Weekly Blogs:
January 26, 2021
TIL: Writing a Blog about The History of Web 2.0
The actual development and launch of the new Web 2.0 is not widely known about. Instead, it has been clouded and obscured by its predecessor: Web 1.0 and its major failure to which resulted in the dotcom crash of late 1990s. The development and relaunch of Web 2.0 was seen as the initial emergence of social media services with new technological, societal, and political developments and practices. The development of Web 2.0 was contributed to two major American tech universities: Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Both institutions are the major contributors to the research and development of Web 2.0 during the midst of the Cold War of Vietnam, to which has shaped and alter society with the increasing “hippie” lifestyles in wanting to escape from the political turmoil. In turn, many of the first “social media” sites were small collaborative “fan-sites” and “online wikipedia articles,” as “[t]hey saw the opportunity to shed the design, develop, and deploy strategy of earlier engineering efforts and to imagine new ways for front end and back end development to be integrated to enable an entirely new paradigm of interactivity” (Boyd, 2015). The escape from “real-life” society within the realm of social media is still embodied and embraced today in the 21st century, but it is rapidly getting twisted from its original purpose.
It is important to note that Web 2.0 was seen as a “safe heaven” from real-life society, in which the many collaborative websites capitulates that. The many modern-day social media apps were also seen as that in embodying the same purpose, as an extension of societal communication practices. Though, “[social media] are first and foremost a product or website designed to monetize us in some form or another (see Fish & McKnight, 2014; Gillespie, 2014)” (Srauy, 2015). Correspondingly, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. were all sites planned to be made as a new economic practice and services, as they were developed as an exclusive site around the specific group of the developers chose to use the services. Eventually, those exclusive online platforms and services became “free” for all to use them, but “there is the implicit deal that these “free” services come at a cost to our privacy” (Srauy, 2015). Indirect surveillance is a new social-economic practice within the online society to continuously monitor individuals for profit. As a result, the once virtual “utopian” society of the new Web 2.0 has become a new battleground for economic and political domination, which transpires from its original vision as a new efficient communication practice.
Image from: https://www.youniversitytv.com/college-tips/information-and-communication-technology-ict- meaningimportan/
Despite the growing political-economic prowess of popular social media sites, another form of social media practice is blogging. Blogging is a process that is solely for the purpose of capturing and expressing a user’s most inner-thoughts and daily routines. The user’s entries are written and posted most often daily, but can be updated weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, depending on the user’s own personal schedule. In turn, “blogging practices, which in the most general sense consist of individual episodes in which a blogger uses specific software to attain specific communicative goals” (Schmidt, 2007). Blogs typically follow two sets of rules or guidelines: Adequacy rules and Procedural rules. The specific content written and produced within the blog should “consist of shared expectations about the appropriateness of given media to obtain certain gratifications” (Schmidt, 2007). As such, the subject and topic that embodies the blog is a personal thought, in which encompass the true emotion of the person, so other users can engage with in experiencing a similar event and/or relate to the subject matter in agreement or disagreement of a user’s personal perspective. Once the blog entry has been written and finalized, it is time to post it! Blogs are a usually classified as a separate type of webpages that follows a unique set of guidelines on how it should be presented for other users to find and view them. “Procedural rules frame the actual use of blogs once the decision to choose a blog from among other available media formats has been made” (Schmidt, 2007). The most basic blog entries is based around creating a comment section within a user’s personal webpage where the details of the blog is written, then beside it an appropriate image capturing the main themes and topics covered within the post. Nevertheless, there are other more intricate blog designs, to which blogs should always be relatable, collaborative, and inspirational. Blogs embodies what Web 2.0 was originally meant to be, as a personalised online engagement and sharing of ideas and comments of the world. A freedom to speak.
Boyd, Danah. (2015). Social Media: A Phenomenon to be Analyzed. Social Media + Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115580148
Schmidt, J. (2007). Blogging Practices: An Analytical Framework. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4), 1409–1427. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00379.x
Srauy, S. (2015). The Limits of Social Media: What Social Media Can Be, and What We Should Hope They Never Become. Social Media + Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115578676
March 7, 2021
TIL: Affordances of Everyday Use & Issues of Social Media
It is not solely within the realm of participating in virtual online communities, but it can have a lasting emotional and physical burden on the user as well. The common issues that arises from “overusing” social media are the feeling of loneliness, dissatisfaction, and frustration. I first discovered a social media platform during my elementary school years and I have first started chatting within this new realm to my curiosity and fascination and I was enjoying it more than I should. Though, I began bearing the thought that: “I don’t really care that much about social media and will not re-immerse myself in the platform,” but very quickly I began to accept the importance of using social media, as I am part of the Gen Z community, whose life is surrounded in consuming and participating in digital media activities. In turn, it’s been discovered by Oberlo.ca in their blogs that states “90.4% of Millennials uses social media frequently vs. 77.5% of Gen X uses social and 48.2% of Baby Boomers uses social media” (Mohsin, 2020). As such, I realized how important social media is to me. Yet, I am still not active in posting any new content within the platforms that I have acquired, but I have been commenting and replying to other people’s videos and posts in sharing my point of view regarding a particular topic. As a result, I’ve been using social media just as a personal side hobby, but I still feel the pressure and emotional struggles regarding participating too much within social media.
By participating on social media it serves as a new way for participating and enacting community services. The purpose of social media was to create a virtual online place where users can continue collaborating on large projects, hosting events, and meet new people just like by participating in community gatherings, services, and clubs in real life! There is one difference between online community participation versus real life community services, is the sensations of witnessing another humanistic friend. The wonders and physical jokes playing on each other is lost within the online world, as such, the reality of the situation sets in even when the user accomplishes a significant task, they feel all the more alone. In turn, another study by Cigna.com found “Generation Z (adults ages 18-22) is the loneliest generation and claims to be in worse health than older generations” (Polack, 2018). Though, they also commented that “Social media use alone is not a predictor of loneliness; respondents defined as very heavy users of social media have a loneliness score (43.5) that is not markedly different from the score of those who never use social media (41.7)” (Polack, 2018). Notably, despite my infrequent use of social media, I feel all the more lonelier, thus my thirst for wanting a trustworthy person to talk to grows. Even though, I like the ability to hide my identity as much as possible when participating online, it’s still a metaphoric persona of myself. Currently, I’ve been wondering whether I should leave and refrain from using social media for a while, but I just cannot seem to do it.
The growing loneliness burden of social media is a major consequence of the dominating social media spectrum, but the actual capitalist affordances is what’s been plaguing the platforms since their acquisitions by wealthy businesses. The many political discussions, comments, and authoritative actions has led to the frustrations of many, as the platform is just another beneficial playground for them to play on. As a result, an anonymous user was interviewed by CNN by their abilities to get off of Facebook and is encouraging everyone else to take part: “when these are the only stimuli delivered by our social media, we can end up living in a state of perpetual paranoia and rage…So, whether you want to be a more responsible citizen, or simply a happier person, you owe it yourself to get off Facebook any way you can” (Rushkoff, 2018). However, not all of us are capable with letting go of social media, because we still hold them as the only place where we can still interact with our friends, whom we met in real life and it is still a form of communication that we can use to maintain the relationships between us. The filtration of voices described by José van Dijck and Thomas Poell as “the tendency of mass media is to present themselves as neutral platforms that fairly represent different public voices and opinions, whereas in fact they operate as filters through which some people get more exposure than others” (Van Dijck & Poell, 2013). That is to say, it’s just a factor in the normalization of social media practices, where the platform is sought as a precise quantifiable algorithms by investors, while users want to preserve the freedom of expression and communication among friends within the platform.
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Mohsin, M. (2020, August 6). 10 SOCIAL MEDIA STATISTICS YOU NEED TO KNOW IN 2021 [INFOGRAPHIC] [web log]. https://www.oberlo.ca/blog/social-media-marketing-statistics.
Polack, E. (2018, May 1). New Cigna Study Reveals Loneliness at Epidemic Levels in America. Cigna Newsroom | New Cigna Study Reveals Loneliness at Epidemic Levels in America. https://www.cigna.com/about-us/newsroom/news-and-views/press-releases/2018/new-cigna-study-reveals-loneliness-at-epidemic-levels-in-america.
Rushkoff, D. (2018, March 21). I ditched Facebook in 2013, and it’s been fine. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/21/opinions/ditching-facebook-rushkoff/index.html.
Van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding Social Media Logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v1i1.70
March 8, 2021
TIL: Promoters, Patreon, and e-Commerce
Network communities such as social media has been criticised as a negative change in society, because of the loss in the values of large community gatherings and important meetings with others. In turn, users commonly only portray a virtual personified avatar of themselves when participating online. Despite the criticisms, it’s still important to begin participating in forming or joining already established online communities, because of the adoption of social media as a new mode of communication and collaboration. The introduction of the modern Web 2.0 allows freedom and the anonymity to engage with others, hence, users are less shy as they let their avatars personify themselves. Regardless, “[t]he Web slices our interests-and target demographics-more thinly than newspapers, trade journals, or radio shows have ever been able to do before” (Barefoot & Szabo, 2009). In other words, the web allows the specific identification of groups of people particularly the rise and growth of social media communities. In fact, the formations of the many custom “Wikipedia” type articles and websites was formed by the gatherings of likeminded users who are fans of a particular medium in seeking to comprise the important information and manage the site as a group. Bulbapedia.com is an example of a “fan-site” formed by the gatherings of Pokémon fans in documenting various information of all the different types of products by the growing franchise. The site holds importance to any users that are fans of the franchise and it’s credited as the most reliable by the standards of the online community and fans alike.
The freedom in formation of specific community groups within various social media platforms not only allows for the ease of collaboration in sharing experiences and information of a specific medium, but also affects the style of communication. The many abbreviations of words among the invention of new words to capture a significant moment a user experiences is an example of the methods used by social media users in changing up the established language. Though, the main type of communication users likes to use is jokes. Furthermore, “[Social Media] might be distinguishable from past industry game-changers…to specifically target consumers from many angles based on retrieved data, yet one could still argue that it is simply augmenting how the comedy industry has always kept itself alive, i.e., with new communication mediums” (Krefting & Baruc, 2015). Memes is one popular example of a comedic format online community uses to share their response to another’s comment or give a comedic context and visual regarding their experience in real life. Each specific meme’s visual is of an already popular medium, but the online community attributed the image with new meaning and context. In turn, every meme is unique and embodies its own guidelines, values and purposes. Additionally, the unexpected occurrences and repetitive tropes are welcomed by the online communities. The rise of the “Helix Fossil” trope was created by the Twitchplays.Pokémon community with the repetitive phenomenon being embraced by the users in acknowledging the continuous habit of clicking on the Helix Fossil for no apparent reason. Though, they quickly treated it as a significant factor as they progressed through the game of Pokémon Red and Blue in identifying that fossil as a mythical “god” for motivational humor. Comedy is the forefront of online communications with new memes, words, phrases, and unexpected events representing the changes in relation to the established value of language in society.
By knowing the importance and values that is shaped by the online society allows for easier marketing practices for both users and major large corporations alike. The acknowledgment of the trends and phrases used would help anyone’s personal content creations become more noticeable to others. As such, one key aspect of marketing personal content creations within the online realm is “Don’t neglect social [search engine optimization]” (Kristina, 2012). Adding tags, #hashtagphrases, and links to other popular community sources mentioned, among other viral topics/content etc. will help direct user traffic to your specific content in which identifies in having similar group of topics and style among others. Not only does it make it easier for you to identify the different content you have created, but you are taking advantage of the search ability feature of the Internet to automatically promote your content. Any search engine now will return the most popular articles, links and content first based on the online users “clicks” or traffic gatherings. Therefore, you can adopt that feature in your own way, by simply identifying the key viral topics and phrases that is most related to the purpose of your content.
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Barefoot, D., & Szabo, J. (2009). Friends with benefits : a social media marketing handbook (1st ed.). No Starch Press.
Krefting, R., & Baruc, R. (2015). A new economy of jokes?: #Socialmedia #Comedy. Comedy Studies, 6(2), 129–140. https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2015.1083165
Nimble, K. of. (2012, April 9). 10 Social Media Strategies for Your Next Campaign [web log]. https://www.nimble.com/blog/10-successful-social-media-campaign-tips/.
March 13, 2020
TIL: Disrupting Traditional Journalism - Freelance Writing & Self-Promotion
The sudden popularity and explosion of various social media platforms significantly alters the traditional lifestyles and interactions within society. People are now talking, texting, posting and communicating using this new form of innovation, in which, only helps the notice and increase the embodiment of the online realm by the introduction of social media. The process in receiving notifications about the latest events, political actions and endorsements, and the overall news within society is changing to encompass the significance of the online society in order to stay relevant. In turn, journalists immediately joined the social media realm as a means to continuously promote their content to stay afloat, but after a while they realized the internal purpose of the platform is just a more efficient mode of communication, as such, they altered their actions to fully take advantage of that discovery (PBSoffbook, 2012). As a result, the digital online realm is progressing rapidly to be the new main primary source of communication and information resource, with the “printing press” of newspapers rapidly in decline. In fact, journalism remains a major revenue stream for the political capitalist society, with freelance writing of digital media and product reviews becoming the new forms of journalistic professions. Writing in any context and style has changed with social media platforms, since formal professional writers must also be aware of communication styles, context and know the algorithms behind the platforms. Freelance writing is an example of a new professional writing style that combines the knowledge of the online communication with formal writing context to generate an accurate description of a specific television program, movie, video games, or general retail products. It is meant to still contain the main purpose of being informative in sharing the latest “news” within society, but within the realm of the digital world.
However, not all journalists appreciate the changes made with the sudden revolution brought about by the social media spectrum. The many user comments posted under or tagged within their own posts, certain journalists may find it infuriating, though the individual users did not meant to cause any harm. The New York Times: Bret Stephens’s Twitter abuse is an example of how the mistreatment of the social media platforms led to misunderstanding and personal attacks.
“The Alleged Topic: Twitter is like porn in that it allows people to give in to their most base impulses, free of consequence. Bret Stephens, as a thoughtful man of refined intellect, wants no part in such a crass pit of voyeurism, abuse, and collapsed context. This is why Bret Stephens would like to announce his permanent retirement from Twitter.” “The Actual Topic: Twitter is like porn in that it makes Bret Stephens feel bad for reasons he seems unwilling or unable to articulate”
(Feinberg, 2019)
In turn, journalists who are unfamiliar with the new online platforms and social media will experience similar abuse and mistreatment, but it is important to note that it is their own responsibilities in misunderstanding the context within the social media platforms. The alleged topic is a dramatic rewrite of the actual topic that is from Bret Stephen’s personal perspective of what the online users are saying about his work. In reality, it is his own hatred and incomprehension of the evolving social media streams. The many violence and mistreatment by professional writers were mainly caused by their own lack of understanding of the platforms, but many other societal and political values, such as being underpaid and lacking rights as an author regarding personal, religious, and race, contribute to the issue as well.
Professional writing and journalistic broadcasting within the social media spectrum does not mix well for another reason, with the style and context of the social media platforms is more informal in lacking any social background to support individual posts. Referencing an informative news outlet or review online is still claim to be untrustworthy by academics, even though nothing has significantly changed, but the context and environment the information is posted in relegates it to be questionable in its credentials. Notably, Buzzfeed began as a regular social media platform giving other users to use another platform to communicate in sharing experiences with each other, then later branched out to become an online news report. As a result, the platform struggles to maintain their new service branch as “BuzzFeed News has to build up its credibility the same way USA Today did. And we do that by doing serious stories one at a time. (Participant D)” (Tandoc Jr. & Wen Foo, 2018). Branching out to become their own journalistic news site to stay profitable while managing the main services of the site is a factor in addressing the change in communication and economic systems of society. Yet, their own origins and goals is the obstacle that is holding them back in promoting their news service as a success. Therefore, social media and journalistic studies does not mix well, because of the informal social context of the platform that was meant for individual groups in sharing content as leisure and entertainment. In contrast, to the formal and serious addressment of journalistic news reports as a reliable source of information regarding significant societal events. In a way, news reports and professional writing in any format and context within the social media spectrum needs to be treated with the same legitimacy and validation as traditional printed news source. Writing for the online world is part of the future digital media network endeavors.
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Brown, K. (2012). The Impact of Twitter on Journalism | Off Book | Pbs Digital Studios. YouTube. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9xI-kAE8A.
Feinberg, A. (2019, September 4). New York Times Columnists vs. the Haters. The Slatest. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/09/it-didnt-start-with-the-bedbugs.html.
Tandoc, E., & Foo, C. (2018). Here’s What BuzzFeed Journalists Think of Their Journalism. Digital Journalism, 6(1), 41–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2017.1332956