The Digital Divide

I think that the inequalities concerning internet access today is one of the most important issues in our societies as they can lead to social exclusion. I agree with what have been stated on Monday during the seminar that every one should be able to make one’s own decision about using the internet or not. One of the problem is that there are some areas in the world (and even in some parts of UK or France) where internet is not accessable. But another problem is that today not being able to use internet can also create inequalities concerning people’s opportunities and chances in life. For example, my grand-parents do not have internet neither a computer because they chose not to have it. It is possible for them because one of their son lives 10 minutes away and so they can ask him when they need to use the internet. The problem is that, today, lots of services are digitalised and people who do not have internet will be more and more socially excluded. Last year, as I was unemployed for few months, I went to the French Job Center to ask about my rights and noticed that a lot of administration work had to be done online. Of course, for me and most of the people I find it easier to have this kind of services online because it is accessible everywhere and whenever you need it. The problem is that for some people, even if they can have access to the devices needed for such services, they might not have the basic skills to use them. This is well demonstrated by Warschauer (2003) in his introduction when he gives the example of the “Hole-in-the-Wall” experiment in India and the “Information Age Town” competition in Ireland. These examples show that, of course, one of the key requirement for internet acces is to have the appropriate technological devices, but is also necessary to be informed and trained about the how to use such devices and the internet.

Bibliography

Warschauer, M. (2003) Technology and Social Exclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. London: MIT Press.

Dataveillance

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast from a French radio program (‘Par Jupiter!’, France Inter), in which the guest of the day, a French comedian, was invited to give his point of view about an article published on The Wall Street Journal‘s website which analyses how one can be traced through the process of data collection taking the example of a ‘pizza-and-movie night’. The comedian thus gives his impressions on the subject saying that once we have access to a service for free, such as Facebook, it makes sense that the data one chooses to give will then be collected and sold for marketing purposes. It is true that, as the actor says, if one agrees in giving personal data knowing that they will then be collected and sold, there is then no problem with it. However, as it was stated during the seminar, the problem does not lie in the data we choose to give but more in the consequences it has on our societies and how it can lead to social exclusion through processes of social sorting and classification (Ball et al., 2006). The question is: do we really have the choice to give or not our personal information? I think that, today, it is difficult to do anything without giving our data as everything that we do on our smartphones or on internet are subjected to datamining (which is demonstrated in The Wall Street Journal‘s article). Therefore, deciding not to give one’s personal data would mean being excluded from society. Moreover, what has been stated in this radio program and what we discussed on Monday (at the end of the presentation on why data collection matters) reveal the fact that ‘there is already all-too-little knowledge either among the public or among data-sharing agencies about where exactly those data travel’ (Ball et al., 2006: p.4).

Bibliography

Ball, K. and Mukarimi Wood, D. (2006) A Report on the Surveillance Society (Summary Report) [online]. Available at: https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/documents/1042391/surveillance-society-summary-06.pdf [Accessed on April 2018].

Kuronen, J. et al. (2018) ‘How Pizza Night Can Cost More in Data Than Dollars’, The Wall Street Journal website, 10 April, http://www.wsj.com/graphics/how-pizza-night-can-cost-more-in-data-than-dollars/ [Accessed on April 2018].

France Inter (2018) Par Jupiter! [podcast] April 2018. Available at: https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/par-jupiter/par-jupiter-17-avril-2018.

The ‘Privacy Paradox’

During this week’s seminar I found interesting the way the group integrated their personal experiences in their presentation. This made think of my own use of technological devices, the internet and more specifically social media and, as Hargittai and Marwick suggest: do I really understand the potential privacy risks associated with [my] online behavior’? When we have been introduced to Facebook it was such a great innovation for the young people that we did not even think about the issues relating to our privacy. Moreover, our generation all these innovations in communication and digital technologies for granted because they are ‘intrinsic to social life, school, or employment’ (Hargittai et al., 2016: p.3737) and therefore, we do not even pay attention to the Terms and Conditions when subscribing to a social network or agree systematically to the use of cookies on the internet. Sometimes I just feel like we do not have the choice – although I guess that we must do have the choice, we are just not informed about the dangers and opportunities we may have to protect our privacy online. Since I have started studying the media in September, I have been confronted to these questions concerning surveillance on the internet and how Facebook or other social media collect and use our personal data. In addition to this, scandals such as the Cambridge Analytica or the case of Snowden reveal the importance of the subject and the fact that people need to be more informed about the issue. The fact that governments like the UK or USA are thinking of changing their attitudes towards companies such as Facebook makes me think that people will be more and more careful when it comes to share personal information on internet.

Bibliography

Hargittai, E. and Marwick, A. (2016) ‘“What Can I Really Do?” Explaining the Privacy Paradox with Online Apathy’, International Journal of Communication, 19032-8036(10): 3737-3757.

Virtual Communities and Democracy

Today, I am going to discuss the fact that community building on the internet and notably on social networked sites can either have a democratic power or, on the contrary, threaten democracy. As we said during the presentation social media such as Facebook or Twitter enable people who may feel excluded, not listened to or marginalised in her or his life, to find their place within a community giving them the opportunity to have a voice. To show this we took the example of the #metoo movement that participated in the liberation of women to denounce sexual violence and harassment. There also other examples such as the #blacklivesmatter still on Twitter and which was created following the discharge of a white policeman who had killed a black teenager in the US. This movement gave to black people, especially in North America, the ability to have a voice and denounce racism in their country. These movements have the opportunity to bring social and political changes. However, social media and the internet in general can negatively impact democracy. For example, when using social media, the content you post on Twitter can be visible only if you have a significant number of followers and if your tweet has been shared enough to have the possibility to be socially or politically ‘influential’. Moreover, there also inequalities between one country to another. For instance, China’s population does not have access to Facebook or Twitter as it is controlled by the government. Or another example could be that some people do not have access to computers or new technologies to be part of a community on the internet. Another democratic issue is the fact that using internet, people make their personal data available to companies such as Facebook which can then use them for marketing purposes and harm your privacy.

The Youth and the Use of Digital Media

After reading the two articles by Alicia Blum-Ross and David Buckingham, I think that all is about education and how parents or teachers can raise awareness among children and the youth concerning their consumption of new technologies whether these are videogames, TV or social media. From my own experience and use of social media, I think that people from my generation tend to use social media more as an entertaining device rather than something that can be used as a learning device or as a way to develop collaborative experiences. As Blum-Ross and Buckingham explain the fact of teaching young people coding or other digital skills is not a problem as long as a balance is found within the educational process between the teaching of digital skills and social or collaborative skills.

On Monday, during the seminar, we discussed about gaming and its social impacts, such as isolation for people who spend hours playing videogames per day. In the video we watched about the Korean gamers, I was surprised by their lifestyle and the importance of videogames over their social relationships. As one said during the seminar, we can compare these Korean players to boy’s bands (such as One Direction) in the UK. I think that it is not just the use of technology which is a problem here but also the development of the ‘fan culture’ phenomenon. There are many aspects in our lives that ‘push’ us to increasingly use digital devices but it is something that is possible to control and that we should control. There is a lack in regulating the use of new technologies as well as in educating the youth to use these devices for different purposes than entertainment such as the development of collaborative learning or, for their future, collaborative work.

An Information Society?

This week I focused on Webster’s critique of what theorists have called the Information Society. In the introduction of his book Theories of the Information Society, Frank Webster highlight five approaches of what is an Information Society. In this post I will only focus on the three points that I found the most relevant to my everyday life.

First, he focuses on technological determinism and the fact that ICTs are ‘regarded as the prime social dynamic’ (Webster, 2014: p.14). As I mentioned last week on my blog, although new technologies take an important place in our everyday life, they do not determine social change but only participate in shaping our society. I have noticed that not everyone use technology in the same way and that the more there is technological innovations the more people seem to be careful in the way they use technologies.

Then, Webster examines the changes in ‘time-space relations’ and flows of information (Webster, 2014: p.20). Here, the writer raises the question of what we can define as networks which allow the information to circulate: does it include postal service or the telegram?

Finally, Frank Webster talks about the Information Society from a cultural perspective explaining that ‘we exist in a media-saturated environment’ (Webster, 2014: p.22) and that our lives depend on our relations to others on how they perceive us and vice-versa.

I find these two last points interesting because it makes me think of the fact that even if we have more possibilities to communicate and share with each other – thanks notably to the digital networks – we also tend to pay more attention to ourselves and to control the image we give of ourselves. Do we then live in a more artificial society or, as Baudrillard mentioned, a ‘hyper-reality’ (Webster, 2014: p.22)?

Bibliography

Webster F. (2014), Theories of the Information Society. London: Routledge.

‘Do new media displace the ‘heritage’ media?’

I recently started to watch Black Mirror, a TV series depicting the power of technological devices on humans and which in the future, as Dutton explained, could lead to a society ‘where autocratic human elites use television and internet for continuous surveillance and control’ (Dutton, 2004: p.42). This kind of TV show makes us realise how powerful and influential new technologies can be and how it affects our modern societies. Moreover, we can notice constant improvements in technological devices and their increasing importance in many aspects of our lives, as well as the struggle for old media to survive among these new media devices. But, do social media and networking displace old media such as television (especially among the young generations)? In a recent report* from Ofcom, it is stated that live TV is still watched by 80 percent and 73 percent of children aged from 6 to 11 and 11 to 15, respectively – making live TV the mostly watched programme. This report also shows that 88 percent of children from 11 to 15 are using social networking. These figures illustrate that watching TV is still common among children even though they use social media. However, it is difficult to say if, in a long-term future, the old media will not be used anymore as it depends on ‘unpredictable social, economic, organizational, cultural, and political forces’ (Dutton in Dutton, 2004: p.42). It is, therefore, also difficult to know if our societies will look like places as described in Black Mirror or other ‘nightmarish science-fiction narratives’ (Dutton, 2004: p.42). Our debate during the seminar this week has also demonstrated the complexity of the way the media can positively or negatively impact the people or the way it serves or harms democracy.

Bibliography

Dutton, W. (2004) Social Transformation in an Information Society: Rethinking Access to You and the World [online]. UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001520/152004e.pdf.

*Ofcom (2016) Digital Day 2016: results from the children’s diary study [online]. Available from: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/multi-sector-research/general-communications/digital-day.

The Forgotten Generation

Born in 1994, I am part of a generation who has grown up using the computer as well as witnessed the increasing use of and dependence for the internet and ‘the transformative social power of the technology’ (Dutton, 2004: p.29). Today, I use the computer for mostly everything and anything so that I can have access to the ‘vital social and economic resources’ (Dutton, 2004: p.29) I need to progress in life. My computer is full of pictures, videos, music, the notes from my courses, my essays and academic writings from others, etc. Although I have always been aware of the negative aspects of internet (its influence, the ‘fake news’, etc.), I have never thought of the fact that all the digitised materials I have would possibly disappear. Indeed, as Vint Cerf argues, people digitise files ‘in the hope of ensuring their long-term survival’ (Cerf cited in the Guardian) but what we forget to think about is the fact that ‘the programs and hardware needed to make sense of the files are continually falling out of use’ (Cerf in the Guardian). For example, my grand-parents have cassettes of my childhood that, today, I cannot watch anymore because I do not have the appropriate player. However, I do not think that the devices I consume now are going to be unusable soon (meaning within my lifetime). The problem is more about the fact that in a hundred years there may not be any trace of my existence and, more importantly, the fact that our digital lives and history may disappear.

Bibliography

Dutton, W. (2004) Social Transformation in an Information Society: Rethinking Access to You and the World [online]. UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001520/152004e.pdf.

Sample, I. (2015) ‘Google boss warns of ‘forgotten century’ with email and photos at risk’, Guardian website, 13 February, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-boss-warns-forgotten-century-email-photos-vint-cerf [accessed 13 February 2018].