Cyber Bullying

After reading ch. 11 in Paul Levinson's "New New Media" I knew immediately I wanted to write about online gossip and cyberbullying. I was a little late to join the popular college gossip site collegeacb.com. It wasn't until over the summer that I heard about the site from a friend who thought she had seen a post about me. While I was curious, I've never really been too interested in these kinds of sites for the very reasons that Levinson outlined in his book: they're generally cruel and completely inaccurate. The fact that I could be talked about on this site, however, somewhat unnerved me, and it didn't take too much effort for my friend to convince me to check it out. She showed me the post she thought might be about me and I was relieved to see that it was pretty harmless and really could be about anyone named Kristen. Once on the site though I noticed the titles of other posts and was both disgusted and curious. Posts included topics calling out the "sluttiest" girls of different classes and dorms, who was gay and who's not, who has the best bodies (and who has the worst), among other terrible categories. What's worse is that anyone can post something about whoever they want without any kind of explanation or certification, and also without the person in question being able to defend themselves without looking defensive. Although there is a report button many people don't utilize this because you need to have an account to do so. Many people probably worry that they'll lose their anonymity if they report something, which makes the site both so popular and so dangerous.

Another terrible case of cyberbullying is the Honesty Box application on Facebook. This has to be the single most confidence-shattering thing for a lot of girls in my high school. This application allowed people to write anonymous notes to you. While occasionally there could be nice things written to you from someone who had a secret crush on you or from someone trying to help you without revealing themselves, 95% of the time it was girls writing nasty messages to each other judging that person on anything from their appearance, to their personality, to their sexual experience. What was especially harmful about this application (that I think trumps collegeacb.com) is that people could only write in your box if they were Facebook friends with you. This meant that for the most part depending on how picky you were in accepting friend requests, the people putting you down were people you knew. Many a times, the people writing the meanest things were the box owner's supposed friends. I can't even count the many times this single little program caused catastrophic fights between the closest of friends within my high school class. I'm thankful I never enabled this application and that it seems to have lost some of its popularity since then.

Bottom line is that cyberbullying is going to continue to be a problem until sites and programs like these are banned from the web. Since this is unlikely, if people join together to stop giving these sites traffic, they will be forced to close. This happened to JuicyCampus.com and although this only directed more kids to collegeacb.com, at least some of these sites are losing momentum.

*although I don't really want to encourage going on to collegeacb.com, I know most of you have probably already been on it. If you haven't it's worth checking out at least to understand more fully the seriousness of cyberbullying and just how close to home it really is. click the link above to check it out.

Podcasts

I'm not going to lie, I really had no interest in podcasts whatsoever before or even really after reading the chapter on them in Levinson's book. However, I needed something to write about for this blog post so I went on Itunes to give them a chance. I came across a couple different ones but didn't really feel like sitting and listening to someone talk for a half hour with no visual to entertain me so I chose one of the shortest ones I could find. It's called "The Daily Appster" and was exactly 6 minutes and 31 seconds long--perfect for someone who doesn't have the time or patience to sit through anything longer. Like I said, the podcast was relatively short, and featured music both at the beginning and the end to lively it up a bit. The basic concept of the podcasts which the creator, James, does everyday, is that he provides a quick review of what he believes to be the best apps for your Iphone, Blackberry, Android, etc. that are available for free on the given day. On today's podcast, he quickly discussed the attributes of six different apps that you can get for free (either for a limited time today or all the time). It was actually pretty interesting and gave me all the basic details that I would need to make a decision. At the end of the brief program James took some time to thank his fans that wrote positive reviews on Itunes and thanked the band that provided the opening and closing music. Besides that, the program was quick, efficient, and informative. No ads, no stupid jokes--just his honest opinion and I was out of there. Thanks to this positive experience with podcasts, I plan to revisit the podcast page on Itunes in search of another good find.

Listen to The Daily Appster here.

Knowing the Age of "Second Lifers"

I have actually been a member of "Second Life" before. It was
about 5 years ago or so and I got the idea from watching my local news. They were doing a story on this new virtual world and I decided to go check it out. I think I only went on the site once and it wasn't because I hated it, but rather you never know what kind of people you are talking to. I can distinguishably remember two types of people. There was this guy who kept making fun of me because I was new to the website. He put me in a bubble and I had no idea how to get out of it. Reading Professor Levinson's section on "Second Life," he probably created a script that put me into said bubble. The second was a girl who claimed to be 15 but was actually 10 or 12. I figured this out based on the language she was using and her lack of typing skills. Since that day, I have never been on the site again. Based on the reading, apparently it was through some changes; one in particular. That change is the addition of voices. Before, members had to type everything as if they were in a chat group. Now, members have the option of speaking aloud to other members. This change can also help identify an approximate age of the complete strangers that you are socializing with.

Has anyone else attempted this virtual reality? Did you notice any changes or updates that have been added over the years? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Editing of Wikipedia Articles

In Paul Levinson's book New New Media, he brings up the excellent point of editing Wikipedia articles. I believe that when he wrote this book, Wikipedia did not force users to create an account in order to edit the articles. Now, however, an account on Wikipedia is necessary in order to make edits. Before, administrators tracked users via their IP address, a set of numbers that are assigned to every computer in different locations, as a way of identifying with each computer user. Levinson says that once an account has been created, Wikipedia uses that to track users. But, neither of these methods are a good way to keep track of vandals. Anyone could create a different account name and easily have access. Or, especially those living on a college campus, can just go to another location (or building) and log in from there because their IP address is a different number (yet, this could prevent the person living in that location not to be able to edit if the editor gets banned.) As of right now, I don't know what could be a less foolproof method. Maybe tracking both the account and the IP address since that could give a lot of information (especially if they consistently have the same IP address.)


On another note, I did not know that editors/readers are allowed to view every single edit that was made to a Wikipedia article. I think that's a very useful tool because it allows readers and other editors to see what other people are looking for in terms of adding content (or even deleting it.) Great! Now, I have another way to procrastinate from doing my homework.

Wikipedia

In today's world, anything at any time is knowable. If you have a smart phone, you can look up virtually any statistic or obscure fact on Wikipedia or google in a matter of seconds.

Anyone (who hasn't been banned) can contribute to Wikipedia. Although this allows for false information and pranksters, Wikipedia has a team of vigilant readers and editors who can quickly address these issues and fix the entries. Even with all this potential for abuse, Wikipedia is remarkably accurate; almost as accurate as Britannica.

Levinson asks "does Wikipedia make libraries unnecessary?" Former secretary of state Colin Powell claims that we don't need books anymore because of search engines and Wikipedia. I think that he is going a little too far saying that we don't need ANY books anymore. However, my need for books while doing research has gone down tremendously in the past few years. Over my entire college career, I've only needed to get a handful of books from the library. I was able to get almost all the information I needed online.

I think Wikipedia is a great site with a terrific format. If you need to know something about virtually any topic at all, Wikipedia is a good start. I can't see a site like Wikipedia dying anytime soon, and I plan on continuing to use it on a regular basis.

Here's a video with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, talking more about Wikipedia and what makes it so special.

Wikipedia Contributors Less Than 15% Women

After reading Levinson's chapter in Wikipedia, I had the greatest reaction to the discussion on what is deemed permissible as an entry and what is not. I think that all entries, including those on fictional characters, that adhere to the established format should remain on Wikipedia. Someone, somewhere will find value in it, and because we are talking about text, which is very small in comparison to images or video, bandwidth is not much of a concern.

As Levinson writes, "all Wikipedians are equal, but some are more equal than others." Sure, there must be those who edit and delete entries or vandalism plagued by "mental maliciousness,"(Levinson 86) but how editors arrive at what is relevant or not is very subjective. For an online encyclopedia that reaches out to so many people, someone will always find value in one aspect of a topic that someone else does not. Ideally, all Wikipedians should be able to contribute on a level playing field. Somewhere along the line the scale has lost its balance and now leans toward a specific type of contributor.

According to an article published in The New York Times this past January, "less than 15 percent of its hundreds of thousands of contributors are women." Noam Cohen's article entitled "Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedia's Contributor List" continues to explain that the Wikimedia Foundation conducted a study which found that Wikipedia's contributors are barely 13 percent women. The foundation has set a goal to raise the number of women contributors, not for the sake of diversity, but to ensure that Wikipedia is as good as it can be.

Why diversity ensure a quality encyclopedia? Males and females are each able to emphasize certain topics that their genders are more familiar with. With contributors representing gender-specific subjects, Wikipedia can expand upon its already wide range of entries. Cohen compares the Wikipedia entries for two shows that relate to each gender: Sex in the City for women and The Sopranos for men. Cohan explains that Sex and the City has only "a brief summary of every episode." The Sopranos, however, has lengthy articles about every episode.

The lack of women contributors is explained by the OpEd Project, a group that monitors the gender breakdown in public thought-leadership forums. They claim that a rate of 85 men to 15 women is common when looking at public forums, such as Congress or even The New York Times. If online resources like Wipedia, which are frequently referenced by so many people are unable to capture the thoughts of the entire population, how can we rely on them as neutral sources of information? An author's voice usually shines through the text, putting a spin on the information. Levinson references I.A. Richards to say that the writer's intentions "have no real connection to the impact of the text. All that should count...is the text itself" (89).

Entries cannot appeal to one gender over another and content cannot be geared toward one type of person while neglecting the interests of others. In order for Wikipedia to be a reliable source, the articles must neutrally represent a diverse spectrum of people.

i Digg it

I was not familiar with the site Digg before reading Levinson’s book but found this chapter to be very informative. After visiting the site myself, I found many different stories that I was interested in and was surprised on how easily accessible they were. They are categorized into topics such as Entertainment, Science, and Sports, which made the site very easy to navigate.

In comparison to other social media sites, I would not consider this a great site to have “Friends.” The concept that one person can follow another like Twitter does not really make sense to me because I feel you should both agree to being “friends” together. While they are not true friends, I do like the idea that your “friends” have similar interests to you just as you would in real life. This keeps you connected and forces you to keep up with each other so you can find out more things going on in the world. You can keep each other updated on current events and this is a very positive part of this site. The site is always refreshing which keeps everyone informed at all times.

On New New Media

At 22 years young, I always find it incredibly disturbing how technology evolves at such a rapid pace. I always catch myself, as well as my friends, complaining about how old we feel and how seemingly out of touch we are becoming with the latest fad online. While we're comfortable with Facebook, it took us a while to get used to Twitter. Heck, I still remember having a MySpace and even a Friendster account from about seven years ago. While seven years doesn't seem like a long time, it seems as if technology lives in dog years as MySpace has struggled to compete with the hipper Facebook, and Friendster is seemingly obsolete.

I've spent most of my college years studying new and social media. It is something I am very fascinated with, and the rapid pace of evolution with this "new new media" guarantees that there is always something new to learn.

Perhaps the most meaningful contribution of new new media is the fundamental shift of roles. Prof. Levinson wrote about this - how anyone can be a producer - not only a viewer. Perhaps this is where most of the debate lies when it comes to new new media, and this is perhaps the main reason why I am so intrigued by the subject.

Has "new new media" brought about a cultural renaissance, or is it destroying our culture as we know it?

On the one hand, one can argue that one of the largest contributions of new new media is user generated content. As mentioned, anyone can be a producer, and anyone with a dream now has a platform to at least have a shot to reach it. Musicians such as David Choi, Alyssa Bernal, and JR Aquino have found success through YouTube. Sean Kingston, Kate Voegle, and Colbie Caillat found their big break through MySpace. On a grander scale, Justin Bieber has gone from viral video to worldwide superstar and Grammy nominee.

Those are only some of the few artists who have gained notoriety through this new new media.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, for every OK Go, there are about a thousand terrible Beatles covers. Is the glorification and opportunity of the amateur hurting culture? Andrew Keen brings forward the monkey-typewriter theory in his book The Cult of the Amateur - How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture. He writes that if you give an infinite amount of monkeys an infinite amount of typewriters, one of them will produce a masterpiece everything else is just garbage that isn't worth our time (8). He asks, "What happens... when egoism meets bad taste, meets mob rule? The monkeys take over" (9). For him, "amateur hour has arrived, and the audience is now running the show" (34).

Perhaps he takes an incredibly pessimistic view on this, but he does raise a legitimate concern. Levinson brought up how Wikipedia has challenged the encyclopedia. It makes me wonder if information like that should fall in the hands of possibly an eighth grader who is good with the internet. Wikipedia may democratize information, but it does raise doubts that it would allow the same eighth grader to be held with the same merit as a tenured college professor.

I guess the reason why the study of new new media is that it involves a lot of unanswered questions. It is constantly advancing and changing at an incredibly rapid pace and we are right in the heart of it. At the same time, we neither have the foresight nor the hindsight to decide whether new new media is good for our culture or not. It raises a lot of debate, which makes it an even more interesting subject to delve into.

Marty Mercado

@nymrtz

Evolution of Social Media

For our generation, social media is something that is an inevitable fact of life. In this day and age, things like facebook, twitter, foursquare and the like are everyday tools that are almost impossible to escape from. Personally, I am a fan of, I would say, most forms of social media. I enjoy getting facebook notifications sent directly to my cell phone and being able to check in to locations on foursquare at any moment. This, in addition to my major in communications, is partially why I chose to take this class on social media. However, I think that this sort of affinity that I have for social media is not necessarily required in order to have interest in this class. I think that most everyone, if given the chance and had enough space in their schedule, would enjoy a class on social media because of the fact that it is so present in our lives.

I can definitely understand the opposite point of view as well. I get that many people do not want to be bombarded with information from different sources at all times through every medium. I think that in the end, when used correctly and for good purposes, social media can only produce good outcomes.

Something that is not so present in our lives is the idea presented by Dr. Levinson of "new new" media. When I first bought his book for my Intro to Communications class last year I was skeptical of the title and I actually talked to someone who thought the cover of the book had a typo. After learning about what this concept actually is it definitely makes sense. I think that the first chapter of the book "Why 'New New' Media?" is one of the most interesting. The explanation that Dr. Levinson gives for his ordering of the chapters is interesting and I think that his reasons made sense at the time that the book was published, but I would be interested to know if he would order them differently today, just a year and a half later.