Workshop IV - Menu Driven Identities

Through MSN and Yahoo, the categories of countries and passwords, name and birthday are available to user to sign up but the Second Lifegame world only available to choose the user first name. There is no choice for Last name categories. The second name section was compulsory to fill but no suitable choice for me. There is no choice for different races. It seems has a racial discrimination as the site presumed the users are western. Otherwise, according to yahoo, there are some assumption for the user, for the section of preferred content it assume that the relation between countries and language, that means if you are certain countries you are suppose to know the certain kind of language.

Through the website of Lavalife , it categorize people to only female and male. The sorts of identity present on Lavalife are categories by the design of the site. Identities are constructing by the division of races, age group the location, language they speak, hobby. Further, there are 3 kind of relationship presumed for the people, for the choice of relation, then the more information is required such as income, children.

Presentation on Self.org II: Playing Games, Sim(ulating) World & Having Divine Powers

I have chosen Mia Consalvo's "Hot Dates and Fairly-Tale Romances: Studying Sexuality in Video Games" selected from week 11 for tutorial presentation. As the popular attention to games is make broader from only considering violence to thinking about sex. The main theme of this tutorial reading is talk about the sexuality in video games. Consalvo's has used different theoretical approaches to studying sexuality in video games. Consalvo pointed out that it is important to see both representations and game-play in studying sexuality in games. She quoted from game theorists such as Janet Murray and John Banks, "a game is not simply a text to be read, but an experience to be had." Thus, we have to consider the performative level of game play.

Consalvo indicated "while heterosexuality is often the dominant sexuality portrayed in games, this 'representation' or 'performance' can be subverted both through the actions of the player and the structure of the game itself." Consalvo has examined two games in this reading, which are Final Fantasy IX (2000) and The Sims (2000).

In the Final Fantasy IX, the heterosexual nature of the theme was implicit. It is a very traditional "fairy-tale". When taking game-play into account, sexuality in this game might probably allow for homosexual readings. The exact happen is depending entirely upon the game player. It all about somebody else desire what the story should be.

In The Sims, on the other hand, players can test the sexuality of their Sims in the game world. However, if players do not wish to challenge the heterosexual nature, players will likely to take no notice of these potentials. Consalvo has argued that this game in some ways challenges the norms of heterosexuality, and however, in the other ways reinforces them.

Workshop - Menu Driven Identities

When we want to sign up for Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Second Life gameworld, there are some basic information we need to provide unless we cannot continue. For instance we need to input the surname, name, sex, date of birth and country. Secondlife have two parts for register, the different between Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail is user needs to input the real self’s information and the name for the game. It can be illustrates that the real identity and the “net” world identity are different supposedly in Secondlife. This reinforces the “tradition” in the virtual community that people would not use the real name to meet other.

Furthermore, there is the interesting thing about the category of “country” that user needs to input. For the category of “country”, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China are provided also, but how about Tibet, Inner Mongolia? As Hong Kong is not a country, but it appears in the list, then why those minority group are disappeared? Besides, when we need to input the first name and last name, the last name one is the list that we need to choose and all of them are the westerner name, if I am Chinese, what can I choose?

Also, in Lavalife's, as we need to fill the categories: sex, seeking target and their age range, and the purpose (casual dating, relationship and intimate encounter). The result is they are westerners and Australian, as I select different purposes, there is the same result. It seems that what even you choose, “they are” what you can choose.

Comment on Yahoo Mail and Hotmail Service

Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Mail provides the choices for the register to choose the specified region for their Yahoo sites. For example, if you are located in Hong Kong SAR, you are able to choose this option to immediately modify your Yahoo IP to the Hong Kong IP. Hotmail does not provide this option.

Hotmail
Hotmail, possibly embodied the service for providing business information for users, provides a checkbox for the register to choose whether they have the intention to receive the information by checking “I won or work with a small business”. Additionally, the time zone is required to choose according to the register’s situation. If you are in the biggest country such as U.S. or Japan, you have also to provide for Hotmail what county or state you are located, while Yahoo Mail does not.

Brief Conclusion
Both Hotmail and Yahoo Mail require registers to provide some privatized information including birth date, gender, first name and last name, etc. Similarly to Lavalife, although the register is not necessary to faithfully fill in the information to reflect their truth identity for convinience or making friends, this does constitute the grounds for the mail service provider to make use of the information in order to have their usage, possibly not in the willingness of the user. But the user does not have choice to choose because once they desire to have access to the service, they have to firstly click the button to agree all the terms or conditions presumed by the service provider. Once the user uses the mail service for serious intention such as business interaction with clients or partners, all the parties within this user’s circle will be influenced by, for instance, e-mail forwarding, virus, advertisements, etc., but at the same time, the information provided should not be untrue. Indeed, no protecting mechanism is now workable for this situation to avoid any kind of disturbance unexpected by the user.

Reflective Post for Self. Net

At the beginning of this class, it is full of confusion. Before I study, I assume it is similar to computer application course. However, it is talked about identity, cyborg, virtual space; and they are related to gender and race also. The most impressive topic is about cyborg. When I know that cyborg is includes many things, for example, as I wear eyeglass, I am a cyborg too. Besides, I am surprise that technology is around us everywhere. Through the technology development, we develop an Internet space, I think everyone should be equal as they will not know the others nationality. But, actually, it would through the name and language reveal his/her nationality. This is the thing that I had never thought. As we start to use the blog to post our assignment and reflective post for our presentation, I practice the use of blog. The function is different with the online dairy. I can through the blog to get some new ideas through other classmates' posts.

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.