My use of social media now Vs. before

When I look back to my first post I realize my involvement has changed quite a lot since the beginning of the semester. I feel like at the beginning of the semester and before that I kind of viewed certain social media technologies as invasive, ridiculous, obnoxious and kind of boring. Now, since I am graduating in a few months going on to the real world as well as getting older I have for some reason noticed the importance and fun of a variety of social media platforms.

            One example of this is twitter. My like for twitter has been a direct result of this class (due to the fact that we were forced to make a twitter) as well as my roommate. Since I made the step to make a twitter I realized that though at first glance (the fact that all you do is post statuses basically) I thought Twitter was kind of ridiculous. However, I then became more accustom to it even to the point of liking it. One thing that I liked was the fact that Twitter has a very creative and changeable layout. I also liked how it’s in real time and keeps you up to date with not only your friends but also any type of companies you like. I also like how simple the interface is and the fact there isn’t so many features.

            I also have found myself to become very involved in the social media platform Foursquare. The way my involvement came to be was through my roommate. Since my roommate moved in with me I started going to her usual Monday nightspot with her and her friends. She would always check in to Foursquare and was this close to becoming the Mayor. For some reason that intrigued me and I thought it was really cool the idea of tracking where you go and being competitive and trying to become a mayor of a place that I was convinced was “my” place. Though, people knowing where I am and knowing where other people are can be seen as slightly creepy it’s really not as creepy as you may think. For example how many times have you gone to a place because you heard through the grape vine was good or how many times have you ran into someone you know at the same place multiple times, is it really that much different to have done it purposefully because you thought the place your friend was at was cool (not in a seriously creepy stalker-ish way though). Another thing that caught my interest was the fact that some places give out specials for checking in a certain amount of times. I think this is fascinating both for the fact that it’s awesome for the user of four square as well as it is a great marketing tool for places. This in particular has intrigued me particularly due to the fact that I would like to go into Advertising and think that these types of marketing techniques will prove to be extremely useful in the advertising field.

            Though a lot of my social media changes have been due to other factors this course has helped me notice the incredibly vast amount of social media platforms. I think this course was the catalyst to my increased interest and presences in more social media platforms while other factors just increased it. I think I think of social media in a much less fearful way. Before I used to think of things like Four Square and Twitter as kind of scary and creepy while now I view it in a much more neutral and positive way. I think that if we all focus on the possible bad affects of social media (i.e similar to the mean world syndrome) than we will miss the extremely beneficial and fun aspects of social media.

            I think that my view of social media will remain the same for now and I think I may even get more involved with social media as I go into the job market and hopefully start working in advertising. I do think though that political and ethical issues may before more of an issue for me as time goes by particularly because employers are so involved in social media that the ethical and privacy issues will because more concerning for me as I move into that stage of life.

 

Jessica W. 

Responding to Sophie’s post (http://csmt11.posterous.com/my-problem-with-social-media )

Even though as I mentioned in my reflection post that this course has
helped me see the positive sides of social media (from both a personal
standpoint and a business one), I still think the best way to leverage
online platforms is to first underscore their pitfalls and potential
exploitative nature. So, as much as thing have changed for me they are
also staying the same, mainly because I believe costs of being
swallowed by the social media world is too high.

I am advocating prosumers and netizens take a critical look at the
media giants, work to understand the self-serving aspects of their
agendas and how they (sometimes) execute those business objectives
against the best interest of their users. (For example facebook’s
opt-out system with privacy settings.) I am particularly interested in
the point that Sophie makes about facebook and gmail being
domesticated into her life and that there was initially resistance in
“willing to admit that there were [any] negative consequences for
checking Facebook 10 times a day, or constantly sitting on Gmail.” I
think that social media has shaped our society in some respects and
engendered surveillance as a normative reality. I also think that
there are some biological impulses at play that make it hard to
question these urges since the drive to understand one’s environment
has been a factor in self-preservation since the Paleolithic age.

The fact that the monitoring of the “Other” in a public setting can be
indulged while the surveyor is cloaked in anonymity has interesting
psychological pulls that are hard to resist. Perhaps it feels like a
way to get ahead, stay involved, or understand the community we live
in— whatever the drive, it is a fact we’ve become used to studying and
researching our friends. Typical facebook train of thought is
scattered and surface level probing of activity within the network:
“Oh, friend X went to dinner here and is checked in, let me click the
link and see what type of restaurant it is, or friend Y got a job here
and it is a company liked by 330 mutual friends, let me google that…”
And the hours go by, with us mining for data about those who we
presumably have relationships with, relationship that fall under the
jurisdiction of friendship. Hmm? I can see why Sophie said that the
“internet can make us feel worse about ourselves.”

Maybe we aren’t the society of narcissism (as Sophie and countless
scholars posit) but the society fearful if we aren’t making use of the
data streaming into our lives we are going to miss crucial information
about ourselves and others. Whatever the reason, monitoring becomes an
integral component of the online value chain for both the sites and
the people mining them.

Sophie expresses relief that she will graduate in a month, and can
take a break from social media use, but I wonder if that break will
happen for her and for myself as a fellow Communication major. In
Andrejevic’s Surveillance and Alienation in the Online Economy he
posits that in the not too distant future, it may become the case that
social networking services become crucial productive resources for
some types of work (285). If we need access to such services to earn
our living, if our employers require the creation and maintenance of
these networks for business, how will we ever step away? I predict we
will not be taking a break but amercing ourselves, I don’t believe
that I am in deep trouble, because there are great companies that are
using the changing landscape for good. (link:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/about.php)


-@Kayla8thecity

Response to ‘The Filter Bubble.’

 

http://csmt11.posterous.com/the-filter-bubble-20078

 

I was particularly interested in Sophie’s book during the week we shared our individual experiences.  While the majority of the class had read positive books on the benefits of social media and marketing, it was out of place to see an critical book.  Rather than a ‘How To,’ Sophie’s Book ‘The Filter Bubble’ explored the synonymous concept of internet filtration.  Much like Netflix suggesting movies based on your preferences, the author foresees a very near future in which the “internet filter looks at the things you seem to like- the actual things you’ve done, or the things people like you like- and tries to extrapolate.”  He criticizes the narrowness ones personal exposure to the world will be, as well as the concept of technological determinism.  I however, would have to disagree with the author in many of his arguments.

 

Like a science fiction film, which capitalizes on the fears of present day concerns, Praiser has taken internet filtering and extrapolated it to a ridiculous degree.  I certainly agree limited exposure can lead to narrow-minded thinking and uninformed decision-making.  As Sophie explains, current events probably should take higher level priority than Justin Bieber-related information.  But even if the author’s hypothetical scenario were to occur, I highly doubt individuals would be victims of the ‘Filtration Bubble.’  People will still be exposed to outside even and other human beings in Praiser’s model, and will still have other unfiltered media outlets.  While it is understandable that authors would want to explore the possible downside to long-tail marketing, one needs to keep in mind that short tail marketing will not disappear.  Budgets for the short-tail are enormous - information or products that nearly everyone will want.  Long-tail niche information or products have smaller budgets.  So while customized information, products etc. are convenient, people will no doubt continue to be exposed to shared mainstream information.

 

Praiser’s concept of ‘technological determinism,’ is also not that different from the sense of 19th century Positivism.  I agree that one should not put blind faith in technology, and that people should be critical thinkers about accepting any new technology - either choosing to participate or not, and having self-control over usage.  I am critical of his notion of ‘Post-materialism,’ however.  He describes the present Post-materialist generation as valuing “self-expression and ‘being yourself’.”  To a degree I find this laughable, as a great deal of social media Identity uses material ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes.’  Since social media is a platform which generates questions about identity, it is understandable but brash to characterize an entire generation based on the new venue of self-expression.  Previous generations likely had similar interests in self-expression and ‘being oneself,’ regardless of more or less materialism.  Again Praiser has taken present day concerns and run away with them, pushing them a bit ridiculously to the nth degree.

 

Justin Tuma

Blog#6 looking back at my post #1 ...

Thinking back about what I said in my first post, I think my use of social media has not changed so much. I still use the same social I mentioned in my first post: Facebook, mixi, Gmail, and carrier-provided email. In addition to them, I started to use Twitter. Even though I had a twitter account before this class, I did not use it at all. But I started to engage in tweeting because of this class. Twitter is the only change in the types of social media I use. What social media I use and how I use them have not changed, but I would say, how I feel when I am using them and how I look at other people’s ways of using social media have slightly changed.

It is because I became more conscious of my “identity” on social media and my “audience”. Throughout the semester, there were a lot of  moments when I thought about what makes users’ identities and who the audience is on social media.. When people use a SNS, most of them use it to share information with their friends. When they share information that is directed to their friends(for example, when they post something private that only their friends might care about and when they make the profile pictures showing their silly faces that their friends might think are funny), they regard their friends as their audience. But at the same time, some of them put information on social media very much caring about the “public” audience. When it comes to certain kind of information, their concept of ‘audience’ gets beyond the networked “friends” and becomes the “public”. When I use social media and share some information there I am now more aware of who I regard as my audience.

And I realized who I regard as my audience is much related to my multiple identities on different social media. On mixi, I share my diaries that include a message to my Japanese friends or might be interesting to them. I do not share pictures that expose my appearance to others as much as those in my facebook albums. On facebook, I less care about showing others how I look because they also show how they look and they also do not really care about the fact that they are publicly exposing their physical appearances. And on facebook, I also tend to share more information about my daily life regularly. Social cues that can construct my identity, on mixi and on facebook, might be different because I choose what information about myself should be open depending on the different audience. Even on facebook solely, I would say, I have two identities because I segregate myself by two languages. I have more English speaking friends in my friends list, so I tend to post something more general, less personally information in English; however, what I say in my status in Japanese sound more stupid or closer to who I think I am that the things I mutter in English.

I remember, Mark Zuckberg once said that on facebook, we will have a “single identity”; “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly” (http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/13/zuckerberg-privacy/). He might mean that because people are getting more comfortable about disclosing their personal information and their selves are also disclosed by their friends, they end up having one single authentic identity on facebook. Considering my identity and its relation to the audience throughout this semester, I disagree with Zuckberg. Although it seems that I have multiple identities on different social media, all of them are one part of who I really am; it is not that one single identity expressed on one particular social media is my "true" identity, but it is just one dimension of my authentic self. There are just different facets of my authentic identity that I express depending on who I think is my audience.

Finally, I said in my first post that I am not sure if I want to keep using Facebook. Now I think I will continue to use it for a little longer than I expected before. People talk about disadvantages of social media (how it is addictive, how it changes friendship etc). At the time I created my first post , those negative sides of social media were standing out for me. But now after thinking about facebook and how social media exists in our life, I feel less harmful about facebook, rather, I feel it is supporting my real life.

 

Sachi (I made this post first by mistake in my OWN space:p....http://st1356.posterous.com/blog6-response-to-my-post-1)

Blog #6

Response to: http://csmt11.posterous.com/womens-myspace-photos-dont-self-represent-a-h


I wanted to re-visit the Dobson piece, because it not only stirred up discussion in class but I had particular interest in the subject matter after taking a Renaissance Art History course last semester.  As Justin noted, it is questionable as to whether these girls taking provocative photos for Myspace with thought regarding the deeper social statements being made about gender roles however, no matter what the intention, the end result is the same.  Furthermore, though art history was not the focal point of the article, it’s worthwhile to look at how the standards and practices of Renaissance art have influenced young women and their display of ‘self’ on social media platforms today. 

Portraiture during the Renaissance was an involved and carefully planned process since it took more time and money than it does to take a snap-shot on your camera and upload it to Myspace.  However, the functions of a portrait, which could serve to document lineage, project prestige and power, document one’s profession, display oneself to the opposite sex, etc. still hold resonance today. 


Portraits of women during the Renaissance were primarily commissioned by a man in their life (such as a father or husband) since they didn’t have their own money to spend.  The result was that these images became approximations of how a man wanted the woman to be portrayed and forever preserved.  Today, women are free to produce their own portraits via photography, however, we find that they are still attempting to cater their images in a ‘hetro-sexy’ form which is what they believe is desired by male peers.

 

It’s interesting to note that women were seen in ‘profile’ longer than men, because it was customary for women to not directly face a man—they would often avert their eyes to avoid appearing too suggestive.  In Palma Vecchio’s A Blonde Woman (1520), the portrait features an anonymous woman, looking directly at the viewer and appearing to offer a bunch of flowers. Her positioning engages onlookers and her exposed breast hints at an essence of sexuality in the image. The portrait presents somewhat of a conflict of ‘moral code’ at the time of it’s creation.  I thought this example was relevant to the Dobson text because it shows how even in many years past, the positioning and facial expression of a woman in a portrait held a deeper significance than the picture at face value.  Despite the ‘Blonde Woman’s’ knowledge or intention, she has been forever persevered as a ‘hetero-sexy’ archetype of the Renaissance in comparison to her ‘respectfully’ portrayed counterparts, similarly to how the young women in Dobson’s piece have displayed themselves in a way that portrays a particular aura about their image and identity. 

 

-Emma L.

My Use of Social Media, Now

Over the past semester, I think that my use of social media has
evolved slightly. I finally made use of my Twitter account, actively
tweeting for class but also utilizing it as a source of news. I found
a few relevant Twitter accounts to follow and found myself checking my
feed regularly through my phone. Twitter is an efficient means of
obtaining news from specific sources in real time that I’ve found to
be very useful. I think that I’ll continue to use it for news but
probably won’t tweet often.

My use of Facebook has remained consistent in a personal social
networking capacity, but I do view it, and other SNSs, in a different
way—as media with huge potential. The most striking capabilities of
social media have been as means for marketers to reach potential
customers, and as facilitators of social movements. Over the course of
our class, I’ve become much more aware of how people use social media,
what kind of information users broadcast to the world, and how
companies can use social media to their advantage. Branding and
marketing are becoming one of the primary functions of social media.
Now, companies can directly connect with their customers and target
new customers more precisely. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and other
SNSs are all used by companies to promote their brands. This awareness
has made me consider companies’ pages and posts more critically than I
did before. In light of all that has occurred with the Arab Spring as
well as the Occupy Wall Street movement, it has become clear that the
power of social media extends well beyond functioning as a way to keep
in touch with old friends.

In general, I feel that having examined social media through different
lenses in class has made me consider it in a different way, even when
I’m immersed as a user. In the future, I think I may have to become
less involved in social media on a personal level and more active to
keep up with trends and news for professional purposes.

Cindy H.

Social media and me - 2.0

I started this class with a pretty accurate understanding of how I interact with social media on a daily basis. Social media fascinates me and I want to be as involved with it as possible, but I for whatever reason I let my engagement in the relatively few sites that I'm a member of lag. I'm not sure if it's an issue of time or if the value that I get out of my social networks isn't high enough, but I do seem to have a more starkly defined sense of regret when I think about how often I use social media sites as compared to the first weeks of taking this class. I have a strong understanding of how a social networking site can significantly change the lives of its users, whether through enabling the spread of political action or by connecting users from displaced communities, and I wonder how my life might be different if I took more advantage of the admittedly optimistic but still true possibilities of social networking technology.

For instance, my involvement with social media was most vividly called into question during the segment on political activism on SNS. While I had never given my political representation on Facebook or Twitter much thought before, I realized that I actively avoided engaging in controversial discussions over SNS. The permanence and replicability seemed like a much more imminent danger in this situation, than say in a picture of me at a bar. However, I have very strong feelings now that I ought to be more active in this society, and where I don't feel comfortable attending a rally in New York City (what with the pepper spray and all) I should get over my fear of expressing my opinions on Facebook or Twitter. Knowing the power that could be contained in less than 140 characters, I think I will at least attempt to change this aspect of my social networking behavior.

Additionally, I've certainly noticed that I have begun to think about all of my actions on social networking sites in a more analytic way. I have always known that Facebook, Twitter, etc. were some kind of media, and as a student of media I have always had a passing interest in these sites, but since beginning this class, I feel that I have a better understanding of how these sites fit into the larger frame of media studies. This has only added to my cursory fascination with social media, but I think it will lead to a more rewarding relationship with my various social networking sites.

@roxyredstar

(first post: http://csmt11.posterous.com/social-media-and-me)

Roxanne Dyer


On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 1:16 AM, Roxanne Dyer <roxannedyer@gmail.com> wrote:
My first experience using social media was early in my high school days. I created a MySpace account to help me stay in touch with my boyfriend at the time. It felt a little pointless to use an entire social networking site to communicate with one person, especially a person I saw almost everyday. Though I eventually added friends, it still felt like a useless part of my life. With no background in AIM, AOL or any other instant messaging programs, I felt completely overwhelmed by my MySpace account and eventually let it fall to the wayside.

It's funny to think how far I've come in terms of using social media. I have about four gmail accounts that I check everyday, multiple times per day. I have a Facebook account that I check almost everyday. With my Facebook account, I'm always logged in, even if I don't plan on updating my status or commenting on any pictures. I just enjoy the freedom associated with clicking on the Facebook link in my browser's bookmark bar and being fed an almost infinite stream of consciousness. Granted, most of my newsfeed is pretty irrelevant to my life, but it's an amazing way to fill idle minutes in my day. I also use Facebook for public relations purposes. I schedule updates regularly and I get a little thrill in seeing the notifications on the pages I manage, even though it's not my authentic self interacting with the Facebook users.

My Twitter account is by far my greatest untapped social resource. I'm fully aware of the wonderful things that Twitter can do, having studied them in more than one class, but I can't seem to make this beyond brilliant social platform work for me. At first I thought Twitter was the ultimate stalker's fantasy, but knowing that I can post as little as I want in any given month has liberated my social experience. I started following reputable news sources along with the cast of Jersey Shore, and the stream of consciousness has turned into a stream of life that is incredibly full of interesting ideas. I've recently acquired a smart phone and now desperately want to be a part of the Twitter feed, but my Tweets feel as insignificant as the onomatopoeia implies. I think the biggest trouble is that most of my followers are people I don't know, and without an audience to write to I'm lost. I'm not sure why Twitter is taking so much longer to catch on with the college-aged demographic than Facebook, but it's definitely defeating what would otherwise be the perfect social network for me.

Roxy Dyer
@roxyredstar


My Social Media Use, Then and Now

     In my first post, I outlined my own social media evolution from MySpace to Facebook, from Hotmail to Gmail, and how I slightly dabbled in Twitter. For the most part, none of my involvement in these sites has dramatically changed, but the way I look at my own and others' use of social media technologies has certainly been affected by this semester. Particularly, our discussions of calculated self-representation and audiences has stuck with me, so that whenever I'm about to click "submit" on any kind of Facebook post, I consider those who might see it and those who I subconsciously want to see it, and why I feel the need to post it. Which, in the end, usually just proves to psych myself out, so most of my written Facebook posts as of late are merely means to inform another person of something they need to know, rather than arbitrary personal statuses. My Twitter is still pretty dead, sadly, but I can still see myself potentially getting into it as my interest in Facebook fades.

     In our studies of social media technologies, I have definitely become more attentive to the varying uses of these websites in my own sphere of friends, and how different ages, cultural backrounds, and occupations tend to use them differently. For example, my fourteen-year-old cousin, who was too young to ever have a MySpace and all the strange friend surveys that came with it, has taken to turning his Facebook status into little exposes of the sort. Today, his status was, "tbh....like!," where "tbh" apparently stands for "to be honest," and the 24 people who liked his status received wall posts from my cousin, "to be honest... i'm so mad i won't see you tonight! lol."

     To be honest, I'd never seen Facebook used in this way, and after a bit of perusing, I found that all of his friends' statuses were like this. The worst of which was my cousin's friend's status, "Like for a rate," where teenage girls would "like" and subsequently receive a 1-10 on the "hottness" scale. At first I was appalled, but then I realized that this is exactly how we used MySpace at his age, and perhaps a factor in how it eventually became what it is today, because the interface seamlessly permitted such activity.

     I think my use of social media will definitely change in the future. I'm always on the brink of deleting any given account, and am only on Facebook to stay informed of friends' birthdays and events. As I grow older and less interested in staying in-the-know, I'll surely delete my Facebook at some point or another. I doubt political issues would cause me to deactivate before then, but perhaps ethical issues regarding a brink of privacy could influence the decision. There are several tumblrs and blogspots that I frequent daily, and unless sites as such unexpectedly fail, I suspect that I will always frequent the blog-side of social media.

Jen L.

 

Pleased to report: no major changes / Responding to Renren

A quote from Ivy’s old post has stuck with me: “On the Chinese version Renren, sharing of content is more a norm, and my taste and personality is more so determined by the topics I choose to share with my friends so they can define me through the things I am interested in. On Facebook, such sharing culture exists in a lesser extent...”  For a user to come away with such a different experience of the two networks’ culture (especially since one is apparently so closely modeled on the other) is surprising. Perhaps it reveals something else about technological determinism: that there is another level of cultural determinism placed on our SNS, in part a product of government regulation/binds as well as the underlying business models that allow the networks to exist for free to users.

I am quite curious about how massive social networks like Renren operate on the other side of the world, especially as in the coming years that site might be in competition with Facebook and others for advertisers’ money.  I had no idea that Renren was publicly traded, on the NYSE, no less, but despite the fact that it charges exorbitantly for brands to host pages on the site (scroll up to see that Kobe’s big in China), that it hasn’t been doing so well financially lately.  (Especially in light of Facebook’s constantly delayed entry to the stock market – who would have suspected its mysterious Chinese counterpart would break out first?.)

Screen_shot_2011-11-29_at_nov_29_8
This is the creepiest part, because 'reading' is a passive action –– they didn't nesc. 'like' these articles. Clicking the links prompts a window that wants to install new Facebook+Publisher apps that seem to function within the SNS itself: what Anil Dash (see below) calls captured content.

Last week in class we talked about how Facebook’s ubiquitous Like buttons also happen to send back data about webpage viewing, even when unclicked.  This week, Anil Dash warned that it is possible that Facebook could begin floating content that was created and posted within Facebook, rather than just linked, to the top of newsfeeds (and presenting unnecessarily alarmist warnings for outgoing links, such as to his own site, despite the fact that he uses a Facebook-Connet powered commenting system). Already, our timelines are no longer being presented chronologically, and so new ways of sorting would not be beyond the pale. I still wonder if there’s a point where users will be fed up with practices that lead to overzealous monetization, but if the alternative is a site like Renren, even more eager to turn a profit, the future remains unsteady.

On the one hand, perhaps the major thing that’s changed about the way I view SNS, is that like when it appears that I was playing devil’s advocate about targeted advertising last week, I actually value pitches that are not wasting my time or the advertiser’s (though there must be a limit).  On the other hand, it’s unfortunate that Diaspora, which began in the very building we have our class, has not even merited a mention in class. It seem that a site, aiming to be everything that Facebook is not, will struggle to make an impact.

Social Media and Me... Now

Cecilia Diaz

Since this semester started, my relationship with social media has changed, probably not in ways very obvious to an outside observer, but that are nonetheless significant to me. While I was always analytical about social media and constantly assessed all of my mediated interactions on SNSs, it was predominantly from a perspective instilled in me through my training in digital strategy. It was more of me examining what people were choosing to share, how they were sharing, and what kind of information or content dominated media channels at any given time.

While I have always been interested in mediated identity performance, and paid attention to that as well when online, the readings provided me with a deeper level of understanding. My explorations of self-presentation online became more salient with the knowledge of research on how taste preferences and class can manifest themselves in various ways on SNSs.

Moreover, I find myself tuned into a finer level of detail online Things I once paid no attention to or brushed off, deeming them inconsequential or merely circumstantial, have taken on a new life in my eyes. Perhaps the set of readings that made the greatest impact of me was the group of readings on race. Thanks to these articles, I look for more cues of race politics online. Suddenly, I am more interested in how diverse my friends’ friends are, not to mention my own.

Overall, while my day-to-day social media routine has probably not changed much, my tools in understanding it have. Through discussions in class, I have new discourses with which to arm myself in trying to make self of SNSs. Some were already familiar to me, such as those on gender or youth, but other units, like the one on race, have helped to enrich my understanding of how SNSs impact our everyday lives.