Right now, we are in a world that heavily relies on the internet and everything is to be put online. This means we need to learn many tools that are related to this area. This requires media literacy. Just like we learn new skills in real life, we also need to learn new abilities in the virtual world. As teachers, there could be students from all over the world, therefore it is important to value our context and make sure that it is well-designed and not biased in any way. Although it’s important to have good media literacy, sometimes we tend to overkill on this topic, resulting in conflict. Similar to political correctness, the starting point is good such as helping minority groups of people and gaining rights for them, but when we take it too far, it becomes ridiculous and starts to cause problems for other people. The same goes for media literacy, surely we want to make our content inclusive and unbias, but sometimes there need to be different points of view and they could be extreme. We need to learn to accept those “reasonable extreme ideas” and take a balance between media literacy.
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When we post our thoughts online, we sometimes tend to speak freely and not see the consequences behind our words. This is fine if we are just posting casually with our friends and family, however, if we are in a professional field where it requires us to be technical and unbiased, then we will have to think about our words before we speak.
As a person who has a multicultural background, I can confidently say that a lot of people can’t understand other people’s thoughts in different cultures. Therefore to avoid conflict on the internet, we need to be cautious as to the words we use, especially when we are public figures. One of the best things to do as a public figure is to not comment on things you don’t know. For example, if I was a physics teacher, I wouldn’t go and comment on politics since I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about. Secondly, make sure to be inclusive with your words and don’t discriminate against any groups of people, the last thing a public figure wants to do is to offend other people on the internet. Make sure to leave a positive image to other people and be a good role model to them.
What are the benefits of a diverse and inclusive PLN in social media sharing that understands where you are coming from with messaging that impacts the community?
A diverse and inclusive PLN means that it can affect a lot more people. There are too many different cultures in this world that sometimes it is really hard for people in one culture to understand other cultures. Therefore, by making the PLN diverse and inclusive, people from different cultures can easily feel empathetic and bring themselves into the thoughts that the creator of the PLN had. On the other hand, the PLN is the opposite of inclusive, meaning it contains a lot of extreme personal thoughts, then it will anger many different groups of people. As content creators, this is the last thing we want. Another advantage of being inclusive is to set correct values for teenagers and underaged viewers. These learners absorb many different types of knowledge from all sources. Therefore it is very important to have a wholesome internet environment for our future generation and being inclusive is definitely one of them.
Before setting up a social campaign, it is important to make up your mind about what is your core idea and what you want other people to learn from your platform. After setting up your theme, you then want your campaign to be as inclusive as possible. Surely you can tweak the details and set up sub-themes for different cultures, but you do want to keep it friendly for every viewer. Besides coming up with a well thought and inclusive idea, you also want to do as much research as needed to support your idea and make it convincing enough for the viewers. Finally, make sure the social campaign is accessible to as many different platforms as possible. This way, people around the world who are using different software can all see your idea and share their thoughts with you.
- Which social media platforms are beneficial in education?
There exist a huge amount of platforms on the internet that serves different purposes. However, there are a lot of platforms that are multifunctional, meaning they are built for many different goals and are used in different ways. Take Youtube for example, a lot of people use it for leisure purposes such as watching game streams and funny videos, but there are also many uploaders on Youtube who are posting educational videos. I personally have been watching an uploader named patrickJMT. He posts an enormous amount of videos about math such as Calculus and Linear Algebra. His video really helped me with my third-year math courses. So to me, Youtube is definitely a great platform for education. There are also platforms that are only dedicated to education such as Stackoverflow, Chegg, Quizlet, etc… These platforms are all beneficial in education and learners can easily use them to gain knowledge.
2. When working with the vulnerable sector, how does social media fit into professionalism and regulations?
Our society is built upon rules and laws, without these restrictions, countless crimes will occur and people will be tormented. The Internet is exactly the same, even though it is a virtual world and is far away from reality, rules and regulations must also apply, otherwise the internet would fall into chaos. Since we can’t see who’s behind the screen on the other end, people tend to relax and release their pressure online. This results in many hate speeches and harassment. Therefore regulations are needed for a safe and wholesome online environment.
As a multicultural background learner, I can pretty confidently say that I’m quite diverse when it comes to multimedia learning platforms. I use various platforms including but not limited to: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Wechat, Bilibili, and Instagram. I love to see different opinions online and debating is one of my favorite thing to do. By experiencing different cultures, I deeply felt that a lot of people in different countries can’t really understand each other. Surely there will be wise ones in every country who can objectively look at others, but the majority still blindly follow whatever is on the internet. Therefore, while absorbing all different opinions, keep in mind to keep your own value and not to be persuaded easily. Debate is good only when both sides are logical and calm. This is why it’s very hard to be diverse while maintaining your own ideology. One thing that I learned on the internet, is that never assume things until real proof came out. Many people tend to attack others just because of a picture or a video that they don’t know if it’s edited. Try to stay calm and get to know the truth behind the graphics and the hate speech. Then you will truly be diverse and inclusive.
Users of online platforms increased drastically ever since Covid-19 started. As of right now, the most used platforms for students include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, etc… Although these platforms can be used in a professional way, the majority of people still use them for leisure purposes, such as talking to friends and watching videos. On the other hand, platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, Stack Overflow, GitHub, Quizlet, and Coursera are much more professional in their own fields. LinkedIn and Indeed primarily focus on job searching, they both provide large amounts of jobs and easy connections with employers. Stack Overflow and GitHub are used for computer science, especially coding. Students can find a tremendous amount of examples of various coding languages and even post questions by themselves. Quizlet and Coursera are more general, they have many different courses from Math to English, aiming for the best self-study experience.
I personally think that students should try different professional platforms to get the best result. For example, if I want to find a job, I wouldn’t just use LinkedIn, I would also use other platforms such as Indeed and WorkBC (since I live in BC). By doing this, I can receive a lot of information relating to jobs than if I just used one platform. This way I can compare different platforms and pick the job that suits me the best.
Online security and data privacy are topics that have a high correlation with each other. By heavily shielding data privacy, online security also increases. However, doing this will drastically decrease the convenience of digital platforms. For example, if we don’t share our address, how would we get online delivery? On the other hand, if we expose too much information online, the chance of getting scammed will be greater. This is why we need other methods like firewalls and anti-virus software to protect our information.
To create your own digital identity, sharing your personal information is always the first step. After the basic information such as name and age are filled out, then you should consider optional information such as your hobby and field of interest. Basically, you need to carefully consider how would you like other people to see you as. By carefully writing your information online, your odds of getting opportunities will be much higher.
Ever since Covid-19 started, online platforms have received massive amounts of new customers. Take zoom for example, in 2019 just before covid appeared, the average number of meeting users on zoom was only 10 million. But just 1 year after, the average number of users is around 300 million, 30 times more than before. Since Covid-19 seems to be a long-lasting problem, we should probably focus more on work-from-home and online services. As for the connectivity between social media and professional balance, I recommend using different accounts for leisure use and professional use. This way we can connect with our family and friends while keeping professional courtesy.
In our society, people are defined by many types of identities such as name, gender, job, nationality, etc… Without these identities, society will collapse. When the internet is born, a brand new world is introduced to people, a world in which everyone can express their thoughts and opinion anonymously. This quickly leads to problems such as the excessive amount of hate speech, rumors, and scams since people don’t need to take responsibility for their words and actions. This is why digital identity is important just like real-world identities. Digital identity is basically how you represent yourself on the internet. Whether you are a person, an organization, or a company, you always need information about yourself in order to interact with others. It can be basic information such as your name, age, and gender. It can also be complicated information such as your religion, values, and political status. It is what helps us to communicate with other people online and to help other people understand us better.
A personal account is our leisure space. We share moments with our friends and families, and our speech on this account would be more relaxing and careless. Professional accounts, on the other hand, are very formal in every way. For example, we want to demonstrate our professional skills in order to get a job. Personal and Professional approaches to digital identities are different but not isolated. Even though people tend to have different accounts for their personal and professional life, there is still some information that is the same for both accounts such as name and age, and others can easily find your personal life through your professional account.
Digital identity grants us safety on the internet by making everyone transparent online. It also makes public services much easier. Nowadays, we can do a lot of things such as pay bills, order on Amazon, and study online. These are all possible because of digital identity. The downside to this is that everything is so transparent that identity theft starts to become a problem. This is why people are now working on identity protection so we can protect our information.
Reference:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137405876_6
1. what does it mean to network using social media?
Ever since the idea of the internet came out, networking has been improving at a ridiculous speed. In the current state of the world, people can hardly live without a network. Internet/networks give us the ability to share information anywhere anytime. As the network develops, social media is born. The idea is simple, a platform or software that can help family, friends, or company to connect with each other and share their thoughts and emotions. However, such a simple idea brought enormous advantages and efficiency to our society. We no longer need to physically go to a place to have a meeting, nor do we need to wait weeks or months for mail to arrive at our families who live across the country. Therefore, a network is the soul of social media, without a network, social media wouldn’t exist.
2. How are we motivated to participate in networked publics?
Nowadays, there are plenty of different networked publics for various uses. For example, online teaching is a classic networked public. Right now, the world is heavily affected by Covid-19, therefore, online studying groups start to increase at a speed that is never seen before. People want to learn new knowledge while still keeping themselves safe, therefore these online teaching platforms started receiving a ridiculously large number of users that they never imagined before. Take zoom for example, in 2019 just before covid appeared, the average number of meeting users on zoom was only 10 million. But just 1 year after, the average number of users is around 300 million, 30 times more than before. Who would ever think a day like this would come? These networked publics brought people tremendous convenience and efficiency, therefore most people are willing to join more networked publics in the future. We are currently living in a world that is updating technology at an insane speed. Therefore we have to adapt to new things quickly and be prepared to live a fully online life in the future.
3. What are the risks & rewards of public communications?
Everything in this world is a double-edged sword. There are no things that only have advantages, the same for public communications. Even though they brought us convenience and efficiency, there are some risks that we have to be aware of. Since we are communicating with other people, we have to put our own personal information online. This results in identity theft and information leak. Nobody wants their credit card stolen, nor does anyone want their phone number leaked and get called by scammers 24/7. The convenience of accessing knowledge online is great, but we have to protect our own information before we do anything else.
References:
matthewwoodward.co.uk/work/zoom-user-statistics/#:~:text=Today%20Zoom%20averages%20300%20million,users%20(day)%20in%20meetings.
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