#qutoj1

It’s an interesting concept - a lot of new journalism is actually personalised blogs. Audiences are responding well to deeply personal information about people’s everyday struggles that they themselves can relate to. The best examples come from ‘Mommy Blogs,’ where stay at home mums vent about the trials and tribulations of motherhood. These blogs have become insanely popular over recent years and help to unify the often lonesome existence that is being a stay-at-home parent. 

Unfortunately, these blogs and the mothers behind them have been subject to criticism for expressing genuinely the tribulations of motherhood, instead of the sugarcoated fantasy that motherhood is often portrayed as. 

Karen Johnson, a Babble contributor and the creator of the blog ‘21st Century Stay At Home Mum (SAHM), has faced criticisms recently for creating this meme. 

The meme was poorly received and Johnson was bombarded. 

“… in the last few days I’ve been inundated with, ‘Why did you even have kids if you don’t love spending time with them and you should cherish every minute and someday they’ll be gone and you’ll miss these moments and when my kids were young I loved winter break and spring break and you moms these days just complain complain complain…” 

Johnson’s treatment for simply suggesting everyday of holidays isn’t blissful with her children is an indication of the criticisms and treatment many people suffer if they dare to complain about their normally picturesque lives. 

Naturally, when things like this happen - people start becoming a little more cautious, more refined in their content, more focused on their target audience. This is not new information - any successful business will become customer and audience focused to make the most money out of the avenues or articles that are generating the most clicks, responses and engagement. However, when blogging becomes involved - the change in direction in content can sometimes result in omitting parts of life that result in dishonest and fake content, purely for monetary reward.  

Josi Denise, a twenty-seven year old mother of four, recently shut down her popular blog - the American Mama - as a result of the facade of it all. 

“Sick of the fake nonsense I used to share on the Internet...writing about my fake life and oh-so-happy marriage...pure bullshit.”

Faced with having to resign from her job to take care of her children, Denise created a blog to generate revenue. 

“Other bloggers make it seem easy. It really isn’t. If I wanted to make money — and I did — it was all going to be a sponsor game.” However, as soon as sponsors started to responded to Denise’s content - the restrictions began to file in. 

“The [brand] campaign leaders will critique everything you write and ask you to repost,” says Denise. However, when she received her first payment of $125, she was validated. 

“...I felt valuable....at the same time, I felt like anything I posted, the brands were watching me. You don’t want to post anything too real.”

Denise started to notice that many blogs, specifically other mother blogs that she would rely on to disperse her material, would not share content that wasn’t advertiser-friendly and positive. 

“The other bloggers in your community won’t share your content with their readers [if it’s not cheery],” she explains. “And if the [blogger] networks don’t share the content, then your own numbers suffer.”

Offline, Denise’s marriage started to fall apart and she realised the life she was living online was nowhere near an actual reflection of her real life. 

“They [mum bloggers] aren’t very honest about what’s going on in their lives,” she says. “I was certainly one of them.” 

It paints a sad and worrying picture. The content that these people are being paid to create and to seemingly enjoy, is actually just like any other ad on TV or from the company themselves. Not to mention, there is no regulation to ensure that the products that are being sponsored are genuinely used by the blogger. 

I think it’s hard in this current social-media driven economy to really remain true to yourself and not allow criticisms and money persuade you. If you had to the chance to make $3000 for just posting something on your blog, you’d be crazy to turn that down, right? But what if you were told that to receive that money you’d have to cater your content to create an illusion that you’re happier than you really are sometimes? Maybe people need to start considering what it means to be a blogger and what freedoms you have to give up to maintain an ‘image’ for the brands that sponsor you. Not only that, but people need to think about where the line is between making money to support their blogs and still creating honest and engaging content, to carefully selecting their content on their blogs according to their sponsors and anticipated revenue return. It’s the difference between blogging from a genuine, authentic perspective - to just selling yourself and selling out. 

Obviously being a millennial, I grew up with my parents constantly telling me how unsafe the internet is, how images you upload will last forever and you can never delete them, how your future employer will see you. I grew up with parents very much afraid of the internet, and constantly reminding me of such - and yet here I am. I have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, two Tumblr accounts, LinkedIn and whatever other websites I signed up to in the past *cough cough MySpace.* I’ve never questioned uploading a picture, never hesitated to re-post something that I felt aligned with my political views and never stopped myself from doing anything on the internet because of fear of judgement or consequences.

Unfortunately, those very behaviours have actually cost people their jobs. This article written by People Magazine discusses a number of people who were fired as a result of their posts on social media. 

“A former colleague of mine posted about how he was going to use up all his sick leave then quit. He posted it at 9 a.m., and was told he didn’t have a job at 11 a.m,” one person reported. 

"I was younger and an idiot. I posted something on Facebook about wanting to go home and play The Sims so I could create [telecommunications store I worked for] on it and then slowly kill off all the customers. I was working a late night shift in a mall and forgot our new coworker had added me on Facebook days before,” another person admitted. 

One terrible situation was also revealed. 

“I work in a hospital and there was a police shooting in my area a couple of years ago. Multiple officers were brought into our ER. One officer was DOA and a number of idiot hospital employees posted condolences on their Facebook pages with the name of the officer before the family was officially informed. Seven or eight employees were rightfully fired for that one.” 

Some of the morals involved in these instances end up a little murky. How do you balance someone trying to make a lighthearted joke over genuine intent to harm? Or the innocence of sharing a condolence post on social media, unbeknownst to you that the family were unaware?  

Sometimes - it has actually helped find employees that don’t align with the companies values. 

“Guy at my company got sacked for putting a Facebook status along the lines of ‘f-ng immigrants, I hate them’ not realizing both his bosses (also owners of the company) were second generation immigrants from India. They started the company from scratch and now employ 30 people. They pay for full gym membership, healthcare, and generous pension for all the staff, which he had to say goodbye to when he was fired.” 

Predictably, it has also resulted in horrible people using their authority and access to perpetuate outdated ideals. 

“I posted a blog post on MySpace in 2005 that got me discharged from the Army. I indicated I had romantic feelings for a female and that I had acted on those feelings (I am also female). My sergeant suspected I was involved with this woman so she looked me up on MySpace, saw the blog post, and 3 months later, I was discharged for ‘homosexual conduct.'” 

At what point does having a plethora of access to people’s information become a hindrance? Is there a line crossed when someone is fired because of their private social media accounts?

Even further than my mere assumption of having no accountability for my actions on the internet, I’ve shared countless private details such as my home address, my tax file number, my superannuation, my age, weight, banking details and almost every other imaginable thing that I wouldn’t dream of sharing with a stranger in real life. 

For instance, I’ve previously been shopping for flights on Skyscanner before, found great ones, clicked to book them and been redirected to another website that I’ve never used before, clicked to confirm my booking and been redirected AGAIN and then put through my credit card details. I then waited multiple hours for a confirmation email even though my money, that was in the thousands, was taken immediately. I didn’t once, in the entire transaction, stop to question whether it was safe. I just assumed if it was affiliated with Skyscanner - then it must be safe. I didn’t question how the actual airline would find my booking considering I booked through a completely different website. When the time came to actually catch my flight, it was a breeze. They had all my information, including my seat and baggage requests and I boarded the plane. Does this show my naivety or does this show how evolved the internet has become that this was a safe practice for me to engage in? 

So were my parents too paranoid? Is the internet safe? Should I hesitate more than I do at sharing all my information online? There’s clearly consequences for the exact behaviours that I’m constantly engaging in, so at what point does it change from mere naivety to genuine unsafe, risky or inappropriate practices? I’ve honestly never considered it, but I think in this new digital age, having control over your social media and online privacy is one of the few things we can do to protect ourselves. 

With only 12% of those “building the internet” being women, Sarah Moran decided to take action in 2014 and create Girl Geek with four other fabulous women. These incredible women are making strides in their relevant technology fields. One co-founder, Lisy Kane, is a videogames producer and made Forbes 30 under 30 in 2017 for Games. Similarly, Tammy Butow who is an engineering leader and Chief Technology Officer for Girl Geek has previously worked for Dropbox as the Site Reliability Engineering Manager. Another co-founder, Amanda Watts, is a branding expert and creative entrepreneur who specialises in digital design and has used Girl Geek Academy events to network and create more start-ups with other women interested in tech. April Staines, who has over fifteen years of industry experience and is another co-founder, has been focused on 3D printing and her skills have been used to create a human sized robot for a locally produced movie! Who could forget Sarah Moran, co-founder and CEO of Girl Geek Academy, is unabashedly proud of the opportunities Girl Geek Academy has created for women internationally, and is now appearing on Channel Ten on the TV series ‘Common Sense,’ to further the acceptance of smart tech women. These women are not only #squadgoals but individually such powerful women who are the perfect representation of #womeninSTEM.

In a lecture at QUT, Sarah Moran highlighted that the Girl Geek Academy co-founders are “hackers, hustlers and hipsters.” Hackers build the product, hipsters design the appearance and hustlers bring it to the market. All these jobs intertwined to create the products and workshops that are now available through the Academy. With a heavy focus on technology, the Academy hosts events such as #SheMakes, which introduces the coding and software of 3D printing and teaches women how to learn new technology skills. Another initiative includes their dazzling #MissMakesCode which focuses on teaching young girls aged 5-8 years coding, algorithmic thinking and programming efficacy. An amalgamation of their work was showcased in April 2018 where the first all-women hackathon was hosted in Melbourne. The hackathon was tokened #SheHacksGames and encouraged women to develop their games industry skills and create an interactive game. These workshops are all designed to build towards Girl Geek Academy’s ultimate goal to “teach one million women technical skills by 2025.”

This global movement recently gained even more traction when Girl Geek Academy received $1.3millon funding, which will be used to recruit 1000 women interested in establishing start-ups. The organisation hopes the scheme will help #techsavy women to network with other women with similar tech venture interests.

Teaching tech, but not losing focus on balance. 

“We sometimes say no. We aren’t about being unhealthy, burnt out and undervalued…” 

This is a nod towards a healthier working week, finding time for friends and not becoming overwhelmed – especially when investing time and money into start-up companies.

One of the most exciting parts of this organisation is how feminine and gentle their approach is, proving that not only do women belong in tech, but you don’t have to forgo your feminine persona to be taken seriously. I can’t support this organisation enough and hope to have the opportunity to attend a workshop in the near future and work on my own tech skills. This organisation has me crazy excited and enthusiastic about all things tech and all things #girlgeekacademy. All I can say is that I can’t wait to see what these girls do in the future and how far this movement will go! #getitgirls

Credit to:

https://girlgeekacademy.com/

At least I thought it did when I blustered into my tutorial one Monday afternoon, overconfident in my abilities. My tutorial group nominated to liveblog an episode of Survivor. Perfect, a walk in the park, a piece of cake, yadda yadda etc. etc.

So imagine my surprise when, to my horror, things started happening a little too quickly. I found myself missing things; good quotes, important plot points, where everybody’s shirts have disappeared to on what was a very small island.

 It really is a skill, because it requires you to do a couple of things simultaneously: You need to be typing constantly – I doubt I stopped typing for more than fifteen seconds during that two hour stretch.

You need an ear for a good quote – When you strand twenty rampaging egotists on a tropical island, you need to know how to sift through the bullshit to get to the golden nuggets…. of bullshit.

You need to think about your medium – When writing for an online publication, its not just about your words – visuals, audio, imagery, video. It all matters, and it all adds some variety to what can be a very dry blog. 

It’s also good to keep in mind that all of this happened two minutes ago and you’ve already fallen behind again. Whoops.

Turns out things were a little more difficult than I had realised.

Of course, when in doubt, the message to be taken away from all of this is obvious: 

I admit, I‘m biased. To me, the word “blog” was a dirty one. It was a word that belongs solely to the realm of lonely and/or bored teenagers; faces lit by the glow of their laptop screens in the dead of night.

I came into this seeing blogging as an exercise in self-indulgence, and even as I write this I can’t help but roll my eyes ever so often, which is probably why it takes me so long to write about these things.

Chances are I’ll come out of this with roughly the same opinion of most blogs too. And I have to clarify, that’s not a slight against my cohort and the excellent things that they’ve been writing about. These are my prejudices, and mine alone.

 I got into journalism to write about interesting things, too see and experience that which would challenge and excite me in new ways. I wanted it to open my eyes to new possibilities and ways of thought, and in the process become a more well-rounded and worldly person.

I don’t like writing about myself (this is in fact torturous for me), because I can’t imagine that anybody is dying to know what a twenty-year old journalism student's thoughts on the industry are. It smacks of self-congratulation, and it makes me uncomfortable at the best of times.

There are interesting stories to be told, I just want to be the one telling the story, not  one of the characters in it.

Throughout this unit, it’s safe to say that my eyes have been opened, both to the majesties of this industry and it’s  drudgeries as well.

But I’ve also been surprised. Throughout the lecturers and the tutorials, as well as all of the reading that I did to research for these posts, at just how widely-encompassing this –ugh- blogosphere can really be. There’s quality to be found, but just with all good things, you really do have to look for it.

So as it stands, at the end of this semester, I’m of two minds. At it's worst, blogging can be a self-indulgent mess, confirming the worst of my suspicions. At it’s best though, it’s a powerful tool for the journalistic practice. When used correctly, it can be lean, mean and informational. It can be funny, charming, devastating, and shocking (in all senses of the word). 

 Well no, not really.

In a surprising move, the online environment has proven itself more than a welcome home for longform reporting.

 Longform, Longreads, The Atavist and even Buzzfeed’s dedicated longform section either collect the best longform reporting from around the internet, or host it themselves. 

IS’s campaign definitely constitutes news, and as such deserves attention from the world’s media. But there seems to be no consensus on the level by which the actions described in these news reports are actually shown in a bulletin. 

American tabloid The New York Post was slammed over its decision to place a photo of James Foley about to have his throat cut by an IS militant on its front page.

Curiously, the controversial website LiveLeak made the decision to no longer host any videos from IS. Despite a plethora of other graphic videos including violent deaths and injuries, no longer want to depict, “the glorification of graphic violence”.

Anybody can find these videos, the nature of online content is that once something is up; it’s up for good.