The Dark Side of Social Media

Much of this semesters work has discussed the role of virtual communities in today’s social media and their place in shaping the world of tomorrow. We can see how internet users are now beginning to feel empowered by the ability to share ideas and express their want for change as a community. While this is Rheingold’s utopian vision of the virtual community in action, there is however a dark side to social media. There will always be those who find ways to utilise technology to the benefit of their own unbefitting causes. Cyber-bullying is now a huge issue. For many years bullying has been a common theme in schools and workplaces alike, many of us have experienced it to some degree. However, due to the nature of social media sadly it has become increasingly difficult for the victims of bullying to escape the harassment. Of course when pictures or comments are posted on the internet it is virtually impossible to stop the spread of such information and it is very unfortunate that there are those in the community that use social media to make other’s lives miserable.  I did an earlier post about digital activism; extremist activist groups are now harnessing the internet as a tool to recruit followers, attack computer networks and access classified information from governments and organisations. The internet can be a haven for extremists and those with views that are suppressed or appropriately rejected by mainstream society; it is a place to build virtual communities all the same. This is a very worrying trend. I found it particularly interesting reading a University of Illinois web page on the recruitment practices of white extremist and white nationalist organisations on the internet. This article defines extremism as a “dogmatic intolerance, expressed mildly or violently, and inclines toward an inflexible obedience to an accepted authority, shaped by a common ideology or sense of group unity (Gardner, 1997)”. Ultimately there is an extremist neo-Nazi or white supremacist percentage of the population existing on these forums. They are people with a message of hate and the same fundamentalist racists who attempt to either deny or somehow justify the holocaust; which of course is absurd. After some research I think there is a strong nationalist portion of membership within an organisation such as Stormfront (one of the listed extremist web communities) who are not necessarily racist individuals but simply frustrated with the way some migrant groups have abused and insulted their communities. Because the ultra politically correct hierarchy of our society rejects their cause they do not have anywhere else to turn, which is sad. I think that while there are people using social media a dark side will always exist, especially where real world social issues are present.




http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/834/743
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNumIY9D7uY

Produsage

The concept of “produsage” is a prime example of Henry Jenkins’ theory of convergence culture of today’s society. Convergence culture can be further broken down to media convergence, participatory culture and collective intelligence. Jenkins believes that society is changing with the increasing flow of information across various media platforms, the likes of which we have never seen before. Do to the flow of digital information the public have a lot more influence over media content and decisions made by corporations. The term “produsage” was first coined by the futurist Alan Toffler (1971) in referring to a culture in which we begin to see the role of users of products converging with the role of producers.  It has broken down the barrier between the old industrial age hierarchy of products being passed down the line from producers to distributors then on to the consumers. Jenkins makes a convincing point in drawing attention to the way 20^th century media corporations have ownership over the stories we know and love. Today’s technology and social media platforms have changed the way in which we now share information, videos and music for instance; whether by legal means or not it is now back in the hands of the people as it was many thousands of years ago. This is ever more prevalent in society when we look at a media platform such as YouTube or the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia which is constructed entirely by user written editorials. Dr. Axel Bruns from the Queensland University of Technology highlighted in his paper ‘Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation’ that fact that “Wikipedia has become a major threat to publications such as the  Encyclopaedia Britannica, and studies suggest that in some areas its content qualitymay be on par with that of its corporate competitors”. Also mentioned in the paper is the practice of collaborative filtering, such as the way Google’s PageRank predictions are based on the web populations content filtering patterns expressed though interlinking and in the way that 90% of the popular life simulation strategy computer game ‘The Sims’ is now user created . So in short I think the future of ‘produsage’ is looking strong. When we look at how easily online user restaurant reviews now alter the success of businesses its clear to see that the power of building collaborative information in a participatory culture is having a lasting effect. Until now I haven’t thought about my own role as a ‘produser’. However, if you can include the time I’ve spent writing and accessorising my page here on blogger as well my contributions to the world of YouTube then I suppose I am a part of this movement.
I believe that in the future we will see a lot more user contribution to products, especially in regard to technology and game based creations. Either consumers will become more tech savvy or producers will design products to be more open to user editing and creation.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibJaqXVaOaIhttp://delivery.acm.org.ezproxy.lib.swin.edu.au/10.1145/1260000/1254975/p99-bruns.pdf?ip=136.186.1.81&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=270271604&CFTOKEN=99114713&__acm__=1359703240_40f813ec2b7ecbcdf055095aa8834defhttp://henryjenkins.org/2006/06/welcome_to_convergence_culture.html