Bryan’s Project-Transformation of US Politics by NM

 There were many presentations that were interesting and worth summarizing, but I decided to summarize one that was said today, not because it’s fresh in my mind, but because I think I formed a legit and proper question and it would be something I would like to see the answer for in the next election.

The presentation I will look at is “The Transformation of American Politics by New Media,” by Bryan Ray Lobo. 

This presentation started with a little of the adoption of New Media by politicians and how it has been very helpful with producing financing for the campaign. Statistics showed that 32% of US Senate candidates had a Facebook page in 2006, and even politicians who didn’t have a clue of it, was apart, because there admin thought that it would be beneficial, which in fact it was. 

President Barak Obama had the most supporters on Facebook, 3.2 million! Through this medium, supporters were able to put forth their views and money was raised to support the campaign. Studies have shown that politicians will do well with the use of social networking sites since they increase their chances of getting votes by 3%.  This medium has allowed the average American voter to financially support their candidates much more easily since they didn’t have the medium to do so in the past. Support was usually given by large corporations and Public Finance. 

New Media has also allowed for a break away for the oligarchy of media sources, but people can now look to independent sources such as blogs, Facebook groups and even Youtube. Also, because of New Media, news reaches more people quicker than through the traditional line. 

Although this is all positive, there is a downside to the increase use of New Media for the Department of Defense (DOD). The DOD believes that the network can be hacked while soldiers are on Facebook or Twitter. While the DOD doesn’t mind soldiers writing blogs about their time at war, they don’t want horrific stories that occur in the Middle East to be written about especially online. 

That was a basic summary of the presentation. 

My question and comment, which may not be answerable until the next election is, “Since Obama was able to raise over $500 million, which surpassed the amount that would be given by Public Finance by millions, because of New Media; will any other future election campaign be able to do something like this or better?” We have another year and more to see, and then we will see how strong New Media really is. This was a great presentation by Mr. Lobo.

My Presentation

My presentation was based the negative effects that New Media, specifically Social Networking Sites, SNS, has on Generation Y. According to Wikipedia, Generation Y include the people born between mid-1970’s to early 2000. The negative effects that I covered are Cyber bullying, Sexual Predators, Narcissism, Internet Addiction and Job Security. Cyber bullying – Almost 50% of American teens are affected by it directly or indirectly and girls are victimized the most because they spend the most time of these sites. An extreme case of cyber bullying are teenagers committing suicide. A case of sexual predation was seen with a an English teen who was murdered after secretly visiting a guy she met online. SNS’s is a great place for becoming narcissistic or encourages the behavior. SNS’s causes teens to spend a lot a time online and may be becoming addicted. Many young people have lost their jobs because of postings online.

The CEOP wants Facebook to put a Panic Button on all its pages but Facebook already has a page with the information that the Panic Button would link to. Also, cyber bullying laws are currently being lobbied and teachers now have the ability to discipline to students because of online and offline bullying.

You can protect yourself by adding people you actually know and let family/friends know when and where you will be meeting a ‘friend’ from a SNS. Also, to prevent an internet addiction you can:

Set limits

Turn off e-mail notifications

Don’t leave your social networks open

Don’t network on your phone

But it’s not all bad because it’s still great for the actual use, networking with family and friends. Also for company marketing and just for leisure.

A Next ‘New Media’

I have been thinking of what the next New Media could be but nothing came to mind quickly. Eventually, I came up with something. We have 5 senses and with Web 2.0 devices we currently only use 2 of these senses. It would be unique if there was a  device that would allow us to smell things like how we can hear and see. It would be helpful because there can more interaction with chef’s online, we can know how the food should smell; or even experiencing nature in places that we maybe unable to go to in reality. If a smell device is created then we could have more fragrances because of mashups.

You may wonder, though, how would this be possible. Well, the same way we have 3 base colors that can create a whole spectrum of colors; if the main independent smells can be found, it could actually work. Imagine being a virtual world where you can see what people are showing you and hear them while all at the same time smell the environment in which you are in. It will bring the virtual world closer to reality.

Privacy & Confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality are two important issues because it doesn’t only affect our image but our whole lives. These issues can be looked at from two standpoints. The first I will discuss is the privacy that the youth have online today. In many cases we hear of a teenager or young adult in some trouble because of the amount of information they exposed about themselves, which is plain outright dumb to do. But have you ever considered the youth who puts everything out there but you don’t know? You may consider this to be good, but teens are becoming tech savvy that they are able to cover everything they do online from family and allow everyone else, or at least those they allow to view, which in some cases may be more dangerous since today’s ‘friends’ can be equivalent to a stranger.

The other point of view would be people intentionally hacking into computer networks and stealing information which usually leads to identity theft. Measures that can be taken to limit this personally are:

• Install a security program on your computer that can protect your computer against hacking.
• Secure your wireless network
• Do not enter personal or credit card information without the padlock in the URL box or ‘s’ after ‘http.’
• If possible, do not use public networks/computers for any personal transaction.

Advice to Baruch College

Baruch College has been taken advantage of New Media, especially Social Networking. Various departments in the school are apart of the major sites such as Facebook and Twitter. I believe this may actually be an effective way to communicate with students but students may not consider using social sites for school information. If someone was also constantly available to answer questions then the use of these sites would be great.

Though this idea may not be directly related to the image of the school, certain course could use virtual worlds to teach various topics in a class. One class I believe this will be helpful in, is History. If everyone, as a class assignment, meet online in a 1774 themed virtual world with the teacher taking the role of, lets say, Thomas Jefferson with the class as the followers of Jefferson. This would help more students understand the topic better.

A department that would benefit from new media, especially becuase of the communication, is the Admissions department. A blog would be effective for general and some specific questions since the back and forth interaction can occur and others will be able to continuously refer to it. Although that information may be available on the website, students may not know where exactly to find, and may feel better asking his/her question and getting a direct answer to it.

Our Class Wiki – So Far

So far I have created a page for my Biography, added my information to the class list on the wiki and added a sub-topic to ‘Online Social Networking’ called “Protecting Yourself on Social Networking Sites” which can be found on the New Media in Entertainment page. I intend to add more to this page and also the New Media in Business page and maybe with regards to accountancy or taxation specifically. I am also searching for tasks that the class in general will have to do, so that I can help someone out, with a post on the How To… page

My New Media Class – So Far

For this class I have been trying to keep-up with the class and also try to keep aligned with what is currently going on with New Media in current news. I have been focusing a lot more on Social Networking in this class for two reasons. The first being, I use social networks on a daily basis therefore allowing me to have a better understand of the changes and the theoretical aspects of social networks in New Media. The second, it’s the research topic.

The work that this class calls for is very practical. I believe it’s the most effective way to learn and just about anything. Initially, I did not want to go on Twitter, and because I didn’t think it made sense to just post statuses. But because of this class I created an account (for a purpose) and got an inside look at twitter and saw it was somewhat of what I thought it to be but realized there was more to it. E.g. useful for jobs, i.e. you can follow a company to get current information about it. I don’t have that laid back feeling towards Twitter anymore because of this class.

Wikipedians Motives

I read the article ‘What Motivates Wikidians?’ by Odded Nov, pages 60-65 published in 2007 by ACM. The major point of this article is the topic itself, ‘What Motivated Wikipedians?’ The author sought to find out if the six general volunteer motivations were the reason wikipedians contribute to the site. The six motives were Values, Social, Understanding, Career, Protective and Enhancement. He also added two motives, fun and ideology, which have been used to study open source software development. Fun and ideology were the strongest motivations, based on the survey.

This article is highly relevant to New Media. Wikipedia is considered to be an element of media and the contributions of this article can help understand why New Media is growing and why collaboration is so strong.

The article is relevant to class, because we speak about the 5C’s with collaboration being one of them. Although we collaborate a lot on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites it could be because it’s in a laid back social setting but this article tries to find out what make people contribute useful information to an encyclopedia setting.

There is no direct proposal or recommendation but the author hopes that in future another survey can be done, to find out how the different motivations impact the different content outlets, by using his article as a guide.

This article was based off of survey results. One result that showed up was that ideology motivated people. The author didn’t think it made much sense because they would be spread over so many other things that they wouldn’t have the time to contribute much to Wikipedia. I believe that they would be studying their topics in other areas and use that information as a contribution to Wikipedia as well.

Modeling Reality with Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds are used by individuals to create an ideal world by recreating themselves with either enhanced features or added elements. Businesses will it for training or as a model to the 3-D model of buildings. In the article, ‘In Room 100, It’s Sid and Nancy All Over Again’ article, I found a pro. Living in the hotel became too expensive and the beloved manager, Stanley Bard, was replaced by a corporate team, but with the use of the virtual world, Stanley Bard was able to relive his days in the Chelsea Hotel with other former residents online. Another pro is that people are able to keep in contact with people in a more desirable world. A con is that people may try to become their avatars after spending much time on it, and also may become socially isolated.

 A pro is that people can create a totally different life online. Therefore, creativity comes in play a lot. Individuals will construct an area that they are associated with and tweak it, by doing a mash-up with reality and their ideas. Also, people become creative with them own self by changing their appearance to make themselves look better or add features they wish they had.

Twitter: Discussion

I find Twitter to be confusing when having conversation. Everything flows through like a new post and although the person who you are replying to is in the new post , it is  hard to find out which post you are replying to. Blackboard and blogs, and even Facebook is easier to understand and to follow conversations because the comments/replies are directly attached to the original post. In-class discussions are even better because even if an idea was stated half hour ago, it would be RT, restated, and then replied to.