The Nature of Social Interaction

In 1993 Howard Rheingold’s book ‘The Virtual Community’ proposed that Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) would radically change the nature of social interaction in a positive way. It would be positive because it would reverse the trend toward privatisation and alienation of developed societies; it would allow citizens to challenge the hegemony of established political power; virtual communities were seen as a place that would lead the user to post-modern sensibilities.

Today the online world is very different compared to the ideas in the 90s, with the nature of social interaction becoming complex with problems arising in relationship maintenance, legal and political obligations, moral responsibility and cultural understanding. Fiona Martin describes in her article that with the growth of the read / write web is causing businesses to assess their online communication strategies and consider the perceived risk in the development of social relationships. Who would of thought that positive potential of social interaction world would turn out like this?

Today with social media becoming an integral part of society, companies who have not integrated social media within their organization are not out of the loop, but mute to online conversations which can lead to disastrous results. For example, two Domino’s employees recorded themselves breaching several food health and safety regulations and then posted the video on YouTube. The video quickly went viral with millions of views. Domino’s waited a few days before responding to the video, by which time most of the damage to the Domino’s brand was done.

The unplanned communication regarding, Domino’s led to the downfall of share price and loss of customer loyalty. It was however the use of planned communication through the creation of a twitter account and a public apology placed on YouTube that put the company back on the road to public recovery. Because of the nature of social interaction, reputation management has become a major challenge online. It has caused a shift from not only regulating others but regulating ourselves.

Don’t DIS my Sociability

Mature aged man with a disability operating touchscreen computer.

Social media has given Internet users endless opportunities to connect, talk, share photos and videos, but there is still a disconnect for disabled users. For disabled users who may have physical or intellectual disabilities social media accessibility is out of reach for most of them.

Social media must improve accessibility for disabled users and work towards being an inclusive platform. Natasha Mitchell shares in her interview with Dr Scott Hollier, Project Manager at Media Access Australia on Sociability: how accessible is social media? that social media today is equivalent to being a basic human right and access to the Internet is an essential service for all users. She shares that for web developers and graphic designers who contribue to the issue who do not comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are like architects who forget to design a wheelchair ramp for disabled users to access the front door.

Goggin & Newell state in their article on ‘The Business of Digital Disability’ that the difficulty of social media inclusion lies in the problematic nature of accessibility as a concept. Accessibility by design is self-regulated and is a reflection of social relations. Accessibility will either facilitate inclusion or exclusion and Goggin & Newell promote the importance for digital disability inclusion in the design process.

People with disabilities still face a long struggle for digital ability inclusion with the creation of inaccessible technologies like the iPhone which has no raised or recessed buttons and inaccessible social media content being produced like the Facebook Homepage for Android devices. Many blind and vision impaired users have found the platform largely inaccessible through screen readers. But there is hope for the disabled user with Facebook rectifying the issue and working towards making the Homepage compatible with screen reader to enable blind and vision impaired users greater access to the social network and its services. As well as the development of the world’s first tactile smartphone, tailored to the blind user with braille buttons and audible content.

Hopefully more companies like these will work towards reducing exclusions and create a gateway for participation and accessibility for all users.

Multicultural Media in Australia

Media plays a significant role in regards to multiculturalism in Australia. Media provides representations and frameworks which shape our understanding of different races, ethnic and religious groups. It has the power to reflect culture or fame into fame public debate and contribute to racism.

Tanja Dreher’s article on ‘White Bread Media’ talks about both the positive and negative potential of the media’s representational function in multicultural Australia. She shares an example of the media under scrutiny for the under-representation of people groups on commercial TV, with Firass Dirani, Australian Actor, who accused TV producers of a ‘White Australia’ policy, claiming that all-Anglo family soaps like Neighbours don’t reflect todays multicultural society. She also shares how multicultural groups in community media are speaking up and talking back to help shift multicultural representations in the media with the example of the Muslim TV show, Salam Cafe which uses self-reflexive comedy to break down mainstream representations of Islam which is often exacerbated in the media. Both of these examples show us that media definitely has the power to frame culture whether its through mainstream or self-representation sources. It also shows just how much media matters in creating a multicultural profile for Australia.

Sukhmani Khorana’s article on Ethnic diversity on Australian television shares how TV shows like MasterChef are working for change by diversifying representations of culture not only in food but in the people, with Asian and Muslim contestants. I think its important for Australian media to diversify its representations of culture because of its power to frame multiculturalism. In todays media people are stereotyped, racialised or misrepresented in the generalisation of culture. Australian media definitely needs to extend its representations of culture to avoid the ‘White Bread Media’ debate and reflect a true representation of our multicultural complexities. I can’t wait for new TV shows to emerge in the future that reflect todays Australian modern family.

The feudalization of the Internet: When CODE is Law

The Internet landscape is changing and slowly being over run by feudal Lords. From medieval times where feudal Lords owned the land and had power over the people, today feudal Lords like Apple, Amazon and Google are controlling cyberspace by accumulating online property and developing ‘walled gardens’ and tethered appliances, which aim to regulate the open and free source of content the internet offers. This is causing barriers to entry, economies of scale and puts limitations on the supply of content. This is not what the Internet was created to be.

Content is becoming tied to platforms and devices; as well as copyright controls and licencing fees have been introduced. Jonathan Zittrain shares in his book ‘The future of the Internet and How to stop it’ that in the online environment code is law. Zittrain conveys that those who control the walled gardens or tethered appliance are in control of the user’s behaviour and content. Ted Mitew shares in his presentation on the feudalisation of the Internet that the iFeudals/web Lords control the user’s permission and data if they use their devices or platforms. He states that there’s no way round it, but you can break it! If you can change the code, you can change the medium and the message. The key is taking control over the endpoint. Control resides with the end user, so if you know how to build your own computer from scratch or code, you can enforce your own law. Peter Denning, Former President of the Association of Computing Machinery states, “Learning to speak the language of information gives you the power to transform the world.“

According to Clay Shirky, the Internet was intended to impose no barriers to entry, no economies of scale, no limits on supply. Don’t limit your Internet experience – Learn to code!

Convergence Culture driving the Classroom

With the rapid increase of convergent media came the digital education revolution, and the enhancement of learning moved its way to the forefront of Federal Government concerns with the introduction of the laptop program in 2008, with high school students exchanging textbooks for laptops and tablet computers. But the role of these new digital technologies has brought more challenges to the government, teachers and the students than the Labor party thought.

Robert Miller shares in his article that the digitization of education has caused a paradigm shift in the nature of human communication, transforming pedagogical functions and student learning as well as financial pressures to stay up-to-date with the latest technology. With funding for the Federal Government’s laptop program set to run out in June 2013, the future of looks rough for some schools. The convergent technology that was purchased in 2008 has been surpassed and students are now bringing to class devices from home to keep up with changes. The president of the NSW Secondary Principals Council, Lila Mularczyk, recently made a statement about the issue that “…technology can never be a one-off investment and you have to sustain it with particular infrastructure, with professional learning, with curriculum development and with learning devices and they will differ as time changes and that is moving far more readily than we can predict…”.

Has the government jumped shark on this issue? Greg Whitby, head of Catholic Schools in Sydney’s west comments that “the issue is around the teaching not the tool. We’ve let the type of tool, the nature of the tool, drive the process.” Convergence culture is transforming so fast it’s overtaken the classroom – the very thing it was meant to enhance. How can schools keep up with the tech trends, future budget cuts, let alone the professional development to put it into practice? The role of emerging technology in society will always cause a relational tension between media audiences and industry culture. But on the bright side, there will always be opportunity for innovation in education because of convergence. What’s next though…we’ll just have to wait and see – because it’s driving!

“Journalism is in fact history on the run” – Thomas Griffiths

Convergence effect on user practices has caused new communication practices to be formed. Convergences affect on media technologies has not only enhanced user practice but has enabled audiences to become prosumers in media. Audiences are sharing and contributing in new ways, no longer just consuming media but producing it. This new change in media practice from unidirectional to the directional model has caused audiences to form relationships with media institutions. Journalism originally an institutional practice has now become a niche practice with a new form of journalism emerging called citizen journalism.

In Quandt’s text ‘Understanding a new phenomenon: the significance of participatory journalism’ he interviews some of the key stakeholders in the media industry and asks their opinion on citizen journalism and the benefits of user generated content. There were mixed views, but an obvious divide – the technophile view that supported the idea of participatory journalism and the older journalists who had a fearful view and perceived it as a threat to their media pipeline of power. Now there are legitimate pros and cons to both arguments, but the fact is journalism as a profession is transforming so fast, research inclines us to believe that this participatory environment is inevitable. The question is how will this change effect the professional journalism culture? I think it will have adverse effects, but I want to focus on how this participatory culture is adding new life into the journalism field.

Recently an Unknown Australian Band goes to number 1 in iTunes because of their own online social media campaign. New forms of journalism are emerging and is showing up in the form of blogs, multimedia videos, podcasts, vodcasts, illustrations, comics and social media campaigns. Advertorials journalists once generated through paid PR networks are now competing with a larger and influential prosumer network. Traditional journalists are now reporting on prosumer content and amateur journalists are now contributing to the journalism network forming ‘proam’ relationships – professional and amateurs working together. Where is this relationship going in the future…no ones quite sure. But we can be sure that when the next big technology development happens, its going to change everything again.

A house divided against itself cannot stand

In today’s modern media environment, convergence is causing more problems than the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) can keep up with. With the increase of prosumers accessing media content through a variety of networks and devices, the need to review media content regulations has become increasingly important. Terry Flew’s article on Media Classification analyses the ALRC’s Final Report on classification and media reform recommending essential changes to develop the national classification scheme to be more flexible and relevant to today’s modern media environment. This has been the first comprehensive review of censorship and classification since the ALRC’s review in 1991…talk about dragged out. One of the key reforms Flew discusses is ALRC’s approach to community standards and classification board benchmarking. These benchmarked classification decisions are meant to reflect community standards. This independent board is responsible for making decisions (objective and free of self-interest) on classification in representation of the Australian community. Flew states that there is a high level of public confidence in the board’s decisions. But I would have to argue, how can someone put confidence in a classification board that is self-regulated, benchmarking the publics standards on moral relativism. While there is no absolute moral justification but moral relativism to define classification, the policies made become simple biases and prejudices of the individuals within the classification board. We all saw the moral differences that arose from the Office of Film and Literature Classification’s (OFLC) proposed draft Guidelines in 2011 for the Classification of Computer Games. To impose a moral absolute classification on violence whether it is passively viewed in film or interacted within video games to a moral relative community ended in an ethically complex result and a lot of community backlash. This issue reveals that to ultimately define the classification code and guidelines for media content with a self-regulated board will always cause a moral divide amongst communities. Government and policy makers both have a major role in enforcing and regulating media content. I think its time to rethink how we benchmark community standards and the role society plays.