Input?

Like a few of you folks out there, I’m struggling to actually write my essay. I have planned it out carefully for the last few weeks, but when the time came to actually begin, I couldn’t. Does anyone else experience the This? What kinds of methods help you over come this? I know my thesis, …

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Eclipse Phase: Politics and Interactions

In the previous blog I discussed the implications of social networks and social economy within the context of Eclipse Phase, in this blog I will be covering the issues presenting in Eclipse phase regarding politics and governance in relation to individuals and social interactions. The political systems within the setting of Eclipse Phase are varied …

Eclipse Phase: Social Networks and Social Economies

In this two-part blog post, I will be examining and relating social media concepts to the fictional setting of Eclipse Phase, a tabletop roleplaying game where the technological singularity came and went, causing what amounts to an apocalypse to occur on the earth. To properly apply the social media concepts and contextualize them in relation …

Social intrusion

Cyberbole, or the extensions of biases within the domain of media wherein social media or technology is described as unquestionably evil or effortlessly and endlessly helpful to the society it becomes a part of, is a symptomatic aspect of our increasing reliance and usage of technology on a faster and faster pace. (Briggs et. all) …

Be Your Selves

Thompson notes in his article “Be Your Selves”, “The internet and social media don’t create new personalities; they allow people to express sides of themselves that social norms discourage in the “real world”. Although the internet can be a scary place where people explicitly share their opinions in a blatant manner, it can also be …

Why I Don’t Post Selfies

After reading Murray’s “Notes to Self: The Visual Culture of Selfies in the Age of Social Media”, I became curious as to how many selfies I currently have on my Instagram. I chose to analyze my Instagram account considering it’s the social media platform I use the most. From my first post in 2014 up …

Social Media and the Epistolary Novel

Epistolary novels, books in which the story is told through letters or other artifacts supposedly generated by the characters, have been around for centuries. Dracula, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and The Woman in White are all examples of classic epistolary novels (Doogan). However, in the past decade or two, the rise of the internet …

What factors might affect the construction of our imagined audiences?

Our concept of self, ideal self, and the looking glass self can affect the construction of our imagined audiences. Our concept of self is a work in progress because it changes along with changes in social structure. Therefore, we may believe that our imagined audiences expect to see the changes we make in response to …

Sophia: the first robot to gain citizenship

Robotics aren't new to us, but there's a deep rooted fear that robots will somehow take over the Earth and destroy all humans, which is perpetuated through many different forms of media. For example, books like I Robot, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and movies such as Terminator. Perhaps that's mostly because of Western …

Instagram’s obsession with animals

I don't use Instagram much, but through a friend I discovered that apparently there's a whole hashtag just dedicated to specific dog breeds--- in this case, a Mudi, but there are tons of others. This got me thinking about how often people make separate social media accounts for their animals. This happens across most of …