Every single social media app on the market has unique affordances that stand out and accustom their intended audience to create personas and personalise their experience on the app. Affordances in communication technology can be described as “the functional and relational aspects of media technologies which frame, while not determining, the possibilities of agentic action in relation to an object (Hutchby 2001a, b, p. 444).” Reddit is an app that I have been using for over a year and in that time, I have created a selective persona that best suits what I want to look at and what I enjoy. ‘Reddit is a data-rich website with a complex network structure (Steinbaur, 2012).’ There are over 330 million reddit users (Archibald, 2020) each having a unique feed that caters to their niche tastes and interests. This is due to Reddit’s affordances that allow for self-expression which are the subreddits or communities of which reddit is built around. The building blocks of Reddit are the 138000 different subreddits that are designed to cater for every single interest or hobby that someone could have. 

Reddit allows users to tailor all their interests into the home page. Users are able to customise their feed by joining the subreddits they are interested in and selecting how recent or how old the content they want to look at is. A feature I love about Reddit is it is all user generated, the users determine how popular a post will become and how many people will see it by upvoting or downvoting the post. The more upvotes a post has the more people it will be shown to. As you are browsing a subreddit you are recommended other subreddits that you might be interested in that are similar to the one browsing. The subreddit suggestions often show subreddits that have a smaller audience as they are more specific and have a niche audience compared to the other subreddit which tends to be broader in terms of the content that is shared. For example, if you are browsing the r/Minecraft subreddit a lot of other specific subreddits are suggested such as r/Minecraftbuilds and r/Minecraftsuggestions. 

Most social media platforms rely on people making interactions in real life in order for them to interact on their social media website, for example to become friends with someone on Facebook usually there is a connection required between the two people to occur in real life (Squirrell, 2020). Reddit offers something completely different. Reddit focuses more on the actual content moreover who it’s coming from and who is producing the content. Reddit possesses the power to connect random people who share the same niche interests together and look at each other’s content and discuss their shared interests. 

Another feature that reddit has implemented is the ability for users to browse the app and look at subreddits and communities without having to create an account. The feature is incredibly simple but effective as it provides anonymity to users. ‘Anonymity is one of Reddit’s differentiators amongst social media platforms and may be the reason that it is one of the most popular platforms (Prakasam, 2020).’ Even when a user creates an account, they aren’t required to share any personal details. Most Reddit users don’t share any details that might lead people to know where they live, what ethnicity they are and even what gender they are. Even when a user shares personal stories and information on topics it is considered standard to create a throwaway account. 

References

Prakasam, N. and Huxtable-Thomas, L., 2020. Reddit: Affordances as an Enabler for Shifting Loyalties. Information Systems Frontiers, pp.1-29.

Steinbaur, T., 2012. Information and social analysis of reddit. Retrieved from TROYSTEINBAUER@ CS. UCSB. EDU.

Hutchby, I., 2001. Technologies, Texts and Affordances. Sociology, 35(2), pp.441-456.

Squirrell, Tim. “Reddit Is the Best Social Media Site Because It Gets Community Right.” Quartz, Quartz, 14 Aug. 2018, qz.com/1309562/reddit-is-the-best-social-media-site-because-it-gets-community-right/. Accessed 30 Aug. 2020.

Aaron, J., 2020. What Is A Subreddit And Why Should I Care? An Explanation For Beginners. [online] Neal Schaffer – Social Media Marketing Speaker, Consultant & Influencer. Available at: <https://nealschaffer.com/subreddit/&gt; [Accessed 4 September 2020].

Archibald, M., 2020. Reddit Statistics For 2020: Eye-Opening Usage & Traffic Data. [online] Foundation Marketing. Available at: <https://foundationinc.co/lab/reddit-statistics/&gt; [Accessed 4 September 2020].

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The 20th century also known as the new media age or digital age has brought about a change in the way we absorb and obtain news. The notion of getting pre-packaged news from the government is almost completely over. The phenomenon of citizen journalism or participatory journalism has greatly contributed in the new age of media and freedom of speech in the community (Wilding et al., 2018, p.13). Technological advancements made in recent times such as the smartphone and social media have naturally allowed the phenomenon of citizen journalism to expand and grow (Wilding et al., 2018, p.18). The introduction of social media has provided people a way to post their content that they can use to push an agenda and political viewpoint for free for people across the world to see. 

Allowing the general public to capture moments in real time with their smartphones allows for new frames to be captured in the making of a story. New corporations are no longer able to frame their stories entirely to suit their desires or hide a key factor in the making of a story without the risk of being exposed by the general public (Zhongdang Pan & Gerald M. Kosicki, 1993). Jay Rosen’s quote “people formally known as the audience ” (Rosen, 2008), perfectly sums up the revolution in that the people are no longer the indefinite consumers of the packaged product they have become produsers (Bruns, 2006) as they are involved in the creation of the content produced. 

However there is a reason why training and work needs to be done in order to become a journalist. Due to the fact that the general public are not trained in journalism some stories provided by general public members can include false information and be distortions of reality (Vanderwicken, 2020). Citizen journalists mostly upload their content to platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube with barely any context to the situation leaving the viewer to have to decide their viewpoint on the story based on the information provided by a random citizen. 

There are some countries however that heavily restrict participatory journalism and journalism in general. Journalism in Syria is extremely dangerous and very tricky because the media there is predominantly controlled by the government. The world press index ranked Syria the 177th out of 180 countries and has been named the deadliest country for journalists (Hassan, 2020). Syria president Bachar Al-Assad has been named media freedom enemy and predator and for good reason (Portrait of Bashar Al-Assad, 2020). During the civil war of 2011 Al-Assad banned foreign journalists from entering the nation and police tracked down and attacked anyone who posed a threat to the regime’s interests. Since the conflict in March 2020 over 200 participatory journalists and trained journalists were beaten and killed for trying to expose the truth of the situation.  

After the Syrian government cracked down on professional citizens journalism was relied upon to fill in holes in the media and gather information about what’s happening in Syria. In 2016 over 300 journalists from Syria fled up-broad to places like Lebanon and Turkey (Deutsche, 2020). Christoph Dreyer of Reporters Without Borders Germany said, “Many ordinary Syrians simply started providing information, initially by filming demonstrations or providing information in social media about demonstrations to inform the outside world about what was happening, ” The problem however with relying on only citizen journalists to prove information is that they aren’t trained so the media don’t like publishing stories written by untrained journalists as they are considered untrustworthy. 

In 2014 a bunch of citizen journalists formed a group called Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently which was created for posting videos and photos on human rights abuses by the Islamic state. The group has been successful in creating an audience as half a million people follow their Facebook page to keep up to date. The RBSS journalists have to work undercover all with fake names to gather their information which can be extremely dangerous (Baraniuk, 2016). Since no domestic journalist can get access into the city of Raqqa the groups effort has been highly praised by the media as it provides them unique insights. The RBSS was awarded the International Press Freedom Award in 2015, from the Committee to Protect Journalists.  

Bibliography

Baraniuk, Chris. “Citizen Journalism Is Playing a Crucial Role in Aleppo – but It Comes at a Cost.” WIRED UK, WIRED UK, 2 Nov. 2016, http://www.wired.co.uk/article/syrian-citizen-journalists. Accessed 29 Aug. 2020.

Bulkley, Kate. “The Rise of Citizen Journalism.” The Guardian, The Guardian, 10 June 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jun/11/rise-of-citizen-journalism. Accessed 29 Aug. 2020.

“Citizen Journalism | Britannica.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2020, http://www.britannica.com/topic/citizen-journalism. Accessed 29 Aug. 2020.

Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com. “Crisis of Credibility for Citizen Journalists in Syria | DW | 20.06.2017.” DW.COM, 2017, 

http://www.dw.com/en/crisis-of-credibility-for-citizen-journalists-in-syria/a-39335775. Accessed 29 Aug. 2020.

Hassan, Majdoleen. “Starting Up in Syria: Investigative Journalism in One of the World’s Most Dangerous Countries – Global Investigative Journalism Network.” Global Investigative Journalism Network, 18 July 2018, 

Hassan, M., 2020. Starting Up In Syria: Investigative Journalism In One Of The World’S Most Dangerous Countries – Global Investigative Journalism Network. [online] Global Investigative Journalism Network. Available at: <https://gijn.org/2018/07/18/starting-up-in-syria-investigative-journalism-in-one-of-the-worlds-most-dangerous-countries/&gt; [Accessed 4 September 2020].

“Portrait of Bashar Al-Assad | Reporters without Borders.” RSF, 31 Dec. 2013, rsf.org/en/predator/bashar-al-assad. Accessed 29 Aug. 2020.

Rosen, Jay. “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” ResearchGate, unknown, 2012, http://www.researchgate.net/publication/291188722_The_People_Formerly_Known_as_the_Audience#:~:text=For%20Rosen%2C%20the%20people%20formerly,who%20today%20are%20not%20in. Accessed 29 Aug. 2020.

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. 2020. HOME. [online] Available at: <https://www.raqqa-sl.com/en/&gt; [Accessed 4 September 2020].tugg

Wilding, D., Fray, P., Molitorisz, S. and McKewon, E., 2018. The impact of digital platforms on news and journalistic content. NSW: University of Technology Sydney.

Pan, Z. and Kosicki, G.M., 1993. Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse. Political communication, 10(1), pp.55-75.

Bruns, A., 2006. Towards produsage: Futures for user-led content production. In Proceeding of the 5th International Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication (pp. 275-284). School of Information Technology.

Vanderwicken, P., 2020. Why The News Is Not The Truth. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/1995/05/why-the-news-is-not-the-truth&gt; [Accessed 4 September 2020].

Committee to Protect Journalists. 2020. Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, Syria – Committee To Protect Journalists. [online] Available at: <https://cpj.org/awards/raqqa-is-being-slaughtered-silently-syria/&gt; [Accessed 4 September 2020].

When being asked what popular culture do you consume it makes you think about what exactly even is popular culture?

The term popular culture is hard to define as it is such a broad concept. Breaking down the term popular culture, John Storey provides 3 definitions of what culture is, one of them being, ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group’. (Storey, J. 2015) Skateboarding is a perfect example of a culture that has overtime grown increasingly popular due to new media development, globalisation and cultural proximity. 

Marshall Mcluhan’s concept of the ‘The global village’ suggests that people of the world can be brought closer together by the globalisation of communication no matter how far apart we may actually live. (O’Shaughnessy, Stadler and Casey, 2012). Skateboarding as a culture has spread rapidly to other parts of the world since it first became popular. There are now estimated to be 100 million people in the world that skateboard (Vee, 2020). The way that skateboards are presented in the common media has made skateboards a symbol for freedom and resilience. Many shows and movies such as mid90s and street dreams show skateboarding to be associated with rebellious acts, teenagers, parties etc.

This appeals to a specific audience which includes teenagers who are related to the scenarios in the films and get inspired to pick up skateboarding. This idea ties well with Thomas B. Ksiazek and James G. Webster’s notion that cultural proximity is the intuitively appealing notion that people will gravitate toward media from their own culture. (Ksiazek and Webster, 2008). When teens watch skateboarding footage, they are more inclined to go out and skateboarding than possibly obey their original morals and rules set by either their parents or culture. 

In the past cultural proximity has been operationalised by ‘hard facts’ such as geographical distance. (Trepte, S. 2008) The development of the internet has allowed for people of different interests to connect with one another from across the world in their deep culture. Skateboarders are able to connect online without ever seeing them in person. It is extremely easy to get recognised as a skateboarder as all you have to do is post a video of yourself on instagram skateboarding and immediately you will attract other people that skate to like and share your posts. Sitting on my phone I constantly find myself browsing Instagram and looking at the endless amount of amazing skateboarders that you can find. Previous to the expansion of instagram and other media platforms you would go to  a skatepark and you would only be exposed to skaters who often skate the same park as you or if you buy a DVD to watch other skaters (Mersom, 2020). Instagram has created a whole new world for skateboarders, there are now thousands of skateboarding pages that post different skaters everyday which can be accessed in seconds and for free. You can now go onto any one of these pages and you will be likely exposed to hundreds of new skaters that you likely would have never seen before. Skateboarding has now become a trend on Tiktok as its growing popularity has influenced a lot of people to start skateboarding.

References

Trepte, S., 2008. Cultural proximity in TV entertainment: An eight-country study on the relationship of nationality and the evaluation of U.S. prime-time fiction. Communications, 33(1), pp.1-25.

Storey, J. 2015, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture : An Introduction, 7th ed., Routledge, New York. ISBN 9781138811010 Chapter 1 What is popular culture?

Ksiazek, Thomas B. and Webster, James G.(2008)’Cultural Proximity and Audience Behavior: The Role of Language in Patterns of Polarization and Multicultural Fluency’,Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media,52:3,485 — 503

O’Shaughnessy, M., Stadler, J. and Casey, S., 2012. Media & Society. 5th ed. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. p.458.

Vee, R., 2020. 52 Skateboard Statistics And Facts You Didn’T Know About | Skateboardershq. [online] SkateboardersHQ. Available at: <https://www.skateboardershq.com/skateboard-statistics-facts/&gt; [Accessed 5 September 2020].

Dixon, V., 2020. Understanding The Implications Of A Global Village. [online] Inquiries Journal. Available at: <http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1681/understanding-the-implications-of-a-global-village&gt; [Accessed 5 September 2020].

Mersom, D., 2020. Instagram Famous: How Instagram Is Changing Skateboarding. [online] Kingpin Magazine. Available at: <https://kingpinmag.com/features/articles/instagram-famous-instagram-changing-skateboarding.html&gt; [Accessed 5 September 2020].