Week 7: Digital divide and socioeconomic status

The six reading materials assigned for this week talked about digital divide. The authors’ focuses were on finding variables that is interrelated to digital divide. Many found socioeconomic status to be a significant factor that influences digital divide. The fact that age, gender, education, race, and economic status of a person influence his or her online behavior was mind-blowing. As young, educated, raised in an urban setting, and more importantly socializing within a peer group, the thought that Web 2.0 can be unfairly distributed has not struck me that hard. Reading the materials, however, left me with a gloomy idea that digital world is no different to real world.

As one of the authors mentioned in his article, it seems like online community is just a replica of the reality. The supporting evidence of online community being a replica of the reality can be found in other studies as well. We read in one of our reading materials that educated Caucasian males have more influence and credibility on blogs. Such phenomenon is consistent with reality, which dominant and active member of the society is well-educated Caucasian male. As the readings of this week suggest a strong influence of high education, male, and Caucasians on the Web 2.0, the dominance of educated Caucasian male bloggers on the web seems obvious. Another example of online community being a replica of the reality can be found in the case of virtual reality. In 2005, a severe virtual plague called “the corrupted blood” occurred on a virtual game world, the World of Warcraft. Even though it was a virtual plague, the users’ behavior was fairly similar to real world humans, that the scholars have studied the incident for a future reference (Lofgren and Fefferman, 2007). As with the online participation, which less educated, female, old, and minorities had limited chance and recourses, characters who were first to die during the epidemics were low level users with less money and HP, and physically old or infirm non-player characters. These examples show that the level of online participation and the human behavior online does not differ much from that of the real world.

If the online world is just a replica of the reality, online participation cannot help in developing democracy because the participators, resources, and values on the Web 2.0 are still the same with the real world.

Even in this pessimistic situation, there is an opportunity to better the situation. One author questioned if the low participation level of educated females’ were caused by parental influence (“Web is a dangerous place with sexual predators”). This potential research question is inline with social cognitive theory (SCT) that environment influences cognition, and cognition influences behavior. It would be interesting to study how much the environmentally influenced cognition has a relation with the digital divide. The environment of less money or education, ethnic group is hard to change, but if it is a cognition problem influenced by environment that is limiting the participation, it may be easier to change than the environment itself. For example, being a female is a status that is hard to change, but her perception and behavior of participating online can change if she is less told to, or fight against the saying such as "women should be more careful of the online world".  Thus, studying cognition and digital participation should have some implication on online being more democratic place.

Week 6: Attention Merchants

Tim Wu, the writer of Attention Merchants, entertains the readers with the history of media and advertising. Wu’s study starts from the history of the World War II, when the Nazis developed propaganda, and ends with an observation of a current phenomenon, social media. Wu illustrates how much advertising has been involved in the various media. The part that advertising is taking on the existence of media is so big that it seems as if media can’t survive solely without advertising.

To be honest, I try to avoid advertising as much as I can in real life. However, as advertising major, I would like to defend advertising from some of the harsh criticisms.

Advertising is a necessity in a capitalist society. Advertising has always existed throughout the human history. People persuading others to come to watch a show, how good a certain product is, or join a certain group is all an advertising activity in a broader sense. In the capitalist society, advertising has become more important because the society sustains it self by continuous consumption. Advertising, in a capitalist society is an educator. Advertising informs consumers that a new product or service is available, and where and how the consumers can get it. If not for advertising, people will have a hard time following what kind of product Apple Company offers, or what an Apple watch is. People get prompt report on what kind of technology or entertainment is out there because advertising tells them.

The entertainment, news, and media contents are all a product of advertising. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter provide free account to users. On the social media feed, there are tons of entertainment contents that people provide for free. Music videos (MV) were only free to watch on television because of the commercials that air before and after the show, and the sponsors of the show. To watch MV on the Internet was not free a few years back. But with the rise of Youtube advertisement, and the fact that allowing some free stuff gets people to watch more advertising now made MV available for everybody. Netflix and Amazon Prime create their own exclusive shows to attract more consumers. People complain that advertising interrupts during their entertainment experience. However, it is the other way around. Advertisement is the main content of the media, and the others are just flamboyant lures. Nothing is free in the capitalist society. Advertising will remain as long as we sustain capitalism. The reason people hate advertising the most these days is because 1) there is a surplus of attractions, such as products, entertainments, and advertising, and 2) consumers experienced and learned what an advertising is, and what its intentions are.

The criticism and hatred, however, should rather be on media and technology. The technology now brings people to communicate faster, multi-task, and work efficiently. Web 2.0 has changed people to respond instantly. When Instagram first came out, people thought 1min video was fairly short. Now there is Snapchat. People are getting used to consuming shorter and instant contents. Teens are watching fewer movies because two hours of content is too long for them to consume. With multiple screens, people have hard time focusing on short content because they have multiple contents to consume at once. Recent media usage report showed that more people are watching television while using mobile devises at the same time. Shorter contents and multiple screens are a problem because it makes people to think fast and superficially. The more efficient and superficial people become, the more consumption oriented they become. Advertisers are using the best out of the current media environment. But that does not mean advertising should take all the criticism.

Week 5: The meaning of digital listening and conversation

In Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy, the author David Karpf talks about how media has changed and what the public, especially the activists, should do to adapt to the change. David Karpf provides an ample example and analysis of the current situation regarding politics, media, and the public.

He also introduced readers with interesting concepts, such as analytic activism, analytics floor and analytics frontier, culture of testing, and digital listening.

Karpf’s analysis was thorough and on point, so there was not much to criticize. Karpf, however, was not able to provide a proper solution for the problems he had listed.

In the book, for instance, Karpf argued that digital listening without conversation could be a problem because just listening would not drive participants enough to build a strong identity tie. Digital listening without conversation, therefore, fails to make a transformation. The observation Karpf made regarding digital listening and transformation is similar to our class discussion about whether the discussions on social media do make change in the real world or not. It is a phenomenon that anyone who is a user of social media can easily observe. Karpf, however, forgets to address two things about this observation: 1) how to develop digital listening into a conversation, and 2) what meanings does digital listening have if it cannot turn into a conversation. Karpf’s analysis would be more valuable if it had answered these points. Thus, I would like to conclude this essay by adding a few thoughts with my short knowledge.

Digital listening has its meaning in collecting big data. Consider each tweet or post as a drop of seawater. The tweets and posts all together create a vast ocean. When public opinion is divided and people argue on social media, the large waves swirls the sea of tweets and posts. However, it is hard to figure out the whole context when you are in the sea. One should be above the water to see the current. On the surface of sea, there is a boat. A person on the boat can look into the sea and catch what he/she wants. On the sea of tweets and posts, what the boatman reeled in is information from the tweets and posts. The information that brought above the surface of the sea can be an article that summarized opinions from social media or infographics. Crowdvoice.org or Change.org that provides a brief summary of social media activism trending around the world can be the example of such information. To have the conversation going, people need to escape from below the surface level. The person on the boat can be an ordinary opinion leader among the public, or a gatekeeper from an organization or a government. Organization or governmental gatekeeping, however, would cause trust issues like current traditional media have. It is also against the special characteristic of social media, which empowers individuals. Thus, it is significant to educate social media users to not just shoot ideas on social media, but to compile ideas, understand conflicts, and grasp the general flow. Also, active development of websites and apps that summarize and analyze social media contents will help educate social media users. Digital listening is a basic step. Digital listening provides social media users with ideas to observe, compile, and educate them. Digital convergence is at its developing stage. People need time to adapt to this new stage. As babies start from listening to talking, reading, and writing, the fact that digital listening has begun implies that social media users are beginning to grow. Conversation will happen only when we are fully adapted to digital listening.