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/>