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In this weeks blog post I will be talking about the role of new media in politics. This weeks topic looked at political engagement in regard to how it can serve politicians and the state as well as the citizens themselves. This role can be broken down into 3 aspects including Mobilisation/ Activism, Transparency and Campaigning. For this weeks blog I will be looking into campaigning on the Internet.

Gone are the days where campaigning was limited to being broadcasted on traditional media. Nowadays the campaigning has spread through Facebook, twitter, youtube and many other social media websites. Today political marketing can tap into their market and target campaigns accordingly (Sauter, 2014). “The Internet would allow democracy to flourish as citizens went online to debate important issues and politicians spoke directly to the people.” (Gilespie, 2007). Thanks to the internet the government becomes more liable where sites such as wiki-leaks can publish secret information, news leaks and classified media from anonymous sources. But along with this politics are more engaging and interactive then ever before where you can follow heads of governments on twitter and facebook.

A successful politician is said to manipulate media and put in place successful strategies. “Presidential elections, of course, are a key example of mediatization, in which every utterance, campaign stop, handshake and tweet is delicately engineered towards manipulating the 24-hour news cycle” (McKnight and Fish, 2014).

Image Source - http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/p/41010504/Obama-best—way-to-move-the-Country-forward-is-if-Pelosi-is-Speaker-again.aspx

Lets just say, Barrack Obama knows how to campaign in an online environment. This picture below demonstrates this. Out of everything he has done in his busy day he chooses this picture to post on twitter. This post shows his voters that he cares about the countries future - because after all, the children are our future.

Image Source: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/statuses/459402803509616640

An example of how the internet has made people more engaged with policy making is the queensland’s governments website “Make Strong Choices” you can find it at http://www.strongchoices.qld.gov.au/. I thought this was a perfect example of a method of campaigning in queensland. Really, this site is a good idea it makes their point whilst giving queensland citizens a feeling of importance. The site explains Queensland’s debt problem with a net interest of $80 Billion. This site basically asks the queensland population to make a decision on how they would like to raise money for the debt we owe. Making out that there is only 3 choices, we either increase taxes, cut services or sell and lease some assets. Obviously selling and leasing assets seems like the best of three options. This is a way of educating the population so that when they announce leasing and selling assets the population can’t be upset by the outcome because they had the chance to vote on what the government should do.  

Image Source - http://youtu.be/LzrCKegLVV8

We are starting to see how immensely important it is for politicians to move their campaigns online and become interactive. As Shirky outlines, “social media (has) become coordinating tools for nearly all the world’s political movements” (2011) and I believe it is a very good tool for transferring information to the public. Politicians today have to be a lot more proactive, interactive and creative in their new media campaigns. But as citizens I think if we look at multiple resources (that the internet lets us retrieve) we are able to make much more educated decisions about politics then ever before. This, of course, only works if people are willing to look.

References List -  

McKnight, John Carter and Adam Fish. 2014. “Beyond Surveillance Fridges and Socialized Power Drills: Social Media and the Financialization of Everyday Life.” Culture Digitally Blog, April 14. Accessed May 4, 2014. Available at:http://culturedigitally.org/2014/04/beyond-surveillance-fridges-and-socialized-power-drills/

McNair, Brian. 2011. An Introduction to Political Communication. 5th Ed. London: Routledge.

Morozov, Evgeny. 2011. “First Thoughts on Tunisia and the Role of the Internet.”Net.Effect Blog, 14 January. Available at:http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/14/first_thoughts_on_tunisia_and_the_role_of_the_internet

Queensland Government. 2014. “Strong Choices”. Accessed May 4, 2014.http://www.strongchoices.qld.gov.au/

Sauter, Thersea. 2014. “KCB206 Internet, Self and Beyond: Week 8 New Media Politics and Engagement lecture notes.” Access May 4, 2014.http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232450_1

In this weeks blog post I will be talking about the role of new media in politics. This weeks topic looked at political engagement in regard to how it can serve politicians and the state as well as the citizens themselves. This role can be broken down into 3 aspects including Mobilisation/ Activism, Transparency and Campaigning. For this weeks blog I will be looking into campaigning on the Internet.

Gone are the days where campaigning was limited to being broadcasted on traditional media. Nowadays the campaigning has spread through Facebook, twitter, youtube and many other social media websites. Today political marketing can tap into their market and target campaigns accordingly (Sauter, 2014). “The Internet would allow democracy to flourish as citizens went online to debate important issues and politicians spoke directly to the people.” (Gilespie, 2007). Thanks to the internet the government becomes more liable where sites such as wiki-leaks can publish secret information, news leaks and classified media from anonymous sources. But along with this politics are more engaging and interactive then ever before where you can follow heads of governments on twitter and facebook.

A successful politician is said to manipulate media and put in place successful strategies. “Presidential elections, of course, are a key example of mediatization, in which every utterance, campaign stop, handshake and tweet is delicately engineered towards manipulating the 24-hour news cycle” (McKnight and Fish, 2014).

Image Source - http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/p/41010504/Obama-best--way-to-move-the-Country-forward-is-if-Pelosi-is-Speaker-again.aspx

Lets just say, Barrack Obama knows how to campaign in an online environment. This picture below demonstrates this. Out of everything he has done in his busy day he chooses this picture to post on twitter. This post shows his voters that he cares about the countries future - because after all, the children are our future.

Image Source: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/statuses/459402803509616640

An example of how the internet has made people more engaged with policy making is the queensland’s governments website “Make Strong Choices” you can find it at http://www.strongchoices.qld.gov.au/. I thought this was a perfect example of a method of campaigning in queensland. Really, this site is a good idea it makes their point whilst giving queensland citizens a feeling of importance. The site explains Queensland’s debt problem with a net interest of $80 Billion. This site basically asks the queensland population to make a decision on how they would like to raise money for the debt we owe. Making out that there is only 3 choices, we either increase taxes, cut services or sell and lease some assets. Obviously selling and leasing assets seems like the best of three options. This is a way of educating the population so that when they announce leasing and selling assets the population can’t be upset by the outcome because they had the chance to vote on what the government should do.  

Image Source - http://youtu.be/LzrCKegLVV8

We are starting to see how immensely important it is for politicians to move their campaigns online and become interactive. As Shirky outlines, “social media (has) become coordinating tools for nearly all the world’s political movements” (2011) and I believe it is a very good tool for transferring information to the public. Politicians today have to be a lot more proactive, interactive and creative in their new media campaigns. But as citizens I think if we look at multiple resources (that the internet lets us retrieve) we are able to make much more educated decisions about politics then ever before. This, of course, only works if people are willing to look.

References List -  

McKnight, John Carter and Adam Fish. 2014. “Beyond Surveillance Fridges and Socialized Power Drills: Social Media and the Financialization of Everyday Life.” Culture Digitally Blog, April 14. Accessed May 4, 2014. Available at:http://culturedigitally.org/2014/04/beyond-surveillance-fridges-and-socialized-power-drills/

McNair, Brian. 2011. An Introduction to Political Communication. 5th Ed. London: Routledge.

Morozov, Evgeny. 2011. “First Thoughts on Tunisia and the Role of the Internet.”Net.Effect Blog, 14 January. Available at:http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/14/first_thoughts_on_tunisia_and_the_role_of_the_internet

Queensland Government. 2014. “Strong Choices”. Accessed May 4, 2014. http://www.strongchoices.qld.gov.au/

Sauter, Thersea. 2014. “KCB206 Internet, Self and Beyond: Week 8 New Media Politics and Engagement lecture notes.” Access May 4, 2014.http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232450_1

Week 5 took a look at how new media is reshaping the professional practices of the entertainment industry through journalism, television, film and music. For this blog I will be discussing participatory fandom and new media campaigns in film and television. New Media campaigns I think really excites the audience about an upcoming movie or television show. For the season finale of Breaking Bad Aaron Paul led his follows on a hunt for exclusive screenings randomly tweeting the location of the tickets. Thousands of people where involved in this hunt for tickets and this created even more excitement for the final episode. Not only where Aaron Paul’s twitter followers talking about it but it was reported in papers and made even more free advertising for the final episode. I know this story really engaged me as an avid fan of the show. Image Source: http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/9.png The web 2.0 revolution has effected the way that audiences interact with movies. Now more then ever is it crucial to have an online media campaign. The technology has changed where now the audience has a voice about what they want to see in upcoming film and television. With this new advent of participatory fandom, a new wave of “consecrating agents” are introduced to into Bourdieu’s “circle of belief” (1993b, 77). These fans conduct enthusiastic critical analyses, show extreme dedication and growing numbers they are “finally being recognized as important contributors to the formation of collective belief” (Shefrin, 2004). “I believe that entertainment producers that embrace this concept of ‘participatory fandoms’ and include their fandoms more in the production process will be much more successful than those that don’t” (Jenkins, 1992). If we look at lets say, George Lucas “Star Wars” franchise the lack of internet and fandom participation in the creation of the last few movies have left fans with raised expectations which where not meet. Something that would have been fixed by simply listening to what the audience had wanted. Nowadays the audience decides on what they want to watch and are very vocal when their needs are not meet. If we look at the success of Peter Jackson’s trilogy “Lord of the Rings” we can see that the fans have been actively courted by Jackson and New Line Cinema throughout all aspects of authoring, casting, film and marketing the trilogy. This ensured that the already large fan base of the book was happy with the product. To do this Jackson conducted interviews where he would answer question that where compiled from over 14,000 submissions. McKellen highlights his alliance with fans in a Newsweek interview: “Although it’s not made exclusively for the fans, it’s made by fans. We’re all allies” (Giles, 2001, p. 4). Lord of the Rings still currently has a huge fan base which still make the content there own. Creating them into memes they put more meaning into the films and lengthen the online life of Lord of the Rings.

Last week new media enterprises where discussed where we where introduced to “Cloud Labour”. Cloud labour website have been developed such as Amazon, Mechanical Turk, CrowdFlower. These websites are basically “Artificial Artificial Intelligence” (Sauter, 2014), creating the illusion that these programs are automatically coming up with things like tags when in fact it has been people who physically identify these things - such as a picture of a boy should have the tag “boy”. Artificial artificial intelligence could be explain by the following image:

image source: https://todaymade.com/blog/mechanical-turk/

These websites create micro-tasks for collective output while providers gain cheap and diverse workforce. Mechanical Turk rewards “Turkers” with a penny for every micro-task they complete. But there has been a lot of controversy over the pay rate where people are getting as little as $2/hr and no benefits. Fuchs states “the entire planet is today a capitalist factory” (2014, 118). Online users can work to produce productivity and capital for major online companies, without a reasonable wage. The barriers between “production and consumption have become liquid in contemporary capitalism” (Fuchs 2013, 107). However what needs to be reminded is that it is the user’s choice as to whether they partake in these cloud labour activities. How you could think of this though is that it is contract work. You choose the hours you work. The closest thing that I can think of this is my job where I can apply online for jobs that suit my availability. I get paid at a good rate but some weeks I can get up to 20 hours a week and other weeks I can get nothing. So, really my average weekly pay rate goes down significantly - but I get to pick when I can work. So there is upsides and downside to this but it is a job I prefer then having a usual part-time job. So many people who work there might think that this lower rate is okay as they get to sit at home all day to do their work.

Gamification has also entered the picture where people are not being paid at all for the work they do. Websites such as “Playbour”, “Doodle4Google”, “Image Labeller” etc. are websites are crowd sourcing similar tasks as Mechanical Turk but they design them as games so they reap all of the rewards. But Fuchs argues in this weeks readings that being a consumer of social media should be consider work and hence should be paid. The data collected on social media is sold to advertiser (Fuchs, 2013) but if they are enjoying what they are doing should they be paid?

References - Fuchs, Christian, (2013). Chapter 5 : The Power and Political Economy of Social Media. In Fuchs, Christian, Social media : a critical introduction, (pp.97 - 125). London, UK: Sage Publications. 

Sauter, Theresa. 2014. “KCB206 Week 4 New Media Enterprises.” Accessed March 26, 2014. http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_4_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fcontent%2FlistContent.jsp%3Fcourse_id%3D_108110_1%26content_id%3D_5232445_1