A Relationship With The World

The eighth and final topic that we covered for Digital Communities focussed on Social Gaming, and the nuanced and often complex rules and regulations that go into facilitating these online environments for the millions of participants engaging in them. 

Image Credit: 2p.com 2016

Much like entering into the field of play in a Football match or, relatively so, any other digital or online form of communication and socialising, online gaming is operated according to laws and codes of conduct, and “game rules created by developers” that “intersect and overlap with rules created socially by players”, essentially creating ‘cultural norms’ and ‘contexts of play’ within the digital world, created by lawyers to protect the interests of publishers and developers (De Zwart & Humphries 2014, p. 77). 

Online games, such as EVE - a Massively Multiplayer Online Game - provide a fascinating basis to look critically at the rules of engagement across the entire digital sphere, highlighted by De Zwart & Humphries (2014) in that contractual agreements and policies laid out by developers and publishers are regularly skipped over and not taken deeply into account by participants before entering the field of play, while additionally stating that the CSM, or Council of Stellar Management is a unique strategy that “affords players a channel of communication with the developers and managers of the game and, at least in theory, an avenue for negotiation and some say in management decisions and the directions in which the game develops” (De Zwart & Humphries 2014, p. 78). 

This unique intersection of users sometimes flagrantly disobeying holistic rules and regulations laid out by developers and publishers but, internally, having a say on how the game world should evolve and be governed, strikes a stark resemblance to the way Social Media seems to be developing. This idea of “characterised labour”, as De Zwart & Humphries (2014 p. 78) describe it, is the result of EVE users and, too, Social Media users, playing or engaging for many hours to the “benefit of the publisher, but also to the benefit of the player population”. 

In theory, the watchful eyes of developers and digital architects - across all digital platforms - are inspired and directed by the infinite chatter and discussion by users about what will and won’t make the technology they are using better, more user centric and, ultimately, more democratic. The ideas and information we share online, consciously or not, directly informs and effects the platforms that we utilise on a daily basis. 

REFERENCES 

Now, more-so than ever, an individual’s identity is made up of very public exhibitions of their daily life across various Social Media platforms, creating a web-like existence that can be traversed, analysed and simply observed by just about anyone, anywhere on the planet, at any time. 

 Image Credit: (IGN.com, 2015) 

Since the inception of platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, a persons willingness to promptly share photos and videos that document the often mundane, everyday activities that were once just a dinner-table conversation  has become almost second-nature. This response to the technology at our disposal could simply be looked at as what it affords, creating a public identity that seems to fit in with the social expectations in our particular online communities, or - conversely - it could be viewed as a complete upheaval and disruption of things that we used to consider private or a case of ‘oversharing’ information and details. 

The ubiquity of social imaging and sharing our visual lives online perhaps provides many people with a sense of connectedness, an easy and accessible method of engaging and sharing with others to feel a sense of support and homeliness, but Turkle (2012) points out that this form of ‘digital connectedness’ is arguably creating less meaningful relationships that are tethered by a much slimmer connection than the ones that are formed in the physical world. 

The visuality and representation of oneself online is now a carefully considered, thought-out process that almost brings a feeling of fabrication with it, allowing for “selection, curation, manipulation and editing of personal photographic images” that has undoubtedly allowed a generation of narcissistic communities to flourish online (Vivienne 2013, p. 279). This being said, a world without these technologies and the possibilities they create is difficult to comprehend, as we are now - for the 79% of Australian’s using Social Media - inherently exposed to the lives of millions and millions and people, breeding an unprecedented level of familiarity and global acquaintance with the world (Sensis.com, 2017). 

There has not been a time where we could feel so instantly updated, refreshed, and in the loop on the things we want to know about our friends, family or most cherished artist or celebrity, and to add to the simmering addiction of this gratification, we are presented with images and videos to accompany the news. Perhaps, in my mind, it has become a case of people - en masse - seeking immediacy in their lives for what seem to be trivial matters, a lot of the time. 

References 

Sensis.com.au. (2017). Sensis Social Media Report. [online] Available at: https://www.sensis.com.au/about/our-reports/sensis-social-media-report [Accessed 17 Jan. 2018].

TED-Ed 2013, Connected, but alone?- Sherry Turkle, 19 April, viewed 3 August 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv0g8TsnA6c>.

For this weeks blog, we are covering the topic of ‘Crowdsourcing in Times of Crisis’, which is perhaps one of the breakthrough elements and affordances of social media in the digital age, birthing a generation of developers, citizens, media outlets, and citizen journalists alike who band together across various social media platforms in order to spread more coverage and up-to-date news on varying forms of disasters and political crises. 

In the current social media climate, users don’t have to look far to garner information on a local or global crisis; it is, quite literally, right in front of our eyes. However, with so much information being generated by citizens at ground level and from all corners of the globe, misinformation and misrepresentation of events can often lead to confusion and disarray about what is truly occurring amongst the chaos during such events. 

For example, Bruns et.al (2012, p.8) explain that during the 2011 Queensland floods, in which many towns across the state were decimated by extreme rains and flooding, QPS Media played a central role in “directly tackling the rumours and misinformation about the floods which circulated on Twitter and elsewhere”, and were widely applauded and acknowledged for aiding Twitter users in reaching correct and reliable updates. 

Such is the magnitude of events such as the Queensland floods that it encourages, en masse, people involved and being directly or indirectly effected by the crisis to engage in spreading and disseminating helpful information to others via the use of hashtags, with Bruns et.al (2012, p.7) stating that from the 10th-16th of January, during the height of the floods crisis, there was over 35,000 tweets containing the #qldfloods hashtag, and 11,600 of them were sent on the 12th of January alone. 

Political crises in particular regions have also created massive technological and social revolutions that cater to providing citizens with reliable and filtered information that, ultimately, proves to save lives and point them in the right direction amidst times of human rights abuses. This, perhaps, is most notably highlighted through the #Ushahidi platform, which was originally a “collaboration between Kenyan and international citizen journalists and software developers” during the 2007 Kenyan Presidential Election Crisis, for citizens to report human rights abuses (Ford, 2012, p.33). 

As Ford (2012, p.33) points out, the breakthrough of such platforms as #Ushahidi has completely reinterpreted the way in which people can communicate and spread information during times of political crisis, explaining that, “people can organise more quickly, find others who share their views and work together in disparate locations to produce powerful sources of information.” 

References 

Bruns, A, Burgess, J, Crawford, K & Shaw, F 2012, #qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods, Arc Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, pp. 7-10, viewed 3 August 2016, <http://www.cci.edu.au/floodsreport.pdf>.

This blog is a section Lifted from my personal contribution for my group presentation on Trolling and Social Media Conflict. 

DO NOT FEED THEM! 

Social Media, or the internet more widely, has flourished into a global haven for users from every corner of the world and has helped proliferate a generation of infinitely connected individuals from varying cultures, backgrounds and ideologies, who interact and coexist under the internet’s ever-evolving umbrella. However, a large percentage of the infinite interactions that occur and are occurring online are unavoidably unpleasant, stemming from a place where an individual or group deem themselves ‘culturally superior’ within the online environment they are operating in, and “aggrandise themselves as puppeteers” to maintain control in a decidedly vitriolic manner (Wilson et al. 2013, p.1).

This online phenomenon, as we are all fully aware, is known as “Trolling”, yet the act of which is far more complex and nuanced than the vague term suggests, with McCosker (2014 p.202) outlining, “What has come to be called trolling should be taken as a starting point rather than a vague end point for understanding the place of provocation in its multiple, highly contextualised and always changing forms.” As McCosker suggests, Internet and Social Media Trolls have earned themselves a peculiar and infamous place in the digital sphere, whereby, they seem to have developed and continuously transformed, both in groups and as individuals, into highly manipulative and deceptive internet users, who look to “repel incomers” and “deter the masses (Wilson et al. 2013, p.2)

Such anti-social behaviour has been the linchpin that Trolls and Social Media provocateurs have based their online existences upon, seemingly positioning themselves as the unofficial defenders of freedom of expression on the internet, and sole identities that are preventing the inevitable ‘homogenisation’ and ‘commercialisation’, of the web (Wilson et al. 2013, p.4). But what classifies ‘Trolling’, and how does one begin to categorise the complex depths of which these deceptive, socially disruptive savants go to in order to achieve some form of digital gratification? Wilson et al (2013 p.2) offers the Urban Dictionary’s unambiguous, albeit, considerably colloquial, definition of Trolling:

“The art of deliberately, cleverly, and secretly pissing people off, usually via the internet, using dialogue. Trolling does not mean just making rude remarks: Shouting swear words at someone doesn’t count as trolling; it’s just flaming, and isn’t funny. Spam isn’t trolling either; it pisses people off, but it’s lame. The most essential part of trolling is convincing your victim that either a) truly believe in what you are saying, no matter how outrageous, or b) give your victim malicious instructions, under the guise of help. Trolling requires decieving; any trolling that doesn’t involve decieving someone isn’t trolling at all; it’s just stupid. As such, your victim must not know that you are trolling; if he does, you are an unsuccessful troll.” 

References 

McCosker, A 2014, YouTrolling as provocation: Tube's agonistics publics, Convergence, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 201-217.

The following blog post is from a blog I wrote three years ago on the topic of Online Activism, and it seems to be equally as prudent and relevant now, as ever. Link to original blog: https://timothymt.wordpress.com/page/3/ 

Image: (Bright Lights Big City, 2017) 

In recent times, the online and digital worlds have facilitated for an endless bevy of different progressive tools for advancement and change. The internet allows us to delve deeper into our own personal regions of interest and tastes. It’s progressed to the point that we are completely customising our online experiences. 

According to Internet World Stats (2017), nearly 2 billion people use the internet and, within that, 1.47 billion people using social media in some capacity. A huge percentage of these users are critical thinkers, striving for freedom and liberty through the use of an extraordinarily powerful tool. So, when it comes to activism in the online sphere, its overwhelming when you observe the sort of astronomical figures that particular petitions or what are called “online stand ins”. 

For instance, an American protest website – put in place to fight unfair blanket copyright law (SOPA) that would heavily restrict and censor the flow of blogs and larger websites – recorded monumental statistics throughout the strike process (Sopastrike.com, 2011).

Throughout the setup of the strike, they recorded 10,000,000 petition signatures, 8,000,000 attempted calls, sent over 4,000,000, emails, had in excess of 115,000 websites participate in their online strike, and had over 1,000,000 internet users blocked from websites during that strike (Sopastrike.com, 2011). 

However, perhaps the most encouraging sign that came from the whole process was that at the beginning of it, there was only 1 American Senator that was Publicly against the legislation on November 16 2011.

Through the growing online support, the protest saw that number rise to five a day later, six 2 months later at 8 am on the 18th of January 2012 and then at 8 pm that same day, through sheer carry and support from growing online users, the number jumped staggeringly to 36 senators in support of stopping SOPA.

The numbers don’t lie.

References 

Bright Lights Big City. (2017). Online activism – social media monster or force for chance?. [online] Available at: https://rvhenderson.com/2016/02/18/online-activism-social-media-monster-or-force-for-chance/ [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017].

Internetworldstats.com. (2017). World Internet Users Statistics and 2017 World Population Stats. [online] Available at: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017].

The meteoric rise of Social Media over the past decade has paved the way for an entirely new, highly populated and habitable environment on the internet; a place where identities are formed, movements are proliferated, and careers can be broken or born. In week 5 of Digital Communities, we began to cover the topic of Digital Citizenship, and how the varying elements of the Social Media platforms have radically changed the way politics and democracy are discussed and communicated to local and global audiences. 

To begin with, Digital Citizenship, as a term, could be looked at as a broad and global moral/ethical guideline for digital media users to follow when they are engaging online, with eSafety (2017) describing it as, “confident and positive engagement with digital technology”. However, this weeks main concern - as outlined by Swinburne Online (2017 para.3) - is with “how political parties and politicians connect with their communities (local, state and national) through social media networks.” 

We are incredibly privileged to live in the digital age, where so much of the political discourse, debate and civic discussion takes place online and, essentially, in real time. With this comes the unprecedented possibility and affordability of citizens being able to directly attempt communication with politicians during their campaigns to have their message heard or read, not just by politicians, but by the community at large. This revolution, underpinned by the 2008 US Presidential Election, where 74% of American internet users went online during the election, has led to a great deal of democratisation and civic involvement across platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter in not just elections, but political and social issues in general (Young 2010, p.204). 

It should be acknowledged that Australia’s uptake on using the internet and social media for political purposes was a little slower, however, Young (2010 p.205) explains that there was a significant difference between the 2001 and 2010 elections, once this form of political campaigning and reporting had progressed. We are now constantly surrounded - virtually speaking - by political news and campaigns, whether we are on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, and our acceptance and constructive engagement with this form of content is as much about the aesthetic and relatable quality, as any other form of content on the internet. 

Image: (The Age, 2016) 

I, for example, have often been drawn to the now much maligned, Sam Dastyari’s, Facebook page. His affable nature, obscure take on politician-to-follower communication, and concepts behind his video content were all alluring and often spoke to me, simply because he was not afraid to take a shot at far more inflammatory, bigoted politicians whose messages were blunt and lacked inclusivity...(Pauline Hanson). 

References 

Cadzow, J. (2016). The close-up view of Sam Dastyari's rise and fall. [online] The Age. Available at: http://www.theage.com.au/good-weekend/the-rise-and-fall-of-sam-dastyari-20160907-grawbe.html [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017].

Office of the eSafety Commissioner. (2017). Digital Citizenship. [online] Available at: https://www.esafety.gov.au/education-resources/classroom-resources/digital-citizenship [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017]. 

Swinburneonline.instructure.com. (2017). Digital Citizenship 1: Politics and Civic Culture. [online] Available at: https://swinburneonline.instructure.com/courses/77/pages/5-dot-3-australian-political-parties-use-of-social-media?module_item_id=6770 [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017].

Image: (Security Brief 2017). 

For the second question posed to us, which read, “how are our social experiences bound up with social media platforms and their affordances, and how we make use of them?”, I chose to focus on the idea of ‘online anonymity’, and how different social media platforms afford different levels of anonymity online, and how this level of anonymity is either used or abused. 

The #worldwideweb affords a much greater deal of anonymity than what society experiences in the physical world, and users can browse social media, forums, pornography; they can exchange content and details online without having to ever reveal their true identity, ultimately providing “freedom of speech, freedom from surveillance, and freedom from being judged on one’s gender, status, age, or appearance, among other benefits” (Van der Nagel 2013, p. 2). 

However, my interest in this case lies within the different forms of social media, and how each affords a different level of anonymity and how these levels are utilised. Generally speaking, Facebook allows users - once they’ve created profiles - to browse anonymously through an infinitely connected community that stretches to every continent on the globe. Yet, according to Huffington Post (2015) there was an estimated 170 million fake Facebook profiles currently active, which one can assume makes up a small population of the ‘anonymous trolls’ and people that utilise the platform to spread abusive sentiment, bully others, or attempt fraud upon unwitting, legitimised Facebook users (Van der Nagel 2013, p. 2). 

Our experiences on Facebook - particularly now with it being such a popular platform for news and media dissemination - is becoming less and less about interacting with our immediate communities, and more and more about observing the way strangers, and basically anonymous, personalities are reacting to global and local issues. Of course, a troll is easy to spot - for the trained eye, and fake profiles are thrown into the Facebook trash can as quickly as they are created. 

The idea and affordance of anonymity on social media provides users with myriad of ways they can curate their lives, and project themselves into the digital ether without anyone - apart from perhaps the people closest to them - blinking an eye or disputing their social status. It is this unique form of empowerment that platforms such as Instagram provides users with, where an anonymously or pseudonymously account means “people can choose what they reveal of themselves depending on their perceived audience” (Van der Nagel 2013, p. 3). 

REFERENCES 

Van der Nagel, E, 2013. Faceless Bodies: Negotiating Technological and Cultural Codes on reddit gonewild. Journal of Media, Arts, Culture, 10/2, -. 

At the beginning of this unit, I still held onto the belief that I didn’t necessarily belong to a ‘digital community’, one where I felt I was actively engaging with other people and proliferating ideas and notions. Rather, I was a spectator, someone who spent more time on the sidelines critically appraising and evaluating the ways in which people interacted online, whether it was amongst particular groups of friends, or within wider, more globalised versions of online communities, like comment sections on online media publications and forums, for example.

This mindset – however traditionalist it may seem – is and was born through a sense of losing the tangible form of ‘community’, and my fear of becoming too complacent and tempted by the digital communities that, from an observer’s point of view, seemed to have forgotten the importance of physical communication, intimacy, and a real sense of belonging. Siapera (2012 p.195) articulately outlines social life in the nineteenth century, explaining that this period of time consisted of people living in small villages, amongst groups that were so tight knit that people knew each other’s grandparents, uncles and aunts, and the only form of communication was face-to-face.

It’s a notion that for many people in this era would find hard to believe, a notion that would cause a certain amount of panic or anxiety for people that are, unintentionally or not, too involved in their digital worlds to consider how great an impact the person sitting right next to them could have on their lives. Indeed, virtual or digital communities afford and offer an infinite amount of possibility and connectedness, a ‘lack of physical proximity’ that denies – to a degree – the idea of racial, ethnic, and gender barriers, territorialism and localism, and welcomes members with varying interests and ideologies as part of its main function (Siapera 2012, p.194).

However, I remembered something important, and that was that every physical or traditional community I experience and move with in everyday life, is also part of some sort of digital community, whether that be a certain Instagram page they follow, an artist or musician they are dedicated to online, or a Reddit forum that just seems to ‘get’ them; everybody, or nearly everybody has a digital persona, an online identity that is bound up in their experiences and interactions within these virtual communities. I stand firm on my own belief, for now, that my most fruitful and poignant memories are ones that I make in the real world. Whether I choose to share these with the digital world or not isn’t important or obligatory, but some people treat strangers they meet in their digital communities like a friend, or an aunt or uncle and take a great deal away from these relationships. This, for me, has been the biggest revelation so far from digging deeper into this subject – the clear and healthy division between people, like me, who prefer traditional forms of community, and those who are more willing to embrace the ‘digital communities’.

References