week 11

Flexibility, Ubiquity, Fragmentation

Technology is everywhere. we are using it without even thinking about it. We cant imagine our every day routine without it. Since our phones became "smart" they do alot of things for us. And i will tell you how i use it.

I wake up from the alarm on my phone, while im having breakfast im checking Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler, Mail. I text people, i post stuff on every media platform im in, in order to connect with people. I use Trip View to check my trains, I use weather app, even have done the course evaluation today via my phone and UNSW app. What would have i done without it?

Apps are everywhere , they are so ubiquitous. Apps are applied to almost anything. It gives the ability to network and view information in a carefree way. We are so used to them, that now cant even imagine our live without it.

However, with this ubiquitous computing becoming more and more important in our lives, there is an issue of security. McCullough says that "as information becomes more and more abundant , clear views through it become less and less possible", which means that our personal security is more likely to be compromised because of the large amount of information going through networks we use

week 8

The Fate of the State

This week i would like to talk about metadata and privacy. 

Anything that has ever been typed on the Internet will stay there forever. You can delete it any times you want, but that information is there in a form of metadata, and it will be there. Which makes us question the concept of privacy on Internet.

Daniel Solove states that metadata is "envelope information because it is akin to an envelope we send a letter in - and the letter itself is the content information". Metadata is very important as it contains every single part of the shared data. 

Metadata allows us to see inexplicit information explicitly, the prevalence of metadata allows people and organisations to view private information and use that information to their own advantages. This is clearly seen in the documents Edward Snowden has shown in the relation to the NSA. That documents included recording telephone conversations, monitoring users of social media, tracking people's locations. Nothing is no longer private over the Internet.

With the merge of new technologies such as google glass or even updating old media , it creates more issues than solving them. It allows us to track others and we are being tracked as well. Evgeny Morozov in his paper states "citizens take on the role of information machines that feed the techno-bureaucratic complex with our data" . Everything we put online is constantly traced.

week 9

New Communities

Micropolitics

Well, this week topic will be micropilitcs, and new communities it is creating.

Living in the world where technology is everything, new media platforms are the ones that create new communities. It gives us opportunity to explore new ways to communicate online and to explore new areas of effectiveness of it.

File sharing is one of the current new micropolitical organisations.  Thomas Jellis staes that micropolitics are "creation of techniques for collaboration, involve experimentation and an openness to be experimental...[it] offers apoint of departure for a new kind of politics". One of the examples of that wold be ThePirateBay. It emphasize the idea of collaboration, as ussers are able to download media through the metadata of other users . However, at the same time it is very rebellious against macropolitics, enhances global cooperation as the Internet connects a huge ammount of users and information.

Douglas Rushkoff brings a very interesting point , he states that government is able to control Internet and can "turn it off", he brings examples of the "corporate-government banishment of Wikileaks last year...[the] Egypt[ian government]shutting off its networks to stave off revolution...the Obama administration seeking the ability to do pretty much the same thing n the US, Facebook's "sponsored stories", and the pending loss of net neutrality". This brings the idea that Internet is a part of macropolitics, the existance of it and its growth depends on the government. However, in my opinion, no matter how many online communities will be "turn off" , the new ones will appear instantly.

week 10

Media Affect

This week i would like to talk about in what ways media affects us. 

We see media, we use media, we think we create media. But its media that influences us. For example advertisement. Advertisement is a brilliant thing to manipulate people. Making people buy what they might not even want, make people want ,even if they dont need it. The simplest example would be, have you ever seen a child in a store... and how he/she wants every candy because it is all shiny and colourful and because all the kids in the playgroud are eating these candies... well that is excactly what is happening to us. We see big , bright ads on tv, or billboards and we want it. we want it because it gives us an idea that if we buy this car, we will be just as happy family as the family that was shown on tv, everyone is happy , going on the road trips with the whole family and with a dog. 

Or ... i love ads like this one. The man deodorant that "attracts" women. After that advertisement almost every man with low self esteem was wearing that deodorant. They hoped to get more attention from the women, unfortunately its not a love potion. Samson clearly stated in his writing that "the way [we] use y[our] product is more and more oriented towards relationship’ (Samson 2012, p. 226). 

However, any advertisement ( well not any, but a successful ones) are not something that came up within 5 minutes in a head of one man. It is a very hard and professional work that has been done by a group of people, professional marketing people that know how to persuade people into buying things. The "viral marketing" explores our "effective attachment" to a product.   

Lets talk a bit more about "viral marketing" . "Viral marketing" is very effective and successful as it reaches a huge number of consumers internationally. The same concept is in viral videos. The reason why videos become so viral these days is because of their "thisness". Some of them are done by a phone camera which gives more personal attach to it. And that's the difference between viral youtube videos and for example news. Its way more recent, it can come up withing hours after the event. ta the same time it connects us as well. We all see the video, we all talk about it, we share it, we connect

Week 7

Framing

This week's lecture was about framing, hacking and vectors.

However, i would like to focus more on the idea of framing  and how it is broadly used in media.

Starting with framing. Framing in my opinion is like the way you see things. almost like a concept of biasedness ( if thats a word). We see stuff in the way we want. It can depend on our education, family values, morality, religion or even the society you live in. And that all create our view on things, however at the same time it makes us biased. Everyone is biased because we all have very personal view and opinion.

And it is similar to media. The content of it depends on the people who own it. Thats why i dont think documentary, or even news show a full story, it always has some people standing besides it that want to show a specific view point, and its not being true for both sides at the same time.

Example about the biased news could be the recent political event. As some of you might know Ukraine is going throught a revolution, where politicians dont do anything , and where their own army is shooting their own people. since i can understand Ukranian and Russian and English i watch 3 sides of the news, the ones that America shows, Russia and Ukraine. Maybe im being biased but Russian news showing footage that others dont show... well US isnt showing them , and Ukranian news ( eg with the army shooting their own ppl) saying that army is shooting terrorists , not civil people. And thats how framing works. It shows you only what someone wants you to see.