Week 10

This is the last blog for ESOC 211, so I wanted to make a reflection of my time in this course and all of the things that I have learned in this course. I learned the importance and the struggle of having online collaborations and communities through this course. More importantly, I learned how we interact with each other in these online portals and how it varies from real life interaction. We went into depth about copyright and collaboration of people through whom we haven't even met. When you think about it, online collaboration and communities are really cool and there isn't really anything like it.

I think another important topic we talked about was algorithms and filter bubbles. This shows how we are deceived through the internet. We don't all get the same information and we are involved in different communities. I think a lot of times we assume that we will be exposed to more on the internet because it is a vast portal with a ton of information but in reality the internet is really limiting in the information that we get exposed to. This being said, it is no different than our communication and communities that we share in person.

Overall I really enjoyed this class, it was really interesting and I learned a lot about current news and how we as a society communicate and connect with each other in online portals.

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Week 9

One thing that we did in this class was discuss a lot about social media news, what is trending and why it is important to the online community. I thought this was really the backbone to this class and really enjoyed speaking about the trending stories. It helped me be more current with the news and it also opened my eyes a lot about what was going on in the world. Especially when it came to my own filter bubble and the things that I only see on my web searches. I was able to get out of that bubble by listening to what other trending stories others in my class had found. I was able to be exposed to all types of news through this method.

It was especially interesting this semester the news that was provided everyday in class because of the presidential election. There were a lot of articles involving politics which I particularly enjoyed as someone who doesn't normally engage with politics. I was able to see many of the stories I would normally not search for on my own time. This made a class about online communities become more engaged in offline activities. I liked the mix of having us interact online with each other as well as offline. It provided a great way for us to communicate about trending and important topics.

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Week 8

This week we learned about hashtags and how they can promote a specific topic. In particular, the lesson we learned was about hashtags and how they have correlated with the Black Lives Matter Movement. And how hashtags have fathered and progressed this movement in the online community. The lecture described two functions of a hashtag. The first function is the, "coordinating signal of commonality." The second function is that hashtags are, "discursively fungible, exchangeable, or flexible." It was expressed in this lecture that hashtags are both good and bad to the online community.

Hashtags can be used to create good and bad messages and spread helpful and hurtful things to the online community. Hashtags offer a structure to the craziness of the online portal but it also offers a way for certain subjects to dominate the web. Hashtags can start a movement or they can be used just for the fun of things. They show what is trending and what is important to the online communities. They can be used to express feelings of serious events as well as hear warming events. They categorize a certain topic and as people talk about this subject with the hashtags you are able to see the trend as well as what people are thinking about this particular subject. It is one way the Internet is able to organize everyones thoughts and feelings.

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Week 7

This week in class we learned about filter bubbles and how algorithms show us what they think we want to see versus the content we should be seeing online. Eli Pariser, founder of public policy advocacy group at MoveOn.org states that your filter bubble is the bubble that you live in online. You receive personal filters based on what you already search for online, creating a bubble so that you only see certain information, information that the web thinks you should want to see. The problem with this filter bubble is that we are not being exposed to new information, you only see the same information you always see. There is no standard way to search information anymore because it is tailored to you personally when you search.

This is a problem because you don't get to see any other information than what is tailored to you. You aren't the controller of the information that gets edited out. So how are you supposed to know the information that you are missing if you don't even know what is being edited out? This is where the biggest conflict is presented. There is a want for a balanced information diet but it is hard with the gate keepers keeping out information from us leaving us with an unbalanced information diet. Algorithms have replaced traditional gatekeepers, which is a problem when it comes to not showing us information that makes us uncomfortable- we need a flow of information.

There is a need for the new gatekeepers to be transparent. As the biggest platform, we need the internet to give us the opportunity to learn new things and meet new people but without a healthy algorithm program, we will not be able to achieve this goal.

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