I never used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram before, one main reason is my friends almost do not have this social software, and are not being allowed to. Correspondingly, for the social interactive needs, we use Sina Blog and Wechat. But what I want to talk about is not network firewall. I want to bring about such a change today from such a new Internet that is not suited to this era. In particular, what kinds of problems and challenges have arisen from the various revolutionary changes brought about by Social Media and Social Network? And those things we are going to prepare, our society is ready (in a worldwide range)? Maybe we are not ready, are not we all imaginary about the constructive imagination in each of us all?

Network Information environment offers us a more transparent and malleable culture form. (Benkler, Y., 2006) Like every new thing is faced with the subversion or collapse of civilization, the social network changed us from information collection. When I was little, my parents and I gathered information and news from the newspaper, they are boring, with limitation, but in some perspective, trustful.(We may not see everything from it, but what we already saw is real.) Right now, since the explosion of social media, people have more channels to accept news and information, they think it’s great to get diversity views. However, depends on their social circle, people would like to interact with somebody who has the same values. In this pattern, information from social media with bias and subjective, sometimes even made up.

The more serious situation is when people get into reading, thinking, it causes discussion. A discussion in social media mostly plays around with the same circle called” The echo-chamber”. The echo-chamber effect is a condition arising in an online community where participants find their own opinions constantly echoed back to them, thus reinforcing a certain sense of truth that resonates with their individual belief systems. Participants within online collaborative spaces will always act in human ways: that is, people will gravitate toward and will be more comfortable communicating with those who share their ideas, conceptions of the truth, cultures and communication styles.(McRae, P., 2010) People have the autonomy to choose the channels of information, but individual choices with emotions and positions still lead to the homogenization of information. More adapt to social identity and carve them into a “safe place”. (Baym, N. K., & Boyd., D, 2012) An importance sense of community with a network and overlapping social ties.

Even though this situation is not such serious apparently, it reminds me to think of Hannah Arendt’s talk about people began to lose the ability to judge independently, do things what themselves cannot believe. (Arendt, H., 2005) Same as The Lucifer Effect in real life, the digital interactive of homogeneous network environment could cause cyber violence in a potential damage.

In China, one typical cyber violence called: Human Flesh Search(HFS), is a type of collective online action aimed at finding with certain events and Publication of collective online actions related to the specifics of targeted individual facts. It related to tracking and posting may help to solve a crime or disclose someone who is allegedly engaged in the corrupt or unethical behavior. (Ong, 2012) But it’s more serious currently, the public can do almost anything in a cyber environment to support or discredit individuals, even beyond the moral threshold. Even more frightening is that they are real user groups, not bots.

For people who violate morality without breaking the law, society informality punishes them by the Internet. When we talk about punishment, there are roughly two kinds of sanctions in the civilized society now: One is to punish a criminal in the state system by law; The other type of punishment is social informality, which imposes a punishment through various social rules. What needs to aware is the second one’s rule is subjective and sometimes arbitrary. Because of the homogeneity of social media, people’s voices are actually self-protection or self-noble embodiment, they depend on social media as a board platform, do justice. However, what I am thinking is the fair of compensation. When public use Internet to spy on people’s privacy, nobody considers who should do it, who has the right to do that critic and at the same time, in what way. In the end, the result can be unexpected. Peter Steiner’s famous cartoon in The New Yorker in 1993 once said “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” (Steiner 1993). Through the current Internet, even dog would not have privacy.

Ironically, the physical reasons why people judge crucially on the Internet is similar to massacre behavior in real life.

Firstly, they believe the responsibility could be separate to each person, that means they do not break the law, and it’s hard to figure who should take that responsibility, in some range, they are faced the pressure of majorities, neutral also embodies the attitude of support here (Jensen, R., 2008)

Secondly, they believe they are one of the “noble” community, a justice behavior of words and deeds will have more supporters from society since everyone wants to be ethnic. Thus, bringing self-satisfaction to people.

Furthermore, they have the obligation to speak freely(power). More than these, Internet blurs each person’s identity, makes them could not directly face the target people. Physically, let them express boldly.

Pathetically, this is not a social media or Internet problem, but rather digital media that exposes social issues. So, except understand the function of algorism and logical for prevent being taken advantage by the commercial and political community, at any time, keep an eye on the environment and society in which we live.

 

 

Benkler, Y. (2006). “Introduction: a moment of opportunity and challenge” in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, 1-18. http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks_Chapter_1.pdf

Arendt, H. (2005). Responsibility and judgment. Random House Digital, Inc..

McRae, P. (2010). Forecasting the future over three horizons of change. ATA Magazine, (90), 4.

https://www.teachers.ab.ca/Publications/ATA Magazine/Volume 90/Number4/Pages/Forecasting-the-Future-Over-Three-Horizons-of-Change.aspx

Baym, N. K., & Boyd, D. (2012). Socially mediated publicness: An introduction. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56(3), 320-329. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08838151.2012.705200

Ong, R. (2012) “Online Vigilante Justice Chinese Style and Privacy in China,” Information and Communications Technology Law 21(2): 127–45.

Jensen, R. (2008). The myth of the neutral professional. Questioning library neutrality: Essays from Progressive librarian, 89-96. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.523.4060&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The future of storytelling (FoST) festival is an immersive storytelling event covers exhibits, panels conversations, lectures from thinkers and practitioners from diverse fields, interactive performance about how to use the cutting-edge technologies, media and communication ways to telling stories in the future. [FoST] On October 6^th, I went to Staten Island for experience interesting people’s projects and explorations of storytelling.

The consequence beyond my thought, I was excepted to just see some VR or AR shows and immerse in a thrill of the chase. It was thrilling and also meaningful when I finish the lecture about “Refining Identity through the lens of the media”.

The talker contains Wendy Calhoun, a writer, and producer of TV-serous; Joe Lewis, head of comedy, drama & VR Amazon studios and Jose Antonio Vargas, Kay Wilson Stallings. Wendy said she refuses to tell “color-blind” [2008] stories, for colorblind stories encourages the writers to be generic in their choice. In fact, the choice of giving a person or actor a cultural specificity could bring the character to life in a much more authentic way. [FoST] The reason why we avoid to express our true thought is that we could not be accepting the situation or the status quo of bias, prejudice and people’s thoughts based on their culture, community, and faith. [2004] She then pointed out that diversity is so much more than race and gender “When we talk about diversity, we say the female, people with color…Diversity is also height, weight…So many different things in the world.” That reminds me to think of Vinopal’s article [2006] about workforce diversity, the homogenization of gender, color and social category, generation, diversity covers so board range of society. We may see the importance of co-operating, for the enterprise culture, better serve the diverse community. but the reason why we still could not see the diversification may not only for the pipeline issues but the dishonesty. The dishonesty causes the ignorance of bias, that could not be measured by any questionnaire or interview. When information professional arranges the records, empathy matters, know the story and emotion of others and really put ourselves in their shoes. What I agree with is the importance of take action, no matter in gender realm or others, like Wajcman’s article let more female get into science, not only talk about what we should deserve and do nothing, only if the situation been changed, fewer judgement about what kind of job should what kind of people do. [2010] Annevar Bush’s As We May Think said scientific reasoning should not only limit to logical processes, that could impede our way for understanding the world. [1945] If we see technology as physical devices, it’s hard to create substantial technology progress. Yochai Benkler [2006] mentions social production in his book. If discards the threaten of intellectual property, people transact knowledge by lower cost, highly effective and board way. We are already breaking through the wall of disciplines, more identity conscious needs breakthrough.

The information heritage needs authentic, research and scrutiny, by achieves, librarians, writers…, Wendy Calhoun than describes her experience of research, once she needs to write a chapter about Kentucky, and she never been there before, so she went there and talked with Kentucky’s police officer, asked them questions. One officer named Walt told her she’s real-life bullet. She said, “Compare actually see where she lived, actually heard what she did, plus, the little more stories as we walk into the room and pitch it.”[FoST], that could be the real passion of doing the job. People were doing that have the extraordinary responsibility to make sure that all stories authentic as possible. You have to do the research. Do it right, not to not do it.

 

 

Work Citing

“FoST FESTIVAL.” Future of StoryTelling | Reinventing the Way Stories Are Told, futureofstorytelling.org/fest.

Burdman, Pamela (2008). “Exposing the truth and fiction of racial data” (PDF). California Magazine. Cal Alumni Association: 40–46. Retrieved 18 January 2008.

Jennifer Vinopal(2006). “The Quest for Diversity in Library Staffing: From Awareness to Action” In the Library with the Lead Pipe, www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org quest-for-diversity, 2006.

Robert Jensen(), “The Myth of the Neutral Professional” Progressive Librarian No. 24, 2004.

Judy Wajcman (2010). “Feminist theories of technology” Cambridge Journal of Economics, Volume 34, Issue 1, Pages 143–152, 1 January 2010.

Bush, Vannevar (1945). “As We May Think” Atlantic Monthly 176, pp. 101-108, July 1945.

Pawley, C. (2003). “INFORMATION LITERACY: A CONTRADICTORY COUPLING” Library Quarterly, 73(4), 422-452.

Benkler, Y. (2006). “Introduction: a moment of opportunity and challenge” in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press, 1–18.