25/04/17 - FaceApp apologises for 'racist' filter that lightens users' skintone (66)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/25/faceapp-apologises-for-racist-filter-which-lightens-users-skintone

This article is about how the creator of an app which changes your selfies using artificial intelligence has apologised because its “hot” filter automatically lightened people’s skin.

FaceApp is touted as an app which uses “neural networks” to change facial characteristics, adding smiles or making users look older or younger. But users noticed one of the options, initially labelled as “hot” made people look whiter. Yaroslav Goncharov, the creator and CEO of FaceApp, apologised for the feature, which he said was a side-effect of the “neural network”.He said: “We are deeply sorry for this unquestionably serious issue.“It is an unfortunate side-effect of the underlying neural network caused by the training set bias, not intended behaviour.” In addition, the writer also mentions Snapchat and how they have also faced similar problems but still are capable of running their app even though there have been many different criticism about them. 

• He told TechCrunch in February: “We believe that such entertaining effects are subject to trends, but photorealism is timeless
• Yaroslav Goncharov, the creator and CEO of FaceApp, apologised for the feature, which he said was a side-effect of the “neural network”.
• Snapchat’s filters have come under fire on several occasions. Last year it was criticised for promoting “yellowface” after it released a filter which allowed users to turn their selfies into Asian caricatures. Prior to that, a Bob Marley filter was dubbed “the digital equivalent of blackface”.

In my opinion, I believe that this app has been through unnecessary pressure; the argument itself seemed like it had repeated itself as it has been faced with another social media sites Snapchat which was mentioned in the article. The fact that this app makes the user younger to look at, shouldn't be a problem as this is the joy of the app and which makes new and digital media worth while. With these new different technologies makes it more appealing and more users will want to use it as they would be attracted by it.

25/04/17 - Teachers on Twitter: why you should join and how to get started (65)

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2017/apr/20/teachers-on-twitter-why-join-get-started-social-media

This article is about the different problems which teachers face when they're on social media. A lot of the times, this article talks about how teachers don't specifically like to be on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter mainly because of the fact that students can be able to view their accounts and sometimes make fun of the teachers when they're in school. Most teachers seem to use their real names, but you can make your account private, so that students can’t find you. Another reason why teachers cannot go onto social media is mainly because they may not have enough time too; With marking, meetings, parents’ evenings, administrative tasks and exam entries, teachers aren’t left with much time to discuss teaching practices with colleagues. But we want to talk about what works. On Twitter, it’s refreshing to get an outside view, away from the politics and day-to-day conversations of your own school. 

• Whatever resource you are about to make, stop – open Twitter and explore what is already available. Chances are that another teacher will have created something that is perfect for you, and is using strategies you’ve never thought of.
• The blogs of some incredible teachers have taught me far more about my profession, and given me more practical ideas, than my MA in education did. There is some incredibly useful research being carried out in education, but I didn’t encounter any of it until joining Twitter and following groups such as The Learning Scientists (@AceThatTest).
• Teachers of all ages and nationalities come together on Twitter and they are excited about the profession, their subjects and the students they teach. I’ve found that if you choose to associate yourself with these types of people, you might well become one.

In my opinion, I believe that teachers shouldn't feel the fact that they shouldn't join the social media networking sites. Teachers, nowadays, have many different reasons why they would not like to join the social media sites and to some extent, I agree with that but for some reasons, I believe that they're too sensitive. Everyone should keep up to date with the latest craze no matter who the person is and I feel that teachers should also be apart of that category. Even if the students were to make fun of them, they still have the option to make their accounts private, as mentioned in the article. The same response would happen, even with the traditional newspapers as if the teachers were to be mentioned in those articles and the students say it, they would still respond within the same manner of respect.

Independent NDM case study: Final tasks

18/04/17 - From nasty to nice: how adblockers are trying to pivot (64)

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/12/adblockers-trying-pivot-nasty-nice

This article is about how Adblocking, for a long time used quietly by tech-savvy desktop surfers, exploded into the public consciousness in 2015 when Apple allowed content blocking on the iPhone. The article also uses the terms that "it looked like a war was in the offing: adblocker developers argued that ad-supported media on the net was abusing its readers, while publishers argued that blocking ads was tantamount to theft. Both sides experimented with blocks and counter-blocks, culminating in sites simply blocking all users with an adblocker turned on." Like Adblock Plus, Brave wants to help publishers in other ways. Users can pay a certain monthly fee which is distributed using bitcoin to the sites you visit, in proportion to how much you visit them. In addition, rainbow’s plan is to take advantage of its position near the networks to build up an unassailable amount of data on how users interact with adverts and advertisers, and sell that on. 

• Brave, for instance, doesn’t even tell a site owner that it’s been collecting cash until $100 is in the bank, and is currently only able to actually pay out to those publishers who own the domain name they’re publishing on.
• Its pitch to users is the same as many adblockers, particularly mobile ones: by stripping out some content, loading times can be improved by “up to 60%”, privacy can be protected, and the web becomes a more pleasant experience for all.
• But 18 months on, the landscape has changed. Facebook and Google’s share of digital advertising has continued to rocket, even as every other provider has flatlined. Meanwhile, market penetration of adblockers has plateaued (Britain’s IAB estimates 22% of visitors block ads, the same as this time last year).

Despite all the critism that Eyeo is getting from other major companies, I believe that this is a good idea with the whitelisted ads. This is because this is a way which advertising will work as mainly everyone uses the computer since print is becoming a dying media platform. This way, Eyeo and all the other companies that are using this method, can make their companies more aware to the audience and since it pops up on the audiences screen, they have that option whether or not they want to view it. It is beneficial mainly because of the fact that the companies revenue will then increase.

18/04/17 - UK internet ad spend passes £10bn as Google faces YouTube row (63)

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/12/uk-internet-ad-google-youtube-mobile-video-tv

This article is about how the internet advertising spend surged above £10bn in the UK last year as companies more than doubled the amount they spent on mobile video ads. A spokesperson called James Chandler, who published the annual digital ad spend report, starts to talk about how hundreds of advertisers have "paused" spending on YouTube; People are increasingly using their smartphones to watch more clips, programmes and films. However, the year-on-year increase of 17% on 2015 comes as many advertisers have pulled campaigns from Google and YouTube after it emerged that some ads have been running around inappropriate content such as extremist videos.Programmatic trading has come under attack following the furore over Google and YouTube placing ads next to inappropriate content.

• The IAB report also found that nearly three-quarters of the £3.8bn digital display advertising market is traded programmatically, where machines have become largely responsible for choosing where ads are booked by advertisers and appear on the internet.
• The year-on-year increase of 17% on 2015 comes as many advertisers have pulled campaigns from Google and YouTube after it emerged that some ads have been running around inappropriate content such as extremist videos. 
• Hundreds of advertisers have “paused” spending on YouTube – where 400 hours of videos are uploaded every minute – which has pledged to tighten controls on where ads appear, such as by banning them running on accounts with fewer than 10,000 viewers.

In my opinion, I believe that the YouTube has become a great place where different users are able to communicate with each other; they are able to make videos and post them online for anyone to watch. However, there will be times where there may be negative comments that are distributed to the video which can be shown to be very aggressive etc. But overall, everything on YouTube is censored and I believe that this is a great place where people can go to, in order to take their minds of things.

11/04/17 - Russian embassy's Twitter account vents barbs against west (62)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/11/russian-embassys-twitter-account-vents-barbs-against-west

This article talks about how the official Russian embassy to the UK Twitter account posted a photograph of flower petals in Sochi lit up in the sunshine. It illustrated the tweet with a painting of the charge of the Light Brigade, when Russian gunners decimated British cavalry during the 'Crimean ar'. Johnson is by no means the only politician to be trolled by the embassy account, which mixes snarky broadsides with photos of staid outreach events and trivia about Russian culture and history. Beckett said that the Russian embassy could get away with provocative tweets because of the country’s misinformation campaign and claims of being a victim of western aggression. He also mentioned that 'if they are trying to be disruptive generally, being a little edgy on Twitter works very well in their strategy'. Asked about the author of its Twitter account, the Russian embassy told the Guardian that “work with social media is a collective activity”. 

• “[It] is trying to sow mistrust and disaffection. It’s pretty marginal … but it has a nice marginal impact, and Russia Today and Sputnik have the same goals.”
• But some in Moscow have speculated that the more inflammatory tweets may be written by ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary Alexander Kramarenko, whose official statements have expressed similar arguments. Born in 1952, he worked at the Russian embassy in Canada in the 1990s and has been a high-ranking aideat the embassy in Britain since 2011.
• “If G7 ultimatum to Russia brings us to real war, what is your trust in @realDonaldTrump as a wartime leader & @BorisJohnson as his lieutenant?” it asked followers in a mocking Twitter poll.

In my opinion, I believe that this is what brings different debates and shows the positives of the new and digital media and the negatives of the traditional media. On the internet, there are so many actions that can take place and people can interact a lot with each other which cannot be done with traditional media such as print. In addition, communication is much quicker which is why high class people have started to use social media and get their word around because they know that people will be listening and this is why this article is also being written up.

11/04/17 - Technology is a marvel – now let’s make it moral (61)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/10/ethical-technology-women-britain-internet

This article is about how 'we are in an age of marvellous technology but also of staggering incomprehension'. We rely on technology for almost everything – our banks, our healthcare, our transport – but we have no idea how it might work or how to hold it to account. At best, that leads to “understand the necessary hashtags”-style blunders. At worst, it leads to companies having the freedom to make foolish or unethical decisions that put our privacy and security at risk. Despite the internet being a huge revelation to the society, there are some certain aspects that are endangering the world as a key thing is that we are becoming very lazy and have become extremely reliant on the internet and new and digital media. In addition to that, the article talks about how there are many social media sites which realise false information, in other words, fake news. But, the article does talk about how we must act to make the internet a much better place for the younger audience; it says the following: We must fight for fairness. We must protect ourselves. Britain has been doing this since time immemorial – it is only the tools at our disposal that have changed.

• This is not just about tech. It is about finding the future of Britain. We’re about to become a smaller country, more alone in a large world. We need something to anchor ourselves to – something to remind us of who we are and where we’re heading.
• These are not revolutionary ideas. Beneath the shiny words – “cyber security”, “venture capitalists” – lie some of our oldest, purest values. 
•  Estonia has been investing in tech education since 1998, when all schools in the country went online; today, companies such as Skype are worth billions of dollars and, as co-founder Taavet Hinrikus told the Economist back in 2013, high-school students now dream of being entrepreneurs instead of rock stars.

In my opinion, I believe that the internet is already a great place which only needs a few changes towards it. One of them being the fake news; misleading people to false and normally, negative views will only make the atmosphere on the internet and in the world uncomfortable. People would have different views about others, whether it's racial or personal it may still be false. The people to blame for this are the ones who run all the different social media sites, as they are the only ones who have control and can stop this false information from being fed to another user. However, there are some certain aspects which is making the world a much more lazier environment such as shopping for clothes or food.

04/04/17 - Katie Price launches petition to make online abuse a criminal offence (60)

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/29/katie-price-launches-petition-to-make-online-abuse-a-criminal-offence

This article is about how Katie Price made a petition which will make online abuse a criminal offense. This was all started off when people on social media would start to make fun out of Katie Price's son who is blind, autistic, ADHD and Prader-Willi syndrome. Price has regularly condemned abusive posts targeting her son, who is 14. In February, a teenager was arrested after online abuse directed at Harvey. And in January a man apologised after the Sun revealed he had sent a string of offensive tweets to Price. Last week, after Price tweeted she had passed the location of the Westminster attack, her son became the target of further abuse. Last year, the police chief constable Stephen Kavanagh warned that existing laws were not sufficient to deal with an “unimagined scale of online abuse”. He told the Guardian: “No police chief would claim the way we deliver police services has sufficiently adapted to the new threat and harms that the internet brings.”

• The government is required to respond to all petitions which receive more than 10,000 signatures. At the time of publishing, Price’s petition had reached more than 83,000 signatures.
• The TV personality and former glamour model announced the petition on her Instagram account, after sharing screenshots of online abuse directed at her son Harvey, who is who is blind and has autism, ADHD and Prader-Willi syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting appetite and muscle development.

In my opinion, I believe that this is a good idea and approach as it will improve the behaviour of users online. If people are more aware of it, people wouldn't abuse others with disability etc because they would realise that there is a punishment to go with this act. This is good for the new and digital media as there will be less negative comments and a more positive atmosphere will take place on social media. In addition, I believe that a good way to stop this is also by having block the users that may post brutal messages etc which will allow others to get on with there social media lives and not have to bother with those negative people.

04/04/17 - Twitter drops 'egg' avatar in attempt to break association with internet trolls (59)

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/03/twitter-drops-egg-avatar-in-attempt-to-break-association-with-internet-trolls

This article is about how Twitter is abandoning its default “egg” avatar in a bid to shake its association with trolls. For the past seven years, new Twitter accounts have been assigned a profile picture of an egg – a playful reference to the site’s bird logo. However, recently the social network announced that it would be introducing default profile photos in a bid to “prompt more self-expression”, and to break free of the association with abuse and trolling on the platform. In addition, some people had retained the default egg profile photo “because they thought it was fun and cute”, read a blog post circulated by Twitter’s product design and research team. So, this specific, new feature would give Twitter a more professional and formal look for a very successful social media site. A spokesperson mentioned that 'the would like to rethink that and change the default profile photo'. They also said "I see you put your engineering manpower into the REALLY serious projects".

• The default profile picture when Twitter first launched in 2006 was of a silhouette of a person. The following year it changed to “o_O”, before the bird motif was introduced in 2009.
• The new default profile photo was chosen through study of bathroom signage iconography, with gender-neutrality a priority, according to Twitter. In a bid to make it feel “temporary, generic and universal”, it was coloured grey.
• “An abusive tweet is an abusive tweet, whether it’s next to an egg, a silhouette or a real person’s avatar.

In addition, I believe that changing the default profile picture from an egg to a more professional look and something which identifies the user is a good thing to a big industry like Twitter; an industry that is as professional as Twitter, they shouldn't use objects such as eggs which would make the social media account as if it was designed for a younger audience. On the other hand, to a lot of the people who use the social media site wouldn't really bother about it because it is just a photo and loads of users normally change their profile pictures anyways and therefore, don't really notice the fact that there are these social media sites.

Case study research tasks

Your chosen industry:

Social Media

Your chosen case study (i.e. text/institution etc.):

Snapchat

Have you received approval for this case study from your teacher? Yes

Audience

1) How has new and digital media changed the audience experience in your chosen industry?

• Allows the user's to communicate via video and images rather than having to type up the messages.

2) Has new and digital media changed the way the audience consume your chosen product?

• New and digital media has always been a way of which people can be able to communicate or actively use their accounts by typing and usually, they would stay on the social media sites permanently, e.g. photos.

3) Has the size of the audience changed as a result of new and digital media?

• Size is always increasing people younger audiences are slowly started to get smartphones etc which will allow them to use different social media sites and interact with others.

4) What are the positive changes new and digital media have brought to the audience of your case study? (E.g. greater choice, easier access etc.)

• It is easier to access.
• Option to communicate without typing. Photos and videos can be used to communicate with others.
• Anyone has the option to use it (any age)

5) What are the negative changes new and digital media have had on your chosen audience? (E.g. quality of product etc.)

• Once the photo or video has been sent, there is no way of accessing that previous message back.
• Once someone opens it, the photo or video will be deleted from the database straight away.

Institution

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking; you can do takeovers on any social channel, so why include it in an article about Snapchat?

Well, yes, you can run a takeover on any channel, but if you’re getting a student to be the person doing the takeover, then Snapchat is the best one to go for. Why? Well, chances are your students have already been using Snapchat for a while, so they’ll be totally comfortable with how to approach it.

In fact, scrap that… they will be far better at Snapchat than you are. By giving a student the keys to your Snapchat account you’ll not only get real student voice in one of your corporate channels, but you’ll also get brilliant content that works brilliantly in that space.

My go-to institution when it comes to great Snapchat takeovers is the University of Glasgow. Just look at this graduation day, seen through the eyes of one of their students. 


UGC

• Snapchat is pushing harder into live events, and it’s relying on its user base to hand over more content in the process.
• Snapchat is expanding its Live Stories feature as part of an app update Monday to get more user-generated content into each story. The idea is that when multiple people upload content of the same real-life moment — say, the game-winning shot at a basketball game — Snapchat was typically showing just one of those videos from just one angle. Now, users can swipe on their phone screen when watching a Live Story to see different angles of the same exact moment.
• Here’s a YouTube video Snapchat created to help explain how the new feature — called Story Explorer — works.
• It feels like a relatively small change, but it matters for a couple reasons. First, it brings more user-generated content into the app, which gives users more incentive to share videos and photos to Snapchat’s Live Stories product, which equals more engagement. More content also provides more digital real estate on which to sell advertising.
• It’s also the first time Snapchat has ventured into computer-generated content curation. Once a snap is selected by one of Snapchat’s Story editors, “advanced computer vision technology” will be used to find other snaps of the same moment at different angles, a spokesperson wrote in an email to Re/code. Facebook and Twitter have ventured into algorithm-based curation with varying degrees of success, and now Snapchat appears to be taking that road, too.

Marxism, Pluralism and Hegemony

Snapchat is, first and foremost, a platform to send funny pictures to your friends and family. And for new users, your parents, or people who don’t understand the hype, it’s just a silly app to send times photos and a distraction from reality. Some people don’t understand all the new great things that come along with app.

Snapchat has taken over millennails is a huge wave in the past year with its additions of filters, daily “magazines” and personalized features, like Bitmoji and memories. I think it supports the ideology of relevancy. Unlike lots of social media platforms, I think Snapchat has been super successful in its endeavors allowing users to catch up with friends in a more personalized way and inform us of important Holidays and recent news stories.

Personally, snapchat updated me on the election, pop culture, and super interesting innovations and discoveries across the world. Instead of an app to send your friends pictures of you making ugly friends (dumbing down), I think people should view Snapchat as a news outlet and social media platform in which to engage users in current events.

Globalisation

Snapchat: The Future of Globalisation?

• The days of placing an advertisement in the local newspaper may be long behind us. It’s sitting comfortably in the rear-view mirror, along with the typewriter and the Walkman CD player. The days of the advertisement reading “job for hire; apply here” is no longer a community affair, a cultural comfort, or a direct line of communication. We live in a world of expansion, as the luxuries of educational and economic opportunity are no longer based in the western world, but whose reach expands to the coast of the Far East and the deepest depths of Africa. Technology brings the world together, expanding information and opportunity, to all those who may access it. Technology, from the Far East to Africa to the western world, has displaced the typewriter and the Walkman, and soon to be, so much more.
• Snapchat, the popular phone application of one hundred and five million users, who send an estimated four hundred and ten million Snapchat messages per day, may want to change their slogan to “Snapchat, the Professional Recruiter: Changing the application process, one download at a time.” For all of those who use Snapchat to speak with their family and friends and significant other, you may already be scratching your heads, preparing to scoff at the ridiculousness of such a notion. It’s even insulting to suggest such an outrageous idea. Snapchat, the image delivery service that is designed for your image to disappear into thin air within seconds, cannot be more effective than a resume or a CV, or the traditional introduction letter. Enter Sober Lane, the popular Irish pub, which is truly living up to its name.

Social media

Facebook tries to clone Snapchat for 8th, 9th and 10th times

• Facebook has been trying to steal Snapchat’s thunder for a while, but this weekend the social network beat even its own covetous record.
• On Friday came the news that Facebook is testing a new camera in its main app that offers Snapchat Lens-style photo and video filters to users. The camera, available to users in Ireland for now, is accessed by swiping right on the homescreen of the Facebook app.
• On Monday, TechCrunch reported that Facebook tried to buy the Asian snapchat clone Snow. Like Snapchat, Snow features, you guessed it, a large portfolio of filters and masks. TechCrunch says that some time after it was profiled by the New York Times in July, the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made a move to acquire the company. But just like Snapchat did before it, Snow rejected the offer, seeing a bigger future outside Facebook than in.
• In 2012, it coded Poke, a flagrant clone of Snapchat, in just 12 days, focusing on the ephemeral picture messaging. Zuckerberg was proud of Facebook’s speed, but the app disappeared without a trace shortly after.
• In 2013, Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for a reported $3bn, but Snapchat declined.
• In 2014, Facebook launched a fully-featured ephemeral messaging rival Slingshot, which actually had unique features of its own, including the ability to require a picture message in reply before the original was ‘unlocked’. Slingshot died a year later.
• In 2015, Facebook tried a different tack, rolling ephemeral messaging into Messenger in a test. The test wasn’t rolled out widely.
• In 2016, it did it again, this time pushing the ephemeral messaging as part of a suite of security updates for messenger, alongside end-to-end encryption. Those features are still in Messenger.

Statistics

UK Internet ad spend passes £10bn as Google faces YouTube row

• Internet advertising spend surged above £10bn in the UK last year as companies more than doubled the amount they spent on mobile video ads.
• The year-on-year increase of 17% on 2015 comes as many advertisers have pulled campaigns from Google and YouTube after it emerged that some ads have been running around inappropriate content such as extremist videos. 
• “People are increasingly using their smartphones to watch more clips, programmes and films,” said James Chandler, the chief marketing officer at the Internet Advertising Bureau UK, which published the annual digital ad spend report. “Consequently, as companies have to follow what the industry calls ‘eyeballs’ to get their ads in front of people, they have to allocate more budget to mobile and online video as that’s where people are spending more time.”
• The IAB report also found that nearly three-quarters of the £3.8bn digital display advertising market is traded programmatically, where machines have become largely responsible for choosing where ads are booked by advertisers and appear on the internet.

Snap shares continue to rise after IPO but analysts remain wary

• Shares in Snap Inc, the picture messaging app that went public yesterday with a valuation of $29bn this week, continued to soar on Friday as some analysts warned against “hot air” fuelling the dramatic rise.
• The stock rose substantially after the media firm NBCUniversal disclosed a $500m stake taken at the initial public offering (IPO).
• The initial success of the offering raises the likelihood that the tech sector could soon present further public offerings, but analysts remain wary.

Issues/debates

Facebook clones Snapchat again with WhatsApp Status and Direct Photos

• Not content with taking on Snapchat by shipping two clones of Snapchat Stories, attempting two acquisitions (one of Snapchat, one of a Chinese company making Snapchat-style camera apps), making four standalone Snapchat-style apps, bundling two ephemeral messaging implementations, and creating five new cameras with AR lenses, (see also here, here, here, here, here, here and here), Facebook is again shamelessly taking on Snapchat.
• The killer app of WhatsApp Status, for the privacy-conscious at least, is the fact that all the status updates are end-to-end encrypted, intended to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks from successfully eavesdropping on your updates.
• “Can they not be innovative? Do they have to steal all of my partner’s ideas? I’m so appalled by that,” Kerr continued. “When you directly copy someone, that’s not innovation.”
• But the bigger news came a few hours later, when Facebook messaging subsidiary WhatsApp announced a major new feature. Status lets users take pictures, add stickers and drawings, and share them to all their contacts for 24 hours. It’s pitched by WhatsApp as an update to the original, text-only, “status” feature, which lets you set a text status like “out for lunch” or “available to talk” within the app, but it’s also a lot like Snapchat Stories. That is, nearly identical to Snapchat Stories. Although, to be fair, it’s also nearly identical to the Instagram clone of Snapchat Stories, Instagram Stories.

Does quitting social media make you happier?

• Yes, say young people doing it...
• Facebook made me feel anxious, depressed and like a failure. When I went online it seemed like everyone was in Australia or Thailand, and if they weren’t travelling they were getting engaged or landing great jobs. I felt like everyone was living the dream and I was still at home with my parents, with debt from my student loan hanging over me.
• I also felt that if I wasn’t tagging myself at restaurants or uploading photos from nights out, people would assume I wasn’t living. I remember a friend from uni said to me once, “Yeah, but you’re still going out having fun, I’ve seen on Facebook.” I tried to present myself as always having a great time. If my status didn’t get more than five likes, I’d delete it. 

Wider examples and secondary texts

Apple launches Clips as it bids for a slice of the Snapchat action

• Cloning Snapchat is the new brunch, which is the new black. Facebook did it, Instagram did it, even WhatsApp did it. But even so, it’s surprising today to see that Apple’s done it too.
• Instead, the goal of Clips is to enable the same sort of fun, creative camera tomfoolery that Snapchat does in its main camera app, but with an explicitly destination-neutral approach.
• No Clips Stories; no ephemeral messaging; no new usernames to secure or QR codes to share.
• If that description makes Clips sound like a Frankenstein’s monster of an app, well, it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. It’s essentially an evolution of Apple’s mobile version of iMovie, its video-editing app. While iMovie on desktop is a fairly fully-fledged video editing app, useful for creating slick videos with a lot of editing, on mobile it’s always been just a bit too heavy-duty for the sort of things it’s used for, like slamming two clips together and putting a bit of music over them.
• For it to really take off, it needs to find some originality before long. Snapchat’s lenses are rapidly becoming a recognisable draw to the app, even for people who don’t use it to chat. Prisma’s AI-powered filters are similarly unique. Clips can launch without a draw of its own, but eventually it needs its own calling card.

MM58

The Internet/Social Media

The internet and social media are currently transforming the way people communicate, gather information, socialise, access entertainment and organise their lives. There has never been so much information available so readily, and its impact is likely to be as big as that created by the printing press. Old industries (such as print newspapers) are struggling to survive while new technologies such as augmented and virtual reality, robotics and artificial intelligence are already in development. From cyber-bullying to trolling, easy access to pornography, cat-fishing, radicalisation, and the risk of grooming, the internet and social media have generated many modern moral panics about potential social change. While some of these dangers may be exaggerated, we do know that terrorist groups recruit online and use the Internet to communicate their propaganda, and that bullying and vicious trolling do exist. It is almost inevitable that these technologies will create major societal and economic changes – it’s just not clear what direction these changes will take.

Hostile Media Coverage

How has the media portrayed the refugee crisis? In the British press, a great deal of the language and the imagery has been hostile. Refugees are often labelled as migrants, to create the impression that they are travelling by choice, rather than fleeing a genuine disaster. A quick Google Images search of newspaper headlines reveals a shocking montage of misrepresentation, in which refugees are described as a swarm, horde or tide, marauding and invading their way across the world. They are held responsible for their own condition, even – or especially – when the West itself has contributed to it. Such language deliberately creates the impression in readers’ minds that refugees are a dangerous and threatening mass, parasitically living off the settled countries of the West. In any tabloid scare story about migrants/refugees, there is rarely any analysis of the causes of the refugee crisis. Any such analysis would run the risk of complicating the picture of a deluge of scroungers, and might even lead us to think of them as human beings.

What about YouTube, Vimeo and the hundreds of other sites with film clips, interviews and reviews? They are all useful. The main point is to focus on what you want to research and to search for it in a systematic way. It’s easy to get distracted and start watching a movie. Fine if you’ve got the time, but not good if you have an essay to write or a presentation to give. Teachers and examiners will want to see references for the range of sources you’ve used, so make sure you list some of the industry organisations above. Many of them have their own YouTube channels.

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Heaven or Hell – the Verdict?

So, social media: heaven or hell? Perhaps, like most forms of communication Web 2.0 is only a reflection of our existing social divides. Perhaps for some, it presents opportunities to explore their identities; but for others it works as a set of ideological blinkers concentrating their existing prejudices.

According to Wikipedia, in media, an echo chamber is a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an ‘enclosed’ system, where different or competing views are censored, disallowed or otherwise under-represented. Giddens argues that in modern or postmodern societies, the question of self-identity – ‘What to do? How to act? Who to be?’ – is inescapable. Unlike oral societies, we have to work out our own roles for ourselves. These will be influenced by both individuals and the state, social and legal changes and, of course, the media.

Alan Martin sees personalisation at its most problematic. We don’t have to look too deeply into our Facebook and YouTube commentary streams to find adversarial social media ‘banter’ that can escalate into extreme and entrenched debate. Alan Martin believes that we are more likely to be adversarial online because we immerse ourselves in blinkered communities, identifying our own viewpoints as the centre ground. We think anyone straying too far from that consensus must be wrong, ignorant or mad; in this way, the internet insulates us from unfamiliar ideas.

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The Role of Social Media

It is also possible that social media had an impact as, in what is now ‘classic’ Web 2.0 fashion, it enabled audiences to produce and distribute texts. For example, The Sun’s front page the day before the election has an unflattering picture of Miliband eating a sandwich. A hashtag ‘#JeSuisEd’ encouraged tweeters to share embarrassing pictures of people doing the same, making the point that anyone can look an idiot eating butties. In addition, @twcuddleston started #Milifandom, a Twitter-based fan club for the Labour leader. But whatever impact these memes had, they were overwhelmed by the pro-Tory press coverage.

The first leader interviews received complaints that the two leaders were treated differently, and that the programme was biased against Miliband. Polls taken afterwards showed no clear winner – YouGov took two polls that gave contradictory results. Surveys of social media responses seemed to favour Miliband. The interviews were watched by about 3 million people. About 7 million people watched the ITV debate and the winner of the debate, depending on the poll, was either Miliband or Sturgeon (for the SNP). An analysis of social media showed that Farage’s comments about immigrants with HIV were negatively received and the minor parties were tweeted about most favourably, with Cameron least favoured of all the leaders. The third debate was dogged by controversy. Cameron claimed he was ‘not invited’ to the debate whereas the other parties, the broadcasters and many on social media were keen to point out that the lack of governmental presence was his choice. Nearly 9 million people watched this debate and Miliband appeared to have ‘won’ the debate, in both traditional polls and in online responses.

"A catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they’re not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances."

We’ve already identified how viewers will choose to watch hosts who they relate to or find entertaining. As a mini case study on audience identity, let’s look at the popular YouTube gaming channel and production company, Rooster Teeth. Currently, Rooster Teeth (RT) has approximately 21 million subscribers across their several YouTube channels. Their growth can largely be attributed to their fans. They have created an online community who discuss videos, interact with employees/hosts and create their own content for the company to use. RT’s website features community message boards which allow fans to discuss games, films, videos uploaded by the channel and pretty much anything else. It has become a social hub for fans who know that they all have at least one thing in common. The website also features a store that is well stocked with T-shirts, mugs, hoodies, keyrings, stickers and many other pieces of merchandise for fans to buy.

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The X Factor and the music industry

Last year, a social media campaign successfully kept winner Joe McElderry off the top spot by persuading even more people to download Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’. This ended four years of consecutive Christmas no.1s for The X Factor, and was seen by many as evidence of people power hitting back at the mass-produced commercial fare that Simon Cowell was trying to foist on us. After all, Rage’s song is a rant against capitalism, and the band reinforced this stance by donating the profits to charity.

Celebrity Tweet

What is interesting here is the comparison between the stars that use Twitter and those who don’t – and indeed how this can affect their image. It seems fitting for Frost to post images of himself cooking because the parts that he tends to play require a sense of authenticity and ‘everydayness’. Twitter seems to support his ideological position, and it is down to Frost to support this image through what he posts. Another British celebrity, Jonathon Ross, also provides interesting insights into his home life, again supported with self-taken photographs. The images used to represent the ‘real’ star are no longer photographed and managed by a team of PR consultants, but constructed by the stars themselves. Twitter images thus seem raw and unmediated, offering an interesting comparison to the ‘airbrushed’ artificial presentations we see in magazines and newspapers.

Fac(ebook)ing the changes

For me, one of the big changes in the media is the impact social networking has had on our daily lives. It’s a case of blink, and there it is, all-pervasive, all-consuming, all-knowing, and I didn’t see it coming. Though there are several of these sites – Bebo, MySpace, Twitter, and MSN and so on, I am going to focus on Facebook.

Media Factsheet 131

As social media has developed, it has become a useful way for news editors to gauge the way that people think and feel and so news institutions can select stories that reflect current trends or they can try and create a trend by reporting stories that will get people talking about the story on Twitter, Facebook and other social media.

Media Factsheet 134

Consequently nearly all digital content has a capacity to be shared on social platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, Ello, Medium, Kickstarter but yet the news institutions have yet to create or conceive of a platform where they control the distribution of news, equally social media sites have no interest in employing journalist to editorialise and check content.

Facebook and other social media sites use a series of complicated formulae to decide which news stories rise to the top of your page or news feed and this algorithm contains editorial decisions, every piece of software design carries social implications. Gatekeepers no longer shape the news agenda and newsroom norms but shaped by algorithms which determine which promote popular stories.

Up-to-the-minute research

Snapchat 'will be bigger than Twitter, Yahoo and AOL with advertisers'

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/26/snapchat-will-be-bigger-than-twitter-yahoo-and-aol-with-advertisers

• Snapchat could become more popular with advertisers than Twitter, Yahoo and AOL within three years, with the messaging app company forecast to bring in revenues of more than $3bn (£2.4bn) a year before the end of 2019.
• That bullish forecast is based on advertisers targeting the youth audience that the disappearing photo app has seemingly cornered. More than half (51%) of video users on Snapchat are under 24, compared with 23% for Facebook and 17% for Google’s YouTube, according to Ampere Analysis.
• The number of Snapchat users grew by 14% and 17% in the first two quarters of last year. Following the launch of Instagram Stories, Snapchat’s growth slumped to 7% and just 3.2% in the final two quarters of 2016. Snap has blamed “technical issues” in the rollout of new products, but admitted in its IPO document that Facebook/Instagram would be a huge threat.
• Last summer, Instagram – which has 600 million users to Snapchat’s 158 million – launched a function called Stories, which is similar to Snapchat’s own story feature. Instagram Stories has already achieved 150 million daily active users. Instagram Stories’ launch intensified another concern: Snapchat’s slowing growth.
• “Our competition may mimic our products and therefore harm our user engagement and growth,” Snap acknowledged.

Snap Inc: it's Snapchat, but now with video-recording 'Spectacles'

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2016/sep/26/snap-inc-snapchat-spectacles-video-recording-sunglasses

• Young people have too much time. Perhaps. But as a result, Snapchat is now worth about $22bn (£17bn), just five years after some college friends started it at home. Today, CEO Evan Spiegel is a 26-year-old multi-billionaire engaged to the supermodel Miranda Kerr.
• Glasses that record video … That reminds me of something. Google Glass?
• Snap Inc. Whatever. The point is that Google Glass were these high-tech nerd goggles, but Spectacles will be simple, bold, fun – and cool!
• It seems so obvious, in retrospect. So why does Spiegel think Spectacles will be different? Well, they’re cheaper and brightly coloured. Or, at least, they will be when they go on limited release in the US for $130 (£101) this autumn. Plus, hey, they’re from Snapchat!
• I think I’ve heard of Snapchat. Is it that thing where you show people your genitals for five seconds? Pictures of your genitals, yes. That’s one of its uses. It’s the app that lets you share photos and videos that delete themselves shortly afterwards. Plus you can add silly graphics and effects. Young people like it.

Apple launches Clips as it bids for a slice of the Snapchat action

• Cloning Snapchat is the new brunch, which is the new black. Facebook did it, Instagram did it, even WhatsApp did it. But even so, it’s surprising today to see that Apple’s done it too.
• Instead, the goal of Clips is to enable the same sort of fun, creative camera tomfoolery that Snapchat does in its main camera app, but with an explicitly destination-neutral approach.
• No Clips Stories; no ephemeral messaging; no new usernames to secure or QR codes to share.
• If that description makes Clips sound like a Frankenstein’s monster of an app, well, it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. It’s essentially an evolution of Apple’s mobile version of iMovie, its video-editing app. While iMovie on desktop is a fairly fully-fledged video editing app, useful for creating slick videos with a lot of editing, on mobile it’s always been just a bit too heavy-duty for the sort of things it’s used for, like slamming two clips together and putting a bit of music over them.
• For it to really take off, it needs to find some originality before long. Snapchat’s lenses are rapidly becoming a recognisable draw to the app, even for people who don’t use it to chat. Prisma’s AI-powered filters are similarly unique. Clips can launch without a draw of its own, but eventually it needs its own calling card.

Snapchat denies claim CEO did not want to expand into 'poor India'

• Snapchat is facing a public relations crisis in India, the world’s fastest growing smartphone market, after allegations its founder said the app was “only for rich people” and that he did not want to “expand into poor countries like India”.
• The complaint was unsealed last week, revealing an allegation that Spiegel, the company’s chief executive, once told Pompliano he had no interest in expanding Snapchat into countries such as India.
• Snapchat, which has about 4 million users in India, has called the allegations “ridiculous”. “Obviously Snapchat is for everyone. It’s available worldwide to download for free,” the company said.
• India is a burgeoning market for online businesses with about 432 million internet users and another 750 million people yet to be connected.
• But India has proved a challenging market to crack. Last year a scheme by Facebook to provide free mobile internet to hundreds of millions of Indians was ruled a violation of net neutrality and stopped in its tracks.

Facebook clones Snapchat again with WhatsApp Status and Direct Photos

• Not content with taking on Snapchat by shipping two clones of Snapchat Stories, attempting two acquisitions (one of Snapchat, one of a Chinese company making Snapchat-style camera apps), making four standalone Snapchat-style apps, bundling two ephemeral messaging implementations, and creating five new cameras with AR lenses, (see also here, here, here, here, here, here and here), Facebook is again shamelessly taking on Snapchat.
• The killer app of WhatsApp Status, for the privacy-conscious at least, is the fact that all the status updates are end-to-end encrypted, intended to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks from successfully eavesdropping on your updates.
• “Can they not be innovative? Do they have to steal all of my partner’s ideas? I’m so appalled by that,” Kerr continued. “When you directly copy someone, that’s not innovation.”
• But the bigger news came a few hours later, when Facebook messaging subsidiary WhatsApp announced a major new feature. Status lets users take pictures, add stickers and drawings, and share them to all their contacts for 24 hours. It’s pitched by WhatsApp as an update to the original, text-only, “status” feature, which lets you set a text status like “out for lunch” or “available to talk” within the app, but it’s also a lot like Snapchat Stories. That is, nearly identical to Snapchat Stories. Although, to be fair, it’s also nearly identical to the Instagram clone of Snapchat Stories, Instagram Stories.

Snap shares continue to rise after IPO but analysts remain wary

• Shares in Snap Inc, the picture messaging app that went public yesterday with a valuation of $29bn this week, continued to soar on Friday as some analysts warned against “hot air” fuelling the dramatic rise.
• The stock rose substantially after the media firm NBCUniversal disclosed a $500m stake taken at the initial public offering (IPO).
• The initial success of the offering raises the likelihood that the tech sector could soon present further public offerings, but analysts remain wary.
• On Thursday, the Instinet analyst Anthony DiClemente urged investors to reduce their holdings of Snap, warning that the company is already seeing a slowdown in the growth of daily average users and average revenue per users.

UK Internet ad spend passes £10bn as Google faces YouTube row

• Internet advertising spend surged above £10bn in the UK last year as companies more than doubled the amount they spent on mobile video ads.
• The year-on-year increase of 17% on 2015 comes as many advertisers have pulled campaigns from Google and YouTube after it emerged that some ads have been running around inappropriate content such as extremist videos. 
• “People are increasingly using their smartphones to watch more clips, programmes and films,” said James Chandler, the chief marketing officer at the Internet Advertising Bureau UK, which published the annual digital ad spend report. “Consequently, as companies have to follow what the industry calls ‘eyeballs’ to get their ads in front of people, they have to allocate more budget to mobile and online video as that’s where people are spending more time.”
• The IAB report also found that nearly three-quarters of the £3.8bn digital display advertising market is traded programmatically, where machines have become largely responsible for choosing where ads are booked by advertisers and appear on the internet.

Snapchat cracks down on risque images and fake news

• Snapchat is tightening up its guidelines for publishers on its Discover service, banning the posting of risque images without editorial value, and clarifying guidelines intended to prevent the spread of fake news on the platform.
• The changes, according to a spokeswoman for Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, are intended to “empower our editorial partners to do their part to keep Snapchat an informative, factual and safe environment for everyone”.
• As well as the rules against questionable pictures, Snapchat Discover will also begin to crack down on the hot topic for most social networks: so-called fake news. Publishers will now be required to start fact-checking Discover stories, both those published in the app and linked to from it.
• Snapchat’s new rules will require some news justification or other editorial value before such stories can be posted to the service. Snap also plans to give publishers a tool in February that will allow them to age-gate content, presenting different stories to users over and under 18, according to the New York Times.

Facebook tries to clone Snapchat for 8th, 9th and 10th times

• Facebook has been trying to steal Snapchat’s thunder for a while, but this weekend the social network beat even its own covetous record.
• On Friday came the news that Facebook is testing a new camera in its main app that offers Snapchat Lens-style photo and video filters to users. The camera, available to users in Ireland for now, is accessed by swiping right on the homescreen of the Facebook app.
• On Monday, TechCrunch reported that Facebook tried to buy the Asian snapchat clone Snow. Like Snapchat, Snow features, you guessed it, a large portfolio of filters and masks. TechCrunch says that some time after it was profiled by the New York Times in July, the Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made a move to acquire the company. But just like Snapchat did before it, Snow rejected the offer, seeing a bigger future outside Facebook than in.
• In 2012, it coded Poke, a flagrant clone of Snapchat, in just 12 days, focusing on the ephemeral picture messaging. Zuckerberg was proud of Facebook’s speed, but the app disappeared without a trace shortly after.
• In 2013, Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for a reported $3bn, but Snapchat declined.
• In 2014, Facebook launched a fully-featured ephemeral messaging rival Slingshot, which actually had unique features of its own, including the ability to require a picture message in reply before the original was ‘unlocked’. Slingshot died a year later.
• In 2015, Facebook tried a different tack, rolling ephemeral messaging into Messenger in a test. The test wasn’t rolled out widely.
• In 2016, it did it again, this time pushing the ephemeral messaging as part of a suite of security updates for messenger, alongside end-to-end encryption. Those features are still in Messenger.

Does quitting social media make you happier?

• Yes, say young people doing it...
• Facebook made me feel anxious, depressed and like a failure. When I went online it seemed like everyone was in Australia or Thailand, and if they weren’t travelling they were getting engaged or landing great jobs. I felt like everyone was living the dream and I was still at home with my parents, with debt from my student loan hanging over me.
• I also felt that if I wasn’t tagging myself at restaurants or uploading photos from nights out, people would assume I wasn’t living. I remember a friend from uni said to me once, “Yeah, but you’re still going out having fun, I’ve seen on Facebook.” I tried to present myself as always having a great time. If my status didn’t get more than five likes, I’d delete it.