Monthly Archives: November 2022

Week 7 – 8: Goal 4 + 5 – Reducing my social media usage and sleeping for 8 or more hours every night

Reducing My Social Media Usage and Improving My Sleep Pattern

October 31 - Novemeber 13

Introduction

In the last post, I discussed how I failed to reduce my social media screen time. I also said I would combine my social media challenge with my challenge to sleep 8+ hours daily.

Two weeks later, I am happy to report that I have successfully completed both challenges. 

 

Strategies that Helped Me the Most

  1. Disabling my notifications.
  2. Putting my phone in another room while I was doing homework helped a lot too. 
  3. I often lose track of time when I am scrolling through social media during the day, so another strategy that helped me a lot was setting a timer for 20 minutes every time I started scrolling on social media just to remind me to put my phone down after 20 mins.
  4. The final strategy that helped me the most with sleep was putting a daily timer on when I needed to put my phone down and go to sleep.

Benefits of Getting Enough Sleep

1. May help you maintain or lose weight

2. Can improve concentration and productivity

3. Can maximize athletic performance

4. May strengthen your heart

5. Reduces your risk for type 2 diabetes 

6. Reduces risk and symptoms of depression

7. Supports a healthy immune system

8. Reduces inflammation

9. Helps you regulate your emotions better 

10. Reduces your risk of accidents 

 

My experience

Reducing my screen time and getting more sleep has significantly impacted my life. I feel a lot calmer and less stressed. My concentration during lectures and work has improved, and my under-eye circles have also slightly improved. 

 

References 

Leech, J. (2022, January 6).10 Reason to Get More Sleep. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-reasons-why-good-sleep-is-important 

The Oldest

Responsible, smart, kind, and caring

The recipe for perfection

But the secret ingredient cannot be forgotten

Indecision

Reliable

Respectful

Rightfully ignored

Talented

Tolerant

Torn

Divided by sides

Divided by lives

Divided by everyone

Divided but meant to carry on

The show must go on

It cannot rest

They are supposed to perform 

They must do their best

Face the world with a smile

Don’t show worry

Don’t show fear

Don’t show indecision 

Where there is no indecision 

There is no doubt

No fear

And nothing to worry about

Designing yourself.

Over the years I have followed so many Instagram influencers and Youtubers that I have loved and hated. I personally like lifestyle bloggers in my opinion, I feel that it is rawer and more personal. My favorite lifestyle blogger is Tara Michelle. She is a digital creator; she is very active on Instagram and YouTube. I really like the way she is her true self.

I have watched her YouTube videos since I have been on social media and wow. Over the years I have found myself more connected with her than any other influencer. She has really changed herself to not be like a typical influencer and that is one of the main reasons I still watch her.

 I think everyone is so different in real life, but people can be very similar online. That is why I enjoy watching her because she is very raw and will not post crap on her site. Many people will try to promote things just for money but will not actually like the product. I have seen it before, and the black lash people get is ridiculous. But Tara, she promotes worthy products and will give honest reviews. This is how you will have a deeper engagement. Allowing yourself to be different and vulnerable to disagreeing to something will increase people to be more interested. I have found myself to try and be as honest when I am talking about food or drinks that I have tried. This is how you try to change that image social media gives you to be different.

Designing yourself up for success and allowing for more good quality reviews. I want people to come onto my website and see how organized and spontaneous my life is. I also want people to feel more connected with me, like I am texting them about this new thing or place I checked out. It really is all about how to connect better with your audience and what they want to see more of.

Digital Breadcrumbs

There’s a saying that goes: if the product you’re using is free (in this case social media), then you are the product. This could not be more true with the rise of data trails and targeted analytics. Dr. Elisa Oreglia explains that a “digital trail” is essentially like breadcrumbs we leave behind when using our smartphones, our laptops, as well as social media (2016). Beyond just scrolling through apps and explicitly engaging with them, our phones have “a series of censors and [we] have this constant background communication between the phone and cell towers”, but also between the internet and our apps (Pod Academy, 2016, para. 13). So, we’re constantly giving away information about our environment, and ourselves.

While this is initially alarming, given that at first glance, it’s pretty exploitative. I’d argue there are more benefits than costs here. I’m personally not worried about my data trails and I don’t try to minimize my footprint. This is because I’m pretty neutral when it comes to targeted ads and companies using my data to better understand me. I think acknowledging that this is the case is helpful in spotting these attempts to exploit me. On the flip side, it’s sometimes helpful for me when what I’m looking for pops up on my feed!

I also think there are more benefits in this double-edged data sword. Analytics are an extremely valuable tool. It’s not just massive companies that leverage our data trails, smaller creators benefit too! Digital creators and artists can use these data tools to build and develop an audience. They can understand their readers better to serve them better. I’d argue, everyone wins here. As long as there is education around the fact that some will try and exploit this data, there isn’t anything necessarily worrisome about data trails.

Media literacy and data trail knowledge is important now more than ever. Understanding that people will try and mold behaviour or influence our decisions is critical in avoiding the pitfalls of these digital breadcrumbs. However, knowledge is key and will help us access the power of these tools. This will also hopefully lead to the leveling of the digital playing field.

References:

Pod Academy, (2016). “Digital breadcrumbs: The data trail we leave behind us.” http://podacademy.org/podcasts/digital-breadcrumbs-our-data-trail/

Week 9 Process Post: Analytics

To be honest, I am not familiar with Google Analytics. It sucks because, in this class, lectures constantly talk about Google Analytics for our websites. Do I know what is going on? Absolutely not. Am I trying to understand what is going on? Yes. 

Back when I did my first co-op a few months ago, I was in charge of marketing content on all platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, and Mailchimp). I viewed analytics on a daily basis for frequent posts. I particularly had to focus on Twitter analytics as it was the most heavily used platform at my co-op. I focused on Twitter as I was required to post 4 times per day, scheduling posts on days I was not scheduled to work (weekends, holidays, past 5pm). My particular strategy was to always post at hours when my audience was active. I also spaced my content every few hours rather than spamming it all at once (which I have done before). Thanks to Hootsuite and Twitter analytics, I learned not to do that. 

As the content creator for my previous co-op, I also focused on paid advertisements. On settings, I changed to reach users who typically engage with content. I also knew how to build my audience by posting on Instagram stories. I found that posting on stories was a way to get users to view my content without actually posting a new post. 

For my own personal Instagram, when I posted frequently I also posted at times when I knew my audience was most active or what my friends call “prime time”. I know how most of my audience behaves because my analytics, it shows my prime time is posting between 8pm and 10pm.

As a reader and user of content, I find that I don’t like content that is heavily reposted. The mute button is my best friend to content I don’t want to necessarily unfollow, but don’t want to see. Constant repetitive content is something that won’t engage your users. 

As my website is food content, Dished Vancouver has the perfect content and website balance. They typically post new content about a new restaurant 1-2 times. Usually, posts can differ from grand openings to promos, to new locations. I like that Dished Vancouver does not repeat their content, rather, redirects its followers to its website for more information. Dished Vancouver engages their audience while posting frequent content without repetition.

A Guide to Yarn Weights

Lace yarn (or: fingering, thread, or cobweb)

US 000 to 1

1.5 to 2.25 millimetres

Super fine yarn (or: sock, fingering, or baby)

US 1 to 3

2.25 to 3.5 millimetres

Fine yarn (or: sport or baby)

US 3 to 5

3.5 to 4.5 millimetres

Light yarn (or: DK or light worsted)

US 3 to 5

3.5 to 4.5 millimetres

Medium yarn (or: worsted, afghan, or aran)

US 7 to 9

4.5 to 5.5 millimetres

Bulky yarn (or: chunky, craft, or rug)

US 9 to 11

5.5 to 8 millimetres

Super bulky yarn (or: roving)

US 11 to 17

8 to 12.75 millimetres

PROJECT: Offline — Meghan

It Starts With Hello

Taylen’s point of view on how she met this person.

It was Fall of 2006 when my family decided to move to a new town. The change didn’t seem super major in my life at the time as I was still quite young, but I do remember the feeling of being the new kid in school. At the time, it was kind of cool; walking around and being like, “Hey, I’m new here!”, but I remember it also feeling quite lonely; being an introverted kid, I didn’t like being in the spotlight too much, so having to learn new things was also quite scary. I only went to school a couple of times a week before we finally moved into our new house, but then when we did, things started to feel more normal again. Meghan was one of the very first friends I made in my new class and though I don’t remember much from that exact year, what became after would be a life-long friendship that is now 16 years and counting. Although we don’t talk to each other every day, we’ve always managed to stay connected in each other’s lives all these years. It’s been such an amazing journey so far with the memories we’ve made and I’m super fortunate she’s been in my life with me every step of the way.

This or That

You can only choose one…

  • Salty or Sweet
  • Winter or Summer
  • Air Guitar or Air Drums
  • Coffee or Tea
  • Dogs or Cats
  • Sleeping or Eating // Those are like my two favourite things

Five Facts of Fun

What are 5 facts about yourself?

  1. I don’t like raw cheese.
  2. My car’s name is Bertha.
  3. I like ramen.
  4. I know how to scuba dive.
  5. I love the hot tub. I am a hot tub connoisseur; 103 degrees (Fahrenheit).
A portrait of Meghan and Taylen embracing in each others arms. The girls are wearing graduation attire.
Processed with VSCO with c1 preset

Drop a Bop

Pick a song that is the theme song to your life and discuss why.

You that song that’s like, *singing* “Everyday is Saturday night, but I can’t wait for Sunday morning”, I like Sunday mornings, so I think we’ll go with that cause it’s my day off. Sunday is like the start of my week. I plan to do nothing and I look super forward to it. Cause every other day I work, go to school; the typical life stuff that takes more time than you think it would.

Debate Time

What is your perspective on the following question: Is the ocean soup?

No. Because there’s living things in it. I think soup is full of dead things *laughs*.

Chris (Meghan’s partner who is also in the room): Well that’s not explicitly true, I’m sure there’s lots of little bacteria and stuff.

Okay… there’s a lot “visibly” living things in the ocean. You don’t like look into your soup and your like “damn, look at that fish swimming around in there, woahhh”. Or a crab or something. I also think that soup is made with intention. There is no recipe for the ocean, not that you need a recipe to make soup, but like you know. You make it with the intent of eating it. Or to enjoy cooking it, you don’t do anything to the ocean other than pollute it so.

Some Deeper Small Talk

Chosen from a group of questions, the person answered the following question: What’s become more important to you than ever before?

Living expenses. I moved out a few months ago, so I need to pay rent and buy all of my goods; which is fine, but you are definitely more money conscious when you have more to spend. That is the current I think, definitely more aware of how much money goes in and out. Even though I don’t see my parents and brother as much anymore, we still maintain good contact a couple times a week. I think it’s better because we have our own space which is nice, so I think it’s a positive thing; not that it was bad before, but it’s better because then the time that we spend together is more intentional.

The Final Spotlight

If you had the final opportunity to say anything to the world, what would you say?

Nobody cares, really. Nobody cares, go do your thing. Don’t take yourself too seriously. You probably care more than everybody else.

Everything.

New Westminster

  • Angelina Dutch Corners (Brunch)
  • Taqueria Playa Tropical
  • Donair Star
  • Waffle House Restaurant
  • Longtail Kitchen
  • Sushi Well
  • The Spud Shack Fry Co.
  • Nashville Hot Chicken
  • Zaaki Cuisine
  • Arvind’s Curry & Cocktail
  • Cockney Kings Fish & Chips
  • Patsara Thai
  • Match Eatery & Public House (Happy Hour)
  • Donuteria
  • Old Crow Coffee Co. (Cafe)
  • Hive Cafe
  • The Hide out Cafe
  • Yum Gourmet Donuts
  • Snowy Village

Burnaby

  • The One Restaurant
  • Baba Sweets & Restaurant
  • Sushi Garden
  • Bubble World
  • Anton’s Pasta Bar
  • Claudio’s Ristorante
  • Glenburn Soda Fountain and Confectionery
  • Icy Bar
  • Sugar Lab
  • OEB Breakfast
  • Zubu Ramen

Vancouver

  • Jam Cafe
  • Pur & Simple
  • Ballyhoo Public House
  • Burgoo Restaurant
  • Sal Y Limon
  • The Pawn Shop YVR
  • Off the Grid Waffle Cafe
  • The Parlour Restaurants
  • Yolks
  • Lucky’s Doughnuts
  • Von’s
  • Soft Peaks
  • Craft Beer
  • Warehouse
  • Breka Bakery & Cafe
  • Kevin & Kevin
  • TacoFino

Richmond

  • CocoRu
  • Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ

Coquitlim

  • Sushi California
  • Si Senior Taqueria Fiesta Mexicana
  • The Kebob House Restaurant

Langley

  • Olive Garden Italian Restaurant
  • Wendel’s Bookstore & Cafe

Delta

  • Stir Coffee House
  • Cravings Coffee

Surrey

  • Famoso Neapolitan Pizzeria
  • Krispy Kreme Donut
  • Afghan Kitchen
  • Afghan Copan

Stanley Park Brewing.

  • Park Sesh Lager (5.0% -12 IBU)
  • Amber Ale (5.1% – 20 IBU)
  • Noble Pilsner (5.1% -18 IBU)
  • Sun Setter; Peach Wheat Ale (4.8%- 18 IBU)

I went to this brewery at YVR Airport. I hate beer. I am a sweet girl all the way. I find beer very bitter and dark. I got a flight of beers from Stanley Brewery. I would rank my beers that I got as Peach Wheat Ale took first place because it tasted exactly like juice, but it did have that after taste of beer. Second would be the Park Sesh Lager, it was still very bitter but not bad. Third was Nobel Pilsner, I did not like it, I chugged it. And lastly, Amber Ale, the most bitter one out of them all. I hated it. After this brewery experience, I still don’t like beer. I did on the other hand get a nice buzz for my flight to allow me to sleep because it was a red eye.

Building My Audience Through Analytics

I have not had the chance to play around with Google Analytics yet. Utilizing analytics will be one of my goals for this upcoming week, as I am unsure how to apply it to my website. When I look up “analytics” on the Installatron search function, the application “Matomo” is the only one that pops up. I am confused about whether this is the correct one or not. However, I will have to ask questions and bother Lauren about analytics this upcoming Tuesday. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend this week’s lecture. However, after completing the readings, I understand how important it is for content creators to know what their audience wants to maintain a successful website. Analytics would be helpful for my website because it uncovers and meets my “customer needs and identity nascent trends before [my] competitors” (data.ai., 2022, p. 64). This point illuminates how analytics play a critical role in determining what the audience is most interested in and utilizes most on your website. Knowing what people are attracted to is important if you want to gain a bigger audience. In my case, I want to know if my book reviews and book club locations are attracting people to visit my website. Moreover, this would give me a better understanding of what I need to post more or less of. Overall, analytics will put my website at a better advantage compared to other book reviewer websites since I will know what I need to improve on.

References 

data.ai. (2022). State of Mobile 2022 . Retrieved November 12, 2022, from 

https://posiel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/dataai__state_of_mobile_2022__en.pdf

BjornBar Bakery

Rating: ★★★/5

Can delicious desserts and amazing cappuccinos make up for the fact that there is no seating? Not sure if this place is Reading with Rachel approved.

Reading with Rachel’s Friday book club meeting was held at BjornBar Bakery in Coquitlam. A five-minute walk from Burquitlam station and a 15-minute drive from the SFU Burnaby campus. I decided to catch up on my readings while I waited for everyone to arrive. My class is finishing up reading William Shakespeare’s Richard II. For today’s book club meeting, we will discuss A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson (a fantastic read for those who love murder mystery – this one kept me on my toes!). BjornBar Bakery is best known for its dessert bars. I decided to try their Raspberry Bar and Nanaimo Bar with a cappuccino. It is safe to say that the dessert bars and cappuccino did not disappoint me. The reviews I read online were accurate. The bars were deliciously chewy and sweet. Also, you can never go wrong with a cappuccino. Who doesn’t love caffeine? In general, these are reading essentials at BjornBar Bakery. While I would return to this bakery for the food, I do not recommend this place for a book club meeting. The store is crowded and small. There were tables to sit at outside (but it is too cold during this time of the year to do so). The tables at BjornBar are all high tops, and because the building is small, they were all pressed closely together. The only reason I could find seating was that I came at a non-busy time. Since BjornBar is right by a SkyTrain station, I think it was the busiest coffee store I have seen. Students were coming in and out, and you could barely hear the music playing because of the chattering. If you have the chance to get one of the tables in the back near the washrooms, it would be a bit quieter to host a book club meeting. However, there will always be a lineup near you because of the bathrooms. Overall, I would not recommend hosting a book club meeting at BjornBar Bakery because of how small the building is and how hectic it is inside.

Analytics

When thinking about analytics for a website, I always tried not to share my activity on the website or any data regarding my use cases. Sharing data always felt like a burden to me as knowing that the online space is not always safe, giving data to a website did not feel right. However, as I am building my own website now I can see that it can be very useful as a content creator.

Before taking this class, It never crossed my mind how useful it can be for content creators to receive data on the user’s use cases when browsing a website. Knowing how the user behaves and what works best for them is enormously helpful when deciding how to design my website. Furthermore, now that I am experiencing the content creators side I find that it can improve user usability just by knowing what parts of the website work and don’t work for my audience.

For example, little things such as how my audience accesses my guides can be useful information for me as I can design my website so that more popular content is easier to access. In addition, I will be able to tell what sorts of content works for my website and be able to get data on what content my audiences like. As someone who writes guides for a game, it is very useful to know what parts of my guides are useful for my audience and what isn’t. Being able to know what my audience wants to know about a character and how to build a character can definitely help my content in the future.

If I know that my audience spends the most time reading the different artifacts to build for a character, I can improve this section by providing a longer in-depth analysis of the artifacts. In exchange, I can shorten parts of my guide that people spend less time reading. Using tactics like this to improve my content can help further grow my website to a wider audience.

Although, I want to set up analytics for my website the process is not going smoothly. I find that trying to connect google analytics with WordPress causes a lot of issues not letting me set it up. It is an unfortunate process, but I do hope I can get it to work or have it work in the future If I do decide to continue to build my website as it can bring all sorts of benefits.

Mini Assignment #4: Remix something

Hi everyone,

Here is my Mini Assignment 4 – Remix Something.

Please enjoy this video of League of Legends gameplay that I remixed into an epic gameplay montage. I found some cool free music and decided to add that in too.

I really like the last clip where I rekt my girlfriend in a 1v1:)

Process Post: Week 9

This was the week our essays were due so I thought I would lend this process post to that whole process. The assignment prompt was: “social media platforms are democratic“.

Please read the essay here: http://sus-e.com/home/essay-one-are-social-media-platforms-democratic/

I approached this essay from the perspective of someone who is involved in the dissemination of social media content. Very rarely do I create or curate social media content so this was the best lens to analyze the assignment through.

I subsequently took a look at current events so that I could have tangible examples to share. The ones I outlined in my essay are Donald Trump’s social media communications, Kanye West antisemitic social media statements, Elon Musk buying Twitter and all the harassment he fosters towards other individuals, and the murder of Mahsa Amini in Iran. Please read the essay to see how I stitched these current events into my argument.

The research process was very smooth. I used the catalogue search in the SFU Library website to find my sources. I also used articles from news outlets to supplement the scholarly articles.

All in all the writing of the essay went very well. The writing prompt was great to work with so I had many thoughts that spilled onto the Word document.

The biggest hiccup I had was when I tried to post my essay to my website. Around 11:51pm, I went to add the essay to the website, but for some reason when trying to publish the post the website would stop working. I tried again three times but nothing happened! It was around 12:02am now so I missed the November 8th due date. As someone who struggles with severe anxiety, I instantly panicked and contacted the TA and professor to alert them to my issue. However, I then tried switching to a different computer at my house and was able to post the essay to my website. I suspect something happened within the cached data on my laptop. I do all the work for this course on that laptop so I had no reason to suspect it would not work when I tried to post.

So, my essay was posted 8 minutes late; hopefully I don’t get penalized for this unforeseen circumstance.

Is Social Media That Democratic?

The Internet has revolutionised how people acquire information. Humans are social creatures, and one of the biggest gifts given to us by the internet is social media. Social media has transformed the way we communicate with others and more likely empowered individual users by protecting their freedom of speech and expression. Users on social media can connect with other users from different parts of the world within seconds. Content creation and dissemination have become easier than ever. However, the purpose of this essay is to examine the downside of these advantages, i.e., the democratic nature of social media. Considering how accessible and widespread social media is, has it potentially made existing problems even worse?

Social media has questioned many existing norms and challenged traditional news media and institutions. However, some problems have amplified since the creation of social media. Online harassment and cyberbullying have now become mainstream and are mostly facilitated by social media (Persily & Tucker, 2020). Although social media was once thought to be a place where all voices were heard, online harassment and widespread intimidation have left some social groups, like people of colour, females, certain religious groups, and people of certain age groups, the victims of such encounters. This encounter has led disadvantaged social groups to take less part in online social platforms than they would wish (Persily & Tucker, 2020).

One of the core elements of democracy is diversity of viewpoints, and an individual can make informed decisions when they are presented with diverse viewpoints and opinions. News is one such source that fosters diversity of viewpoints and helps democracy thrive. News can help produce “positive externalities” that in fact benefit human society by bringing about policy changes and a redefinition of the roles of political parties and institutions (Persily & Tucker, 2020). However, due to fewer regulations for news generation on social media, it has led to enormous disinformation and misinformation on online social platforms. It is crucial to note that social platforms are a business model that exists to make money by presenting users with content that is both controversial and tailored specifically to them; this is referred to as “algorithmic gatekeeping” (Stark et al., 2020). This business model has sort of been flawed when considering the democratic stand that it has taken. 

Algorithmic gatekeeping has given rise to “filter bubbles” (i.e., content tailored to the user’s personal preference) and “echo chambers” (i.e., showing opinions that align with the user’s preference). Hence, algorithmic gatekeeping presents the user with news that is tailored specifically for them. This one-sided view of society and topics could lead to fragmentation and polarization. Fragmentation is defined as the “disintegration of society into smaller sub-units that no longer form a cohesive whole, induced by individualized media exposure” (as cited in Stark et al., 2020), while polarization means “ideological division of a society into different (extreme) political camps” (Stark et al., 2010). Hence, with fragmentation and polarization comes a declining social consensus on major societal issues, and society is more divided than ever. Although, social media has led to more news being generated, for an individual user it does not necessarily mean diverse. The user often gets what they want and what they like through this algorithmic gatekeeping. Due to this, diverging views are often marginalized, and disengaging with views that are ideologically different has become easier (Kent, 2013). Lastly, apart from the algorithm the content that is being shared to us is coming from the user that we trust and know. For instance, considering India’s situation, fake news stories on WhatsApp revolve around the idea of nationalism and nation building as they connects user emotionally and make fact checking less important (Bali & Desai, 2019). 

In a nutshell, social media has always given opportunity to the individual user to create and share content, and perform their right of free speech. However, the problem lies in the abuse of free speech on social media and its algorithmic gatekeeping. Humans are so engrossed on social media platforms that their decisions in real life are shaped by the information they perceive on online social platforms, and this is where the problem lies (Margetts, 2018). Social media has the power to bring large-scale policy changes and reforms to institutions, but with the current structure of social media and extreme polarization, the changes are nowhere near. Hence, lawmakers and tech giants should work together to structure an online space that is safe for all the users, promotes diverse content and free from any manipulation or filtering. As the quote says, “Unity in Diversity.”

References

Bali, A., & Desai, P. (2019). Fake news and social media: Indian perspective. Media Watch, 10(3), 737-750. https://doi.org/10.15655/mw/2019/v10i3/49687

Kent, M. (2013). Using social media dialogically: Public relations role in reviving democracy. Public relations review, 39(4), 337-345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2013.07.024

Margetts, H. (2018). Rethinking democracy with social media. Political Quarterly, 90(S1). https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8d51efd0-ede2-450c-9f96-5b962a2d9989/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=Ch%2B9%2B%2BMargetts%2B-%2BRethinking%2Bdemocracy%2Bwith%2Bsocial%2Bmedia%2Bfinal.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article

Persily, N., & Tucker, A. (Eds.). (2020). Social media and democracy : The state of the field, prospects for reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press  https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108890960

Stark, B., Stegmann, D., Magin, M., & Jurgens, P. (2020). Are algorithms a threat to democracy. The rise of intermediaries: A Challenge for Public discourse. https://algorithmwatch.org/de/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Governing-Platforms-communications-study-Stark-May-2020-AlgorithmWatch.pdf

 

 

The post Is Social Media That Democratic? first appeared on Self Therapy.

“Two’s, Seven’s, and E’s for F’s” – Remix

What would someone working in the crazy industry of crypto choose to remix? I decided no better option than Tyler Hobbs, Texas born digital artists collection; “Fidenzas”.

The newly remixed image below is a combination of three separate NFTs from his collection released earlier last year. It may seem abstract but I utilized Adobe Express to mash his top sellers into one masterpiece.

I call it… “Two’s, Seven’s, and E’s for F’s”.

Each one of these pieces of digital art were purchased on the secondary market at the outrageous prices above. So maybe I should try and sell this powerhouse too?

Essay #1

As a social media user, I want to warn people who follow me to be careful. For some reason, social media is not where you come to see your friends as it used to be the fun of it. Instead, I feel as though I am being fed information. I now see more outrageous accounts that spew hate and try to influence my beliefs to match what I see on platforms. My Facebook is filled with massive amounts of news from accounts that I do not remember following; they have very strong opinions towards specific topics that are very hateful to minorities and vulnerable groups in our society. I am trying to understand why this is happening, and I have been researching to give you information on how our behaviours are being collected. This is to educate the public to utilize the internet carefully as it is a shadow of its old self.

If you see on Twitter, everyone here can agree that we have at least ten bots followers. Most people do not get retweets; instead, they get that random one that gets you excited, and then you realize it’s a fake account again. The article discusses bots and how these bots essentially mimic our behaviours and can be utilized to push traction on news that aims to convince us for political gain (UC, 2022). These bots are created by people who are essentially employees at for-profit corporations that are paid to influence behaviour (UC, 2022). An example is in the last United States elections; the Russian Internet Research Agency hired people who could understand American culture and speak good English to push news, comments and like posts that rile up the population (UC, 2022). These accounts aim to polarize the American public to the point that they would undermine our government and put us on a path to a falling empire (UC, 2022). This is inherently the goal of bots and the cause for their growing number; it is so bad that 8.5% of Twitter accounts are bots (UC, 2022). This explains why you have that one loyal follower that gives you a retweet every time you tweet.

Another interesting journal by Bansal writes about the patchwork of policy working to fend off misinformation (Bansal, 2019). He discusses how the US election created doubt in American democracy, and many experts confirmed that foreign influences played a path in that election. Multiple groups on Facebook that had bots were influenced strongly (Bansal, 2019). Facebook had to roll out sweeping measures, which surprisingly worked and provided relief. However, there is still animosity on Twitter with the hate groups and negative/fake news getting more aggressive in micro-targeting. The new wave of social media sensation is a prime example of this; many young men and almost every person on the planet now know Andrew Tate. The individual was not someone I saw on my page a few weeks ago, but now I cannot stop seeing him after googling him once. It is horrible on Facebook and TikTok.

Governments have started releasing legislation to punish people who push fake news to sway the public. Canada, Singapore, France, Brazil and Egypt have some of the most severe punishments. Another example is the study “SCM,” which presented results on research on a Facebook platform, showing that most people use comments to gauge false and real news (Kluck, 1970). The growing number of bots can, therefore, either undermine factual information or uplift fake news in the worst-case scenario. The article by Beshai (2018) utilizes nodes to illustrate how deep and far false news travels compared to real news on Twitter; very stark imagery called cascades is formed. 3D tools demonstrate how broad and deep false and true news travel (Beshai, 2018). The study uses a visualizing this type of data where “breadth is (how many times a given tweet is retweeted) corresponds to the width of the tree, and depth (how many “generations” of retweeting occur) corresponds to the height” (Beshai, 2018). This imagery provides a more straightforward interpretation of the state of our situation. This is a wake-up call for the public to be wary and vigilant in consuming information.

I am not here to spread doom and gloom but to inform the public that this is real and could affect our society. Hence, I will provide insight into how Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms can reduce how false news penetrates our system. The study called “Real Solutions for Fake News?” (2019) states that using disputed news tags can help inform the public of inaccuracy by about 10% from the base of 29% who believed initially. The other tag used in this study is false news which helped reduce the spread from the base of 29% to 16%, a 13% reduction (Clayton, 2019). I believe some corporate social responsibility is warranted, and companies should invest more in fact-checking to protect society.

Finally, I believe guides from the article “Fake News” will help reduce society’s vulnerability. Questions I recommend asking oneself are: “Does the article come from an established, credible and rigorously fact-oriented news organization such as ABC, The Guardian or The Wall Street Journal? If not, encourage students to consider the general character of the publication: how are its stories presented? Who owns the organization, and are they interested in promoting a particular view?” (Henry, 2020). Other possibilities are checking the URL link, checking for satire, using fact-checking websites, a simple google search and various types of bias (Henry, 2020). Confirmation bias is one that I found myself falling in tune with some news outlets. This could be as simple as stereotypes about a place, and then a story comes up that could run as evidence for the said stereotype. The last article shows how the use of fact-checking, either imposed or voluntary, reduces the spread of fake news by 25% (Chadwick, 2021). The study also highlights the reduction of false news sharing by 67% per viewer by educating them on fact-checking and increases their sharing of fact-checked news by 58% (Chadwick, 2021). Hence, I believe being vigilant in self-awareness can be a massive tool for navigating the internet in these times of upcoming mid-term elections.

References:

Beshai, P. (2018, March 9). Cover stories: Visualizing the spread of true and false news on social … Retrieved November 9, 2022, from https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aat4382

Bansal, S. (2019, October 4). The patchwork of policy working to fend off misinformation. Centre for International Governance Innovation. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://www.cigionline.org/articles/patchwork-policy-working-fend-misinformation/

Clayton, K., Blair, S., Busam, J. A., Forstner, S., Glance, J., Green, G., Kawata, A., Kovvuri, A., Martin, J., Morgan, E., Sandhu, M., Sang, R., Scholz-Bright, R., Welch, A. T., Wolff, A. G., Zhou, A., & Nyhan, B. (2019, February 11). Real solutions for fake news? measuring the effectiveness of general warnings and fact-check tags in reducing belief in false stories on social media – political behavior. SpringerLink. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-019-09533-0

Chadwick, A., Vaccari, C., & Kaiser, J. (2021, March 17). The amplification of exaggerated and false news on social media: The roles of platform use, motivations, affect, and ideology. figshare. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/The_amplification_of_exaggerated_and_false_news_on_social_media_the_roles_of_platform_use_motivations_affect_and_ideology/14223083

Henry, E., Zhuravskaya, E., & Guriev, S. (2020, June 4). Checking and sharing alt-facts. SSRN. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3597191

Kluck, J. P., Schaewitz, L., & Krämer, N. (1970, January 1). [PDF] doubters are more convincing than advocates. the impact of user comments and ratings on credibility perceptions of false news stories on social media: Semantic scholar. undefined. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Doubters-are-more-convincing-than-advocates.-The-of-Kluck-Schaewitz/f32cfce6e8ec2331481a300085ff39e99ecaac6b

UC, S. B. (2022, November 8). How is fake news spread? bots, people like you, trolls, and. Center for Information Technology and Society – UC Santa Barbara. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://www.cits.ucsb.edu/fake-news/spread