Who wants to learn about social media and it’s uses in both a fun and informative way?
I decided to take the edge off learning about social media and the most popular applications, and made a two minute rap video demonstrating the abilities you have when you use these applications. I wrote the rap and made the beat in the background with my voice. All filming was done on my smartphone and edited by myself.
Here are the lyrics so you can rap along with us (SPOILER ALERT!):
Social media has moulded the way that we live,
So lets take a look through the different outlets.
MySpace is the one that started it all, sending messages and comments- replaced a phone call.
Show your interests, your hobbies, play your favourite song,
Add photos, set your background, edit all day long.
Instagram, is a photo sharing application,
Upload photos of your day- despite your situation.
Upload photos of your friends,
Photos of your food,
Add a different filter,
According to your mood.
Professional photographers are no longer in need,
Everyone is qualified, with a filter on your feed!
An app called Snapchat, involves photos too,
But this time the photos, can be nude!
Send a photo to a friend,
A photo with a limit,
in 1-10 seconds, it’s gone- poof! Don’t be timid!
Mark Zuckerberg went to Harvard, but didn’t like to attend
He made face mash, a website that was made to offend.
The foundation was laid for his greatest feat;
Facebook arrived, MySpace was beat.
It started off exclusively for those who study,
And then it opened up to everybody.
The layout is simple, just the standard white and blue;
No longer just for teens, our parents use it too!
No usernames or music or edited background,
Just type in a name, and your new friend can be found.
Like a page, start a group, create an event;
Are you going? Even maybe? Your invite has been sent!
Update your status, read the comments on your wall,
Suggest a page, stalk your friends, you can do it all!
This rap has discussed social media and it’s uses,
Connecting with others, and daily amusement;
Developed from letters to phone calls,
Texts to the net;
Social media is about as SOCIAL AS WE GET!
I hope you enjoyed watching it as much as I did making it!
Two weeks ago, a tutorial task was set in class to shoot a movie reading a set script to practise for our upcoming assessment. We grabbed a partner and our handy smartphone device, and set out to wander the university for great props and backdrops to be featured in this exciting news presentation.
Here is the script we had to read:
‘In local news, the Gold Coast’s internet is in trouble again. The internet infrastructure owners are asking for a subsidy of $200,000 each year, in order to keep the internet operational. The company’s manager said, “We would have to limit people’s access to the internet; without the subsidy”.
We were told to feature a variety of shot sizes in order to understand our current study in film and film production. We chose to include a medium close up, medium shot and long shot. The reason behind choosing these was because we thought these types of shots would work the best for a news report that focused on the words and not necessarily the location. We were asked to produce three shot sizes, but we found that the long shot (LS) wasn’t particularly necessary for this video. The medium close up and the medium shot seemed to work the best for the type of news report we were doing as it was relatively short with limited information; so the focus did have to be on what I was saying.
Hayden and I filmed it together as a team and my legend of a tutor Josh edited it for us! Next time you see me reporting the news it will be on Channel 9; so watch out!
Social media continues to be an essential part of modern communication between adolescents as their primary source of online contact with friends and family. In this essay, I will argue that the extensive use of social media does in fact, pose negatively on the health of young people. I aim to concentrate on how it affects them psychologically, and how it adds to not only issues of self-esteem and confidence in adolescents, but long term mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression and suicide.
To enable us to to analyse the impact that social media has on the health of young people, we must look at what social media is, and who is classed as a ‘young person’. We will look at what social media applications are used most frequently, and how often they are used; to determine why social media has the ability to create such an effect on their health and well-being. Social media is defined as a online tool that allows both individuals and groups to share their personal view points and experiences to connect with others, and maintain relationships (Girald, Z 2009, pp. 62-63). It acts like an online journal, documenting your opinions, thoughts and current occurrences in your life that you choose are important to share with others. This concept of an ‘online journal’ makes sharing your life online not only more interactive, but allows you to express your individual self in a variety of formats; whether it is through writing, photographs or videos.
According a report by the Pew Research Center, social media use is most commonly used by ‘young adults’; defined as people between the ages of 18-29, making up 83% of the demographic (Duggan, M & Brenner, J 2012). Women use social media more often than men (Brenner 2013), with the most frequently used and preferred social networking site being Facebook (Duggan, M & Brenner, J 2012). Facebook not only allows you to update what you are up to, or how you are feeling; but details on your work history and relationship status, photos of yourself and your contacts, and the opportunity to operate separate social networks by sharing different information to selected groups of people. Young adults use social media frequently, deeming it a crucial aspect of modern daily communication. 70% of adolescents admit to using online social media accounts like Facebook daily, while 46% of adolescents using these accounts several times daily (Lenhart, A & Madden, M & Smith, A & Purcell, K & Zickuhr, K & Rainie, L 2011). The continual and frequent use of social media allows our psychological state to be affected; diminishing our self-esteem and affecting our confidence on and offline.
The use of social media has shown to have negative effects on the development of confidence and self esteem in adolescents. By becoming less confident in themselves, they begin to become concerned about how the public perceives them; developing into self-esteem issues. This can result in self-isolation and compromising their values; by falsifying their image to become more accepted by peers. Young adults that already have issues with self-esteem and lack sustained social relationships in reality, are harmed the most by social media; as they concentrate on building their relationships online, and letting any potential social connection in their daily life suffer (Jackson 2008). This form of self-isolation creates a ‘sense of comfort’ psychologically, although, it shelters them from growing confidence in the ‘real world’; ceasing addressing any confidence issues that may affect their overall self-esteem and well-being.
Social media allows people to be able to effectively communicate with others on a broader scale; whether it is with someone you know quite well, someone you would like to know better, or someone you haven’t met yet. Based on similar interests, social media can connect you to people that you may not have had the courage to address in real life, or the opportunity to meet, due to the location in which you live. From this concept of the ‘opportunity’ that arises from the potential of social media, introduces challenges to the people using these sites; are you replicating your true self through the use of these online profiles?
As social media enables you to illustrate your ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ on your profile, it allows room for self-doubt and confidence loss in people with a low friend count. Donath and Boyd argue that despite the ability to be able to demonstrate your social capital on social media, it won’t automatically provide you with good social capital (2004). This idea of ‘good social capital’ through an ‘online friend count’, can bring critique and ridicule, relating to the amount of friends you appear to have. Judgement from others include how your profile looks, from wall posts, photographs and status updates. This judgement when produced as negative feedback on their wall or pictures, can decrease their social self-esteem and well-being (Wanga et al. 2012).
It has been found that users that spend extensive time using social media updating their profiles, suffer from low self-esteem and narcissism (The Hindustan Times 2010). Narcissism can develop in some individuals due to an excessive need to be accepted and desire to be admired on their self-presentation. Narcissists choose to select photos and update statuses only that show them in a good light to remain popular with their peers (Ong et al. 2011). This ‘false sense of identity’ not only affects the self-esteem of narcissists, as they don’t feel comfortable to disclose their true self in risk of not be accepted and well liked, but affects the confidence of adolescents that have a low friend count; by comparing themselves to false identities and facades.
As the self-esteem of adolescents is affected in relation with social media, users can develop a range of short and long term mental health conditions. A survey by Pew Research Center, found that almost a third of social media users have experienced negative consequences from their time spent on social networking sites (Rainie, L & Lenhart, A & Smith, A 2012). As social media is an important part of modern communication, it is easy to succumb to peer pressure online; just like you would in the ‘real world’. This peer pressure may persuade you to engage or instigate ‘offline behaviours’ in an online environment, such as: sexual experimentation (‘sexting’) and bullying (‘cyberbullying’) (O’Keeffe, G.S & Clarke-Pearson K & Council on Communications and Media 2011).
Cyberbullying is a form of bullying, performed primarily online; although, it can translate into bullying in the ‘outside world’ too. It has become quite common among adolescents, with 57% of young people bullied online themselves, or know of someone that has been. Cyberbullying has been shown to lead to the development of critical mental illnesses in adolescents such as anxiety, depression and suicide (O’Keeffe, G.S & Clarke-Pearson K & Council on Communications and Media 2011).
Sexting involves sending semi-nude or nude photographs through the internet to individuals of your choice. The social media application ‘Snapchat‘ has become popular within adolescents, as it allows individuals to send photographs to each other with a time limit on the picture, self-erasing the photograph when the time is up. Despite this, ‘screenshots’ can be taken when using the application, allowing the photo to save to the receiver’s phone, where it can be stored and shared with anyone they choose (Irish Independent 2013).
A video report by Common Sense Media shows that a large 20% of teenagers have admitted to sending semi-nude or nude photographs of themselves through the internet (2009). The public display of these photographs, can leave adolescents with serious forms of emotional distress, an opportunity for bullying and blackmail, and the most distressing; suicide. A cyberbullying case involving sexting distraught a teenager to the point that she committed suicide, after being blackmailed to share photos and videos of herself that were posted publicly online (The Vancouver Sun 2012). These forms of ‘offline activities’ brought into an online environment, demonstrate the dangers that can emerge when social media is used in excess, without any regard to sensibility and consequence.
There is no doubt that social media has a large impact on young people, and throughout this essay, I have demonstrated how their psychological health can be affected by using it in excess.
Adolescents visit social media websites more than any other demographic, developing self-esteem issues from a lack of online friends, resulting in self-isolation and falsifying their image to gain acceptance, in the form of narcissism. Users with low self-esteem compare themselves with these ‘false senses of self’, risking the development of more serious mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression and suicide. ‘Offline behaviours’ such as bullying and sexual experimentation are linked to such mental illnesses, with their use in social media websites.
I acknowledge the research I have found relating to the positive effects of the use of social media, which include; increased confidence for shy adolescents and the potential to grow stronger social connections both on and offline. While this confidence boost may seem beneficial to shy adolescents, I believe that it will only benefit them in the short term, as social media doesn’t give you the confidence to make friends in real life, but only further isolates you; ceasing any urge to keep social connections in reality.
In conclusion, I believe that social media has a negative impact of the mental health of young people as it has the ability to affect them in the form of short and long term mental health conditions, conditions that can have damaging effects on their quality of life.
Until next time,
Reference List:
Girald, Z 2009, ‘SAICE and Social Media’, Civil Engineering: Magazine of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering, vol. 17, no. 7, pp. 62-63, viewed Monday 16th September 2013, via ProQuest database.
Jackson, L.A 2008, ‘Adolescents and the Internet’, in D Romer & P Jamieson (eds), The Changing Portrayal of Adolescents in the Media Since 1950, Oxford University Press, USA, pp. 377-410.
Donath, J & Boyd, D.M 2004, Public displays of connection, BT Technology Journal, vol. 22, no.4, pp. 71–82, viewed Wednesday 18th September 2013, via Springer Link.
The Hindustan Times 2010, ‘Facebook users narcissists, have low self-esteem’, 9 July, p. 13, viewed 16th September 2013, via ProQuest Database.
Wanga, J.L, Jackson, L.A, Zhanga, D.J & Sub, Z.Q 2012, ‘The relationships among the Big Five Personality factors, self-esteem, narcissism, and sensation-seeking to Chinese University students uses of social networking sites (SNSs)’, Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 2313-2319, viewed Monday 16th September 2013, <http://www.sciencedirect.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0747563212002014>.
O’Keeffe, G.S & Clarke-Pearson K & Council on Communications and Media 2011, ‘The Impact of Social Media on Children, Adolescents, and Families’, Pediatrics, vol. 127, no. 4, pp. 800-804, viewed Wednesday 18th September 2013, via Pediatrics Journal.
Irish independent 2013, ‘Sexting- there’s an app for that. But beware: it still has consequences’, 12 Jan, p. 13, viewed Thursday 29th September, via ProQuest Database.
Common Sense Media 2009, video recording, Common Sense Media, San Francisco, CA.
The Vancouver Sun 2012, ‘Amanda Todd’, 29 Dec, p. 1, viewed Thursday 19th September 2013, via ProQuest Database.
From my recent posts, you have gathered I am writing an essay on the negative health effects that can arise from excessive social media use by adolescents.
I decided to post up my original ‘essay structure/content plan’, so you can see how far I’ve come between now and when I post my essay. My ideas have developed a lot over the last 3 weeks, but this concept of ideas remained the focus throughout the essay, as more information rolled in to help me out. I guess this is my type of ‘mind map’, as I learn by writing and doing, not visually, which is what a mind map helps you with. As I write, I learn information quickly, and can adapt that knowledge into the content of my essay.
INTRODUCTION:
-150 Words
-(3-5 sentences)
-Thesis statement (as an answer to the topic question)
-Clear direction of my topic and argument
-Show goal- how I will show the continual use of social media affecting the health of young people
PARAGRAPH 1:
-350 words
-Define social media
-What is it?
-Who uses it?
-Define ‘young people’
-What is used the most? Facebook?
-How much is it used?
Introduce how it affects our psychological state e.g self esteem
PARAGRAPH 2:
-350 words
-Self esteem issues: Loss in confidence by putting up a false image of who you are (falsifying your identity)
-Narcissism- only showing good pictures- contributing to self esteem issues
-How people perceive us- Judged on how you conduct yourself online
-The excessive need to make more friends- ‘social capital’
PARAGRAPH 3:
-350 words
-The long-term mental health problems that can arise from self-esteem and confidence loss
-Key indicators the same in real life as online
-Depression, anxiety, suicide
-Cyberbullying and sexting as examples of offline behaviour translating to online
-E.g Amanda Todd story
CONCLUSION:
-300 words
-Summarise key points
-Acknowledge positive effects of social media from findings- then dispute them, explaining why my theory makes more sense e.g shy people gaining confidence- only short term solution to ongoing confidence issues.
When you are writing an essay, or even an academic article or book, you find yourself becoming overwhelmed with information galore. You have all of these bookmarks, print outs, database links, library links; it all becomes too much!
Diigo allows you save your references as you go so they are all in one place when you need them. Choose to save all the articles as ‘Diigo bookmarks’ for easy finding, placing tags on articles to ‘read later’ if didn’t finish, or add notes and tags about the relevance and key words for your topic. Better still, Diigo allows you to ‘highlight’ paragraphs that you find that will help you later for easier retrieval.
Below, I’ve attached a link to my ‘Diigo library’; a library that carries all the sources I read to complete my essay. Read and become inspired, who knows; maybe you’ll write an essay too?
Social media has become a crucial part of modern communication, engaging adolescents and adults alike. The diverse ways in which we can communicate through these websites are what encourages us to use social media; enabling us to update how we feel, what we are up to, and other important details of our life to the people of our choice.
Due to the popularity of social media, particularly with adolescents, I decided to conduct some research on the impact it can have on our physically and psychological health and well-being. After weeks of searching, I found a great deal of information on both the positive and negative effects of social media, but I found myself drawn to the information relating to the negative ways in which it can impact our health. What I found most interesting, was how our mental health can be tested with the excessive use of social media. It can encourage a range of mental health problems from low self-esteem and confidence issues, to anxiety, depression and suicide if left untreated.
I decided with all this information at my fingertips, to write an essay; one that goes beyond the cliques of mental health problems, and clarifies the issues so anyone that reads it, will understand the message and will feel like they can relate with it.
To start, I needed to be able to respond to an essay question, in order to merit a clear, coherent response:
Does the extensive use of social media have a positive or negative impact on the health of young people? What are the most academic papers on this topic? Clarify what all sides of the argument claim and only then offer your reasoned opinion based on facts.
With an essay topic and now a more specific essay question on paper (or on OpenOffice to be precise), I was on my way to analyse an important new communication method that is relevant to society’s day-to-day operations.
The topic of ‘politics’ is always a tricky one to discuss. Every individual has their own personal view on what they believe is right, and they use a combination of their beliefs and values to assess the way their country should be run. With such a large amount of the Australian population using online services, it makes it easier for politicians to connect with you to inform you of their latest campaigns and values. By connecting to citizens using the internet, politicians can create a greater personal ‘relationship’ with you by the connection of email and social media accounts in particular. The use of online social-networking sites for political knowledge ‘offer[s] entirely new ways to engage with politics’ (Hoffman, L.H & Jones, P.E & Young, D.G, 2013). This strategy allows too for politicians to clear up any issues that might be popular with the Australian public, therefore gaining a better understanding of what Australia is after in a member of parliament.
A report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project discovers nearly three quarters of adults in America in 2012 are engaged with politics in some way using online facilities (Smith, A 2012). Edemocracy is the engagement of citizens connecting to the internet for political use and is a great way for citizens to gain knowledge about politics on their own terms, without being subjected to manipulation. I believe this is a great thing for both citizens and politicians, as it allows for a greater relationship between the government and the people through a more honest, less ‘media-driven’ campaign approach.
I personally, am not too knowledgable when it comes to Australian politics- or simply politics in general. I naturally am very opinionated, so when I do start to research the policies certain parties follow; my interest and passion develops. I found a great link on the ABC website, called the ‘Vote Compass’ that allowed me to answer a range of questions to find out which party I should be voting for this election. This helped me gain a better understanding of policies each party stands for and gave me a more clear vision of my political position. According to my results, I should be voting for the Greens, which was my overall intention based on my previous knowledge of the party, and the important national issues I care about such as the banning of live exports and marriage equality.
With all of this passion for politics starting to develop, I thought I’d set myself a few challenges to see how much information I could find out about a few key issues, and start to involve myself in various forms of internet political participation.
Sign an e-petition:
Petitions are a great way to involve yourself online or in person to change the future of an important issue nationally or worldwide. I decided to sign an e-petition designed to end whaling in Japan for good on the Animals Australia website. I am very passionate about the welfare of animals, and believe whaling is an issue than continues to pull at our heart strings; why is it still going on?
When will the NBN get to your place? What are the benefits?
The NBN refers to the National Broadband network designed for a more reliable and faster internet service available to all residents in Australia. This is part of a 10 year plan to advance the way we use the internet to keep up with the constant progression in new technologies. The benefits of the NBN will be a faster, reliable and modern way to access the internet, and to designed prepare our ‘…telecommunications infrastructure for the future’ (NBN, 2012).
The National Broadband network (NBN) will be arriving in my area of Mermaid Waters, after September 2016, with plans to begin construction from June 2014. I can’t wait to see what all the fuss is about, and how much it will impact on the quality of broadband connection we receive.
Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. Send one a message.
As I was browsing though a number of animal welfare sites (as I do, being very passionate about the welfare of animals), I stumbled onto a link on the Animals Australia website about the banning of live animal exports. As this is a controversial issue involved in the current political policies, I decided to have more of a read about live exports and the effects in has on animals and their quality of life. The more I learnt, the more disgusted I became; so with this, I decided to follow the option on their site to send your members of parliament a message about the banning of live exports. As you can see below, I managed to get a letter out to my Federal MP: Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Opposition Leader and Shadow Minister for Trade about the importance of banning live exports in Australia for good. Through all of this research, I found out my local representative is Steven Ciobo, my state representative is Campbell Newman and my federal representative is Kevin Rudd.
Hoffman L.H & Jones P.E & Young D.G 2013, ‘Does my comment count? Perceptions of political participation in an online environment’, Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 2248- 2256, viewed 30th August 2013, via Science Direct.
Social media has become an important part of socialising, especially within the ‘Gen Y’ group. Society has become somewhat reliant on technology, thus creating a greater need to implement a social structure online involving the use of new technology. I decided to create a survey using ‘Survey Monkey‘ to get a better understanding of why people use social media to the extent they do. Why are we so reliant on the use of social media; could our day-today operations function without it?
The questions I chose to ask weren’t significantly compartive to questions used in statisitc sites such as ‘Pew Research’ or ‘The Australian Bureau of Statisitcs’. I did however find a selection of relevant questions asked on the ‘Pew Internet’ website, which is a project of the ‘Pew Research Center’. These questions were more specific, asking directly about the social media applications they used with yes or no options only, click here to view comparative survey questions (Pew Internet & American Life Project, n.d.). My comparative question was developed in order to assess the favourite social media application, providing not only a variety of choices, but a ‘other’ option too. I found my use of 6 multiple choice options, increased my chances of getting broader results, which was my overall goal.
I was able to convince 35 people to partake in my survey; the majority of my audience swayed by my persuasive post on my Facebook page. Due to my survey being advertised via Facebook, this created a somewhat bias view of the results, as the majority of my friends on Facebook are young adults. In fact, 91% of responses were aged 16-25, and obviously used Facebook in order to see this survey being posted. Although, according to Tourism Australia, ‘Australia is the world’s most Facebook addicted country…’ (MediaNet Press Release Wire, 2012). I did however send the survey via email to my family and was passed on to work collegues, which gave me a slighter broader demographic.
Question 1: How often do you visit social networking websites?
This question was designed to see how regularly the auidence used social networking websites as a whole, thus how reliant we are on social media in society. 57% of responses said they visited social networking websites ‘more than once a day’, while 26% admitted to check social media ‘at least once an hour’. This shows the extent of which social media has impacted on our day-to-day lives, and the importance of its existence within society. 8.5% of responses chose the answer ‘once daily’ and the remaining 8.5% chose ‘I don’t use social media’.
In response to these answers, a staggering 91.5% check social media daily in comparison to a tiny 8.5% that don’t use social media. This was the sort of result I expected, due to age of the partakers in my survey, but thus substantiates my point of our reliance on social media on a daily basis.
Question 2: Do you class ‘your friends’ or ‘your followers’ on your social media sites as friends in real life?
As an avid user of social media, I have a combination of both friends and business connections amongst my ‘friend’ lists. I was interested to find out if my social media contacts had a similar ‘friend’ list structure as myself, or if they did know every single person that were ‘friends’ with online.
40% of the responses answered that they knew ‘most of them’, while only 8.5% knew ‘all of them’. This is a surprising result, as it shows the naivety towards privacy on social media, which is a current issue in the media. 28.5% of the audience knew ‘some of them’, while 11% admitted to not knowing many of the contacts at all on social media! This would lead me to believe that these two results are due to their use of social media for reasons other than socialising with friends. I added an answer titled ‘Friends’ yes, ‘Followers’, no’ to show the difference between friends lists such as Instagram and Tumblr, which allows people to follow you that you don’t have to see in your feed like other sites e.g Facebook. Again, 8.5% of results were that they didn’t use social media at all, which was an obvious answer after reviewing the first question’s results.
Question 3: What would you say is your main reason for using social networking sites?
I decided to use this question to find out the reason behind social media becoming such an important part of our lives. I personally use social media to keep in contact with friends that I don’t see regularly, so it didn’t surprise me to see 73% of my responses agreed with me. 17% of the responses said they use social media for ‘Networking with friends you see all the time’ while only a mere 3% said that used it for ‘Networking for business’. It seems that ‘Networking for business’ wasn’t a popular option, but due to the age bracket of my responses, it doesn’t surprise me.
I did though have the option of an answer titled ‘other’, just to further widen the results I could achieve. I received some interesting responses, 14% choosing ‘other’ as their chosen answer. Boredom, wasting time, stalking and ‘picking up chicks’ were the responses I received, boredom received 60% of these votes. This just shows that despite social media having it’s advantages, not every one is enjoying using it, and just seems to partake in it’s activity due to sheer boredom.
Question 4: What social networking website do you use most often?
I developed this question in order to figure out what social networking website is used the most, and therefore, contributing the most to our social media infatuation. Facebook had a overwhelming majority, taking 82% of the votes for the most used social networking site. Instagram was the only other site that gained votes, receiving 12% of the votes. Twitter and Tumblr were options but received no votes whatsover, which I did find surprising; especially due to the success of Twitter as a social media platform. Again, 6% of votes stated that didn’t use social media, which has been pretty accurate percentage of the numbers we have been seeing for this option so far.
Question 5: Do you prefer using social media to other forms of online/phone communication? (text messaging, phone calls, email)
I was particularly interested to see the response from this question, as it shows how influenced we are by what the media and society tells us to do. Regardless of our apparent regular use of social media, is this really something we enjoy doing? Or do we miss the days of receiving a phone call or text message instead of a Facebook post? The most popular response was ‘I don’t have a preference’, while following a close second on 28.5%, text messaging was the chosen answer. 20% of people preferred phone calls while a tiny 3% preferred email contact. Only 14% of the responses preferred social media networking sites while 3% don’t use social media at all. Due to the highest response being in favour of ‘I don’t have a preference’; it shows that as long as humans are contacted by their friends and connections, they are happy- despite the way they choose to do so.
In summary, my results overall did indicate generally what I expected them to. Facebook was obviously the most popular social networking site, and social networking in general was admitted to be used daily. Due to the responses in majority being between the ages of 16-25, I feel like the answers to all of the questions are quite predictable for this age bracket. Arguably the most important finding in this survey relates to Question 5, and if we really do prefer using social media over other forms of communication methods. By the outstanding result in this question being that we ‘don’t have a preference’ it shows us that really social media is something we enjoy, but not more so than any other form of communication method. Yes social media is effective in our functioning within society for social reasons, but it is not vital to the day-to-day operations of socialising as much as I initially thought. I believe the information here isn’t enough to conduct an essay on, but this survey could be relevant for future study, possibly referring more so to the use of social media within young adults.
MediaNet Press Release Wire 2012, ‘Media Release: TOURISM AUSTRALIA’, Australian Associated Press Pty Limited, viewed 29th August 2013, via ProQuest Australia & New Zealand Newsstand
The use of mobile phones are a crucial part of our every day lives. We use mobile phones for both personal and business uses such as for: phone calls, text messages, emails and internet usage. Have you ever wondered how this amazing development came into action? When did it all begin, and how did the constant advancement of technology affect the outcomes we received in the form of mobile phones?
I decided to create a timeline referring to the history of the cell phone using Timetoast, focusing on key events that has made it what it is today. Check it out:http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/history-of-the-handheld-mobile-phone, or if you are interested in simply reading about these key events, I have posted a text view of my timeline below.
Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre that refers to a near-future world using gritty aesthetic and advanced technology (Stockwell, S 2013). It began as a reaction to ‘space opera’; another genre in science fiction films, to show a more of a dystopian perspective on the future. Jonathan Willson describes cyberpunk as, ‘…a dystopic vision of powerful corporate interests set in a decaying urban environment’ (Wilson, J 1996). Examples of concepts used in the Cyberpunk genre involve; computers controlling people, body modifications and genetic reconstructing in the form of humans and robots.
I believe ‘The City of Lost Children’ is not a Cyberpunk film per say, although it offers a lot of similar elements to the genre itself. A key feature in this film was a brain floating in a machine that barked it’s thoughts and commands at the ‘humans’ using a condescending undertone in order to get what he wanted. The machine had a dystopian view on the world, as did the other characters in the film; another key element of Cyberpunk. This view of computers controlling people is a concept found in most Cyberpunk films, although this film didn’t contain high technology which is a crucial component in the Cyberpunk genre. Instead, this film was set in the British-Victorian era which leads me to believe it is hybrid-genre of both Cyberpunk and Steampunk.
Below is a trailer for ‘The City of Lost Children’, I recommend that you watch this film and decide for yourself.
Willson, J 1996, ‘Enter the cyberpunk librarian: future directions in cyberspace: [1]’, Emerald Group Publishing, Limited, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 22-28, viewed 29th August 2013, via ProQuest Central
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Straight from the horse's mouth: A blog by Bella Hunting 