#danahboyd

The first week’s session on Digital Cultures was focused on “Living in Public: Danah Boyd on Social Networks”

The session has covered what networked publics are, how audiences are created by media and are no longer passive, explored new media and traditional media - Finally, how the media flow overtime had changed.

First and foremost, I learnt that Networked Publics is constructed through network technologies, emerged community due to intersection of people and technologies and It supports many of the practices. Her readings spoke about the four properties and the three Dynamics: “persistence, search ability, replicability, and scalability.

Danah Boyd’s statement of, “Audiences are created by media and are no longer passive” conveyed that as the technology evolves, and so does the audience.

The session also mentioned how the media flows differently in today’s society. People around are more connected with each other and have the power to discuss their opinions on social network.

We become more active and interact more through the use of our mobile devices and interactive buttons on remote control for example. The statement is valid, but argues with the Hypodermic needle theory - a theory that believes the audience are passive - the mass is easily indoctrinated by the media they perceive.

This week our topic was trolling and social media conflict, week 7 of digital communities. I chose to do my presentation this week. It was a decision I made to push myself into writing about something very personal for me. You often hear about very sad stories of suicide amongst young people due to bullying and trolling on social media. Thankfully the case wasn’t this bad for me, but it did create huge emotional scars that I have spent years healing.

Individuals have their own interpretations of trolling, it’s difficult to define in a single sentence. Researchers have determined that when identifying trolling, the senders’ intent is most important. Bergstrom (2011), describes trolling as being made a victim, to be caught up as the butt of another person’s joke.

In Danah Boyds article on bullying she gives examples using real stories, and notes that a lot of bullies don’t even realise what they are doing or that it can hurt people. Particularly amongst children and teenagers. When adults tell teenagers off for bullying adolescents often jump to say, it’s just gossip and drama, it’s just life (Boyd 2014, p.132).  I think that rather than immediately just punishing children for ‘bullying’ it’s important to understand why they did it, why they think it was ok, and then providing education before negative punishments.  

Trolling is difficult to monitor as something that is non- offensive to one individual may be offensive to another. England and Wales have tried to define trolling and criminalise it. An interesting case study my team looked at was that of Facebeef, an antagonistic site that trolled for fun and claimed they were just pranksters. The page has changed a lot over the years and could from stricter rules and guidelines, but perhaps also that the teenagers running it have matured.

In my experience I was caught up in a battle with an online site to try have a post about me removed. It was the third page to come up when you googled my name and I was concerned over the image it gave me. On a site where people ask questions and respond anonymously someone had decided to write hurtful and degrading things to another. Because I didn’t have an account, and the sender was anonymous the struggle to have the post removed took almost a year, plenty of time for damage to be done. This has made me feel that our government should have a system where intervention can take place a lot easier than the fight I had. I also believe that bullying has existed forever, media has just given bullies new ways to hurt others. I think that more education is needed through our school systems teaching children to be more respectful and not be keyboard warriors.

References

Bergstrom, K 2011, ‘“Don't Feed the Troll”: Shutting down the debate about community expectations on Reddit.com’, First Monday vol. 16, no. 8, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3498/3029>.

Social media - the networked public and our self-image.

Our self-image is influenced and shaped by our interactions and locality, which, in a pre-digital age was determined by our geographical context and real-life connections. Goffman (1990) analysed self identity expression and explored the way we “perform” depending on the audience to project our desired image. Where front of stage and back stage can represent our public and private life, contexts and publics affect how we express our self-identity (Goffman 1990).  In a modern world where digital communication and technology is so dominant, it is obvious our online identity is shaped by the affordances of social media and its public – the networked public. According to boyd (2010) the traditional public is restructured and reinvented through technology, and the networked public is concurrently a ‘space’ and a collection of people (boyd 2010, p. 41). 

[image] Addicted2Success 2017

The affordances of different social media change the way people engage and interact. Facebook profiles and ‘friends’ lists, the filters to embellish photos on Instagram, the authenticity and immediacy of Snapchat are affordances that essentially influence the identity we project as we ‘perform’, manipulating our image to suit our online audience. However, these audiences can be ‘invisible’, passive or active consumers, yet one can’t really know who views their content (boyd 2010). 

The friends list on Facebook, a customised selection of people, can be a determined audience, with some people choosing to accept everyone, and others much more selective. This changes the way one may act. For example, my Facebook and Snapchat are private, with a different name and a small friends list, I know who my audience is, and I can be raw, silly, and opinionated, a side of myself I may not feel comfortable showing on other social media platforms due to their affordances. On Instagram, knowing my followers is less important and I allow anyone to follow me. However, this means I am conscious of the invisible audience who may be scrolling the feed. I tailor my content with positive messages, vibrant images and playful content that reflects my professional side, athleticism, and hopes to inspire others, projecting a positive image of myself that could appeal to aspiring athletes, sponsors and media professionals. While the audience is invisible, the choice to share a photo may arise from the potential appeal it has to the social imaginary of followers online (Warner 2002) – which picture will get the most likes? 

[image] IBM 2017

Users have the freedom to create a more impressive or idealistic self online by choosing the best photo, filter, and caption in order to get the most ‘likes’ and the social validation humans crave (Fox 2017). As a result, social media has the potential to boost confidence, but also foster insecurity and has been identified with potentially unhealthy and dangerous mental health consequences, especially for young women who strive for the perfect identity and as a result compare and contrast themselves to other people’s “highlight reels” (Fox 2017).

Social media is powerful in shaping our identity and it’s affordances means users are constantly performing online to create and maintain their chosen sense of self.

    References

Addicted2Success 2016, 6 Ways to Gain Millions of Followers on Social Media [image] Addicted2Success, viewed 9 December 2017 https://addicted2success.com/blogging/6-ways-to-gain-millions-of-followers-on-social-media/

Boyd, D 2010, “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications.” In Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (ed. Zizi Papacharissi), pp. 39-58.

Fox, A 2017, ‘Instagram is the Most Harmful App for Mental Health’, Huffington Post, viewed 7 December,< http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/05/27/instagram-is-the-most-harmful-app-for-mental-health_a_22112176/>

Goffman, E 1990, The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin

IBM 2017, “How Instagram Managed to Be a Popular Media Platform [image], IBM, viewed 9 December 2017 <https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/9b7ea9e9-c769-4552-aae7-f3ce7f463c5b/entry/how-Instagram-Managed-to-be-a-Popular-Social-Media-Platform?lang=en>

As we come back after the holiday break we move into the topics of trolling and social media conflict, negative behaviours that are often exhibited on social media sites which draw copious amounts of media attention.

Easy A - a seriously underrated movie that better understands conflict better than most.

Our Definitions

Internet trolling: Often people who partake in internet trolling are also referred to as trolls themselves. Internet trolling involves using many forms of anti-social behavioural tactics such as posting spiteful, inflammatory or irrelevant comments to garner an emotional response from other people participating in the online public.  

Agnostic Pluralism: Where we accept that conflict is unavoidable and instead of focusing on the negative actions we use it to create and generate positive discourse contrary to the matter.

And a side note: I prefer to refer to bullying as demonstrations of anti-social behaviours as I believe as Boyd (2014) discusses that the term bullying is actually quite difficult to define, and has a vastly different meaning to many individuals.

I have found what danah boyd discusses in It’s Complicated (Boyd 2014, p. 152) which I have posted a quote in its entirety below, to best reflect my overall feelings about the behaviours we see demonstrated, particularly by teenagers on social media. Ultimately, anti-social behaviours such as bullying and abuse tactics have not fundamentally changed, although the public and some parliamentary figures are acting as if it has and are panicking.  

Fuller (2014) notes the reason for this widespread panic aptly by stating that parents of teenage aged children are approximately a generation and a half behind this ‘always on’ culture. This means that the people part of this generation do not fully understand or agree on the crux of the problem, which is why we are seeing more people persecuting social media sites rather than the individual.   Don’t get me wrong, I will not pretend that with the existence of a variety of social media sites and networks that bullying and other behaviour have not become more pervasive. The ‘always on’ lifestyle means that where you used to be able to effectively shut off from abuse, now you can be subject to torment and trolling on a constant basis.  

“Name-calling, threatening, saying that she was going to get smashed, things like that ... We had reported a couple of posts on Facebook, and they'd as usual come back saying that it doesn't breach their community standards.” CASSIE WHITEHILL, SISTER OF BULLYING VICTIM

To use myself as a known example, the behaviours that Cassie describes are not indifferent from the type of bullying I was subject to when I was 12 and 13. I am not trying to take away from the tragedy that is Chloe’s passing by drawing a connection, as reading more about this case study deeply saddens me. The root of the problem is not social media though; it is the behaviour of these girls who continuously tormented Chloe until she simply could not take it anymore.

The threat, which was the tip of the iceberg for poor Chloe, was that the girls who targeted her at the shopping centre on the fateful day threatened to post a video of the incident on social media. To analyse this act in relation to what McCosker (2014) discusses would the upload of this video have resulted in any agnostic pluralism? Would the cruelty of what happened to Chloe have been enough for people to say, well hang on a minute girls, this has gone too far?

I think that we don’t spend enough time educating and fostering positive behaviours early on, these girls have potentially been exhibiting negative behaviours for years before they began targeting Chloe. In my experience in working administration in Primary and Secondary Schools these young people are not mindful and do not think deeply enough about the consequences of their actions. This idea is reinforced by Boyd (2014) and her research partner Alice when looking at the case study between Ashley and Abigail and the way the family tends to focus on Abigail’s positive behaviours and Ashley’s negative behaviours.

I can only hope that these girls that targeted Chloe are deeply remorseful for what they did, and if they are not, there is a deeper emotional/psychological problem than social media. As danah boyd (2014) says if you take pleasure in this you are more likely a sociopath. If we continue to shift the blame from the individual to the technology, I think we will see more people who are incapable of exhibiting positive behaviours and recognising there are consequences to their actions and finally being able to take responsibility.

We cannot change what happened to poor Chloe, but if we cannot recognise as Boyd (2014) says that our current approaches to these behaviours aren’t working we will not be able to aide in the education and prevention of the mental health issues that are plaguing some young people as a result.

For more reading on Chloe’s Law see here. Vale.

References

Howard, J (2014) Sister’s sad loss sparks Chloe’s Law campaign to tackle bullying, The Mercury, viewed 29 December 2016 <http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/tragic-familys-crusade-against-bullying/news-story/4a2b3a7b395263a1a5cfb7676d9db61c>.

Boyd, D (2014) 'Bullying: Is the Media Amplifying Meanness and Cruelty?', in It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, Yale University Press, New Haven, USA, pp. 128-52.

Fuller, G (2014) 'Cyber-safety': What are we actually talking about?, The Conversation, 27 February, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://theconversation.com/cyber-safety-what-are-we-actually-talking-about-23505>.

Hope, E (2013) Tragic family's crusade against bullying, The Mercury, viewed 29 December 2016 <http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/tragic-familys-crusade-against-bullying/news-story/4a2b3a7b395263a1a5cfb7676d9db61c>.

Law Report (2014) Can A Cyber-Bullying Commissioner Protect Our Kids?, Radio National, 27 February, viewed 29 December 2016, <http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lawreport/5286036>.