all my Blogs

 Introduction

Hi! My name is Giselle and I’m excited to be taking this class! I’m a Communications and Technology major and can’t wait until we dig into the world of social media!

Defining Social Media

Social media is an internet platform where people all over the world can interact, follow their favorite celebrities, and have a good time sharing memes and pictures. Pinterest is an app that although many people don’t consider it social media, I do. It's not your traditional platform, but people share pictures, ideas and most importantly, DIY’s. Some platforms don’t “make it” as a social media labeling because not everyone uses them. Pinterest has a tendency to be for more creative people, especially women, from what I’ve seen, so the social media title tends not to include some applications.  

Measuring Social Media

Measuring social media saves time and resources and can show us the best of the platforms. But a challenge could be that we have limited data. Every social media platform provides different information which can lead to misinformation. Also not everyone chooses to share data, which could mean the results may not be accurate. 

History of Social Media

DVD Player .vs. Netflix- When I was little the way I would watch movies was with a DVD Player, my mom would get a bunch of pirated movies, even some from Mexico, and that is what I had to watch. Now we have so many different Platforms, but the most known one would have to be Netflix. I was young when I first heard of it. And we never actually got it until I was a freshman in college, I believe. It was a whole other world when Netflix was released. With a DVD Player you could only watch what you already had or you had to buy/ rent movies. Now don’t get me wrong, with Netflix you can’t just watch anything, but they for sure have many more movies and shows that could fit in my TV stand.

Social Media and Participatory Culture

I don’t believe I actually participate in an online site. I’ve never actually allowed myself to be a die hard fan of anything, sure I’m a fan of various artists, but I don’t recall being super into anything. I guess I had what you could call “stages” for example I had a one direction stage where I loved the boys and the band, but even then I never joined a one direction community or even went to a concert(unfortunately still haven't). I think the closest I am to a community is on the app Wattpad. Is a reading app where people write books for anyone to read. I do now believe we could be called a community because we all read the same books before they are even discovered, which is kind of special. 

Social Media and Identity

Politician: Mike Pence

Celebrity: Chris Evans

I’ve recently noticed that Chris Evans is not afraid to speak his mind when it comes to politics. This week's news is Trump's Supreme Court Nominee. Mike Pence’s twitter just seems to be a personal commercial site. He re-tweets Trump’s tweets, and doesn't seem personal at all. Chris Evans tries to include his followers, and gives his opinion. He encourages people to vote and use their voice and re-tweets articles and videos from news channels. Pence on the other hand just tweets things made by the white house. 

Social Media and Identity

This SpongeBob meme was very popular, it's called Mocking SpongeBob or Spongemock was used as a way to indicate a mocking tone towards an opinion or POV. Memes have become a great part of social media. Sometimes the creators act fast and make money off of the memes by selling merch.  

Extra Credit Blog

Another way to violate social media etiquette would be for s person to repost someone's content to “admire” it to the point where it might be creepy, uncomfortable or even harassment. I don't mean repost as in catfishing or reposting a celebrity, but if for example a guy reposts a girls images over and over again, and she doesn’t know him and he leaves uncomfortable captions or comments or even gifs, it could quickly turn to a bad netiquette situation. 

The Economics of Social Media

Social Media Site: Instagram

Instagram is owned by Facebook, and in recent years, Facebook has been under the spotlight for how it handles censoring and its users. Many Instagram users that I’ve seen are censored when there was really nothing wrong or a case to be worried about. Yet there are some profiles that get away with so much hate, inappropriate content and just bad offensive posts, and nothing happens to them, they’re still there. They pick and choose what to “censor”. I believe they should censor this type of stuff, like the saying goes, ‘if you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all’. 

Case Study: Google and Ideology

I like to work with what I know best, and what I know best is Instagram. I follow a woman on tiktok who uploads content on how it is to work for different social media companies, and one of them is Instagram. Overall she explains it to be great, they give you free food, and have a great workspace. Although I know this is only one side of the company, if this is the company at its best, then I figured the worst can’t be all too bad. 

Case Study: Facebook

As careful as I try to be on social media, I started noticing that whenever I looked something up on my internet browser, I later got ads for it on Facebook and even instagram and even sometimes on Pinterest! We like to say that we all have an FBI Agent looking at us through the screen, but as we see more and more of these patterns I start to wonder if maybe it's true. When I think of us being surveilled all the time it reminds me of dystopian movies such as The Hunger Games and Divergent, where the government is always watching and controlling the people. This is very sad to me and honestly frightening, to think that freedom is nothing but an illusion. 

Case Studies: Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat

TikTok. TikTok quickly became such a powerful site after GenZ organized a movement where people started to reserve tickets to Trump’s Oklahoma rally. It started with one person and it quickly escalated to thousands reserving a seat, and obviously not attending. The Trump administration thought thousands were going to attend, when only a couple hundreds were able to. Trump was seen shocked and disappointed, and even tried to ban TikTok.

Social Media and Power

The reason some governments react negatively towards Wikileaks is because they obviously have things to hide and they don’t want to get out. Although people say that some things are better hidden, people will just have to grow up and make peace with the fact that not everything is what it seems. And we obviously have a reason not to trust the government. 

Social Media and Democratization of Information

I remember when I first discovered Wikipedia I was so excited. All the information I could need in one site? Great! But soon my teachers would warn us not to use the sire, and if we did we would get a 0 for the grade, this confused me and annoyed me. Later I found out it was because anyone can edit the site, and there could be a lot of misinformation. Even then though, I used it ever so often. Scholarpedia is a good alternative because it is written and edited by scholars. They have to be invited or elected, and although the site is still editable by anyone like a wiki, updates must first be approved before they are made final. This is a great way to get information that is accurate and as accessible as Wikipedia. 

Final Analysis

 This semester was very interesting as I learned a more in-depth understanding of what social media is. Before the class started I only knew the common apps such as instagram, twitter, and snapchat. However as this class progressed I began to be familiarized with more apps that I didn't even consider social media. I also was not aware of how much power social media holds. It is one of our main ways of living not just in the United States, but in many parts of the world. The whole world is now connected through the internet which means that anything and everything can travel in a matter of seconds. We saw this a lot this year with so many crazy events that took place. I will for sure use the skills I learned in this class and use them for my career. I am majoring in communications and technology so it will involve a lot of social media use and understanding.

Self- Analysis

 The first day of class I thought I knew everything about social media and how it works. However, this class was more then that. Throughout the semester I realized how powerful social media is. I realized that so many people rely on social media for their lively hood and it is not just a social platform. This course gave me a better understanding how social media is worldwide and how beneficial that is. It was my only class where I went on zoom and heard others opinions.  I enjoyed learning about other peoples opinions on the articles and the different ways they use social media. I had a goal of hearing more opinions so that I can have different views of topics. I would say that I did accomplish that goal because I am more open to discussing topics. In this course, I also have improved on researching facts for writing. Before I would not think to elaborate more on facts into my writing. Overall, this course has encouraged me to be more open minded and I learned there is so much more to social media.

New Social Media Technology

 A site that we have not examined in the class, just as one that many would not commonly consider while talking about social media, is GoFundMe. GoFundMe is a site that gives networks an online organization to help one another, by advancing other users' causes or giving to their mission. Users make a profile and set up a mission a short time later to advance their motivation and have the option to get gifts through PayPal, and digital currency. This site permits underfunded associations, and developments the opportunity to get monetary, and social help they would not typically get or have. This accommodating apparatus can furnish numerous legislators and dissident with a stage for their voices to be heard, and a venturing stone so their desire can become activities.

Surveillance

Facebook is a gigantic offender when it comes social media surveillance, yet different sites like Instagram and Twitter are also spying on your history. Your information is gathered by these social media stages and offered to promoting organization. Normally when you look for something or view something you will get predictable ads on your social media. It crazy because I can be talking about a certain brand or product and next thing I know I see ads about it on my social media. Not only are these platforms are using your history, they are also using your microphones.

Wikileaks

Wikileaks are known to distribute and release arranged government data. The spilling of government data on Wikileaks made the association be under criminal investigation and indict people for releasing arranged reports. WikiLeaks is a type of freedom of speech and democratization of information however remembering that the sources data could be made up or not valid somewhat. That is a con to the opportunity of this data getting out to society is that a few people may peruse something about the public authority that isn't accurate and gone for it. This could mislead the trust that individuals place in the government.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free website where people can create and edit information about pretty much any topic. The idea of the website is good and can be useful sometimes. However, Wikipedia’s information is not reliable and accurate because anyone can edit the information at any time because of this people do not go to Wikipedia. Wikipedia could fix this challenge if they did not let everyone have access to edit.