User talk:Littlekatie1

This is for discussion and a way to share ideas regarding social media through contribution.
 * I had to create a new user page so I copy and pasted from my original user page.

Wiki Exercise 1
What makes a good wiki?

"LittleKatie101 (discuss • contribs) 13:26, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Facebook, chat groups and pages allows 'in-the-moment' conversation and interaction with statuses, check ins and live videos. The feature to attach files is easy and quick that makes it possible to share ideas and work during group projects. In terms of collaborative work through blogs; guest posts are useful to contribute ideas and information following from the owner's content. The comment sections on social media sites are always easily accessible which is something that wikipedia is missing. Wikipedia has a more formal set up and does not opening invite people to discuss on the information filled site. Where as facebook and twitter rely on the way people express themselves, wiki uses facts and minimises the personal tone, a voice from it's content. Even if editing is done by someone, it is critically debated until a decision of it's worth is made.

Following this, wikipedia as a way to connect and engage collectively, has an anonymous feel to it as users are just a name on the screen-if found in the first place- and any way to relate to the user is non existence apart from possibly a shared knowledge of facts on a topic shown on wiki. Facebook was created with a person profile as it's main feature as a way to connect people and encourage engagement and with photo sharing, people are able to portray a persona. There is further interaction possibilities with 'likes' on facebook and twitter which wikipedia does not use. Wikipedia's users are not looking for a way to portray personality or collect likes, they just are looking for a way to engage in knowledge and share it on a platform. However there are more limitations on the things that can be written on wikipedia as it has to have value where as facebook, is more freely used. Although, both have rules and regulations and options to report fi the words seem untrue, racist and offensive.

Privacy is another issue in difference between wikipedia and social media. Facebook, Instagram and twitter have ways of regulating who can see what you post. However what is written on wikipedia is open to the world wide web and is accessible for all. Not only are the pages of content open to everyone but the 'user pages' are also available for everyone to see. It is not advisable to share valuable or personal information on it where as you are actually encourages on social media to share where you work, your relationship and place of residence.

LittleKatie101 (discuss • contribs) 22:51, 7 February 2017 (UTC) @LittleKatie101: The way the editing system works on Wikipedia, with edits being scrutinised greatly before they are accepted as a change, seems to work well for the purpose of this site. It makes the information we consume here more reliable if it has had to undergo such scrutiny, whereas on Facebook or Twitter and even on blogs the information given may not be as accurate. Being most familiar with social networking sites alone, Wikipedia appears complicated to me, but the differences in the way it is used and contributed to make it an interesting comparison to what I already know. --Tinytalia

12:50, 8 February 2017 @LittleKatie101: I agree with you in that I think the way Wikibooks is formatted is a bit trickier than what we're used to with Facebook, but arguably the format is more advanced than the early versions of communication on the Internet. As we have become accustomed to the Facebook interface, a lot of Wiki users might see it as limiting in terms of what you can do with font sizes, typeface (bold/italic/underlining) and linking more than one external page on a post. I like that you highlight the differences between the personal space of Facebook with the profile pictures and the more formal Wikipedia model. Do you think that in order to encourage more people to use Wikibooks it needs to be more user-friendly? EmilymDaniel (discuss • contribs) 00:33, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Marker’s Feedback on Wiki Exercise #1[edit] @LittleKatie101: 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 Understanding and Engagement elements, it should give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses within the achieved grade band overall. Satisfactory. Among other things, satisfactory entries 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). The wiki markup formatting will need some work.This post is at the lower end of this grade band, so there’s clearly room for improvement here. I think in order to engage with the wiki exercises a bit more, it might be useful for you to look at the Grade Descriptors and (especially for this, perhaps, the Understanding) criteria in the module handbook to get more of an idea of how to hit those targets. Less instrumentally, and more in relation to this particular post, you state that Wikipedia has a more formal set up and does not opening invite people to discuss on the information filled site. I find this important, as you are attempting to address qualitative differences between platforms, but also, factually disputable - especially for a platform whose designs explicitly builds in Talk and Discussion pages! It may seem like semantics, but actually, this might be seen as an opportunity for you to think about those different qualities and how they fit in with assumptions.Re: responses to other people’s posts – there was only one (you are required to post comments to two other users, therefore in assessed conditions this would affect your mark significantly) and what is there is too brief. Remember that the comments are "worth" as much as posts themselves. The reason for this is not only to help encourage discussion (a key element of wiki collaboration!) but also to get you to reflect upon your own work. This can all, of course be used to fuel ideas that might form part of your project work. Here is the comment in full: The accessibility to 'talk' on wikipedia, although as you said is there, is more complex as you have to know what you search for and want to talk about where as facebook and twitter hands in to you on your home page through algorithms and likes. There are two issues here, both worthy of discussion, but you haven't engaged with either - knowing what to search for is an important literacy issue, and being handed over to algorithms is in itself problematic (extremely interesting! but YOU need to build the ideas here!) GregXenon01

Wiki Exercise 2
From using a range of social media platforms, I believe I am highly visible online. Starting on myspace, I transferred to bebo then facebook and along with them I grew to have an online presence on twitter, blogger, snapchat, instagram and tumblr. Much of my life has been expressed through the different platforms, different situations have been shared on the different source due to having a different audience. The act of having an online persona can dictate the amount of visibility a user reveals online. However, depending on the platform, my ‘visibility’ can be selective. Facebook urges their users to type in their ‘likes’ and political, relationship status, work placements and educational history as if it were an online biography. Jill Walker Retberg (2014) raises the idea that social media can be used to track daily activities and special events. ‘We have represented ourselves with numbers and data’. This forms a narrative of our ‘online life’ and can be shared to people who we choose over social media. This visibility can be according to privacy settings that can be altered. 1

For me, my instagram and twitter are open to the public. However I am more particular about my visibility on Facebook. Facebook clearly shows my workplace and where I live. Therefore I only allow ‘non friends’ to see my place of work and profile picture as a form of identification. I tend to express myself more on twitter as the 140 characters can express thoughts and with the mass of users who see it, I feel that less people pay attention where as facebook encourages people to read, comment and like. Internet visibility also depends on how much you post and what you share. A user can be visible on facebook as it can show when they’re online-though it can be turned that off too- yet, on instagram you can post photos with selected relevance to your life or personality but yet still wish to express yourself, or create a persona through a little squared image. This information that you choose to share is in your control in a sense, however everything is coded into a system that is collected by the company and therefore, in an economical sense, there cannot be a thing as a ‘free user’ as the organisation has control over your information. Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 00:51, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

=Personas on social media=

Facebook and other forms of profile driven social media uses a picture and name to identify the user which can be a portrayal of the 'me'-a persona. For example, tumblr tend to thrive off being anonymous and so my picture didn't show my face. However I drifted away from that and use twitter and facebook where I express my thoughts on twitter and mostly show my interests in politics and news on facebook. Being able to express opinion and share your knowledge can encourage others to do so. This can be said for wikibooks as the knowledge is being shared and discussed in an open dialogue for users on their chosen and searched topic.

=In terms of wikibooks=

Wikibook users have a different form of visibility. Where as social media portrays personas visibly, wikibook forces to be factual and use it in terms of research. However the discussion feature allows a dialogue to open where different users’ options become visible and therefore a personality can be shown through that. The username is visible to everyone, as is your page and discussions. This is further tracked in the ‘contribution’ page which stores all the activity that the user has done-even when deleted by the user. This is out of the control of the user and the actions can be controlled by the organization. Information can be reverted and deleted if it does not comply with their standards. However as seen here 2, some information can be altered and left unnoticed for a length of time. Therefore the issue of privacy and security is questionable as wiki does allow anyone to edit content to an extent. Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 02:03, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

=References= 1. Rettberg, Jill Walker, Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves, Visual and Quantitative Self-Representations, 1-19 (2014) 2. BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38982914/fan-of-the-sherlocks-edits-bands-wiki-to-get-backstage (Feb 2017) Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 00:51, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

=Comments=

Love your article- I find it interesting that you started from Myspace and slowly started getting more social media accounts, do you feel like online visibility is as important when you're younger that when you are older? I know a lot of communication goes on when you're younger as well- like MSN and all- where when I was younger I would be more excluded if I didn't have social media accounts. Also, do you find this freedom to share news and politics on Facebook may end up in a very negative newsfeed, especially around when something major happens, taking into consideration that social media has a tendency to increase depression? (Basically I'm saying that all this negative news adding to this?) (Depression in teens in relation to social media- https://www.theguardian.com/mental-health-research-matters/2017/jan/20/is-social-media-bad-for-young-peoples-mental-health) Hgfoster (discuss • contribs) 19:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC) Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 12:42, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * When I was younger, I felt online visabilty wasn't AS important. There wasn't as much of a demand for it, maybe when bebo came about with the 'love' and 'friends list' there was more attention being put on it and people's self worth started to rely on them a bit but I think it has more of an impact now with the range of social media and likes and comments. As someone who does freqently share news stories on facebook, I don't take into consideration that it could lead to a negative feed. Of course news is usually negative but I think there a are lot of people who are not aware of what is going on and spend more time on social media. However, now you saying that, I have realised that my own facebook page is very negative along with news I share and memes. Maybe I could make an effort to share more positive content. On the matter of social media as a whole leading to depression as that article you shared, described, I do believe that by comparing yourself to what you see online can manifest into a depressive mindeset as the user believes that they are not living up to society's expectations. I truly believe that our self worth is becoming based on the amount of followers and likes that we collect as the value of online presence rapidly increases.

Comment- I enjoyed how you looked at different platforms and how they are different in terms of what information you put on them. It is interesting to look at how your actions online affect your day to day life. For example, if you were applying for a job and the employers decided to look at your social networking sites, and you had uploaded something inappropriate, it could affect their for employment. I disagree however, with Twitter and Instagram being more public since you can set your profiles to be private. This only allows people who you accept to follow to you view your posts. However, since these are less personal people tend to have them more public whereas on Facebook more personal information is visible such as where you live, where you study, what you study, where you work etc. I really found your work interesting, especially the article you included as it gave more insight into what can happen when you edit and it goes unnoticed. It gives a real life perspective. When you say Tumblr tends to thrive off being anonymous, although your face is not in the pictures, does it not link to your email, which defeats the purpose of being anonymous? And if that’s not the case then if you go into this deeper, if you log into Tumblr it is tracked by your I.P address. Another interesting point you made is how although you choose what you upload, it is coded in a system and there is no such thing as a free user. This intrigued me as it made me think about the true extent of how much control we truly have over our social networking sites and our information. JayeRaiyatMedia (discuss • contribs) 19:51, 16 February 2017 (UTC) Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 12:42, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for commenting. When I said twitter and instagram is more public, I mean for myself as I keep them open as it allows more of a dialogue with other people I have the same interests in, in my case, other bloggers and writers. It allows a quicker response from people. As for tumblr, you made a really good point of being able to track the IP address which puts into question how anonymous it can be along with your email address. But you can hide your email address from users and can put your profile to anon when you ask a question to another. But then there are ways, through hacking I suppose that you can find hidden emails and then IP addresses. I don't think it is possible to be completely anonymous online.

= Wiki Exercise 3 =


 * "There is a popular sense that contemporary culture has an overload of information that is counterproductive at the individual and society level." (Web Theory, Robet Burnett and P. David Marshall p23)

The internet is overflowing with information from educational, entertaining, factual and information about the users (profiles on facebook, linkdin). When looking for certain information, I use key words and relevance of sources to sieve through the information. Spending most of my time on the internet using social media or broadcasting services, I am fed information rapidly from news to what someone bought in the sales. I can limit what I see on the feed by using the unfollow button on facebook but due to algorithms there are adverts and news articles that are commonly shown on my feed. Facebook and twitter has allowed an action to flag up if you “don’t want to see things like that”.

However, this just means that the space where the sponsored or suggested content is replaced with something else. In educational terms, the amount of information that is available for us is very much there, but by reading a couple of sentences, I can figure out if that is helpful for assignments or enhancing any knowledge. Also, I find myself looking at suggested reading from other students or articles that have been viewed a large amount of times. It is a clear example of conforming but then I will try to find other information that other people may not have looked at. Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 19:22, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

In relationship to wikibooks
When contributing to wikibooks, I have been using the suggested reading however since the topic is vast, I have been starting with topics that I have a person interest in as a starting point. From there, the suggested reading form those writers, are my next step. We have a discussion page where we keep the communication open with other users on the topic so we can see what we are all planning and topics we are looking at.

With the amount of information that can be discussed, it can be broken up into subtopics which makes it easier focus on relevant points rather than going off track. This means that clear designation is vital when contributing to group projects.

Coping with distractions
According to Dannah Boyd, we are "tethered" to the internet, an "always on culture". Even if we are not sitting looking at our facebook page, our profile is still live and we expect notifications, we can hear the buzz from our phones in our bags. Our minds unconsciously wonder to "what if they have replied" or "how many likes?". But Boyd highlights that it is not just young people and it is no longer a generational issue; the 'always on' culture depends on how people use the internet as a form of media. Boyd seperates it to 1: communication and 2: a form of expression. I use the internet for both forms an so I admit, I am "always on".4

Distraction can be a possibility but it can be useful to embrace it at times as I can find more information that can link to other useful topics. However, by writing a strict list, the topic of discussion or the ‘to-do’ list can be followed. When there is a heavy workload I find it useful for a form of delegation to take place, whether it is myself or someone else. This reassures that everyone involved has an understanding what is going on and the task may feel less daunting.

If talking about social media as a form of information, there is a feature on laptops and phones that block users from accessing the website. This stops users from mindlessly scrolling through social media when opening their browser. It has become apparent that this is needed as our browsers automatically suggest Facebook as soon as you type F into the search bar-faster than typing your own name.

Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 15:33, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Comments for Exercise 3

 * I forgot to mention when I search for specific things on Google that suddenly it flags up in ads on the side of my Facebook feed in my own wiki exercise, but I just wanted to say I hate it so much! Like you said, even when we're given the option for that particular ad not to be shown to us, another one simply replaces it within moments and again I'm staring at that nice pair of jeans or those cute shoes that I searched for like a week ago which I can't afford... It's really frustrating that everything we do comes back to haunt us quite literally, but I guess along with the perks of having an endless expanse of information at our fingertips we have to deal with getting flashbacks of what we've already searched previously popping up here and there. I also discussed finding more information linking to what I started out with reading-wise in my wiki exercise, I think it's useful and we can take advantage of it for projects and assignments in which we need to read around a lot and extend our knowledge. I did however admit to other distractions that were less helpful, like one minute finding yourself doing something productive and relevant with your searches and the next finding yourself stuck in the deep end of the internet of duck quacking. I think these distractions and detours are much less helpful! -Tinytalia (discuss • contribs) 18:47, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the adverts and alogrithms bother me and I feel like it is an invasion of privcy. Almost like the internet is wanting you to go back to the site so they can get more clicks and views. It preys on the curious. It highlights the idea that our data is not our own and we are not 'free' online as our data belongs to a higher power. We, as users, organise ourselves based on what the corporative companies offer to us. Facebook and Google are media giants who have bought a lot of other platforms that means our information is shared and can be used to their advantages as business. The pair of jeans is being offers on the advert is not for us, it is for our money, our clicks and views. Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 00:27, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Hiya! Love your point about how our Facebook profiles are still up even when we're not using Facebook, so we're always 'online' Its an interesting thing that I never really considered. When I go off my phone I forget that I'm still on Facebook to say, and its even interesting that when we actually delete our profiles we can still recover them, meaning we are never really offline once we create a profile. I feel personally I'm one to always think 'what have they replied' as social media makes me quite nervous at some points. I had no clue that there was a way to block websites thats so helpful, going to start using that! Hgfoster (discuss • contribs) 11:31, 3 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, I find that being 'always on' makes me nervous as I do think- who has replied, what have they said, what if they haven't and I found myself checking the 'active time' to see if people have been online when I sent them a message. It is quite worrying how fixated we have become with the online culture. Glad you found the link useful! Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 00:49, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Wiki Exercise 4
Pros Available for anyone to edit and share ideas. Allows interaction between multiple people. All contributions can be seen and they are recorded.

Cons Notifications don’t immediately notify users as social media can do. This means users can miss discussions. Edit conflicts can result in losing information. If other users don’t follow the discussion or structure, it can be difficult to clearly organise the topic.

As Pierre Levy commented, “None knows everything. Everyone knows something”, A platform such as Wikipedia allows intelligence to be enhanced through collective work as the editing feature allows anyone to share and contribute their knowledge. Wikibooks allows a collective process of sharing information which can enhance the knowledge of other in the group and anyone who can access the wikibook. Wikibooks uses the concept of ‘collective intelligence’ put into practice and reflects on the Hive Mind as each member of the group have been involved in sharing information about digital media and culture. In regards to our group of 17 people, we looked ‘Privacy and the digital age’.

Together, there was 17 people working on that section which allowed us to split it into topics and sub topics. Talia ( naturally took on the role of leader and directed the discussion by setting up topics of discussion on the ‘discussion’ page. This worked very well. When there are so many people working on a subject, I believe it is needed to have a leader to deligate. The concept of collective intelligence is shown through the discussion page of the book. Each group had a discussion chapter where discussion and collaborations on the topic could be seen. I was able to see what each group was going to be researching and looking into. This stopped any over lapping of information and if I had any sources or information that I felt were specific to another group’s topic, I was able to ‘edit’ their section to share that with them. It was helpful when other people commented on my ideas that helped develop them or make them more useful for the development of the wikibook.

The discussion page of the book allowed a continuous flow of conversation between each member, but more specifically each small group. We shared and supported each idea, topic of discussion and source that we were planning on using or thought that could be helpful. Going back to Levy’s point, features of wiki, such as the ‘ping’ feature, was highlighted by other classmates and then we were able to learn and continue to do that in our discussion. This made it easier to discuss and debate with each other. Another personal example is the feature of adding pictures on wikibooks. I could not figure out how to add them but as someone else did, they were able to edit my section and add the picture I wanted. This proved to be a useful and helpful tool in completing the wikibooks.

While it was helpful that everyone could share and contribute information to the wikibook, lack of a push notification on wiki, as Facebook and Twitter has, proved to be an issue. People, including myself, were missing information despite being “pinged”. We have grown use to the idea of being notified without having to access the website. This related to danah boyd’s idea of the “always on culture”. She argues that we are “tethered” to the internet but there felt that was a disconnection from the lack of accessible notification and app.

In terms of peer reviewing, the open discussion page and wikibook allowed each person to critique the work each member had contribute and advise maybe another topic of discussion or something simple like referencing. It was also possible to see when and who had contributed during the process. It was clear that there were certain groups and people who continued to check wikibooks and engage with the assignment and others.

It was overall useful to engage and developed communication skills that can be useful in the future. However the lack of push notification and the ease of 'messaging' like it can be done on websites such as facebook made discussion slow and frustrating.

Littlekatie1 (discuss • contribs) 11:59, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Content (weighted 20%)
The introduction section here is a little brief, however it draws its strength from being well written, in an accessible language. In addition to this, very usefully, each section has been laid out in bullet point format, with a very brief summative sentence for each section. The sections themselves represent wide coverage of many of the main issues surrounding privacy in contemporary popular culture.

However, of particular use here – and very much a strength of the chapter as a whole, is the section that draws together the issues raised here, and applies these to other areas of the wikibook as a whole, explicitly making more of the platform than would otherwise have been, had the groups decided to write this chapter in isolation. To be clear, the execution of this section could have been better – greatly improved through more systematic use of interwiki links to draw attention to the specific pages, sections and issues from the various pages in the wikibook which you were commenting on. Another specific section here that could have been improved is the section on celebrity vlogging. Whereas it is true that there hasn’t been a lot written on this (yet – there is a growing interest in the scholarship, and we can expect much more appearing in the short term), it should have been acknowledged that the scholarship on celebrity culture as a whole is very well established, and that most of the issues raised in relation to YouTubers (e.g. “the price of fame”, privacy issues, and the implied “fair game” logic) are covered in existing debates on celebrity. All that said, the potential for this last section was recognised and other parts of it fully engaged with existing research in the field, and therefore is rewarded.

Structure-wise, the chapter seems to hang together fairly well – the definitions section at the beginning, whilst by no means exhaustive, gives the reader a sense of the subject matter under discussion early on, and also some useful working definitions of key terms used. Some typo errors and inconsistency of formatting appear dotted throughout, but these are not the norm for this chapter. Odd inclusion of bibliographical material of theorists, but no discussion or application their ideas in that section (especially in the case of Fuchs, where it lists a few of his research association and academic achievements. A little bit more joined-up work would have improved on this section enormously.

The unusual step of including a survey and posting the results here is an extremely useful one. Something that absolutely HAS to be thought through in ALL future work is that if one is conducting a survey (even if for demonstration purposes, as included here) or indeed ANY work with people, one must go through an ethics approval process – this is to ensure no harms (relative or absolute) occur for researchers or participants. This process will become more apparent later in the degree programme, particularly in final year projects. The glossary is really useful – not quite exhaustive, but good for quick reference purposes. Use of interwiki links in here would have been useful. The references section again evidences research, reading and sharing of resources. Some of the formatting seems to go awry towards the end, so a little more joined-up thinking there would have been useful, but overall good.


 * Excellent. Your contribution to the book page gives an excellent brief overview of the subject under discussion in your chosen themed chapter. There is an excellent range of concepts associated with your subject, and the effort to deliver critical definitions, drawing from relevant literature and scholarship, and your own critical voice in the building of a robust argument is very much in evidence. The primary and secondary sources you found about the chapter’s themes cover an excellent range and depth of subject matter.

Wiki Exercise Portfolio (Understanding weighted 30%)

 * 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.


 * Reading and research:
 * evidence of critical engagement with set materials, featuring discriminating command of a excellent range of relevant materials and analyses
 * evidence of independent reading of appropriate academic and peer-reviewed material to a wide degree
 * Argument and analysis:
 * well-articulated and well-supported argument through highly original judgement relating to key issues, concepts or procedures
 * evidence of critical thinking (through taking a position in relation to key ideas from the module, and supporting this position);
 * originality in evidence of relational thinking (through making connections between key ideas from the module and wider literature, and supporting these connections);
 * significant evidence of independent critical ability

Engagement (weighted 50%)

 * Evidence from contributions to both editing and discussion of content to an appreciable standard (i.e. volume and breadth of activity as evidenced through contribs)
 * Good engagement with and learning from other Wikipedians about the task of writing/editing content for a Wikibook
 * Reflexive, creative and well-managed use of discussion pages using deployment of judgement relating to key issues, concepts and procedures

2nd Marker Comments

Content

This entry starts with a rather short introduction, but is structured very well throughout. The idea of including a survey is very useful and backs up the points being made. Although some sections could have been improved (as stated in the marker’s comments), it is a good read. I agree with the proposed mark.

Understanding

There is excellent evidence of critical engagement with material, independent reading and relational thinking.

Engagement

I agree with the comments provided by the first marker: There is good evidence of engagement with others and a well-managed use of the discussion pages.