Hironobu Kanahara
Hiu Ying Ma (Vivienne)
Jo Kabuye
COGN 150
Summer 10
Professor Aytes
Group Project- Social Network Report
The blog, indifferentcitizens.blogspot.com, which we created, is based on the Arizona immigration law- SB1070. We hope to explore concepts of social networks or an online community in general employing the blogger.com website as a platform and engaging with SB1070 as the central issue. The blog helped online users interact though social network sites such as Blogger.com though it is not as interactive as the typical online social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. As with any blog or network, some of the users are more outspoken, and some others are more neutral. Users don’t necessarily have to know each other to leave comments; they reserve the rights to hide their identities. Having the topic based on the Arizona immigration issue, most of the users who comment are English speakers, with this group of English speakers being primarily made up of those living within the United States. The main form of participation that is available to users on the blog is leaving comments, unlike other SNS they are not able to chat; however they have the option of sharing the blog on their Facebooks, Twitters, or email it to friends and family. The format of a blog allows us to tap into the opinions and viewpoints of the public at large; through this format we hope to connect people together on the platform and face the issue in various ways, knowing that it has been a social problem that affects a massive amount of people. Therefore, a blog that is about posting issues related to the law helps people voice their opinion and express themselves. Racial profiling, power abuse, and stereotyping are all problems that are potentially created from this the law on top of that lays a heightened emotional involvement. It is controversial because many people feel passionate about the issue; however lack the ability to express themselves in adequate fashion. We believe users might therefore be able to also share their experience through the comments they share. A blog can potentially lead to the creation of protest and civil disobedience as the numbers grow, which can be linked to participatory culture.
Our blog is managed by four team members, and each of us posted different blog entries adding to the information available to viewers. The way participatory culture works is through contributions of people who relate to certain things; in other words, the way it works on the internet is by people’s actions. What we figured out through working on our blog is participations of each member builds up a ‘participatory culture.’ One updates of a member facilitated another updates of other members. Within the realm of participatory culture, the actions of each project member, which was in essence free digital labor, was all towards a common goal. Therefore, participation or updates of blog contents became significant actions among all of us, which means that we made our ideas into texts and updated them as blog contents without any reward. It is true that reaching our team-goal is a source of reward for our efforts we have made to sustain and develop our project. Participatory culture is formed through our taking part in something and sharing our views, ideas and thoughts. We came to the conclusion over the course of this project that participatory culture exists within the Gift-economy. The topic of our blog relates to the immigration issue of which most of us had little understanding; however, by researching about different things for our posts increased our understanding about the issue of Arizona Immigration Law through collaboration. Our blog became a hub for our team-network and each member shared ideas to create value that drew internet users to view our blog. Our responses for articles written about Arizona immigration created the sense of learning and we could teach and learn mutually. Therefore, our team project could progress toward our goal through each team members’ participation in the realm of the Digital Economy.
In Howard Rheingold's From the Screen to the Streets, it is stated that political activists can actually use various forms of media to mobilize collective action. They can use these mediums to mobilize individuals from different places into joining in street protests and demonstrations, fund-raising activities, vote campaigns, and even legislative lobbying. Since the medium is accessible and can reach numbers of individuals in a short period, people can easily be made aware of various political issues which need to be addressed. The protesters would be able to reach large numbers of people and mobilize them into acting upon said issues in the form of collective action (Rheingold). This means that anyone who has access to any form of media has the capability to mobilize and be mobilized. Using new social media such as blogging, we are not only creating social awareness to inform the public but also to affect the public sphere.
In fact, media is a very powerful entity that even has cause political action to be taken against in order to neutralize its power and effects. As seen in the aforementioned discussion, new media like this is a very powerful tool in changing the society and the world. A lot of individuals may say that media exists to entertain people, but it has a far more important role than that. Media can make people aware of social and political issues and mobilize people into organized social action; with media, people are given more opportunities to revitalize their societies.
Media, indeed, is powerful, with it individuals have the power to spread photos and stories from medium to medium, making it possible for other individuals to become aware of certain issues and thus, engage in social action. It is stated that media and its ever-changing technology can do even more than just mobilize people into collective social action, or prompt people to download various software to crash an organization's mainframe for the organization to lose millions—it can even unseat a president from his position. (Zuckerman).
Within this group there were no issues of privacy being encroached upon because we made it so individuals can post on the blog anonymously. This allows them more freedom in their opinions and viewpoints they express. Looking at it from the perspective of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, these participants are no longer under perceived surveillance so they have more room to express their individual opinions, whether or not they adhere to popular modes of thought, without fear of persecution. It was interesting to note that what we might have considered widespread beliefs of those are against this law were not actually always present. Looking at one of the comments, they believed race is not an issue when it comes to this law making the point it is all about the age old debate about the power of the federal government to control the sovereign power of the states. In this it can be seen that social networks such as these attract all kinds of people each with different backgrounds and each with their own view of a subject. For though we were united by a common interest and cause there are intricate complexities that arise in all social networks that in fact enrich the experience of others connected to the network.
The blog is puts to use the idea of collective intelligence, for by its very nature a blog is one that allows comments and feedback from individuals who share their opinions and add to the discussion thereby influencing another person’s thought system while simultaneously having their thoughts influenced by another. In this sharing and commenting lies the heart of collective intelligence for what is formulated is a kind of group well of ideas and thought from which participants are able to draw from. This manifests itself in how they can take knowledge or information they have gleaned from their group experience on the blog and use it outside the group in discussions with others, for example a debate over the constitutionality of the new Arizona immigration law.
This blog seeks to challenge the effects that living in a fast-paced media rich environment has had on those within this society. The effects being that of hyper-tension, which is focusing on multiple things simultaneously allowing for multitasking; however, on the con side this hyper-tension has caused the populace to lose interest in things after short periods of times this can be exemplified in the public’s large response to happenings like Hurricane Katrina or the tragedy in Haiti. Both occurrences were met with overwhelming signs of support in terms of the efforts to rebuild those areas as well as provide aid to the inhabitants; however, after shorts periods of time the public’s interest waned on to the next “in” cause that arose. Thereby we seek to draw the attention of the public to what we consider an important issue that looks to shape the face of the United States for years to come. In such a way as to instill a form of deep attention so that they can become effective in their support and desire to further educate themselves about the Arizona immigration issue.
In terms of number of participants we lacked a great outpouring of support from the public in terms of comments and views on the blog. This can be due to a number of reasons, but if we were to do this again we could have advertised this blog more on other social networking site, harp on family and friends to get involved, and commiserate with other blogs that are similar in content to build a wider audience.
Works Cited:
Rheingold, Howard. “From the Screen to the Streets.” 28 Oct. 2003. Web. 18 Aug. 2010.
Zuckerman, Ethan. “Mobile Phones and Social Activism: Why Cell Phones May Be the Most Important Innovation of the Decade.” 20 June 2007. Web. 18 Aug. 2010.
Boyd, Dana., Ellison, N.B. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 2007. Web. Article 11.
Terranova, Tiziana. “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy”. 24 Apr. 2000. Web.
Hayles, Katherine. “Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes”.
Foucault, Michel., Bentham, Jeremy. “Discipline and Punish”. “Panopticism”. 1975.
