The Impacts of Social Media

The impacts of Social Media are multidimensional.  In the modern world, Social media has become an integral part of people’s lives. Apart from networking people from around the globe, it has become the most important source of breaking news. People no longer wait for the television to broadcast or the newspaper the print the news. In the age of social media, people can access  news from all over the world through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter etc, where news is spread all over the world with just a single click, in moments. (Amin & Thrift, 1995)

One of the boons of Social media is the increased level of interaction between people from various cultural and geographical backgrounds. McLuhan and Powers (1989) stated that with the advent of social networks, people are able to keep in touch with each other at their convenience irrespective of their geographical barriers. In simpler terms Social media has diminished the time and space constraints.

Apart from the social influences, Social media has had its fair share of influence in the field of politics as well. Ranging from the Iran elections, and Obama’s reelection for a second term as US President, and political unrests in Egypt, social media has transformed several political landscapes as well. (Grossman, 2009)

Further, social media has also rendered its invaluable contribution towards education and promoting the importance of literacy. Through the means of regular social networking, children often develop better communication skills and are often perceived to be more aware of their surroundings. With the growth of ICTs and the Internet, information is now readily available on a wide range of topics, which arms the users with facilities like never before.

Finally, Social media has also changed the dynamics of marketing as more and more companies are now inclined to communicating directly with their consumers than spend all their resources trying to produce advertisements on TV. Direct communication with the customers has helped them understand the needs of the people better making the marketing policies much more acceptable and consumer-centered. (Gefeb & Straub, 2004)

 

References

• Amin, A., and Thrift, N., eds., 1995. Globalization, Institutions, and Regional Development in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gefeb,D., and Straub, D. W., 2004. Consumer trust in B2C e-Commerce and the importance of social presence: experiments in e-Products and e-Services. Omega. 32 (6), pp. 407-424.
• Grossman,L., 2009. Iran's Protests: Why Twitter Is the Medium of the Movement. TIME. [PDF] [Online] Available at: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2011/cs4001_summer/documents/Time-Iran-Twitter.pdf [Accessed 10 December 2013]
• McLuhan, M. and Powers, B. R., 1989. The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21^st Century.New York: Oxford University Press.

 

 

Play?: Videogames and Gamification

The concept of gamification refers to the implementation of gaming mechanisms in user experience designs, thereby transforming a task into a game play. The idea is to draw the attention of the participants towards the task in the form of games, in order to accomplish the task with fun which makes learning easier (Koster, 2004). This is similar to adding points to the LinkedIn profile completion task for example.

The mechanism of gaming in it, whereby the network awards points according to the user’s information levels triggers the innate desires within a person to take the task as a sort of competition, which is important as well as entertaining. Thus, the sole purpose is to create challenges and then distribute rewards depending on the completion of those challenges. (Deterding, 2011)

Some of the advantages of gamification are its tendency to give direction and leadership to the workers, who work towards a common goal with a self constructed strategy just as in games. It encourages the participants to put in a better effort by inducing a sense of competition, whereby one can be left behind, just like in video games (McGonigal, 2011). Gamification empowers communities and brings people together through social networks or in work places. Apart from uniting the crowd, it gives them an objective and purpose, which justifies their existence. This Crowdsourcing is one of the biggest promises made by gamification. In management free companies, gamification gathers the input of the hundreds of employees towards a desired output by the means of collaborative tools.

While there are positive effects of gamification some of the negative examples of this theory is the phenomenon of edutainment, an idea that developed recently, where schools started educating people through the means of entertainment. This form of digitized education left the students without knowledge of core skills. (Zichermann, 2011)
References:

• Deterding, S., 2011. Meaningful play: Getting "gamification" right. Google TechTalk. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGCPap7GkY [Accessed 06 December 2013]
• Koster, R., 2004.  A theory of fun for game design. Phoenix, AZ: Paraglyph Press.
• McGonigal, J., 2011.  Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world.  New York, NY: Penguin Press
• Zichermann, G., 2011. Gamification by design: Implementing game mechanics in web and mobile apps.  New York, NY: O' Reilly Media.

 

 

Play: Digital Arts, Internet Memes and Spreadable

The terms “viral” and “memes” have a distinct set of meaning when it comes to the world of marketing and advertising. As suggested by Henry Jenkins, these terms are the biological metaphors designed to explain a certain media phenomenon. The way media content spreads through people and cultures, it has often been likened to that of a biological virus, which spreads throughout the body seamlessly. The kind of techniques used by the media in marketing and advertising nowadays such as the Word-of-Mouth marketing and other appealing mannerisms such as video content and musical mixes in order to attract the public attention towards a certain product is being referred to as the virus within the spreadable media. Henry Jenkins refers to this process as “guerrilla marketing, exploiting social networks, and mobilizing consumers and distributors”. (Jenkins, 2009)

DouglasRushkoff in his book highlights the functioning of the so called media virus. He argues that the media virus is similar to the pathogens that that travel within and affect our body. The content spreads among the people through sharing. These media contents contain underlying messages and meanings that are intended to infect the common minds in order to compel them towards a product that is being advertised (pp.9-10). For example, the endorsement of a certain product by our favorite celebrities often brainwashes us into buying the product. These ideological codes are termed as “memes”.

These memes or hidden messages with specific agendas were first likened to viruses and memes as in biological systems, by biologist Richard Dawkins who wanted to explain the cultural evolution through biological terms. He outlined that just like the pathogen and the human body, the society also evolves with the infusion of media encoded messages.

Dawkins’s theory was further seconded by Stephenson in 1992, when they pointed out how the human mind is vulnerable towards these media encoded messages with preset agendas, with examples like mass hysteria. Mass hysteria is a phenomenon wherein, panic spreads amongst a group of people due to the inception of panic in one person, almost like the way a virus spreads, only in this case the people have a role to play, like vehicles carrying the virus. (Neil Stephenson,1992)

Work: Crowdsourcing, Free Labour and the Californian Ideology

The California Ideology is a hybridization of cybernetics, free labour, and counterculture libertarianism. This ideology has been widely promoted by magazines such as the Wired and Mondo along with academic readings such as the books of Stewart Brand, Douglas Rushkoff, and Kevin Kelly among others. It was a systematic and analytical insight into the rapid growth of the Internet and its effect on the economy. In simpler terms the Californian ideology was a critical perception towards the technological neoliberalism that came with the expansion of the World Wide Web. The academic findings of the Californian ideology outlined a peculiar culture and highlighted the advancing technological arts, entertainment and media. The aim of the ideology was focused towards one goal only, which was to create a democracy in cyberspace where everyone was free to express themselves the way they wanted. (Barbrook & Cameron, 1995)

This phenomenon of free labour and Crowdsourcing that has been endorsed by the Californian ideology refers to the democratic participation of people as volunteers in order to complete an assigned task where a group of people contribute in their own small way leading to a greater result. (Jeff Howe, 2006)

This ideology was promoted through publications by the business class in the information technology market, which was a hybrid of the ideas of Marshall McLuhan along with some individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberal economics that gave birth to anti-statism and techno-utopianism. This new culture preached the principles of knowledge based economy through the exploitation of information that facilitates growth of wealth with the help of virtual communities across the Internet. (Best & Paterson, 2010)

Critics argue that although the Californian Ideology has empowered the organisations with increased wealth and growing network of business, it has classified the society into groups based on their socioeconomic conditions. The Californian ideology remains a form of reactionary modernism which has been seconded by Barbrook, who suggested that "American neo-liberalism seems to have successfully achieved the contradictory aims of reactionary modernism: economic progress and social immobility. Because the long-term goal of liberating everyone will never be reached, the short-term rule of the digerati can last forever." (Barbrook, 2000)

Panoptic Panics: Privacy, Security & Cyberwarfare

The concept of panopticism refers to the social theory of surveillance, where subjects are observed. According to Michael Foucault, how developed the theory of panopticism, it is a kind of an experiment conducted by the authority on its employees and prisoners, but monitoring them and their deeds continuously

JeremyBentham was the first to propose the concept of a panopticon when he proposed an observation tower inside a building to monitor the prisoners inside their cell walls with the purpose of increasing the security by facilitating more effective surveillance.

The fundamental role of panoptics is to pave the way for a transparent society where everyone would be watched in order to prevent them from being unlawful, unethical and immoral. It is often seen that people tend to put on their best behaviors when they are aware that they are being watched and will be held accountable for their mistakes. Hence panopticism provides an incentive to do well, and do the right things.

An example of this is the plenty of CCTV cameras around the workplace as well as social establishments, which have been designed to specifically discourage criminal activities. However, as encouraging and positive it looks, a transparent society created by panoptics has its downside. The challenges posed towards privacy and security is immense. The advent of digital devices such as object recognition, person recognition, biometrics, sensors are readily available nowadays and spying on others are easier than ever.

As pointed out by David Brin, due to this transparency, it has become harder than ever to main secrecy where necessary. An example of this is the case of WIKI LEAKS where documents relating to national security were released on the web with the help of panopticism theory, which almost resulted in a civil war. (Bateson et al., 2006)

The Digital mind/body: Investigate the Cultural Construction of Robot in Contemporary Western Culture

The magnitude of technological involvement in contemporary lifestyle has transformed our cultural and social surroundings, so much so that a human brain can be considered as a digital mind, like a robot for example.

 

Electronic gadgets such as cell phones, iPods, and computers have become an integral part of our daily life. Several surveys state that even a five year old child spends an average of six hours in front of an electronic screen, making them accustomed to the presence of digital media around them. Latest studies indicate that in the United States people almost doubled their online time between 2005 and 2009, and in the same period the online time of European people grew by a third and the unemployed individuals in the UK spent 45% of their leisure hours engaged in some sort of media and communication technology. (Richard Watson, 2010)

The advancement of communication technology and Cyberspace has left most of the Western World communicating through text messages and emails instead of traditional face to face conversations. This all round technological presence has affected the thought process and attitudes of mankind in such a way that they seemed to be programmed to think as robots, with a digital mind, For example, a person looking for information no longer approaches another human being next door, instead he/she uses Google for information.

Scientists who study the psychology of the brain believe that this type of habit and behaviours is most likely to influence the way people act and think. Famous Neuroscientist, Michael Merzenich suggests that a human brain is ‘plastic’ and that it reacts to any new stimulus. Simply put, this means that the human brain is likely to adapt to any new habit, hence turning into a digital mind/body when introduced to digital world long enough. This has been further explained by Professor Susan Greenfield, who states that digital involvement of people produces a blast of dopamine in prefrontal cortex and this affects the brain. Longer periods of involvement produces a blast so severe that it becomes unlikely to develop an original mind as the blast often compromises the reasoning ability of the brain. (Richard Watson, 2010: 7)

Hence, to summarise, the advancing technology and booming cyberspace are continually transforming the human-esque behaviours within the society and is creating a digital culture, converting mankind into breathing and walking robots.

 

The Dilemmas of Privacy & Identity Theft in Cyberculture

With the growing involvement of the Internet in the modern life, the pros and cons of Cyberculture are an intriguing issue to reflect upon. Along with several perks of being technology savvy and embracing the revolution of Cyberculture, crimes such as identity theft and invasion of privacy stand out as notable hindrances. This write up reflects on the issues of identity theft and lack of privacy amongst other cybercrimes such as theft, fraud, copyright infringement, and attacks.

A technology dependant life has left people vulnerable to certain technological crimes as the computer systems can be manipulated to design hacking and other cyber crimes. With computer information systems being an inseparable identity of modern life, it is thus essential to analyze both the risks and the advantageous opportunities of the Internet and computers, in order to minimize the risks.

IDENTITYTHEFT refers to the unauthorized obtaining of financial or legal information of a person and then utilizing it for a personal gain, in a way that secures the actual identity of the criminal. Several example of identity theft over the years have raised awareness and protection from organizations. In July, 2001, MSNBC.com reporter Bob Sullivan reflected on how his Social Security numbers, date of birth, driver’s license numbers, and credit card information was shared publicly in a chat room.

Individuals affected with identity theft usually deal with fraudulent financial transactions on personal accounts. Some eminent personalities that have experienced this particular cybercrime are Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, and Oprah Winfrey.

The lack of privacy is another popular cybercrime, which begs the question, whether anything is private anymore. Among the different ways of privacy invasion, spying through monitoring software, emails, internet cookies, search history etc. are extremely popular issues since the inception of a technology based life.