Tag Archives: Digital Reflection

Digital Reflection-The Ethics of Google by Lauren Briggs

Leave a reply

Screen Shot 2016-05-02 at 11.49.12 PM

For our final class, we looked into an article about the ethical implications of Google before starting on final presentations (http://www.fastcodesign.com/3058943/the-ux-of-ethics-should-google-tell-you-if-you-have-cancer). The article addressed the idea that, since Google has become a stronghold for information, perhaps it should be responsible for telling its searchers if they are drastically ill, just as it gives its users the information and links they have searched for. With the dramatic growth that Google has undergone, and its ability to give users answers millions of results in sometimes under a second, this article questions the ethical responsibilities that the search engine now has in order to inform its users of the implications of their searches. For example, if a user’s searches seem to imply symptoms of cancer, is Google morally obligated to contact this user and tell them that they may have a deadly disease?

In my opinion, it is not up to Google to tell its users what the implications of their searches are. Though Google has expanded into more than just a search engine, it has certainly not become a medical expert, and in my opinion, only medical experts are properly qualified to diagnose a disease or ailment. As stated in the article, “the evolution of Google’s Knowledge Graph is hardly the parallel to a doctor who spots a passenger’s melanoma on the subway.” The debate may be different if it regards an actual person who attended medical school and is trained to spot physical problems, but the answer is much more clear-cut when it involves a search engine and a company instead of an actual doctor. Just because Google has access to a wealth of information does not mean that it needs to diagnose its users based on how they use that information. Additionally, in class it was mentioned that making Google an official source for diagnosing or even just informing its users of their possible illnesses could morph into a business plan for Google, where the company makes even more money off of diagnosing users. Not only is this problematic because of the possibilities of getting it wrong (if Google misdiagnosed a user, it could certainly cause more harm and worry than good), but it is also a problem that Google, a corporation and not a medical professional, would be making money off of its users’ possible medical issues.

This article speaks to the larger scale to which technology is involved in our everyday lives, and the problems that this involvement can raise. I myself have looked on sites such as WebMD before, yet I would still largely prefer a doctor or other professional to be the one looking at my symptoms and officially diagnosing me if there were a problem. Additionally, giving Google the ability to diagnose illnesses would give the company even more power in the public’s life than it already has. I use Google everyday for my personal life, as well as for research for projects and assignments for classes. While these searches can sometimes reflect my interests and academic pursuits, I would much rather that this information not be compiled and stored to reflect an image of me for Google, even though our time in this class has shown that this is largely the case. Google already has a great deal of control over our lives, in terms of not just the information it provides as a search engine but also through its other offerings such as Gmail, Google Docs, and YouTube. These forums allow for collaboration but also increase the ways that we are being watched and monitored through the Internet. If Google were given the power to diagnose its users medically, I think this would be an unnecessary move that might benefit the company at the expense of its users.

Digital Reflection-Amazon and Google at UMass, by Lauren Briggs

Leave a reply

On April 13th, our homework and class discussions centered around Amazon and Google, and the effects that these corporations have had on the UMass campus and its students. A great deal of our discussion pertained to the disadvantages that Google and Amazon can bring, and the reasoning behind UMass partnering with these two companies.

One thing that stood out to me during these discussions was students’ comments on the fact that both Amazon and Google have risen to become wide-reaching companies, but both started out as small businesses. Particularly, I remember in elementary school that students were encouraged to use a variety of search engines to get the widest range of information. Theses search engines included Google, but also sites like Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. Now, Google would be my first option for a search engine, and I wouldn’t consider using other sites, even if I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I think that this speaks to the prevalence of Google, and the prominence it has risen to, even though it began as a smaller company. In the past, it was the smart thing to do to get sources and information from different search engines, because it meant a broader variety of that information. Now, I would be very surprised if any of my fellow students commonly used search engines other than Google.

In the same way, Amazon and Google have become the main places I go when I need to purchase something online. Recently, I have been purchasing some of my books for another one of my classes through Google Play, which offers certain texts as Ebooks, available to purchase and read on my computer. As mentioned in the podcast about the implementation of Amazon at UMass, the use of Amazon instead of an on-campus bookstore was seen as a detriment to the bookstores in the town of Amherst. While I agree with the idea of supporting a small, local business like Amherst Books, buying and reading my books online is an easier option. For me, it is much faster to purchase a book through Google Play and start reading it instantly, rather than taking a bus into town and buying the book in person.

One of the reasons I like using Google Play is that it has most of the books I am looking to buy and read, which is a feature shared by Amazon. What I appreciate about Amazon is that they have almost everything available for purchase, so whether I am looking at textbooks or Christmas gifts, I’m usually bound to find what I am looking for, or at least something similar. It is for this reason that I use Amazon so much-I am practically guaranteed to find what I need every time I go to the site, just like I am usually bound to find a book through Google Play or a site with information I need through a Google Search. Google and Amazon have a lot to offer, which is personally what draws me to them.

While Amazon and Google do have the advantage of being convenient options for their customers, I do find it somewhat disturbing that we depend on these options so much. While I would appreciate having other sources of information and consumer products, the fact does remain that Google and Amazon are some of the most convenient and wide-reaching options available to me as a UMass student. In this way, I think it is doubtful that we as a society might return to a time where students used multiple search engines, and not just Google, or when Amazon was still a fledgling company. Unless other corporations engage in making their information and products as widely and as easily available as Google and Amazon, I can only see their success building in the future, for both UMass students and society as a whole.

Reflection: Cyber Harassment-Lauren Briggs

Leave a reply

This past Wednesday, our assigned readings and class discussions centered around the topic of cyber harassment. Though I have never been a target of online harassment or cyber bullying myself, I found both the reading by Professor Danielle Citron as well as our discussion incited by her writing to hit a personal note.

Recently, I did a project for my Junior Year Writing class about a trend in my ideal career field, and I chose to research the affect of the Internet on the field of writing. Doing this project made me realize just how much I rely on the Internet for everyday activities, from doing research for similar projects to checking Facebook and other social media platforms. Personally, the Internet makes my life easier, and gives me more resources to utilize in my academic life and my social life.

However, my project didn’t really investigate the side of the Internet that includes cyber bullies and ‘trolls,’ and while I have learned about cyber bullying in a more general sense in high school, the Citron reading was an intense and in-depth look at how the Internet can affect people negatively. For me, it was really interesting to go from researching and presenting my project in my Junior Year Writing class to doing this reading and hearing what my classmates had to say in our discussion on Wednesday. I went from discussing all the benefits that the Internet can offer to a person’s career to seeing just how quickly the Internet could damage or even destroy someone’s entire life.

Of course, the existence of the Internet isn’t to blame for cyber harassment, but though the Internet has its benefits, it is also important to recognize how quickly it can dismantle a career, a social life, or both. Throughout my research for my Junior Year Writing class, I found that a great deal of my future career in the field of writing could be centered around the Internet, specifically in terms of the methods of communication and connection that it provides. For example, through my research I found that the Internet has already altered the field of self-publishing, and has made that a much more viable and inexpensive option for those who do not want to take the traditional publishing route. Additionally, social media has made it easier for authors to connect with their readers, as well as agents, publishers, and other people involved in the field of writing. These are both benefits that the Internet has offered to my ideal career field, but, as we saw in class, being so connected and somewhat dependent on the Internet can have clear downsides as well. If someone in the field of writing or even myself in the future were to become the target of cyber harassment or stalking, it would probably be very difficult to disentangle one’s image and career from the threats and abuse that come along with cyber bullying. Thus, with my ideal career field being so interwoven with the resources and opportunities provided by the Internet, I myself would have to be very careful of what information I released online and how I might deal with the possibility of cyber harassment, as both of these things could come back to haunt me. Unfortunately for me, with my goals growing more and more dependent on the Internet and being connected, cyber harassment is something I would have to be especially careful of.

Though I have not personally been a target of cyber harassment, it is easy to see through Professor Citron’s reading how quickly one’s life can change as a result of it. While I am thankful to not have had to undergo the struggles of one who is being targeted online, I have become more concerned about cyber harassment in general now that I know more about its possible effects. Doing research into my own future gives me hope, as I think the Internet has a lot of tools and resources to offer its users. However, it also worries me, as the more we become dependent on the Internet, the easier it seems to me that cyber bullies and stalkers could get ahold of personal information and harass someone into needing to abandon the Internet altogether, and thus leave behind something that provides a lot of connections and career opportunities. Through our discussion and my research I have seen the positive and negative aspects to the Internet, but I have learned about the seriousness of cyber harassment.

Reflection: Digital Platforms-Lauren Briggs

Leave a reply

Digital platforms haven’t always played the same role in my life that they currently do. Before I was in ninth grade, I didn’t have a Facebook account, and I never had a MySpace or an AOL account. The Internet was mostly used in my house to do research for school projects, sometimes order things online, and occasionally play games.

Now, hardly a day goes by where I am not using the Internet, and many of the ‘platforms’ that come with it. I use Amazon to buy my textbooks for school and to purchase other things I might need or want. I use Google for research and YouTube to watch videos for class as well as for fun. I check Facebook multiple times a day, both from the desire to know what is going on with my friends and from boredom. Going online and using these platforms has become a habit for me, for better or for worse.

Without these platforms, I can easily see my life becoming drastically different. For one thing, my life would definitely become harder, simply in terms of managing everything I have to do. For example, without Amazon it would have been difficult for me to have ordered my textbooks in time for classes this semester. Also, without the Internet in general I wouldn’t be able to access many of my assignments for school. Some of this convenience is part of having a personal laptop; when my laptop broke at the beginning of the fall semester, I found it more difficult to keep up with things in general, mostly because I didn’t have access to the Internet and its platforms at my fingertips. However, I was still able to access my schoolwork on the computers at the library, and even check Facebook and Twitter through apps on my phone. While that period of time was difficult for me in that I had to schedule time to go to the library to get my work done, it also demonstrates my heavy use of social media platforms, in that I would squint at my phone in order to check on updates rather than simply going without social media for a few weeks.

This reliance isn’t something I’m proud of, but it is something that, in my opinion, has been perpetuated by the platforms addressed in the reading. With its constantly updated timeline, segment for news headlines, and options to add pictures and videos, Facebook can keep its users worried that they’re missing out on new updates from their friends. As mentioned in the readings, Amazon employs purposeful methods to keep its customers interested and to keep them coming back (“The Age of the Platform,” pages 50-55). While these methods are arguably good business tactics for Amazon, they also contribute to its users reliance on the platform in general.

I don’t necessarily wish I could go back to the time in my life before I was so connected to these platforms, and I don’t think it is practical to wish for that either. At this point, human beings will continue to be connected to and interact with the Internet and its platforms. However, I think it is important for us to be aware of the tactics used by these platforms, such as Amazon, to keep us interested, and to be able to walk away from platforms like Facebook and interact in the real world as well.

Lauren Briggs-What YouTube Means To Me

Leave a reply

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9cbde6RUmAFDASl_By4A4EH0rUBF_gpi[/youtube]

My Top 15 playlist demonstrates a selection of videos that I not only enjoy watching, but also that represent what I use YouTube for. While I don’t post videos on YouTube myself, I do enjoy watching videos that other people have posted, and I have found that sometimes a connection can be generated just by watching the videos.

Generally, my use of YouTube is to find humor or something to distract me from schoolwork. This is represented in eight of the videos I included, which range from clips from Saturday Night Live to a parody video made by a user named Chris Fleming. My videos also include compilations, such as selected clips from the television show The Office, and news bloopers that happened to reporters and anchors from many different locations. The variety in these types of comedy clips reflects what I look for in YouTube videos; some days, I will prefer to watch a longer, compilation video that features many short, funny clips, while other days I will be more invested in watching longer comedy sketches or parodies.

Outside of looking for laughs, another category that I discovered in my YouTube playlist is that of videos that are based around celebrities. While they don’t make up a huge portion of the YouTube videos I watch, I do enjoy viewing celebrity interviews and lip synch competitions, which are some of the videos I included in my playlist. Though I enjoy insights into the lives of famous actors and actresses, I also generally find that after a few of these videos, they begin to blend together. There is typically some sort of comedic aspect to keep me interested, but I definitely watch fewer of these celebrity-based videos than I do comedic ones, simply because after a certain point, they all can seem the same.

In addition, I included several videos centered around music in my playlist. I find that some of the most common ways I listen to music in general is through YouTube. When I am doing work and need background noise, it is very easy to put together a playlist of some of my favorite instrumental music to help me to study. Specifically in my playlist, I also included some covers of famous songs done by a group of sisters. I have been watching their videos for several years now, and I find their videos and music to be interesting ways to connect with them. Though I have never met these sisters in person, I enjoy listening to both their covers and their original songs, and I feel that I have gotten a unique way to connect with them through their vlogs as well.

Lastly, I included a workout video in my playlist. I only included one workout video, since that it fairly proportionate to my viewing of workout videos on YouTube in general. While I don’t watch or use many videos when I workout, I do find them useful as free and easily accessible ways to switch up my workout routine. Overall, that is what YouTube is really all about for me: a free and accessible way to be entertained, informed, and hopefully made a little happier.

The End

Leave a reply

The end of the year has come for English 302, and I know I sure have learned/grown a lot these past few months. I’ve always been of the opinion that being critical of our media is important, so this course was instrumental in teaching me ways to do that. I think I always half-knew about all the Google privacy issues and things like that (ease always comes with a price), but like most consumers I didn’t look into it. This course forced me to think about how we get what we do and the consequences therein.

That sort of sentiment is one that is reflected across all new media platforms we studied this semester. Looking at UMass and Amazon forces us to think about what we give up as far as human interaction (and with that, human jobs) and agency when a University pairs with a corporation. It seems like nothing but a win for UMass, but there’s a lot to consider as far as repercussions for local bookstores and the monopoly of various industries that Amazon is building.

In our exploration of creative platforms, it was really cool to see webseries and games that are able to go beyond big production companies as far as representation and content. Inevitably the question of money comes up with these projects, and I think it was interesting that we talked about (especially with webseries) what the long term goal of these creators is. Do they want to get picked up for major traditional platforms like YouTube to TV or to be purchased by larger companies to get more access to better production quality and more revenue? Or is the goal just to create an audience and a business that can support itself outside of these traditional avenues of success? In some cases, is it just a product of love that will survive as long as it can?

Something that I kept coming back to was how advertisement and corporations, the parasites on the backs of old media, are trying to squeeze they’re way into new media upon seeing its success. Obviously there are companies that sponsor these projects in addition to those run by crowdfunding or out of pocket, and there are levels to this as well (as with thee show the YouTube team talked about, Carmilla, which is sponsored but very transparent about that). If these companies are going to do this, because new media is so invested in user feedback and participation, I think they’ll have to change the way they approach it at the very least. Look at Denny’s on tumblr, which uses the language and humor of that site’s culture so flawlessly it’s sometimes hard to tell that it was they are the ones posting.

It’s been really awesome getting to see people really fight back to get the representation they deserve in games and shows, but it will be interesting to see how monetization plays into it as new media platforms gain popularity (because weirdly enough, these things do have audiences! It’s almost like people of color, queer people, and women exist!!). In John Minus’s article for blackgilnerds, he talks about how Twitter is so important to the Black community because it’s a free space to speak and build community without filters or fear, and how “people have tried to do organized, scholarly articles on why Black people tweet so much. People want to isolate and monetize the fact that Black people tweet so much. “Black Twitter” exists as a scary gray area of the internet for some, the same way inner cities have scared Middle America for the last 50 years.” So although Twitter as a platform is a space for corporations (see sponsored hashtags and pseudo-activism), the community cannot be bought, although ads will undoubtedly keep trying (late capitalism is whacky like that).

I had a really good time in this class. I learned about some really awesome projects, I had to examine the media I encounter and forces behind it, and I worked on a cool project with a great group of people. I think I learned a lot, and I’m really excited to take this class with me in the future.

In the end, maybe it’s not the views we get, but the memes we make along the way.

The Monopolization of Internet Platforms

Leave a reply

Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a reoccurring idea coming up in class. That idea is the monopolization of the internet. Platforms are used to connect people, and in today’s world, technological platforms are on the rise. Technological platforms are those that don’t require physical presence to connect people, and that includes the internet.

There are most definitely powerhouses in the platforms of the internet that relay the idea of a monopoly. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, YouTube, and Pandora/Spotify are among the most prominent. Now, a lot of the time,  the monopolization of the internet is treated as a negative, but I feel like it’s very much the opposite. The monopolization of the internet is something that helps move it forward.

Now at first that may sound absurd. Monopolization can be seen as hindering the growth of smaller entities, and possibly stunting development. But with the internet, I feel it’s different. With the internet, things come and go, take memes for instance. The same holds for monopolies. Look at MySpace, Limewire, Yahoo, AIM, and others. They used to be considered the biggest platforms in what they did. But now they’ve bowed out, and moved over for the new top dogs.

Looking at it, internet platform monopolization isn’t necessarily a bad thing. All these new big names had some improvement over their predecessor. The old apps becoming the biggest name of their platforms put them in the spotlight. This allowed people to be shown what was good about the current era, and what needed improvement. The next monopoly takes that information and improves on it. People often say that Facebook was a massive improvement over MySpace, and Google’s results are generally better than Yahoo’s.

Now to some, monopolies like this are bad, as they don’t feel they promote new ideas and improvement. Maybe it sounds like I’m saying that “I for one welcome our new overlords” in some regard but I honestly feel like these waves have their benefits. “Out with the old, in with the new” as the saying goes. I feel that saying fits this trend very well. It’s the nature of the internet to grow and improve and I feel that the monopolies have played a part in that.

 

 

So, Amazon: Evil or What?

Leave a reply

cowboyamazon

When it comes to certain companies, it’s a bit easier to smell the evil: It’s not like you have to look too terribly hard at Google or Apple before thinking “yeah, well, not too hard to see where that could go wrong”.

With Amazon, things are a bit less cut and dry.

Obviously Amazon’s got its issues. People have been end-is-nigh’ing books and bookstores since Amazon first got its legs in the 90s. The site made lifelong nemeses of privately-owned bookstores by basically just existing, much the same way other online retailers like Ebay had the internet-fresh world in a tizzy of what going digital meant for local businesses. Amazon then had the gall to introduce the Kindle, which, as we all know, is the death of all literature as we know it: Say farewell to that fresh book smell, kids, because that’s going the way of the VHS soon enough.

If you’re detecting some sarcasm there, you’re not wrong. Frankly, Amazon’s done a lot worse than make a book-reading tablet, and honestly, were it not Amazon filling that void for an online bookstore, some other site would have stepped in. It’s the digital era, and you can buy pretty much anything your heart desires online these days. Is it bad for small businesses? Yes, unfortunately, but then, so is Walmart. It’s hard for me to condemn Amazon for business practices that are basically becoming the status quo these days. At some point I just have to step back and think about how I personally would do things differently, and barring wagging a finger at capitalism, I can’t say I have an alternative suggestion in mind.

Aside from generally existing, though, Amazon does have a skeleton or two in its closet: The recent Amazon vs. Hachette debacle only skims the surface of that. Amazon’s not afraid to bully writers and publishers into lower prices, meaning lower prices for consumers, but less pay for authors.

So… Amazon: Evil? I can’t say for certain just yet. There’s definitely the potential as they acquire more services and branch out into more directions, but unless something truly explosive’s happened off my radar, so far, Amazon seems to not entirely live up to the evil empire its fellows happily inhabit.

Of course, something not being inherently evil doesn’t exactly mean it’s necessarily good. Ethics among these companies isn’t exactly Western-style black hat or white hat. When the entire landscape’s grayscale, what it ultimately boils down to is at what shade you draw the line.

Walking Outside the Walls

Leave a reply

(of Google and other New Media Paradigms in Race, Gender and New Media)

The irony of this class for me is that I signed up with the narrow-minded goal of developing career-oriented technological skills. I expected these to include audio and video-editing, and the production and presentation of online content. Broader, more humanistic goals like developing digital literacy also occurred to me, but were simply items on a list, the kind of which you might find (and which I actually did plan to include) on a resume. The irony, of course, is that my original mode of thinking is what digital literacy seeks to problematize and expose to critical debate. Therefore, this class became, not a covetous, last-chance-before-I-graduate dip into a vocational skills bag, but rather a reflection on my relationship to technology, education, race, and gender.

Speaking of which, my most important takeaway has been a realization of my own privileged relationship to technology, and an awareness of how people with less privilege relate to technology in their lives. Essentially, by virtue of my race, class, and gender privilege, as well as my privileged access to education, I experience most of technology’s good side while being spared most of the bad. For instance, while I still have cause to be concerned about companies like Google tracking my data, for the present I am more likely to feel the effects of that practice in the form of more personalized and convenient web-searches, than in the form of data-packet discrimination based on perceived purchasing power. In general, I now have a much more concrete sense of how exploitation occurs in technology-mediated spaces–the gist being that traditional inequalities and prejudices are perpetuated.

This last point has had a major affect on how I’ve come to view New Media and the rhetoric surrounding it. Public conversation is saturated with uncritical and fawning messages about how “revolutionary” technology has become. Of course, they mean “revolutionary” in the PR sense of the word, in which the implied change is really only a new facade for old relationships of power–like new forms of consumerism, for instance. Basically, new media technologies (and the cultures growing around them) have so far been a disruptive force, but they have not been revolutionary. They do hint at the potential for big changes, and positive ones too, but those won’t just come about by themselves. The technologies of the internet, like automobiles and airplanes before them, are neither inherently good or bad, so they don’t only create either good or bad changes; they just make change. Right now we have an opportunity to direct the transformative power of New Media with a little more foresight and productivity than, say, we did with automobiles, and we should take advantage of it.

My Digital Reflection

Leave a reply

In the reflection I wrote on my experience of YouTube at the beginning of the semester, I described it as ‘a platform whose very purpose is to democratize the exchange of ideas and give voice to the otherwise average citizen.’  In light of what I have learned during the course, I can identify aspects of this evaluation which can be problematised.  While earlier I viewed YouTube as an example of the power of new media to redistribute power more fairly than traditional media, I am now more aware of ways in which race and gender permeate this seemingly new and neutral institution called “New Media.”

I have learned through the readings, our class discussions, and through my own research in my group’s project on web series that YouTube’s “democracy” does not always equal meritocracy; that the government of YouTube by the consent of the governed is results in many of the same problems found in traditional media.  YouTube is like the company of which it is now a part, Google, in that promoted the most popular content, which is consequently viewed far more often than most unusual or transgressive content.  It gives people what they want (or what they think they want).  I learned that this type of popular consumerism is a major concern for the creators of webseries (not just on YouTube but on all platforms), whose content often deals with persons of colour, women and LGBT people.  The need to hold the attention of the masses means that those who want to create challenging material are taking a risk, and may ultimately fall prey to homogenising effect of mainstream culture which tends to either remove nonconformity by natural selection or simply absorb and compromise it.

This was a growing and sobering realisation for me over the course of the semester.  I, who had always thought of myself as critical of consumer culture, began to point my attention more towards new media, which I had thought of as the haven and weapon of the kinds of people who would not reduce racial minorities to offensive stereotypes, who would not reduce women to mere sexual objects and who wish for a more fair and inclusive system for distributing opportunities and protections.  Over the course of the semester I was forced to think about how technology has affected my life and influenced my decisions.  I confronted the fact that I have allowed Google to wield so much power over me since I was old enough to consider myself “computer literate” that I now picture the face of George Orwell’s Big Brother whenever I think about this seemingly harmless, benevolent organisation.  This Sunday when I sit down to watch my favourite network television show, Game Of Thrones, I will be more troubled than ever by the fact that all of the major characters seem to be white, heterosexual and conventionally attractive.  I wonder what it would take for the stories being told in web series about the less visible people in our society so reach such a large and rabid audience.  Ultimately, I understand that as a society and as individuals we can choose to use and interact with new media in ways that dismantle the power of homogeny in our society, or we can allow the resistance to be crushed by the heavy hand of consumer culture.

The Invisible College: A Digital Reflection

Leave a reply

On entering the course, my thoughts on the subjects in the course title (“Race, Gender and New Media? Woo!”) were fairly vague. “I like to deconstruct issues of race and the presence of institutional racism and white supremacy in all facets of our society!” I thought, “Issues related to gender are always pertinent to my existence as a queer person also! (And I use facebook a lot I guess…)”

Essentially, while I have often encountered an intersectional analysis of race and gender in and out of the classroom, I really had no idea how to really incorporate ‘new media’ (whatever that meant to me at the time) into that discourse. I knew that vitriolic racism and sexism was as present in cyberspace as anywhere else, but the specific analytic concerns that new media might require were lost on me. How to approach these fairly different areas of society in a way that made sense and would be useful to me? Where to start? Racist youtube comments?

The answer was pretty simple: money. The internet, due to its nature as a self-replicating and collectively-produced organism can appear as a mess of content for which no one is really responsible or benefiting. But one of the first questions we asked in this course was: who’s making money on the internet? Who’s making the most money? How are they making that money? And, as a regular visitor to cyberspace, how are they making money off me and what does this mean?

These questions now haunts me whenever I use the internet and participate in new media culture. Knowing that through the seemingly innocuous act of clicking on a link or using a free (“free”) service, I am supporting vast and invisible systems that I may not want to support.

 

Digital Reflection

Leave a reply

        Over the course of this semester I have developed a better sense of what constitutes new media and how it influences our culture. New media including parodies, and memes allow for easier and more personal interaction with our peers. Such interaction forms social networks where people collaborate, share, and analyze content that is deemed culturally significant. Often these communities are confined to their respective websites, in some cases however, viral content can converge over existing communities. Whether this content is either meme, or YouTube video, communities use such media in part because of its expressive nature.

            The YouTube playlist assignment was an exciting project not only because I could write about my history with YouTube, but also because I could see how others used YouTube. I learned that many of my peers use YouTube to listen to music, some listened to country while some listened to live performances. Some used YouTube solely for the viral videos, and some used YouTube for its educational content. With scores of people cutting the cord, YouTube has become home to content creators who fill niches and provide frequent, quality updates. The final project had our group examining YouTube and its importance within new media. As a part of our project, we interviewed YouTube personalities including, The ArchFiend and NikkiPhillippi. We sought to find out if YouTube was a viable job, how they were introduced to YouTube, and whether they believe there exists any race or gender discrimination. YouTube is just one alternative; streaming sites like Netflix, and Hulu have granted unprecedented access to a catalogue of movies and TV shows. Netflix has even gone as far to produce its own show, House of Cards, to much acclaim. Amazon Prime meanwhile agreed to a deal with HBO. With online content providers offering so much, is it any mystery so many are making the switch?

We also talked in length about how race and gender influence New Media. The first day of class, a viral video entitled Princess Peach and Daisy Vs. Michael Jackson reinforced and froze several stereotypical traits attributed to women. After their children are stolen, Peach and Daisy take up arms and go after Michael Jackson. Mario however saves the children and a cheeky messages displays “Looks like Mario isn’t getting lucky tonight ;)” As a part of class we also watched web-series including Awkward Black Girl and The Couple. These web-series, which are part of the black ‘webtopia’ explore the ordinary black, often typified in television.

            Whether discussing Google and their policies, or memes and their controversial meaning, this semester has taught me that this technology is still very much in its infancy. Smart phones, tablets, and streaming services did not exist ten years ago and it is anyone’s guess where we may be in another ten.