Final Conclusion

In the last couple of days I was thinking a lot about what should I write in this final conclusion. I was considering how this class changed my way of thinking, and what I gained through this class personally and professionally.

So here it comes:

To be honest after the first session in September I thought: Why they want to make our lives even more complicated? And they also force us to write a blog, what I considered as the worst thing that could happen with me in this course. Then when we started to talk about ‘gift economy’, ‘shareware’, ‘open source’ (things I have never heard before): so I thought at least we learn something about computers/internet as I knew without this module I wouldn’t know about these things as I was not that interested in this area to look after it by myself.

Things changed around week 3 when we started to do the group project. I did a lot of research on online identity, why people are using online networking sites. I think this wiki/ blog assignment combination was a really good as it was something new and different (not an essay) that challenged our mind. I enjoyed both of the projects: the blog was a personal challenge, the wiki was a professional challenge.
With writing the blog and also reading after the 'blogging phenomenon' I realized how blogging changed the whole nature of news. Now everyone can be source of information and become ‘citizen journalists’ . Of course there are also good and bad consequences: news becomes more personal and initiated but because of the 'umediated' way of the online news (as they are not 'legitimized' by the journalist) the number of unreliable sources increases.

I liked the group project as well and luckily everyone in the group worked really hard and we managed to do what we planned in the beginning. I really liked to play with the wiki. I think I got a bit addicted to it, cause I always wanted to make it look better and to be perfect..
I also realized during this project how easy it is to publish on the net, and I hope that our site can be a credible source for everyone.

What I also liked in this class where the discussions about the internet, about being online as they changed my whole way of thinking about the internet. I remember when we were talking about the commercialization and how there are more and more advertisement on the net and how the web force people into consumerism. I shared this view before and looked at the web really critically and rather as a bad than a good thing. During this class I realised that we just need to know how to use the internet and then it becomes a really a good thing. I mean advertisement is everywhere and we cannot do anything about it and to be honest we control ourselves. As we don’t give our personal details to a random in the street we would we give it out online!! We need to realise that cyberspace is like real life where people commit crimes, people become victims of crimes, where people socialize.

In the last 2 years we have been learning how to be critical, and how to ‘intellectually defend’ ourselves (to look behind the surface of for ex.: modernism, consumerism, main stream media etc) In this class we learned how to look behind the surface of the internet: how to protect ourselves online (I took off some personal details from my Myspace page) and how to use the internet cleverly.
Personally, I don’t think that I will sign up to Second Life or to more networking sites but I must admit I have a different perspective now. I feel much more confident as I really have a basic knowledge about computers/internet (I don’t need to lie in my CV anymore:) so it did help professionally as well!
Thanks Nigel, I really enjoyed this class and I think all of us could benefit from it.
BYE

Deadlines are coming...

Wow I can't believe that this our last week in this term..I think this was the most hectic and hardest term so far, but I have to say that now at least I know what I'm doing not like in some first year terms:p This week we have 3 deadlines so I really hope I will be able to finish all of them on time.
Luckily, all of the three classes we have this term overlap each other. Issues around Modernity, Technology and Democracy, New Media forms, Information Society, Development and Underdevelopment were key themes in all of our classes.
So far our wiki project goes really good, and I think we will be able to finish it on time. To be honest in the beginning I was a bit worried that this project would come out really bad. But I think we did our best and worked on the project really hard and it is good to see that it worked out!! We are just doing the final touches now: bibliography, put some more pictures and make the text easily readable by highlighting and paragraphing.
Anyways, I need to go to finish the Chris Sams essay!! So let you know more next time, in the final conclusion and hopefully by that time I handed all of my essays in!!

Reflection on Wiki&Blogging&Researching

I've been so busy with editing the wiki and researching that I almost forgot the blog! but I will make it up now.

Okay, I will start with the technical stuff.....I've been editing the group wiki for a while now and sometimes I get really annoyed because it just does not want to do what I want!!:(( I know we should be happy that we don't need use Dreamweaver because that would take a long time for us..but sometimes I find the wiki too 'elementary': for ex. I can just write a text next to an image if I put both of them into a table...I mean I am getting better now but it takes much more time to design as I thought it would be..That's the BAD thing!

The GOOD thing is that the group project goes really well, we already have loads of things on our wiki, we just need to make it more user friendly: get some more pics also get some more theory but I think we are over the hardest bit as we have the basic structure of the site and now we know how we will realize our plan:))

BUT I am bit worried about the referencing!

• For example if I use a pic, that I found on yahoo, but I just use as an icon, to link to another wiki page do I need to include that in the bibliography??
  
• Should we put a separate bibliography in the end of each page (I did it that way) or should we have a bibliography in a separate page where we list all the books, pics etc. we used on the site??( I think the last year they did it like that)

Theoretical part of the wiki: My main problem is that I want to include everything:)..and as I am doing more and more research I have more and more material (so I need to stop now) and it's really hard not to get carried away and talk about things that are really interesting but actually does not fit into the 'online identity' theme. For example when I was doing the case study for the online vs. offline identity I found a really good article: a sex offender who has a Myspace page. The article (Jenn Shreve 2006) compared what he says about himself on his Myspace page and what is written on the Californian state sex offender list.

This case study not just raises the question of online/online identity but also:

• What rights criminals/sex offenders have?
  
• Do they have a right to have a Myspace page??
  

Jenn Shreve (2006) investigates these issues: I added the full article to the related links. It is called: MySpace Faces a Perp Problem if you want to read it.

But the main point is that it is not against to be on the site itself! According to Myspace terms the only people who can’t have a Myspace account: are people under the age of 14, those who provide false information or fail to maintain the accuracy of their profile, or people who use the service unlawfully. (Jenn Shreve 2006)
Of course it's not just sex offenders who gave fake details, but the Networking sites cannot oblige people to identify themselves for ex. with credit card numbers because it would make it difficult for bands, teenagers to use the site.

So it's not against the law if a sex offender is on the site, but it is against the law if the sex offender is using the site to 'paedophilic', ‘sex offending’ purposes. Anyways, check out the article if you want to get more info.

My other worry is coming from the credibility of the online sources! We talked about this issue at the New Technology class with Chris Sams when we had seminars on News online:the blogs and the ‘democratising tendency of the internet’ (what a big worldJ) that how nowadays all kind of people write all kind of stuff on the internet. and now I can really feel how hard is to filter out which are the reliable ones. Personally before I only relied on sites like: economist.com, guardian.co.uk but the problem is that there are not many articles about online identity on these sites..

Finally, Yes, it's a good thing to have this blog!! as the wiki and the blog complement each other..what we can't put on the wiki we can put it here!! It also gives us a space where we can write about our own experience, worries during the class and the group project and if we look back in our blog we can refresh what we have learned during the class.

Good&Bad Website

I chose the imdb website (The Internet Movie Database) as a good and ryanair’s, an airline, as an example of bad website.

I think everyone is familiar with the imdb website. I use this website quite frequently, if I want to find it about a film, an actor, director etc.

• Navigation: The navigation of the site is really good. If you want to find out the name of an actor who played on a particular movie you just need to search on the movie and there is a list with name and the picture of the actors, then you just need to click on the name and there you can get the short bibliography of that actor and list of the films he played. This works vice versa: find out the title of the movie trough an actor etc.

• Information: There is also loads of information about the films, actors, directors. You can find the ‘professional’ information: who, when, where directed/acted in a movie, and movies he directed/played in. Also you can find ‘personal’ information: the actor, director’s bibliography and also some interesting things: height, favorite food etc and some personal quotes. You can also find loads of picture on imdb and people can comment and rate movies at the bottom of the page. We can get some useful information from the comments as well.

• Relevance: On the front page we can find out about the upcoming movies, DVD s. The website is constantly updated and we can find out things about movies that are currently filmed.
  

As a bad website I chose ryanair.com. This is a website of an airline. The design of the website is really poor: it looks that it was made 20 years ago by an 8 years old. It’s too flashy and colorful, it’s tasteless. I think there is also too much useless information, too many navigation icons on the main page: so it looks all over the place. Also the useful information comes in the end: when you think you have booked you flight then you realize that you need to pay extra for this and that (baggage etc). I think it would really important for an airline to have a quite easily navigable, transparent and professional looking website as people will judge the airline also by its website.

While I was writing this I thought about our wiki page and how should look like as people( Nigel:)) will "judge" us by it.. So we should have a well designed and structured (we already have it I think..) easily navigable, ‘clean’ structured website. Also I should be relevant: so people who’re reading it can learn from it, not just repeating something they’re already known!! So hopefully it will be like this, but it’s not easy!!!!!

Online Communities, Online Identity and Social Networking Cites

Last we were talking about communities (online and offline) and tried to find the right definition but we COULDN”T because there was no one definition for it. Obviously people sharing some common interest (music, sport, religion), living in the same town, coming from the same ethnic background can form a community. BUT of you have something in common with other people it does not automatically mean that you are part of their community. (For ex. You can live in Salisbury and love Madonna but not be the part of the Salisbury Madonna fan club, if there is any)
So this is why it’s hard to define what community is. But now I will rather focus on online communities, identities and the networking cites. As I was doing research for our online identity group project I found that there are differences between Myspace users and Facebook users.
But first I want to quickly write down who we are going on with the group project. Now we decided who will do what. We started to edit the wiki, put our pictures up. To be honest I have troubles with editing the wiki but hopefully I will get used to that as well:P
I will have a look at different social network sites and try to find out the success of these sites, who they aim, why people joining these sites etc. I will also try to find some differences between networking sites (like Facebook and Myspace) and why people choose to use one specific site and what this choice tells about their identity. I will have a look at case studies (if I find) when online identity played a key role is changing someone’s life.

So far I can say that people who are using Myspace are more likely to put on 'online identities'. As usually people go on Myspace to create new friendships so they 'glorify' they profiles so people visiting their sites will add them. While Facebook users usually have their offline community, identity that is usually the same as their online one. They bring their already existing communities online so they can talk, share picture after school, when they are not together. Of course there are exceptions!! And I will also have a look at different case studies.

PROJECT PROPOSAL

In light of the group discussion last week, here is a summary of the ideas and issues that will be introduced and discussed in our group wiki on the issue of 'Identity'. As we progress with this module our ideas and focus points are subject to change, however at this present point I think its safe to assume that the group members are all in agreement over the following information. Our Project will fall under two main headings, the issue of online identity-what it means, and the idea of deception within online identity. Within these two subheadings will be various questions we may wish to cover:

What is Identity?

• Exploring the question of identity, What is our identity in our real lives, how do we define it and what it means to have an online identity in contrast to a 'real life' identity. Whether there are any differences between these concepts? Does identity change once we enter cyberspace? why? Theorists/sources of interest may include the following:

Understanding Human Behavior in Cyberspace By Yair Amichai-Hamburger (2005, Oxford University Press), (How the Internet enables people to express elements of their personality that they cannot express in the real word, the social psychology).

Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice By Martha MacCaughey, Michael D. Ayers (2003, Routledge), (understanding the impact of the Internet on politics today, collective online identity).

Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice By Andrew Feenberg (2004 Rowman & Littlefield)

Sex in Cyberspace: Men Who Pay for Sex by Sarah Earle, Keith Sharpe (2007Ashgate Publishing, Ltd), (self-explanitory title! Research based on online forums and chat rooms)
Identity: Cultural Change and the Struggle for Self By Roy F. Baumeister (1986Oxford University Press)

Culture and Identity: Critical Theories By Ross Abbinnett, chapter entitled 'Postmodern and the aesthetic' (2003 Sage Publications Inc).

http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/TGAME.html

www.newmediastudies.com/resourc2.html

http://www.bathtub.yoga.com/blog/myspace-vs-facebook-or-why-facebook-needs-artistpa%20ges.html

www.reviews.digitaltrends.com/guide92.html

• Looking at social networking sites and how they are constructed. Who do they aim at? Is there a 'type' of person who joins these sites, and does it say something about one's 'identity' depending on which site you choose to be part of? eg. The online society you involve yourself with and how this may impact you. Does identity change once a social networking site enters the equation? Sites we may choose to look at (and have already looked at), are primarily facebook and myspace, although bebo and univillage are also of interest, as well as WELL and equivelant sites

• How do Myspace and Facebook differentiate? Myspace and the idea of a 'glorifed CV', which is used by most people for networking and meeting people across the world. Facebook on the other hand being almost in the same vein of Friendsreunited.com because you only add people you know or have known, and it being used by primarily by university students. In addition it is arguably more user friendly.
  Give an example (or two) of a case whereby online identity online has played in key role in changing someone's life. (currently finding examples of this within our group)

DECEPTION:

• Issues that can be covered in this section are ideas concerning online deception in regards to identity. Are people who they say they are? Ideas about Identity theft. False Profiles on social networking sites and how much this really matters, if at all.
• Dating websites may also fall under this category, and how much deception (if at all) is used when trying to lure those of the opposite sex
• 'bands' online, I know through personal experience of working within the online PR of music that myspace music is not regulated and controlled by the 'band' or the artists themselves (once they become well-known), the PR team will usually monitor, change, update and 'add' friends on the myspace of various artists posing as the artist themselves. Is this deception? or Publicity? Where does one draw the line.

Other things to take into consideration:

• The work of Erving Goffman

A furry character in Second Life