Critical Reflection of my Facebook Profile

Social networks allow individuals from all over the world to communicate and interact. Facebook was created in 2004 by five founders, most notably Mark Zuckerberg. It was originally created by Zuckerberg as a social network exclusive only to students of Havard and eventually expanded to allow students of colleges in the local area to join, then to students of all US universities, gradually developing to allow anyone with a registered email address worldwide to join.  (Phillips, 2007). Shown above is my Facebook profile which I created in October 2008, over my time as a user on Facebook I have accumulated 593 friends, the majority of which I have personally met, in contrast to the growing trend of this social network of which users haven’t met the majority of their friends in person. The two central photos on my profile are the profile picture which is my god daughter and I, and the cover photo which is a photo of my dog. The profile shows information such as the area I live in, current and past education, and relationship status.

In this post I shall critically engage with my Facebook profile to discuss the follow themes: ‘Timelines’ and Histories: social media as the new frontier, and ‘Friend-Unfriend / Follow-Unfollow’: fandom, adulation and paranoia in the digital age for an assignment in the social media LM118 course for the media studies degree programme at University of Brighton, UK. The theme ‘Timelines’ and Histories: social media as the new frontier covers producing and consuming social media which was discussed in the first week of the LM118 course. To discuss these themes you need to define ‘producing’, ‘consuming’ and ‘social media’ in relation to social networks. ‘Producing’ is creating data yourself, writing a status or posting photos onto Facebook, ‘consuming’ would be reading and registering other individuals photos and status’, and ‘social media’ is a communication platform between a group of individuals. The term ‘prosumption’ is defined by Jurgenson and Ritzer (2010, 14) “Prosumption involves both production and consumption rather than focusing on either one (production) or the other (consumption)” which is what social networks involve, allowing the users not only to receive and consume media data, but also to contribute and produce social media themselves as Jurgenson and Ritzer (2010, 14) state “While prosumption has always been preeminent, a series of recent social changes, especially those associated with the internet and Web 2.0 (briefly the user-generated web, e.g. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter), have given it even greater centrality.” Which is a very accurate observation of the social media networks.

The concept of prosumption can be seen in the following photos of Facebook. Whilst using Facebook I am asked by the social network platform “What’s on your mind?” which if I reply to, will create a status or whatever I wish to type; through this I can also add a photo, my location or a life event. I am also asked to update information with questions such as, “Where have you worked?” or “What skills do you have?”, I am always offered the opportunity to contribute data onto the social network site, allowing others to know more about myself, however, there is no specific emphasis on just producing, as I am also encouraged to consume by the Facebook timeline where I can view others status’, locations, and photos, such as the status in the photo below, where a friend has shared an external link to an article. I can also view other individuals comments on this status, allowing me to consume, however, again there is no specific emphasis on just one of the ‘producing’ or ‘consuming’ purposes of Facebook as I can like the status, like peoples comments, share the status or even write a comment myself allowing me to produce the social media just as much as I am consuming it.

 

 

As David Goff states (2013, 16) “Not only is abundant media content now consumed wherever and whenever the consumer desires, consumers increasingly generate media content as they utilize the fastest growing segments of online media, social media.” which further supports the concept of prosumption, especially in relation to social networking. Consumers don’t just take the role of consumers now on social networking sites, they are the producers themselves. It changes the position that without producers there is no consumers and creates a new view that the consumers are intrinsic to other consumers, there cannot be audience for presuming with both producing and consuming.

The next theme I will be discussing while critically engaging with my profile is friending, unfriending, and gain, concerning popularity, in relation to the ‘Friend-Unfriend / Follow-Unfollow’: fandom, adulation and paranoia in the digital age, which was explored in week two of the LM118 course. Many people’s views on the idea of friending and unfriending are rather negative, as it has become a representation of an individual’s social status, the number of friends is available on people’s profiles to everyone with access to that profile, and adjusted every time they gain or lose a friend. The fact that this number of friends is public points towards strategic friending behaviour which results to self-presentational concerns (Lee, at el, 2012). I agree with this view in the sense that many people on Facebook do add people that they either don’t know at all or just have mutual friends with to either to make new friends and communicate with them or just to have more friends on their profile to make themselves seem more popular, advancing their popularity status in reality, with the latter being the more common of the two. You can see in the photo below that I have multiple friend requests from people I have only have a few mutual friends with, suggesting that I probably do not know them in real life (hence why these requests haven’t been accepted). It would also seem that Facebook encourages users to add others by suggesting ‘People you may know’ even if you don’t have any mutual friends with the people at all. 

However, whilst I do agree with the view it isn’t true all the time, for instance I haven’t accepted the friend requests shown in the photo as I don’t actually know the individuals who have sent me friend requests, out of the 593 friends I do have on Facebook I would estimate that only about 50 of them I haven’t met in person, and I myself never send friend requests to strangers, but there is still the fact of while I am not adding strangers and accepting their requests, there are still strangers sending me requests, and admittedly out of the 593 Facebook friends, 50 of which I haven’t met, I am not  in regular contact with all of them and many of them are probably people I have just spoken to on a few occasions and we’ve added each other as friends on Facebook.

“… popular press coverage which has primarily focused on negative outcomes of Facebook use stemming from users’ misconceptions about the nature of their online audience…” (Ellison, et al, 2007, 1143-1168). Whilst Ellison is making a point of the studies being conducted, she makes a very valid point about the popular press coverage of Facebook, and how it is always being mocked in the media about how ridiculous it is to have a large amount of friends on Facebook whereas individuals probably only regular communicate with about 50. For example there is an article claiming that the human mind has a limited amount of capacity for social relationships, and Facebook cannot improve this (Connor, 2014). Due to this the stereotype of Facebook created by the media, it has generated an idea to the people who don’t use Facebook that it is just a site where everyone is friends with everyone even if they have no clue who they are.

In conclusion I believe that, in terms of theme of consuming, producing and prosumption, Facebook is a perfect example of prosumption, perfect for the capitalistic culture it is usually used it, it produces its own data to be consumed, and allows the audiences to become its own audience. Such as the text by Jurgenson, Ritzer and Goff who all suggest that while prosumption has always existed social media networks sites such as Facebook have increased its used, and advanced consumers to producers.

In terms of themes of friending, unfriending and popularity it is very controversial, on one hand it creates a self-conscious feeling around individuals concerning popularity among individuals, however on the other it doesn’t necessarily mean all individuals on Facebook are concerned with the popularity concerning have more friends than another individual.

Lee, Moore, and the Park’s successfully discusses the negative feeling towards the concept of friending and unfriending on Facebook due to the bad effects it can lead to such as the self-conscious of popularity, and Ellison clearly shows how media isn’t helping the concept any further with its negative reviews of the concept.

 

Bibliography

Connor, S. (2014). Despite social networks like Facebook and Twitter, most people will only ever have a handful of good friends. Available: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/despite-social-networks-like-facebook-and-twitter-most-people-will-only-ever-have-a-handful-of-good-friends-9042188.html. Last accessed 9th January 2014.

Ellison, N., Steinfield, C., Lampe, C.. (2007). The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication . 12 (4), 1143-1168.

Goff, D. (2013). A History of the Social Media Industries. In: Albarran, AThe Social Media Industries . London: Routledge. 16.

Jurgenson, N & Ritzer, G. (2010). Production, Consumption, Prosumption. Journal of Consumer Culture. 10 (1), 14.

Lee, J., Moore, D., Park, E., Park, S.. (2012). Who wants to be “friend-rich”? Social compensatory friending on Facebook and the moderating role of public self-consciousness. Computers in Human Behavior. 28 (3), 1037.

Phillips, S. (2007). A brief history of Facebook. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia. Last accessed 9th January 2014.

 

Critical Analysis of Geert Lovink’s Chapter ‘Society of the Query: The Googlization of our Lives’ in Networks Without a Cause

Google is one of the most powerful corporations in the world. Starting off as a research project by two university students, Larry Page and Sergey Binn, it is now the most popular search engine available on the internet (Alexa, 2013), with an estimated one billion monthly unique visitors, and its website ‘google.com’ was recently listed as the most visited website in the world (eBiz MBA, 2013). However such dominance always tends to open the door for criticism, the company has been criticised over a sensitive issue such as privacy (BBC, 2013) and others.

Geert Lovink is very critical of the corporation in his book ‘Networks Without a Cause’, in his chapter ‘Society of the Query: The Googlization of our Lives’ he states that
“With the rise of search engines, it is no longer possible to distinguish between patrician insights and plebeian gossip. […] Nowadays, an altogether new phenomenon is causing alarm: search engines rank according to popularity, not Truth. […] We no longer learn by heart; we look it up. With the dramatic increase of accessible information we have grown hooked on retrieval tools.” (Lovink, 2011: 146)

Lovink’s main argumentative points are that as a public, we no longer feel the need to learn academic knowledge as we can look it up using search engines such as ‘Google’. This is very alarming as on the internet anyone can post information and claim it to be factual. However, one may completely disagree with Lovink’s claim; whilst it would appear that many people may be dependent on the knowledge that the internet can provide rather than remember academic knowledge taught to them or learnt by them, it would be foolish to consider that people are solely dependent on the internet and prefer looking up information on the internet rather than remembering such information. Stating this would surely suggest that the majority of the world’s population would voluntarily choose to only attend the compulsory years of education required in each country. There would be no need for universities as people would prefer to search the internet for knowledge they need, which obviously isn’t the case.

Additionally, another counter argument is that is would be idiotic to consider all of the information available on the internet factual, whether it claims to be truth or not. The majority of the internet should always be considered an opinion, not factual knowledge. Whilst on the surface it does appear shocking that search engines would prioritise popular sites rather than truthful sites, it is up to the user to look for the factual sites, and only take information on the internet as fact if it comes from a reliable source. It makes no difference from someone writing a book or making a speech and claiming their opinions are fact, it will always be down to the audience to make the decision whether they believe if what is being presented to them is fact or fiction.

To conclude, Lovink makes good points about the concern of the internet and its damaging effects it can cause to knowledge, but he doesn’t consider the matter with an open mind. People can lie on the internet, however people could lie before the internet, the issue at hand of misleading information isn’t caused by the internet itself, its caused by its users and with or without the internet those people would still be able to spread misleading knowledge.

Bibliography

Alexa. (2013). How popular is google.com?. Available: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/google.com. Last accessed 13th December 2013.

BBC. (2013). Google privacy policy criticised by data watchdog. Avaliable: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23187771. Last accessed 13th December 2013.

eBiz MBA. (2013). Top 15 Most Popular Search Engines | December 2013. Available: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/search-engines. Last accessed 13th December 2013.

Lovink, Geert (2011) ’Society of the Query: The Googlization of our Lives’ in Networks Without a Cause, Cambridge: Polity, pp. 146-157.

Critical Analysis of Alexander Halavais’ Chapter ‘Censorship’ in Search Engine Society

With the development of internet, and other communication methods government surveillance and censorship has increased substantially for better or for worse. Surveillance by government and other agencies has been heavily criticised being immoral and unethical for the invasion of peoples privacy. For example, the Leveson inquiry about the news international phone hacking sandal raised serious questions about the morality of surveillance. The scandal consisted of several journalists working for the newspaper News of the World intercepting text messages and phone calls of the mobiles of several high profile celebrities or members of the public involved in high profile stories such as the murdered aged 13 school girl Amanda ‘Milly’ Dowler, where her voicemail was accessed by News of the World reporters.

Halavais wrote

“Google has found its informal corporate slogan – “Don’t be evil” – to be more of a stumbling block than it had anticipated. Because, at present, it is the most visible and most utilized general-purpose search engine, its effort to shape access to information have led to criticisms. The company has weathered censure for bowing to pressure by the Chinese government to filter search results, for bowing to requests by the US government to produce records of searches by users, and for presenting content to users (news stories, books, and images) without licensing the content.” (Halavais, 2009: 118)

Whilst Halavais makes some valid points concerning Google’s controversial actions, I don’t believe he is viewing the situation with an open mind. One might argue that the actions taken by Google, whilst seeming unethical, are necessary, for instance censoring the Chinese public’s searches, it denies the public their freedom of knowledge, however it only appears unethical to the Western world; one could argue it’s the Chinese Government’s choice, even if it is not the choice of the Chinese general public’s to have a controlling dictatorship, and in the eyes of the Chinese government they believe they are providing the best for their public, and who are we to challenge that?

In addition, the fact that Google allowed the US government access to private information such as search histories is on one hand an invasion of privacy, which is terrible especially considering the recent trouble the US government have run into with the exposure by Wikileaks, the website which showed evidence the US government were monitoring phone calls, text messages and other methods of communications used by the public, however I feel that this heavy surveillance is sometimes needed for the protection of the public, because one could argue that it can help prevent crime and terrorism had this surveillance been available to the government previously who knows what terrorist acts could have been uncovered before happening?

To conclude, I understand the criticism such intense surveillance and censorship receive, however I feel that before any criticism is presented you need to look at the idea of surveillance and censorship with an open mind, and understand that whilst it may appear immoral, sometimes it could be claimed that it is for the greater good of the public with the intent to help rather than harm. I feel that Halavais agrees with this idea writing “such utopian visions ignored the very real challenges that national governments were unlikely to overlook. “Thai child pornography, Albanian tele-doctors […]” among other objectionable content, were not only inevitable, but would inevitably draw regulators of national governments onto the net.” (Halavais, 2009: 118)

Bibliography

Halavais, A (2009) ‘Censorship’ in Search Engine Society, Cambridge: Polity, pp. 118-138

Critical Analysis of Vaidhyanathan’s ‘Open Source as Culture/Culture as Open Source’

Open source is information and knowledge freely available to others for use, modification and improvement. As long as once it has been modified and improved it is for personal use or if made available to others the original author has been credited and the information is available for free. 

The ideology of open source is to achieve widespread knowledge, and allowing knowledge and work to be changed and interrupted for improvement, therefore carrying on the spread of knowledge. It is pointed out that “The “open source” way of doing things is all the rage. Companies as powerful and established as IBM boast of using Linux operating systems in its servers. Publications as conservative as The Economist has pronounced open-source methods “successful” and have pondered their applicability to areas of research and development as different from software as pharmaceutical research.” (Vaidhyanathan, 2013:24) which shows that the concept of open source is obviously beneficial and helpful otherwise companies such as IBM and the magazine publication company The Economist wouldn’t not only be using them but making it public that they use them and boast of their benefits.

Vaidhyanathan makes valid points about open source and is very critical of propriety information, which is knowledge and information not freely accessible due to the author charging for their work/s and this also means that no improvements can be made or modifications as it will breach copyright, he argues “The “open source” way is closer to how human creativity has always worked. Open source used to be the default way of doing things. The rapid adoption of proprietary information has been so intense and influential since the 1980s that we hardly remember another way or another time. However, through most of human history all information technologies and almost all technologies were “open source.” And we have done pretty well as a species with tools and habits unencumbered by high restrictions on sharing, copying, customizing and improving.” (Vaidhyanathan 2013:24) “Richard Stallman took a stand against the proprietary model long before the rest of us even realized its power and trajectory. […] Stallman found he was not allowed to improve the softwares and devices that he had to work with, even when they did not work very well. More important, Stallman grew alarmed that he was becoming contractually bound to be unkind and selfish.” (Vaidhyanathan 2013: 26).

Vaidhyanathan uses negative words such as unkind, selfish and trajectory whereas describes open source as human nature, whilst I understand Vaidhyanathan’s reasoning of preferring open source, I do believe his argument is slightly too harsh for the fact is that whilst propriety doesn’t allow for creativity and makes people unfairly pay for knowledge which should be free, at the same time it is the authors piece of work, art even, and its unfair on them that they should have to give away their hard work because others like Stallman can’t find the work beneficial to his own. I feel that society runs on propriety information, as it fit’s the ideology of capitalism, there needs to be something for society to buy, and something to sell, if there was just open source information and work then the current society in it capitalistic structure would cease to exist, collapsing from the lack of buying and selling.

 

 

Bibliography

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2013) ‘Open Source as Culture/Culture as Open Source’, in Michael Mandiberg (ed.), The Social Media Reader, New York, New York UP, pp. 24-31

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