Reflective Post

This tutorial presentation is deepens for us to understand about the similarity concept of weblog, warblog and news media. I’m agree with Lasica said blogging is the beginning of a new form of journalism. In addition, weblogging will drive a powerful new form of proletarian journalism as millions of Net users, young people specially, take on the role of columnist, reporter, analyst and publisher while fashioning their own personal broadcasting networks. Moreover, warblogging is too the role of reporter as their own personal broadcasting networks.

On the other hand, blogging is a new form of news, but it does not relocate traditional news sources by creating an altogether separate to them. Therefore, there is little foundation for the view among some that blogging will supersede professional news. In this tutorial, we had to share about related to blogging and warblogging in particular build credible oppositional voices to mainstream news media. As the result, more classmates were think news media in particular build credible.

Tutorial Presentation: Resistance is Fertile - Consumption in the Everyday

My tutorial presentation makes us to understand the construing of advertisement. It could be found everywhere. We are surrounded by the messages from billboards, store signs, huge electronic monitors, which have been embodied much means for causing passers-by attention to achieve the most effective willingness of consumption; therefore, the individual is labeled as the consumer. Some parts of the populace would get used to it by filtering out them, but others would be annoyed by the radio or television commercials and, most objectionably, the calls from telemarketers.

Media is the most crucial way to activate the activity of consumption. Two main areas are to be considered from the media according to the consumer theory: the democratic nation state and the industrial economy. Concerning the values or equality in family life, gender relations, sexual preference, consumer patterns and emotional dynamics, consumption is considered for the reproduction of labour and the satisfaction of needs. It controls our mind to distinguish reality, in which a city is just simply like a real ‘imaginary museum’. The people in the city are bounded by a language system, which is a production of meaning and a sort of speech, from the advertising media restricting the freedom of the individual and group to choose rather than offering more varieties for the consumer’s benefits: ‘Consumers are transformed into immigrants’. Different types of consumers in different sex, age, class, gender, ethnicity, race and region form specific types of consumptions are varied by four aspects: the social relationships to catalyse consumption, the consuming act to the goods, the participation of the consumer in the research of designing products and the frequency of consuming activity. Consumption in the modern world increased spectacularly with the help of the advertisement in several media.

Mark Poster finally concluded that media in the consumption are ‘as old as culture, influencing, constraining, enhancing and generally making possible from the beginnings of human society the practice of culture.’ No matter how the political or economical condition could be developed, media could transmit messages to the populace through their infinitive strategies made use of in order to let us be addicted without remedy by the typical patterns of consumption.

Finally, the presentation will be concluded by the colleagues expressing their daily experience of viewing advertisement in different places to let them bear in mind that how media could practically influence our habits of consumption and how it becomes the main part for constructing our daily life.

Tutorial presentation -- Ethics

This presentation is based on Marco Kingsto's Diary of a Webdiarist: Ethics Goes Online, published in Remote Control (2003).

The author Kingston is the journalist of a Webdiary. He started by posting his own opinion on his webdiary, and posting his readers' ideas, comments and complaints on the internet upon the receival of readers' emails. So he posted online ethical codes on his site. The codes were drafted according to the hardcopy journalism but with amendments made according to the immediacy of online postings. He then draws on some points

First, unlike hardcopy journals, webdiaries are able to interact with the diary's readers. Once Kingston made posting on his webdiary, the readers will provide their opinion to his post. The interaction between the two sides could influence their attitude towards the subject, like the author has admitted that he is being inspired by some of his readers' ideas. Also, the topic of discussion will not be dominated by one side, as other readers will post their ideas and hence balance the webpage.

Second, those who post their ideas on the net, including the web owner, are responsible for everything they posted on the internet. This is because their comments are posted under their own name. This could also increase the accountability of the postings, and hence the liability of the webdiary. However, some people might want to comment anonymously due to their social status or having conflicts of interest. The author thus strongly recommends them to provide a Nom de plumes, which give reasons of why they do not want to comment under their names.

And in the online ethical codes he also includes some points which is same as hardcopy journals like the banning of posting offensive materials like discriminatory words, or plagiarism on others' work.

At the end of the presentation, a piece of news and its discussion forum is shown for further discussion on the topic.

Tutorial Presentation: Resistance is Fertile

In tutorial presentation, I choose the reading is “Warblogging as Critical Social Practice”. This reading has including the four aspects: ‘Defining the Weblog’, ‘Weblog Developments’, ‘Warblogging and Journalism’ and ‘Weblogging and New Media Theory”. It has been about the potential for alternative and democratic forms of communication on the Internet. In contrast to traditional mass media inherently biased towards open, egalitarian expression.

This article investigates how warblogging, a particular way of using weblogs to cover international current affairs, has emerged as a ‘popular alternative, but in such a way that it is contingent upon broader cultural and political trends and the influence of mainstream journalism.

Finish in my presentation, I will ask the short question to our classmates for discussion. The question is related to blogging and warblogging in particular build credible oppositional voices to mainstream news media.

Reflective Post

Regarding to the tutorial presentation is effectively for us to understand the problem of race, privacy, and discrimination really exists in internet. ICERED is a good example for us to prove the condition of virtual world.

Internet is a “racialized space. Tal didn’t agree with “color –blindness” of the internet and Bailey think that whites are the domination of cyberspace as the adoption of knowledge and language of the white and excluded non-white.

Moverover,“Peaceful and humanity exits without restraints” seems impossible in virtual world.Classmates contribute the opinions and agree with that internet as a “racialzed space.”Race is through online interaction racial identity spring from participant’s perception rather than psychical cues.

Reflective post

This tutorial presentation is good for us to understand more about the JenniCAM and how she breaks the binary opposition of public and private; body and machine; real and fiction. As she questioning the representation of woman and gender subject, no body denies her positive influence. We agree JenniCAM is expanding the use of technologies; and she is a courageous girl who represents the “real female” image and redefine the definition of voyeurism. In this small tutorial group, I think is great for classmates to share their comments and opinions.

Presentation on Tutorial Reading

Rumination on Cyber-Race by Jerry Kang

This reading is talk about the Race problem in the cyber-space.

Jerry Kang is a Korean-American law professor also we can see him as an immigrant and racial minority in USA. He did provide two examples: ‘fighting words episode and car purchase’ to explain how he did discriminated by the other people. And in his reading, he did point out several things:

• How can we map each other into racial categories?
  
• Racial Mechanics.

Cyberspace provides a space for people to interact with each other and form a group, although they are at great distances. (e.g. real time chat, weblogs…etc)
Cyberspace not only help people maintain social relationships originally constructed in real space but also facilitate new relationships originally formed in cyberspace.
Cyberspace become more and more ‘real’ like the TV game, we can see that it have the potential to change everything, including racial mechanics.

ABOLITION

Most cyber interaction are based on text, which don’t need to disclose morphology
Race is not signalled in cyberspace but doesn’t mean that race ceases to matter in cyber or certainly, in real space. ‘Text’ will also permit racial mapping, explicitly (I’m Asian) and sometimes implicitly (consider cues from language, grammar, dictions, names).

INTEGRATION

• Cyberspace can help to reform racial meaning by promoting social interactivity?
• In real, we will imagine experiences, provided by mass media – stereotypically
• In cyberspace, we navigate less segregated communities, which means that we will engage in more direct experiences with actual people, not mediated by third parties. And direct experiences are less stereotypical than vicarious ones because there is less economic pressure for racial minorities to perform stereotypically for any audience.
• Also, there have a more equal social status in cyberspaces.
• Cooperation toward a joint goal is another important requirement. This defuses competition and highlights a common project rather than a common racial identity.

TRANSMUTATION

In a cyberspace, we can simply broadcasting a different racial signal than in a real space – cyber-passing. (racial masks) Moreover, the transmutation had given a reason for people to understand more about other’s race and identity. But in what way? Mediated stereotype. In the end, we may all unwittingly consume black/red/yellow-face, while believing it to be an “authentic” direct experience.

Presentation - Cyberstalking: gender and computer ethics

Internet is definitely breaks through the boundaries between public sphere and private sphere; we can have our "say" from home (private sphere) with the computer reach the internet (public sphere) where everybody can have their own "say". Traditional thinking / Mainstream people think of the internet seems provided a virtual public sphere for people to have their "freedom of speech".

But in the reading of "Cyberstalking: gender and computer ethics", the reading counterpart problems including
- computer ethics (“self-protection”, Spam report)
- cyberstalking in Internet (sexual harassment, defamed)
- different place/country with different law/restriction of the practice using the internet
- gender inequality (feminist ethics with the liberal arguments)

I will then show an e-mail that I have received for discussion and to see what our classmates seeing the situation in Hong Kong.

Tutorial Presentation of Racing Markers of Difference

My presentation is base on the e-journals which called HK cyberculture: a case study.
Through the journal, it mention that internet is a place where is peaceful and humanity exits without restraints. And it associated with Habermasian ideal world of true participatory democracy in the virtual world.

The article is focused on research of cyberculture, using ICERED as a case study. This English community is established in HK. There is the bulletin board and it divided into 3 parts which included work, play, and school. Through ICERED user, they have to log onto the site with a fake name (make up a name for themselves).Through their communication as they just to find the chartroom buzzing with gossip, conjecture, unfounded speculation, and everyday peoples like you and me who are lucky or unlucky to have become the topics of discussion. They seem like defender of freedom of speech. However there is the conflict between freedom and regulation, between the right to speech and the right to privacy. As there is the case of “E-silk road Holding, an online exhibition, it sued ICERED for libel and ask to know who is posted these offensive comment of against their company.

The unbearable “whiteness” of ICERED

Through the journal, it point out that internet as a “racialzed space. Tal didn’t agree with “color –blindness” of the internet and Bailey think that whites are the domination of cyberspace as the adoption of knowledge and language of the white and excluded non-white.
Through the ICERED case, most peoples are “yellow”, the radicalized exist through how “yellow” marginalized the “white” and “non-yellow”. As the site is an English language site so it can be attract some white or racist white people to join it.
There is dialogue which posted in ICERED and it is reflected the racial problem in internet.
A white user called “RATMAN” posted the report result “86% Chinese people have only 70% peripheral vision compared with westerners.” As a result, a conflict was take place between the white and yellow through the dialogue.
Another scholar claim that the sense of “race” is still exist in internet as the relation between racial identity and physical body is very strong. It is through online interaction racial identity spring from participant’s perception rather than psychical cues.

Tutorial Presentation of Digital Gender

For this tutorial presentation, I choose the reading about JenniCAM.

Jennifer Ringley established the JenniCAM since 1996, it recorded her daily life through the digital camera. JenniCAM seems fulfilling the male audience’s voyeuristic desire. Actually, it is the show about the life of Jennifer, who is not desirable at all time. But it represents the real life of a girl. JenniCAM is redefines the definition of voyeur, and it raises the question of representation and the gender subject. She creates the new definition of “to be a subject”, since Jennifer is the object and also is the subject in JenniCAM.

From the reading, as Judith Bulter theory of identity-forming category is “both produce and destabilized in the course of this reiteration”, through the JenniCAM, which reveals the contradiction of gender identity and desire. It tells that JenniCAM shows the cyborg subjectivity; also a hybridized identity through the development of technology, such as the name of JenniCAM, is the hybrid of woman and technology.

Moreover, she breaks the binary opposition of public and private; body and machine; real and fiction. JenniCAM also reinforces the discussion of “human as computer” metaphor, this is because beside the upload images of Jenni’s, there are narratives that typed by her, this makes her life become more mechanized.

From JenniCAM, it denies the necessarily connection between sexual pleasure and women. Her images with narratives constructed by Jennifer herself, it challenges the traditional definition of woman must be the “object”. As there are male and female audiences watch it, it questionings the male gaze.

As the fort-da game introduced by Sigmund Freud, there is the promise of return of Jennifer in JenniCAM. This explains why people keep on to check whether Jennifer’s body in there or not. JenniCAM also examines the pre-oedipal, she acts as the mother figure, as the source of pleasure and unity.