Well politics has been an even bigger hot topic this past week. Who will run, who will win? Having a Bachelor's in Political Science, I seem to find myself immersed in all of the debates and platforms. Then I often have a fleeting thought...do other countries work like this? How do their campaigns for political office go? Do they participate in the same way Americans do?
Jean Burgess and Axel Bruns really got me to see that often times...nothing changes. People are who they are. Their study looked at Twitter as a microblogging platform and the election related tweets. The researchers discuss how much Twitter impacts a campaign but often times not in the ways it should. It seems that even in places like Australia, the voters seem to mirror only what they are presented. Not a lot of in-depth research is done by the common voters to see what they like and do not like about candidates. We see that in our own country as well, Americans jumping on board with social campaigns yet never really understanding what they are fully supporting.
The roles change a bit in places like South Africa. The citizens of these areas, as discussed by Marion Walton and Pierreinne Leukes, do not have a direct and readily available connection to the campaigns being given by elected officials. So do they let that stop them, why of course not. While what gets heard and who hears it is closely monitored, mobile use to gain access to these campaigns has increased. These two articles also add to the context of how crucial it is for voters to get involved and how crucial this new emergence of social media campaigns really are.
The final article for this week discusses how blogs and political blogging effect the political discourse of a country. Stefania Vicari discusses how the new political blogging practices are effecting campaigns. Because of this new era, Blogs are bringing light to the issues facing countries and even giving a new era of campaigning a shot.
Overall the issues that face Americans are still prevalent in other countries. Social media is playing a giant role in the politics of today around the world. So as this new era pushes its way through, will we step up and do our part to join in the fight to know the facts and do the research.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
#PoliticallyCorrect
As if social and digital media did not run our daily lives already a new era has been rung in, digital political campaigns. Our first reading for this week kind of set the premise and theoretical basis for what this new phenomenon is, interactivity. Barbara Warnick writes about the guidelines and research done on interactivity and concludes that is that in which users connect with a speaker on a common cause. She writes about the political campaigns of the 2004 election and shows that interactivity functions rhetorically to advance the agendas of candidates. This shows that political figures are stepping on board the digital media train, now more than ever, to join voters under a common cause.
The next article by Janet Johnston focused on the use rhetoric on Twitter in the 2012 presidential campaigns. She states that, "Social media changes the way candidates react to situations as well as how Americans can respond, support, and gather information about both candidates." So how does this new use of digital and social media affect us as voters in any kind of elections? Well data shows that President Obama's "Change" campaign was one of the driving forces behind his win and reelection. So if he is the first to really solidify the use of rhetoric and Twitter as its outlet then what will come of the next campaigns? Johnson again describes the use of rhetoric by stating, "Political candidates must learn to use rhetoric in the digital world. When a person learns to communicate a clear, concise, and effective message at the appropriate time and direct that message to a specific audience about a certain situation, that person creates leverage. By creating “rhetorical leverage,” political candidates communicate messages effectively with the electorate and create an advantage. The candidates can possibly neutralize messages created by their opponents in other traditional media by learning to use virtual rhetoric effectively and take advantage of the rhetorical situation through these new rhetorical media."
Rhetoric, being the use of language to construct clear and effective messages for an audience and a specific situation, plays a key role in everyday life and once again, like Warnick states, bring people together on a common cause. That also is prevalent in Amber Davisson's piece on Google Maps as a rhetorical invention in the 2008 election. The use of the traditional red and blue maps were used to divide our country by affiliations; however, in 2008 Google created user generated maps that sought to band a divided country together into what they could unite and become. Instead of the traditional read and blue mixed maps we see around election time, alternative maps created during the 2008 presidential election, show the seeds of future political action. Here lies a potential future where users can collaborate and participate in the political interpretation of the spaces they occupy on a daily basis.
Social media plays a heavy role in now just about every aspect of our lives. Political parties and their communication through social media gives voters a firsthand experience of the political process in real time, which television, radio, and print could not accomplish in past elections.
The next article by Janet Johnston focused on the use rhetoric on Twitter in the 2012 presidential campaigns. She states that, "Social media changes the way candidates react to situations as well as how Americans can respond, support, and gather information about both candidates." So how does this new use of digital and social media affect us as voters in any kind of elections? Well data shows that President Obama's "Change" campaign was one of the driving forces behind his win and reelection. So if he is the first to really solidify the use of rhetoric and Twitter as its outlet then what will come of the next campaigns? Johnson again describes the use of rhetoric by stating, "Political candidates must learn to use rhetoric in the digital world. When a person learns to communicate a clear, concise, and effective message at the appropriate time and direct that message to a specific audience about a certain situation, that person creates leverage. By creating “rhetorical leverage,” political candidates communicate messages effectively with the electorate and create an advantage. The candidates can possibly neutralize messages created by their opponents in other traditional media by learning to use virtual rhetoric effectively and take advantage of the rhetorical situation through these new rhetorical media."
Rhetoric, being the use of language to construct clear and effective messages for an audience and a specific situation, plays a key role in everyday life and once again, like Warnick states, bring people together on a common cause. That also is prevalent in Amber Davisson's piece on Google Maps as a rhetorical invention in the 2008 election. The use of the traditional red and blue maps were used to divide our country by affiliations; however, in 2008 Google created user generated maps that sought to band a divided country together into what they could unite and become. Instead of the traditional read and blue mixed maps we see around election time, alternative maps created during the 2008 presidential election, show the seeds of future political action. Here lies a potential future where users can collaborate and participate in the political interpretation of the spaces they occupy on a daily basis.
Social media plays a heavy role in now just about every aspect of our lives. Political parties and their communication through social media gives voters a firsthand experience of the political process in real time, which television, radio, and print could not accomplish in past elections.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
#ViralMovements
This week I am writing all the way from New York City. This week has been a complete adventure for this southern gal, as I have ventured out of my comfort zone and into a world completely different from my own. Though none of this has been done without a bit of academic reading.
This weeks readings are about political and social media campaigns as well as viral movements. Something that struck me as interesting kind of in relation to this viral movement is my snapchat. As I have traveled to NYC and throughout its five boroughs I have seen something quite interesting. Every time I change places my snapchat recognizes this and gives me boarders that tell where I am. This kind of freaks me out after las week's lessons on sur/souveillance; however, it kind of fits into this weeks lessons. Gustafsson brings a new term into the light, viral politics and viral movements. These are simply new ways to create change and publicity for a common cause, much like my snapchat. This sense of viral politics is a new one and instead of us picking and choosing which political movements we choose to be apart of, through the social media boost we are now saturated with this information and know about it whether we choose to or not.
Take the Chickfila campaign a couple of years ago. As Jill Weber writes about the 2012 controversy and how greatly it impacted society in just a few days. No matter which side you were on you were on you still had passion and chose to defend your beliefs. Even those who chose to not do anything about this and did not really care about the controversy, those people can still say they knew about it and had an idea of the situation. This is just an example of Gustafsson and his political and viral movements.
Social media is the new pony express, or world wide web, it is our quickest way to obtain information. The argument has been made over and over again if social media is taking over and pushing out traditional media. In my opinion, it isn't. It is teaching an old dog new tricks and revamping the traditional into the new world.
So like my snapchat has done this week, it takes my location, filters and boarders and those around me and combines them into one common "story" for all those in NYC to see. This is the new viral movements and a new way for information to be distributed. The most effective, with the least cost.
This weeks readings are about political and social media campaigns as well as viral movements. Something that struck me as interesting kind of in relation to this viral movement is my snapchat. As I have traveled to NYC and throughout its five boroughs I have seen something quite interesting. Every time I change places my snapchat recognizes this and gives me boarders that tell where I am. This kind of freaks me out after las week's lessons on sur/souveillance; however, it kind of fits into this weeks lessons. Gustafsson brings a new term into the light, viral politics and viral movements. These are simply new ways to create change and publicity for a common cause, much like my snapchat. This sense of viral politics is a new one and instead of us picking and choosing which political movements we choose to be apart of, through the social media boost we are now saturated with this information and know about it whether we choose to or not.
Take the Chickfila campaign a couple of years ago. As Jill Weber writes about the 2012 controversy and how greatly it impacted society in just a few days. No matter which side you were on you were on you still had passion and chose to defend your beliefs. Even those who chose to not do anything about this and did not really care about the controversy, those people can still say they knew about it and had an idea of the situation. This is just an example of Gustafsson and his political and viral movements.
Social media is the new pony express, or world wide web, it is our quickest way to obtain information. The argument has been made over and over again if social media is taking over and pushing out traditional media. In my opinion, it isn't. It is teaching an old dog new tricks and revamping the traditional into the new world.
So like my snapchat has done this week, it takes my location, filters and boarders and those around me and combines them into one common "story" for all those in NYC to see. This is the new viral movements and a new way for information to be distributed. The most effective, with the least cost.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
#Techy
A wise woman once said "Your pace in the race of life is defined by those whom you choose to run by." This quote really came to mind as I was reading Aaron Hess's article You Are What You Compute. This article brings to the forefront an issue that generations today don't even know they are facing. As Hess states we are "attached at the hip with our digital devices; we have become one with them." Even as I was reading this I received a text and absolutely could not stand to let it sit there and me not know what it said. We have talked a lot lately about where identity is found, online or offline, and Hess describes it perfectly in the term technological unconscious consubstantiality. This means simply that the relationship between humans, identity, and technology is not like a Venn Diagram but three parts that make a whole and cannot be separated. We are in fact defined by whom we choose to run the race beside, and for me a lot of the times its my technological devices.
Hess along with Mark Andrejevic, and Jan Fernback begin to talk about identity and personal information being something that is completely accessible to more than whom we choose to give it to. Andrejevic speaks of a world in which technology predicts our every movements, when to start the car, when I need a bus, even maybe when I am out of milk. Personally, this is immensely scary. I tend to be very private and let no one know certain details about my life, but if these details can be found through other details, what are we to do about it?
The final topic looked at by these authors is once again Identity, but one in which everything we say and type and search is logged and kept for reference. So if I look up something one time and Google logs it, then it begins to show me images and search results based on these one time log ins, what exactly is my identity? Am I really the person I choose to be and do I really like the things I like because I choose too, or is it all a fabrication and recreation of what the man behind the curtain tells me to?
Hess along with Mark Andrejevic, and Jan Fernback begin to talk about identity and personal information being something that is completely accessible to more than whom we choose to give it to. Andrejevic speaks of a world in which technology predicts our every movements, when to start the car, when I need a bus, even maybe when I am out of milk. Personally, this is immensely scary. I tend to be very private and let no one know certain details about my life, but if these details can be found through other details, what are we to do about it?
The final topic looked at by these authors is once again Identity, but one in which everything we say and type and search is logged and kept for reference. So if I look up something one time and Google logs it, then it begins to show me images and search results based on these one time log ins, what exactly is my identity? Am I really the person I choose to be and do I really like the things I like because I choose too, or is it all a fabrication and recreation of what the man behind the curtain tells me to?
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
#OhNaNaWhat'sMyName
Identity seems to be a hot topic right now, not only in the media but in this week's readings. Who are we and what is our story? In the first article by Danah Boyd the ability to have a pseudoname is the issue at hand. Why is such an issue for people? Aren't we allowed to be who and what we choose to in real life. Yes there are dress codes and restrictions for certain jobs but away from those guidelines people are who they are. In the new and upcoming generations a trend has set in to find and define identity through online and social sites, so why is this such an issue to older generations?
The way millennials develop their identity and understand privacy is through the way they are taught in schools and at home. Alice E. Marwick discusses the networked model of privacy and how it contradicts most of the signals or lessons teenagers have been taught on privacy. They have been watched over and informed on how necessary it is to have strict privacy settings; however they live in a world where information freely flows and can be reproduced in every way possible. Because of this their thoughts on privacy and information flow has been altered, as well as their versions of online identity. These two issues go hand and hand.
Camielia Gradinaru discusses the concept of online identity and its convergence to the internet today in her article From Multitude to Convergence: Contemporary Trends in the Online Identity. She states that In the 1990s, the dominant discourse about identity was formed around the idea of the great freedom in construction of a new, different identity/identities using the characteristics and tools of the Internet."
Online identity is something that is liquid and always changing, just like the actual human identity. People change through circumstances and situations and different parts of their person come forth. Frankly, a lot of time is spent worrying about who people present themselves as online while there are many more pressing issues to donate this research time to. After all, for years and years writers, artists, and celebrities have been creating different identities to keep their private lives private, so why is it a big deal for common classes to do so?
The way millennials develop their identity and understand privacy is through the way they are taught in schools and at home. Alice E. Marwick discusses the networked model of privacy and how it contradicts most of the signals or lessons teenagers have been taught on privacy. They have been watched over and informed on how necessary it is to have strict privacy settings; however they live in a world where information freely flows and can be reproduced in every way possible. Because of this their thoughts on privacy and information flow has been altered, as well as their versions of online identity. These two issues go hand and hand.
Camielia Gradinaru discusses the concept of online identity and its convergence to the internet today in her article From Multitude to Convergence: Contemporary Trends in the Online Identity. She states that In the 1990s, the dominant discourse about identity was formed around the idea of the great freedom in construction of a new, different identity/identities using the characteristics and tools of the Internet."
Online identity is something that is liquid and always changing, just like the actual human identity. People change through circumstances and situations and different parts of their person come forth. Frankly, a lot of time is spent worrying about who people present themselves as online while there are many more pressing issues to donate this research time to. After all, for years and years writers, artists, and celebrities have been creating different identities to keep their private lives private, so why is it a big deal for common classes to do so?
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
#Reflections
This week is a little different from previous weeks. This one is about reflecting back and analyzing what I have blogged about and how I have grown throughout the semester.
I must say at the beginning of this project I was a little over confident in myself. I thought, considering I had just created a personal blog, that I knew the ins and outs of the blogging world, boy was I wrong. I quickly learned that academic blogging is nothing like personal blogging and even the mere definition of a blog is in question. Throughout our readings and research I have come to understand a lot about communication technology systems, something that I once again thought I had in the bag. My eyes have definitely been opened to vast discussions on communication technology systems and their impact.
As I looked from my first post and remembered how terrifying it was, to be putting my work up against my fellow students who seemed to have completely better writing styles than I did. As the next few weeks approached I saw my confidence begin to bloom a little as I began to really understand the readings and reflect on not just what the authors were saying but how I interpreted those pieces. In my latest writings I see that I have grown even more in my ability to develop effective arguments about what is being said, as well as, formulate that in a way my audience can understand, even though that audience may only be my mom.
I believe each of the weeks have appealed to me in a different way. The meme week ranks in my favorites because I got to spend hours laughing at the hilarity of internet memes. The Social Networking Sites week was also my favorite because it spoke to a system that I have been able to grow up watching develop and launch. Through these articles and posts I see a common theme and that is me questioning society a bit in their lack of knowledge of these subjects and lack of care. Of course I am a Polly Anna thinker and I like to see that the world, at its core, is good, so these questions come as no surprise.
Through this course I have had the ability to broaden my horizons as well as my audiences, thanks mom! I hope that through the next weeks of blogging I can better my writing styles and gain more knowledge through our readings. I am so honored to have the opportunity to be in this course and absorb all of the information given by articles, my professor, and my fellow classmates.
I must say at the beginning of this project I was a little over confident in myself. I thought, considering I had just created a personal blog, that I knew the ins and outs of the blogging world, boy was I wrong. I quickly learned that academic blogging is nothing like personal blogging and even the mere definition of a blog is in question. Throughout our readings and research I have come to understand a lot about communication technology systems, something that I once again thought I had in the bag. My eyes have definitely been opened to vast discussions on communication technology systems and their impact.
As I looked from my first post and remembered how terrifying it was, to be putting my work up against my fellow students who seemed to have completely better writing styles than I did. As the next few weeks approached I saw my confidence begin to bloom a little as I began to really understand the readings and reflect on not just what the authors were saying but how I interpreted those pieces. In my latest writings I see that I have grown even more in my ability to develop effective arguments about what is being said, as well as, formulate that in a way my audience can understand, even though that audience may only be my mom.
I believe each of the weeks have appealed to me in a different way. The meme week ranks in my favorites because I got to spend hours laughing at the hilarity of internet memes. The Social Networking Sites week was also my favorite because it spoke to a system that I have been able to grow up watching develop and launch. Through these articles and posts I see a common theme and that is me questioning society a bit in their lack of knowledge of these subjects and lack of care. Of course I am a Polly Anna thinker and I like to see that the world, at its core, is good, so these questions come as no surprise.
Through this course I have had the ability to broaden my horizons as well as my audiences, thanks mom! I hope that through the next weeks of blogging I can better my writing styles and gain more knowledge through our readings. I am so honored to have the opportunity to be in this course and absorb all of the information given by articles, my professor, and my fellow classmates.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
#ToBlogOrNotToBlog
This week our readings dive into the very important question of, "What is a blog?." In a piece by Mary Garden, on defining blogs, she gives direct quotes from a Pew Research project about the defining of blogs. Pew Project director Lee Rainie says:
"I would say absolutely we’re dealing with a term that is not particularly well defined because blogging is a platform. Blogs can be so many different things to so many different people. The definition needs to be more about structure than content."
Jeff Jarvis, veteran journalist and blogger, takes a radical position:
"There is no need to define ‘blog’. A blog is merely a tool that lets you do anything from change
the world to share your shopping list. I resist even calling it a medium; it is a means of sharing
information and also of interacting: It’s more about conversation than content … Blogs are
whatever they want to be. Blogs are whatever we make them. Defining ‘blog’ is a fool’s errand."
Boyd found through her ethnographical research that veteran bloggers were usually
irritated by the definition question, finding it a futile exercise. For example, ‘Carl’ says:
"I’ve given up on definitional questions and gone for these tautologies. Like blogging is what
we do when we say, ‘We’re blogging.’ … It’s a blog because a blogger’s doing it … It’s a blog
because bloggers are engaged with it, and everyone points at it and says ‘It’s a blog!’"
So what does this mean? If researchers cannot define a over twenty year-old phenomenon, can we? Or does the definition even matter? I believe that to those who blog or know about blogs it doesn't. The increasing number of blogs over the past ten years have shown us that somehow this idea is spreading and it is giving different spectrum of people in completely different parts of the world a way to reflect and connect, defined or not.
The next article by Torill Elvira Mortensen discusses the main purpose of our whole semester; as well as, the stigma of blogging in the academic culture. This author disscuss the movement and purpose of blogs as being more of a "middle-brow" consumed market, and all but slams the middle-class working blogger by stating, "The common practice of blogging is rarely dominated by clear, touching prose, deep academic thinking, or political debate." While there are two separate and distinct groups, middle-brow and high-brow,
While there tends to be a vast difference in the two classes of blogging, one for more of a diary use and one for professional research, that does not mean that the two cannot mix. Because, I believe to write a blog, academic or personal, you must in some way put forth your personal opinion about the subject which blurs the lines a bit between strictly subjectively academic, and personal. This seems to be, in my opinion, the issue for the stigma. Blogs have retained this impression to be strictly for our diary use, but they are not. They can be used in ways to further education, such as this course.
This article, like the third one on Power Laws, show that a certain group of people are making up and deciding what is needing to be read; however if there were more blogs to choose from, these power laws might actually turn into more bell curves, giving some balance between academia and society.
I will leave you with a quote from Mortensen:
"Ultimately, communication happens as human beings create meaning from a set of signals which we can call signs. The practice of receiving and communicating this meaning is where we need to look, if we wish to make an attempt at breaking out of the symbolic universe within which we have all been trained. Weblogs and webloggers have one advantage in this attempt."
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
#MyTopEight
What exactly are we saying about ourselves on social media? Are we telling a story? Are we writing in our digital public diary? Do we even realize that once something is posted, its out there forever? These are all great questions to ask, and all questions this week's articles seek to answer.
Social media and social network sites (SNSs) have created a new culture in our world. Before you have time to pick up the phone to chat with a friend you can know exactly how their day has been, via the social sites. What does this mean then? Where did all of this begin. Boyd and Ellison answer this question for us in their research, "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship." They define SNSs as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system." They discuss that through the first major social sites like Friendster and Myspace, this culture was born.
Everyone totally remembers when the only thing that mattered was who was in your top eight, who's top eight you were in, and what song was playing on your profile. Growing up in this era, a new culture was created where there was a new way to interact and socialize. Then, after moving away from being a college only site, all of the previous Myspacers moved to Facebook. Boyd & Ellison along with Page, Harper & Frobenius discuss what exactly our profiles say about us, what story they tell.
From 2008 to 2012 the range of limitations on what Facebook users can do has grossly expanded. Only a few short years ago we could only write words in a box, now we can tag, tweet, link, check-in, add pictures, and all but create a hologram of ourselves to these updates. So what does what we put on our profiles say about us? Page, Harper & Frobenius discuss in-depthly the narratives we portray about who we are and how we feel through what we post. Cultures and niches are formed throughout the social networking world and they truly mimic our lives. Andre Brock writes about African American culture on sites such as twitter. These niches created by certain races or cultures only mirror our lives. As human we stay in our comfort zones, we follow or friend who we know or would like to know, celebrities or athletes we admire, and the companies we support. To me it has little to do with race and a lot to do with the story we are telling about ourselves, whether that be who we actually are or who we want people to perceive us as.
Social media and social networking sites, if not already, will soon take over how we look at the information we give and receive. To that, there is much need for research to be done in these fields about how to capture an audience that is so 5 minutes ago.
Social media and social network sites (SNSs) have created a new culture in our world. Before you have time to pick up the phone to chat with a friend you can know exactly how their day has been, via the social sites. What does this mean then? Where did all of this begin. Boyd and Ellison answer this question for us in their research, "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship." They define SNSs as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system." They discuss that through the first major social sites like Friendster and Myspace, this culture was born.
Everyone totally remembers when the only thing that mattered was who was in your top eight, who's top eight you were in, and what song was playing on your profile. Growing up in this era, a new culture was created where there was a new way to interact and socialize. Then, after moving away from being a college only site, all of the previous Myspacers moved to Facebook. Boyd & Ellison along with Page, Harper & Frobenius discuss what exactly our profiles say about us, what story they tell.
From 2008 to 2012 the range of limitations on what Facebook users can do has grossly expanded. Only a few short years ago we could only write words in a box, now we can tag, tweet, link, check-in, add pictures, and all but create a hologram of ourselves to these updates. So what does what we put on our profiles say about us? Page, Harper & Frobenius discuss in-depthly the narratives we portray about who we are and how we feel through what we post. Cultures and niches are formed throughout the social networking world and they truly mimic our lives. Andre Brock writes about African American culture on sites such as twitter. These niches created by certain races or cultures only mirror our lives. As human we stay in our comfort zones, we follow or friend who we know or would like to know, celebrities or athletes we admire, and the companies we support. To me it has little to do with race and a lot to do with the story we are telling about ourselves, whether that be who we actually are or who we want people to perceive us as.
Social media and social networking sites, if not already, will soon take over how we look at the information we give and receive. To that, there is much need for research to be done in these fields about how to capture an audience that is so 5 minutes ago.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
#meme
What exactly is a meme? There is actually academic studies for this cultural phenomenon call memetics, and as described by Davi Johnson, in Mapping the Meme, it is the emerging and contested science of the "meme." When asked what a meme is some might think of Kermit...
or this lady...
What do these new form of social "propaganda" actually say about our culture? Through the research and writings of Johnson, Jenkins, Shifman, Wiggins and Bowers I have come to better understand the history behind something I have always found as entertainment. Having no clue the study of memetics originated in 1976 through the book The Selfish Gene by biologist Richard Dawkins. This is quite interesting because we see this emergence of memes only recently, or at least that is when they exploded. Scholars suggest that there is no room for this virtual hilarity in the academic setting, but is there?
Why are these so popular? I believe they have become a new way to express ourselves, a new way to be parodize what is happening in pop and world culture. Let's take the famous and beautiful Ryan Gosling. Due to his ability to be innocent and play the loving and manly roles in great movies he has become the poster man for all preppy and scholarly memes. If this is a way to gain attention why is academic literature not tapping into this way to make learning fun for adults? Shifman suggests that memes must be imitated, remixed, and rapidly diffused, a perspective we could share and carry further to modify.
Wiggins and Bowers define Internet memes as as the spreadable media that have been remixed or parodied as emergent memes which are then iterated and spread online as memes. These memes progress and persist due to dynamic interaction among members of our participatory digital culture. Clearly these memes have emerged as our new form of SNL, or YouTube channel so why have they been almost banned from academia.
If you take a look at many of the University of South Alabama Sakai sites you will see that there are memes used to "break the ice" between online teachers and their prospective students. Personally I have seen multiple ones about public speaking, award shows, and history. Johnson states that memes use us to alter their environments so that their chances for replication are enhanced. If we as academic students and researchers are trying to spread information and teach others about our chosen subjects, why not use something that spreads like wildfire. Let's be honest, within fifteen minutes of Jameis Winston falling down for no apparent reason in the play-off game there were a multitude of memes and videos created to poke fun at the slip-up.
I am not saying that using memes is altogether the best and most effective way to teach higher education, but I am saying that it doesn't hurt to open up the doors and windows to the coming future or education. In closing, if you have a message to send, or need to get a good laugh just create or look up memes and you are sure to get a good laugh.
or this lady...
Why are these so popular? I believe they have become a new way to express ourselves, a new way to be parodize what is happening in pop and world culture. Let's take the famous and beautiful Ryan Gosling. Due to his ability to be innocent and play the loving and manly roles in great movies he has become the poster man for all preppy and scholarly memes. If this is a way to gain attention why is academic literature not tapping into this way to make learning fun for adults? Shifman suggests that memes must be imitated, remixed, and rapidly diffused, a perspective we could share and carry further to modify.
Wiggins and Bowers define Internet memes as as the spreadable media that have been remixed or parodied as emergent memes which are then iterated and spread online as memes. These memes progress and persist due to dynamic interaction among members of our participatory digital culture. Clearly these memes have emerged as our new form of SNL, or YouTube channel so why have they been almost banned from academia.
If you take a look at many of the University of South Alabama Sakai sites you will see that there are memes used to "break the ice" between online teachers and their prospective students. Personally I have seen multiple ones about public speaking, award shows, and history. Johnson states that memes use us to alter their environments so that their chances for replication are enhanced. If we as academic students and researchers are trying to spread information and teach others about our chosen subjects, why not use something that spreads like wildfire. Let's be honest, within fifteen minutes of Jameis Winston falling down for no apparent reason in the play-off game there were a multitude of memes and videos created to poke fun at the slip-up.
I am not saying that using memes is altogether the best and most effective way to teach higher education, but I am saying that it doesn't hurt to open up the doors and windows to the coming future or education. In closing, if you have a message to send, or need to get a good laugh just create or look up memes and you are sure to get a good laugh.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
#ZombieLife
We hear all the time that we are a generation of "Zombies," or we are so wrapped up in our technology that we have lost our oral and written skills. But have we? The big question is if our generation is actually the "lost one." Are we the people that have no social interaction skills, no drive, no will to work?
In her book "The Already New," "Lisa Gitelman discusses the reality of media and its ability to be a single entity as well as a thing of history. In the intorduction of the book Gitelman poses the question: "What actually is history?" Gitelman states,"If history is a term that means both what happened in the past and the varied practices of representing that past, then media are historical at several different levels." The teenagers and millennials of today are looked upon as being so consumed, reliant, and enthralled with the latest and greatest technology and social interaction yet how will that look fifty years from now? Now when the newspapers and the televisions or even color televisions were invented and created there was some old-timers shaking his finger and fussing about how the times were changing and nothing would be the same because now children would not play in the yard or get good sunlight anymore. These naysayers did not know the history they were apart of and neither do the people of today.
Gitelman describes it greatly as this: "But media are also historical because they are functionally integral to a sense of pastness. Not only do people regularly learn about the past by means of media representations—books, films, and so on—using media also involves implicit encounters with the past that produced the representations in question. These implicit encounters with the past take many forms. A photograph, for instance, offers a two-dimensional, visual representation of its subject, but it also stands uniquely as evidence, an index, because that photograph was caused in the moment of the past that it represents." Yes media can harm us in a way, it can poison the innocence of children and force them to see adult content at young ages, or it can be a dictator in a way and tell us exactly what we need to be thinking about; however there are upsides to our emerging and highly technological era. Today we can now find photographs and articles at the tip of our fingers instead of taking prolonged trips to the central library to search for hours.
Another interpretation of her book can be taken from the sentence, "When media are new, they offer a look into the different ways that their jobs get constructed as such." I believe this is a sentence that means so much in the definition of what our media today actually entails. If you take a Newspaper 40 years ago they ran everyday and were available for delivery or purchase in the store. No a newspaper, though there is a decline in paper production, has three or four social media sights, a website, and an actual online version of the paper. This shows the evolution of our media and the advances we are taking to rewrite and make history.
The summation of this article and the reality of our world is that yes there are pros and cons to everything in life, there is always a silver lining or a dark cloud but it is if you choose to see that. We are making and marking history with the techological advances made in the 2000s, and to say it has no impact on history or completely ruins history would be foolish. Are we zombies? Possibly...but we are infact interacting socially, but in a different way than those before us.
In her book "The Already New," "Lisa Gitelman discusses the reality of media and its ability to be a single entity as well as a thing of history. In the intorduction of the book Gitelman poses the question: "What actually is history?" Gitelman states,"If history is a term that means both what happened in the past and the varied practices of representing that past, then media are historical at several different levels." The teenagers and millennials of today are looked upon as being so consumed, reliant, and enthralled with the latest and greatest technology and social interaction yet how will that look fifty years from now? Now when the newspapers and the televisions or even color televisions were invented and created there was some old-timers shaking his finger and fussing about how the times were changing and nothing would be the same because now children would not play in the yard or get good sunlight anymore. These naysayers did not know the history they were apart of and neither do the people of today.
Gitelman describes it greatly as this: "But media are also historical because they are functionally integral to a sense of pastness. Not only do people regularly learn about the past by means of media representations—books, films, and so on—using media also involves implicit encounters with the past that produced the representations in question. These implicit encounters with the past take many forms. A photograph, for instance, offers a two-dimensional, visual representation of its subject, but it also stands uniquely as evidence, an index, because that photograph was caused in the moment of the past that it represents." Yes media can harm us in a way, it can poison the innocence of children and force them to see adult content at young ages, or it can be a dictator in a way and tell us exactly what we need to be thinking about; however there are upsides to our emerging and highly technological era. Today we can now find photographs and articles at the tip of our fingers instead of taking prolonged trips to the central library to search for hours.
Another interpretation of her book can be taken from the sentence, "When media are new, they offer a look into the different ways that their jobs get constructed as such." I believe this is a sentence that means so much in the definition of what our media today actually entails. If you take a Newspaper 40 years ago they ran everyday and were available for delivery or purchase in the store. No a newspaper, though there is a decline in paper production, has three or four social media sights, a website, and an actual online version of the paper. This shows the evolution of our media and the advances we are taking to rewrite and make history.
The summation of this article and the reality of our world is that yes there are pros and cons to everything in life, there is always a silver lining or a dark cloud but it is if you choose to see that. We are making and marking history with the techological advances made in the 2000s, and to say it has no impact on history or completely ruins history would be foolish. Are we zombies? Possibly...but we are infact interacting socially, but in a different way than those before us.
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