Dark Sides of Social Media

It is widely believed that everything has two sides, one for goodness, and the other for badness. Social media, as an industry created by the new century, also behaves that way. Now that we’ve got to know its benefits, in this passage the dark side of it will be discussed.

As an information platform, the basic function of social media is to spread information. People will update their Facebook or Tweeter timely letting others see their life and concerning about what is going on with their friends and relatives. Or even sometime your friends will report something in which you could possibly be involved. Meanwhile, under loose security settings, strangers may easily enter a private Facebook space to visit anything in it. Perhaps the visitor could be carrying every possible purpose, and this will put the space owner into a potentially dangerous situation.

When surfing the internet, going through a forum, or visiting a Facebook page, we receive a great many pieces of information. But have you ever been cheated by some of them? It seldom happened to us that when we read something online we are tracking its source to see whether it is true. As information publishers always want news published timely, they have no time and sometimes no ability in checking what they received. Or there could be some mistakes caused by the carelessness of publishers. So this kind of wrong information could be a potential threaten to us.

Besides the undersigned errors, there could also be some intentional errors in the information we got from social media. This part of problem is actually related to the morality. Certain organizations would do some change according to their own purposes. For example, sellers could naturally create a favorable environment for their products. Politicians could be clearing barriers for the development of their political intentions. Authorities could be harmonizing the cultures which are not fixed with its dominating policies. This kind of movements does no good to the development of the human nature and the innocent public.

Though the internet and social media are too large and broad to be officially supervised globally, every government is still on its actions of keeping the online environment healthy and regulated. As for individuals, we have to be cautious about the social media. And to keep ourselves away from these dark sides of the social media, I suggest that: firstly, visit authorized social media platforms; secondly, compare the same event from different social media platforms; third, take others’ comment into your consideration.

Reference

Marisol Bello, 2012, Hurricane Sandy shows dark side of social media, USA TODAY, view on May 19, 2013, <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/30/hurricane-sandy-social-media-errors/1668911/>

Jonathan Ladd, 2012, The Dark Side of Social Media Sites, view on May 19, 2013, <http://www.newsoftwares.net/blog/the-dark-side-of-social-media-sites/1330/>

Mitchell Cuevas, 2011, The Dark Side of Social Media-Jealousy, view on May 19, 2013, <http://www.saltywaffle.com/the-dark-side-of-social-media-jealousy/>

We Have Two Lives

With advanced technology, social media has become an essential part of not only our social life but also life. Everyday, people get online to see what is going on about the world, and meet others online to kill time or do business. Just as what the human history has experienced, the online citizens gradually accomplished the transform from individuals to communities. (Ensslin, A. and Muse, E. 2011) People set up their online identities to get into the online communities. Under the trend of virtualization, there is a great number of online products came out to the public. One of those products is the Second Life.

The Second Life is a game of virtualized online community which came out in 2002, and was publicly tested in 2003. At the beginning, the number of the game clients broke 100’000 on October 18th, 2006. But it unbelievably reached 200’000 in just 57 days, on December 14th, 2006. The fast development of this game, in term of social media, implied the great popularity and expectation of the virtualized community industry. What made it so outstanding is the integrity of this platform. Firstly, it was based on the online conversation that people began their online career. And when people got familiar with each other through the platform built by social media, there came the term of ‘online community’ which provided a home for these online citizens and where they can share what they saw, what they heard or what they experienced. As the community getting larger and larger, people will be unconsciously grouped by their own interest or value. Different groups of people held different ideas about the world and had different methods of dealing with problems. Next, groups of people must have something to do to prove their existence in the online world, so they would possibly organize some ‘events’ for their followers and online friends to attend. Finally, just like the real world, advertisements would always be filled into every webpage online, and every corner in the real world.

 

However, there is still something that would be disappointing. Though the internet is highly developed in this age of modernization, there is still a great deal of people who cannot get access of the internet, thus cannot join the events of online communities. What’s more, there could be some problems with the hardware facilities which would possibly lead to the failure of joining the events. Finally, and basically, if the web server crashed down, the whole community would also immediately disappear. (Aliza Sherman, 2009) These accidents would all result in desperate endings.

The Second Life, as far as I think, is almost the same as the real world. You also have to think as the way you think in the real world. The only difference is that what you do is just staring at the screen and clicking. And it provides everybody a chance to taste a different character which could be regarded as certain self-actualization. Then people can sometime fall into the role of the game, and intend to expand the online identity. (Meadows, M. S. 2008) To some extent, the online identity can be a reveal of the true identity of a person because the internet offers every online citizen a mask to hide themselves.

 

 

 

Reference List

 

Aliza Sherman, 2009, Second Life Is Social Media, viewed May 14, 2013, <http://gigaom.com/2009/05/09/second-life-is-social-media/>

 

Ensslin, A. and Muse, E. 2011, Creating second lives: community, identity and spatiality as constructions of the virtual, Taylor and Francis, EBL Book Library, viewed 27th February 2013.

 

Meadows, M. S. 2008, ‘The roles of social worlds and the rules of game worlds’ in I, Avatar: the culture and consequences of having a second life, New Riders, Berkley, CA, pp 34-51 (available via the Library electronic resources).

Produsage As I See

In term of terminology, “produsage” is a compound word coming from “produce” and “usage”, referring to a new commercial pattern that consumption is actually transformed into production. This pattern, I think, is really beneficial for this age of social media which can perfectly embody the power of the technology and public participation. And it is a convincible pattern for this century to practice broadly. This theory was firstly put out by Mr. Axel Bruns in 2007 saying that the so-called production is, in fact, not the final version any more. (Axel Bruns, 2009) Instead, it becomes a temporary work in a constantly dynamic developing process. For this pattern, there is an original example about Wikipedia that every term is not invariable, and can be edited by any visitors under the permission of Wikipedia. Firstly, visitors must have read the relevant information about the term, enjoying service from Wikipedia. Thus, there comes the possibility of generating different understandings. Then, the more people wrote about the term, the more completed the term will be. In this process these visitors or consumers becomes the producers to help Wikipedia build up its web content and let more visitors get better service while putting out their own opinions.

 

Similarly, there is another example which is fresher but traditionally regarded as “unmoral” that we sometimes make notes on the book we borrowed from the library, because we have different opinions about the content. These notes or comments suggest our different ideas and understandings. Perhaps they are not removed by inspectors, the next reader of the book may get one more inspire. And what if this reader continues to make notes on it? From then on, every “unmoral” reader becomes a “produser” who uses the book while re-produces the book.

Anyway, there are 4 characters of produsage: open participation, fluid heterarchy and holoptism, palimpsestic, unfinished artefacts and common property. (Henry Jenkins, 2008) Firstly, open participation means to offer free entrance to the issue and service. This will lead to a large crowd of participants or users which are the base of this pattern. Then according to their various skills and interests, they can provide their own contribution to their interest content, and the content they generated will be always open to every visitor for reading, revising or complementing. As visitors contributing constantly to the content, it will keep abundant and up-to-date. That is to say, the content is and will always be under construction, because human cognition is always in the evolution. The last point to say is that the ownership of these contents belongs to the public. The platform owner is actually a management body to keep the content away from getting so far. And everybody can do adding or revising work towards the content, but no individual owns it.

Reference

Axel Bruns, 2009, Produsage and business sharing, viewed May 5, 2013, <http://video.nextconf.eu/video/923263/produsage-and-business-sharing>

Henry Jenkins, 2008, From Production to Produsage: Interview with Axel Bruns (Part One), viewed May 5, 2013,  <http://henryjenkins.org/2008/05/interview_with_axel_bruns.html>

Social Media And Politics

Last time social media was regarded as a tool of anti-corruption, but it was never and will never be only an anti-corruption tool. In politics, it can be used in many aspects, for a typical example, if a candidate of any elections is going to reinforce its influence, the candidate and its team will undoubtedly seek for help to social media which is greatly influential to the public and powerful in disseminating information like idea and policy of the candidate. (Henry J. and David T., 2003) 

 

 
 
 

Ever since the birth of the first language, there came the original social media. And now, it is not only referring to the traditional ones like TV programs, radio programs or newspaper, but also integrated with new technological online social-contact platforms like Facebook, Twitter, My Space or YouTube.( Winograd, M. and Hais, M. D. 2008) What’s more, any kind of information dissemination towards the public can be called a social media. So even a sales promotion, which informs the public of the prices of goods, could be counted. Social media covers almost every human being in every corner of the world unless where there is not a “society” at all. (Johnson, Dennis W., 2009) And actually, it, to some extent, is equipped with a special leadership towards the idea of the public. Steve Forbes became the first individual to announce his presidential candidacy on the Web. What’s more, Arizona became the first state to allow online voting in its presidential primary. Furthermore, President Obama has his own website to publish his ideas and policy, meanwhile, listen to what people suggest and complain about. Basically, the transmission of information is largely conducted by characters, voice and image. Meanwhile, the online social-contact platforms were originally set up for entertainment. So on the internet, there could be some difference in those political campaigns. Under the intense scrutiny of these new platforms, candidates are exposed to a more open environment. (Young, S. 2010) They have to be excellent in relevant aspects to prove their ability of performing those important duties. Just like the way pop stars do, a candidate who looks more honest or sounds more reliable, will possibly gain more votes when the election is at a tie, because the impression is better. It is kind of like perfectism that people believe every advantage on the candidate contributes to a better country if one day the candidate were elected to be the president under the trust of the voters. There are two terms in Mr. Rheingold’s view of virtual communities: social aggregation and personal relationships. (Rheingold, 2013) In term of virtual community, political parties are aggregations of people, and there are different relationships between those party members. (Jericho, G. 2012) Meanwhile, in term of participatory culture from Mr. Jenkins, there is no limitation of participation towards the discussion. Political parties disseminate their ideas onto the online forums joining online discussions and let others interact with them. Finally, as more information can contribute to better understanding of a candidate or a party, the future political election will be more dependent on new and powerful social media.

Reference 

Henry J. and David T., 2003, ‘The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy’, Introduction to Democracy and New Media, viewed April 30, 2013 <http://web.mit.edu/transition/subs/demointro.html>

Johnson, Dennis W., 2009, ‘The online revolution’ Campaigning for president: strategies and tactics, New Voices and New Techniques, pp 147-159

Jericho, G. 2012, 'How many votes are there on Twitter?', The rise of the Fifth Estate: social media and blogging in Australian politics, Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, Australia, EBL eBook Library, pp 254 – 278, viewed 20 January 2013. 

Winograd, M. and Hais, M. D. 2008,Millenial makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the future of American politics, Rutgers University Press, Piscataway, pp 156-173

Young, S. 2010, 'New, political reporting and the internet', How Australia decides: election reporting and the media, Cambridge University Press, Australia, EBL eBook Library, pp 203-228, viewed April 30, 2013.

Howard R., 2013, The Virtual Community, viewed April 29, 2013 <http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/>

Social Media Anti-Corruption Is Overwhelming

Social media is a newly born concept which indicates a new type media along with interactions. For example, if effective participations are not done, this new media platform would be almost blank and useless. Modern social media takes the place of traditional media changing the old one-way dissemination style with multi-way conversational style. In term of social media, there are two key words: UGC (User Generated Contact) and CGM (Customer Generated Media). (SCL, 2008; Hudson, John, 2012)

In term of anti-corruption, social media has its own advantages. Firstly, due to the popular participation, the information, UGC, can be dedicated by anyone whom the internet is available to. So there could be a great deal of information and the source of the information, CGM, will never die out until corruption itself one day is no longer being. This can surely contribute to the dissemination of anti-corruption information.

Secondly, the registers are not required to provide their real names. That means people can choose whether or not to provide their personal information when they are revealing something which could draw revenge from the exposed organization or persons. (John C. B., Paul T. J., Justin M. G., 2010) In this way, the security of the information providers can be largely guaranteed.

According to the two advantages, social media is actually an information exposing platform which can punish corruption morally and provide people with information and call on the public to take actions to fight against corruption. However, it will not bring any material punishment to related corrupt people and organization. Basically, the validity of the information that is spread on this platform is unknown.

Wikileaks, a famous publicly trusted website which aims at revealing corruption for the global justice and humanity, is constantly discussed and focused by the society, commercial organizations and governments. (Alan Knight, 2010) According to Henry Jenkins, the power of fans is undeniable. Under the support of millions of fans around the globe, Wikileaks gets a great deal of donations to keep running through the pressure of charges and account freezes. Till now, it has revealed an unbelievable number of corruption cases of several significant international co-operations and governments. And dealt with related authorities, most of these cases brought significant changes to the local market and politics.

In my opinion, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is a great and respectable activist. Because of his effort to build the website, the world justice is developed and the humanity is protected. What’s more, he has set up a great example and found a powerful and professional tool for the world to fight against corruption.

As Julian Assange is drawing more and more revenge from infuriated substances, the future of Wikileaks itself may seem dull and dim, because it would be possibly facing more severe problems or even collapse. But if it dies out, there will be more Wikileaks coming out. And the trend is that the industry of online anti-corruption will be long-live and prosperous. (Anderson, T. B., 2009)

 

References

John C. B., Paul T. J., Justin M. G., 2010, Using ICTs to create a culture of transparency: E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies, Government Information Quarterly, viewed April 21, 2013, <www.elsevier.com/locate/govinf>
Hudson, John, 2012, ‘Social media’, New Scientist, Vol.214(2865), pp.32-33 viewed April 21, 2013, <http://www.ebsco.com/>SCL, 2008, ‘Web Site Operators & Liability for UGC – Facing up to Reality?’, Society for Computers and Law, viewed April 21, 2013 < http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ed9981>Alan Knight, 2010, Wikileaks and investigative journalism, viewed April 21, 2013, <http://alanknight.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/wikileaks-and-investigative-journalism/>
Anderson, T. B., 2009, ‘E-government as an anti-corruption strategy’, Information Economics and Policy, 21, pp.201-210, viewed April 21, 2013, <http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0167624509000110>

A Reflection of How Social Media Can Make History

    As watching a video of “How social media can make history” by Clay Shirky on TED, I was again surprising at the power of the social media and digital devices. Shirky said there are only 4 periods in the last 500 years where media has changed enough to qualify for the label “revolution.”: the printing press, the telegraph and telephone, the recorded media and the radio and television. (Clay Shirky, 2009) But moreover, I think that the internet can be counted as the fifth period of media revolution. The technology is so advanced that everybody can tweeter anything they want to share online in several seconds. I use cellphone the same way as most of the cellphone users in the world. When I came across something interesting, I would take a picture by my phone and post it online to the tweeter and Sina Weibo (a public service in China, just like tweeter); when I saw a sales promotion in the street, I would normally announce my friends on tweeter by “@” them; and when I was in trouble of getting lost, I would send my location onto the tweeter and ask for help. I believe that most of you are just doing things like that. It is the great convenience brought to us by social media.

 

    There is not much point in introducing the latest cellphones or interesting websites, because almost everybody is really familiar with them. And what I really want to talk about is the social media and the digital activism itself. Internet is only a platform for the public. Today, the internet is easily available for most of us and the information it brings is of a great abundance. We can easily be noticed of the latest news by keeping our cellphones online. Thus, there is more chance for us to become an activist. Take the “Earth Hour” activity starting in 2007, Australia, for example. The activity received great attention from the world approving it as the largest campaign in reaction of the global climate change just in the second year of its existence. What’s more, in 2008, the campaign was supported by more than 50’000’000 people from 35 countries. (Earth Hour, 2008) The spread of such a large-scale activity is mainly done on the internet. It is quite unbelievable in the old time that millions of online visiting records were made just in several days. An unaware glance at the title or picture of this activity in the web page can lead to the curiosity to that. To some extents, with the great help of some large websites’ generous propaganda, people are informed of that activity from any digital devices they could reach during their visiting to other social media websites. The digital activism comes of the curiosity, interest, sympathy, morals and justice.

 

Reference List

Shirky C., How social media can make history, viewed April 15, 2013, <http://embed.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html>

Earth Hour, Earth Hour History, viewed April 15, 2013 <http://www.earthhour.org>

Cellphone - Helpful Partner but Mask Producer

(Just for fun!)

    Communication is getting more and more important to our lives, mobile phones must be the most influential among all the communication products. According to Amber Case, nowadays, we are all half cyborgs due to the reliance to the digital equipment, especially the cellphones (Amber Case, 2012). A report from the International Telecommunications Union indicated that cellphone is the fastest accepted high technological product since the dawn of human nature. In the end of 2010, the total number of mobile phones has reached around 5 billion (International Telecommunication Union, 2010). And the global popularity rate of cellphones increased to 70% from 12% between 2000 and 2010.

    Over the past 30 years, the fundamental functions of cellphones has not only been making phone calls or messages, but also been integrated with picturing, video/audio playing, internet-surfing, GPS navigator, wireless connection etc. And the revolution of cellphone is gradually becoming realized. It seems really predictable that the functions and applications are still rapidly evolving.

    Most importantly, the future of cellphones will be more intelligent. And cellphone is becoming an indispensible intelligent partner. With the combination of internet service and the development of hardware and software, cellphone users could get online to read news, watch TV programs, post Twitters; they could publish their own videos on Facebook sharing with friends and receiving comments; they could control household electrical appliances through cellphone command. In the future, under the support of developing internet and operation systems, more and more virtualized and humanized services will be available to cellphone users.

    What’s more, cellphone will become mobile sensors scattering around the world. When all cellphones get online, every user could become a publisher of its local news. When all information is gathered, a full-view picture of the real-time world. At that moment, hundreds of weather detectors will not be retired and replaced by millions of cellphone temperature and light sensors. Meanwhile, the real-time transportation condition will be updated according to the analysis based on the number of congested cellphone signals and their moving speed and direction instead of helicopters and roadbed sensors which require large amount of commercial or governmental investments.


   However, as Turkle has mentioned in her lecture “Connected, but alone?” on TED, we are unprecedentedly largely isolated by our cellphones (Turkle, 2012). Though people are connected to the internet almost all time, the time of face to face conversation is constantly decreasing. Nevertheless, the preference to chat by typing indicates the mental obstacle in interpersonal communications (Lorente, 2002). And it is really harmful for both individual and human development, because it cripples people’s ability of real talk and cooperation allowing the existences of more misunderstandings. People begin to stay behind the mask produced by cellphone screens. Thus, the trust between people is dying and that is what actually leads to the loneliness. For young people, they seem more likely to get into troubles with their phones by, for example, cyber bullying, sexting, distracted driving, cheating and so on (Common Sense Media, 2010). Parents should pay enough attention to that.

    So, more properly, cellphones has been making things convenient, but it was also simplifying, crippling and fading our lives. And individuals should be cautious about their cellphones.

  

Reference

Amber Case, 2012, We Are All Cyborgs Now, viewed April 8, 2013,
 < http://www.ted.com/talks/amber_case_we_are_all_cyborgs_now.html>

International Telecommunication Union, 2010, ICT Facts Figures 2010, viewed April 8, 2013, <http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2010.pdf>

Turkle, S 2012, Connected, but Alone?, viewed April 8, 2013, < http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html>

Lorente, S 2002, Youth and Mobile Phones: Something More Than a Fashion, viewed April 8, 2013, <http://www.itu.int/osg/spuold/ni/ubiquitous/Papers/Paper_Youth_and_mobile.pdf>

Common Sense Media, 2010, Do Smart Phones = Smart Kids?  viewed April 8, 2013, 

<http://www.itu.int/council/groups/wg-cop/second-meeting-june-

2010/CommonSenseSmartPhCommonSenseSmartPhonesS.pdf>