Tag Archives: Internet

Screaming Eagles-Discussion Questions for Citron Reading/Audio

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  1. How does one begin to stop these things from happening? Cyber bullies can have access to a lot of information about the person that they are targeting, or they can dig it up. In doing so, the information that they find can be used against the victim to ruin their careers or even their whole lives. How can these actions be deterred, or stopped altogether?
  2. How can someone even begin to forgive their cyber attacker? Could you imagine yourself being able to forgive someone who cyber bullied you, as was exemplified in the audio clip?
  3. How do you see cyber harassment happening in the future? Will we have developed our laws more so that cyber crimes are more easily punishable, or will this remain a problem for years to come?
  4. Is it the role of the government to raise the level of security or monitoring online activity to prevent some of these cyber attacks? Or should the problem be dealt with at a more local level? Does limiting cyber bullying affect free speech?
  5. In your opinion, what type of person is a “troll”? What kind of things could have happened in their lifetime that makes them want to harass people online? Can there be sympathy for trolls?
  6. What do you think the best way to handle a troll is? Should people ignore trolls, or should they try to defend themselves?

True Friends Let You Use their Netflix Account

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With the internet’s explosive use of media outlets like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, watching shows on the web has become more and more popular seemingly leaving television in the dust. It seems like TV is quickly becoming a thing of the past creating space for the come up of more web series. Along with the rapid progression of web series, it is becoming easier for users to get hooked due to the easy access the internet provides.  I am usually the type of person who has 2 to 3 shows I watch on television, during the summer you can often find me glued to the couch watching them during their air premier time because I usually have more time on my hands.htyt      When I go back to school I often miss a season due to the lack of availability I have with television. This past semester I found out one of my friends has a Hulu Plus account he never uses.  Being the good friend I am, I offered to watch the missing seasons of my favorite show, not even needing to turn on my TV in my dorm room.  I also have a friend who graciously pays for her Netflix account while letting me and a few others mooch off of her.  Thanks to my great friends, I really have no need to sit and watch television, because I can watch my favorite shows on my computer screen for free.  It is interesting to see the shift from television to web in my life because of its convenience and low cost.

When thinking about web series I did not really know much about them, let alone watch any.  Class time was probably one of the first times I sat down and saw a web series displayed, and I have to admit they were pretty entertaining. I found myself laughing at the jokes, and the production and format of the web series were so approachable, and the dialogue not overdone. The people on screen could have been my friends. I started to get a sense as to why they are becoming so popular; another thing brought up in class and readings was the emergence of black themed webisodes. This was allowing a meeting space for the black community to engage in topics and jokes, while also giving black actors to chance to display their talent and add diversity to this online world.  I appreciated this because I was able to see people more close to what I deal with in life, and it is always refreshing to feel like you can connect to what you’re watching, which is what I think we aim for when we watch programs.  I will definitely be looking out for webisodes and thanks to my friends, the access I have to online programming is expanding.

 

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Walking Outside the Walls

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(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.

Developing My Digital Literacy

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When I signed up for this class I had no idea what to expect. I decided to enroll because I wanted to take an English class that was not literature-based. Although I did think that the class would require us to interact more with technology, I enjoyed learning about new media and the impacts of technology from an academic standpoint.

In the beginning of the semester we discussed our broad opinions about new media. I remember referring to new media, specifically the internet, as a faceless equal playing field where race and gender do not matter. Throughout the course of the semester, I realized that I was misguided in my original interpretation of new media.

Contrary to my initial view, we learned that often new media perpetuates racism and the objectification and degradation of women. In class we discussed racist memes which, due to the ease with which they can be copied, rapidly spread and thus widely and quickly promote their racist message.

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We also discussed how video games degrade women through hypersexualization while also over-representing white men by almost exclusively portraying white males as heroes. While in these two instances new media popularizes negative stereotypes and creates new negative stereotypes about women and about different races, new media also offers a place for misrepresented and underrepresented groups to express themselves. We learned about how web series offer a place for these misrepresented and underrepresented groups to create shows that focus on the specific problems that their groups face unrestrained by the tenants of traditional network television.

In addition to learning about race and gender in new media, we also discussed how Google and Youtube dictate our searches and thus dictate both our knowledge and who grows popular on the internet. I used to view YouTube and Google as places where anyone could have their blog discovered or could post a video and grow famous. Now I realize that YouTube and Google are, at their core, businesses, and, that advertisers rather than users exist as YouTube’s and Google’s customers. Because advertisers are Google’s and YouTube’s customers – YouTube promotes videos and Google promotes websites based on which websites or videos receive the most views, or based on who pays for promotion. While I appreciate the existence of Google and Youtube as free services, I recognize that the validity of information or the quality of content is not Youtube’s or Google’s first concern when yielding search results.

Overall, this course taught me to recognize the importance of digital literacy and to develop my own digital literacy. While the internet does offer a place for anyone to have a voice, the business-minded nature of websites that control our searches, namely Google and YouTube, makes some content difficult to discover. In addition, I learned that it is important to recognize that while the internet gives misrepresented and underrepresented groups a place to express themselves, it also promotes racism and degradation and objectification of women by idolizing white men and by perpetuating negative race and gender stereotypes.

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Here’s a trailer for the film “Miss Representation” which outlines many of the themes we discussed this semester:

 

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2UZZV3xU6Q[/youtube]

 

 

My YouTube Life

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My YouTube Playlist

 

YouTube. A mating ground of creativity, eclecticism and adorable cats. I’ve been on it since I got my first computer in 2008, and since then, I’ve been amazed by the amount and quality of content that people on this website could produce. One of the greatest and most unique things about YouTube is the fact that it can cater to literally any interest that anyone could possibly have. This, really, is why it’s so popular. Want to learn how to knit? YouTube. Want to listen to mostly any song ever recorded? YouTube.

My gateway drug into YouTube was through Kyle Landry, a talented teenage piano player from Massachusetts. One of his songs, Dearly Beloved, was from a video game I loved to play at the time (Kingdom Hearts), and it struck me the second I listened to it. I was hooked. I watched every single one of his videos, and even put them on as I fell asleep at night. I was continually inspired with how hard he worked at perfection, and ultimately, it inspired me to work harder on my musical skills. Still to this day, Kyle Landry is my favorite YouTuber.

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After a while though, I decided to venture out from this one channel. At around this time, Beauty Gurus were starting to surface. I started watching those videos too, as I do to this day. I got into vlogs, watching one a day as they filmed it (I primarily watch CTFxC and it’sJudy’sLife now). Vlogs are fantastic because you really do feel like you’re living their life with them, but not in a creepy way of course. You grow with them, even though you’ve never met. It’s a very YouTube centric and original platform, as far as I know, and I’m not sure what my everyday life would be like without it.

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My deepest connection to YouTube lies in a video I stumbled upon accidentally. One day about a year and a half ago, me and my brother were on YouTube, and came across a very strange video called “Cooking With Dog”. Thinking that it was some strange, sadistic video of a woman cooking her dog, we of course clicked on it. Instead, we found a sweet Japanese woman and her eerily well-trained poodle Francis teaching us how to make a cake. Well, the dog didn’t do much but “narrate” the cooking video, but still, it was so strange and adorable that we couldn’t stop watching. My brother watched every single one, and decided he wanted to start making the recipes based on the videos from Cooking With Dog. Over time, he became very good at it, and is now training to go to the Culinary Institute of America. All because of a little 5 minute video about a woman and her dog in a kitchen.

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In the end, YouTube is a cornerstone of my life. It’s where I learn, and where I relax. The people on it have inspired me, and others around me, to do better, and to be better. This may all sound cliche, but it’s true. Though it may be just another website on the big ‘ol Internet, it still affects people every single day, with every single video.

“Invisible Audiences”

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What is are “Invisible Audiences”?

 

Invisible Audiences: Digital objects are double articulations, created for a particular audience but with the knowledge that they can and will spread to an unknowable audience wherever the Internet is available. In other words, though content can be created for a specific viewership or people, it may spread to these invisible audiences wherever it can be viewed on the web.

 

Citation: Sean Rintel. “Crisis Memes: The Importance of Templatability to Internet Culture and Freedom of Expression”.

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“Searchability”

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What is Searchability?

Searchability describes the state of being searchable or the extent to which something can be searched. In our context however, searchability is one of the four features that contribute to memeticism. Via search engines objects of popular and folk culture are easily found, especially as meta-data tags improves the indexing and curation of digital objects. As such both raw materials and templates for generating objects are easily found.

Citation: Sean Rintel. “Crisis Memes: The Importance of Templatability to Internet Culture and Freedom of Expression”.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/searchability