The Nitty Gritty

In the eyes of the average Facebook user, social media exists as its own entity within the spectrum of social interaction. It is never static but constantly changing in terms of content and trends. Pages uniting users in their habits of “Pretending to Text in Awkward Situations” or confessing that “We All Have a Mad Friend who’s a Ranga” all add to the endless noisy stream of Facebook content.

Amidst the constant flow of memes, viral videos and politically themed tomfoolery such as “Tone Abet”, it’s easy to underestimate the power of Facebook to harness solidarity amongst extreme racist, homophobic or sexist (the list goes on and on) groups.

In terms of our online feature, we want to nut out how YOU, the users, can have more power and control over the content that pops up in your feeds.

Catharine Lumby and Dr Kate Crawford published a report, The Adaptive Moment, in which they outline the necessity for users to have a role in governing content as “full digital media citizens”.They highlight that users have the most power to inform hosts/platform providers about offensive and inappropriate content.

This power depends upon several factors such as the responsiveness of the host/platform to user complaints and the transparency of the methods by which to make contact.

Lumby and Crawford state that users have limited roles restricted to merely making complaints. They should have a more active role in formation of policy and industry practices.

So what’s the ‘little man’ to do when he (or she) stumbles upon inflammatory pages such as “Fighting Against the Imperialistic ‘Gay’ Agenda” ?? The “TECH WIZZEZ” (us), aim to help you out!

In the meantime, let’s remind ourselves why social media is good:

And for more on Catharine Lumby’s views on regulation:

http://ezproxy.library.usyd.edu.au/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/864820214?accountid=14757

Image courtesy of  Sam Michel

And here’s a video… Just to keep it ‘interesting’

This is instagram in video form. Painfully hipster but an apt representation of Spain…

The ‘Youtube Psycho’ Syndrome (YPS)

The latest in the realm of online media projects is as such:

It’s amazing what a good pun can do for morale.

Mary thought of “Elimihate”- the name of our project that aims to investigate the effectiveness of legislation in moderating hate material vs user regulation in social media. Or to narrow it down, anti-semitic pages on Facebook.

We will be observing what happens after discriminatory content has been flagged by Facebook users (us) and creating legislative recommendations that support users in moderating their online spaces.

There is a huge amount of academic deliberation over the Finkelstein Report and the subsequent Convergence Review. All this talk of regulation reform is however, largely directed towards professional, established media outlets that are (seemingly) well aware of their role in the formation public opinion and their ethical obligation to that public.

The Convergence Review is decidedly pro self regulation over government intervention, and with good reason. Elimihate aims to delve into murky waters however, through to exploration of ‘hate’ groups on Facebook. The ‘regular’ people behind such groups make no attempt in hiding their agenda, whether it be homophobia, misogyny or plain old racism. It is largely left up to other users who stumble across this kind of content that wobbles along the line between free speech and decency to give Facebook the heads up. Whether they’ll do anything about is another thing entirely. An issue too big for a little blog post.

To summarise: we will be cruising the natural habitats of the classic ‘Youtube Psycho’ types. For credit.

To be continued.

I shall leave you with a meme. If you pronounce poor JK’s name wrong, let this be a lesson to you!

***

“How’d ya find out?” … “Facebook told me.”

Over the past fortnight, the issue of privacy and social media was discussed in our lectures. In 2013, it is widely accepted by most people that Facebook is a wickedly convenient tool for gathering random personal facts about ‘friends’ on the periphery of our social sphere.

The ol’ Facebook “stalk” has become a ubiquitous social practice in the pursuit of potential lovers or “friends” you haven’t bothering to talk to since 1998. Putting your foot in it has taken on a new, disturbing dimension when you take care in not letting slip just how much you have gleaned from Facebook profile.

The academic name for this, according to American academic Danah Boyd, is “social convergence”. Dumbed down: when different social contexts are mushed together into one creepy, invasive package.

We forget, you see, that nothing can ever be permanently deleted or completely hidden thanks to screen shots and tools like Graph Search on Facebook that delve deeper into the connections between you, your friends, your friends’ friends and so on.

“Information is not private because no one knows it, it is private because knowing is limited and controlled.” ~ Danah Boyd “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck”  2008

The highly personal nature of Facebook can have its moments of social do-gooding when it comes to naming and shaming. Author of Policing Social Media, Daniel Trotter describes Facebook as a “digital enclosure”, not just because of its technical ability to retain the personal information of its users, but for its capacity for USER SURVEILLANCE.

Facebook is a huge part of the online culture of interacting and sharing information. This makes it an incredibly effective platform in ‘citizen persecution’- i.e, naming and shaming criminals, exposing the transgressions of public figures and flagging inappropriate/offensive content formed around groups and pages.

Social media will never be completely private. Social media is about a degree of exhibitionism after all. Awareness and transparency however, would do well to make things a little less… Creepy.

Image courtesy of

3. 2. 1. VIRAL

The ‘Tech Wizzez’, that is Jess, Mary, Zanda, Brendan and myself, originally designed an online feature based on the effectiveness of online advertising vs traditional advertising in the paper or TV. With a particular focus on viral videos, we ambitiously thought that we could just whip up a witty video advertising a generic product, such as dish washing detergent, and hope that it went viral to prove our point.

Inspiration failed to strike however, and thus we have moved onto a new idea of investigating the effectiveness of user moderation of hate speech on Facebook. Viral videos are still a worthy topic and I found a great article on the Harvard Business school website that breaks down what makes online video advertising a success.

In a nutshell, the reality is that we are bombarded on a daily basis with stuff to make us laugh, to sit up and take notice. Memes, Youtube parodies, you name it, Facebook has it!

As a result, advertising needs to make us laugh, it needs to make us feel like we’re special, that you are personally being sold an idea or product in a neat, witty, intimate package.

Furthermore, if you don’t feel embarrassed to share it on your personal Facebook and Twitter, those advertisers have struck gold! You just don’t watch an ad and move on, you are doing the heavy lifting for that company and you don’t even know it! Free labour? Yes please!

Despite social media granting corporations the ability to cut corners in reaching large numbers of people, you’ve gotta admit, you have a bit of a chuckle along the way!

Here’s the Harvard article:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7267.html

Twitter, what?

It’s a bit of a shock for supposedly media savvy twenty two year old to be reprimanded by a Baby Boomer for a lack of Twitter participation and a decided distaste for e-books. In my eyes ‘tablets’ are those things you put down your throat, not a tool for finger-swiping your way through the Sydney Morning Herald. 

Despite these slightly pompous retro tendencies, I swallowed my pride and got myself a Twitter account. Already I’m intimidated by the swathes of hashtags, acronyms and @soandso’s yet I speedily followed 50 plus accounts in the space of fifteen minutes. With this decidedly self-imposed illusion of being ‘in the loop’ put in place, let’s see if I actually follow through with the whole Twitter band wagon. A hundred and forty characters may be small, but carries a whole lotta weight…