just my opinions

Three words in varying combinations meaning similar but not quite the same things. There's a difference between crowdfunding, crowd-sourced funding, and crowdsourcing? Crowdfunding is generally used by artistic and entrepreneurial individuals, in order to find money to fund their projects, most often this is done through crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter (often entrepreneurial), Patreon (more artistic), and GoFundMe (combination). The Australian Government in 2017 introduced the term crowd-sourced funding (CSF) as a new way for start-ups and small and medium-sized companies to raise money from the public to finance their business. Subsequently, crowdsourcing has historically been the act of taking a job ordinarily performed by a designated agent (Usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, large group of people generally in the form of an open call. It could be said that all the variations of crowd sourcing/funding/sourced-funding are the distribution of problem-solving between people to achieve a shared goal. Most commonly, crowdsourcing or crowdfunding refers to the online process of individuals or organizations using the public network to recruit people for their skills, participation, ideas or funding.

DreamLab app is an Australian-based app that utilises a smartphone’s internet connection to solve problems related to cancer research while the phone is charging. Because we often charge our phone while we sleep, we’re literally helping cure with our eyes closed. The DreamLab concept harnesses our digital citizenship and need to be connected all the time, then transfers that internet connection into solving problems that help cancer research at a much quicker rate. Crowdsourcing a cure for cancer while you sleep.

If we continue in the direction of Dreamlab, understanding the positives and also how to improve on the negative aspects of crowdsourcing, we can open up our world to a new kind of intellectual labour and creativity in our digital communities. Who knows what crowdsourcing could do? Cure cancer? Revolutionise hospitality? Memorialise great moments in history as paintings on silos? Or even help the Russian Prime Minister name his puppy? There are so many possibilities if we truly understand how to get the best out of people

Trolling, not the fishing kind, colourful baits and lures pulled behind a slow-moving boat, attracting unsuspecting fish, intriguing and enticing the foolish fish to literally take the bait. The internet, Urban Dictionary defined, kind, where random comments are made as bait and lures, left behind on high traction content, attracting unsuspecting people, intriguing and enticing (and sometimes angering) the foolish people to metaphorically ‘take the bait’. That’s the kind we’re talking about, where internet trolls make often inflammatory comments with the intention of causing knee-jerk, emotionally charged reactions within people. According to the ABC in 2019 the cost of online abuse and harassment is valued at $3.7 billion annually in Australia alone, Additionally, a survey about online abuse found that 39 per cent of respondents had been harassed online. 

As the modern world trends towards social networking and the widespread use of the internet, people around the world have adapted their use of a multitude of new technologies; computers, mobile phones, and other smart devices, into tools that can be wielded in the battle for social and political change. From the word activism, meaning “the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change” comes the term “digital activism”, a form of activism that uses the internet and digital media as well as content as key platforms for mass mobilisation and political action. Digital activism can appear in different variations like hashtag activism, for example, the #metoo, another variation is clicktivism, like Kony 2012, where users show support by liking and sharing content related to activist movements.

KONY 2012 is as viral example of clicktivism which appeared in early 2012 as a documentary produced by Invisible Children, who say it started as an experiment (Invisible Children), to see if online video could make a war criminal famous, in an attempt to bring him to justice and save the Ugandan children he had abducted into his ‘Lord’s Resistance Army’. The Kony 2012 movement was a transnational feat of civic engagement, with $28 million raised in 2012 alone, which Invisible Children used to expand their operations within Central Africa in their attempt to #stopkony. As of 30th May 2019 their video has 102,440,024 views, but Joseph Kony is still free, his “Lord’s Resistance Army’ still exists and Invisible Children have shifted their work away from just Kony, to focus more intensively on their programs in the border region of the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan, where multiple armed groups like Kony’s operate. Thusly, the ‘awareness’ or maybe more appropriately, clicktivism, the campaign has wound down as people stopped donating. In this case, unfortunately, the digital activism campaign didn’t change a whole lot, it certainly didn’t #stopkony.

Recently a friend raised the point to me, that I have never really understood politics and that what I knew coming into the 2019 Federal Election was severely lacking. After a quick run-down it became clear that I needed to do more personal research about the issues I cared most about and which parties and policies I aligned with. Fortunately, through the use of #hashtags such as #auspol #australiavotes2019, and moreover engaging with Facebook pages such as “The Simpsons Against the Liberals” and “Australian Green Memes for Actually Progressive Teens” I was able to learn the more complex natures and policies of certain parties. While these Facebook pages and hashtags facilitated and substantiated a lot of my political views going into my first election, it became clear that they were effectively amplifiers, and functioned as links to particular publics, while also constituting parts of their own publics. They allowed parties and politicians to engage with younger audiences who are native to the internet age, and probably have a similar degree of political awareness I had. The trending memes (cultural information shared from person to person, then becomes a social phenomenon in a multitude of social publics) and topics on the politically geared pages encourages discussion among new groups of people as the memes get shared and tagged.

Adversely, in doing my own bit of research into #auspol and movements such as the equal marriage rights plebiscite, it becomes incredibly clear that the public spheres I tended to engage in consisted of people who were very likeminded. There appeared a very apparent filter bubble on a lot of the content I was consuming and interacting with, with very little variation or opposing opinions. For example, in regard to the marriage equality plebiscite, through the lens of my public spheres, my online communities, it appeared as though “I don’t know a single person voting no”. My social media feeds carried an overwhelming sense of a vast majority yes vote. My sphericles were aghast to find that the plebiscite found an only slight majority yes vote, with responses along the lines of my friend’s “How? Who? Why?”. It can be explained by the psychological phenomena of homophily (the tendency for people to seek out or be attracted to those who are similar to themselves). You see, the people I was seeking out and engaging with throughout the 2019 Federal Election and the Same-Sex Marriage Plebiscite, often fit into the same demographic as me, with very little margin of difference in opinion. I was engaging with people and internet users, within my self built digital community, my “social sphere”, which meant that my views and opinions skewed, and still do, based off of public perception and what those likeminded individuals thought. Maybe the validation was helpful, maybe I need to push the boundaries of my opinions, we’ll see next time around. #AustraliaVotesNextTime?

Is Tumblr a blog or a social network site? When I’ve asked friends and classmates their opinions the answers have been complex and multi-faceted. Most agree that the site is primarily a blogging platform, the definition of a blog (a regularly updated website or web page, typically run by an individual or small group, written in an informal or conversational style) seems to fit that description quite well, though for my own understanding I wanted to add that Tumblr is a platform for blogging rather than a blog itself. One friend also described the platform as a microblog, which complicates the definition I was constructing for myself, as microblogging is defined as a social media site to which a user makes short, frequent posts. The definition uses the words “social media site” which only further clouds the question we’re asking here. So, in terms of definitions and my own understanding, I believe that Tumblr is a microblogging platform with elements of interactivity that lend themselves to a higher degree of social networking than typical blogging.

When attempting to distinguish Tumblr from exclusively “social networking” sites Adam Rifkin for TechCrunch.com (https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/) observed that “a large number of Tumblr users don’t WANT an audience”, that is, they value separation between their “findable and identifiable real-life” online presence, and the more anonymous and privatised platform that they only share with few close friends and strangers they have no chance of meeting. So then, definitions aside, it appears users are allowing the platform to perform a few different functions. It is microblogging, letting users share exactly what interests them, with no intended audience in particular. While the dashboard feature functions as a social network to connect users with those people in their audience, and who’s audience they are apart of, who are interested in similar things, regardless of if they know them personally or not.