Twitter and General Election

Who would have thought social networking platforms and politics could work hand in hand?

In less than 2 months from the day I started signing up for a Twitter account, my opinion of the popular social networking and microblogging tool has changed completely today (as opposed to my earlier post on Twitter).

Held once every 5 years, the Singapore’s 16th parliamentary general election was held last night on 7 May 2011. Being a proud Singaporean who is pursuing a higher education overseas, I would very much like to at least follow what is going on with the most-talked about topic of the year in the country. I must say without the Internet and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, I would be totally clueless about what is going on back in my home country.

I was able to catch the entire election on Channel NewsAsia Live (CNA) in Melbourne. The CNA coverage was not as useful as I thought it would have been. Most of time was just the news anchors chitchatting with the guests who provided commentaries on the election and results on the show. In fact, I got the election results from Twitter before the television news coverage did. Check out some of my friends’ comments:

Social media plays a huge part in this year’s election. Like what fellow blogger Clarence Chen has noted, it is encouraging to see social media engaging the youths of Singapore and interesting to see how social media is playing a significant role in politics. I would say this year’s election has managed to create the highest awareness yet with the introduction and use of social media platforms.

I have to pay tribute to the tweeters behind @ge2011 for bringing us the quickest updates of the general election possible.

You guys have done an incredible job! Let’s not forget the journalists and reporters too, for having to rush out the articles on the election in today’s papers.

Twitter rocks!

References

Facebook. 2011, Facebook, United States of America, viewed 8 May 2011, <http://www.facebook.com/>.

General Election. 2011, Channel NewsAsia, Singapore, viewed 8 May 2011, <http://www.ge.sg/>.

Twitter. 2011, Twitter, United States of America, viewed 8 May 2011, <http://www.twitter.com/>.

Creative Nihilism

In the chapter on ‘Blogging, The Nihilist Impulse’ from the book Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture by Geert Lovink, the author sees a growing trend in the blog culture such as citizen journalism and participatory media. His viewpoint on blog users seems to be a cynical one. There are some contradictions at the beginning of the article as Lovink tries to defend himself when he says the aim here “is neither to promote nor to deconstruct citizen journalism or to downplay the significance of participatory media” and the “explicit aim is not to classify bloggers as digital nihilists” (2007: 1). However, later on in the article, Lovink argues that bloggers are creative nihilists “who celebrate the death of centralized meaning structures and ignore the accusation that they would only produce noise” (2007: 22).

Seriously? Were you trying to be nice, Mr Lovink?

On a side note, I admit I did not know the meaning of a nihilist when I first came across the word when reading the article.

According to Dictionary.com:

Nihilism [nahy–uh-liz-uhm]

–noun

1. total rejection of established laws and institutions.
2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.
3. total and absolute destructiveness, especially toward the world at large and including oneself: the power-mad nihilism that marked Hitler’s last years.

So basically, it means nothing.

Why do people blog in the first place? Is it to:

1. Create a form of freedom of speech?
2. Inform the public on certain issues?
3. Create memories?
4. Seek attention?
5. Have a passion writing?

Lovink comments that the blogs of today do not follow “centralized meaning structures” and “focus on personal experiences, not primarily, news media” (2007: 1). I agree with his statement to a large extent. Most of my friends’ blogs and the blogs I have come across are mainly on personal experiences, such as daily happenings, their love life, what they did, and the list goes on. Only his or her network of friends would visit the latter’s blog and maybe comment once in a while to find out what is happening. A third party would not care about what you blog about. Therefore, Lovink sees such blogs as being not newsworthy and only create “noise”.

One example would be Singaporean celebrity blogger, Wendy Cheng, better known as Xiaxue (which means snowing in Chinese). According to Speakers, her blog amasses a daily readership of 45,000 daily. Cheng’s weblog has also won several awards such as the Nuffnang Regional Blog Awards and Best Asian Weblog.

Check out her blog at http://xiaxue.blogspot.com.

She first started blogging mainly on her personal experiences such as random daily happenings in 2003. Cheng slowly found herself getting more readership over time due to her forthright personality in her posts. They spark some controversies at times as well. Lovink says internet cynicism is “frank first and foremost about itself” and exhibitionism equals “empowerment” (2007: 13). It is now considered a lifestyle weblog as she blogs about food, fashion and even politics. To me, Cheng is just another creative narcissist  who obliges “in order to be out there, to exist with everybody else” by saying aloud what she thinks and her opinions (Lovink 2007). Perhaps, Lovink should think bloggers of today are creative narcissists, as opposed to creative nihilists.

Any opinions?

Are you just another creative nihilist or narcissist out there producing noise?

References

Cheng, W. 2011, Blogger, United States of Amercia, viewed 15 April 2011, <http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/>.

Lovink, G. 2007, ‘Blogging, The Nihilist Impulse’, in Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture, London: Routledge, pp. 1-38.

Speakers – iTV Conference, 2010, iTV Conference, Georgia, viewed 15 April 2011, <http://itvc.ge/speakers/>.

Delicious

Hmm… delicious! No, I am not slurping my tongue and savouring the smell in front of my MacBook screen. This post has got nothing to do with food and beverage.

As an avid Internet user for the past decade, this is going to be slightly embarrassing. I have only decided to find out more about social bookmarking web service Delicious (previously known as Del.icio.us) today.

All rights reserved by Flickr user rubyshoes.

Hence, I have just signed up for an account (it’s free too!) and decided to discover the widely raved about web tool that I see on blogs and websites all the time. So what Delicious does is having all your favourite bookmarks saved, synchronised and organised in an account. This would be really convenient without having the need to visit every single website or wreck your brains to recall all your favourite websites if you use a different machine. For example, the hard disk of your computer crashes one day or  if you are at your friend’s place and need to access webpages you have failed to remember.

Delicious is considered Web 2.0 because of its capability to share and interact with the rest. I am able to see what my friends have bookmarked and vice-versa. The tagging function of Delicious allows users to tag their bookmarks, such as travel, food, shopping, movies, music, social networking and so on. On the homepage of Delicious, I am able to see what are the latest bookmarks saved by users, and also the most popular bookmarks on Delicious at the moment under ‘Hotlist‘.

Do check out their official blog here for more updates and comprehensive content of this wonderful web tool that I have just discovered. I am glad I did!

My bookmarks taste really good now. Do yours?

References

Delicious. 2011, Delicious, United States of America, viewed 31 March 2011, <http://www.delicious.com/>.

Davidson, S. et al. 2011, Delicious Blog, Delicious, United States of America, viewed 31 March 2011, <http://blog.delicious.com/>.

rubyshoes. 2007, Flickr, United States of America, viewed 31 March 2011, <http://www.flickr.com/photos/rubyshoes/426426544/>.

YouTube Communities and Rankings

While discussing YouTube, José van Dijck argues that the site’s interface influences the popularity of videos through ranking tactics that promote popular favourites (2009: 45). How do ranking tactics impact the formation of online ‘communities’?

Firstly, ‘communities’ in this case refer to the large user groups on YouTube created by YouTube users themselves. The formation of such ‘communities’ happens when large user groups of anonymous people with similar interests come together and share their “cultural experiences” (Dijck 2009). Try logging on to YouTube and you will be amazed with the vast number of communities and channels available. As mentioned by Dijck in his article, examples of such communities include anime-fans and heavy metal adepts. Since YouTube relies mainly on user-generated content (UCG) platforms, it is also catered to non-produsers (YouTube users who do not create their own videos or upload videos). Non-produsers are able to comment and carry out discussions with fellow members within the communities below the videos. They are able to like or unlike the video, and rate the videos too.

I find the ‘Recommended For You‘ section on the main page of YouTube really intriguing. It is as if the site has a tracking system of what you have watched so far or seem to be watching. It is also strategically positioned on the top half of the page. Strategic because users will never fail to notice the section once they log on to the page. This results in the tendency to click on the ‘recommended videos’ when a user logs on. Another thing that I have observed is that such recommended videos tend to have high viewing traffic and discussions going on. By appearing under ‘Recommended For You’ section or ‘Most Viewed‘ section, the clip is most likely getting even more traffic.

Dijck’s concern is that such ranking tactics YouTube is functioning single out “‘most viewed’ videos; it also lists ‘most discussed’ videos and has rankings for ‘Top favourites’ and ‘Top rated’ – familiar categories deployed by most commercial radio stations” (2009: 45). What about the ‘least viewed’ or less popular videos? My latest log in recommended videos related to J-Rock (short for Japanese Rock), Visual-kei, indie bands, failblog and amongst other stuff that I tend to watch on YouTube. Without having to search for what I exactly want to watch, I have already been recommended on what to check out for. In this way, I am exposed to the sub-communities relating to the specific interest that allows me to interact more. This shows how the ‘ranking tactic’ of a website can do to influence a user to watch a particular clip. Hence, I do not see why there is a “neglect of the substantial role a site’s interface plays in manoeuvring individual users and communities” (Dijck 2009: 45).

Ultimately, I reckon there is not much ranking tactics impacting on the formation of online ‘communities’ on YouTube simply because we choose what we want to watch. We watch because we want to watch it. The interest or genre of the clip plays a great deciding factor on whether the user will click to watch it. To be very frank, the ranking tactics do not matter to me because I am very selective on what to watch. For example, even if a tutorial video on make-up appears in my ‘most viewed’ video page, I will not watch it because I don’t use make-up. It will also not appear under my ‘Recommended For You’ section as I don’t watch videos of such genres on YouTube.

References

Dijck, J.V. 2009, ‘Users like you? Thoerizing agency in user-generated content’, Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 31, No. 1, Sage Publications, Los Angeles, pp. 41 – 58.

Twitter

FINALLY! I have created a Twitter account that is required of us to do so for those undertaking the Net Communication subject.

Add Follow me @whyzedtan if you want to!

Disclaimer: The display picture of my Twitter account is not me.

I have never really understood the significance of using Twitter with Facebook around. My understanding of ‘tweeting’ is like updating a Facebook status by typing a short message and share it with the rest. Since Facebook has very similar functions as those of Twitter, I do not quite see the point of signing up for an account. Besides, my network of people on Facebook is definitely much bigger as compared to Twitter.

I would not consider being ‘forced’ to sign up for a Twitter account just because the school has asked us to. Living in the digital age today, I guess it would only benefit us by exploring and knowing more.

Alright, I have lots of exploring to do to discover the wonders of this hyped social networking and microblogging service. Let’s hope I am able to join in the conversation with the rest of the world. 🙂

Reference

Twitter. 2011, Twitter, United States of America, viewed 24 March 2011, <http://www.twitter.com/>.

WordPress, a Web 2.0 Application

What on earth is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0, a photo by Werkplay on Flickr.

The tag cloud above is a pretty good one that gives an overview of what Web 2.0 is. In short, Tim O’Reilly (2005) defines Web 2.0 as web applications that enable users to interact and generate content, such as blogging. WordPress is one good example that encompasses such characteristics.

Features of WordPress that defines it as a Web 2.0 application

Users, or rather bloggers, are able to generate content solely on their own. They can write anything they want at any time. It gives bloggers a sense of freedom of speech where they are able to write their thoughts, experiences, interests, express how they feel via the means of text, pictures or videos, and the list goes on. There is no structure of what or how they should write.

WordPress users form a community, whereby they can access forums to discuss topics (mostly related to technology). Just to list down a few such as news, lifestyle, fashion and web features, as shown in wordpress.com and wordpress.org. Since WordPress relies heavily on user generated information, interactivity is the key focus of the site. The users blog about their daily lifestyle, comment on other users’ postings and share the latest contents. WordPress not only allows users to comment on the post, it also allows them to rate or like the particular entry. There is even a subscription button below for users to subscribe updates from the author of the blog.

The WordPress site is also highly customisable, allowing the more advanced users to create and produce content in the kind of presentation style that they want to have through the use of html, xhtml codes and css styles. Beginners, too, have a wide range of themes, fonts and layout to suit to their likings. Bloggers can also choose who to show their content to by selecting public, password protected or private.

The right sidebar feature of WordPress, also known as widgets, has a range of very essential and useful tools available for users to choose to have them on their site. Widgets such as links, calendar, archives, RSS and search are some common tools found on blogs.

Sustainability

WordPress is a platform for users to share personalised content, more generally known as diary-styled blog post. The content is widely varied, ranging from sports, food, entertainment, gossip and fashion. These contents are free and easily accessible by people in and out of the WordPress community. Optional additional upgrades such as customising domain name and CSS editing come with a cost. It enhances interpersonal interaction, as well as an unaware increased interaction with software. Therefore, the more users sign up for a WordPress account, the more sustainable it becomes. When users constantly suggest rooms for improvement of the site, the software is also improved at the same time. On the other hand, WordPress does not focus only on those who use it, but also people who are only interested in reading content, rather than generating them.

References

O’Reilly, T. 2005, ‘What is Web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software’ (2005), viewed 23 March 2011, <http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html>.