Future Gaze



Looking into the future!

I think Politics in Social Media is going to increase and expand with its use in the future. As it is politicians are already using Social Media to update their campaigns and win voters. This is likely to increase with politicians adapting to the social tools and using that to their advantage. I can guess that there will be added security on these tools though and that politicians will have to be increasingly aware of how they present themselves, how they state their arguemnts and closely monitor the social media streams.

Second Life



When I heard of Second Life I thought to myself you have got to be joking! This is completly bizarre, why would you bother? get out in the real world and live your first life!! Second Life is basically an online community where you can be whatever you want to be- you create an Avatar, and that's "you" online. So you could be a Tiger, Vampire, Hooker, male or female regardless of your sex... This program includes all your normal day to day stuff but has it online.

When you sign up (and yes I created an account to try it but gave it up just as quickly) you create a character that you want to be... If you have a free account there isnt much to select from and not much you can do, but if you have a paying account you can buy things like bits for your gender- so if you're not happy with your size of equipment you can buy it bigger! You can also buy clothes and accessories to make your Avatar look cool. Once you have set up you can go exploring, visit cafe's, meet people.

There have been people who have met up online, got to know each other and get married over the Internet. Then they have organised to meet each other in real life and actually get married. I just thought that was so strange... how do you know if that person isn't a serial killer? or a rapist? how can you trust someone on the Internet? It just seems rather shifty to me.

And then when I heard that there was a male posing as a 14yr old female, I thought that was just sick! Alarm bells started ringing in my head when I heard that and it just made me wonder how truthful people really are on these sites and what are their motives?

I think that SecondLife is really just some shy nerdy guys creation of trying to make friends becuase they can't do it in real life. I think that this website really takes away the everyday experiences people could have instead of being online.



Mobile Phones

Changing the way you communicate

I have my mobile phone on me at all times, because I get a lot of phone calls and texts from family and friends, so its important that I can answer them straight away. I've just recently moved to Geelong with my partner so I don't get to see my family and friends as much as I used to, so having my mobile on me at all times allows me to keep in touch with people that are important to me. My mobile phone also allows me to remember lots of things; like the shopping list, important birthdays, social events etc; it entertains me while I'm on public transport or waiting in ques for a long time. I can take memorable photos with my phone if I've forgotten to get my camera. I can also access Facebook and organise social events through my mobile phone.
I could probably live without my mobile, things would just be a little inconvenient without it. I do use a diary that keeps track of everything just in case my mobile goes on the blitz. I can always write shopping lists and remember to put them in my purse. And I could always use my computer or the landline phone to keep in touch with people. But I find that a mobile phone is just so much better to have with you. Its very handy in an emergency situation.
Being available 24/7 can be annoying and invasive, you don't want to wake up in the middle of the night by your phone going off telling you that work is tomorrow. However, being able to be reached at any time of the day is very good if its a dire emergency.

Mobile devices, such as smart phones, iPods and tablets etc, have dramatically changed the way we communicate with others and our social relations. These mobile devices are becoming very dominant in our personal and professional lives.

Social implications of mobile devices:

• having mobile phones allows everyone in the household to make calls without having to fight over the landline; so while parents are taking important business calls the teenagers can make social calls at the same time.
• mobile phones increase our social abilities by allowing us to make plans with friends and family, keeping in contact etc; however, mobile phones can also distract us from social engagements.

Economic implications of mobile devices:

• the cost of a phone call used to make parents restrict their children from making calls from the landline; but now with mobiles you can decide on various plans and discuss affordability with what suits you better.

Political implications of mobile devices:

• using mobile devices allows people to stay in tune with what is happening without being in the office or at home.
• can use mobile devices while waiting in traffic or during the lunch que, so you're never in the dark about what's happening.

Politics and Social Media

 

There has been a growing trend in politics lately with the increased use of social media as a means of projecting your campaign to a wider audience. Politicians and social media platforms have formed a new relationship; with the likes of YouTube and Facebook, reaching out to increased audiences and younger audiences.

The first person to use social media in his campaign was John Edwards, who announced his candidacy for President via an online video. This video was unique because for the first time in recent history a presidential contender didn't go through the normal channels of publicity. He had announced his candidacy not through mainstream media or during an interview with someone from a television network. Edwards' campaign was attempting to talk directly to the people that mattered through the Internet, but wasn't very successful because instead of posting the video to YouTube where the mass population is, he had posted his video onto his own website.

The most successful online campaign is that of Barak Obama's, who used the Internet as a tool for fundraising, persuasion and organizational activities.

Campaigners have used the Internet to post their profiles up on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many, many more. The benefits of using the Internet for political campaigns is that it can reach more people and engage more people than traditional forms of media. Social media can be accessed anywhere and at anytime, therefore allowing increased exposure for the candidates. However, there is also a downside to using the Internet for campaigning. Whatever you put on the Internet can be accessed by anyone, can be available for a very long time, other people can misuse it to create a negative image of a particular person. Especially on YouTube, where anyone can upload videos that can be made to embarrass or hurt your public image.

While I think that the Internet is great for many things, I also believe that tradtional methods should not be forgotten either. There are still members of the public that don't access social media as much as a younger generation and I also think that not many of the younger generations would be too interested in political campaigns either.

Germany, J. B. 2009, ‘The online revolution’ in D. W. Johnson (Ed.) Campaigning for president: strategies and tactics, New Voices and New Techniques, Taylor and Francis eLibrary, UK. pp 147-159

 

Produsage

Produsage-" the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement"

Production in social media is no longer an accurate term to describe the materials available to the population. We are users of the social media platforms and at the same time producers. Produsage is the term that incorporates production and usage, we have unconsciously merged the two into a new hybrid form. The social media platforms that allow individuals to become producers include: YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and many diverse blogs.

The key principles of produsage include:

• open participation/ communal evaluation
• fluid hetearchy/ ad hoc meritocracy
• unfinished artefacts/ continuing process
• common property/individual rewards

Produsage can incorporate music in the likes of paradies and other young people uploading things on YouTube. Doing this blog is a means of produsage.

WikiLeaks



Controlling the World!!

I didn’t know a great deal about WikiLeaks or Julian Assange until a few weeks ago. I thought it was something to do with Wikipedia… Apparently not. This is all about the leakage of certain confidential information about countries all around the world.

Some say that Julian Assange is a threat to national safety because he has leaked many documents that have incriminated many nations. However, looking into the history and researching Julian Assange he doesn’t do it to endanger lives he does it so that people can find out the truth about what really goes on behind closed doors.

Hacking into computers was a hobby for young Julian which he took with him into adulthood becoming his profession. At the age of just 16 Julian began hacking under the name “Mendax” and formed a group with 2 other people called the “International Subversives”. Four years later Mendax was found to be hacking into the Melbourne master terminal of Nortel, which is a Canadian telecommunications company. He was also reported to have had access to the Australian University; the USAF 7th Command Group in the Pentagon and other organisations. However, while Julian was found to be doing illeagal acts his knowledge assisted the police in 1993 where he helped the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit by providing technical advice and assissted in prosecuting persons. It wasn’t until the following year that Assange was finally charged, but it wasn’t until 1996 where Assange pleaded guilty in Melbourne’s Victoria County Court to 24 counts of hacking. The judge had regarded his offences as “quite serious” but there wasn’t any evidence to suggest he had done it to seek personal gain. The judge said he had acted out of “intellectual inquistiveness”. Assange was fined $2100 and was warned if he continued to hack he would be jailed. However, this did little to stop Julian Assange and in 1999 he came up with the idea of a leakers website. It was in 2006 where WikiLeaks became founded by Assange as the editor in chief; with the following year proving to make him well known. July 12 2007 was the leak that made Assange “famous”. The Baghdad airstrikes was a series of air-to-ground attacks conducted by the US army’s helicopters. Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his assistant and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in the incident as were many others. Chmagh's children are in the van and were seriously injured. This leaked video showed the world that the American soldiers were out of control and didn’t care or question what they were firing at. Subsequent leaks made by WikiLeaks also demonstrated the lack of consideration organizations have for their population and the dangers that can occur when trying to hide secrets.

Some of the other issues that have occurred:

·         February 2008 a Swiss bank gets WikiLeaks shut down after it published reports that suggested illegal activity, however, the ruling was overturned.

·         April 2008 there were top-secret documents published from the Church of Scientology, including a handwritten note from the founder- L.Ron Hubbard.

·         September 2008 a student David Kernell hacked into Sarah Palin’s email and was later jailed for it.

·         November 2008 the British National Party’s membership list was leaked by a disgruntled former party official. A police officer was later fired after being found to be on the list.

·         September 2009 WikiLeaks published a document about Trafigura. The metals company had obtained a super-injunction against a UK newspaper to prevent publication of a memo which suggested that they would dump toxic substances in Africa.

·         October 2009 WikiLeaks published a MoD security manual with other documents giving instructions on how to prevent leaks.

·         November 2009 there were 500,000 text messages from September 11 2001 in the US released.

·         April 2010 a US military video of a helicopter attack in Baghdad raised doubts about adherence to rules of engagement.

·         July 2010 WikiLeaks published over 90,000 partially redacted intelligence reports about the Afghanistan war which identified hundreds of informants and endangering lives.

·         October 2010 WikiLeaks showed that Iraq war logs suggested that allies had ignored evidence that prisoners would be tortured, under-reported civilian deaths as well as responsibility for deaths at checkpoints.

As a result of these leaks which has made journalistic history, powerful groups have retaliated aggressively. since December 2010 an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade was imposed by the Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union. This blockade had destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks revenue. Interestingly enough, while the US government could find no lawful grounds to enforce a blockade, the US finance companies continued to do so without care.

It has been found that this violates competition laws and trade practice legislation of numerous states. This blockade has singled out an organization that hasn’t committed anything illegal in any country and has subsequently been cut off from its financial lifeline in every country. PayPal defended itself by stating on their website the reasons for freezing WikiLeaks account. They said it was due to a violation of their policy which stated that their service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. It’s been discovered that while it is a crime to leak classified information, receiving and publishing it is not.

eExtremists



Evil and Dispicable



One of the topics our Social Media class has looked at is "e-Extremism", which completly shocked me when I realised the content and the thought processess behind this. I was completly disgusted with what I saw on the Internet. I had knowingly searched (in class because thats what we were exploring) these websites that were filled with racial hate and discrimination. I couldn't believe something like this was allowed to go on the Internet. Anyway before I blow up into a full on rant I will explain the subject matter.

e-Extremism is basically extremist groups that publish their filth and hatred of other people on the Internet. The internet has allowed these groups to reach an international audience; tries to recruit new members into their ranks; it links diverse extremist groups; and maximises image control. These groups use the Internet and social media platforms to spread their propaganda.

A useful website to check out is: http://splcenter.org/what-we-do/hate-and-extremism. This site
monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public. There are just over 1000 hate groups online which include: neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, racist skinheads and many others. These extremist groups are driven by: racial purity; anti-Semitism; political hegemony; anti-liberal and anti-government.

Some of the webistes that I unfortunately came across included:

• "Hammerskin Nation": http://www.hammerskins.net/; what I thought was interesting about this site were the photos. All the people on the site had their faces blurred out, which I thought was a bit ironic as they are clearly displaying such strong beliefs and wanting those beliefs known but yet didn't want their faces known? What is the point about being involved in groups like this if your going to hide your identity? If you are too ashamed that you don't want to be identified then you must know that it's wrong or that the beliefs are disgraceful, but then why would you join the group to begin with?? I don't know. These ridiculous things confuse me. So basically this site, this group, The Hammerskin Nation, is a group made up of men and women who have chosen the White Power Skinhead lifestyle. The group is made up of blue collar workers, white collar professionals, college students, entrepreneurs, fathers and mothers. To sum up their objectives is their quote "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children."
• "National Alliance": http://www.natvan.com/; is a group that tries to achieve certain goals; it also stands for a comprehensive view of life, or world view. The site provides links to information that they believe supports their arguments. This group is the largest Neo-Nazi group in America.
• "Storm Front": http://www.stormfront.org/forum/; is an Internet forum that supports white nationalism and supremism.

There was one website that claimed the Jewish Holocaust didn't exist and went on to explain why it couldn't have happened. This website had published a video that analysed a gas chamber in Auschwitz explaining that it wasn't possible to exterminate thousands of people based on the dimensions of the chamber. The narrator of this video then went on to say it could have been done better if they had of made certain changes. This form of thinking and analysing is disgusting and I can't believe people think like that.





TWITTER!

A Whole New World...

In my blog today I will be discussing Twitter (and other social media), in which I believe is a distraction to our lives and interferes socially. Some of the points mentioned in this blog come from the supporting works of Mary Cross in her book Twitter World’ in Bloggerati, Twitterati: how blogs and twitter are transforming popular culture.

Living in the 21st century, everything is changing and is completely different from what previous generations are used to. Our society now has been dominated and overtaken by the Internet, which has transformed everything in its path. Marshall McLuhan had predicted in the 20th century that electronic technology was going to change the world, turning it into a village and sending people back to tribes. I think this guy was heading on the right track, we are becoming less and less "civilized" to each other due to the fact we have technology. Instead of interacting with real life people when we are with them, we are on our phones either surfing the net or text messaging someone else. Now that we have Twitter and other social media we are indeed going back to what McLuhan had predicted. We have created global villages online where we can shop, where we can meet new people and where we can express ourselves over the internet.

Twitter and other social media has drastically changed the way the media communicates with us. No longer do we wait for what the television or newspaper reports to us, because it takes too long to find out the information. Instead we await for the “Twitterati” to inform us of the news, as they are the first responders whenever there is a crisis; it is also the first port of call when looking for an eyewitness.  While it is useful in reporting and informing people about the events of bushfires, tsunamis and earthquakes, when it comes down to it, who in their right mind would be tweeting about a crisis when they are running for their lives and trying to be safe? And while its all well and good for people who are safe to report the news to others or alert their followers about what's happening, I ask once again, who in that situation where they are facing life and death are going to jump on a computer or check their phones to see how other people are faring?

Around the world nearly 200 million people a month are updating their Twitter posts, with an average of 140 million in a day, 1 billion a week.

Twitter and other social media has drastically changed the way we communicate with others and how others connect with us. It has changed our routine from the very simple of getting up in the morning and greeting the family hello, to opening up online accounts and greeting the world. Mobile devices have allowed us to continually be connected and “on” to social media. There is a change to the way we entertain our children, while we are busy with our online accounts and checking messages we try to hush our children up and keep them placated while we are busy “socializing”.  When people come together for a meal or go out to “catch-up” there is always someone that is checking their phone for messages or browsing the web. I think that while social media is good for staying in tough with people that we don’t get to see everyday i.e. people overseas or in another state, it is a distraction to the people that we get to physically see. It interferes in the ways we interact with people in the face to face setting.

I, myself, have signed up for a Twitter account because of the studies I'm undertaking at university. Participating in Social Media classes, I thought I would give it a go and see what it's like. I find Twitter to be confusing and highly annoying. While I'm only 21 I seem to be quite old fashioned in the way news is reported and maintaining relationships. Reading posts I find is hard and frustrating with all the symbols interjected within the writing etc. I prefer Facebook, it is much easier to use and simpler for me. I have all my extended family in Perth so for me, Facebook is great in keeping in touch with them. But when I'm around my friends I prefer to be paying attention to them and not some technological device. In the academic papers I have read I can understand and appreciate Donna Harraways's argument of us becoming "cyborgs".

1st ever blog!

It means no worries!!

Daunted by the fact that I have to do a blog (of which I have never done) I decided to take an easy approach and learn from good old Timon from the Lion King. Surely a university student as myself can work my way around something as simple as writing up a post and putting it to the net... wrong!! I haven't got the slightest clue! Oh well, Hakuna Matata, I'll do my best and see how I go.