Web206: The final weeks

Relationships Online
The parameters of relationships has changed since social media became a form of communication and sharing. Prior to the Internet we could only have relationships with people whom we had met. Now we can have relationships with total strangers, friends of friends and fellow gamers on the other side of the world.

On Twitter we can feel connected to celebrities if we follow their Twitter feed or like their Page on Facebook. If a celebrity we are following retweets us personally, or sends us a direct message – we get excited because that tightens the bond we have with them.

Johnson tells a story about TV queen Oprah tweeting about her dog having a tick. She asked her followers the best way of removing the tick. Of course her feed was overwhelmed with replies as Oprah has more than a million followers. However as Johnson states “that isolated query probably elicited thousands of responses. Who knows what small fraction of her @ replies she has time to read? But from the fan's perspective, it feels refreshingly intimate” (Johnson, 2009).


Social media
Social media is a strong avenue for people to share information, images and personal details with their friends. And there are hundreds of social networking sites out there which people can join for the purpose of communication and networking. There are many advantages to sharing on social media – you can keep in touch with friends overseas, family who live interstate, or you can even be friends with your next door neighbour who you see every day.

Shirky states “Publishing an essay and having 3 random people read it is a recipe for disappointment, but publishing an account of your Saturday night and having your 3 closest friends read it feels like a conversation, especially if they follow up with their own accounts” (Shirky, 2003).

Why do so many people share their most intimte thoughts over the Internet in public spaces? Do they think nobody is reading? Or are they totally aware people are reading? Do they do it for attention?

Twitter
I've had a Twitter account for over a year and have only retweeted from other people. During this subject we had to create our own tweets using links and hashtags. It was difficult to find suitable articles to link to and create an eye-catching headline which would grab people's attention, but I did it. Since those tweets I've accumulated several followers, retweets and comments about my tweets. So this tells me Twitter is best used for original content...well, creating one's own tweets rather than retweeting others.

Facebook
Some may make aliases for publishing online, in fact it is probably best to do so. I think it's important to keep your private live and your professional life separate. However some social media sites require your real identity. Whereas it is acceptable to have more than one Twitter account, Facebook frowns upon this. Sengupta states “Facebook has sought to distinguish itself as a place for real identity on the Web. As the company tells it's users: 'Facebook is a community where people use their real identities...the name you use should be your real name as it would be listed on your credit card, student ID, etc'” (Sengupta, 2012).

However how do we know people are abiding by Facebook's rules? It is still possible to create fake accounts for Facebook, or one for private use and one for professional/academic use.

I'm constantly amazed at the content which people share online. In fact I am sometimes discusted when I see inappropriate images of people in comprosmising position, or those who are constantly checking in at pubs and clubs and upload images of themselves drinking cocktails every weekend. Is this expected to start a conversation? What conversation are they attempting to start with this form of communciation? Are they not concered with how this portrays them? Do they not have a care in the world? And these people are using their real identities and are friends with their employer on Facebook!

Even though social media is available for all to use, do you have to share your inner most thoughts and desires. Have some dignity, people. Don't wear your hearts on your sleeves or it will come back and bite you.

What not to put on social media:

• don't update your relationship status until you've been in that relationship for more than a few months
• don't post inappropriate photos of yourself in compromising situations, ie bars with strangers, motel rooms, taking drugs, with a huge bottle of Jim Beam in your hand, choking a cat
• political ramblings
• your religious beliefs
• rude and offensive language
• shocking and horrifying videos of people being tortured or injured
• your employment situation
• DON'T BE FRIENDS WITH YOUR BOSS!

---

References

Johnson, S. (2009, June 5). How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live. Time Magazine Online. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902818-3,00.html 

Sengupta, S. (2012, November 12). Facebook's False Faces Undermine Its Credibility. New York Times Online: Technology. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/technology/false-posts-on-facebook-undermine-its-credibility.html

Shirky, C. (2003, February 8). Clay Shirky's Writings About The Internet: Economics & Culture, Media & Community, Open Source. Retrieved from http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html 

Web206: Topic 1.3: Cut, Paste and Copyright (and Information Overload)

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/dermartin/2955625983/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Information Overload

Information overload is a concern these days with so much information available on the Internet. Back in the days before the Internet when everything was printed - printing costs were high and demand and accessibility for certain material was low. Nowadays because EVERYTHING is available online and mainly for free, how do we filter out what we don't want? How much time do you spend deleting spam from your inbox? How many ads do you avoid while surfing the net? How much do you believe? Who are trusted, reliable and credible sources? Most things published online have NOT gone through an editor or a gate-keeper so people are able to air their grievances and express their opinions to anybody around the world.


Video: Clay Shirky's "It's not information overload, it's filter failure"

Video courtesy of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabqeJEOQyI

My notes from this video:

• Facebook has one of the BEST thought-out and executed privacy management tools of all the social networking sites. What the problem is though is that managing our privacy is an unnatural act - it isn't something that anybody is good at setting up and doing
• Privacy is a way of managing information flow
• We don't tend to worry about having a discussion with a friend in the street and somebody overhearing us. But we do worry about what is 'overhead' online, ie. status updates and relationship statuses on Facebook

We have had information overload in some form

or another since the 1500s.

What's changing now is the filters we used for most of that

500 year period are now breaking (Shirky, 2008).

Copyright

Everything we write is almost always based on something that someone else has written. Privacy is the infringement of copyright, while plagarism is the failure to give credit. If we are repeating something another person has said - we need to credit that person - EVEN IF they stole it from somebody else!

As a Web Designer we need to think about the images and content we create. Do we want others to be able to share our images? Re-use them? Modify them? Or make money from them? We need to either copyright our designs (visual or text) or apply a Creative Commons Licence. This needs to be enforced for future Internet users. Generations to come need to be aware of the dangers and penalties of copyright - whether we agree with the current copyright laws or not!

Lawrence Lessig (US lawyer and anti-copyright campaigner) is well known for his stand on copyright legislation and believes we need a reform because the current copyright laws are smothering creators. Creators are not able to express themselves without the fear of being penalised for plagarism. He believes creativity is not based on coming up with completely new ideas, but from modifying existing ideas. Everything old is new again.

Berry states "the paramount claim of Lessig's prognosis about the fate of culture is that we will be unable to create new culture when the resources of that culture are owned and controlled by a limited number of private corporations and individuals (Berry, 2005). He goes on to say the Creative Commons network might enable sharing of cultural goods and resources amongst possessive individuals and groups. But these goods are neither really shared in common, nor owned in common, nor accountable to the common itself. It is left to the whims of private individuals and groups to permit reuse.

Berry isn't a fan of Lessig and believes that Lessig's attempt to make it easier to understand which creative works can, or cannot, be used for modification has spawned a monster with a thousand heads and resulted in a more complex issue as the current copyright act (Berry, 2005).

As a web designer not only do we need to consider copyrighted images, but also code from other websites. Consider for instance the common practice of downloading html tags that define the layout of a website. Even if you don't include any of the content and only use the html and css coding to style a new webpage - is that copyright infringement? Are web designers obligated to give credit to the original author? What if that author stole it from another...and from another...and so on? The copyright issue in this situation is unclear (Snapper, 1999).

Plagiarism harms the author who receives no credit, but unless there is also copyright infringement, an author has few legal grounds for claiming economic loss for a plagiarised use of his work. There is no direct financial harm.

Snapper believes that the actual harm is not to the author, but to the reader. If sources are not credited - the reader can do no further research via the (un)credited sources.

An interesting point which Snapper raises is although academics write a great deal and profit from their writings with academic recognition, they rarely expect to make much money from copyright licenses.

And another...electronic publications lowers both the cost and the financial risk of publication, and therefore suggests that the electronic publication industry needs fewer copyright protections that the hard-copy publication industry (Snapper, 1999).

It is more likely that as the Web becomes a more important tool for research and distribution of information, we will see a slight shift in the importance that is attached to piracy and plagiarism. In order to protect the scholarly community against plagiarism in cyberspace, we may need to lessen the property protections of the copyright owner in cyberspace.

Snapper asks this in relation to Fair Use:

Scholars should be able to keep a copy of a source -

but this is considered plagiarism.

Therefore it would seem reasonable that copying

for the sake of archiving electronic information

be seen as 'fair use'.

An interesting question from Clay Shirky on the topic of information overload, but I think it suits the current copyright laws:

If we have the same problem for a long time -

maybe it's not a problem - it's a fact (Shirky, 2008)!

Sources of images

As a Web Designer I am always trying to source images to use which are permitted or licence free. This presentation was created by a fellow student, Katrina Comyns. She discusses remixing and re-using stock images and explains the difference between licenced, free and royalty free.

Un-complicating the complex world of remixing and reusing Stock Photography - A guide for graphic designers on Prezi

Here is a list of sources which offer free, royalty free, licence free, or paid images:

• Clip art from within Word etc. (this typically comes with the license to use the program)
• Free clip art sites (Google them but make sure they are free - many want a fee) OpenClipArt is a good one
• Royalty free art (This is art where you pay a once-off fee and can then use without paying royalties. 123RF is a good one.
• Stockphoto
• StockFreeImages 
• Shutterstock
• Freepik
• Getty images
• Wikimedia Commons
• Stock.XCHNG
• Creative Commons
• Flickr - search under 'Attribution license"

---

References:

Berry, D (2005) On the 'Creative Commons': a critique of the commons without commonalty. Retrieved from http://fsmsh.com/1155

Comyns, K (2012) Un-complicating the complex world of remixing and reusing Stock Photography - A guide for graphic designers. Retrieved from http://prezi.com/aowz1lv9k-pm/un-complicating-the-complex-world-of-remixing-and-reusing-stock-photography-a-guide-for-graphic-designers/

Shirky, C (2008) Web 2.0 Expo NY: Clay Shirky (shirky.com) It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LabqeJEOQyI

Snapper, J (1999) On the Web, plagiarism matters more than copyright piracy. Dept Humanities, Institute of Technology, Chicago.