IRL Prosumption

Hi everyone,
Throughout this course we have discussed how prosumption has grown from web 2.0 taking advantage of its users free labour, to Manzerolle discussing how social media companies have figured out how to straight up exploit us, monetize our work and increase their profits through advertising they force on us through their apps.

I would like to talk about how this is increasingly concerning because businesses IRL are beginning to take hints from the online industry.

In this article "Prosumption: Why Just About Everyone Unwittingly Works for Free," the author lists a bunch of things that are technically prosumption in the offline world.  Things like building IKEA furniture, pumping your own gas and now even making your own food at restaurants.

I thought this was significant to talk about on the blog because we had talked about IKEA furniture in class earlier, but I think we were able to justify it's "worth" for the consumer by saying that by building the furniture ourselves it saves us money.  This is similar to how with social media, at first it wasn't really significant that our personal data was being mined, because we got to use the service for free.

Now however, restaurants like these ones are charging restaurant prices for food that you could buy for much cheaper at the grocery store, and advertising it to you as "DIY Restaurants," like it's a fun outing with your friends. In reality though, you are paying to do what these businesses formerly had to pay employees to do.

This to me is just like the way we as social media users are being exploited for our personal data, as well as by being the primary content producers on these platforms.

Can anyone think of any other ways that these IRL prosumer businesses might be detrimental, other than just being exploitative?

Thanks Wikipedia, for allowing me to Graduate

My Wikipedia searches this term have ranged from "Non Government Organizations" to "Materialities/Imaginaries" to Justin Bieber- and the website helped me understand each topic I searched in addition to some other research. Without it, I honestly don't think I would be graduating from University this upcoming Spring. This is why I decided to donate to the Wikipedia Foundation this past month. I understand that Wikipedia is not thought of as a reliable source for scholarly papers but it is indeed a great way to start a paper to get a general understanding of main concepts/themes/definitions. This post is intended to be a shout-out and socio-economic analysis of the extremely popular medium all University students must know and love.
The website can be thought of as a non market peer production platform that enables success for some users and dissatisfaction for others in the sense that their governance structure has been labelled has "autocracy and bureaucracy."


"Wikipedia shapes online sociality not by implementing buttons for liking, friending, following and trending- functions anchored in the popularity principle- but by contructing a platform for 'knowing' that is moored in the neutrality principle" (Van Dijck, 2013).

Wikipedia has created a platform that is actively involved in what Van Dijck calls a "culture of connectivity" but has done so in a way that contributes to our knowledge and understanding of everyday concepts and largely valuable to us as students. Wikipedia has never allowed advertisements so it's obvious that this is not their business model- rather they
focus on public and private donations from people like ourselves and companies to keep up with the maintenance of the platform. Without these donations, the "free online encyclopedia" would not exist, and that to me- sounds like a nightmare.

Would you agree that Wikipedia can be described as the epitome of crowdsourcing? Would you consider donating to the Wikipedia foundation?

"Dear Labour It's No Longer OK to Not Understand the Internet"

Hello everyone! I wanted to share this really interesting read with you all that I found on The Guardian. It's titled: Dear Labour, it is no longer OK not to get the internet by: Gaby Hinsliff.

The article is a tad confusing as Hinsliff discusses a wide variety of concepts. One of the key concepts we're going to focus on is based on the interconnected, digitally dependent world we live in and the notion that it is no longer okay or ethical for politicians to not be internet literate/effectively use the internet in their political and everyday practices.

"You can't tackle the radicalization process without undersstanding that it's moved on from mosques into suburban bedrooms, where teenagers talk direct to Islamic State fighters via messaging apps you've probably never heard of (and to which security services will increasingly demand."

This article allows me to infer on Fuchs notion's specifically in Chapter 8.1 in which he discusses the social roles that have been constituted for modern society. Each level whether it's Political roles, Economic roles or Private roles all have a role in prosuming modern medias.

"As modern society is based on structures of accumulation and a separation of roles within different realms, there are different conflicts of interest over the control of property, collective decisions, and meanings that can result in social struggles."

I would state that it is important for political persons to be internet literate/present online for the sake of their own campaigns- to reach a wide audience and to properly connect and engage with the public. The fact of the matter is that user generated content is dominating the internet and provoking conversation- which politicians need to be aware of and engaged in. Would you agree that it's critical for politicians to be internet/computer literate and be participating on various platforms online to communicate with the public? Why or why not?

Hillary Clinton: on fleek?

American electoral processes seem to last forever; I feel like I know almost everything about the republican and democrat candidates. Part of this is due to the new style of electoral campaigns which are being introduced in the Information Age. With the popularity of Web 2.0, candidates now have a way to access a larger demographic and especially a demographic which is notorious the lack of voting: the youth. This is a perfect example of Marwick's self-branding. Clinton uses social media to advertise herself as hip, cool, and in touch with the citizens of the U.S. Some people have criticized Hillary Clinton for her attempts to appeal to a young crowd, identifying her as both "trying hard" and pandering to the youth.

Here's a good example of Hillary Clinton on Vine.

While it's important to get younger people involved in politics, some people argue that it makes a mockery of politics for Hillary to resort to meme-like content in order to get votes. What do you guys think? Is it important to have a political candidate who understands social media and uses it to advertise themselves? Or is it more important for political candidates to view youth as informed, responsible voters who cannot be won over by silly tactics?

Can Instagram Be Considered False Advertising?

Throughout this course we have become very familiar with the term self-branding and the various ways that we are encouraged to use social media to succeed. Instagram has become one of the most well-known platforms for self-branding and life streaming. Instagram has introduced an entirely new economic market in which people can gain capital by sharing photos and promoting brands through their social media.

How To Quickly Get Popular on Instagram

This article was written for users that want to market themselves on Instagram. It explains the various steps a person must take if they want to get popular on this social media platform. The article explains to readers how to obtain the most followers and the ways that they should get noticed and connect with other users. Today there are websites in which people can actually purchase followers to make their page look more popular than it may actually be.

If a business has an Instagram page and they purchased followers or likes, do you feel that this constitutes as false advertising/deception? Should we be allowed to purchase followers?

Martin Shkreli's Risky Business

Recently the internet was set ablaze after Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals,  raised the price of an HIV medication fifty times over. The move was criticized by people from all spheres including political figures such as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and others in the pharmaceutical industry. Despite the massive backlash Shkreli defended his decision, claiming that his move was simply the result of capitalism and was necessary to facilitate further pharmaceutical development.

The arc of Shkreli as villain reached its conclusion on Dec. 17th as Shkreli was arrested by the FBI for securities fraud. The arrest is predicated on the claim that during his time as a hedge-fund manager Shkreli ran a ponzi scheme in which he defrauded many of his investors.

(Shkreli leaving court)

While it's very satisfying to think of Shkreli's actions as inherently evil are they perhaps the result of something else? Are Shkreli's actions the result of, as Neff discusses, a culture of risk in which making risky decisions is considered a virtue? Is Shkreli simply one greedy and immoral individual, an isolated case? Or is he the product of American Dream style capitalism in which money must be made by any means necessary, even if that's stealing from the sick to give to the rich?

Social Media & News

In Christian Fuchs Social Media and the Public Sphere he discusses the transformative power of new technologies. By drawing on the concept of Habermas’s public sphere, Fuchs believes that social media puts focus on political and cultural communication. Unlike Habermas’s idea that says the public sphere is a question of its member’s command of resources. Social media in turn has become key in defining the public discourse for these social media platforms.  What this article reminded me of was the way we share and learn about important news events. For me I personally have found out major events through social media sites before hearing it on the news. This of course was not always the way people accessed important news information, and I find it very interesting how social media has caused a shift in how we search for information.

http://www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-twitter-and-facebook/

I came across this report by Pew Research Centre that shows the statistics on how many people are sharing news stories via social media.  From this the research shows that users are actually turning to these sites to fulfill different types of information needs. Its really interesting how we can seek out information in different ways and the transformative power social media has in how we seek it.

Do you find you get your information from social media sites more frequently than from specific news sites? Why do you think that is?