The Two Sides of Anonymity on the Internet

Anonymity on the Internet – If we were to liken it to any character it would have to be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. “Anonymity” Jekyll is the good side of being anonymous on the Internet. He allows freedom of speech and the free flow of information. Whilst on Mr. “Anonymity” Hyde is the very worst type of person on the Internet, he is more commonly known as a troll. Trolling isn’t something that’s easy to define, however I’m always interested in what Urban Dictionary has to say:

1. Trolling

Being a prick on the Internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent bystander, because it’s the Internet and, hey, you can. 

Trolling has a lot to do with cyber bullying and abuse that comes in the form of comments, pictures, memes, private messages, videos etc. Unfortunately, for me and the rest of my gender (I’m a girl) we are being targeted by Internet trolls and it isn’t particularly nice. People who hide behind their screens hurl virtual insults and constantly target female bloggers, activists, musicians and artists. Abuse such as ‘bitch’, ‘slut’, ‘whore’ and violent threats are seen in comments to women who try to have a voice. 

Late last year, the infamous Reddit troll Violentacrez was named and shamed by a Gawker article, sparking debate on the wider web about censorship. Michael Brutsch aka Violentacrez was a regular contributor and moderator of controversial subreddits. The most infamous being r/jailbait – basically a collection of images that border on child porn. He was known for submitting content that displayed misogyny, gore, violence, incest and bestiality. And why? In an interview with CNN’S Anderson Cooper Brutsch tries to explain that when he had a bad day at work, he’d “let off steam by trolling”… Right! Because when I’ve had a rough day at work the first thing I feel like doing is uploading a picture of a half naked pubescent teen on the Internet.

Don’t be like Dr. Jekyll and let Mr. Hyde takeover, people need to stop abusing the right to remain anonymous on the Internet. Freedom of speech is important, please don’t ruin it for the rest of us.

Clickity Click Go the Keys of Activism

The first protest I ever went to was when I was 6 years old. What did I have to protest about at the age of 6? Not a lot, but Australia as a whole had an important message. In 2000, on a freezing cold morning in May (we stopped in the Blue Mountains on the way and played in the snow) my mum, dad, my aunties and cousins along with 250, 000 other people took to Sydney Harbor Bridge in support of Indigenous Australians.

This is a pretty distinct memory of mine, someone wrote ‘SORRY’ in the sky with an airplane and my feet hurt after walking all the way from Hyde Park to the bridge. What did stick with me, and has till this day is the coming together of people to represent something they believe in. That wasn’t my only experience with political activism at a young age. We also went to Sydney and Canberra to protest the war on Iraq.

I think these demonstrations taught me the value of becoming part of something bigger than yourself, and that every voice – even a six year old girl’s, can make a difference.

 My best friend and I at our very first Protest for Peace

So what happened to my generation? I know I wasn’t the only kid at the protests I went to with my parents. Where did the marches and demonstrations go? Why doesn’t Gen Y seem to be present in political activism?

Well actually we’re still here, we’re just employing a new concept to make our voices heard. It’s called clicktivism. Oxford Dictionary describes clicktivism as “the use of social media and other online methods to promote a cause.” The most pressing issues for our generation (outlined by the age) are marriage equality, asylum seekers and climate change.

Clicktivism was employed recently with the now viral, rainbow-crossing trend. In homage to the rainbow crossing on Oxford Street (Sydney) being removed, James Brechney created a temporary rainbow chalk crossing in Surry Hills and put a photo of it on Facebook. People started to share the picture and within a week there were DIY rainbows sprouting up everywhere; from sidewalks and streets in Canberra…to Kenya.

It involved not only sharing photos and hashtaging #diyrainbow, but it also involved going out into the community and creating your own crossing to raise awareness about equal-marriage in YOUR neighbourhood.

Even my University got colourful

Clicktivism is evident all around the world and is being used in many different ways for many different causes. In the case of Kony 2012, Henry Jenkins believes that many young people got their first experience of clicktivism by having the video forwarded onto them by classmates and friends. What was interesting about this case though, is that the only goal that the movement had was to create awareness about Joseph Kony and his crimes, in the hope that he would be arrested by the end of 2012.

Most of the campaign was based around people sharing and ‘liking’ the video on Facebook and unfortunately it has resulted in something called commodified activism. Essentially it’s taking activism and turning it into a novelty or trend, the issue gets lost behind the stickers and t-shirts and actions fall by the wayside to someone ‘liking’ a post on Facebook.

Here’s some slam poetry from a guy who feels pretty strongly about commodified activism

What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is everybody’s.

Remember when you were a kid at the school library, hanging out with your friends and drawing pictures during a rainy day during lunchtime? You want to draw something but have no idea what, then your friend draws a flower, and you like that flower but you want it to have different coloured petals. You draw that flower, and your friend accuses you of copying. But! You protest, MINE is DIFFERENT to YOURS. MIIINE has blue and pink petals and YOURS has purple and red.

I remember justifying it to her as taking her idea and making it better – needless to say she didn’t appreciate that. Little did I know, I had just remixed her drawing.

Of course, as any 19 year old would, I primarily associate the term ‘remix’ with music. However, what I didn’t understand was that the meaning of the word remix extends much further than a few music samples thrown together to create a different song.

Remix is a culture, living and breathing in our society. Lawrence Lessig* wrote that remix culture is ‘a society that allows and encourages derivative works by combining or editing existing materials to produce a new product.’ This reshaping of ideas can be anything from remixing music

To reinterpretations of art,

To textual mashups. One of the most popular textual remixes is known as Slash fiction, which is kind of like gay-soft-core-romantic, readable porn. Here’s a slash fiction example in the form of Harry Potter, pretty extensive stuff.

Remix culture is however problematic. Much like my “reinterpretation” of my best friend’s flower there are no clear lines that determine what is copying original content and what is reshaping it. There are two sides to the remix debate.

This article outlines that on one hand there is the  movement that believes in making information free. Creative Commons was born out of this movement and is a platform that allows creators to decide how much of their content can be made available; “ it gives them [the creator] an opportunity to make it [content] more available than what the copyright legislation outlines” – Jessica Coates, Australian Centre for Creative Innovation

On the other hand, we’ve got the artists, inventors, musicians and authors who are just generally pissed off that they’re not receiving any real recognition or pay for their work. Filmmaker and copyright laywer Peter Carstairs views remixing as making money off other people’s ideas and creations: “Ripping off another person’s songs isn’t about the free-flow of ideas. It’s about ripping off songs without paying royalties.” Which is probably fair enough.

The problem with remix culture is that the lines of copyright laws are becoming more and more convoluted as the internet pumps out more and more content that can be reshaped, reinterpreted and remixed.

*To see more of Lessig discussing remix culture, see this here video

Harry Potter gets lost in a Monster’s University

Transmedia narratives are described by Henry Jenkins as: “a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience.” Essentially it’s giving the audience other points of contact and engagement with the story- which in my view, is a pretty excellent way to franchise and the future of entertainment.

Funnily enough, I grew up with transmedia narratives – in fact my whole generation did; yes the dreaded Gen Y. From young ages, we were able to interact with the story through different mediums which took our entertainment experience to a whole new level. What made this change so revolutionary? The gaming console, the computer, and the wider web!

Take Harry Potter for example. Lucky little me got to log on the very first Harry Potter website when I was 6 years old! Through this website (created by Warner Bros), I became part of the Hogwarts universe: I was sorted into a house by The Sorting Hat, Olivander chose me a wand and I could play Quidditch with other online users – and this was in 2000! Now, with the 7 books and 8 movies completed, the magic has still not left Hogwarts and the market is still well and truly there, a new website was launched last year in conjunction with Sony and J.K. Rowling. The site tells the same story of Harry potter and Hogwarts, but creates a different and ongoing experience for Potter fans.

In terms of facts and figures, the website was a huge success generating 36 million unique visitors, 3.5 billion page impressions and 158 million + spells casted and potions created in less than six months from the launch date. However, after reading a couple of reviews, it seems that the Pottermore experience is pretty lack lustre.

Different types of transmedia stories are unfolding and becoming increasingly accessible to people of all generations. So long as you have an internet connection and a computer or smart phone, you can become part of a larger universe. For example The Lost experience employed the idea of collective intelligence in order to piece together the puzzle of the TV show. Henry Jenkins describes the link between transmedia narratives and collective intelligence:“Transmedia storytelling is the ideal aesthetic form for an era of collective intelligence… art in the age of collective intelligence functions as a cultural attraction, drawing together like-minded individuals to form new knowledge communities”

One transmedia narrative I was particularly looking forward to unfolding was Monsters University, a sequel to the much beloved movie of my childhood Monsters Inc.

Disney Pixar had it pegged perfectly. In 2001 the box office hit Monsters Inc was released, I was 7 years old and in my second year of primary school, In June 2013, when the upcoming sequel is released I will be half way through completing my first year of University. My point? They have targeted the audience of this film to the whole of Generation Y. Not only that, Disney Pixar set up an extensive interactive website that looked exactly like your regular universities page.

Pretty sweet right? Even down to the Twitter page. In an attempt to create the Monsters University transmedia tale, something must have fallen short, where you should have been able to enrol as a student on the MU website, they failed to provide the opportunity. Even though the movie’s release is just over a month away. The Facebook page that has been set up with real college like anecdotes with the potential to interact with me as a student has now fallen victim to one way advertising of the actual movie.

I was pretty peeved so I sent them this Tweet:

@MonstersU when can I enrol?! There's a great transmedia pre-launch opportunity to envolve ME in the Mosters University Universe! #BCM112

— holly doust-robinson (@hollydoust) May 15, 2013

Monsters University, started, but then it looks like forgot to put fuel in the car and it died, like a poor University student’s attempt at study.

Buzzzz goes The Hive Mind

Choose your own adventure:

A brain eating parasite has just taken over half of the world which turns its victims into flesh eating zombies. You need to find out more information on how to fight off the parasite, find safe houses, and what to do when face-to-face with your infected neighbours corpse.

Do you:

A) Turn on the television

B) Read the newspaper

C) Log onto the internet

If you chose A or B you’ve unfortunately run out of time waiting for “up-to-date” news and have been consumed by a horde of the living dead.

If you chose C hooray! You escaped the parade of zombies heading for your house because you looked at a forum for minute-to-minute updates about the world’s impending doom!

Why choose C?

Introducing: The Hive Mind! A bi-product of humanities latest ever growing, mind boggling invention: The internet. ‘Hive mind’ is not a new term, its origins are of course in the insect world but the term is now being applied to forums, blogs, sites like Wikipedia and social news media websites such as Reddit and 4Chan. These sites not only distribute information (not always created by the submitter) but also provide up to date information and sometimes minute by minute updated threads which can be seen in cases like the Boston Bombings.

These websites employ the collective intelligence concept, which is based around accepting that nobody knows everything but everybody knows something. Which brings us to citizen journalism; Jay Rosen describes citizen journalism as: ‘when the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another.’ By using collective intelligence we can all take part in citizen journalism – by being a produser.

Is this threatening the role of legacy media and traditional journalism in today’s society? Abso-freaking-lutely. The internet comes at a low cost, and once you have access to the wider web, submitting and accessing content is free. Bugger paying $3.20 a day for a newspaper! This again reminds us of the open vs. closed debate: “if you universally make people pay for your content it follows that you are no longer open to the rest of the world, except at a cost” – Alan Rusbridger. Why pay for free information?

Even though Reddit and 4Chan had minute by minute updates during the Boston Bombings, the sites users did end up accusing a completely innocent man of committing the bombings and there in lies the downside to the hive mind, kind of like lemmings or sheep the hive tends to jump on board with a popular opinion.

In saying that it was interesting to see how speculation and observation on the internet gained so much attention from the rest of the world. Though controversial when accusations were thrown around this was an excellent example of FREE crowd sourced information.

So if ever faced with impending doom, be sure to check the internet to increase your chance of survival. The Hive Mind is alive, buzzing and full of free information.

Au Revoir

Well hasn’t it been an adventurous five/six weeks. Delving deep into the depths of media and its effects through a very relevant medium – blogging. At first I had my qualms about it, how do I know the content we post is relevant, how do I develop my own voice and most importantly how the bloody hell do I stick to a 300 word limit for each post with so many resources available to me?

Questions were answered as I gradually made my way through this assignment. I noticed that when I sat down to write seriously and give this my best effort that my own personal voice was emerging, and I have to say that I’m pretty proud of what I’ve written. It may by slightly cynical and left wing but I’m happy with the way I’ve documented my thoughts/feelings/considerations in this subject. Writing concisely was perhaps one of my biggest hurdles and didn’t always succeed with keeping to the word limit. By my last blog post, I’d nearly got it down pat

My first post made me consider the all important and very pressing question of: what happens next? – how does technology affect the media and vice versa.

My next post, really did prove to me that sex can sell anything. Even really basic clothing items that I could pick up at Big W for a third of the price. Hells bells, even I’ve been sucked into buying singlets from pretty girls in next-to-nothing.

My third post really drove home to me how much of an island Australia really is, especially within our media. It’s incredibly concentrated and even with a world of new technology and new technology we really must still considered what is spoon-fed to us by our media.

So with that my friends, I leave you. I love this subject, and I actually do quite like blogging, but thank god this is over.

[CENSORED TITLE]

Even in a new age of freedom of information, censorship is still a very real and worrying concern for Australian media.

Why? For starters lets look at the media conglomerates of Australia. In American there are 6 major players in the mass media game, in Australia there are just two: News Corp and Fairfax Media. News Corp owns a newspaper in every capital city of Australia – The Daily Telegraph, The Australian, Foxtel (25%), MySpace (5%) and even the Donna Hay magazine my Mum likes to read. Fairfax Media has it’s hands in every pie – The Sun Herald, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Vine, Domain, Drive, RSVP, and the Australian Financial Review… Just to name a few.

Consider this: these two conglomerates provide us with our main source of news and information, they control what goes on the front page, what the most important stories are and even where the advertisements that fund the distribution of the information go. These outlets of information influence our everyday lifestyle and most importantly our opinions. When trying to inform a nation of about 22,991,428 people, this is pretty scary.

Now let’s look at who are the big names in this industry: Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Stokes, Bruce Gordon. These guys are the faces behind the media monoliths and their representations and values believe it or not DO affect what is broadcasted to us; the wider audience. Unfortunately, in Australia, we’ve become accustomed to accepting what is spoon fed to us by our newspapers and have become lazy in questioning the man.

One simply has to look for facts and figures regarding Gina Rinehart’s (who owns 142.7 million shares in Channel 10) earnings, holdings, interests, agendas (or lack their of) to know that something is most definitely up with our media today.

Sex can even sell socks

Fashion giant ‘American Apparel’ on one hand operates as a socially responsible and seemingly sustainable business, on the other hand – It’s Ads put the ‘outrageous’ sexist ads of the 1960’s consumer era to shame.
Fashionable apparel basics, heaps of colour varieties, In-house design/advertising/marketing, manufactured in downtown L.A, full benefits for employees and above minimum wage pay. Sounds like a socially responsible and non-exploitive fashion brand.
Unfortunately or fortunately, advertising is the medium that brands use to throw their products and services in front of us in hope of generating things like impressions but ultimately the sale. Unfortunately or fortunately, advertisers throw psychological black magic spells into their strategies, copy and creative (informed by very specific ‘target’ research) by utilizing things like ‘semiotics’ – signs, symbols, indexes, denotations and connotations to make the sale.

“The American Apparel advertising campaign has become as synonymous with our brand name as the signature Made in the USA basics that first put us on the map.”

“They regularly feature women in provocative poses – lying in bed, legs spread, on all fours, from behind, bending over – trust me, they’ve done it all.” It would almost seem the American Apparel advertisers thought: “sexually provocative pin up girl, being objectified on a billboard is the new cut through strategy’. Take that feminism! (Then again there are feminists who may see this as empowering – my body is a weapon.)

So an American Apparel Billboard: it is a sign, we understand from the consumer perspective what advertising is and its purpose. Its medium literally denotes – advertisement, buy this. Advertising is culturally bound and often subtly uses semiotic elements to build or transfer associations of another to a product/or service – 9 times out of 10 creating the problem and providing the solution.

American Apparel ads create a problem for women – at a deeper level the connotations we get are really simple in this form of advertising: ‘you will be sexy if you buy and wear our clothes’, ‘you will accrue a trendy lifestyle’, and in one light pushes the chauvinistically geared ‘sluts rock’ agenda – this is hardly liberating women & celebrating the female form. Some switched on people in our society have got a problem with this – denouncing – American Apparels Best Bottom Competition 2010.

Others like FHM endorse the move: “American Apparel began a hunt earlier this year to find the world’s best bottom. Lots of ladies sent pictures in, and they’ve worked out a top ten which we’ve handily laid out below using all the numbers from one to ten… Having said that, we want Donk to win because then she might go out with one of us, and then that someone could look her in the eyes just before they have sex, point at his genitalia and say “put a Donk on it”. Also, it would mean that if that someone was asked at work what he was doing on any specific evening, he could say: “putting a Donk on it”

Intellectually I disagree, but the photos are just so damn exciting and you can’t argue with data and dollars.

Monologic media – a thing of the past!

Monologic Media No more

The polls are in and it seems that the world is taking a stand against monologic media. People are saying goodbye to being voiceless and hello to being proactive. No longer do people have to sit in silence and have their news told to them, instead there’s a plethora of ways for people to interact with our new media. Devices like smart phones with lightening quick internet are leading the revolution. Slowly we’re giving people a voice, and nothing’s stopping them now.

Reddit is a fabulous example of  a website that is quite literally built on a platform of audience participation. The site needs users to interact it with it in order for it to function as the discussion forum that it is. The users are the contributors and there is a constant flow of content uploaded to Reddit every single day, with relevant up-to-date information. For the information that is not considered relevant by the wider population of Redditors there is still a kind of gatekeeper in place to help filter contributions, these guys are the aforementioned and infamous ‘Mods’ and who are kinda like Big Brother for each subreddit, but! The Mods are still the users.

Audience participation can also expand on a much broader spectrum than the users of just Reddit. On January 26^th 2012, the people of the internet raised $70 000 in 19 hours for an orphanage in Kenya after it was attacked by rebels. Someone uploaded a photo on Reddit of a man who single handedly defended the orphanage and it went viral across the net. Yay power of the interwebs! There have been countless occasions of charity from people across the internet actively participating and intentionally making a difference.

Another interesting case of mass audience participation happened when a little whale named Mr. Splashy Pants surfaced:

What I like about this story is that even though, the goal wasn’t met exactly as planned, it was reached anyway. It plays on McLuhan’s the ‘Medium is the Message’: the notion that the medium may change but sometimes the message still remains the same. It’s okay to let things get a bit out of control.

Reddit is a site, that is based on giving the wider community of cat lovers, weed smokers, political thinkers, environmentalists, gamers, writers, food appreciators, atheists, Doctor Who lovers and most importantly the every day person a voice and a chance to be heard.

Technological warfare

There’s a war brewing – the war that decides if ‘we’ go 1984 or work together for something more. We are breathing in the times of the great world war of technology.

The battle rages between locked or ‘closed’ appliances and generative or ‘open’ platforms. These technological advancements that have altered our lives and connected us all – but we are still uncovering how to use them. Locked appliances bar users from modifying or changing any part of the content, software or product where generative platforms allow modification and transformation to suit the user or wider audience.
The biggest battle of the war is being fought by Apple and Android (Google) and the winners and losers are still being determined, but really, its pretty evident that Google is taking over the world (in a not-completely-evil-money-hungry sort of way)

Being a social ‘Redditor’, I want to see how open content platforms like Reddit affect ideas of news and authoritative sources – the sociologist in me wants to know how the collective will reshape our lives. The users of Reddit as a collective community control the content of the website. As Alexis Ohanian (cofounder of the website) put it “it is the democratic front page of the internet”. Ohanian refers to it as democratic because a submission’s popularity is dictated by the user using the up or down arrow to either upvote or downvote a post.
The audience on this website become active participants in contributing to the flow and filtering of content.
Each subreddit (a custom-made subforum) has it’s own set of moderators, known as ‘The Mods’. Usually these are users who have contributed or founded/cofounded the subreddit.
I believe that Reddit works hard to try and keep the website as user based as it possibly can.

News media platforms have mutated – television, radio and print are no longer the gods of mass media production, they are not the curators and bias monoliths they once were. Our news now, more than ever is dictated by free flowing content that Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon and Imgur (to name a few) allow. Not only that but our connection to this media is instant, our mobile smart phones are our platform and our access to the internet is our gateway to a world of content that we could potentially be responsible for, making our internet as we know it, a completely open platform.

 Have a kitty for your thoughts.