User talk:Knowers

Screen time and always-on

In this era of information explosion and mobile Internet, long screen usage time and always-on online lifestyle have become the characteristics of modern people's life. No need to go to Internet cafes or use broadband Internet access in front of computers, people can now link to the Internet almost 24 hours a day. Smartphones and tablets make it possible for humans to stay online forever. In my own case, I spent about 20 hours on the computer screen last weekend (from 5 pm on Friday to 9 am on Monday). These usage times are scattered throughout my awake time. These usage times can be divided into two categories based on devices: smartphones and laptops. Among them, I spent about two-thirds of the time on the mobile side. We didn't include TV screens into our categories.Because TV is not connected to the Internet, it is not part of the Internet discussion. Different devices will bring people a completely different Internet experience. Compared with PC, we can freely communicate with others through the Internet, regardless of the occasion. This connection blurs the boundaries between virtual and reality to some extent.In the early days of the Internet (from the 1990s to 2010), only Internet geeks were addicted to the discussion and exploration of virtual communities. But now, everyone can do it. Increasing of people hope to establish new relationships through social media, and expect this relationship to be reflected in reality. People spend more screen time paying attention to others or specific events. This concern further deepens the user’s permanent online trend.

On today's Internet, information search has become an open process of continuous trial and error. The complex information context and constantly updated knowledge system in the post-truth era continue to extend our online time. Meanwhile, whether it's Wikipedia's associated page or smart push of social media, it's inducing us to immerse ourselves in the Internet more deeply. Compared to the early days of the Internet, we lived in an era of information explosion. All information in this era is within reach of the Internet. Many people are addicted to the ocean of information, especially the topics of interest to them. It’s like a child who likes sweets and lacks self-control ability to walk into a candy store alone. Our virtual community is full of too many addicts. This addiction to information often manifests as mild or severe symptoms such as social media dependence, procrastination, etc. In order to cope with this negative impact, we should keep a clear understanding of the state of always online. That is, we should be the master of technology and not a slave. We should base ourselves on real needs and relationships when using any web platform. We need to learn to balance the real world with the virtual world, so that we won't get lost in the ocean of information and find a path to a better reality.Knowers (talk) 10:27, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Reference List

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu7ZpWecIS8, TED:How cognitive surplus will change the world

2. Boyd, danah (2012) ‘Participating in the Always-On Culture’ in Mandiberg (ed.) The Social Media Reader. pp. 71-76

Instructor Feedback on Wiki Exercise 1

@Knowers:

Posts of this standard roughly correspond to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is in relation to the making criteria as outlined in the relevant documentation, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall:

Pass . Among other things, pass entries may try to relate an idea from the module to an original example, but might not be very convincing. They may waste space on synopsis or description, rather than making a point. They may have spelling or grammatical errors and typos. They might not demonstrate more than a single quick pass at the assignment, informed only by lecture and/or cursory reading. They may suggest reading but not thinking (or indeed the reverse). The wiki markup formatting will need some work.

Although this work is at the upper end of this particular grade band, improvement will go a long way to attaining a higher mark. I think in order to engage with the wiki exercises a bit more, it might be useful for you to take a closer look at the assessment brief to get more of an idea of how to hit those targets.

Making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would have gone a long way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. At the moment, there formatting of the text is rather “blocky” (i.e. in rather lengthy chunks). I suspect that, as you become more familiar and proficient with the platform and markup techniques, you will start to find a more aesthetic, user-friendly approach, which will improve things.

Detail:

• Although fairly well written generally, you need to support your claims through secondary reading (i.e. further reading,). There is some evidence of this here, but really at this level, there should be a much more systematic approach to reading and research, from note-making right through to applying the ideas you encounter in your studies to support your arguments. In subsequent work, please bear this in mind, as it will lead to an improvement.
• Also, be very careful about how the phrase “addiction” is used here. Although there is evidence to suggest addictive aspects of web activity from social psychology and from behavioural science (around, for example, gaming, and online gambling) there are lots of sources from cultural theory that problematize this notion. In addition, on this module we are much more interested in the cultural experience of connectivity, and so perhaps shifting the focus towards the participatory aspects of these issues might be worthwhile.

General:

'Reading and research': evidence of critical engagement with set materials; evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material. Marginal.

'Argument and analysis': well-articulated and well-supported argument; evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position); evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections); evidence of independent critical ability. Marginal.

'Presentation': good use of wiki markup and organisational skills. Merit.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 12:04, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Annotated Bibliography Exercise

Reich, S. M. (2010). Adolescents' sense of community on myspace and Facebook: a mixed‐methods approach. Journal of community psychology, 38(6), 688-705.

In this article, Reich explored the community awareness of young users on MySpace and FaceBook by using focus group and online surveys. The researchers found that teens' use of social networks was more likely to be individualistic than to have a sense of community. The author invites college students and high school students to use semi-structured discussion methods to investigate their reasons, experiences, feelings and social relationships for using online communities. In addition, the researchers conducted the same survey among adolescent social media users by online surveys. The researchers investigated adolescent users' sense of belonging to online communities, emotional security, personal participation, and identification. This research is very helpful to my research. It provides representative examples of psychological attributes of young users of social media. Considering that the majority of Chinese social media users are teenagers, the conclusions of this paper also apply to Chinese social media users. The main limitation of this paper is that the psychological feeling of community is not the main purpose of the survey data, and the survey indicators adopted cannot be directly used to measure. In addition, the study did not look at social media groups and was limited to individual users. Finally, the research was limited to Latino users, which may affect the applicability of the results. Thus, the authors argue that researchers should be careful to use the concept of "community" to describe the functioning of social media platforms, because studies show that adolescents see social media as a way to connect with others, not as a community. This study will support my research and serve as the basis for hypotheses about social media user behavior.
Knowers (discuss • contribs) 18:10, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Social Movement Case Study

Brexit and Social media

In recent years, the global social movement is being profoundly changed by the continuous development of social media networks. From the Arab Spring to Trump's rise, social media has become an integral part of various political and social movements. This article will take the 2016 Brexit referendum as an example to discuss the influence of social media on social movements.

Pro-Brexit campaigners outside Parliament in London in November 2016

According to Goodwin & Jasper (2014), social movements are regarded as organized, continuous and non-institutionalized challenges to the government, rulers, cultural beliefs and other organizations or individuals. Social media is regarded as a technology that can promote "liberalization", a powerful tool for communication, participation and mobilization, and can promote political change and renewal. However, social media has also reshaped the way we get information and form opinions . In 2016, focusing on the topic of "Brexit", the two camps of the referendum launched a debate and publicity war on British social media . This paper takes Twitter as examples to analyze the social media activities of British users before the Brexit referendum.

Taking Twitter as an example, Hänska & Bauchowit (2017) used Twitter content of supporters from the two camps a month before the referendum to draw a map of the "Brexit" of Twitter. They have collected more than 7.5 million tweets related to Britain's withdrawal from the EU. They found the following facts: First, Twitter users who support leaving the EU are more numerous than those who support staying in Europe, while Eurosceptic users are usually more active than those who support staying in Europe. The ratio of support for users in Europe and Brexit is 1.75 to 2.3. Other public opinion studies on Brexit (Google search trends, Instagram posts and Facebook) have revealed the similar trend.

Secondly, the political inclination of Twitter users is related to the political inclination of their region. However, this does not mean that the referendum can be predicted through Twitter activities. This is because the study found that the user gap between the two camps on Twitter is much larger than the difference in actual public voting.

Thirdly, users who support Brexit are more inclined to interact with people with the same political orientation, which has obvious "echo chamber" effect among Brexit users. In the "echo room", the user's personal point of view is strengthened under the influence of repeated single point of view information, and he actively avoids the opposite point of view. In contrast, users who support staying in Europe are much more open in discussions. specifically, 83% of Brexit supporters ’interactions were with other Brexit supporters; in contrast, the number of users who support staying in the EU dropped to 46%. Support for Europeans 49%, 39% and 50% of the time to reply, repost or quote Twitter comments from Brexit users. In comparison, Brexit supporters have responded, forwarded or quoted opposition tweets in 19%, 8% and 11% of the time. The same thing happened on Facebook. Del Vicario et al. performed a quantitative analysis of a sample of 5,000 posts about Brexit on 38 pages linked to the official British news source on Facebook. They proved that there is a clear separation between Facebook users of different perspectives, and that this separation is determined by personal preference and presentation. This means forming different "echo chambers" around different perspectives. Moreover, research has shown that the more obvious the normal differences of opinion are, the greater the differences in opinions between different "echo chambers".

Anti-Brexit protesters in Manchester

Düsseldorf carnival parade in February 2018

In addition, in terms of interaction with the media, Brexit supporters tend to access media that shares their views, such as the Express, the Daily Mail, and Breitbart. Comparatively, Supporters of staying in Europe are willing to forward news from more neutral media, such as the Guardian, BBC, Independent, rather than media that support staying in Europe, such as the Mirror, Financial Times, and the Economist. In general, the most frequently linked domain names are Guardian, YouTube, BBC and the Express. YouTube became the second largest media source, reflecting the importance of online video in promotional activities. The most popular video that supporting Europe is a clip of John Oliver's comedy-news show in “Last Week Tonight”. In comparison, all Brexit videos are less popular than this one. Famous Brexit videos are 'Brexit the Movie' and other clips, especially clips made by Toby Young and Joseph Watson.

In conclusion, compared to supporting users who stay in the EU, Brexit supporters are more active on Twitter. There are multiple explanations for this phenomenon. First, Brexit slogans (like 'vote Leave', 'take control', or even 'Brexit') are more suitable for spreading on platforms like Twitter. Furthermore, media reports on the referendum also support Britain's departure from the European Union. In terms of circulation, 82% of newspaper articles before the referendum supported leaving the EU. From this point of view, the political tendency of Twitter reflects the political trend of offline media to a certain extent. Although the debate on Brexit and the political movement on Twitter to some extent reflect a change in actual public opinion, we still need to pay attention to the characteristics of social media itself. Researches show that there is a clear “echo chamber” effect among the user groups that support Brexit on social media. This reminds us that social media is a powerful public opinion amplifier for political and social movements. A considerable number of users are not thinking about problems but seeking approval on social media. Furthermore, this identity is also easily reinforced by the presence of like-minded people. Considering the development trend of social media, it is reasonable to believe that its own characteristics will profoundly affect the development of human politics in the future.
Knowers (discuss • contribs) 02:41, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Collaborative Essay Critical Evaluation

Wikibook is a tool that allows users to complete book writing by collaboratively editing web pages. Everyone is free to write on the Wikibook and discuss the work with other users through the Discussion page. All updates and modifications are visible on Wikibooks and are open to everyone. This means that the writing process is transparent, and everyone can communicate with the author. I think the open nature of the Wiki platform itself can be applied to social science research across regions or countries, especially in sociology, folklore, and anthropology. Considering the difficulty of remote field trips, researchers everywhere can choose the wiki platform as a platform for their academic exchanges and study records. In addition, the ease of editing of the Wiki platform makes it a record platform for “ethnographic” research. Wikibooks (and other Wiki sites) encourage users to write and interact with web pages centered on knowledge or opinions."neutral point of view" (NPOV) and good faith are principles of communication in the Wiki community. This principle requires that wiki users must respect each other and use rational language to communicate rationally. According to the NPOV principles, the main purpose of the Wiki community is not to debate opinions, but to require users to focus on providing their own resources and expressing their opinions. All discussions on the topic should be held in the "discussion" edition and should not appear in articles on the web. The Wiki community tends to present all opinions and reasons neutrally, and judges themselves. In this process, communication between users is centered on common interests and creative enthusiasm, contributing their labor and resources to the community. Wiki is a community of knowledge sharing. All pages are written by users and shared with everyone. This is a useful attempt to the knowledge sharing model.

For the first time in this semester, I tried to write a team and my own research using Wiki tools. This was a beneficial learning process for me and gave me a deep understanding of the features of the Wiki platform and the spirit of the community. During the writing process, our team encountered some difficulties and differences. The discussion page is a great communication tool for everyone on the team to post ideas, share resources, and ask for help.Our Collaborative Essay theme is Offence and Antisocial Communications. We explore the three types of harmful behaviors of the Internet in this article, explain their manifestations and harmfulness, and explore possible solutions. This writing assignment gave me a comprehensive understanding of the harmful activities in the Internet community. We explored how criminals use Internet vulnerabilities to engage in illegal activities and antisocial communication. Through my research on criminal activities, I deepened my understanding of the information behavior of social media users and features of social media platform. In this process of writing，I would thank for my companions, Emily and Lily, for adding a lot of new ideas to my writing. Finally, I would also like to thank Dr. Greg for his guidance and the very useful reference books he has recommended.
Knowers (discuss • contribs) 18:50, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Reference List

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK: ESSAY DISCUSSION PAGE

@Knowers:

Students should be engaging at least once a day, for the duration of the project. The following points illustrate how this engagement was evaluated.

Evidence from contribs to both editing and discussion of content (i.e. volume and breadth of editorial activity as evidenced through ‘contribs’). These are primarily considered for quality rather than quantity, but as a broad guideline:

Each item on a contribs list that are 1000+ characters are deemed “substantial”: none

Items on a contribs list that are <1000 characters are important, and are considered in the round when evaluating contribs as a whole because of their aggregate value: there are a number of these, but certainly not for the duration of the project, and not near the level, advised in the wikilabs.

It is expected that you will make at least one contrib per day, for the duration of the project: see above, this would have been greatly improved by following the advice in labs and in the assessment brief

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 13:10, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Instructor Feedback on Wiki Exercise Portfolio

@Knowers:

Posts of this standard roughly correspond to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is in relation to the making criteria as outlined in the relevant documentation, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall:

Merit. Among other things, merit entries will make a clear point in a clear way. They will relate concepts to original examples in a straightforward fashion. They will make effective use of the possibilities of the form (including links, as well as perhaps copyright-free videos and images, linked to from Wiki Commons). They may also demonstrate a broader understanding of the module's themes and concerns, and are likely to show evidence of reading and thinking about the subject material. The wiki markup formatting will be very clear.

Making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would have gone a long way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. I suspect that, if you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this will make a considerable difference. As it stands, there is a some really critically engaged work in here, and you have thought of the implications of your argument, communicating fairly effectively, your ideas in response to the various wiki exercise briefs. Good stuff!

General: In addition to the common marking scheme, there are three broad criteria widely employed in the Division, which are used to help assessors evaluate your work in a more general sense:

Reading and research: is there evidence of critical engagement with set materials?; is there evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material? For this element, your work has been evaluated as: Merit

Argument and analysis: Is argument well-articulated and well-supported?; is there evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position)?; is there evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections)?; is there evidence of independent critical ability? For this element, your work has been evaluated: Merit

Presentation: academic writing style and structure, and organisational skills For this element, your work has been evaluated as: Merit

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 13:38, 19 December 2019 (UTC)