Articles
Doing research on the Occupy movement was interesting, because I had never studied the protest in depth before. From starting in New York City on Wall Street, the movement has spread all over the country and the world through social media. In my research I visited the orginal twitter page for Occupy, which acted as a significant catalyst in the movement, the original website dedicated to Occupy, and the adbusters page that made the call for activists to Occupy lower Manhattan on September 17th, 2011. I also found it very interesting that the Occupy movement was inspired by the Arab Spring, which I feel most people do not realize. Even today the orginial webpage for Occupy Wall Street shows updates on the Occupy movements around the world, even though the movement has somewhat died out in its original habitat. It seems that the original movement will never die out if the originial website is still disseminating stories about Occupy around the world which embody the views from the 2011 New York City protest. Disseminating these ideas through the internet and social media allows the movement to live on, despite some people saying that it is now extinct.
Having done a significant amount of research about this topic previously, this experience wasn't as informative as it was useful for my future implementation. I knew that Anonymous was a prolific hacktivist group with the core intention of being the "robin hood of the internet". They decide with their own volition what is legitimate or illegitimate, and use pseudo-legal to illegal means of confronting these concerns. During my time in class, I aggregated as much content as I could to really contextualize the kind of vigilante justice that they perform, and then to better understand the developments of communities within the group. Within this research, I found that Anonymous really do have a source of power through their brand; the Guy Fawkes mask and the active social media performance further pushes their presence so that when they do actually act, they have a notable following. I did, however, find that Anonymous has virtually no female members within its ranks, which is not wholistically a problem, but I do think it is a hindrance to their growth. I think that their intitatives would likely be directed towards women's rights issues if they had a more diverse group, which I think would very necessarily push their vision and movement in an important direction. When looking at Anonymous, it is important to think about the psychology of these people; They feel voiceless and want to change that, they are interested in fame, but also are terrified of being caught. They see themselves as super heroes that can skirt the law to do whatever they want, which just happens to be a good cause. At the end of the day, they are fame-seeking hackers who are sick of the current system, but want to do good. I'm excited to learn more about the psychology of hacktivism and the development of the Anonymous brand.
Prior to this assignment, I had never heard of Anonymous. During my research, I learned that they are a “hacktivist” group that opposes Internet censorship and control, and whose attacks mainly target governments, organizations, and corporations that they accuse of censorship. The group first appeared on the imageboard 4chan, and its members, called “Anons”, can be seen in public wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Anonymous has been tied to many instances of international hactivism that targeted groups such as the Church of Scientology; government agencies of the United States, Israel, Tunisia, Uganda; child pornography sites; copyright protection agencies; the Westboro Baptist Church; and various corporations like PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, and Sony. I also learned that Anons have publically supported Wikileaks, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy movement. In 2012, Time called Anonymous one of the “100 most influential people” in the world. It was fascinating to see the varying approval of the group—some see Anons as “freedom fighters” and “digital Robin Hoods”, while some critics have labeled the group as “cyber terrorists”. Their mission of exposing others and fighting censorship is a bit ironic, considering their core value of secrecy and anonymity. Although some Anons just focus on “lulz”, or entertainment, many Anons choose to focus their efforts on political activism. What I find intriguing about Anonymous is its ability to execute large-scale hacktivism, despite its decentralization and lack of leadership. Furthermore, I am interested in exploring is how Anons come to be involved in the group, how they manage internal disagreements, and how they maintain their anonymity in transparent forums like the Internet.
LISIS, Islamic State of Syria and Israel, is a terrorist organization in the Middle East that has taken to social media to popularize their mission. The organization believes that it is their right to claim religious, political and military authority over all Muslims, therefore they punish anyone who they believe is defiant of their mission. Although ISIS operates in the Middle East, the organization has been successful in captivating the attention of the world through the utilization of several mediums of social media, their most popular being Twitter and YouTube. Their Twitter handle ISIS_Med (Islamic State Media) has over 15.8 thousands follower and has sparked an anti-ISIS Twitter account called Operation Ice Isis (@OpIceIsis) with 35.5 thousand followers. This an example of the ability of a single organization to infiltrate the public sphere outside of their physical geographic location, creating supporting and oppositional dialogue regarding their cause world-wide. ISIS has also taken to YouTube to publish promotional propagandist videos and also violent and tortuous ones serving as a threat to enemies. Al Hayat Media is the company that produces the ISIS videos; they employ impressive editing techniques that give the videos a theatrical component. Several of the videos and promotional adds have effects that resemble an action movie, however the content is extremely disturbing and cruel. ISIS even turned to the use of a publicly downloadable Google Play App, however that since been disbanded. When it comes to social media, ISIS knows what they are doing. Despite the cruelty of their mission and the secrecy of how their organization operates, they are able to convey a professional and legitimate facade, gaining both public support and opposition.
This studio session was a good introduction to the Chinese Blogosphere. I did not know very much about the topic going in, so it was interesting to learn more about the internet culture of China. We researched different bloggers and popular sites. One blogger that caught my interest was Han Han because he is a popular public figure who is a race car driver, but also discusses politics on his blog. Most political posts are censored or deleted by the government, and some bloggers have even gone to jail like Ai Weiwei. Some blogs are political, but many focus on fashion and other diverse topics. One of our group members grew up in China, and it was very interesting to hear her perspective on the Chinese Blogosphere. She mentioned that whenever someone's blog was deleted or a post was removed, the government would say that westerners influenced them to write what they did. The government censors much of what reaches the public, but an unique example is a youtube documentary "Under the Dome" about smog that was allowed on the internet for a few days, but quickly removed. I am interested to look at what content is seen as inappropriate, and how the public feels about such strict censorship.
What struck me most about my group's research into the Chinese Blogosphere was how many topics fall under it. There are the major websites that allow the discussion to happen - Sina Weibo, the government-monitored social media site that finds itself most similar to Twitter, QQ (though this is closer to instant messaging than to blogging), Kaixin001, and others. There are the specific people involved - Ai WeiWei, Chai Jing, HanHan, and more. HanHan, especially, brings out an interesting point that I'd like to further explore when he talks about his ability of "knowing the rules and saying things by not saying them." This seems to be a recurrent necessity within the Chinese blogosphere - knowing how to work within the rules set up by the government while still being able to put forward ideas that convince people to further pursue the topics of social and civil rights that cannot be said. For example, China has recently dictated that all authors publish their names along with their ideas online. This removal of anonymity goes against some of the ideas we've discussed in this class. My question is: shat are the rest of the rules? What do bloggers in China need to keep in the back of their minds when they're posting? I'd like to better understand how people navigate these waters.
Finally, Chinese Internet activism is taking on new forms that I'd like to further explore. For example, Chai Jing's Internet film "Under the Dome" gained hundreds of millions of views before it was removed from the Internet. What will the Chinese populace's response to the removal be, as a result? How will other media forms continue to push the censorship of the Chinese government?
There are clearly many subjects that fall under this topic (and even more information about these subjects), and I believe that deciding exactly what to write might be the hardest part of this assignment.
The topic E-Estonia caught my eye from the start. I know little about the country and its history so I was very interested in learning about this new digital age. E-Estonia is a recent development. It was started by the Estonian government to increase citizen interaction. This program enables citizens to pay their taxes on line, go to school online, do their banking online as well as many other things. One of its most interesting features is that it allows people e-residency. This means people that don't live in the physical boundaries of Estonia can be online residences. This gives them the ability to access the same electronic services that a citizen of Estonia would. This aspect of the program was developed mostly for entrepreneurs and people in the world of business. The Estonian government hoped it would bring additional economic growth to their country. Officials hope that it will create a better educated population, a more transparent government, better access to social services and a more flexible exchange of data. I find E-Estonia fascinating and I think it is something that with some improvement could be a global phenomenon. Its capabilities would allow people to vote from their own homes for big elections. It has the potential to change the way people all across the world interact. This development makes Estonia on of the most advanced e-societies in the world.
Before our first studio session, I had heard of Occupy Wall Street but I had no idea what it was or what the movement stood for. So during the first studio session, I spent most of my time familiarizing myself with the topic and learned that when the movement first started in 2011 in the United States, there was little organization and a heavy reliance on the Internet and social media. At the first protest in New York City, a video went viral of women being pepper sprayed by the police and from this video, the movement grew around the web. I think that it will be really interesting to see how this movement used the Internet to gain supporters and spread their movement. I think that today, I am very use to using the Internet and social media methods to promote something that I am interested in and it is hard to think back to before social media blew up and how people promoted campaigns. One thing that caught my interest was how at the first Occupy Wall Street protest, the protesters were upset with the lack of media coverage they were getting and because of this, published their own newspaper “The Occupied Wall Street Journal.”
One thing that my group discussed is where we want to focus our research. We wondered if we should focus on how Occupy used the Internet and the Web to initially start their movement or how they used the Internet and the Web to spread their movement around the country and the world.
I knew little about Anonymous going into Thursday’s studio session. I had heard about things they had done from time to time, but did not know the goal of the group. What struck me most was how people became involved with the group and that there was no official requirements for membership, if you wanted to be part of it, you simply were. Get involved (and perhaps download a printable Guy Fawkes mask) and you are good to go. However, this liberal inclusivity has downfalls. There also seems to be a lot of discord amongst those involved with Anonymous: disagreement about how to handle their Operations; different (or lack of) political views; and disagreement about privacy issues, as a group that remains secretive while exposing others.
These ideas are interesting in terms of our discussion on community on the Internet, because it seems that Anonymous is united in many ways, but also deals with their own set of internal conflict, just like traditional communities. Understanding more about why and how people are involved will give insight into what the group represents. From the research during our studio session, it is clear that the hacktivist group wants to expose corruption and wrongdoing, but as a leaderless collective, will they be able to effectively unite to make a difference? Do they need more structure or does their decentralization give them an advantage?
Going into this assignment, I really had no knowledge of the Turkish Gezi Park protests, so I was excited to learn more about their impact related to the Internet. In our research yesterday, our group started out tagging articles that summarized the protests, and then moved deeper into understanding the impact that social media, especially Twitter, was used to amplify the protests.
We were really interested by the penguin, which became a symbol of the revolution after a documentary of penguins was aired by CNN as an act of censorship during the protests in order to bar the content from broadcasts. The penguin became widely used during the movement, and there were lots of articles and political comics noting the penguin’s connection to the revolution. I definitely think this will be an interesting topic to explore further as our research continues, especially considering the use of the penguin through social media outlets to discuss the revolution.
Additionally, I am looking forward to learning more about the governmental social media “trolls” in Turkey during the protests. I was familiar with the idea that other governments had used the media to go undercover and promote political propaganda, but I didn’t realize that this was also evident through social media. In fact, many trolls were employed during the time to open fake Twitter accounts and spread slogans, comment on negative journalistic pieces, as well as manipulate people to spread false messages and trick people. I think this is especially compelling, because it considers the fact that people are so eager to believe anything they read on the Internet, which is an issue I think will be very interesting to delve deeper into.
After completing the first studio session for the second digital assignment, I am excited and intrigued about my topic, Wikileaks. I have some knowledge about Wikileaks because we studied this topic in one of my media studies introductory courses. I have read a book, titled “Beyond Wikileaks” that I remember was very informative and helpful. Based on the research that I did yesterday during class, I feel that our group has already discovered many newspaper stories, movies, videos, blog entries, and controversy over Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, who is currently held in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Our group had a good discussion regarding the lawsuits that are filed against Assange, namely that he is being charged with rape or assault. Our group also found a lot of articles, all which we posted to Diigo. I feel that I need to search for more information on how the Internet influenced the movement. I’m possibly interested in exploring the idea of the public sphere and the role of anonymity in relation to Wikileaks. Wikileaks has definitely caused a lot of national debate and uproar regarding the transparency, security, and actions of the government and the role of whistleblowers. I’m excited to explore and learn more about Wikileaks and how social media played a role in this social movement.
I found the concept of E-Estonia to be very clever, and very well presented in Europe. In an increasingly digital society, Estonia is using the Internet to advance their economy, but not through the traditional method of international trade: E-Estonia garners citizenship around the globe so that these new citizens move their business registrations, and therefore tax revenues, to Estonia. I think that a country like Estonia is the perfect "guinea pig" for this experiment into online governance. A developed nation with a small population, Estonia has the resources to launch such an iniatitve, and have it make an impact on the way the country is run. Virtually every aspect of the government is available online, from paying city parking, to paying taxes, to education, and voting. It has been fairly successful and effective in its intention of "de-centralizing" governement, but at the same time it is effective and environmentally friendly. The concept of E-Estonia is spreading throughout Europe: there will be a summit with other European countries such as Denmark and Switzerland to discuss the benefits and drawbacks.
Even though I know little about Estonia prior the class on Thursday, the concept of e-Estonia raised my interest as it sounds sort of idealism and novel to me. E-Estonia is commonly referred to a movement by Estonia government to facilitate citizen interactions with the state through the use of electronic solutions. It provides e-services such as e-Election, e-Business, e-Banking and etc. In late 2014, Estonia became the first country to grant electronic residency to people from other countries, which was referred as e-Residency. e-Residency provides access to the e-services mentioned above but it is not equivalent to physical residency. During my initial research, e-Estonia has constantly reminded me of Benedict Anderson’s claim that nation state is an imagined political community. While Anderson explains “imagined” as people in one geographical nation state shared the image of communion even though they do not see each other physically, e-Estonia has extended this idea to a cyber-based context. Even though people may reside in different places around the world, they can be identified as Estonia as they obtain their e-residency. Government functions and resident responsibilities can also be executed online. Even though Estonia does not expand its physical border, the nation state of Estonia is growing bigger with the development of its e-society, e-Estonia.
Although Arab Spring is known worldwide, prior to the first studio session, I had not known much about it; however, I do recall hearing about it a few years ago when it primarily emerged. Starting in 2009, a wave of protests and revolutions emerged and used Twitter, a renowned social networking site, to plan protests and share their ideas around the world. For example, in 2011, there was a revolt in Egypt against the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Under this dictatorship, citizens were outraged with the treatment of people and the ruling of the country; therefore, there was need for a change, need for a revolution. This revolution emerged and became Arab Spring. During this time, these revolts in Egypt, and others in other countries, were referred to as “The Twitter Revolution.” Protestors in these nations used social media mediums such as Facebook and Twitter to disperse their opinions. With the use of these powerful social media outlets, the revolutions were able to gain power and create international awareness. In our group, we looked at articles that explained how Arab Spring used social media to mobilize its movement.
In studio session, “time-lining” emergence, movements and continuation of Arab Spring was a must in order to understand how they came about and what they have accomplished. That being, they made President Hosni Mubarak step down from office, which shows a rather strong revolution. However, now it is essential to figure out how social media, such as Twitter, had such an impact on making this occur so effectively?
In the beginning of this movement there was no figurehead, rather it was a group of people using the Internet and social media networks like Twitter to battle the Mubarak regime. “Rapid internet interaction through Twitter and Facebook gave information to the protesters about how to counteract the security forces as they tried to disperse the protesters, maps showing locations for protest meetings and practical advice about such things as what to do when teargas is used against groups of protesters.” This quote was in an article that was explaining how these revolutions were able to exert such great power and pressure on the standing government at the time through the use of Twitter. With social media and Internet, it made it so much easier for members of Arab Spring to contact one another, make plans and even executive massive protests at ease.
One article I found extremely interesting was an article that was talking about how Arab Spring may be losing fight against ISIS. ISIS is huge right now, and I believe it would be very interesting to compare and contrast the two of these groups through their use of social media as a medium, their impact and their accomplishments to date.
The group first tried to determine what topics and articles that we would write on the vast topic that is Bitcoin. Alex, a 4th year Computer Science major on the team, led the group’s discussion as he is currently working on a large Bitcoin related social media project. The first step was trying to get a better understanding of exactly what Bitcoin is and how it works a form of exchange. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto, who had a vision to create “A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”
The group then split up to do more investigative research on Bitcoin and any related news. The articles that I focused on were about the social media aspect and it’s relation to Bitcoin. Ideas ranged from Bitcoin following the trend of early 2000s social media to how social media impacts the price of Bitcoin as people speculate in real time around the globe. As new digital currencies become more readily available in the near future Bitcoin’s fate will depend on how it matches up against them. Another article highlighted the most popular Bitcoin purchases on Overstock.com. Most purchases were fairly mundane which some say is evidence of the currencies success.
Prior to class on Thursday, I was unfamiliar with E-Estonia, but upon hearing its description in class, it immediately sparked my interest. E-Citizens? That's crazy! In many ways, Estonia is following ideas which have already been suggested by a number of political thinkers. Specifially, I'm talking about online voting. Estonia allows citizens to vote in elections from their personal computer, I would think to increase voter turnout. While many people in the US may object to such an idea, saying someone would undoubtably hack into the system, it likely works much better in Estonia sheerly because of its small size. Government officials can keep a closer watch and have better control over the servers that we could have in the US. Online voting has then spiraled into online everything - registering businesses, paying taxes, looking up health records, even paying for parking or vending machines. Everything is further connected, founded in order to make things easier, and innovative. Should the server remain secure and functioning, I would think E-Estonia would skyrocket Estonia's economy. More relevant to our course, though, is the social implications of an E-society. If you can do so much from home, what happens to community?
I am excited to learn more about E-Estonia, and I wonder if it is the direction the world is heading. I still have not learned very much about E-citizenship, but I know it wil be an interesting topic with interesting implications. If you can have citizens in all areas of the world, it would really break down the idea of geography weighing heavily on community and notions of nationalism. I want to know how this society really came about and is sustained, the role of social media, and the overall satisfaction of Estonians.
In class we began to research and discuss the Chinese blogosphere. It is interesting that because sites such as Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China, many Chinese people choose to blog on sites such as Weibo in order to express their opinions. One aspect that we discussed was the fact that sites such as Weibo are under constant scrutiny from the Chinese government and many bloggers have been arrested because of their posts, whether they are highly popular political activists with millions of followers or teenagers who spread false rumors. I was aware of the amount of censorship of social media in China, but it remains very surprising to read about the extent to which Chinese authorities are cracking down on bloggers. Despite this, the blogosphere seems to have become the voice of the people in China. We also discussed the human flesh search engine, which is a quite frightening way for internet users to target and attack an individual. This entails the publication of all of the individual’s personal information in order to publicly humiliate them. Doing so is now a prosecutable crime in China, but it remains a fascinating yet scarily efficient form of cyber bullying. Going forward, I am intrigued to learn more about the effects of government involvement in the Chinese blogosphere and how people in China use the blogosphere for political and social reasons.
In my initial research of Occupy US, I learned the history and general timeline of the movement. I was surprised to learn that it originated with the Arab Spring; I previously wasn't aware that the two movements were aligned. Although Occupy is no longer at it's peak, it is still a large, international movement and very present online. There are live streams, videos, articles, radio podcasts and so on to appeal to as many people's media tastes as possible. Further, there are community engage groups for discussion.
Additionally, there was an article of someone who lived in the Occupy camps for a few months on Wired. She wrote about the death of Occupy and how Occupy's media was largely responsible. They didn't tell the truth about what was going on in the camps, therefore killing the movement. Interestingly, this author focused on the search for community within Occupy...she claimed most people in on the movement were looking for a place where they belonged. This ties into our class perfectly. An international movement (Benedict Anderson), largely online (Rheingold), but still has the element of meeting face to face that Tonnies found to be so important.
Upon initial research, our group collaboratively studied and learned more about what ISIS actually represents. We were interested in finding out more about how the organization is funded, how it began, who it consists of, who it is targeting, what the ultimate goal is, and more. ISIS, which stands for the Islamic State of Iraw and Syria, is an Islamic rebel extremist group controlling terrotiry in Iraq and Syria. A huge segment of our research in the first studio day focused on ISIS’s media campaign and sophisticated media department. The group’s success with regard to recruitment comes from myriad media outlets including t-shirts and merchandise, iPhone applications, YouTube videos, magazines, Facebook, and much more. The group has a presence on almost every media platform. This aggressive ISIS media campaign focuses on recruitment. One article maintained that the organization is so good at recruiting because it appeals to recruits religious identities, it operates as a sophisticated propaganda machine, it exerts a cult-like control, and it uses success as a tool by broascasting their growth and ‘accomplishments.’ In future research, I am interested to investigate what the United States is doing to deal with the situation. I would also like to look into arguments stating that the videos are all staged and fake.
Prior to the first studio session, my knowledge of Anonymous was limited. I was aware that they were a controversial hackivist group, but I was not aware that they played a role in so many events of recent years. Events such as Ferguson, Missouri, the attacks on Charlie Hebdo the Church of Scientology, and other smaller hacking scandals have all been linked to the group, not to mention the fact that they declared their own war on terror. Additionally, I was not aware of how closely tied the group is to social media. Not only do they have a Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook account, but they are also responsible for exposing others' wrongdoing over these accounts. One of the most recent examples is that they announced 9200 Twitter accounts that belonged to people who had ties to terrorism, such as ISIS, and who were trying to recruit others. This type of vigilante justice is represented by the Guy Fawkes mask that covers the members' faces to keep their identities hidden. Additionally, their Robin Hood-esque personas could originate from their beginnings on the website 4chan. Although the controversial website has had its share of issues, there have been various instances where the community has come across some type of outrageous behavior and garnered support until they have eliminated the problem themselves. Although this may not be the most politically correct manner of justice, researching Anonymous has shown me that they are extremely effective at what they do, for better or worse.
When the Arab Spring was occuring in Egypt back in 2011, I paid some attention to it but did not fully understand the extent to which social media played a role in the revolution. Social media with respects to Facebook and Twitter allowed for the protestors to mobilize and as a result this also helped to inform people abroad about the events that were taking place. As a group we looked at articles relating to how the protests started and focused primarily on the role social media played. I watched some videos on Youtube that showed the violence that occurred between the police and protestors. The visual aspect of the revolution was very eye opening as it helped me get a better understanding of the movement. I also looked at a video in which the protestors were singing and chanting how much they wanted the former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak out of office. He had ruled Egypt for over 30 years and the Egyptians were fed up with his dictatorial and oppressive rule. As a result, Hosni Mubarak getting ousted proved to demonstrate that the Arab Spring in Egypt had been a success. I saw footage of the Egyptians celebrating once they heard that Mubarak had stepped down. From this session, I was able to get a brief timeline of how the protest started and also how it ended with Egypt attemping to adopt a more democratic regime.
Prior to the first studio session I knew very little of wikileaks besides the controversy that follows with it. The idea behind it is unique and refreshing. With today's governments and corporations leaving so much hidden from the people, the transparency that wikileaks provides is a positive aspect for everyone, except for those being exposed. While I was reading about wikileaks and the work it has done in the world, it really does improve society and hold countries accountable for the evils they have tried to hide from the world. It provides whistle-blowers (a person who informs on a person or organization engaged in an illicit activity) an anoymous outlet. Also, an interesting aspect of wikileaks is that it was a catalyst for another research topic in our class, the Arab Springs. The influence of wikileaks is constantly growing too; within this past week a Mexicoleaks website was launched. It was created by a journalist who felt the government was censoring the media too much. There apparently is a lot of corruption and scandal that needs to be addressed too. Transparency leads to a better world and wikileaks is doing its part to help.
China has always interested me in regards to most anything. While the general way that humans go about living life is the same across countries, the culture in which people live differ drastically between countries. China has stood out to me, partly because I am Chinese and my grandparents like to talk about the country a lot, but also because of how different it and its people are from the US. China has about four times the amount of people living there compared to the US. Naturally, this enormous population results in many more varying perceptions on lifestyles, laws, and anything else you could possibly think of. With the rise of the internet, and social media in particular, people in China began to find outlets to share their opinions; one such outlet is a popular messaging site known as Weibo. Weibo has been the source of a lot of controversy in China. Information spreads very quickly on this site and within days, or even hours, a single picture can spread across all of China. One instance of this is when a picture of a young Zhang Zetian was posted and soon spread to the point where she was seen as a celebrity. This quick and widespread sharing of information has also caused many problems that the Chinese government is trying to address. There have been many negative cases where people have been unjustly harmed in one way or another. China is trying to decide how they should approach this situation on massive blogging in a manner that most people will agree on.
Today, our group didn't get a lot of "research" done in terms of filling up our Diigo-repository. Instead, we engaged in a very productive conversation. Our group comes from a mixed background: myself, a second year planning to studying science and technology studies (STS) through an interdisciplinary major; Jessica, a fellow second year studying CS; Jane, a fourth year politics students; Sarah, and architecture student; Patrick, a first year planning to double major in CS and anthropology; and Alex, a fourth year CS student who is currently working on Bitcoin as his capstone/graduating thesis project. We all shared our interest and prior experiences with Bitcoin, and projected potential research topics. The conversation quickly turned into a long-winded (but much needed and much appreciated) run-down of Bitcoin, the blockchain, and mining--Alex, our resident 'Bitcoin guru,' provided our discussion with a solid technical foundation. He explained a lot of contradictory items, such as efforts to replace M-pesa (a mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinance service) with a Bitcoin layer being antithetical to the original design values of Bitcoin as a decentralized network. Alex helpfully pointed out a few more technicalities, such as the 1 megabyte limit on each block, the minimum amount of Bitcoin in a transfer (5,400 satoshi), and a watered-down version of hashing.
We have a variety of backgrounds and are already engaging in discussions that reach across disciplines. I suspect that the technical dimensions of our research and scholarship will be clarified and "debunked" by our CS-students, and the societal dimensions of Bitcoin further explored by our non-technical students. From an anthropological perspective, I am so excited to see a trans-diciplinary pidging (or creole/inter-language) already forming. This type of cross-disciplinary collaboration has been written about as a "trading zone," whereby participants "exchange ideas, learn from one another, and, having traded, return to their disciplines, richer for the experience and bearing tangible rewards in the form of improved research" (p. 3). I look forward to working in this group and seeing how our different academic backgrounds merge in our research.
During the first Studio Session my groupmate and I researched the basics of Ukraine's history. I was not too familar with the country and this is what lead me to originally choose Ukraine because I wanted to learn more about it. My groupmate and I had very informative conversations about what she had heard from recent news and I shared information from an NPR show that I heard around this time last year about Crimea. We then went to Wikipedia to get the general gist of the story. I found an article that had a chronological timeline of events so that helped to catch me up. My groupmate also found a YouTube video that was very helpful and explained Ukraine's political past dealing with the EU and Russia and it also discussed things like the Orange Revolution. Now that I have a general idea of the events, next session I plan to look at how the citizens of Ukraine voiced their opinions and views on the internet and social media.
In the same vain as Cat's post, our group spent much of today discussing the two proponents of Wikileaks, Edward Snow and Chelsea (formerly Brendan) Manning. Their role in leaking major government documents through Wikileaks garnered international attention for the gravity of such a breech of government security. Furthermore, it has shown a serious spotlight on Wikileaks as a platform that know what is "really going on" and what this means for terms/the code of conduct for freedom of speech. Should some things still be kept private is something I hope our research of Wikileaks will provide an answer to.
I have followed the case of Chelsea (Brendan) Manning for awhile. I am particuarly intrigued by how he not only (and most obviously) leaked government documents but also was still given rights. For example, one of the last articles I looked at today before class was finished was about how Manning petitioned for government documents that were written and published before her sex change (man to female) be edited with the updated and appropriate gender pronouns (i.e. she, her). I think there is a clear and confining relationship between the U.S. military and homosexuality-- "don't ask, don't tell." The fact Manning was initially hired into high profile, military intelligence while struggling with his sexuality is interesting to me and then, after what he did and also following through with a sex change, that it is under consideration to change the gender pronouns. Ultimately, this all (in my perspective) relates back to freedom of speech and identity, which may as well be one in the same on the web.
Unpacking the layers of Manning's relationship to the military, his sexuality and Wikileaks will reveal a great deal and I am excited to proceed further!
One of the first articles I read regarding WikiLeaks was about the life of Chelsea Manning. It was extremely interesting to learn that a person, who had voiced concern for her mental health, had an identity crisis, and who assaulted an intelligence analyst, was still allowed to obtain access to confidential intelligence information. It seems that someone deemed unstable would have that access removed. Her emotional instability admittedly is what led her to leak thousands upon thousands of documents in an attempt to show the world the truth about war and to persuade conversation and policy change across governments. Her early life and history are so interesting and are important in understanding her motivations in leaking information to WikiLeaks. Since her arrest in 2013, Chelsea, previously Bradley Manning, has started a hormonal gender transformation process.
Interestingly, Julian Assange, the "editor-in-chief" of WikiLeaks had a similar life story. He too had an unstable family, moving almost 30 times within Australia before he reached his mid-teens. His parents divorced and remarried a few times, similar to Manning’s parents, and he was charged with many accounts of hacking into a Canadian corporation at a young age. He developed WikiLeaks in 2006 to publish the truth and expose national governments. Another goal of the project was to protect its anonymous news providers by creating the online “drop box.” WikiLeaks really took off with help from Chelsea Manning, who considered Julian Assange a friend while speaking with Assange anonymously online, though he denies it was him. I find the histories of the people involved in WikiLeaks the most interesting part of the story in general, because I believe their similar backgrounds had a hand in shaping their decisions.
In the first studio session, my group-mate and I worked to achieve a common knowledge foundation before moving forward in our research. My knowledge of the Ukraine crisis included the start of the events in 2013 but did not expand to current news. In order to accumulate this basic knowledge I took the advice of the professor and started at Wikipedia. I have bookmarked four Wikipedia pages in order to provide a solid background and timeline for the events of the Ukrainian crisis beginning two years ago. I began with the general knowledge page titled “Ukrainian crisis” and then added “Euromaidan” and “2014 Ukrainian Revolution”. I also included the page on “Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation” in order to cover the Crimea portion of events that have continued to unfold through today. In an effort to include research of multiple mediums, I found a YouTube video from 2014 with views reaching 3 million, which claims to cover the events in Ukraine up until the date it was published. My group-mate also bookmarked NBC News’ page on the Ukraine in order to include research on current events as well as updates on the situation. Our research up until this point covers the (semi)historical recordings and timelines of the events as well as current events. Moving forward we will focus on the contributions and significance of media and the Internet in the unfolding and intensification of events in the Ukraine.
I chose the Turkey focus for this assignment, because I have limited knowledge of the events of the Gezi Park protests, but hope to learn more. In our preliminary research the group came across a multitude of articles demonstrating the impacts of social media and mobile devices on the movement. Most notably, the government’s own social media reactions were unique. For example, due to the protesters extreme social media use to document police brutality and other abuses, the government created its own social media accounts and used them to “troll” protesters and clog social media feeds. I hope to look into citizen reactions to these government actions.
Another interesting aspect of the events of the Gezi Park protests that I hope to research further is the ownsership of the penguin symbol by the protesters themselves. While the penguin documentary was originally used by CNN to block views of the protests in Turkey, protesters claimed the penguin as a symbol of media censorship and dressed in penguin costumes, spray-painted penguin images, and more to add a comical aspect to the protests. Observing the transition of the penguin from censorship to a symbol of unity against censorship through social media will be interesting.
Another aspect of the protests that I found interesting was the physical lay out of the protest encampment. According to one map of the park during the height of the protests, groups were organized into “neighborhoods” by religion, ethnicity, and other diverse classifications. I hope to look into this further to see if these divides became apparent in the online, social media aspects of the movement.
During the first Studio Session on WikiLeaks, I researched the basics of the organization and the major figures related to it. Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are all key figures that I anticipate will be important in future research. In particular, I think the exposed "Collateral Murder" video would be a significant media text to analyze in the project, because it is often cited by articles as having a major impact upon its release. My group discussed the background knowledge that we previously had about WikiLeaks from other Media Studies courses, which helped direct the research done in our group. One question that I posed to my group towards the end of class was, "would people in the United States care as much as they do about WikiLeaks and complete transparency if no U.S. content was shared by Snowden and Manning?" It's fascinating that WikiLeaks is a global issue, but became prominent in the US media when the exposure is about the US.
From the general-level research I did in class, the theme of private versus public became immediately apparent. One thing that I found to be particularly intriguing was that while WikiLeaks promotes transparency and openness, WikiLeaks as an organization is so private and anonymous. I think this creates an interesting dynamic wherein to reveal massive amounts of confidential information to the public, one must be extremely private.
This dynamic stands in contrast to the trends of Social Media sharing. Typically, the "public" person releases only certain small amount of information that he or she consciously chooses. For example, on sites such as Facebook, one does not allow for complete transparency, such as providing a home address, but may share a photo of the exterior of his or her home. This sort of filter may be comparable to the editing and shortening of extensive documents and film that WikiLeaks prepares and sends to news organizations. I anticipate exploring this public/private sharing dynamic throughout this project.
In approaching my research about Anonymous I had only a very sketchy idea of what the actual structure of the organization was. In my preliminary study, it's clear that is exactly how they want it. Their website (although it's difficult to tell what can actually be attributed to Anonymous because of it's entirely decentralized structure) reads: "Anonymous is not an organization nor a group. Anonymous is an idea. And ideas can not die. Therefore EVERYONE can be Anonymous. Just spread truth, share any post, video or tweet of Anonymous. Or write & submit your own article to AnonHQ! And always stay anonymous, don’t show your face or identity. That is the power of Anonymous. This is about BEING ANONYMOUS." I think Anonymous has become such a powerful organization because it plays deliberately on the open structure and peer-to-peer network of the Internet while still staying anonymous. While most of their work relies on public spectacle, the members and organization itself are supposed to stay out of the limelight. That's an interesting and difficult paradox in many ways since the organization itself relies on a media that they often disdain. And in many ways, their claims of responsibility for their many operations (in Ferguson, against Rupert Murdoch, the Church of Scientology, etc) trouble this idea since while anonymous they are also extremely prominent figures, even if shrouded in Guy Fawkes masks (a reference to V for Vendetta, a 2005 dystopia film). Above all, I think Anonymous is an interesting organization because of their self-claimed role as the Moral police/ vigilante judges of the right and wrong behavior on the Internet. They are the inheritors of everything decentralized and peer-to-peer of the Internet, but it does in the end cause some problems since they sometimes find themselves in cases of conflicting ideological claims- valuing Privacy above all else but using the disclosure of private information as their main weapon against those they perceive as deserving of retribution. And furthermore, if they are the judges of the Internet, they must always be careful to keep due process in mind if they want to keep their place on the White Hat hacktivist moral high ground.
Prior to today's class I knew very little about the Arab Spring. We had talked briefly about it in my Intro to Digital Media class back when I was a first year and I knew it was sometimes refered to as "The Twitter Revolution," but that was really the extent of my knowledge. In today's session I learned a little more about how it got this nickname. A wave of revolutions took place in Tunisia and Egypt, among other countries in close proximity, in 2011 and it was in large part due to social media. Citizens of these countries had been unhappy with the government for a long time, but it took social media outlets including blogs, Twitter, and Facebook to get the movement going. One article I came across touched on the difficulty of explaining how the Arab Spring occurred. What made it difficult was that there was no clear leader rather, cyber-activism and social media was the leader.
In this session we searched for the popular bloggers and trends in China. We searched for both news articles and primary source from the blogs. While the most popular ones includes a wild range of blogs including fashion blogs and those commenting on stock market, there are some interesting blogs concerned about the political situation in China and we looked at specific activists in China, including those who got arrested in the past due to their blog posts(Ai Weiwei, Liu Xiaobo). Hanhan is one of the most interesting blogger since he often comments on political events and seems to avoid the trouble by saying things implicitly. From that we discussed the censorship and Chinese government's influence on the Internet. We also looked into how actions are initiated on the Internet. For example, the human flesh search engine was a popular term in China. It is a way for a group of people on the Internet to target one person, often anonymous at first, and initiate a search on his or her personal information together. Usually they use this information to attack that person. The umbrella revolution in Hongkong was another interesting example on how they organized protest through the Internet. The drastically different opinions in censored mainland blogs and those in Honkong blogs are also something worth further examination. In general, I'm interested in how people interact and organize in Chinese blogosphere and how the intense censorship and political factors in China affect the online community.
In today's class my group started discussing ISIS and their role on social media. Through research, I learned that not only does ISIS create highly graphic and gory videos to recruit members, but they also publish videos of propaganda where ISIS soldiers are featured giving candy to small children and visiting wounded soldiers in hospitals. I think this adds an interesting dimension to the intent of ISIS's use of social media. Clearly, the terrorist group is not only attempting to gain followers by instilling fear through gruesome executions, but they are also now trying to exude an appearance of being an organization that "cares" about its members. Additionally, one article mentioned that ISIS also consistently spreads rumors online claiming that they have raided a particular area or city to intimidate citizens from taking action. Therefore ISIS's online recruitment has transcended its orginal purpose of gaining support, through also leverging the speed and breadth of the internet to seize control of various towns and cities.
I actually knew nothing about Arab Spring before today’s class. So I learned about this series of anti-government protests and violent riots that started in the Middle East in early 2011. Since our group’s topic is specific to Egypt, we tagged news articles relating to Egypt’s political turmoil. What was interesting to me was how Arab Spring was really mobilized through various forms of social media. Bloggers, especially through Twitter, allowed for the widespread knowledge of important events to be taken in by mass amounts of people, both in the area and not. Though I could not personally read the details, I found multiple Facebook events organizing protests in Egypt. Events like these and groups were ways for Egyptians and other supporters to come together and communicate their opinions. This was a form of media that was not as easily censored or manipulated as the news and the people realized this. In this digital age, we are not just reliant on the government or the news to provide us our information. Instead, we can turn to each other, all with our smartphones, capable of capturing images and video, and the internet, that can connect us to strangers far away and give us a platform to speak without being censored.
In today’s studio session, my group and I spent our time finding what we could..find, essentially anything that connected ISIS and social media. What we discovered was astonishing. Articles that detailed how mothers had found their lost children on ISIS media, gruesome videos that showcased beheading after beheading and even contrasting videos showing ISIS passing out candy to children were all found online. My initial thought after our first researching session was “where do we begin?” It was alarming to see that there were so many problems associated with ISIS and that all of these problems were vibrantly showcased through social media. ISIS had twitter accounts, Facebook pages, Instagrams and even apps. However, with each ISIS presence there was a presence of opposition. There were hashtag campaigns to combat ISIS twitter accounts, groups of hackers dedicated to shutting down those accounts, articles detailing the government’s attack through social media and the dark web and so much more. The brief and simple conclusion that my group and I made after our session was that ISIS had a major social media presence that reached men, women and children all over the world but that the movement was being combated with social media as well.
Throughout my research today, it was interesting to see how Wikileaks was able to share its message, while largely avoiding federal charges in various governments. Many of the key players in the Wikileaks space are on the run, seeking political asylum. Additionally, the reactions of various governments, especially the United States, show the confusion that arises once the laws are not updated frequently enough to deal with new technologies, such as social media.
Lastly, I found it especially interesting that Wikileaks was having to take curious routes to obtain funding for its operations. Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal have all publicly refused to process donations that are intended for Wikileaks. Wikileaks, to counter this opposition, has created the Courage Foundation, which focuses on gaining financial resources for individuals in asylum, one of which is Edward Snowden.
I'm really interested in the movement so far, not just looking at what they stand for, but the ways in which they spread their message. I have found a lot of tumblr blogs that were used to spawn the movement, and to solidify and generate a narrative for the "99%." Social media is obviously a huge part of the movement, both in creating and maintaining it, but I think it is going to be exceptionally interesting to look at the ways in which the movement has grown from the original few platforms into a multinational movement. I'm intrigued to keep looking at how the movement is growing today through the internet.
In the first Studio Session we researched the topic to further understand the Gezi Park’s protests’ origins, goals, and methods. We examined the political issues the protesters were originally disputing and the broadened scope of social and human rights issues this grew to include. The backlash by the government was also examined, especially the gross media censorship that the government relied on. Major Turkish news outlets, especially the Turkish CNN and BBC branches, refused to cover the protests, or covered them in a biased and limited manner. In order to combat this, and further protest the lack of human rights and expression this behavior was demonstrating, the protesters turned to social media as an open platform outlet to disseminate their message and give an accurate portrayal of what was occurring. I was particularly interested in the group’s use of twitter in order to disseminate their message, emphasizing the platform design of short, impactful messages and hashtags in order to reach a vast amount of people in a direct and easy manner. The fact that these tweets could easily be re-tweeted in order to spread the message was also interesting, as it encited a very negative response from the government whom attempted to ban the use of twitter. I look forward to doing more research on these types of social media bans and the increased censorship by the government as the protests progressed, and also the current situation regarding social media use in Turkey.
In class today, my group began to research ISIS and its prevalence in social media and the world stage at large. I had heard plenty about ISIS before--a group responsible for the killings of thousands that are not a part of the muslim faith. It is a radical-hate group supported by many all over the world, and they believe that by killing off non-muslims they are helping support and create an Islamic state. After today's session I learned that their efforts are proliferated and furthered by their use of social media. Even those that do not believe in or support the ISIS efforts still follow their twitter page, and have even downloaded their app--which can actively tweet messages for you made by ISIS members. Beyond their social outreach, they post YouTube videos of their killings with their warning messages and threats. These have been viewed by millions of people and have helped spark outrage against them on social media and with government action all over the world. I am now very interested to go further with this project after today, as I think it will not only better my understanding of the ISIS effort on the main news stage today, but show me how social media can effectively control and push a movement forward on large scales.