New Media & Society

New media, as a whole, has brought about a renewed or fresh interest to past media infrastructure and uniting people and their voices under this umbrella. There are many positive and negative aspects that media such as internet, video gaming, DVD programming, wikis, blogs, and other media applications, have on people and society as time goes on. In some instances, the positives outweigh the negatives and vice versa, it depends on the situation and how the technology is utilized/ whom it is utilized by.

Some effects of new media on society include privacy and sharing conditions, the wider plane of information, the availability of easier options, the variations of utilization by different groups of people (race, age, professional jobs, hobbies), and the potential adverse effects of each listed previously such as bullying, stalking, over sharing, context focused on, lowered confidence in youth, and sometimes sustainable divides in groups.

The greatest accomplishments under the new media era include DVR options, internet, blogs, wikis, and gaming because they all have a person who could find their niche and contribute what they know and what they think in any of these respects. It promotes individualism and a wider plane of information being shared amongst persons or groups. In a blog, a person can share their view on a company's policies, an employee can discuss grievances, another person can share their lives through imagery and photography, and another person can speak facts or refute what a newspaper article may say if they feel it is out of context or biased in anyway. As in past readings by Gill, this was the case when a newspaper citated and fact checked information from a well known blogger before publishing itsstory or creating an addendum to an article. At the same time, a blog can bash others by anonymous people and the revelation of information, irrespective to privacy that could be very damaging to a person publically. Not to mention, this can change the view or reputation of them in society forever. This has happened in past presidential elections and political races, where a person who has a past dug up is brought about online and criticized by unknown people. But besides privacy issues and anonymous bullying, blogs as I said before are useful in how they can contribute to the wider plane of information available, and some are reliable sources of information based on their expertise in a certain area. Not to mention, the use of blogs with companies gives a more personable experience that may make others want to follow suit, like magazines and clothing companies using it to gain new customers and followers but at the same time while inspiring a ton of people, they want to hear from others whom they also find inspiration from. This is a two way communication that is effective in the business models of today. Not only giving consumers what they want but also trying to give them what you think they may need.

The advancement of phones and the applications that are applied to them are tremendous in the fact that a person can access the internet for news, watching television shows at any time, search for town and city information within the phone's internet capabilities, and use applications to store personal information. These applications help make life easier to not only contribute thoughts through a social media form on issues that happen today, but have a place to store and share information about one's self. With these social media applications on one's phone, a person can blog or talk to another person or see what they are doing easily. This might be great in terms of effective communication which is necessary between different groups of people in society but it can also facilitate arguments that can get out of control. There are different sites that cater to different interests that may encourage people to find a niche in this vast internet society, but it can further subdivide groups of people and cater to a certain way of thinking without any room for newer ideas. This can lead to trolling, bullying, or stalking when it gets out of hand. In terms of the younger generation, they have a sense of entitlement that they can share any information and sometimes overstate parts of their lives. Not to mention, on sites like Facebook, people like the younger generation can look at what others are doing and feel insociable or feel a sense of lower confidence due to feeling inadequate or failing to compare to the social and glamorous lives hat others live.

But what we find is the easier accessibility of information that anyone of all ages can find and use. It brings people from all walks of life together to communicate, do things easier, and encourage information sharing that can contribute to the common goal. This is essentially new media and how it relates to society, with positive and negative aspects that occur in any form.

Privacy & Confidentiality

With new media outlets such as the internet, social networking, blogs, wikis, video games, electronic technologies like tablets, applications on phones, and new forms of televisions shows like reality television, the ideologies about faster and easier information to obtain is essentially apart of the goal but almost always there are shortcomings of privacy and the idea of overshare. There is a plethora of information out there about celebrities and regular people like ourselves, some of the time this information is generated by companies and their computing systems and put onto sites like the white pages or people search. Then there are other times that we ourselves, and those within our social network, share a lot of information about each other through blogging about instances in our lives, sharing christmas party photos of each other over Facebook, making it known where one works, your favorite places you like to frequent, and over on twitter, where one shares every thought and place they are. With twitter especially, people essentially give up a geotag or online footprint of GPS and location service data that shows where in the world there phone is located thus showing exactly where they are. This can later problems like stalking or information about you being built up by application computers to target you for advertising. There are two examples of this. First, the applications one puts on their phone purchased through the market that asks that their information may be collected for research purposes or may be stored and the other is, when one utilizes the internet, the net saves websites you frequent or use adshare programs that targets e-commerce websites and ads that cater to you. "The information provides opportunities not only for legitimate business purposes, but also for the nefarious aims of identity thieves and other predators, according to faculty at Wharton and elsewhere" ("Leaving ‘Friendprints’: How Online Social Networks Are Redefining Privacy and Personal Security", 2009) With this can come identity theft or personal safety issues such as stalking when one knows all about your information by what is presented by you and others on the internet.

This helps call into question, when can a person ever have privacy over the internet or when using technology, the answer is complicated. On Facebook and Opt-out campaigns, you can control how much information is divulged, who can see your profile, or relay in opting out in ad information, that you have pop-up blockers installed that prevents you from seeing an ad or spam ad. On the other hand, with such few limitations, we cannot forget the thousands of other systems, websites, and people in place that will readily share and hack using programs to divulge and collect information about you without you even knowing. Like with Facebook, a photo can be tagged of you, without you knowing unless you sign up for notifications, a person can just do it because they believe it is of you. That is one hard thing to control and that is other people. Which brings me to my next point about wikis, if you are a celebrity, there is no sort of privacy on the web. Every personal life detail fact checked, what you have done in early, middle, and late career is made available. Not to mention, Origin about where one is born, who their families are, and relationships. These celebrities are not only the traditional singers, musicians, and people of substantive talent but it also relates to those on reality tv, their lives made available over tv, internet, wiki, blogs, and online media message boards for speculation.

Though privacy may seem like a thin line to walk on, when it comes to engaging in new media and the risks it runs, there are again privacy settings implemented by what you want to share or not on Facebook and Twitter. With Facebook being, the limitations or confidentiality you assign to your profile on who views what and with twitter, removing location tags on your tweets/posts. One can help themselves by not constantly placing themselves into exact details about themselves but try not to overshare everything about your life, and divulge what you are comfortable with people knowing and try to have an air of anonymity still. If applications ask of too much information, just do not give it and find another one that suits your needs. Also with video games, they have taken great measures of confidentiality and protecting gamers identities and safety. They have moderators 24/7 that can view conversations and ban people, or build in text filters that does not allow one to speak on where they live, work or go to school, sometimes not even their name. The game Toontown Online was very diligent in achieving these goals of anonymity and keeping the focus on the game and less on the people behind the characters. There are built in filters on words allowed or if a common phrase like "where do you live" or trying to say an actual actress is actually filtered and comes out as jumbles of animal sounds" (Well you do play an animal game character). Then you are immediately reported or kicked off the site right away for account review by moderators.

Although new media is great, one has to be diligent about their safety and oversharing information because information is easier to obtain about another person or sharing it even.


Works Cited

• Leaving ‘Friendprints’: How Online Social Networks Are Redefining Privacy and Personal Security. (2009, June 10). Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/leaving-friendprints-how-online-social-networks-are-redefining-privacy-and-personal-security/

The Next New Thing

A new type of media would be something that takes health office and applications further than it does now by integrating the two technologies. There would be a SD card memory card with tons of backups at one's doctor or health care specialist's office, that has information about patient health and medical history stored.

The patient would download the relatable applications and it coaches them on healthy habits, what their doctor suggests they do within the day, and what goods are relatable to them. You can scan your food or drink and it will load it into the database and tell you if its a good choice to eat with your health conditions or not, the calorie amount, how much exercise you will need to do to burn it, and this helps with eating out and fast food if you dont count calories and pack foods from home. One's health care specialist can truly pin point and fix what needs to be done in a person's life.

This SD card fits into a little stylish bracelet for women, like those fitness trackers people wear today or a manly wristband, that would discreetly not look bulky. The SD card would correlate with applications that one can download onto their phone and take scanned images of food, enter in fitness activity for the day, and this information is sent to your health provider for their records and yours. Its not only monitoring but it helps give one a healthier lifestyle that needs accountability and relates doctors more to their patients.

New media like this really helps to innovate new technology in health advancements that is needed.

Advice to Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College, albeit its great scenic campus with a ton of facilities for students to utilize, some have no idea about them or no information in regards to the right departments to discuss about specific questions or queries they have. There is also sometimes a divide between freshman and more accomplished upperclassmen that they might have reservations about approaching on usual information for registration and to navigate this college and CUNY system labyrinth. New Media could definitely play a role in the improvement on these terms and other ideas that could help revive the tiring system or smooth out confusions with the old system.

For the scenic campus, we can utilize a Flickr page and photo and news feed on the Facebook website. Where everyday photographs that are taken by not only the professionals but students and faculties themselves can be uploaded to show what is the news, the latest fashion, the different weather days occurring, and different events happening and upcoming. This can help get information unavailable before out there and showcase a sort of nationalism to one's college and share thoughts of whats happening on campus and have an active conversation amongst peers and colleagues. This update to the Facebook page would take it from posting basic information to a more rich plethora of information and student interaction.

For the confusion that students like myself get when we need certain information like loans, student club meetings, Bursar information, the website is sort of detailed and vague at the same time. The old module of emailing gets one no where or phone calls, where one gets no one to one interaction and is faced with frustration and getting the "run around."What would be great is a few paid moderators of experienced students (This could be work-study) and faculty that would operate the college online message boards where students can ask any information they need to know and other students and faculty can come together and provide as much information as they can. To even go a step further, implementing Live Chat, where if one feels more comfortable chatting over the live chat module with someone from a certain department or operator to assess their needs and help get information that is sometimes hard to get. This way freshman and upperclassmen can interact more, share on these live chats about official information needed and on the message boards, talk about off-topic, general, pop culture, classes and professors, and official necessary information at the same time. It is all about integration and interaction, this is to address that unnecessary divide between students to students and students to faculty.

One can even take it a step further to improve other aspects of the college's system. For example, a professor can host online office hours by appointment for those who cant make it during a certain time or day. For security and safety purposes, it would be done in an official capacity on campus in the media centers like the library cafe, WEB, or library. Other new media technologies could be in the Cafeteria where there is a line up, and a touch screen at each food station that requires a cook or server already there to see your order and make it for you. Instead of one explaining what they want in detail or the cook telling you about what is available, the menu would have to display only whats available and the estimated waiting time to make it. You can pick your food based off of this and then wait for it. We can even upload the calorie information into the food choices and make suggested menus based on health conditions or what is complementary to each other, if one has a hard time deciding what they want.

Lastly, with the school newspaper, I do not see them around campus at all. Maybe if we could create an online website for it, and print the website on the back of the student IDs, so students can remember to go and read the news. Not only print it on the ID cards but at the same time on the library's homepage that students first see when they take out a computer in the library.

All of these suggestions go hand in hand with the advancements of the anywhere and everywhere notion that New Media brings to today's society. Making things hassle-free and more interactive is always the goal and the optimal choice for making everyone's life a bit easier.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds like Habbo, Toontown Online, Club Penguin, Poptropica, Runescape, and even topic specific message boards can take somebody out of their surrounding to be immersed into this alternative reality that hosts many different uses. There is a necessity of fun and most of these virtual worlds being games brings on that factor. Not to mention if its multiplayer or multidimensional world, there is communication between players to work for or against each other to accomplish their goals in this alternative reality. Not to mention, it can be used for informative and leisurely reasons like PurseForum, a forum where women discusss their health, reveal their bag obsessions, up to the minute news, and other sections that reveal/ evaluate what they are doing in their lives, their opinions about things, and slowly this helps to reveal who another person is behind their computer/tablet screen. With message boards can be evolved to include things like private wiki databases that only a sole companies' employees can have access to and share ideas on topic and also off topic if they wish, from a business standpoint.

The positives to this is children, young adults and adults will have this sort of access from any remote location they are in the world to communicate with other people from all walks of life. Keeping on communication, the message board can help people from different countries communicate what is going on in their lives or share their opinions on world affairs. Not to mention, people that work for a global company can for example, talk to a fellow colleague in Botswana while they are in Ukraine. It brings about this closeness. For children's communicative skills, it can help them seek out talking to other people and get less shy about opening up about what they are thinking about if they cant talk to their parents about it, it is sort of bridging together their way of becoming more confident and open, so they can utilize these skills off the internet or virtual reality. Also another positive is the fostering of creativity, in terms of people being able to take up the persona they want to be, create custom characters that they identify as themselves on these virtual reality games. Not to mention, in a business standpoint, creativity with problem solving and fostering brainpower and sharing amongst each other over a net server would create a great work atmosphere especially tech companies and old business models assimilating some of this new accessible culture into its operations. This could build employee confidence and self-esteem in sharing their ideas and brainstorming with other fellow colleagues in implementing these ideas.

The cons are quite simple, you can be talking to someone but at the same time, you cannot tell if they are being genuine or presenting themselves truthfully because there is this idea that some people "catfish", or misrepresent who they are or what they do, even lying about their age or certain aspects of their lives to seem more attractive to someone else. This gives a sort of falsifiable credibility to people being honest online.There is also the actions of others online that consist of attacking or bullying others, not only does it happen on these virtual worlds all too often where others are criticized for their beliefs or made fun of because of it, but it seems to extend to professional school settings where there are college gossip sites that posts inappropriate or embarrassing items about people that go to a certain university. There are sites like "JuicyCampus, that encouraged students to talk trash about their peers in an anonymous forum" (Young, 2009). There is also issues of privacy in terms of over sharing that could be related to anonymous posting, like there could be information about somebody that a person gossiping about it can share to thousands of other people, thus breaking one's privacy and being in possession of such private and vital information that can hurt and destroy someone else.

When it comes to technology there is always pros and cons but to discuss the future of virtual realities under this umbrella of technology, there will definitely be a more personable and innovative approach when creating new sites and updating previous ones. For a more personal experience, I believe there will be sections where people can enter certain groups on these realities that have similar interests and interact more. And a more innovative approach would be the accessibility to virtual realities off the internet, a blend of old and new media technology in a sense. Creating more of an atmosphere where artificiality gets less and less.


Works Cited:

• Young, J. (2009, August 31). They're Back, and They're Bad: Campus-Gossip Web Sites. Retrieved November 15, 2014, from http://chronicle.com/article/Theyre-BackTheyre-B/48220/

Social Networking

With social networking comes strengths and weaknesses that we all observe today and with that comes the necessity of responsibility in technological use. Some ways that social networking is useful in any setting is communication. Corporate wise, communication on these modules on a specific level, like a network for only those who work within a certain department of company or who works for a specific business in general. This can be great on the Facebook format, where we see people who can only join a specific network if they have ties to it and can post on group or network only walls or feeds. Personal wise, family, friends, and online acquaintances who enjoy the same interests or whatever else, can have discussions amongst each other. For family and friends, lets say if a person lost their phone, they could alert family or friends that they did so and keep in contact. With online friends, they could keep in contact through media like Flickr and Twitter to keep in contact and know whats going on in each other's lives. Another way in a business sense, is to advertise for current and new customers. If a company has a social media presence, this is usually taken of by its own department of media relations or PR, public relations. Where its the social relation manager and workers jobs to get brand presence out there, reach out to new customers, keep in contact with old customers, and basically to generate tons of interest in a brand or company, however and whenever they can. This is usually done everyday on places like Twitter, where a brand has personnel like the social media managers who answer queries, post new news about the brand, and help with customer service with online orders and issues.

These are all great benefits but they also extend to society as a whole. Its this idea of communication amongst everyone and sort of promoting a loose sense of democracy, in which, everyone has an opinion and can voice it on any of the social networking websites. They could post videos, photos, documents, etc. Not to mention, on twitter, there was an Amazon problem where they red flagged and removed LGBT community books from their bestseller searches due to them being "adult situations" but with other romance novels not being flagged, it showed a sort of sexist-orientation discrimination. In the New York Times article for the story, there was "nearly two days of angry online commentary, particularly on Twitter"(Rich, 2009). Meaning people constantly spoke about it that news reports and newspapers like NYT and critics picked up wind of what was happening. Just think that without social media, a lot of discrimination or issues would in fact, go uncheck or necessary up to the minute news would have to wait until it surfaces on newspapers, online publications, magazines, 5 o clock national news (which only hosts mostly sensationalized national news, not so much local) and not to forget, the news now has a link with Social media to discuss in a segment what is trending hotly on twitter and other social media formats. This is evident in the fact that with that same news awareness picked up by the New York Times, made it become a headline in the fact that "Thousands of Twitter users included the tag “#amazonfail” in their messages on the subject, pushing it onto rankings of the most popular topics on the site and drawing in other users" (Rich, 2009). This shows the importance or emergence of media on society and news.

But with such freedom can come the hatefulness or problems of society that in fact, rears its ugly head online and why the necessity of reporting links of spam and abuse with moderation from site monitors is needed. People's privacy in lieu of information and data leaks, hacking of accounts especially social media accounts to seek information about a person (stealing of passwords, which may be common passwords used across a span of webpages), bullying or belitting others online that dont share the same opinions, stereotyping someone through how their profile picture looks, or content on their social media pages, internet trolls that cause havoc and do all of things listed before, and the real life relationships that can deteriorate because of so much time spent with virtual friends or strangers that you sometimes have no clue who is behind the screen. With so much time spent on the net, "today’s youths may be missing out on experiences that help them develop empathy, understand emotional nuances and read social cues like facial expressions and body language" (Stout, 2010). They can become so engrossed on this fantasy or escape from reality online that they might ignore the reality that is really online. What also results is they may like virtual reality better than the real world, essentially preferring online people who they feel cannot hurt them from behind a computer screen and can lose touch with communicating one on one with a real person, and lose those charismatic skills.

With social media there is upsides and downsides to its uses and effects as a result of those uses. If I were to say something about the future of this technology, there will be a lot more uses, sometimes connecting with people entirely online like apple applications of Facetime or conference calling without actually meeting the person will become the norm. But you cannot really get to know the person and their gestures that hold their underlying motives and personality, or aura in a sense. I think with these negative uses with good moderation and the education of technology and different walks of life people will have the new generation, these technologies can be a big help within the confines of society and be a place where people can continue to interact. But hey, maybe Twitter can include games that people can play amongst each other, or graphic games like an XBOX live or such, where a mass amount of people can play and discuss not only the game but things they are currently experiencing in life, sharing jokes, and the latest episode of Survivor or Big Brother.

Works Cited

• Rich, M. (2009, April 13). Amazon Says Error Removed Listings. New York Times. Retrieved November 11, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14amazon.html
• Stout, H. (2010, April 30). Antisocial Networking. New York Times. Retrieved November 11, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/fashion/02BEST.html?_r=0

Check Out Social Networking Sites

Continuing on social networking, there are various social network and media sites out there that have certain strengths, interesting points about them, and also weaknesses that cripple the site in terms of format or content. The points of comparison to be discussed will be between: Facebook, Myspace, Friendster and Crunchyroll.

In terms of comparison on content, it will be Facebook vs. Myspace (The age old battle) and Friendster and Crunchyroll (Because these sites are not only chatting but have an interactive element of gaming and videos).

For Facebook, its content involves things such as fan pages, businesses of interest, gaming, private messaging, instant chat, the news feed, and other clickable places on the website. With the fan pages, you can check out what your favorite businesses, celebrities, and businesses of interest near you are doing in their news feed, see their pictures and get any updates necessary to keep in the loop. Gaming where you can do quizzes, farmville and other games to keep yourself occupied while on the site to stay on longer, you can invite people to come and play with you, though this feature is sometimes unanswered and becomes annoying, when you are in fact the one being invited to 100 different games. Then the messaging system is pretty simply laid out, type in the first letter of the name of the person you want to message and you can. Or use the bottom right chat enabled live chat function where you can see who of your friends is currently online and chat like its the 90's Aol Instant Messenger service. Lastly, the big news feed about information from friends, businesses, pinned notes from other websites, shared content from other websites by other facebook users truly keeps you informed. Facebook has a great layout and you can never get lost. The only shortcoming is when searching for people, people can go by nicknames that you cannot find them, but I guess that is a great privacy function indirectly.

For Myspace, it was archaic until recently when it changed its layout and content into involve more of the endless profiles (now celebrities and musicians are prolific in content), more musical content available (it had its roots in endless band and music pages from unknowns but it seems to be delving into more wellknowns than ever), and it has a new radio and video content. It is going in a more media and less social networking direction it seems. The front page is newsworthy, has a place where you can connect your facebook to it as per other endless applications does, but its very confusing and bulky in layout even though it is more modern. It seems like the front page profiles is more about entertainment and celebrities and seeing their pages, to network or "try to" contact them and know more about whats going on in their lives rather than your nuclear friends, family, and friends of friends. It feels like its going in an MTV format and direction instead of its roots like how Facebook has now dominated. The content is quite lacking because if you only want to chat and do not care about celebrities or music, then its definitely not the website for you.

Now if we look at the dimensions between Crunchyroll and Friendster its similar yet different.

For Friendster, this seems as if its a gaming online environment with forums for everyone to connect. There is the playbox where you can purchase game titles for your computer and at home enjoyment. There are different genres of games like mmorpg, rpg, fighter, fantasy, and adventure. I do love the fact that you can challenge and play with others, like the popular genre of mmorpg, massive multiplayer dimension type games. The forums available to discuss from games on the site, playbox games, and other hot off topics available. This site even though it is amazing, the graphics and resolutions are easy on the eyes, and creates a virtual community through games, it is limiting that if one does not play games or cares for it, its not the site for them. There is no place to view whats happening in their lives through pictures and such like Facebook does.

Crunchyroll on the other hand is a virtual community as well, it is not as interactively multi-dimensional as Facebook is but it has a forum as well as a store section and english and other language subbed animes of every genre for fans of Japanese Animations to watch. The forums can be discussions on actors of asian descent, dub foreign actors, off topic discussions, or inquiries into actual just subbed episodes where fans can grieve or celebrate what happens. Again, this is a specific audience and its limiting in the fact that you may not like animation videos, so its not your type of site.

But, even if its not someone's type of site, they can very well become fans of it and meet others like themselves and have discussions through the many forums on how they feel.

It goes to show there is a social network site out there for any and everyone.