LEVEL 9 - Cyberspace Victory

What seems to be the question of the week and perhaps the year


Do you think Wikileaks is wrong?


I know I should have an answer but I don't. Yes I think Wikileaks is a fairly good idea and yes Wikileaks seems to give a fair voice but there are no absolutes here. Obviously Julian Assange is not as confident as he was, but who would be after being labelled a "hacker".

What good can come from hacking? What does one achieve from breaking into personal information  and revealing it. Should businesses who have invested in an e-commerce strategy be under constant fear of hackers getting into their system? Where is the line drawn if even the hackers are scared of hackers? Even Assange admits to being paranoid sometimes.

"A low grade fever of paranoia runs through the Wikileaks community" (Khatchadourian, 2010, pg 2)

It seems that the power now lies in the virtual world instead of the real. Comparing this to activist campaigns who, in the past, have walked the streets and created picket lines, it looks like we are now creating a cyberspace battle field. The website Crowd Surfing writes that the new phenomenon is "slacktivism", whereby people join virtual petitions that can assist with activist campaigning. Crowd Surfing believes that social media is 

"reawakening popular activism" (2010) 

So I guess we can thank Julian Assange for opening up the eyes of some more ignorant folks to hactivism and slacktivism. Let's just hope that the cyberspace activist community protect themselves from open fire.

                 

SOURCES

Khatchadourian R, 2010, 'No Secrets: Julian Assange's mission for total transparency', The New Yorker, June 7, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=2

Crowd Surfing, 2010, accessed 21/9/2011, http://www.crowdsurfing.net/2010/12/18/the-year-of-slacktivism-and-hacktivism/

LEVEL 8 - Even Hot_Mumma69 is a Professional

The story of South Korea's struggle to citizen journalism.

Imagine this:
Hot_Mumma69 writes an article for the Hankyoreh newspaper in South Korea, she discusses her political preference and gives evidence based on her research. She’s proud of her work, hands it to her boss and he tears it up in her face. BAM! Bye bye career. 




So maybe it wasn’t that harsh but in the 1980’s freedom and full advocacy was hard to come by. Media outlets and major news stations were the watchdogs of the Government, in a time where no one could discuss any political allegations, the audience was given a one-sided view on almost everything.

In Isozaki's books he discusses the ways the Government has control and what they have control over.

"The South Korean state controlled resources and their distribution in all spheres, including politics, economics, social welfare and autonomous activities by non-governmental groups" (2002, pg 288) 

It looked as though South Korea was plummeting into the dark abyss of full Governmental control and Hot_Mumma69 was out of a job.  But not all was lost. By 2003 a new Prime Minister was elected, Roh Moo-Hyan, (we’re going to call him Roh03). Roh03 was given the opportunity to turn the current state of South Korea around and his first order of action after he was elected was to allow his first interview as PM to OhMyNews. OhMyNews was one of the first online newspapers that made room for the public to speak. It is an open source style of news reporting where people can send in their stories and they can be published online. Their slogan ‘every citizen is a reporter’, fits well in the topic of citizen journalism and as discussed in the tutorials can have issues. However, considering OhMyNews has almost 15 million visits per day, I would say it’s working. Not only as an online portal but as a place where South Korean’s can safely have a voice. There are still some restrictions in South Korea, for example, the current Government is able to limit the expression of ideas that circle the communist party of North Korea. In other words, they don’t like it when you are pro-North Korean. But apart from that you are practically free. 

The question that arises from this story is,how far will citizen journalism really go?

                                          

I believe there is still a long road ahead for the boundaries of professional vs amateur to blur completely, but I also argue that without citizen journalism there would not have been civil disobedience and ultimately Non-Governmental Organisations. We want the amateur to become the professional. We want the girl to become the journalist. As Bruns states in his article:

“the very term ‘journalist’ has been broadened to include not only core news professionals, but also commentators, hosts, and a variety of other media personalities” (2009).

Because not only do we want Hot_Mumma69 to be a professional in the bedroom, we want her to become a professional journalist too.

           

SOURCES:

Bruns A, 2009, 'News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: New Directions for e-Journalism' 
URL: http://produsage.org/files/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalism.pdf

Isozaki N, 2002, South Korean Advocacy for Democratization,the state and NGO's: Perspective from Asia, Shin'ichi Shigetomi ed. Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

LEVEL 7 - If you like that then you'll LOVE this!

"If you liked The Italian Job then you'll probably enjoy the movie The Town."

Just a day in the life of an employee at Video Ezy. I feel I say this all the time. I refer to popular movies to make my customers watch a non-popular movie. Classic selling technique, or so I thought.


The readings by Chris Anderson and Clay Shirky point out that success is no longer through popular demand but rather through specific niche markets. The "Arthouse" movies I would call it. But the majority of them are not Arthouse films they are either small-budget films, film festival movies or word of mouth films that slowly make their way up to the top of the food chain. For example, The Lost Thing, is in popular demand at Video Ezy because of the amount of awards and nominations it has.

My boss has had to change the way we market our DVDs because popular movies are not making us enough money, therefore he has opened up a market for the customers who want obscure titles and TV series that are difficult to get. His target is the niche market of movies that are continually in customer demand. Anderson calls these titles "misses".


"A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability." (Anderson, 2004)


So when Anderson disccusses the rise of these niche markets due to the Internet, he is also talking about my part time job, because I use these marketing strategies to create hype of good movies. I never thought a reading could hit close to home but this has topped it for me. The ever-changing market of these niche titles will only get bigger.




So if you liked this blog then you'll enjoy working at Video Ezy.