For this week’s process post, after reading through this week’s reading by data.ai, stating that in 2021, “the average American spends 4.1 hours on their mobile device”, this got me thinking about how content viewed across various devices needs to be adaptable. Since there is such a wide variety in screen sizes and colour output screens, websites and various applications can look completely different across devices.
When I first learned about building a website creating my personal one for my portfolio, I learned about the usage of breakpoints and media queries. In the code for the website, specifically in the stylesheet, this defines where elements can be set or changed on the page, depending on the screen size that the webpage is viewed on. Although a quick solution can be zooming in or out of a website, issues can occur of overlapping elements on screen (such as the navigation buttons overlapping each other) and elements that may not be completely viewable (such as an image). Majority of the time, this can be defined by the horizontal measurement of the screen, though depending on the website’s content, sometimes there are vertical breakpoints that are also defined in the code.
How PROJECT: Offline appears on my desktop.How PROJECT: Offline appears on my phone.
In using WordPress for our blogs, luckily these breakpoints are already pre-defined in the themes that most of us have chosen and are already flexible when it comes to moving elements around the page such as columns, rows, and the website’s navigation. Looking at PROJECT: Offline from my phone, my website reformats nicely with the navigation collapsing into a hamburger menu. I’m curious to see how my website would appear on a bigger screen than my desktop, such as a TV.
In taking consideration how screen sizes can fluctuate, colour output also changes too; such as Apple products with their retina displays and other devices that may have their OLED displays. This has been a common issue of mine recently as I’ve stumbled upon this when editing my photos.
After making the switch over from using a MacBook Air to a PC desktop, I have an older monitor that I use for my desktop. Recently, I’ve found that after I export my edited photos and when I view them on my phone, the photos appear much darker than I’d expected. I haven’t quite figured out if this is an issue regarding the settings on my monitor or the monitor itself, but it’s been annoying having to continuously transfer my photos onto different devices. And yes, I also miss my Apple computer lately.
I suppose there is a community when it comes to using technological devices. Therefore, it’s important that we keep being adaptable for having content being responsive for various screens and to be frequently checking how our content looks across these devices. Who knows what the next aspect ratio on a device may be, what if a new device came out tomorrow that is 1:1…
For the third blog review, I have been assigned to review Mika’s blog, “Year of Mess”.
When first arriving to her website, the first thing that caught my attention was the photo of a little girl, which I assume is a photo of Mika when she was younger. The caption at the bottom reads, “when did messy stop being okay?”. The narrative and thoughts I had when I first visited her blog and seeing this was, “How could someone get mad at this little girl? She is still young and still learning so yes, being messy is okay. So then why is it wrong for us to be ‘messy’, aren’t we still learning too?”.
And I really love how this photo highlights what the blog is about.
Mika uses an asymmetrical layout for her website with her content taking up the left side of the page and a fixed navigation along the top of each page. Along to the right side of each page, she has a blurb with a quick tagline of what her blog is about, as well as a more recent photo of herself. Below, there is a section that highlights the most recent posts on her blog to read.
As most of her blog contains the usage of serif fonts, I’m curious to learn more about the choice of a sans-serif font for her main logo. It does contrast well to be distinctive from the rest of the site, but it seems slightly drastic from the website’s overall cohesiveness; perhaps because this font in particular is stretched more in the horizontal axis. There is some inconsistencies with the usage of capitalization and non-capitalization as a stylistic choice in some of the headers and captions, however, this does not impact the content contained on her blog.
Mika has also added an accessibility tool bar to her site, which is currently in a blue colour. I think if she added some blue accents to her site, this would incorporate a nice splash of colour to her site! However, if she also wants to keep to more minimalistic look to her blog, I think changing this to a pink tone to match her photo would make it more suitable!
From reading the “About” section of Mika’s blog, realizing afterwards that this is a transcription of the provided auto file on the page, Mika’s personality and voice uniquely shines how she transcribed it, and this continues through the way she writes across her blog. She incorporates the usage of italics and bold words to make her writing more dynamic, in addition to incorporating some onomatopoeia. Through her writing, she commonly breaks her paragraphs between each sentence, however it is incorporated well to break up the thoughts and ideas in the post.
As a perfectionist myself and learning how to navigate through learning to let go the anxieties that confront me day to day, I’ve enjoyed reading through some of these “messy” posts and find myself relating to some of the topics and emotion that she discusses. In “I’m Glad My Apartment Flooded (Part 1 of 2)“, I dealt with a similar experience of helping a relative with their house flood and it reminded myself of how incidents like these are common for others too. As her stories are well detailed (like this one!), I think she can take advantage of the widgets provided with WordPress and add these to her posts! Adding a simple photo/visual or another element I think would really add to the narrative!
Overall, I’ve really enjoyed the authenticity of Mika’s content from the personal examples she’s faces in her own life and learning about what she took away from that experience. I noticed that Mika did not choose to implement ads onto her site. However, I think this was a better decision as I think the implementation of banners would take away from the authenticity her blog showcases.
Mika has done an awesome job curating her blog for her audience. Year of Mess reminds us that we are all human; sometimes things happen and we are not alone in facing bumps in the road like these and we can learn from these experiences, together. It has been a pleasure to look over your blog and I’m excited to see the blog’s final product in the coming weeks!
This week (Nov. 13–Nov. 19) was the busiest week of the term so far, with essays, midterms, and plenty of assignments in the lineup. Finally, I got through the rough patch, and now my only focus is doing well in the finals. So good luck to me!
Now, looking over the content for this course, I will be going over the Google Analytics data for my website and the importance of SEO.
Google Analytics
Most of my website’s reach is coming from direct channels, which is understood at this moment due to peers looking at each other’s websites, grading, etc. However, access through social media is at 16.7% and organic search is at just 8.3%. To reach a larger audience, I would need to improve my organic search results.As said by Hollingsworth (2021), organic search is usually the primary source of website traffic, which is clearly not the case on my website because of poor SEO at the moment. Hence, I would have to tag the posts and make proper use of keywords in order to perform better on the search engines.
Looking at reach by devices, 75% of the reach came from desktops and 25% from mobile phones. Currently, as a student, I mostly use desktop all the time, so I’m only focusing on the desktop website; however, now that I’ve realised that the majority of my audience will most likely carry phones wherever they go, it’ll be critical to polish my mobile website to make it accessible and finished.The data from data.ai (2022) also suggests this trend: more people are spending their daily time using phones. Hence, this is what I should start working on as soon as possible.
Lastly, it is important for a website to be fast and reliable in order to improve the user experience. It turned out that my websitewas poor in terms of quick response; it took 3.8 seconds for a page to load, and that’s a lot! I would have to probably add a plugin or reduce the picture size for content to appear quickly and reliably.
Rabbit holes, after rabbit holes, after rabbit holes, so many rabbit holes that I have no idea where I should begin. Everyone falls down a rabbit hole once or twice… or thrice (for some of us that is a daily occurrence). Rabbit holes sometimes seem like never-ending spirals that we sometimes fall down because we were looking for something specific and like five hours later, we realize we have no idea what we are doing and how we ended up in that position.
Rabbit holes are a blessing and a curse. Rabbit holes are a great way to keep up with modern trends, and get your name and online persona out into the world of the internet, also you can get inspiration for crafts and your own posts from the deepest parts of the internet. However, it is essential to not forget the best part of getting lost in rabbit holes which is that IT IS SO MUCH FUN!
Getting lost in rabbit holes is an absolute blast because, in the beginning, you are looking for a recipe on how to perfectly cook scrambled eggs and the next thing you know, you are trying to figure out why elephants are grey. I honestly love escaping into the depths of rabbit holes because it is so easy to get lost and learn new things, and my personal favourite reason would be that you get to kill some free time that you did not know what to spend doing.
However, every coin has two sides and the other side of rabbit holes is an absolute curse. I know I mentioned that I love wasting my time surfing the web for random nonsense as well as random knowledge, but that is also the disadvantage of rabbit holes. Rabbit holes are never ending spirals of articles after articles after articles. Most of the time I will have stuff to do and tasks to make off my checklist, but instead, I end up sitting on the couch and surfing the web for no reason and getting sucked into a rabbit hole that I would rather not escape.
No matter what you think of rabbit holes, they are a part of many peoples’ everyday lives and there is not much we can do. Sure we can limit our internet usage, but I would rather figure out the answers to random questions than get boring chores done. I guess that’s just my opinion!
A few days ago I started an Instagram account connecting with this website. It’s worked quite well to bring more readers to the website, especially if I mention a new blog post in a caption. About 37% of the traffic from the last 28 days has come from Instagram, and I saw a spike after a social media post on Nov 13 when 15 users visited the site. I’ve had 63 users for the past month, which might not seem like many, but it’s a 54% increase since last month.
Overall I’ve had 99 users in total with a bounce rate around 47%. The bounce rate has been fairly steadily decreasing since early October, which hopefully means my posts are not terribly boring.
I’ve been trying to refine my targeted audience, because I think choosing a niche will help me reach more people. I’d like to do something around the history of knitting, like knitting superstitions, using vintage patterns, and how knitting has changed over the years. I follow a lot of content creators who focus on historical dress, and I really enjoy learning about how crafts and art used to be done. I don’t want to narrow down my focus too much, and I still want to keep the recipe section and be able to write odd posts that align with my interests at a particular point in time, but I’m excited to learn more about knitting through history and maybe make that my focus.
The semester only has a few weeks left, which is both exciting, because I’m looking forward to winter break, but also blows my mind, because I can’t believe how fast time is going. It’s true that once you get older, time goes by much quicker. In December I’ll have more time overall for knitting, so I’d like to prepare by learning a bit more about knitting as a historical craft over the next few weeks.
In my last process post, I accidentally skipped the readings for Week 9 and reflected on Week 10 instead. Therefore, in this post, I will refer to Week 9. Can you tell my brain stopped working at this point in the semester? I am mentally still in September and not November. For this week, I decided to add a new section for non-fiction book reviews on my website. This entire semester, I was only focusing on fiction books, which I don’t necessarily think is bad. However, I realized that providing both would expand my audience because of the variety. Also, some people only like to read non-fiction and are looking for recommendations. Therefore, I am excited to write my public post on my first non-fiction book review! I am also looking forward to receiving my second review feedback soon. I can confidently say that I am satisfied with all my writing, editorial, and design elements at this point in the semester. However, I am always open to receiving feedback and improving. After reading Bleymaier’s article, “On Advertising — Maria Popvova” I thought it was interesting how he mentions the concept of ad-free sites. Bleymaier mentions how Popova “claims her affiliate advertising links are not ads” (Bleymaier, 2013, p. 1). Here, Popova implies that her including links in her post is not to sell anything and that they are or will be featured on the website already. This point is interesting because it made me reflect on my website and how having an ad-free site is beneficial. From a user’s perspective, no one enjoys clicking on a website and having ads all over the place. However, in terms of collecting data, this could be useful for me. In other words, seeing what my audience is interested in engaging with. Advertisements are something to consider, but I am unsure where to start. Tutorial, here I come.
This week in POSIEL we focused on using Google Analytics and SEO on our websites, and all of the data that this plug-in can provide. Therefore, this week I focused on setting up my Google Analytics account (properly this time), so that I can view and utilise this information accordingly. A few weeks ago (likely...
After reading through this week’s reading of Pod Academy’s about Digital Breadcrumbs, I wanted to reflect on how I made the personal challenge this week to avoid social media and spending numerous hours scrolling on my phone as a user. One major point was when I found myself bored of completing (or not completing) the task that I was working on, I realized how I subconsciously unlocked my phone, swiped to the next page of my home screen where my social media apps were, and tapped Instagram. It was that simple and moments later I found myself quickly shutting off my phone and placing it aside me facedown in shock that I did the motions once again.
The line in the article that discusses how our daily actions are monitored and that “we willingly tag ourselves in specific locations through social media platform[s]” (Pod Academy, 2016), this reminded me of how my friends and I use the new social media app, BeReal. BeReal is a social media app that sends a notification once a day for those to stop what they are doing at the moment and take an image. Not only does this image get taken from the front-facing camera, but also the back-facing camera. The image is timestamped, then users can choose whether or not they would like to tag their location. Before publishing, users can choose to post only to their friends or on the community page where it can be shared publicly. If one does not share within 2 minutes of the sent notification, then the posting will have a timestamp stating how late they were.
Timestamp and location to share with your friends?! This easily shows where one is at a given moment in time. What I find even creepier is that if the person decided to share the location where they took the image, it tells you how far away that person is from you. Unless you would want to meet up with a particular friend, I’d think sharing this information on the community page with the public can be quite dangerous. Now think even further that on Snapchat, if the user chooses to share their location, this updates in real-time when the person is on the app. Have I been found cyberstalking my friends to see if they are hanging out without me, possibly, and I’m pretty sure many others have as well; what are the positives that this kind of feature really has? Overall, I’m starting to think that maybe it is time that I step away from social media for a while; not only for it being a distraction but for the time it wastes away from me focusing on myself.
Reflecting on the content-creator side for this week, I decided that I wanted to keep my website ad-free and unmonetized. The content of my website is about people telling their authentic stories about themselves and with placed advertisements. I feel that this would take away from the realness I want to convey with my content if there are banners on my site creating a distraction away from the actual content. If I decide that I would like to place monetization on my website in the future, one aspect I would take advantage of is some of the discussions that take place in some of the articles written; this could be about a brand, company, music artist or a location of a specific restaurant. This way, advertisements would not seem as jarring and can seamlessly fit into the content itself. PROJECT: Offline is not intended to be a place for product placement or branding opportunity unless the person spoken to is building their brand themselves. To keep my PROJECT: Offline genuine, my focus needs to remain on showcasing real people and their real stories…
Regarding Monetization: What Can and Should Be Monetized?
Did you know you can monetize a wedding?
Many weddings involve large gatherings of people. Those people are an audience, who are all likely to share some similar interests.
Marketers want to capture large audiences with similar interests and they do so by paying for advertisements.
To monetize your wedding, you can sell promotional space to advertisers.
Weddings are expensive so recouping costs by any means possible just makes sense.
Monetize your life
Today, there are opportunities to monetize everywhere.
You can do things such as:
Leverage your network of friends and sell them products you believe would improve their lives.
Make above-average content about your everyday life and get sponsored.
Write a blog like this one and run advertisements.
Now, just because you can monetize everything, should you?
Deciding what to monetize
While it is simple enough to live life in a manner to maximize profits (this is what corporations do), it is not typically the way that most people desire to live their lives.
However, although maximizing profits may not be directly what we want, we can take lessons from corporations and implement them in our own lives.
When faced with the choice of monetization, I think the following:
What are the costs of monetizing this (social, financial, environmental, etc)?
What are the benefits of monetizing this (social, financial, environmental, etc)?
Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
If yes, is this something I am comfortable monetizing and will not regret in five years?
If yes, go ahead and monetize.
Choosing whether to monetize or not, really comes down to a cost-benefit analysis and a review of one’s own feelings in regard to the item you are thinking about monetizing.
Conclusion
Always look for creative ways to monetize your life. Your and your friend’s attention and time are valuable, so allow others to pay for it. Have a system to decide what is worth paying for and what is not.
This week’s process post prompt looks at data trails and tracking. In the early ages of the internet, data tracking was an entirely new concept. Google was one of the most notorious for this when they collected search prompts from users to improve their search engine. Nowadays, almost every single individual on the internet gives up their data in one shape or form—it is nearly impossible for you to not give up your data. Only those who properly do their due diligence may be able to minimize it, but not avoid it entirely. I will be looking at data trails and data tracking from both the perspective of my own audience on Tess Drives and my personal take on how I feel about data trails and the choices I currently make when I am on the internet.
Tess Drives’ Audience
I successfully installed Google Analytics on my website on November 2, 2022. It was a little confusing to get it up and running mostly because the instructions on how to download it wasn’t quite clear in lecture and tutorial. I finally had the “ah ha” moment when I realized the Google Site kit plug in had both Google Analytics and Adsense and you need to go to Google Analytics on the web to access the metrics. I’ve had to help a few colleagues in the class with this as well because we all thought that Google Analytics itself, was a WordPress plug in.
Here is a summary of some of the data from Google Analytics:
In the last 7 days…
Traffic
-100% of page viewers have directly searched my website to land on the webpage
-0% of page viewers have stumbled upon my website through socials (YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram)
-61.1% of page viewers are from USA
-27.8% of page viewers are from Canada
-5.6% of page viewers are from American Samoa
-5.6% of page viewers are from India
-83.3% of page viewers view my website on desktop
-16.7% of page viewers view my website on mobile
Content
-Average duration on my homepage is 4 minutes 48 seconds
-13 page views on my website home page
-4 Views on my contact us page
-2 Views on my about page
What does this data tell me? Well, it gives me a glimpse on how well my website is being perceived by the public. For example, I can see that my website has reached viewers outside of my Pub 101 class judging that 61.1% of my page visits have come from users in the USA. Or, I know that I need to advertise more on my social media platforms to get viewers from my YouTube to head over to my website judging that all of my page viewers have come from directly searching my website rather than being redirected from my social platforms.
On the flip side, some people may find that I am breaching their privacy by tracking these kind of metrics without their permission. I find it odd that there is no automatic disclaimer from Google Analytics to tell my audience that their actions are being tracked on my website. Maybe this is because Google Analytics tracks engagement anonymously? I am unable to view personal information of specific visitors to my page, I am only able to see generated numbers from the tool.
So, is data trails and tracking wrong? In this specific example, I feel like my audience has nothing to worry about. Since I am not gathering personal information such as legal name, age, sex, or location. I am simply trying to learn the skills to create a website and to engage with my audience effectively.
On the other hand, large corporations — especially in social media — gather not only your personal information but track your behaviour online that is associated with your account info to target you with ads and suggested content. This has only come to light in the last decade where Facebook was put on the spotlight for unethically selling Facebook users’ information to third party advertisers in the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal (Confessore, 2018).
The problem with data trails and tracking when it comes to social media and other corporations, the agreement to give up some of your data is buried in thousand-word pages of terms and conditions—which the majority of people just scroll through and click “agree” and get on with their lives.
So I ask again, is data trails and tracking wrong? Morally, it is wrong. But I am no expert on privacy laws in Canada and the United States. To me, I feel like it is impossible to not give up your data nowadays because it has been so convenient for big corporations to use our data and make our lives easier through things like tailoring content online, Smart Home tools like Amazon Alexa, and productivity enhancements such as the Apple ecosystem.
It is evident that if you want to make your lives easier with technology, it will have to come with an expense of giving up some form of data.
Shay’s Opinion and Choices
Nowadays, data is key and companies are willing to pay millions for it. I have come to a point in time where we have become so complacent with giving up my own data to companies to make my daily life easier. For example, under privacy settings in my iPhone, I have nearly every app tracking my location because apps like Starbucks require to have my location tracking on to make it more convenient to locate the nearest Starbucks or to mobile order a coffee. It’s just so much more simpler to give these large corporations the ability to track me to fully benefit from their applications.
A more severe example of giving out my personal information is of course to the company of Tesla. I have set the Tesla app to track my location as “always” since my iPhone is the key for the car. Tesla has advised users to keep the settings like this to allow the car to unlock quicker when I walk up to it.
Something that may seem even more frightening is that I have basically given up my entire rights to Tesla when I am driving the car. I am currently enrolled in the limited early access full self-driving beta program where I have been admitted to use Tesla’s beta software based on my driving habits. You will see in the screenshot that I have included (Autopilot Review, 2022) that in order to use the beta software on the car, I need to “consent to the collection and review of on-going VIN-associated vehicle driving data while enrolled” – essentially, I am granting Tesla to not only spy on me while I am using the software, but they can spy on me and collect data from me while associating the footage with the exact vehicle identification number that was assigned to my vehicle. With all this in mind, I’ve thrown in the towel because who else can say that they are driving a car that is “full self-driving,” to me, it’s entirely worth it. Tesla is clearly using this information further enhance their self-driving software so that it can become fully autonomous and they definitely have better things to do than to spy on me.
All in all, I definitely could care less with how much data I have given to companies such as Tesla. I am able to fully utilize the $15,000 software upgrade to make my car drive itself and I am confident Tesla has better things to do than to spy on me online.
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.
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.
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.
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
It’s almost impossible to avoid being on social media. I receive updates from my school, friends, family, and organizations I’m involved in through social media. I’ve tried to take breaks, but the fear of missing out on something gravely important, like a friend forwarding a reel, keeps me habitually checking notifications. With increased usage of social media comes the collection of vast amounts of personal data on every user. We’ve grown accustomed to sharing more of our lives than others would ordinarily see, and with that comes the natural concern for personal privacy. But what we share can be used on a larger scale to analyze information about our personality, voting habits, and personal beliefs, and target us with ads and posts aimed to sway our political leanings. Can data then be used fairly within a democracy, if it can also be used to manipulate voters?
Data reveals who we are. It can predict how we will behave, what we believe in, who we will vote for. It is a given that our online data is being shared, from the moment we agree to privacy policies. There is little we can do to mitigate this personal privacy breach other than opting out of the odd cookie or choosing to stay off of social media. Unfortunately, the latter option is impossible for those who receive updates from their schools, workplaces, friends and family, and public services from social media feeds. Data use is now an unavoidable part of democracy, but not a wholly negative one. Political parties can use data to learn the needs of their voters to determine which issues to focus on in their campaign, lending publicity to important issues (Hankey et al., 2018). Though social media is widely cited as negatively affecting democracy, it cannot be said that it is a universally poor resource for information. Social media invites people who would not usually have a platform to participate visibly in social and political issues. But this can be explored too; our behaviour is influenced by that of others. If we can see how many people support an issue, we are more likely to become involved (Margetts, 2018).
This is not a new part of democracy. Advertisers and politicians alike market to certain demographics with messages that invoke a reaction based on personal experience. The difference is the scale of information available for use in political campaigns and the detailed profiles that can be created for each voter (Hankey et al,. 2018). If politicians build social media campaigns using thousands of data points to identify statements that may sway voters, the information being spread is likely false or only partly honest (Amer & Noujaim, 2019). Rather than being a true reflection of their ideas and goals, their platform becomes untrustworthy. A candidate may authentically intend to curb carbon emissions, but a quotable statement on environmentalism will also draw the attention of left-leaning voters who are on the fence. This creates a political process that is closer to a popularity contest than a democratic election, visible in the personal insults levied at political candidates based on their appearance, age, and gender, rather than their political platform and qualifications.
The 2019 documentary The Great Hack features Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting company that processed data points on American voters to determine who could be persuaded through targeted ads to vote for the Republican party. Their involvement in the campaign led many to wonder who can rightfully view and use personal data. Is it still democratic to intentionally influence voters with the aid of data that can identify each person’s personality, personal connections, personal history, and political opinions? Even if the voter alone is responsible for what they put on their ballot?
Political campaigns increasingly rely on social media to directly address voters, as opposed to using mediums like news outlets that require intermediaries (Sahly A. et al, 2019). With that freedom to discuss their platforms, politicians may stretch the boundaries of a democratic election by discouraging respectful and productive debate. In the 2016 presidential campaign Donald Trump was known for using conspiracy theories and false information circulated by extremist groups to demean fellow politicians and incite anger among his supporters (Marwick, A. & Lewis, R., 2017). This reads like a description of a soon-to-be authoritarian, rather than a candidate for presidency in a democratic country. With inflammatory statements, political issues can quickly become a collection of misinformation and disinformation that, coupled with strong loyalty to either the ‘left’ or the ‘right’, create a prime environment for uninformed and emotional voting. People under a democracy should make freely formed decisions. If social media were truly democratic, its main function would not be profit. Social media companies need to make money from freely downloadable apps. Advertisement and the sale of data are the main sources of income for these corporations, which means users are the product (Mod, 2017). Advertisers buy data to determine effective marketing strategies to target specific audiences. Even more invasive and morally questionable are the political campaigns that collect data on voters, with the aim of gaining their support. A democracy by definition is a system that is governed by and for the people. With data gathered from social media used to purposefully aggravate or polarize, democratic elections become akin to marketing campaigns. As social media is now inextricable from democracy, it will need to be considered as such, and regulated to prevent extremism and manipulation.
Works Cited:
Amer, K. & Noujaim, J. (Directors). (2019). The Great Hack [Film]. Netflix & The Othrs.
Hankey, S., Morrison, J., & Naik, R. (2018). (rep.). Data and Democracy in the Digital Age.
Margetts, H. (2018). Rethinking democracy with social media. Political Quarterly, 90(S1).
Marwick, A., & Lewis, R. (2017). (rep.). Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online.
Mod, C. (2017, January 13). How I Got My Attention Back. Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2017/01/how-i-got-my-attention-back/#.djqfcpajo
Sahly, A., Shao, C., & Kwon, K. H. (2019). Social Media for Political Campaigns: An Examination of Trump’s and Clinton’s Frame Building and Its Effect on Audience Engagement. Social Media + Society, 5(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119855141
This essay will focus on the notion that Twitter creates democratic spaces for dialogue. I will be presenting a neutral stance by providing examples of why Musk’s acquisition may help Twitter to become a more democratic platform and why his recent acquisition may actually contribute to autocracy. Then I will ultimately conclude by supporting or disagreeing with these statements after presenting the facts I have researched.
Context
Elon Musk acquired Twitter Inc. on October 27, 2022 for $44 Billion USD (Conger & Hirsch, 2022) officially becoming owner and CEO of the social media company. The motive behind this move was to simply to create a platform that promotes free speech and to create an inclusive space for everybody.
Those familiar with Twitter and Elon Musk prior to the acquisition should be familiar with how active Musk was on the platform compared to other celebrities and influencers, specifically interacting with the public in both positive and negative ways (Figure 1, 2, 3).
The Good
Since Musk acquired Twitter, he has made it clear that he has a mission for Twitter to become “the most accurate source of information about the world” (Figure 4). In doing so, one of his main tools will be to revitalize Twitter’s “blue checkmark” verification to “democratize journalism & empower the voice of the people” (Figure 5). According to Edgerly & Vraga (2019), “innovations to [Twitter] verification appearance is needed. One option is to attempt to restore the value of a verification badge” (Edgerly & Vraga, 2019). This suggests that there is little evidence that current verified accounts are more trustworthy than non-verified ones but mentions that reiteration of the verification system is needed to provide better evidence, which is something Musk is attempting to work on.
Often, we find that news channels and journalists want to capitalize on mainstream media for personal gain without even fact checking their stories. On October 28, 2022 media outlets across the USA were fooled and quickly took to Twitter to post their stories where two random men stood outside the Twitter HQ posing as ex-employees immediately after Musk’s acquisition of the company (TMZ, 2022). One of the media outlets that got duped came from CNBC, who later posted to Twitter apologizing for the incident (Figure 6). “An important goal of factchecking journalism, correcting misinformation, is only attainable if audiences are exposed to, pay attention to, and ultimately engage with the fact-checking content – accepting its conclusion and participating in further communication (Kim et al, 2022). Media outlets only started to realize they got this story wrong after seeing the response and engagement from the public on Twitter. The public did not accept the conclusion gathered by CNBC and communicated that through replies on Twitter. Ironic as it is, Musk is targeting these exact incidences of misinformation that are churned by media outlets. Again, it is still unclear how he plans to do this but if he achieves his goal, then it will be beneficial to all Twitter users.
The Ugly
Musk now owns Twitter, creates content on Twitter and also consumes content on Twitter. It can’t get more autocratic than that, he owns the whole company and has the ability to display what content he believes should be highlighted. The biggest question now is, what is the fine line between free speech and hate speech? How will Musk act in an impartial way that truly creates a democratic platform for all users? “Freedom of speech is really not black and white. This is very messy territory. We’re dealing with humanity” (Davies, 2022). Even a Supreme Court in Norway found it difficult to decipher what constitutes as hate speech, “But what constitutes ‘hateful or discriminatory speech’ is rather broadly defined in this provision. The difficulty in defining such subjective concepts as ‘hate’, ‘persecution’, and ‘contempt’ is yet another issue” (Nguyên Duy, 2020). This will need more of an action-based response by Musk rather than a verbal one. If the Supreme Court had a tough time on deliberating on this, how in the world will Musk be able to tackle this? We will see how this gets addressed by looking at our Twitter feeds over the next few months.
Recently Musk announced a change to Twitter’s “blue checkmark” system to a subscription-based model called “Twitter Blue” at a price point of $8 USD per month (Ohnsman, 2022). He hopes that users will pay for the blue verified checkmark and be recognized as a trustworthy user. In true billionaire fashion, it seems like the CEO only cares about profiting off their users rather than trying to create a democratic platform organically. Jennifer Grygiel an associate professor and expert on social media stated that, “He knows the blue check has value, and he’s trying to exploit it quickly” (CBC News, 2022). It seems like Musk wants to see how this verification pay system will play out and make a quick buck off existing users, rather than tackling the real issue at hand, democratization of Twitter.
Finally, it is easy to say that Musk has a brutal track record when it comes to political views, lifestyle choices and his care-free attitude. All of this can easily be found on his Twitter account @elonmusk. Musk does not hold back and has many controversial tweets that I have outlined in the context section of this essay. In addition, according to a survey of 2014 people conducted by Preply.com, “2 in 3 of those we polled said they do not want Elon Musk to take over Twitter, though Republicans are more supportive than Democrats” (Zajechowski, 2022). Evidently, it is difficult to trust this kind of leader when it has been proven time and time, that he seems to take life as one big joke.
Conclusion
Now that we have looked at both sides of the argument, which one is correct? Well, I bet you knew this one was coming, but it depends. And it depends on how you look at it. For me, I think of it as, will Elon reach his goal of providing a platform that promotes free speech and power to the people? Well yes, eventually he’s going to get there. And he’s going to pay whatever cost just to make himself look good. But at what cost? How many people will leave the platform in doing so? How much hate speech will go under the radar? How bias will the platform be towards Musk’s liking? And what will Twitter become in the near future?
Another question to ask is, will the platform be authentically democratic? I doubt it. It’ll be skewed in a way that Elon wants the platform to look like and he’ll gather a bunch of lawyers in preparation if anyone tries to go against him.
In summary, I believe Elon needs to focus on what he’s good at, making cars and sending rocket ships up to space. There’s no doubt that he’s a brilliant person, but he needs to control his ego and step out of the spotlight by letting better leaders deal with democratizing Twitter.
Featured photo: Singh, M. (2022). TechCrunch From: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/06/elon-musk-twitter-blue-verification-india-launch/
References
CBC News. (2022, November 6). Twitter users can soon buy a Blue Checkmark ‘just like the celebrities’ for $8 a month | CBC News. CBCnews. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/twitter-subscription-verified-accounts-1.6642108
Conger, K., & Hirsch, L. (2022, October 28). Elon Musk completes $44 billion deal to own Twitter. The New York Times. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html
Davies, P. (2022, October 28). Musk’s twitter: A platform for Free Speech or extremist hate? euronews. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/10/28/will-elon-musk-s-twitter-become-a-beacon-of-free-speech-or-a-soap-box-for-hate-speech
Edgerly, S., & Vraga, E. K. (2019). The Blue Check of Credibility: Does Account Verification Matter When Evaluating News on Twitter? Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 22(4), 283–287. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2018.0475
Kim, H. S., Suh, Y. J., Kim, E., Chong, E., Hong, H., Song, B., Ko, Y., & Choi, J. S. (2022). Fact-Checking and Audience Engagement: A Study of Content Analysis and Audience Behavioral Data of Fact-Checking Coverage from News Media. Digital Journalism, 10(5), 781–800. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2021.2006073
Nguyên Duy, I. (2020). The Limits to Free Speech on Social Media: On Two Recent Decisions of the Supreme Court of Norway. Nordic Journal of Human Rights, 38(3), 237–245. https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2021.1872762
Ohnsman, A. (2022, November 4). Rupert Murdoch 2.0: How twitter gives Elon Musk the power to shape public opinion. Forbes. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/11/03/elon-musk-twitter-social-media-baron/?sh=a317f8b28739
TMZ (2022, October 29). Twitter layoffs hoax, duo posing as laid off employees trick reporters. TMZ. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://www.tmz.com/2022/10/28/twitter-layoffs-hoax-pranksters-trick-media-outlets-pose-fired-employees-elon-musk/
Zajechowski, M. (2022, September 12). Survey: Is free speech under attack? Preply. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://preply.com/en/blog/twitter-free-speech-survey/
Appendix A
Tweets that were referenced above.
Figure 1. Elon responds to a Twitter user with feature requests to be incorporated into his Tesla.
Figure 2. Elon responding to Bernie Sanders in a controversial tweet.
Figure 3. Elon tweeting out his political views to his followers in an attempt to influence voters.
Figure 4. Elon tweeting that Twitter needs to be an accurate source of information about the world.
Figure 5. Elon tweeting that the blue check mark will democratize journalism and empower voices of the people.
Figure 6. CNBC’s Deirfre Bosa apologizes for spreading misinformation on the Twitter employees who were fired on the job.
This week in POSIEL, we discussed the idea of monetizing our websites through advertisements, and whether or not this is something we are interested in doing for our site. For this, I played around with Google Analytics, and set up a Google Ad-sense account. However, I ultimately decided that I will not be monetizing my...
This past week I’ve been carrying out little tweaks, and running into a couple of problems with the website that I’ll have to deal with soon. When someone makes a comment they are led to a page with a list of errors. I’m not sure if this is because I need to approve comments before they’re visible, but I’ll see what I can do. There are also a list of warnings at the bottom of posts about accessing array offset- I’m not sure if they were caused by me updating the theme, so I’ll need to look into that too.
I’ve been focusing on small things that improve the navigation and visibility of the website, like including an archive of posts by month for PUB 101 because I realized it may be a bit tricky to see my progress through the course without a timeline. I linked my website in my social media profiles, and I think it’s directed some more readers to the website because users have increased in the past couple of weeks.
I’ve also been thinking about ownership of content with the readings we were assigned this past week. I own this domain, but Instagram has the license to use the content I’ve posted under the Knitting After Hours profile. I caught myself thinking about the future of this blog as I prepared for course selection for next semester, whether I’ll feel motivated enough to keep it up. I’d love to continue with it because it’s a new mode of expression for me. It’s a place where I don’t need to align my writing with the style of an organization I’m volunteering for, or format my writing for an academic setting.
I was born at the time when the Internet had already been around for a while, but I didn’t grow up on the Internet. I got my first phone when I was 10 to call my mom and my dad for emergencies, and nothing else. I stayed off social media until my second year of high school. Even so, over the last five years with my small Internet presence I’ve become accustomed to giving up a certain amount of privacy in order to stay connected. A blog is something entirely different. This website’s purpose is not so much connection as it is logging my progress in this course and exploring my interest in knitting and related topics. I own what I put out on this website, and it’s a reflection of me.
I also gave some thought to Google Adsense, and decided not to install it. After testing to see where the ads would appear on my site, I realized I don’t like the idea of having things that I didn’t create on here.
I want to build and continue this website. I hope to write knitting patterns at some point, and I would love to be able to use this website as a way to list them for download rather than using a platform like Ravelry. I also think it’s good for me to detach a bit from the expectation that I give up ownership when I put things out on the Internet.
I’ve been following @motherofpurl on Instagram for a few years now, since before I began to knit. They recently put up a new website, and I really like the design. Lauren from Mother of Purl designs patterns, sells art yarn and wool rovings, and holds classes on fibre art. Their website is designed to be a business, and you can see the appeal of their creations right on the home page with curated photos of their collections and hand-dyed or spun fibre.
My favourite part of the website is probably Lauren’s thorough About section. They include their values and a bit of their history and experience with knitting, and the features available through Mother of Purl. I admire the layout as well, they continue to use a few main colours- pale olive, burgundy, and light green- throughout the website and this section, so even though the format of each page is different there is a good flow. Their logo has the same colours, and it cleverly represents the title of the website- a clam shell with a ball of yarn as its pearl.
I like to follow experienced knitters and fibre artists, because I think knitting is one of the many crafts that is passed down through generations, and still retains techniques from many years ago. It’s a unique craft in the amount of time that it takes and its artistic practicality. Lauren, and many knitters, have built their business and art from fibre, and it is good to see that this slow craft can sustain people even in fast-moving times.
I finally feel like the design of this website is coming along, so I’ve been more relaxed. I got some good marks back on assignments from a couple of classes that I was nervous about. I know academic validation can be an unhealthy thing to base confidence on, but it still feels uplifting to get good feedback.
This weekend I’ve been trying to think about my health a little more. Since starting school I’ve succumbed to the daily routine of: wake up late, drink loads of coffee, grab snacks whenever I can, study for hours without much moving around, and go to sleep when it’s already tomorrow. Over the past few days I caught up on doctor’s appointments, cleaned, went running, cooked lunch, and spent more time giving myself breaks. I didn’t do anything about my sleeping schedule- I’m convinced it’s a lost cause. I know every weekend won’t give me the chance to do all of this, but it helped to take a breather.
Over the last few days, I have taken some time to consider and develop community guidelines for my website in order to try to further facilitate an open and respectful online space for myself and my audience/readers. At the end of this post, you will be able to find more information on what my community guidelines are and where they will live on this website.
Monitoring the Comments Section
In her article on “The Psychology of Online Comments” by Maria Konnnikova, she cited that “anonymity has been shown to encourage participation; by promoting a greater sense of community identity, users don’t have to worry about standing out individually,” (Konnikova, 2013). However, user anonymity can often create a disconnect between the commenter’s identity and what they are saying. By doing so, this may also change their social behaviour either for better or worse. This effect is known as “online disinhibition effect,” a concept originally coined by psychologist John Suler. In this course, we read an article by John Suler (2004) where he outlined six types of online behaviours that people engage in. It was most often seen that online users prefer partaking in the online behaviour known as dissociative anonymity (Suler, 2004; Konnikova, 2013). Both Suler and Konnikova draw from how the “protection” and or “freedom” of not being seen or known online for which enables them the opportunity to behave in specific ways that they would not normally engage in if they were face-to-face. There are two types of disinhibition effect:
benign (positive or neutral – e.g., feeling safe or open enough to reveal secret emotions, fears, wishes, wants, and or other personal information about themselves)
When it comes to commenting online, there appears to be an increase in negativing and or toxic commenting on social media and website post sections. However, turning off or removing comments also affects the reading experience itself because it takes away the motivation for readers to engage with a topic more deeply, and thereby, share it with wider groups of readers (Konnikovca, 2013). This is because of a phenomenon known as “shared reality,” in which our experiences of a particular event/topic are affected by whether or not we choose to share it socially (Konnikova, 2013).
One of the ways that content creators (or anyone) can try to overcome this is by creating boundaries, or by establishing community guidelines. Community guidelines are a set of rules and regulation policies created to ensure a certain standard of behaviour is implemented online for the purpose of creating safe online environments for users to interact within. People do have the right to free speech, but it is important to be civil even when others disagree so long as there is no harm to others in any form is involved, such as threats, hate speech, inciting violence, misinformation, and disinformation. I have chosen to keep comment sections on my posts so that readers can interact either with each other and respond to the posts, if they so wish. Community is about finding your own place within a collective world or group of people where mutual interests can be shared. There are already enough terrible things in this world without having people trying to virtually tear each other down in the comments section or on any online space. We have very little control over many aspects of our lives and the events that place within in, but what you can control is how you behave and react.
Here are my website’s community guidelines:
Be respectful of others and their opinions
Respectfully disagree when opinions do not align
Comments are welcomed and encouraged
Inappropriate behaviour will be removed and blocked
No self promotion of any kind
As of this moment, these guidelines can be found on my website under the “About” section titled “Community Guidelines.”
References
Internet Matters. (2022). Understanding community guidelines. Internetmatters.org. Retrieved from www.internetmatters.org
Konnikova, M. (2013). The psychology of online comments. The New Yorker. Retrieved from posiel.com
Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. Cyberpsychology & Behaviour. Retrieved from posiel.com
This week we looked at the analytics of our websites. Analytics are something that I am very familiar with, as I worked in a co-op with a Google Ads provider for a year. Determining your audience is an incredibly important part of any online campaign, and using analytics properly will substantially improve the marketability of your website. Knowing your audience will give you the ability to determine what is working and what isn’t on your website. Analytics provide information on a wide variety of website activities, such as who is coming to your site, how long they are staying, what pages they visit, and what are clicking on. Using this information, you can optimize your website to what your visitors are interested in.
Alternatively, there are numerous privacy concerns associated with tracking data online. Facebook had a massive fiasco a few years ago in which it was revealed that they were saving and selling a huge amount of information from their users. Since then, privacy concerns have been at an all time high. I believe that information about website activity and website duration is completely harmless, especially considering the content that is available on my site. I doubt anyone would be concerned they were exposed for spending 45 minutes looking at game reviews. Similarly, as this is a personal blog I have no intention of selling information of any kind.
