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

Week 3 and Second Life

As I don't know a lot of things about computers and I've never thought about what www meant before I wanted to gather some information that I gained in the last 3 weeks in case I forget it or get confused...

• so first of all it's important to mention Belbin's and Tuckman's name who both wrote about how groups work, how people play and swap roles online. We might have a closer look at their work in our identity online project.
• we also learned how to create a website by putting a code in a simple notepad. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I've never imagined that I could create a website on my own:P
• I also know what is an open source: a software that everyone can edit.
• We also learned about UNIX a computer operating system, like Windows, that was developed in the 60s but was never an open source.
• LINUX is like UNIX
• I think it’s really important to mention Richard Stallman’s name as he is a hacker and a software developer. He started the GNU project to create a free operating system like UNIX in the 80s.
• we also talked about the 'culture of internet', about the Gift economy: where the credibility is based on the contribution, so if you can contribute you can take from it (like Amazon) and it's not necessarily money based. Shareware: use it for a while(usually games) and you can test it whether you like it or not. If yes you start to pay for it.
• Search engines: There are different search engines like Yahoo, Google, AltaVista etc .We should try different ones: AltaVista is good at image search others might be good in something else.
  
  
  The thing that I was most stunned by was Second Life. Second life is virtual world on the internet where you can sign up free and create a character in the way you want it and become a ‘resident’. You can be whatever you want to be: a lawyer, a furry or even a terrorist. Actually you can have a second life there (probably that’s why it’s called like that:P): you can buy cars, house etc. I find this whole thing crazy. First of all it’s incredible what technology is capable of and at the same time I think it’s insane that some people are really living in that virtual world and not in the “real world” and spend real money on things that are not “real” and they can’t even touch. And the craziest is that people are getting rich by selling their lands!!! I think people who are playing Second Life probably lack something, they aren’t satisfied with their life, want to be someone else or I don’t know, maybe they’re just bored…I mean I wouldn’t even have time for this but of course everyone has the right to do whatever they like!! And probably there are loads of good things about Second Life, as it was mentioned in an article on Times Online, that there are places where you can learn life-saving skills, or show off your paintings, as well as places where you can learn how to be a Jedi Knight! I would love to learn that:) (Second Lives and online utopias, 16 May 2007)
  

'Social graph-iti'

As our group project is identity online I wanted to find out why people are using networking sites like Myspace/Facebook etc at what is good/bad about these networks. I know why I’m using Myspace: I can send messages to friends who are living in other countries, I can see how they look like now, I can send pictures to them etc.. so it's in a way help to keep the friendship more update and fresh. And I just speak with people who I know!!
What I don't like is when random people are sending me messages and videos or try to hack my myspace, as it happened with me last week...I don't understand why someone is doing that!!!Personally I don't put on too many personal details on Myspace as my friends already know me. And we also need to be careful how much personal info we let strangers know about us!! I have been reading loads of articles about people who fall victim of identity theft as they giving out their birth place and date, full name etc.. online. I put on a good article about this, the title is: A fresh identity is stolen every four seconds
So this is definitely the dark side of networking!!

But why people like these sites and why are they useful??

An article published in The Economist (18. 10. 2007) tries to find the answer for: why facebook is a ‘masterstroke’? It says that one of the reason is its “mini-feed”, this is ‘an event stream on users pages that keeps users abreast of what their friends are doing-uploading photos, adding a widget and so on’. The article also describes how people are getting addicted to 'spy' on their friends. I found this absolutely true and freaky at the same time..Why we like checking on our friends????

Jerry Michalski, a consultant, calls the mini-feed a “data exhaust” that gives Facebook users “better peripheral vision” into the lives of people they know only casually. This mini-feed is so far the clearest example of using the social graph in a concrete way.’

They also talk about the future of these social networks: as not one big social graph but instead a 'myriad small communities on the internet to replicate the millions that exist offline’. Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster said in this article:

'unlike other networks, social networks lose value once they go beyond a certain size....The value of a social network is defined not only by who's on it, but by who's excluded' (The Economist 18/10/2007)

So certain people, identities are excluded from these networks: as there are already networks like "aSmallWorld" that is just for rich and famous people!!!

Just something interesting

While I was making research for the ‘identity online’ group project I found a really interesting article on the Economist’s website. The article is from the print edition of The Economist September 2007. The article starts with “IT USED to be easy to tell whether you were in a free country or a dictatorship. “ The writer talks about how nowadays data about people's “whereabouts, purchases, behaviour and personal lives are gathered, stored and shared on a scale that no dictator of the old school ever thought possible”. Then he goes on about how the governments and corporations transform this as they say they just do it for the public good: ‘to ward off terrorism or protect public health’ and to ‘deliver goods and services more efficiently’. (The Economist Sep 27th 2007)
I put the article on the related links if anyone wants to read it, it’s called Learning to live with Big Brother.

blogger the 'citizen journalist'

As I've never wrote and read blogs I was interested who/why were writing blogs. I had a look at Stuart Allan's book Online News (2006) where he talked about the importance of blogging in online journalism nowadays. He studied the tsunami that devastated Indonesia in 2005. Stuart said that the journalist could just give 'one part of the story, and from a chosen perspective consistent with implicit judgements about access, news values, source credibility, and audience predisposition.' (2006, p.6)
And here comes the importance of the bloggers, some of them were eyewitness of the tsunami and could give a realistic and close coverage of the disaster. This is how the blogger become a 'citizen journalist'. (Stuart 2006)
I won't go that far with my blog..but I will write about my ideas and progress as this blog is a reflective, learning diary since it's one of the assignments for the Multimedia Project module

I find this class really interesting and something new as we don’t really have 'practical' projects like this. It also opens new topics in the media field such as identity online, virtual communities etc. that we talked about last week. I think this module is really challenging as it makes us think about everyday things (almost all of us is using, myspace, facebook etc) in a way we wouldn't have thought about them before: such as how these sites like myspace and facebook are creating 'virtual communities' and how people are sharing their personal information, pictures on the internet and putting on different identities.

I could also link the idea of 'information society', a topic that was mentioned on the New Technology/ New Cultures class, to this module. In this 'information society' the more optimistic view about the internet, high technology (internet connects people, work can be quicker, simpler through the internet and also the internet) clashes with the more pessimistic view that shows the negative side of this always renewing technology (suicide pages, paedophiles etc) and says that modernization is not necessarily good and we shouldn’t cross certain lines even if we have the power to do it.
Personally I don't know which view is the right one (if there is right one) and I hope this class will help me to develop a more complex and clearer view about these issues.
I found this class really interesting even though I am a little a bit scared because I am not really good with computers and we will also need to create a webpage as a group project. I am working together with Ioannis Sarah, Alisha and Miray and our theme will be identity online. I will write about how the group project goes a bit later because we just started to do some research and we are not really sure how and what we will do.

My First Blog

This is my blog that I will be writing in the following 8-9 weeks. As it’s my first blog ever it feels a bit weird to share my thoughts here not knowing who is reading it:p But I hope I will get used to it.