Blog Post # 3 DTC 356 Unit 2 Take Aways

This unit built upon the foundation set by the first unit. While the first unit discussed how the Internet evolved, and how it has initially changed our society, the second unit talked about the Internet today, and how it is being utilized. We first started out the unit by discussing the history and legacy of social networking. How it evolved over the years from small sites, with limited markets such as college students, or business professionals, to the broad and open platforms that exist today. There is a great infographic that we discussed in class,  entitled a “Short History of Social Media”, and presented by Shea Bennett. It was a cool way to show in the form of a pictorial timeline how social networks have evolved. It can be found at http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/files/2011/08/history_social_medla.jpg

 

Then we moved right into how social networking is being used today. This encompassed how it is used positively and how it is used neutrally. Social networking is a great way to efficiently spread information. It keeps people up to date, and makes it easy to get a message out to a large amount of people. After all, on Facebook, the largest social network today, there are after all, according to their about page, over a billion active users. However, while it could easily be used as a method of communication, a way to launch direct action…it often is not. There is a little word that gets thrown around called slactivism. “ Repost if you want to save the rainforest!” or “ like to stop animal cruelty!” or “ change your profile picture to protest this!” simply liking and reposting or modifying your account to show support of a cause, but not actually doing anything about it in the physical world, to change the situation is slactivism, or in other words, lazy, slacking activism. The picture that I found off of the IPhone app IFunny does a great job poking fun at this idea, and commonplace Internet attitude. While liking to show support is positive, it does not raise the money or resources to actually feed hungry people in a developing nation. However, once we identified what slactivism was, we switched to activism, and how individual organizations functioned.

So, the focus of the final part of the unit was devoted to analyzing activism on the Internet and how social network has aided and hindered it.  Individual organizations, such as PETA, the Audubon Society, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving not only have websites, but they utilize social networking as well. Some however, such as PETA do a great job of integrating social networking. They use Twitter to pass along news, Pinterest, YouTube to post related videos, and they have lots of interaction with the users that follow them. On the

other hand, some of the other organizations present them selves as if they have simply just jumped on the social network bandwagon. They have very sparse, and unorganized social networking pages. This makes it seem as if they didn’t give it much thought and are not utilizing the pages to their full potential. In order to stay active, an organization must continuously recruit and encourage young prospective members to share their views. This way the next generation can carry on the work and keep the organization alive. Social networking sites are a great way to do this. Many organizations such as Green Peace are great examples of this., there Face Book profile contains lots of information, and it is aimed toward youth, with cool designs (https://www.facebook.com/greenpeaceusa ).

Overall, this unit was really interesting. I learned a lot about how social networking has changed society, and about the positives and negatives that go along with it.