2011). Papacharissi also said that privacy enables the existence of relationship and community and if we share all of ourselves with everyone, that sharing loses all meaning and value (Papacharissi & Gibson, 2011).   Social Media sites do have privacy settings, however our information is only kept private to a certain extent. For a culture to encourage sharing, how can today’s society acknowledge the basic human right of privacy?

Privacy can only be met to a certain extent at one point or another your information that you have shared, no matter what privacy settings are on can be out there for the world to see. These days with all knew technology introduced, allows for privacy to be exposed whether permission was granted or not. It’s difficult now to have a defined line between public and private life, which not only affects just one person, but their family and friends too. With my accounts I try to keep everything as private as possible that includes Instagram, Facebook and twitter and even though basic information is public my more personal details are set to private but does that really mean they are secure? Modern society is changing and media is becoming more easily accessible and technology is changing whether everybody is willing to accepting it or not. Due to this access information is becoming less limited making privacy more of an issue because it is hard to keep personal information, opinions and even photos private. Overall I think that there is no such thing as privacy these days and its becoming a foreign thing which is worrying for the future.

  Goldie-Raynes, K. (2011). Aliases, Creeping, and Wall Cleaning: Understanding Privacy in the Age of Facebook. Retrieved from Frodo: http://frodo.lib.uic.edu/ojsjournals/index.php/fm/article/view/2775/2432