EXTREME!-ists

The Internet is great in bringing people with like-minded thoughts and opinions together, giving them a platform to express their shared love. If you’ve ever used Tumblr, that’s pretty much half of it-people all fangirling over their favourite tv shows or movies. 

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But there is a dark side to this- just as people can join together to discuss their love of my little pony, they can just as easily join together to form hate groups, and find people with like minded hatred. Hate groups have expanded from small domains on the Internet to pages on social media sites such as Facebook.  By incorporating hate groups on social media it makes it easier than ever for people to join and to target potential members.

I personally have seen a number of ‘hate’ groups pop up on Facebook recently, a ‘Cancer is funny because people die’ one pop’s to mind. It’s hard to tell through online hate groups if people are being serious with their claims or are simply trying to cause a stir and make people angry. 

 

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Extremist groups are “any ideology or political act far outside the perceived political centre of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards. “ This means extremist groups can be a part of a registered political party. Take the Australia First Party for example. The Australia First Party is an extreme right wing political party, (making it extremist) whose policies including limiting immigration and abolishing multiculturalism.  Besides having their website made using  Comic Sans

(how can anyone take anything written in Comic Sans seriously?) 

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My face exactly when I see Comic Sans.


No.

The Australia First party has failed to make any huge impact online, with just over 200 likes on Facebook. 

 

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Howard Rheingold has a utopian view of virtual communities and the way they benefit our lives.  This allows people from across the world to share their views without ever leaving their house. This aids in the creation of hate groups because your privacy is protected. The community and the people around you are unaware of what you are up to or what you are supporting, you can easily find people with similar extremist views that may not exist in your community.

Personally, I can only see the dark side of social media growing in the future. Society as a whole is becoming more and more desensitised and more hate groups will emerge as people ‘like’ them as inappropriate jokes. Extremist political parties will continue and increase their presence on social media to recruit members. Social media means people can have secret identities online and cannot physically see the people they are offending, making it all the easier to do so.  

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Catfish

Online we can be whoever we want to be, there are no barriers stopping us. There’s this really interesting documentary called Catfish about a young man who meets a family from across the country online. (Spoiler alert!) After a nine month relationship he discovers the family he knows are not what they seem -all the family and friends profiles in which he’d been interacting with, including the nineteen year old girl he fell in love with, were all run by the same person, a middle-aged woman. You can never be one hundred per cent sure with what you’re getting online, and whether that be with a potential girlfriend or eBay purchase you should always be weary.  

(I may have just watched Catfish and wanted to link it somehow, this is my blog, I make my own rules.)

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 If we think of virtual communities (and the creation of them) we are likely to think about programs such as The Sims or Second Life. Where you able to create a world, create yourself and interact with those in it. Programs like Second Life in particular aren’t just about replicating consumer societies with a better-looking version of yourself as an avatar; it’s about reinventing yourself completely. You can be as controversial, confidently or slutty as you like because in the end nobody really knows who you are, and if that personality doesn’t work out, it’s all too easy to reinvent a new one. Through these virtual communities we are able to be everything we’re too afraid to be in the real world and experience society differently. (Just like the woman in Catfish was doing, it links!)

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Jean Baudrillard discusses the idea of Hyperreality as something where users are unable to distinguish between true reality and created simulations of this. But in Baudrillard’s discussions he explains how users are able to blur the lines so far between reality online and offline that they start to create symbols and meanings for things that don’t actually exist. When I think of this, I think of popular games such as Farmville, where the user knows they gain no true value from playing in the real world, but lose sleep, time and real money playing to gain a status symbol that means nothing. Rheingold explores how wonderful virtual communities can be. How they surpass time and space limitations and help make our lives better. Virtual communities are great, I often wonder how many of my friends I would still speak to if I wasn’t on Facebook; but I think virtual communities aid in the creation of hyperrealities, where now friendships stay alive by the mutual like of posts.    

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I guess the dying question is ‘will we all end up living on second life?’ and I say no. Nothing beats human interaction, the feeling of physically being around people and having real world experiences. However, new innovative products such as the Durex ‘Fundawear’ (underwear for long distance lovers, that allows each pair to feel touch through an app –watch the video) make it seem as if physical real world reactions will slowly fade away.

We are now able to shop, work and study online; things we never dreamed of years ago. It does leave us wondering where the future will take us, and how far it will surpass our wildest dreams. 

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But who knows really...

No, I read it on Wikipeida. It's true.

Produsage 

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Like we’ve discussed here before on SocialRamblings the Internet has made it easier than ever for society to achieve things. You no longer need to have a high degree in order to write for an encyclopaedia, no, all you need is Internet access. Wikipedia anyone? 

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This user lead content creation we all use today is called produsage. Wikipedia is one of the best and most well known examples of produsage in today’s society. Anyone with Internet access, educated or not, are able to add to and edit the worlds largest encyclopaedia, and for the most part it works. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t love Wikipedia. If a science-y article is too wordy to get your head around, try Simple Wikipedia. Produsage allows the consumer to become the producer and the resulting product is therefore what the consumer wants. It’s all the relevant information in one place, with easy to access links to related topics and references. Perhaps the best merit of websites like Wikipedia are the ease in which the information can be updated. If a new law has passed, record has been reached or a celebrity wins an award that information can be changed immediately. There’s no more waiting for a new edition, its there almost instantly. 

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The ease in which produsage allows anybody contribute may however, be its biggest flaw. Anyone can contribute anything, doesn’t mean that everything they contribute is going to be right. You can’t measure how much a user truly knows about a topic by their contributions, most of the time, if its there, you sort of believe it. Melbourne Comedian Dave Thornton acknowledges this, and makes jokes suggesting that each user should be given a specific font based on their intelligence level, a doctor, Times New Roman, an idiot, Wingdings.
Everyone’s heard of or seen something on Wikipedia that’s not right; some are more obvious then others. It’s a new age problem with produsage. Giving everyone access gives anyone the opportunity to change the program for better or worse. This may lead to an overall distrust of the system or program. Every teenager has heard (and ignored) their teachers tell them Wikipedia is not a reliable reference. 

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Wikipedia isn’t the only source of produsage on the Internet. Blogs and YouTube videos count too. It’s user based content creation. The parody’s and reviews all create a web of discussion, where users are able to post and explore their responses. This fits in with Henry Jenkins views on participatory culture. Participatory culture is essentially produsage. In participatory culture members contribute together and feel as if their contributions are both valued and important. Participatory culture also strongly supports creation by others. If you think about popularity of websites like YouTube that’s what you’re finding. A web of people, creating their own content and sharing it with the world.  

 

As for the future of produsage? I can’t see it slowing down. I think produsage will only continue to get bigger and bigger and fill more spaces online. 

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The one about trying to be young and hip

Social Media and politics

What is the best and easiest way for old people to seem young and hip and connect with young people?  Through social media of course.

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This is the strategy enforced by many politicians in their endeavors to reach and connect with younger audiences. The way in which it allows society to watch media releases and learn about candidates in their own time, makes it seem as if this is the way of the future. 

 

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If the increase in popularity of social media in politics continues it will change the way society views its candidates. Old-fashioned principles and methods will no longer stand as viable options in social media; nobody wants to watch a half hour speech about a policy, its boring and doesn’t fit into our online attention spans. In social media, we need things to not only be capturing our attention away from the other million things the internet has to over but quick and easy to watch, read or follow. Ex Australian Prime Minister John Howard is an excellent example of poor social media tactics. His YouTubevideos are long, uninteresting and did not attract views. Howard and his team in charge of social media did not try to use their media platforms to their full abilities.

But even if they did, it raises questions if it was even possible for Howard to be popular on social media due to his traditional, conservative demeanour. Just like everyone else on social media politicians need to be stand out, individual, easy to understand and humorous in order to be popular online. US President Barack Obama has truly mastered this. He appeals strongly to a younger generation due to relevant presence on social media. 

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 Obama (and his people, more likely) use social media in the appropriate ways for each platform. Tumblr is my favourite example of this. Tumblr is an interesting form of social media; it’s not a typical wordy blog, you reblog (or share) things you like (mostly images) and its very light hearted and fun. Obama uses Tumblr is this way. His blog is light hearted. It’s informative but its still fun. It seems as Obama (‘s people) is using his Tumblr just like everyone else is, making him seem very connected with his audience. This contrasts to Obamas opponent Mitt Romney whose Tumblr blog falls on the more serious and political scale. There are no ‘fun’ posts; it is a blog purely run for a political purpose. Obama’s Tumblr is has been created to make himself appealing to the Tumblr audience, and it works.

 

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A pop-culture reference of the hit tv series Parks and Recreation reblogged on the Obama Tumblr.

  

The power of politics in social media can be explored though Howard Rheingold's study on virtual communities. Social media and virtual communities find strength in the weak ties created by this type of networking. This means that politicians are able connect to audiences through social media without really doing anything personal. Blogs and comments can be produced by anybody, and one video message is able to reach millions of people; we no longer have to be somewhere to hear a message.

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I think it’s always funny when older people try be young and hip on the internet. So it’s interesting to see how politicians, who are typically older, survive in the young and hip world of social media. Is it something that can influence their results?