[insert politian's name here] is my Facebook friend, Week 4, 1.6

Kinds of involvement that two political websites encourage (from nominated list)

While Coombs (2009) states that direct communication with politicians has never been easier, this is not evident in the websites for the leaders of the two major Australian political parties

There is very little opportunity for participation on the Prime Minister's (Prime Minister of Australia) website and encouraging involvement appears to be limited to signing up to a newsletter via email, contacting the Prime Minister via the contact page or visiting her external sites on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube.  Were you to use the contact page to send a message, if it was greater than 10,000 characters - about 1,500 words - the communication would need to be sent via regular post.  When accessing the Facebook button a popup window appeared stating that you were leaving the PM's site and they had 'no control over or responsibility for external sites'; not accurate as while they do not control the websites they do have some control over content and comments on Facebook, Flickr and Youtube with permissions and editing rights.

The Facebook page had much greater opportunity to contribute, but only by commenting on the PM's posts, and contributors who were opposed to her or the ALP did not appear to be deleted.  The PM seemed to use this as a less formal news feed and there was an image of a social media flyer (Social Media Guide, 2011) for the ALP national conference held in December.  This flyer contained details of how people could follow what was happening and communicate with the ALP during the conference, particularly via a dedicated Facebook page and specific Twitter hash tags.  Following another link took the visitor to the ALP website and a section dedicated to encouraging people to 'Get Involved' .  This provided specific ways and tools for people to share and discuss ideas and opinions

The Opposition Leader's (Abbott) website content and opportuntity for participation was almost identical to the Prime Minister's with the addition of a link to 'Tell us what you think', a community survey for the Opposition Leader's electorate only.  The links to the same social networking sites were also prominent and  the same path to Facebook ended up the Opposition Leader's page.  A link to the Liberal Party's website needed to be specifically sought rather than directed there from other information and that site (Liberal Party of Australia) was similar to the ALP's and had a tab to 'Get Involved'.  The layout of this page was simple and an easy way into participating with the Opposition on matters that interest the visitor.

Both Parties' websites' participation pages provided a diverse range of areas or ways for those wanting to participate.

Coombs, A. (2009).  How cyber-activism changed the world.  Retrieved from http://griffithreview.com/edition-24-participation-society/how-cyber-activism-changed-the-world/all-pages

Get Involved.  Australian Labor Party.  Retrieved from http://www.alp.org.au/get-involved/

Prime Minister of Australia, Retrieved from http://www.pm.gov.au/

Social Media Guide [Image]. Australian Labor Party. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150471412757328&set=a.10150173759707328.302398.161674172327&type=1&theater10 Ways to Get Involved with the Liberals, Liberal Party of Australia, Retrieved from http://www.liberal.org.au/Get-Involved.aspx

Tony Abbott, Retrieved from http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/

Faith and Spirituality Online, Week 4, 1.5

How has the internet been used to resist or counteract religious persecution and human rights abuse?

In my searches for sites around religious persecutions a good number of sites returned focussed on China.  And it seems like religions, or in China's and Russia's cases, state atheism - where the religion governs the country, would be threatened by the internet.  Those authorities can control the internet to some extent but savvy users (and bold given the penalties) can risk working around the firewalls.When religious beliefs are made public they can be questioned.  China's sensorship of the internet made headlines (Bennett, 2011) earlier this year when Google took the country on, but there are harsh penalties for anyone who breaches the government's internet laws.  Therefore, those wanting to speak out about persecution or abuse would generally do so from outside their country.  If they choose to use their own name it is knowing that they are unlikely to ever be able to return.  The persecuted, those who are close to them or those who oppose human rights abuse such can create websites such as the Falun Dafa Information Centre (2008), which provides background information for those unfamiliar with Falun Dafa and their persecution.  This particular website states it is the 'official source' of Falun Dafa information and while it is managed out of the US it does contain reports from inside China.

Scientology has a reasonably high profile due to its celebrity membership: John Travolta and Tom Cruise in the US, Kate Ceberano in Australia.  Its website is very well organised and is non-confrontational with plenty of reasoned statements about the foundation of its belief system. There is another side to this church as shown via websites, such as Ex Scientologist and it's message board Ex Scientology Message Board.  These sites provide resources and an opportunity for ex-Scientology members or those in that church and questioning it to share their stories, provide resources and create a supportive community for others who might have experienced abuse or intimidation by that church.  The two points of view can coexist in the one place.  

Bennett, I. (2011). Media Censorship in China. Council on Foreign Relations. http://www.cfr.org/china/media-censorship-china/p11515
Ex Scientologist.  http://www.exscn.net/ 

Ex Scientologists Message Board.  http://www.forum.exscn.net/forum.php?s=2ea5591c6cff68078e34a4b6bfcf691f

Falun Dafa Information Centre.  (2008). http://www.faluninfo.net/

Health: what my doctor didn't tell me, Week 3, 1.4

First thing I noted was Mike's (lecturer) notes about medical advice needs to be based on trust and identity:  not unlike the previous topic of online romance and sexuality.


When I was seeing a specialist recently I joked that self-diagnosis via Google (Eysenbach, 2008) was probably his worst nightmare.  He wasn't so dismissive, saying he 'Googles' frequently.  But, for me, the difference between a non-medical practitioner and a practitioner hopping online to research medical conditions is that the medical practitioner has a little more understanding about what they're reading than the non-medical person.  Having said that, the searching could be influenced by their own bias - and Google's filter bubbles (Pariser, 2011).

In searching for information regarding Atrial Fibrilation (AF) google predicts what I might want to type and suggested four search terms: treatment, causes, emedicine and ecg.  I chose causes and was faced with pages of links.  How do I assess quickly which are credible?  Ordinarily I might limit the results to Australian pages, but, in this case I won't because of the opportunity for global knowledge.  I scanned for sites or names I recognised and ended up linking to It's My Health because it was an Australian link.  I was expecting it to be a little tacky, but, it was very clean, clear and easy to navigate.  It also gave the name of the writer, who was a GP in Australia, so I felt a certain level of comfort.  I also expected the information to be very wordy; it wasn't and all the information was explained very simply in a paragraph or two and dot-points.  This site linked to AF section on The Australian Heart Foundation website, which had the same information but linked to an AF information sheet (pdf).  This contained a lot more detail and was around eight pages.  It was easy to read but would've been better with links to heading or an index of some sort.  The It's My Health site had several ways of finding what you were looking for: by name of condition, symptoms or body part.  While there I did a search on another medical condition that had no information on the site.

The next site I went to from my search results was the Mayo Clinic - AF. This site had a similar depth of information to the others but included diagrams.  Because there was no personal information on the page it took me to, ie. a doctor's name, I scanned the page for information about the clinic.  I found a link to a Mayo Clinic Health Manager tool where there was 'About' link.  It's a site which manages a family's medical matters, not unlike the centralised data described in Eysenbach's reading.  From what I can tell it seems to be a US based site.  The legal information refers to Microsoft Corporation and a little further reading reveals that you must have a Microsoft Health Vault account as well to use the service.  I'm not sure I'm comfortable revealing information this personal to Microsoft.  I got more interested in looking around the Mayo Clinic's site - you can look for a doctor or make an appointment.  I can imagine that this could work for some people who may put off calling to make a time and would rather fill in the fields in the online form, hit send and wait for a call.  When digging around the education section I discovered there is a Mayo Clinic College where you can get a degree in medicine.  This site seems to be a coming together of many parts of medicine and provides a community where anyone can find information relevant to their purpose, as a patient, professional, researcher or student.  The clinic seems to have established a very intricate online presence and the visitor should be able to navigate their way around the site fairly easily.

All the information about AF matched fairly closely with what I already knew about the condition.  In fact, when hearing or taking in this information for the first time there is so much that plenty is not remembered.  It was useful to go back.


The Australian Heart Foundation, Artrial Fibrilation, http://www.heartfoundation.org.au/your-heart/cardiovascular-conditions/pages/atrial-fibrillation.aspx
Gunther Eysenbach. (2008, August 25). Medicine 2.0: Social Networking, Collaboration, Participation, Apomediation, and Openness. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 10(3).
It's My Health, Artrial Fibrilation,  http://www.itsmyhealth.com.au/conditions/heart/atrial-fibrillation
Microsoft Health Vault, http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/healthvault/default.aspx
Pariser, E. (2011).  Beware online "filter bubbles". http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

Dating, Intimacy and Sexuality Week 3, 1.3

How far does a partner need to go online before it's considered cheating?  Is flirting acceptable? Is cybersex real?

These questions highlight that activity on the internet is similar to any other activity away from the internet.  When we do anything we bring to it our own set of ideals and values, and they may well be different to others.

Some of the student discussion around this agreed that it depends on the people involved and the boundaries set.  The word 'guilt' popped up, but, cheating doesn't depend on someone feeling guilty; their nature may mean they feel no guilt at all about behaving in that way.  However, if the user feels the need to be secretive or deceptive about their activity it's likely that would be considered cheating.  The hurt can be as intense online as offline. 

Flirting on the other hand is a little greyer: what one person considers flirting may not be to the other.  Each person brings their own influences (or agenda) to the way they interpret another's actions; what one person intends to be sarcasm another may perceive it as an insult.  Pascoe (2009) mentions that the teens researched are very careful to make what they're writing 'say' exactly what they mean it to.

When participating in online activity users need to always have in mind that what they say and do may be interpreted by others differently.  If you already know someone offline this may be less of an issue; although, if they have a reputation for being flighty it could be exacerbated online.

I remember some of my first chats online and one of the first questions asked was 'a/s/l?' - for age/sex/location?  I found this quite confronting, particularly because I felt it was almost irrelevant or that the person might change their behaviour based on what I told them.

Pascoe, C.J. (2009). Intimacy in Mizuko, I et. al. Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. Available from http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/book-intimacy

At work no one knows I'm a wizard Week 2, 1.2

"implications of the rise of casual and social games on the internet"

The first thing that I think of is that the ability for games to be played online is an opportunity for people to be more social than less social.  Brooks (2008) states the culture of gaming in Korea being more mainstream or socially acceptable than gaming in the US.  And the state provide a solid infrastructure which supports this activity, with an abundance of high speed cabling made easier by the compact geography and population.  The availability of high speed broadband makes a more diverse group of online gamers accessible anytime.  The accessibility of sofware and hardware to Korea from neighbouring producers must make this easier too.

Business is now using gaming to engage their consumers, using the psychology of rewards (badge system) (Derryberry, 2011; 2008)

Brooks, Geoffrey.  (2008).  Counting Rupees: Korea bangs. http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/08/counting-rupees-korea-bangs/

Derryberry, Anne (2011). Badges?! We don’t need no stinkin’… Oh, wait, maybe we do.

http://imserious.typepad.com/imserious/2011/10/badges-we-dont-need-no-stinkin-oh-wait-maybe-we-do.html

Derryberry, Anne (2008). Serious games: online games for learning. http://www.adobe.com/resources/elearning/pdfs/serious_games_wp.pdf

I want my MP3, Week 2, 1.1

Task 1.1 Signing up for a lastfm account

For once I thought I'd look at the Terms and Conditions and the first thing that struck me in the first paragraph was that lastfm could change the terms, without notice at any time.  The user is responsible for checking back at the T&C from time to time to see if they've changed.  Given that you have to use an email address to sign up I don't see why they can't notify users that they've changed.  While the service is primarily web-based it does require access to information on the user's computer - eg. iTunes.

I was a bit suspicious about how this service works, but after I plugged in a dozen or so names of artists I like the service pulled up matching albums and similar artists to buy.  Some of those suggested were pretty accurate.  And it also did a search for free mp3s that were available (none).  One of the bands I plugged in was a less well known Australian band from the mid-90s and it returned a number of their albums - their radio station didn't respond particularly well.  I switched to the station associated with Sarah Blasko's and the associated station played artists that had definite appeal to me.  There is something strangely engaging about knowing someone is listening to that song at that very moment - I will confess I crave Spotify.  I found lastfm not particularly easy to navigate and work out how it is meant to network.  I'm not the sort of person to put in keywords and seek out people who might be listening to similar things; I prefer things a bit more random.  If friends were using it I would be inclined to seek them out.

I have noticed that after playing 50 tracks for free the service will end unless I pay $3.00 per month.  But, I'm feeling really uncomfortable exploring, downloading addons (scrobbler) and linking profiles with twitter or facebook - I'm just not sure I want to be associated with this sort of service.  I do not think it's right to be streaming music without any royalty structure to the artists.  Having said this, I discovered a bonus album that came with an album I own - except I didn't get that edition.  So, off I trotted to iTunes and bought it for around $10 - as easy and spontaneous as that.

I already had a Grooveshark account that I signed up to early in 2011.  I got onto this through following Adelaide Fringe on Facebook and Twitter.  Each Friday they would set up a theme and invite requests from followers and add them to their playlist.  Each playlist stayed there and I could access it anytime.  I also set up one or two of my own playlists (from music listed on there that I already owned) for accessing when I didn't have my ipod or it wasn't convenient.  Nice idea; except that the site doesn't seem to have the necessary permissions from copyright owners, so, I have disables my account.  A fellow student also pointed out detail of one of the T&C's which was the decider for me to deactivate the account:  "You are solely responsible for any necessary payments that may become due to any third parties as the result of your posting of or linking to the User Content and EMG's use thereof"

I am very curious about Spotify, the music service that Facebook has linked with in the US (and maybe UK?), where you can see what your friends are listening too in real time.  This service does have licensing for millions of songs, so I think they are starting to recognise the value of friends recommendations.

Everyday Life, Week 1

Discussion task 1

My first experience of the internet was when my mother was chatting to a housemate about it and he offered to show her how it worked at his workplace - he worked for a government (health) research area that had a couple of computers connected.  I do remember very vividly that the browser was Netscape, which seems to have morphed into Mozilla Firefox.  But, the idea of the internet and the web was too abstract and I had no point of reference for how it could work for me.  It was another two or three years before I worked in a place where it was available.  While we had networked computers only one communal station had access to email and internet and someone (me) checked a couple of times a day.  Internet browsing was limited, and for the most part, because it was a design industry not really used a great deal due to file size and speed.  I think it's only been the last 6 or so years where it started to become accessible at home - affordability of services and hardware (my first modem was about $300 - now the same modem or better is less than $100).  Even have two services - ie. home via landline and 3G via ipad, is not unreasonable.  Not to mention the inclusions on mobile phones/pdas.  When I think about it, it's become broadly accessible around the world in an extremely short period of time.  Now, I have access to the internet in any number of ways through all of my waking hours, for work and personal use.  Only in the last couple of days I've been 'researching' possibilities for New Years Eve activities - very important stuff. I am constantly checking things via the web and rarely take a plunge now into something that's unknown - accommodation, I try to find out as much as I can about a place unlike the risks we used to take.  There are so many review websites now, where users can provide feedback.

Discussion task 2

We were asked to comment on an internet controversy, so only this week I followed Paypal freezing Regretsy's (Regretsy: where DIY meets WTF, yes, a spoof of Etsy) account and ordering them to refund money to 'donors', because they claimed Regretsy had misused the Donation button.  I couldn't look away for the following 24 hours, where social media and blogs went nuts about the evils of paypal.  What could've been financially disasterous for Regretsy, as became evident by other organisations who've experienced Paypal's policing, ended up being resolved within a day or so.  Paypal came under fire from  many people very publicly, and word was spread very quickly - it helps when a highish profile on twitter manages to retweet about it.  Bloggers analysed Paypal's policies before and after Paypal had made a statement and pointed out the problems.  But, it also meant that there was a wealth of people who proposed substitutes (Paypal's lesser known competitors).  I found out about it via a Facebook friends 'share'.

This incident got me thinking about governance.  In the non-online world there are bodies that you can go to when this sort of thing happens - ombudsman, authorities, regulators.  But, online, it's a bit harder.  In this case, luckily for Regretsy, the governance came from the online community.

So were Paypal right to do what they did?  Clearly, they look for odd behaviour to try to prevent fraudulent activity, which in itself is not a bad thing.  After reading the correspondence between R & PP, PP's statement and analysis by bloggers there are some major issues in the way PP communicates with its users. 

Which goes back to the faceless names we deal with online.  When there's no or limited personal interaction is it easier or harder to be less emotionally involved or misinterpret what's being said.