User talk:Cls00085

Wiki Exercise 1
I would describe my online presence as controlled. All of my accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are private so I regulate who sees any and all of my content. I do have a Tumblr blog but there are no pictures of me anywhere associated with it and there is only my first name. The only account that is not private and has pictures and personal information about me associated with it is my Pinterest account, but even that is minute, down to a profile picture, name, and where I’m from.

If someone is allowed access to my accounts they know a lot about me but even then an edited version. I don’t really use my Facebook for personal updates and my Twitter is pretty inactive but you can physically see the world through my eyes on Instagram. I check and update that account the most frequently in regard to personal information. As I am studying abroad right now it’s a lot of pictures of castles but at home it’s pretty places by the lake or selfies with my sister. There is not a lot of text or spelling out how I’m feeling involved but the cliché “a picture is worth a thousand words” exists for a reason.

As I mentioned before, Pinterest is my most unfiltered medium of tech and honestly my favorite. For the way I have come to use that site, it’s very creative. I don’t just “pin” recipes and lifehacks, I have boards for specific feelings, aesthetics for books or characters that I love, and even boards with artsy pictures of my hometown and state. I love the evolution that has happened with this platform and I am constantly updating and creating new boards to reflect inspiration I’ve had. Those boards speak a lot about me without being any of my own, original content. Every image on my profile is someone else’s creation that I have curated into categories to tell a story or express a feeling and I think that’s pretty awesome.

The idea of online presence relates to always on culture in that even if I am not physically present or even using a profile actively, what I’ve posted there in the past exists anyway. I haven’t tweeted in god knows how long now but people can scroll back and see my thoughts from a few years ago. They can not necessarily know who I am now, but they can see who I was then. I also always have Pinterest open in a tab or on my phone, it’s my go-to mindless activity and creative outlet when I can’t be bothered to create something myself from scratch. I am constantly connected to it even if I’m just scrolling through hundreds of random pins.

I feel like compared to others, I might not be as “present” online if you are looking for information about me as a person. I am very active on my Tumblr but no one can associate that back to me in an easily identifiable way. In general, I don’t feel that I post anything that could be bad for my future getting employed or anything like that, I just like keeping things to myself and those close to me. I have a couple of people in my life who have the URL for my blog but it’s because they are interested in the same thing that I blog about. In general, my online presence is there but it’s not complete.

Cls00085 (discuss • contribs) 18:31, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Comments
This was a really interesting read. I agree with a lot of what you are saying and have a pretty similar relationship to my social media as you seem to. I am also a big fan of Pinterest and, like you, it is my most unfiltered platform but it is also the place I don't have many real life friends looking through my pins and boards so on some level I also feel it is my most private social media. Also having the ability to make boards private just for your own viewing makes my Pinterest even more private. The connection you have made briefly to always on culture, and the fact a lot of it is just mindless scrolling on your phone is interesting as I think that social media is so easy to be always present on and needing to be up to date with everything new, a lot of it does turn into mindless scrolling. Overall this was a really good post! Bex.frew (discuss • contribs) 15:50, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

It is very interesting to see that you have multiple social media platforms that you are actively a part of, but that you are a part of to the extent that you want to be. You maintain privacy to the extent that you want, which is interesting. You explain that despite not always being active online, you are always accessible through social media and thus always-on, a point that I had never really considered when thinking about always-on culture (thank you for another perspective). Despite personally not having Pinterest, it seems like an interesting online culture to be a part of (definitly more organised than Tumblr!). This was an interesting read and well written. Smbromley (discuss • contribs) 12:19, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

I really like your explanations of the different use of your social media accounts. Especially the connection with the always-on theory, I totally agree in this point. I mean every time we log in to Facebook or any other page, we´re remembered, so they kind of saving our datas, username and password. At the point of your privacy settings I think, we all are kind of blindfolded here. Even if we set our accounts to private, how do we know they really private? I think whatever we´re posting is in the internet, no matter from what account or how private we try to be there. I´m kind of critical here, I mean every person who wants to find more information about via the internet just need to try hard enough and dug deep enough. And if you have different accounts, where you show different personal information about, how can you be sure that nobody connects these accounts and build a picture of you in this way? 139.153.66.42 (discuss) 13:28, 7 March 2018 (UTC)Akm00018

I'm thinking more of a layperson in terms of linking my accounts. I would like to think the way I have them setup currently doesn't link anything I don't want to be linked to each other or back to me as an individual (Ex: my Instagram and Facebook are linked because I'm lazy and can't be bothered to make separate posts but my Tumblr is not connected to me or images of me in anyway). I guess if someone really wanted to seek me out and connect something specific back to me, they could just look up my IP address or something but I doubt people make that much of an effort in general. I think that under anything but extreme circumstances, my privacy settings work the way I want them to. Cls00085 (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Claire! I was just wondering what podcasts you enjoyed as you mentioned you enjoy podcasts in your bio! I really enjoy film making podcasts- what are some podcasts you would suggest to somebody who wanted to branch out? Podcasts are great. Anyway, I enjoyed reading your post very much! I hope you are finding your way through the collaborative essay ok! I cannot wait until Thursday when I can finally stop working on it and then we have no more deadlines for this course until April! (I'm so excited!)

Digitalmediafiend (discuss • contribs) 12:07, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise 2
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.cmich.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1002/aps.42/epdf Suler, J. 2005. “Contemporary media forum: The online disinhibition effect”, International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 2: 184-188.]

This article by John Suler addresses ideas associated with disinhibition in online interactions. The purpose of this article was to give a brief over view of how online interactions differ from face to face interactions in respect to how much information is revealed by people and how they may act differently because of the lack of nonverbal cues. While this was not a formal study, it was a useful overview of online communication patterns and tendencies that differ from what is known and expected in face to face interactions. This is useful in my personal research project regarding always on culture and Youtube because it gives psychological insight into the thought processes of both people who produce content like vlogs and those who leave comments. It specifically looks at the way that people feel more free to share information they otherwise wouldn’t because there is not “real life” consequences for doing so. This article is limited in that it is not a study of a specific demographic of internet users and their patterns of behavior, but it is a great starting point in explaining how people may feel connected to people whose videos they watch on Youtube and their connection to these strangers whose lives they watch and feel they have intimate knowledge of. This article will not inform my paper topic in terms of empirical data, but will serve as a means of defining certain key terms regarding user behavior in online environments and how it differs vastly from interactions people have in their day to day lives in a face to face context. Always on culture is all about our constant connection to the networks we interact with online and this article can help flesh out some of the specific patterns of behaviors of these people who sometimes broadcast seemingly their entire lives via Youtube. Cls00085 (discuss • contribs) 21:19, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Comments
NCowling (discuss • contribs) 16:07, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi, there. This was a great annotation and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It is interesting to see the different behaviours people display both online and offline. I find myself acting differently online than I would in real life. I'll happily post opinions about politics on Twitter rather than say these same opinions in front of people. I think it is the degree of anonymity that gives users extra confidence. This article will be useful in our research project regarding YouTube culture as we can look into comment sections and the reactions of "vloggers" and other creatives to these comments.

2. @Cls00085, Hi Claire, I fond this annotated bibliography extremely insightful. My group 'Team Fact or Fiction', is doing a question on online identity, and I feel your annotated bibliography ties in nicely with it. It is interesting that your study speaks of people being different because of 'social cues', I never really thought of that. Also, I do believe that online a lot of people grow in confidence.

Thanks again for this insightful study, all the best. MTxPrincipessa18 (discuss • contribs) 16:03, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Comments
Hi, your annotated bibliography was extremely interesting, I was not aware that there was any research into the psychological reasoning behind the way people interact online: via those that upload video content and those that respond to the videos through comments. I thought you did well in explaining the bibliography in a concise manner, and it seems that it almost interested you on a personal level outside of the research topic, was this the case? Also, you mentioned that this topic is useful in relation to always-on, in that through patterns of online behaviour we stay connected to the online culture. I was wondering if you could elaborate on this? I personally took it to mean that through online interaction on content such as videos and commenting on videos, this creates a dialogue between vlogger and user, thus even though the vlogger may not be online, they are still contributing and as a result are ‘always-on’. I was wondering if perhaps there was another way that this could contribute to always-on culture and its relationship through this chapter on how psychological patterns effect how we interact as humans but within an online capacity? Smbromley (discuss • contribs) 18:24, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi, This topic does interest me on a personal level and I am happy that you were able to pick up on that! While I do not study psychology, there is a lot of overlap between psychological research and the field of communication which is my degree at my home university. Last term I was in an advanced interpersonal communication class where we had an entire unit about online communication patterns and disinhibition was a large part of that conversation. I have always been interested in online communication practices as that is a large part of not only what I study at my home university but I am an avid user and consumer of online materials. I think both disinhibition and parasocial relationships are important things to consider when looking at Youtube specifically within always on culture. I think that your take about always on culture and the interaction and dialogue between the commenters and creators of videos is exactly what I meant when talking about always on culture and Youtube. There is an ever present conversation of sorts happening on any given Youtube video if commenting is engaged. The creator of the video may not always be on their channel in the sense of live streaming their life, but their content is always accessible and users can engage with it whenever and however they feel like.

To talk about your last question, I’m not sure about any specific research that exists about this but I’m sure there are other ways we can look at always on contributing to human interactions via technology. I think the aforementioned parasocial relationships is another good direction to go. That sense of connection that many people find with Youtuber’s online personas is a very interesting aspect as these people are like “friends” that are always accessible any time the consumer wants to watch a video. There is also the realm of these video producers that goes beyond Youtube on to other social media and sharing platforms. They seem to have these all encompassing public profiles that go beyond their main content platforms and allow them to build and even richer public image and persona. Let me know what you think about that in relation to this article! Cls00085 (discuss • contribs) 14:24, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi, it's interesting that you studied the psychology between the behaviours of online communities. I personally take Psychology, and as a result, I am surprised i never thought about the psychology behind online communication, interaction, and cultures. Your degree sounds extremely interesting, and also fits in really well with our research topic, adding more layers of thinking that I am really grateful for.

The idea of the disinhibition and parasocial relationships feels like it has the potential to be linked to the concept of consumerism and always-on. Consumerism could have the potential to feed disinhibition due to the fact that through posting online content, vloggers received some form of financial revenue the more followers that they obtain. The idea that people want to 'get to know' the people behind the screen encourages more people to vlog about personal topics. This then feeds the continued cycle of posting and commenting. Do people really care how personal their vlogs become if the reward is in some way financial gain? Even in the form of sponsors? What do you think of this potential connection? I understand its pretty basic, but before elaborating, I feel like your opinion on this would be interesting and insightful.

As for the idea of disinhibition and parasocial relationships in general, I feel these are concepts that are extremely interesting, and despite that you mentioned in your bibliography that it would not directly contribute to our group research into always-on, I agree with you strongly in that it is a concept that can aid us through looking further into the idea surrounding the ones mentioned within your annotated bibliography. The idea that you talked about of the connection between YouTuber's online personas is something that has always interested me. That people become so emotionally invested, yet this is all one sided, and why it is that happens. Your annotated bibliography has informed me enough that this may be a personal area of interest for me in the future, so thank you for this insight. Smbromley (discuss • contribs) 11:34, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise 4
Wikibooks as a collaborative space gets the job done, but I feel like there could be ways to make it more user friendly for the average person. Wikibooks aims to be a space that allows for the sharing and expanding of ideas in a way that builds public knowledge much like its parent site, Wikipedia. The goal is to create a place where information that is typically discussed and shared at length in an higher education environment and bring it to a platform that gives access to anyone with an internet connection. That basic goal I think is a achieved, but I don’t think the interface itself is conducive to those who are not tech savvy like myself.

Using Wikibooks for me personally was frustrating for a group project. I am so used to in person meetings and the importance of collaboration in a face-to-face context that having to post things that I would just normally verbalize in a meeting was not an enjoyable way to work. I think there is a lot of value in conducting group work in a in person setting and trying to move that entirely online while having to be more formal with my tone and word choice did not make the process any easier. One of the main pitfalls of Wikibooks that I found throughout this process is constantly having to check back in. I wish it was like other apps and websites that email me when someone posts to my page or mentions me in a comment. I missed so much for the first couple of weeks because I didn’t realize that I had an inbox on the site. People were interacting with me, but I was completely clueless because I didn’t get a notification either in my inbox on my computer or on my phone. I’m so used to push notifications and update emails from my various social media platforms and sites that I follow that having to manually log into the site every day to see if there was an update to my page from someone was such a chore.

I do however, see the beauty of bringing discussions that are not typically accessible to all people into a public space. Higher education is such a place of privilege especially where I come from in the United States that having a space where others who may not have the financial means or physical ability to be in a university classroom studying beyond high school is so important. Information can be seen as a form of currency in the modern age, the more you know about something, the more opportunities you have to move further in your chosen path in life, whatever it may be. I think that Wikibooks striving to be a place for collaborative learning that is accessible to anyone with an internet connection is an admirable thing that should be embraced. I do think taking steps to make the interface more user friendly to suit the average person would make that pursuit that much more successful.

I think some improvements to emphasize more of a “digital commons” or building a community can be made. Things like being able to “follow” specific user’s discussion pages or books themselves would really help. As far as I’m aware in my time using Wikibooks that’s not currently a feature. My generation is so used to having various feeds across our social platforms where all of the things we care about are placed in one space for us to scroll through and view that having to manually search for a user page or specific book on the site is annoying and seems behind the times. Obviously, I have not been a user on the site for long, so there might be tips and tricks that I missed in my learning process that would have made my time using the platform easier, but I think the fact that I didn’t find those things or catch on to them easily says something about the average user. I am not a tech person, never have been. I don’t know any type of code, I don’t play online games, I don’t use forums. My knowledge is very main stream in that sense so a platform that puts more on the user to create their experience is hard for me to embrace and catch on to. I actually found this platform to be rather isolating versus building a community because it is not very accessible to people with my background.

INSTRUCTOR FEEDBACK: DISCUSSION, ENGAGEMENT, CONTRIBS

 * Engagement on discussion pages of this standard attain the following grade descriptor for contribs. Whereas not all of the elements here will be directly relevant to your particular response to the brief, this will give you a clearer idea of how the grade you have been given relates to the standards and quality expected of work at this level (although it should be noted that your work achieved this descriptor at the lowermost point):
 * Satisfactory. Among other things, satisfactory contributions may try to relate an idea from the module to an original example, but might not be very convincing. They may waste space on synopsis or description, rather than making a point. They may have spelling or grammatical errors and typos. They might not demonstrate more than a single quick pass at the assignment, informed only by lecture and/or cursory reading. They may suggest reading but not thinking (or indeed the reverse) and will have little justification for ideas offered on Discussion Pages. The wiki markup formatting will need some work.

Students should be engaging at least once a day, for the duration of the project. The following points illustrate how this engagement is evaluated.


 * This was clearly not the case here – only 6 days registered as having logged a contrib. One of the largest contribs was a cut and paste job of draft work for the essay page, and I’ve discounted this as I can’t assess you for the same work twice. There are a few smaller contribs that suggest that, when you did engage, these seemed to be significant entries in terms of moving the project forward, including comments in the visitor’s section, and in the brainstorming section.

Evidence from contribs to both editing and discussion of content (i.e. volume and breadth of editorial activity as evidenced through ‘contribs’). These are primarily considered for quality rather than quantity, but as a broad guideline: o	Each item on a contribs list that are 3000+ characters are deemed “considerable” o	Each item on a contribs list that are 2000+ characters are deemed “significant” o	Each item on a contribs list that are 1000+ characters are deemed “substantial” o	Items on a contribs list that are <1000 characters are important, and are considered in the round when evaluating contribs as a whole because of their aggregate value


 * Several contribs registered as being under 1000 characters, with only two classed “substantial” – some of these were discursive and meaningful, but it’s largely a case of too little, too late.

•	Engagement with and learning from the community on Discussion Pages o	Evidence of peer-assisted learning and collaboration o	Evidence of reading, sharing, and application of research to the essay o	Evidence of peer-review of others’ work


 * This was the strongest element of your contribution, perhaps. Some evidence to suggest that you pushed your arguments and encouraged others to comment/respond.

•	Reflexive, creative and well-managed use of Discussion Pages o	Clear delegation of tasks o	Clearly labelled sections and subsections o	Contributions are all signed


 * There some organisation of the discussion page on your part.

•	Civility. Your conduct is a key component of any collaboration, especially in the context of an online knowledge-building community. Please respect others, as well as observe the rules for civility on wiki projects. All contribs are moderated.


 * You conducted yourself well, as far as the evidence suggests.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 13:31, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Instructor Feedback on Wiki Exercise Portfolio
Posts and comments on other people’s work, of this standard, roughly corresponds to the following grade descriptor. Depending on where your actual mark is in relation to the making criteria as outlined in the relevant documentation, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall:


 * Excellent. Among other things, these entries will probably demonstrate a complex, critical understanding of the themes of the module. They will communicate very effectively, making excellent and creative use of the possibilities of the form (including links, as well as perhaps copyright-free videos and images, linked to from Wiki Commons), and may be written with some skill and flair. They will address the assignment tasks in a thoughtful way. They will make insightful connections between original examples and relevant concepts. They will be informed by serious reading and reflection, are likely to demonstrate originality of thought, and will probably be rewarding and informative for the reader. The wiki markup formatting will be impeccable.


 * There is some excellent work in here, although this work is at the lower end of this grade band, so although I’m being picky, there’s still some room for improvement. For example, making more use of the wiki functionality and markup would have gone some way to improving fluidity and functionality of posts. I suspect that, if you become more familiar and proficient with the platform, that this would have made a difference.


 * Re: responses to other people’s posts – these are especially good. I like that you have framed some of your responses as questions to solicit discussion and also that you have engaged in discussion in an open and critical way.

General:
 * Reading and research: some clear evidence of critical engagement with set materials, as well as occasional evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material


 * Argument and analysis: some very well-articulated and well-supported argument raised; evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position); evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections); evidence of independent critical ability – all present.


 * Presentation: see above comment on use of wiki markup and organisational skills.

GregXenon01 (discuss • contribs) 11:30, 9 May 2018 (UTC)