Virtual Communities

Recently in one of my workshops for digital media we were asked to create an account for ‘second life’ where we had to create an ‘avatar’ – a representation of ourselves or our alter egos. When I was creating my avatar I was trying to make it as much like me as I could but truth be told I did make a few changes, I made myself slimmer and made my hair longer and blonder. It’s said that we create what we want others to think of us. I wondered round this second life, seeing what people had created and seeing just how big this virtual world has become, and how many people where online, it just shows how much having a second life means to some people. In a way it’s a way to escape their real life.

Virtual communities are just that to me, virtual. It’s almost a game to me and I don’t really think that the other avatars are real people like me, sitting at their computer. For a lot of the people it is a ‘second life’ separation from reality a place where people can be there selves. It can be a whole other secret part of your life. I don’t think I could be one of those people who log onto second life everyday and live their own ‘second life’ as if it is normal.

When I was younger I joined a site called ‘habbo hotel’ where you had to create a character and create a room, quite similar to second life where you make your character look like how you want to be perceived, by leaving out your imperfections, because really who’s going to no? You can chat to other people knowing their real people to slipping that to the back of your mind as it makes you think how different is that person in real life? They can disguise themselves just like I do. The same goes with the new Nintendo Wii where you have to create your own ‘mi’ (which is like an avatar) which you use to represent yourself to play games, but again with this I still make adjustments to my avatar image making myself shorter and slimmer, my eyes bluer etc. I think creating an avatar is a great way of getting yourself involved with the game, especially with online games, or games on the Xbox where you can play online against people all over the country where you create your own avatar to show people a perception of you, but is it really you? How do we no that what we are seeing is anywhere near the truth. With it being so easy to change the way you look and the way you want people to see you. If you think about it too much its a bit creepy, your playing and interacting with complete strangers, and you may choose to talk to these people because of the way they look, and what clothes their wearing, but as much as I change myself others could have made themselves completely different, with no connection to their real selves and that creating themselves a second life.

Digital Divides

Digital Divides is the 'split between those who have access to digital tools and the internet and those who don’t'.

One of the main digital divides in the global divide which is the inequality between different countries, some countries not having access to the internet or even the telephone. Having access to the telephone has long been taken for granted in the western parts of the world. ‘Telecommunications expert at the United Nations and elsewhere has expressed concern about the impact on world economic development of many countries’ staggeringly low access even to the telephone’ (Couldry, N. 2000:186). More access needs to be made to the countries with no connection because in 1995 ‘more than half of the world’s population lives more than two hours away from a telephone’ (Couldry, N. 2000:186).

Living in today’s economy it’s hard to believe that there’s a huge part of the world with no access to the telephone or internet. We don’t think twice about how lucky we are to have all the technology just available to all of us for a small fee, but, with what we can do with the internet and all the information we have access to, the small fee is nothing. There are two main divisions in the divide, firstly there’s the global divide and the secondly there’s the social divide. The global divide is between different countries, number of computers, website hosts etc. The social divide is concerned with who had access and who doesn’t to those societies’ web resources. There’s the gap between the rich and the poor but there’s the divide within poorer nations with who can afford online access. With the global divide its how many phone lines there are and modems with the number of web hosts. With the social divide it’s more about ‘how individuals in the same society differ in how they access, and use, the internet’. (Couldry, N 2000:189).

There are different ways of overcoming the digital divide but a simple phone line in the middle of a poor country is no solution to the ‘digital poverty’. ‘New thinking was emerged which concentrated on providing social forms of access to phone links such like village centres in Bangladesh, ‘telecenters’ for both phone and internet access’ (Couldry, N. 2000:189). We have to look closely at peoples gender, income, race and location to access people internet use, what they use it for, how often and where, whether we are heavy internet users or light internet users.

In the world we live in, we assume our internet access and availability is normal and almost standard and we don’t think about the other countries where access is almost impossible. We have so much information at our finger tips to do with what we please, I think with the introduction of things like internet cafes it will help people stuck in the social divides, being able to have access to the internet and having access to what they need, there are solutions to the problems the digital divide can be overcome.

Couldry, N (2000) 'The Digital Divide' in Gaunlett, D. & Horsley, R. (eds) Web. Studies (second edition), London: Arnold.

Is the Internet killing our culture?

Today the internet is a huge part of today’s economy, you can search for literally anything and find something on it, but this can have a bad effect on things like newspapers and music artists being sold in everyday shops.
You can literally buy anything online, a lot of shop have their own online websites where customers can buy online, which for many people is more convenient, its great for the customers but not so much for high street stores.
In the article between Andrew Keen and Emily Bell, Keen argues that the mass media over time has ‘produced a lot of trash’ (Keen, A and Bell, E. 2007:1) like tabloid newspapers, television soap operas etc. but there was more good than bad in the mass media such as the BBC, Guardian, New York Times and record labels, which where all committed on creating high quality work meaning many artists could make a full time living from their work.
The Internet made paperback books, recorded music, movies and newspapers more accessible and affordable for the consumer. Anyone with internet access can publish anything online, Keen states that ‘the internet is producing the cult of the amateur, a dumbing down of culture, in which innocence is replacing expertise as the determinant of value’ (Keen, A and Bell, E. 2007:1).
Everything on the net is dumbed down, simplified so its accessible to everyone with a connection, making it easy for people to find exactly what they need, which is good and bad. Newspapers are losing economic exchange value because of it being available on the internet. In Keens opinion the internet is leading to fewer produced books, movies and music. I don’t agree on this, without the internet artists wouldn’t have the amount of publicity, artists put their work online for everyone to view, and people can easily buy their work, its another way of advertising. One of the major problems with the internet is illegal downloading, getting music and films online for free by downloading, it has become so easy to get free music, films etc. without paying, people now do it without thinking about it and the effects it has on the artists and companies. Record companies and film companies are seeing the bad side, with sales decreasing in shops through accessibility online and the online sales not being as strong because of illegal downloading. Emily argues that artists aren’t suffering because of the internet, the internet seeds it. It gives the artists more ways to get their name out. I agree with this, so many successful artists where born through the net like Lily Allen, Sandy Thom, Kate Nash, Gnarls Barkley and The Klaxons. They used the internet to promote their work, Amazon online has lead to massive increases in the number of titles published each year.
In my opinion the internet isn’t killing our culture, its helping it, allowing us to have so much access to the things we need, for artists it carries advantages and disadvantages, getting their music more assessable but having it at the risk of piracy. With saying this artists much have a much harder job promoting their work and advertising their music if the internet wasn’t available. However I do agree that the internet sales are having a bad effect on our high streets with many companies closing down due to lack of sales, I don’t believe the internet will ‘kill our culture’.

Bell, E and Keen, A. (2007) Andrew Keen v Emily Bell: Is Todays Internet killing our Culture? The Guardian (Comment is Free) [WWW] available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/10/andrewkeenvemilybell

Campaign Video

As part of my course I was asked to create a campaign video about a subject of my choice. I went in a group with a class mate and we chose to do our campaign video on animal testing. The Video has since been uploaded to 'You Tube' for people to watch and express their own views. I feel quite strongly about animal testing and the advantages and disadvantages it has on animals and humans. Animal testing is something that everyone has heard of, but something that most people don’t no much about and most have just heard to bad sides. It’s a very important way of doing tests to help with things like cosmetics, drugs and household products. Animals are seen to be very similar to humans, which is why testing is done on the animals before being used on humans. Some people have very strong opinions and see this as animal cruelty and see it as ‘unnecessary infliction of suffering cite that the stress on animal experiences could impact the accuracy of the results’(Rowlinson, J: [WWW]) Animal testing is such a controversial subject and people can have very strong opinions about it, for example people who are against animal testing may see it as something that creates unnecessary pain and suffering and see it nothing more than animal suffering. Those who support animal testing see that it uses animals to benefit humans, where it can save lives to provide vital medical treatments. I do fully understand the advantages of animal testing the outcome has given us so many successful products which can save lives such as medication, which is very important but on the other hand there must be other ways to test for treatments, medications etc. without harming animals. Some of the things which animals are used for testing on such as household products which aren’t in any way live saving nor necessary for living, in my opinion animals shouldn’t be put at risk for the sake of little things.

In my campaign video I lightly touch on the problems facing animal testing, which is forever being campaigned against for animal cruelty. The main point to my argument was the fact that there must be another way to get the results, other tests that they could do without using animals. There are plenty of companies such as cosmetic companies which don’t use animals to test their products on. Its a way of doing things and getting answers without testing on humans and putting humans at risk of reaction. Although animals shouldn’t be put under the same risk their living beings and deserve the same treatment as humans. The campaign is done without and disturbing images or statistics, it’s done with stuffed animals and more relaxed realisation of the effects that animal testing can have on animals, and how they don’t have a choice and their lives are ended without living the life of a free animal in the outside world. I found it very interesting researching the subject and showing my opinion on it, but also found it very interesting looking at the advantages on animal testing and the medical treatment it can help with.

I hope, now that the video is on you tube and now on here that more and more people will view it, and learn a little more about animal testing.

What is Animal Testing? [WWW] Available from: http://www.aboutanimaltesting.co.uk/what-animal-testing.html

Social Networking

I recently read an article called ‘Why youth (heart) social network sites: the role of networked publics in teenage social life” by Danah Boyd.

He talks a lot about the social networking sight ‘MySpace’ and its influence and evolvement with today’s youth; I found it really interesting as I used to use MySpace when I was in secondary school and for a short time after. MySpace was the hotspot for everyone, and literally everyone I knew was on it, from friends at school and friends out of school. Social networking was the way and still is now to keep in contact with those closest, people don’t tend to use the phone as much anymore to keep in contact and to arrange to go out, people do it through social networking sites. It’s a way to keep up to date on what's going on with friends, it’s free and easy. Social networking sites seem to play an important role in teenager’s social lives. It’s a place where teens can go and work out their own identity and status. Networking sites likes MySpace and Facebook carry certain properties: persistence, search ability, exact copy ability, and invisible audience something that isn’t present in face-to-face public life. Networking sites enable to expand your curiosity and search anyone on the web, seeing other people’s personalities and profiles, but by still remaining invisible.

Social networking sites are open to everyone, race and social status don’t play a part in joining the sites, as long as you have internet connection you can join, ‘Poor urban black teens appear to be just as likely to join the site as white teens from a wealthier background'(Boyd, D 2007:3) MySpace enabled bands to join up and create their own webpage’s where they could advertise their music and have their own music uploaded for anyone to listen too, this quickly attracted the attention of indie rock musicians which created a sort of genre for the site, the site was mainly dominated by the indie/rock scene and was a place to show your individuality and personality.

Social networking sites are based around your own profile, which you create, more so for MySpace where you can edit and create and completely personal page, with many websites where you can design your MySpace profile through, or even for the more creative you could completely transform your page using html. Most other sites blocked you from being able to edit your page to the extent you could in MySpace, this wasn’t intentional, MySpace left a hole, where early adopters that they could personalize their pages by adding codes, this wasn’t simple, the site its self doesn’t offer you help on how to customize your page but their where many others that would, this for me was the best thing about this specific social networking site, being able to completely transform your page to look how you wanted it to look, and also learning at the same time about different codes and html. People where able to express their creativity and personality through a website. There is so much to explore through social networking even though other like Facebook don’t leave room your personalizing your profile you can still have your own page and be close to all your friends and really tell the world your likes and dislikes.

Boyd, D. (2007) 'Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life', MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning - Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.