I missed last week’s class so jumping straight into it this week. In the seminar we had a wonderful discussion about approaching and understating new media in a binary way (i.e. good vs bad for the users). We were divided into two large groups and told to come up with arguments for the “good” and the “bad” sides of media in terms of enabling participation, expression and accessing information.

Our group was arguing the “bad” side and the first hings we came up with was how there is never going to be equality in the social capital as there are many people online who have a larger following than others meaning their posts and participation gets more views and they have more chance to influence whoever is reading or viewing their content. We also spoke about how there are areas in the world with restricted access to online media like North Korea and China where web users legally cannot access specific websites and are constantly under surveillance and must be careful about what they post online.

The opposition argued that the internet allows movements such as the #metoo campaign to gain popularity and for peoples stories to be herd and in turn hopefully help resolve and get rid of such issues in the future. But it was also said that some web users simply join in these hashtags as a trend and don’t really know what they are about or support the movement at all.

This brings me to the final point which we all agreed to, at the end of the day its not just about what you post or where or when and by who or how many people its read or viewed, but rather how it is interpreted and what it provokes in another persons mind.