Social networking, the obsession for all ages..

Why is everybody so obsessed with Social Network sites? Firstly Myspace and then Facebook. I am, I have to admit, the definition of a Facebook addict, I check it daily, if not a few times a day, update my status on a regular basis and bring a camera out with me at all times to upload pictures to my facebook account at any opportunity. But where did it all come from? Well I originally had a myspace account and this is where the obsession began for me, spending hours at my computer adding friends, making my profile look pretty, commenting on peoples pictures and wall posts, trying to portray an image of myself that i wanted people to see. Dannah Boyd refers to myspace as being 'essential to being seen as cool at school'.
 Facebook then took over, everybody left myspace and their 'pretty' profiles, to go onto a boring blue and white website that iinitially all i thought you could do was 'throw sheep' at people, what was it all about? As more of my friends left myspace and joined facebook I thought id give it a go. I now haven't checked my Myspace account in a matter of years and am fully dedicated to the once boring, blue and white Facebook. But what is it about these Social Network sites that hook us in? Well in all honesty I believe its the concept of 'being nosey' everybody loves to sit in the street and people watch so why not do it from the luxury of your house through your laptop? You can find out in a matter of minutes what your friends are doing today all through the wonderful realms of Facebook. Also allowing your friends to know what you are 'doing'. My emphasis on doing is apparent because i think there is a thin line between Facebook status updates and the truth. Very few update there status with 'just having a cuppa and a biscuit' it is more like announcing something you want people to know 'out on the lash with boys/girls'. But then there is what I like to call the 'cringe factor' of Facebook, when they feel the need to publicly display their dirty laundry- why oh why would you tell the world your heartbreaking secrets? keep them to yourself.
 Facebook is something that seems to have captured people of all ages, it was once mainly a teen based site but now seems to have attracted a larger audience. It is a brilliant way of contacting old friends and family. But again isn't it really just an excuse to be nosey.
 There is, of course, now Twitter i am unable to speak about this in much detail as i have not yet given in to the twitter bandwagon so don't really know what its about but i do know that a lot of my friends on Facebook are gradually moving over to Twitter. So will Twitter take over and Facebook but left in the dark like Myspace was..?

Second life- What is the fascination?

Before starting this course i had only briefly heard of Second Life, it was not something i had any interest in being part of and therefore did not know all that much about it. I had heard in the news or possibly just in the rumour mill that it had caused marriages to fail, people to lie and deceive, but it was just a game, could a virtual game cause this much trouble? Well in workshop 23, we were asked to set ourselves up a second life account, have a look at it, explore it and see how we found it. Well i can safely say that was the one and only time i have or will be visiting Second Life.
 The most enjoyable thing about it was creating yourself a character, being able to look as you wish, bigger boobs, a smaller bum even reducing the size of your nose or mouth. So i set my character up to be this beautiful slim 'perfect' girl. After my character was complete i decided to do as Simon had asked and explore Second Life, see if i could find out what all the hype was about. I did some exploring, i learnt to fly and transport myself to different areas and then i braved the scary concept of actually talking to people. The majority of people that i came across were older men, although there was also a lot of women, on this particular occasion it was men that i cam across most. So i would start a discussion, about anything really and then lead it to possibly their age and what they enjoy about Second Life. Now for example one man that i was talking to, his character looked around mid twenties, tall, dark and handsome. When i found out how old he was, he was 56. Is this not the deceit that i previously mentioned? OK, so i had modified myself to get rid of a bit of excess weight but i hadn't knocked 30 odd years off my age. The concept of talking to this man then seemed wrong, why would a 22 year old girl want to talk to a 56 year old man that she didn't know?
 When searching Second Life on the search engine 'Bing' i found it strange to find that the first link that came up was a Marital Affair Dating Link, for 'people looking for additional uncomplicated excitement' - was this what Second Life was all about? I  thought the idea of Second Life was an improvement on Internet chat rooms because you get an idea of what the person actually looks like, It seems i was wrong as people ,understandably, change their appearance for the better.

 I think the concept of Second Life is good and if people feel that this is a good way to interact with people then that is perfectly acceptable but it isn't something i will be joining as a leisure activity now or in the near future.

                                                                                 Real Life.

      

                                                                              Second Life.

Facebook and The unwanted friend

In this blog I wanted to look at something that has become quite a talked about subject within my friendship group recently, the Facebook phenomenon and people that, you may have seen but don’t actually know, adding you on Facebook. Why because you meet somebody once or have briefly looked in their direction do they feel the need to then add you on Facebook and view all the details of your personal life. I understand that we have the option to ignore their request if we wish but I don’t understand the need for them to add us in the first place. When looking at this i went back and looked over the acrticle in our handbook ' Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of networked Publics in Teenage Social Life' Dannah Boyd's article, she dicusses the fact that when asked it was found 'teens join Myspace to maintain connections with their friends' so why are people adding people that they dont know? When thinking about this I then decided to go onto my profile and have a look at my friends list, in doing so, I noticed that some of these people I had added and I could see the details of their lives and what they are doing. I then decided to go through and delete the numerous amounts of people that I really didn’t care what they were doing so why I was friends with them I didn’t know. After going through and deleting old school friends, friends of friends and even family members that I have not seen or spoke to in years. I realised I had actually deleted nearly 100 of my ‘friends’. So maybe I was as bigger culprit as any for adding/accepting people I barely knew.

 I then looked at it in another way, the fact that on Facebook, people put their daily routine and it would be visible to all of their ‘friends’. So for example, ‘Amanda Bowe is going on holiday tomorrow.’ Everybody knows that I will be away from my house, that my car will be there for a week untouched and also my house will be empty. You may as well put a sign on your front door saying ‘Away for a week, help yourself’. Yet we don’t see this a strange thing to broadcast over Facebook. Ok, so I understand that the chances of the people you have on Facebook as ‘friends’ robbing your house is unlikely but if we continue to add people that we really no nothing about, how do we know? The reason I made the decision to delete all of these people from my Facebook is when looking at their status updates I realised that I didn’t have any interest in what they were doing and I certainly didn’t want them to know what I was doing. Of course there are my close friends that I like to know what their plans are or see the photos that they have uploaded for as for the others I simply don’t care.

 I recently discovered a better way to ignore these friend requests without them knowing, you just never accept or decline their request, therefore they are not offended by your rejection but you don’t have to allow them into your Facebook life. As a result of this I currently have 12 unaccepted friend requests.

Digital divides.

I am writing this blog in my media workshop today, Simon has decided to give us some time to create the blogs. We have been asked to look at and discuss Digital divides.

We have been given a handout which states that Digital Divides refers to the split between those who have access to digital tools and the Internet and those who don't. This term has come to be discussed in reference to a number of percieved situations of inequality.

The Digital divide can be arranged based on gender, income and race groups, and by location. It refers to gaps in ownership of, or regular access to, a computer. As access to internet became a central part of computing, the terms usage shifter, it now refers to not only gaps in computers but also access to the internet.

Looking at The idea of the Social divide. After some searching, and help from Simon. I found a great case study on govcom.org it looks at the two internet servers in The United Arab Emirate. It shows how the majority of people within The United Arab Emirates have restricted internet access, only allowing them to access things that the government want them to see. In Dubai, it is seen as a more western side of the country and therefore the restriction is much less. Allowing them to access almost anything they wish through their internet server. The thought of one country having two internet servers, both being very different and allowing two completely different types of internet browsing is quite strange, we would think one rule would fit all? Most of UAE is serviced by Etisalat which is 70% dial up, whereas Dubai is servised DIC-NET which is a broadband server.

Govcom.org tried the internet server that had the restrictions built into it to see if there was a way of gaining access to the things that were banned. It showed that the thing that were banned were things such as, websites containing alcohol and drugs, dating and Gay and Lesbian websites. It looks to me as though the restrictions could have a link to religion. It seems that many of the things that are blocked are also things that are frowned upon by their religion.

Another example of Social divide I have also found is a study done by National Telecommunications and Information Administration, within this study it shows that People with a disability are only half as likely to have access to the Internet as those without a disability, 21.6% compared to 42.1%.
They also look at how different races and ethnic origins within households have different internet access. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have maintained the highest level of home Internet access at 56.8%. Blacks and Hispanics, at the other end spectrum experience lowest household internet rates at 23.5% and 23.6%, respectively.

There are large Global divides in developed and non developed countries. In many developed counties, the growth of broadband is largely due to competition and declining prices, it is also made possible thanks to available infrastructure. The main digital divides are quite relevant in areas, including fixed-line telephone connections, broadband and mobile phone telecommunications. Less developed countries are catching up but are still quite far behind.
However, mobile phone markets in many low-income countries in Asia and Africa record the strongest growth, with India being the world's fastest-growing market.

Copyright.

This week in our digital media workshop we looked at copyright. We were split into 3 different groups all looking at different sections of copyright.


Group 1: In defence of copyright – the publishers position
Imagine you are a publisher or a creator of content. Why is copyright important to you? Why is it necessary? What problems does the internet pose for content publishers and copyright? What kinds of copyright infringement are there?
Some areas/sources to investigate:
• Copyright and the World Trade Organisation.
• Global copyright enforcement.
• Andrew Keen – The Cult of the Amateur
• The Pirate Bay and other copyright enforcement cases.
• What is fair use?

Group 2: Copyright and participatory culture
What problems does copyright pose for participatory culture? What arguments can you find for a change in copyright laws due to these problems? Use examples to demonstrate the arguments.
The Free culture argument – (Look at Lessig, Doctorow, Benkler, Leadbetter - see pg 44 in the handbook)

Group 3: Solutions?
What solutions are there to the problems discussed above? What solutions have already been attempted and how successful have they been?
. For example:
• The technological fix – DRM, Bandwidth throttling
• Open Source – the commons & capitalism
• The legislative fix – 3 strikes, tiered internet provision (Net Neutrality)
• Digital Britain Report

We chose to be group 3 and therefore were looking at The Solutions. We decided the easiest way was to take a section each, look at the solutions and then meet to discuss and put them all together. Dale and I were looking at The technological fix - DRM, Bandwidth throttling. Dale chose to look at DRM and i was looking at Bandwidth. We researched each area and together and then planned out what we were going to present. When meeting up with the group we all discussed our ideas and were happy to present it to the rest of the group. Unfortunately when we got to our workshop Tom had some bad news and he had to leave the lecture, therefore taking the backbone of our presentation. Group 1 were not present so we did not see a presentation In defence of copyright , the publishers position. We watched Group twos presentation which was interesting and showed some good examples of Copyright and participatory culture. We then went up to present ours, it was a little, or a lot, unorganised due to the fact Tom had had to go and it kind of all fell apart when we stood infront of the class. Simon finished the workshop by going through the information in slightly more detail and I now, nearly, fully understand all aspects of Copyright.

Psychogeography

Prior to the campaign mentioned in the previous post, one of our earlier tasks this year was to create a psychogeography project. This was one of my favourite tasks this year.
Psychogeography is the study of the emotional and psychological effects of our environment. This involves going out on a dérive (French for "to drift") which is to explore an environment you may be unfamilar with, with no pre-determined destination, with only chance and coincidence as a guide. The concept itself was introduced in 1955 by Guy Debord who defined it as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals".
For this project we were to get into groups. Again, I worked with Kate, Kelly and Dale. We then looked into different methods and ideas in order to come up with our own particular dérive. As none of us were from Leicester, apart from Dale, Leicester was relatively unknown and unexplored to us. Eventually we came up with the idea to roll a die to determine our destination. The way we did this was to catch a bus, after purchasing a day ticket, and then roll the die. Whatever number the die came up with was the number of stops we would wait before getting off the bus and catching the next one we could find.
Our first bus was from the city centre. Upon catching it we rolled the die and funnily enough it only came up with '1'. This meant we only moved a short way before we had to depart from the bus. The next available bus stop was at the train station, where we caught the 54. We rolled the die again, which this time gave us the number '6'. This brought us into a completely unknown area to myself and we waited a very, very long time for the next available bus. The next available bus happened to be the 54 again which we caught and got off after 3 or 4 stops, which brought us to an area between Thurnby Lodge and Evington. The next bus was the 38A. After five stops we coincidentally ended up in the neighbourhood Dale grew up in. This was completely by chance and very surprising. Armed with our video camera, which we had been using to record the journey, Dale entered his mum's house, where he used to live, while Kate, Kelly and I waited at the bus stop for the next available bus.
The final bus, the 38, took us back into town and thus completed our dérive. Our next task was to edit together the footage into a video, using Windows Movie Maker, to present to the class the next week. We chose to speed up the footage where we were on the bus, using a video effect that can only be described as "sketchy" - this was to convey the fact that we only had a relatively sketchy idea of Leicester itself and the bus trip in which we were taking. The song we used was 'King of the Road' as buses in Leicester seem to dominate the traffic.
We were happy with our video and confidently presented it to the class the next week.

Campaign project

We started this term by devising our own campaigns inspired by battlefront.co.uk.
We chose to do a campaign on something that is very relevant within youth culture. Our campaign was based on 'Real beauty'. To do this we got into groups, I was with 3 other people - Kate, Dale and Kelly. At first we brainstormed various ideas until eventually coming up with the concept of real beauty. This, in turn, was inspired by a similar campaign by Dove.
Our task was to take photos of our own friends and discuss with them what they would change about their physical appearance, whilst also encouraging them to appreciate their natural beauty. We were shocked to see that people we know and love for who they are would want to change such things as their nose, lips or hair in such drastic ways.
We then edited together a video, incorporating all the photos and their responses. Each photo would be displayed for around 5 seconds, with a caption that contained that particular person's response. The video itself started with a short introduction containing various facts and statistics, such as "80% of women say that the images of women on TV and movies makes them feel insecure", a fact we were also shocked to learn.
Eventually the video leads on to a new set of photos, this time of plastic surgery gone wrong or to the extreme. This was a series of unnatractive photos with the hideous results of surgery and botched operations all in the attempt to look "beautiful".
We asked our friends if they would go to these extremes to ammend their appearance, with mixed results. Some said they would opt for plastic surgery, whilst others said they wouldn't. From a personal point of view, I would say that none of the subjects used would even need to take such steps to improve themselves were all already much more beautiful than the ugly women used in the photos of the botched operations.
The next task was to find a suitable soundtrack for our video, which was to be uploaded onto YouTube and shown to the class the following week. We, again, brainstormed several ideas
for songs, particularly those about beauty. After ideas including James Blunt's 'Beautiful' and Christina Aguilera's 'Beautiful' we finally decided to go for another appropriately named song called 'Ugly' by the Sugababes.
In the final part of the video we used another series of photos, this time of ourselves as well as our friends in their element; having fun with no concerns to the things they dislike about themselves yet still looking beautiful as they are. The lyrics of the song we thought fit in well with the subject matter, e.g. "People are all the same, we only get judged by what we do, personality refelects name, and if I'm ugly then so are you."
We chose this song as it wasn't as clichéd as the other choices.
We were happy with our finished product, and this is what we came up with:

Link