Future Gaze

In the past decade we have seen many changes in the world of Social Media and business.

As we have already seen, social media has sky rocketed in its existence, from mere existence in our daily lives to being in our daily lives most of the time. It is evident that social media has become the way of the future and will continue to be as it has become more accessible through our portable devices such as iPhones, iPod touches and tablets … etc.  I believe that social media has come a far way and will only continue to progress.

The way of the future seems to be wearable computers. Google officially announced the new device in 2012, the Google Glass.The Glass device is basically a heads up display that sits partially over your eye, giving you a one-eye-view into the digital world, showing you anything from the weather to the location of a friend. It also has a camera capable of capturing video and still pictures and, instead of a speaker, it has a Bone Conduction Transducer which transmits audio directly to the innermost part of the ear via the nose clip on the glasses

Stats for the first part of 2013 show that:

1. Facebook – 11,489,600 Australian users/accounts

2. YouTube – 11,000,000 UAVs

3. LinkedIn – 2,757,000

4. Tumblr – 2,600,000

5. Twitter – 2,167,849 Active Australian Users

6. Instagram – 1,083,924 Active Australian Users

7. Pinterest – 640,000

8. Google Plus – approx 340,000 – David Cowlings estimation

This showing that the use of social media is increasing among society.

Image Credit 

When considering the future of social media we must consider that we as humans, by nature, are social despite the many years spent relying on mass marketing. We will be using social media as a way to have conversations and build a community or tribe that share the same interests. Social media's relevance and finally in today’s society we are in a new era now where being Social, Local and Mobile are an important part of being on social media.



The future of social media to me is unknown but as social media depends on society, the future of it is in our hands.

The Great Firewall of China

The Great Firewall of China also known as the golden shield project is an internet censorship and surveillance project that is operated by the government.  In 2012, it was reported that China had been reinforcing it's internet firewall in attempt to block users access from social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube etc... These have been blocked in order to prevent it's people from becoming ‘corrupt’ and to neutralise critical online opinions.

 

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By the end of December 2012, China had 564 million Internet users, 50.9 million more than the year before, and representing nearly 40% of the Chinese population.

A list of some types of banned websites/content includes:

·                     politically sensitive terms

·                     embarrassing news events

·                     online messages from dissidents

·                     political activism sites

·                     any microblog posts that it dislikes

·                     religious site

 ·                   pornography 

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Twitter, Facebook and similar social network sites are nipped in the bud before they become popular. Instead, china has alternative websites or copycat sites  which Chinese people are welcome to use. subject to the control of Chinese authorities, they are obligated to monitor and filter comments made by users or risk seeing their sites suspended

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China’s firewall, was cracked and users could access the banned social media sites 

The Great Firewall of China 

E –Extreamists.

I think the best way to start is to define what an extremist is.
Extremism is characterized by dogmatic intolerance, expressed mildy or violently, and inclines toward and inflexible obedience to an accepted authority, shaped by a common ideology or sense of group unity. As defined by Gardner (1997)

Many  things can influence internet extremists such as racism, anti-semitism, politics, liberal and Anti Government (conspiracy theories).

image credit.

Extremists are using the Internet as a global communication network to get their point across to everyone everywhere. They do this by becoming viral from the used of the internet, from creating websites with various multimedia links and output. Internet extremists can initiate a physical effect with the voicing of their opinion becoming more than what is written on the net, thus becoming violent.

Violent extremism creates a huge part of extremism. TheAustralian Government is working with communities to build resilience to violent extremism—that is, the use or support of violence to achieve ideological, religious or political goals.  


The Against Violent Extremism (AVE) Network is a unique and powerful new global force in the ongoing struggle to tackle violent extremism. 
They have 1635 connections, 155 formers, 82 survivors, and 37 projects, all to try and help aid the prevention of Violent extremism

Extremist groups have been known to be some of the very early users of communication networks that eventually evolved into the internet. An example from Gerstenfeld, Grant and Chiang (2003) illustrates their early prominence: Tom Metzger, the leader of the White Aryan Resistance, actually created a computer bulletin board (this was in the internet's very early days). This kind of example illustrates how this issue has always been around, and will probably always be around, and we (as a society) need to learn how to deal with it effectively. 

I think the following points highlight the importance of being aware of these hate groups, and how to combat them:
·                     Internet users, including children, need to be made aware of basic security procedures available to them through their web browsers or service providers when online
·                     Society and its elected representatives must decide whether existing laws, particularly those regarding communications, are in need of revision
·                     Parents and educators should consider the merits of teaching children media literacy and critical thinking rather than relying upon filtering software

Real V Second Life

Virtual World, Second Life, Digital Characters, and Avatars give us all a digital experience of another reality from such games as the Sims, World of War craft and Second life. Games like this are a 3D environment where they can interact with others in a lifelike and social space. Second life especially is not considered a game as there is no main objective.  Players of such games create a real avatar which is meant to be a representation of themselves or what they wish they looked like; it gives these people another reality to adhere to. Second life is taken very seriously and can even be considered as some first life as they spend more time online in their virtual world then they do in reality. You get connected to your avatar as it is seen as your representation in the virtual world and when things happen to it, the creator can feel distraught as they feel their actual reality has been hurt. People who play second life also take it very seriously as they can spend real money to create their avatar the best they can possibly make it, of course the base model is free. Second life has also become a way of making a living for some people as they create items such as houses and on the game and then sell it outside the virtual world for real money.  A number of commercial, Government and educational organisations have set up a form of presence in second life .Second life the Game has even joined the social media context with its own Facebook and Twitter Websites.

http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/jmlynch/Second%20Life.htm

linked here is an article about a Lady who earns Real money from her Second life. 

As mentioned earlier people take second life extremely serious , as it is a means to becoming social and meeting people, some of what can be seen as extremes are that people get married, have babies and they even have a ‘real’ online wedding.

  http://janeysplace.wordpress.com/2008/08/

Although they do all these things I wonder if it has ever crossed their mind that who they are interacting with is really! Who they say they are…

World of War Craft is along the same lines of Second life where it is an online place where people get together and interact except a key difference is that it is considered a game as there is a major quest to complete. World of War Craft has become that addictive in real life that some people even seek counselling and other remedies as this game has become their reality.

People use second life and such other games to discover their identity, and trial new things, they can also use these mediums as a was of expressing themselves.

" the screen becomes a hyperreal vehicle for travelling across a simulated world. ( Nunes, 1995, p. 315)

 so I ask Do people use second life as a means to escape their real life or is it just a release and a way of expression?

Produsage

No it’s not a typo …

Producers are involved in user-led content production or produsage.

Henery Jenkins defines produsage as “the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement”.

Axel burns States that produsage process itself is fundamentally built on the affordances of the technosocial framework of the network environment, then, and here especially on the harnessing of user communities that is made possible by their netwroking through many-to-many communitcations meadia.

http://produsage.org/node/9

What emerges is that in the online, networked, information economy, participants are not simply passive consumers, but active users, with some of them participating more strongly with a focus only on their personal use, some of them participating more strongly in ways which are inherently constructive and productive of social networks and communal content. (Axel Burns)

 “ Fans and other consumer actively participate in the creation and circulation of  new content… involving audience engagement that are shaping cultural and social protocols” (Fuchs C 2011, P.266)

Axel Burns and Henery Jenkins also believes that there are for major principles to produsage

Open Participation, Communal Evaluation: the community as a whole, if sufficiently large and varied, can contribute more than a closed team of producers, however qualified;

Fluid Heterarchy, Ad Hoc Meritocracy: produsers participate as is appropriate to their personal skills, interests, and knowledges, and their level of involvement changes as the produsage project proceeds;

Unfinished Artefacts, Continuing Process: content artefacts in produsage projects are continually under development, and therefore always unfinished – their development follows evolutionary, iterative, palimpsestic paths;

Common Property, Individual Rewards: contributors permit (non-commercial) community use and adaptation of their intellectual property, and are rewarded by the status capital gained through this process.

The collective and networked approach of produsage is able to draw on four key pre conditions of the networked technosocial environment within which it exists:

1. Probilistic, not directed problem solving   
2. Eqipotentially, not hierarchy
3. Granular not composite tasks

4. Shared not owned content

Examples of Produsage:

Open news, open source of content  Wikipedia, Flickr 

Collaborative knowledge communities like Google earth

Produser communities around commercial products. the Sims

Other examples are second life, YouTube 

Sims is an example of produsage as a player creates a character with specific features and enters a world where they can interact with others. The section in which you alter your character, create new items and share it with the other characters is called the exchange.

Youtube is also another good example of produsage as it allows people to share, watch and discover videos from anywhere in the world. Consumers can watch videos and even change them.

Produsage matters because it offers people the opportunity to be part of the media they consume. We all have contributed, shared and connected within networks through photo sharing, blogging, tweeting, and making videos, this allowing anyone to be a produce, a distributor and a consumer of content.

Political Campaigns and Social Media

http://blog.gahcc.org/2012/11/the-real-winner-of-the-presidential-
elections-social-media/social-media-political/

http://pakzindabad.com/2013/04/04/political-parties-
targeting-social-media-for-election-campaign/

Politicians and social media have started working hand in hand.  With political leader incorporating some form of media throughout there campaign. Social media websites such as Facebook, twitter and YouTube…Etc. have begun to influence the political landscape. Many politicians across the western world have begun to utilize theses media outlets alongside their campaign; they use these new technologies in order to reach a larger and also younger audience.

http://www.onlinesocialmedia.net/20110411
/political-election-issues-and-social-media-1-in-5-discuss/

The first person to use social media for their political campaign was John Edwards, he created a video and posted it on his own website to announce he would be running in the election. John Edward campaign was the start of a new revolution of campaigning, in today’s society every candidate running for an up and coming election use a form of social technology to appeal to society. From all the present media technologies, the platform of choice has become YouTube. Most of the politicians in today's society have been part of social media in some form whether it be an online video or just having regular communications on such sites as Facebook or twitter.

Although politicians use social media as a way of expressing to the public, it doesn't mean that the way they use it is effective. A Great example of social media and politics is Obama 2008 campaign.

Obama and his team managed to reach 5 million supporters on 15 different social media networks over the course of his campaign. Obama Approximately had 2.5-3 million Facebook supporters, 11500 Twitter followers and 50 million viewers of his YouTube channel.  Showing that him and his team did use social media effectively

(source of info)

Another campaign that was successful for using social media which is a little closer to home is Kevin Rudd, for his Kevin 07 campaign. The federal election campaign used all the social media outlets including his own website of kevin07.

http://www.tamaleaver.net/2007/08/07/kevin-07-

or-team-rudd-gets-its-web20-on/

http://blog.izilla.com.au/2007/12/18/
recent-projects-kevin-07/
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Kevin and his team attracted more than 10,000 friends on his MySpace account and almost 5,000 on Facebook, The Kevin Rudd website encourages people to send in their own videos sharing their views on why they plan to vote for Kevin Rudd, and to have their say on Labor policies.

Kevin Rudd fans can also buy Kevin07 T-shirts and bumper stickers.

(source of info)

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/kevin07

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Social media can get support other celebrities to help boost votes for campaigns

Politicians can receive some slack from the pubic for using social media and can be made a mockery of.

It is clear that in today’s society in order to appeal to most people the politicians running must have some form of online campaign using some form of social media, so that they can reach a wider, broader and somewhat younger audience.  This must be alongside the traditional campaigning practices like radio advertisements and also mail in the post. In order to maximise the politicians audience.

Anti- Corruption in the world of social media

Bertot, Jaeger and Grimes (2010) state that there are 3 types of anti-corruption practices
1. Administrative Reform    
2. Law enforcement
3. Social Change

Anti-corruption has found its way onto social media. Prior to the internet we had to rely on other sources of media like Television, radio and newspaper, to be informed on what’s currant news. These types of media all at some point have had a form of censorship from radio with non-explicit editing to television have ratings from G - General Viewing to R – for viewing for those over 18, with restrictions on media what is stopping the restrictions on social media. Online censorship creates a wall between certain populations and their ability to gain access to and use digital tools for activism. Censorship limits access from either, the blocking of websites, filtration of search terms, removal of undesirable content from accessible sites and encouragement of self-censorship through intimidation and persecution of activists. A country known for their internet censorship is China, they have the world’s most pervasive filtering practises. In the past they have blocked both Facebook and Twitter on numerous occasions, as they cannot facilitate communications and coordination outside of Government control. In today’s society it is hard for Government to maintain such a high demanding task of censoring all websites, as once you place something up on the internet is up there forever.

Bertot, Jaeger and Grimes (2010) believe that there are 4 major strengths of Anticorruption
1. Collaboration
2. Participation
3. Empowerment
4. Time (real time updates.)

I believe the biggest, and most predominant anti-corruption example is wikileaks  “WikiLeaks is the quintessential example of how social media technologies can be used to fight corruption.” (Bertot et al. 2010, p 267). Julian Assange is a founder of wiki leaks and is one of the most controversial characters as he is known for unveiling secret documents supposed to be confidential to the Government. Wikileaks is a podium, which is fuelling the use of social media to spread the word and discuss important issues. Seth Liss suggests that Wikileaks has given us a window of the potential power and influence forms of social media.  

Another well-known example of Anti-corruption using social media is Kony 2012, this sky rocketed all over Facebook and twitter, with many links to YouTube videos, there was even a support group where you could purchase what seemed to be like merchandise supporting Kony 2012.

http://astillasderealidad.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/kony-2012-prepara-el-terreno-para-la-el.html

As social media is broadcasted to such a large audience, it allows for people to support organizations such as Kony 2102. Social media can be viewed as a resource to better fight corruption.

I ask you to think is wikileaks just the begging of Anti-corruption using resources of social media?