Questions
that need to be answered on your website:
1 ) What role does social media have on an individual’s identity and how they present themselves to the world? Identify and explain at least one positive aspect or social media and identity and one negative aspect.
Nowadays, social media plays an important role to help us create, shape and communicate who we are. Social Media’s reach and influence is global. But it is also highly personal. Since the fierce competition and life pressure in modern society, people nowadays are easy to feel frustrated and alone in daily life. Social media gives everyone a public platform to express oneself and gain the reaction from your followers immediately. This make us consciously or not be involved in rebuild our personal identity in the virtual world. The positive aspect of this mode is that social media provide us an extra channel to
self express. We can introduce and present ourselves to the others through various social media. Social media helps us to create our public image influenced by the people observing us. This kind of interaction happens online. There is no pre-existing relationships needed and no regional boundary. This advantage of social media extremely increases the possibility of being acknowledged by others. But the problem is this kind of social relationships is hard to maintain. People should update their website frequently and give responses to their followers attentively. What you post should also attract your target audience consistently. Since this is not a real world , people who addict to social media are easy to mix their identity in reality and the one online. This is dangerous for some people who have high expectation of their own influence. The fluctuation of comments and likes from their followers will cause their anxiety and disturbance. Sometimes, associating with a virtual system means an escape from the reality. When we spend too much time on social media, we still have a lot of barriers in real social activities. The social activities online can never replace the real ones in reality.
2) Reviewing the role social media has on politics, social activism and security, identify and explain at least two examples of how social media is increasing accountability or governments or people around the world.
Social media increase public participation in politics and involve people in social activities. Social media also extend the democracy to all kinds of public affairs. For example , there is a social medium in Chine named Weibo which had the similar function as facebook. The freedom of speech in Chine is limited for long time. People are not allowed to criticize the governments in traditional media. Weibo provide them a platform to speak relatively free and increase the transparency of some public affairs. For example, when a government of a poor rural area tended to construct a luxurious government office building, the journalist exposed the new on Weibo. This report arose a large scale public discussion on Weibo. People strongly protested this corruption and left thousands of comments under this report which forced the government gave up the project finally. I think this is a good example to illustrate how social media change the way people interact with the government and how they wider the debate for public issues. Social media Can also make celebrities appear more apathetic and ‘on-the-ground’. Before we have social media, the celebrities is too far away from us . We never thought that we would have the opportunities to be close to them. but now we they broadcast their lives on our pages and we can communicate with them directly. MySpace is a good example of this. On one's MySpace page are a list of friends and their pages, personal photographs, and other potentially sensitive information. Some celebrities got around this problem by setting up MySpace fan pages where only public information was included, but such sites were mostly run by assistants and a personal touch was often missing. Some of the stars also like to interact with their audience and even joke with their fans online. Social media is increasing accountability or governments or people around the world.
3) Using the concept of the surveillance society or cyber-bullying, explain social media’s role in either concept, the impacts it is having on society and how society is changing to adapt to these new pressures.
Privacy is the one that allows us to live without being paralyzed by self-consciousness. The illusion of privacy gives us room to be fully human, sharing intimacies and risking mistakes. But all the while, the line between private and public space become not obvious with the development of social media. Technology means that bullying is no longer limited to schoolyards or street corners. Cyberbullying can occur anywhere, even at home, via email, texts, cell phones, and social media websites 24 hours a day. Cell phones and computers themselves are not to blame for cyberbullying. Social media sites can be used for positive activities, like connecting with friends and family, helping students with school, and for entertainment. But these tools can also be used to hurt other people. A famous tragedy of Cyberbullying is the suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons , a 17 years old Canadian girl whose death has been attributed to online distribution of photos of an alleged gang rape that occurred 17 months prior to her suicide, in November 2011. In response to Parsons' suicide, Nova Scotia enacted a law in August 2013 allowing victims to seek protection from cyberbullying and to sue the perpetrator. Personal privacy is easy to be threatened by using social media. In this case , social media turned to be the tools of crime. the bullying spreads unimaginable rapid online. If there is no measure adopted, this negative influence brought by social media will be very dangerous. On the one hand, our society should take measure to increase the public awareness of how to protect personal privacy and how to maintain the alertness to Cyberbullying . On the other hand, It is also important for the government to establish the specific policies and laws against cyber-bullying.
1 ) What role does social media have on an individual’s identity and how they present themselves to the world? Identify and explain at least one positive aspect or social media and identity and one negative aspect.
Nowadays, social media plays an important role to help us create, shape and communicate who we are. Social Media’s reach and influence is global. But it is also highly personal. Since the fierce competition and life pressure in modern society, people nowadays are easy to feel frustrated and alone in daily life. Social media gives everyone a public platform to express oneself and gain the reaction from your followers immediately. This make us consciously or not be involved in rebuild our personal identity in the virtual world. The positive aspect of this mode is that social media provide us an extra channel to
self express. We can introduce and present ourselves to the others through various social media. Social media helps us to create our public image influenced by the people observing us. This kind of interaction happens online. There is no pre-existing relationships needed and no regional boundary. This advantage of social media extremely increases the possibility of being acknowledged by others. But the problem is this kind of social relationships is hard to maintain. People should update their website frequently and give responses to their followers attentively. What you post should also attract your target audience consistently. Since this is not a real world , people who addict to social media are easy to mix their identity in reality and the one online. This is dangerous for some people who have high expectation of their own influence. The fluctuation of comments and likes from their followers will cause their anxiety and disturbance. Sometimes, associating with a virtual system means an escape from the reality. When we spend too much time on social media, we still have a lot of barriers in real social activities. The social activities online can never replace the real ones in reality.
2) Reviewing the role social media has on politics, social activism and security, identify and explain at least two examples of how social media is increasing accountability or governments or people around the world.
Social media increase public participation in politics and involve people in social activities. Social media also extend the democracy to all kinds of public affairs. For example , there is a social medium in Chine named Weibo which had the similar function as facebook. The freedom of speech in Chine is limited for long time. People are not allowed to criticize the governments in traditional media. Weibo provide them a platform to speak relatively free and increase the transparency of some public affairs. For example, when a government of a poor rural area tended to construct a luxurious government office building, the journalist exposed the new on Weibo. This report arose a large scale public discussion on Weibo. People strongly protested this corruption and left thousands of comments under this report which forced the government gave up the project finally. I think this is a good example to illustrate how social media change the way people interact with the government and how they wider the debate for public issues. Social media Can also make celebrities appear more apathetic and ‘on-the-ground’. Before we have social media, the celebrities is too far away from us . We never thought that we would have the opportunities to be close to them. but now we they broadcast their lives on our pages and we can communicate with them directly. MySpace is a good example of this. On one's MySpace page are a list of friends and their pages, personal photographs, and other potentially sensitive information. Some celebrities got around this problem by setting up MySpace fan pages where only public information was included, but such sites were mostly run by assistants and a personal touch was often missing. Some of the stars also like to interact with their audience and even joke with their fans online. Social media is increasing accountability or governments or people around the world.
3) Using the concept of the surveillance society or cyber-bullying, explain social media’s role in either concept, the impacts it is having on society and how society is changing to adapt to these new pressures.
Privacy is the one that allows us to live without being paralyzed by self-consciousness. The illusion of privacy gives us room to be fully human, sharing intimacies and risking mistakes. But all the while, the line between private and public space become not obvious with the development of social media. Technology means that bullying is no longer limited to schoolyards or street corners. Cyberbullying can occur anywhere, even at home, via email, texts, cell phones, and social media websites 24 hours a day. Cell phones and computers themselves are not to blame for cyberbullying. Social media sites can be used for positive activities, like connecting with friends and family, helping students with school, and for entertainment. But these tools can also be used to hurt other people. A famous tragedy of Cyberbullying is the suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons , a 17 years old Canadian girl whose death has been attributed to online distribution of photos of an alleged gang rape that occurred 17 months prior to her suicide, in November 2011. In response to Parsons' suicide, Nova Scotia enacted a law in August 2013 allowing victims to seek protection from cyberbullying and to sue the perpetrator. Personal privacy is easy to be threatened by using social media. In this case , social media turned to be the tools of crime. the bullying spreads unimaginable rapid online. If there is no measure adopted, this negative influence brought by social media will be very dangerous. On the one hand, our society should take measure to increase the public awareness of how to protect personal privacy and how to maintain the alertness to Cyberbullying . On the other hand, It is also important for the government to establish the specific policies and laws against cyber-bullying.