Horror images (CMS/PL 312)

Enrico De Angelis argues in his chapter “ The controversial archive: negiotiating horror images in Syria” in the book “The Arab Archive” that the images that were taken by photographers in places like Syria are called orphan images, because maybe the photographer’s name is posted on the news agency’s website, but when the image starts to spread all over the internet, nobody knows anything about the picture, which means that nobody knows who is the father/mother of the person in the picture,where does he/she live, how old are they. All we know is that those “orphan pictures” spark a kind of emotion when someone sees them, For example, President Donald Trump once saw a picture that was taken in Syria and he said that it had an impact on him. The only chance of showing the horros of Syria to the rest of the world is by making the citizens become journalists themselves, since the governemnt prohibited any journalists from entering the country.These pictures circulate the web very quickly, and people tend to share them, but the debatable question that was raised here is: whether it was ethical to share the pictures or not, because these pictures  show corpses, or maybe people slowly dying. The Abounaddara collective was against sharing pictures that expose the victims, because that takes away their dignity from them, and that there are definitely other ways of showing the horros of Syria to world. The collective argues that we never see pictures of victims from the United States or Europe. The other opinion was was from journalists who said that those images will make the world aware of what’s happening in syria, and will make them never froget about it, and maybe the pictures will spark a reaction from the international community. The author also mentioned that the photographers themselves can 

Donatella Della Ratta’s essay “ Why the syrian archive is no longer (only) about syria” in the book “The Arab Archive” starts with telling the story of “Ceasar”, an exhibition that happened in the United Nations Headquartes in Ney York that showed the pictures of Syrian between 2011 and 2013. This moment was a moment of success as this exhibitions sparked many reactions from the audience. She also discussed that several citizen journalists risk their lives by goign and documenting what’s happening to show the world what’s happeneing, because tehy want the world to hepl them and to do something about it, and when these videos end up on youtube, youtube deletes these videos because they were known as terrorist propaganda

To relate this to the iraqi protests, i don’t think that the iraqis are very conservative  about the images that they show to world, because a lot of horror images have been shared from the protests (i’m not comparing the iraqi protests to syria, because i know that syria has expirienced way more violence). However i feel that iraqis are used to seeing sensitive scenes, because of all the wars that they’ve been through. In December 2019, The iraqi protesters broke into a 17-year-old boy’s house, who live with his mother, thye beat his mother in front of him,forcibly dragged him out,beat him up, and set fire to the house. They slit his throat and they tied up his body to a light pole by the feet. People in the street reacted by encouraging the executioners, taking selfies to capture the moment. The videos and the pictures were posted to twitter. They did this, because they’re claiming that the boy was a a member of the fifth column in the pay of the Americans.

The Uprising documentary is a very emotional one to me, because it shows that people with no experience in filmmaking or photoraphy have documented the Arab Spring since 2010, and it is relatable, becaus they’re normal citizens just like all of us. All of those videos put together has more effect on the people than watching those clips separately. Those people risk their lives and risk being arrested by the government just for them to have somekind of primary source proof, and of course they’re hoping that the international community will give them a helpign hand 

Deepfakes and cheapfakes (COM 311)

I have seen how a lot of people lying or fabricating something online just to spread rumors, but i have never seen that advancement in technology to fake a video. Deepfakes are a whole new genre of videos, in which artists can manipulate everything in the video, their voces,their bodies, and even their words. The videos end up looking very close to reality that’s it’s so hard to notice that they’re fake. The problem is that those deepfakes circulate on the internet very quickly, and people are going to believe anything they see. It all started when  artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe posted a fake video of Mark Zuckerberg to Instagram ,using a video dialogue replacement model (VDR) made by Canny, an Israeli advertising company. The video was created using a suite of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques that enable the sophisticated manipulation of visual data, specifically the movement of bodies. Some were put in awe by the video, but to me the video was so scary and worrying.

  Deepfakes are just a a component of audio visual (AV) manipulation.AV includes both the cutting edge, AI-reliant techniques of deepfakes, as well as “cheap fakes” that use conventional techniques like speeding, slowing, cutting, re-staging, or re-contextualizing footage.  AV manipulation is most likely to have a negative impact on women, people of color, and those questioning powerful systems. They can be transmitted at the speed and scale of today’s online platforms

Mosireen (CMS/PL 312)

The Arab Archive 

This book shows how important a citizen is when it comes to citizen-journalism, and how much of big role they play in spreading awareness all over the world by documenting what’s happening first-hand, using the cell phones, by taking pictures or videos. This example specifically applies to the Arab Spring in 2011, specifically the case of Egypt in 2011.

Eight-Hundred-and-Fifty-Eight Hours

The Egyptian revolution that had happened in 2011, and people protesting have been documenting everything that has been happening, to document both the assembling of mass protests and the atrocities of state violence. The mosireen are a group of people, who collect those archives as much as they can. 858 is an Archive of Resistance, compiled by members of the Mosireen media collective, embodies many of the attributes of the uprisings that enacted new and inspiring modes of collective politics. They gave their archive the name of 858, which means the amount of time they spent to upload content.The struggle of these archives is that the government won’t let them circulate that much on the internet, since they don’t want to let the people remember what happened in 2011, so they will not really let these archives out on the internet.

After i conducted a ot of research i did not find any archive for the Iraqi protests; however, i can relate the part about citizen journalism to the iraqi protests, because the iraqi citizen mainly rely on the reporting of the protesters, since the iraqi media doesn’t cover the events well. 

Numerical representation (COM 311)

The article by miller states that

Digital:

Manovich said that Digital media is a numerical representation, and all information is represented in 0-1 binary code. The old media (analogue) and the new media (digital) differ in so many ways. Digital media can be tinkered with in a way that is difficult with traditional media, because analogue it allows large amount of data to be stored, and it can be easily manipulated.  It can be compressed and decompressed, which allows a large of amount of data to be stored and distributed in an efficient way.

Automated:

Manovich also suggested that automation is one of the key components of digital media. He came to the conclusion that the numerical constitution of digital media and communications means that such products can be easily manipulated through the use of automated templates and algorithms.

The wall street journal shows that people should be more careful and more aware while using the their devices or while searching through one of the most famous search engines in the world, which is Google. This is because the article states that Google interferes with the search results. This shows that they interfere with the user’s privacy and they personal data about the users, so they can make personalized and targeted advertising, and at the end of the day all they do with this data is gain money

Tactical Media (CMS/PL 312)

Tactical media is a set of practices that activists use to create counter-information, according to  Garcia and  Lovink. They also call it the”Do it Yourself media, because it’s an easy,cheap,simple, and most importantly, effective tool of communication. It aslo doesn not require professional artists, but it requires creativity. One of the important techniques that help in sending the message in tactical media is culture jamming, whcih happens when the culture or the symbol are subversively critiqued. Tactical media can aslo be seen as civill disobedience,  which is an act of non-violent and peaceful resistence 

In Iraq, protesters are taking the streets differently, using spray paint to paint the wall of baghdad to express their visions for a brighter future. They have transformed a tunnel  leading to tahrir square, where the protests mainly started, into a revolutionary art gallery.

Many of the murals in the tunnel depitct their demands, and others sow their support and empowement to women, who participate in the protests. The text next to the woman showing her muscle says” “Our women are like this”

This mural hails Iraq’s tuk-tuk drivers who have been helping the protesters. The graffiti reads: ‘Our tuk-tuk drivers are in the fire, they help others … they are better than America and Iran together.’ The drivers of the motorised rickshaws, typically seen in poorer parts of the capital, have become the unofficial heroes of the protest movement.

This colourful mural represents Iraq’s television media ‘that do not want to see, hear or speak about’ the anti-government protests.

'Google: Good or Evil Search Engine?' (COM 311)

find the chapter here:https://sk-sagepub-com.jcu.idm.oclc.org/books/social-media-a-critical-introduction/n6.xml

The Ubiquity of Google

Google has become ubiquitous in everyday life. It has become how we search, organize, and perceive information about almost every aspect in our lives. The phrase “to google” now has a meaning in the Oxford dictionary, which is to go and search for something, which is typically what everyone does with a search engine

Google's Economic Power

Google was found in 1998. In 2004 it turned into a public company. In 2006, Google acquired Youtube, and in 2008, it acquired DoubleClick.  In 2012, it became the second largest computer service company in the world. In 2012, Google has hit a record in Profits, because they reached US$10.79 billion

Google and the Capitalist Crisis

In 2008, the year that a new world economic crisis hit capitalism. Google’s profits were not harmed by the crisis. The company stabilized its profits in 2008 in comparison to 2007, achieved a 54% growth of its profits in 2009, 30.4% in 2010, 14.7% in 2011 and 10.7% in 2012. An economic crisis can have negative influences on advertising markets because companies with declining profits have less money to spend for marketing purposes. Google may have benefited from the crisis because Google provides a form of advertising that is based on the close surveillance of users. Surveillance makes Google advertising predictable. Capitalist companies seek to control unpredictability of investments, especially in times of crisis, and therefore welcome Google advertising because it is based on a form of economic user surveillance.

The Wealth and Power of Google's Owners

Page, Brin and Schmidt increased their personal wealth by a factor of five in the years 2004–2012. They are among the richest Americans. Google is an ordinary capitalist company and accumulates its profit; therefore, the wealth of a few grows, because of the exploitation of many.

How Google Accumulates Capital

Google uses internet prosumer commodification in two ways. The first one is it indexes user-generated content that is uploaded to the web and thereby acts as a meta-exploiter of all user-generated content producers. Without user-generated content by unpaid users, Google could not perform keyword searches. The second way is users employ Google services and thereby conduct unpaid productive surplus-value generating labor,such as, sending an email on Gmail, finding a location on google maps or google earth, translating a sentence on Google translate.

Google as a Surveillance Machine

Google surveillance is a form of economic surveillance, because surveillance of user data is an important part of Google's operations. It is, however, subsumed under Google's political economy. The details of the PageRank algorithm are secret. Basically small, automated programmes (web spiders) search the WWW, the algorithm analyzes all found pages, counts the number of links to each page, identifies keywords for each page, and ranks its importance. The results can be used for free via the easy user interface that Google provides.

The Ideology of the 20% Rule

Google adopted a work time regulation introduced by the 3M Company: a certain share of the work time of the employees can be used for self-defined projects. Google uses the 20% rule: “We offer our engineers ‘20-percent time’ so that they're free to work on what they're really passionate about. Google Suggest, AdSense for Content, and Orkut are among the many products of this perk”. The company seems to expect that the outcome of this work should be new services owned and operated and thereby monetized by Google. Google's management strategy is, on the one hand, based on the expectation that an integration of work time and free time in one space and the creation of happiness and fun inside the company make Google employees work longer and more efficiently.

Biopolitical Exploitation

 Google wired with all human brains would be the ultimate form of constant biopolitical exploitation – all human thoughts could be directly transformed into commodities that are sold as data to advertising clients. A dynamic profile of each individual could be created so that commodity advertisements could be served in the second one thinks about a certain circumstance. Targeted advertisements could be directly and continuously transported to human brains. Google, on the one hand, aims to commodify all knowledge on the Internet and to erect a panopticon that surveils all online user activities. It aims at the commodification of users' knowledge, which is an aspect of human subjectivity. On the other hand, Google dreams of the vision that its surveillance reaches directly into the brains of humans in order to monitor all human thoughts.

Internet Solutionism

“Technological solutionism”: solutionism is recasting “all complex social situations either as neatly defined problems with definite, computable solutions or as transparent and self-evident processes that can be easily optimized – if only the right algorithms are in place”. This theory claims to find a solution to everything using technology as long as we have the right algorithm

Internet Fetishism

It is a form of internet solutionism, because it assumes that internet can solve everything in society. According to Karl Marx, it is the logic is that things are more important than human connection. Internet Fetishism’s assumptions are based on technological rationality, which assume that society functions like machines and is fully controllable like an algorithm.

To conclude

Google preaches for an idela lifestyle and a perfect working environment for their engineers;however, it is not that ideal, because their engineers complain about long working hours 

The dark side of digital activism (CMS/PL 312)

Before I start talking about the article I have to give background information about the author of the article, to make his argument even more relevant to the readers. Morozov is a young writer (35 years old). He is American and from Belarus. Belarus has autocratic regime, so when he moved to the United States, he wanted to show that there is actually a dark side to digital activism

He starts the article with a definition of slacktivism is a suitable term to feel-good activism that has zero political or social impact. It gives those who participate in “slacktivist” campaigns an illusion of having a meaningful impact on the world without demanding anything more than joining a Facebook group. It’s basically a good type of activism for the lazy generation, because it requires nothing more than a click. This type of activism will receive media attention, but the media attention is only of secondary importance. He criticizes this narrative by asking a question: are the publicity gains gained through this greater reliance on new media worth the organizational losses that traditional activists entities are likely to suffer, as ordinary people would begin to turn away from conventional (and proven) forms of activism (demonstrations, sit-ins, confrontation with police, strategic litigation, etc) and embrace more “slacktivist” forms, which may be more secure but whose effectiveness is still largely unproven? He did not typically give a yes or no answer, but his argument is that the ideal case here is when one’s participation in digital activism doesn’t subtract from one’s eagerness to participate in real-life campaigns. However, it’s also quite possible that a significant portion of the activist population would be morally content with the “slacktivist” option alone, preferring not to get too close to more dangerous activities that are likely to get them in trouble with authorities.

To relate this article to the case of the Iraqi protests, during my research I have found out that a lot of people have made online in order for the people to sign them, and in order for the people to participate and to voice their opinions. One of the petitions that I have found was made by an Iraqi protester, and in the description he wrote about the protester’s need and wants (electricity, fresh drinking water, and job opportunities) and how the government has responded to their protests, which was a very violent response, because they used tear gas and water hoses. In this petition they request the help and support of the international community represented by the United Nations Security Council to get involved and to stop the ongoing violations practiced by the government.  . I have noticed that the petition has not reached its goal yet, nor was it signed by a lot people, but at least the people, who have signed will get the feeling that they tried to participate to protest against that violence that the Iraqi government is exerting upon the protesters, by calling out for help from the United Nations.

Viral Video, YouTube and the Dynamics of Participatory Culture (COM 311) Jean Burgess

Viral Video, YouTube and the Dynamics of Participatory Culture

The subject of this reading is viral videos. The term refers to video clips that become highly popular through user-generated distribution via the internet. In this essay the author focuses on the central role of cultural participation in the creation of cultural, social and economic value in participatory culture. From the point of view of cultural participation, videos are not messages or products; however, they are the mediating mechanisms via which cultural practices are originated, adopted and retained within social networks. Speaking of social networks, YouTube is social network, where videos are the primary medium of social connection between participants. Some of these videos do become extremely popular via word-of-mouth combined with media hype. For example, user-created videos like Evolution of Dance’, and Chris Crocker’s ‘Leave Britney Alone!’ For the rest of the essay, Burgess focuses on two videos, called chocolate rain and guitar, because they are popular videos, and they show the idea of the viral video as participation. Both videos are user-created content, they’re both performance-based and music-related. The initial spike of attention for the video, chocolate rain, originated ‘as a joke at 4chan.org, a significant source of Internet ‘memes’. The singer of Chocolate rain, Zonday, was interviewed by the press, and eventually a self-parodying version of the song was produced for a faux-MTV film clip. A lot of parodies were made to imitate chocolate rain. The video Guitar is a more ordinary example.one with far greater reach and staying power than the ‘Chocolate Rain’ phenomenon. Most of the response videos are either direct emulations (in which other bedroom guitarists test and prove their skills) or variations on the genre that the original Guitar video distilled if not originated. The longevity of the video’s popularity, I would argue, is a function of the extent to which the culture surrounding the neoclassical cover music video invites participation and rewards repetition and ongoing engagement. In contrast, internet ‘meme’-based viral videos rely on inside jokes that are ‘spoiled’ by going mainstream, and therefore quickly reach a tipping point and tend to have relatively short shelf lives.

Memes pt2 (COM 311)

Chapter 4:

Shfiiman starts chapter 4 with different approaches to define the word internet meme. Taking Dawkins definition into consideration, which is “small culture units of transmission that spread by means of copying or imitation from person to person within a culture”. Shiffman looks at three dimensions that can make a meme copied and imitated: content, form, and stance. Content is the ideas conveyed by the meme, form is the physical appearance of the meme, through which its ideas are conveyed, and stance is the attitude of the meme, for example it can be funny, serious, or emotional. One of the most important sub dimensions of stance that Shiffman mentions is keying, which is the tone and the style of communication. Shiffman came to the conclusion that an internet meme should be defined as “a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance, which were created with awareness of each other, and were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users.” She applies her definition of internet memes to a video that went viral in 2007 by Chris Croker, a huge Britney spears fan. In the video, Croker defends Brittney Spears while crying, and he keeps on saying “Leave Brittney alone”. Shiffman says that the content in this video was that Corker was trying to convey was that being gay and effeminate is okay. The form of the video was pretty simple, because there was a white background, it was shot up-close, and the stance was so emotional and serious. The video was repeated so many times with same form, but the stance and content have changed drastically, because those parodies, and they are memetic. Shiffman also looks at the “Pepper-Spraying Cop” meme. The story behind it is a copy pepper-spraying students in California back in 2011, as they refused to evacuate the area, when they were protesting. The meme was replicated so many times but in different contexts, but mainly in the pop-culture context, and in the political context.

Chapter 5:

In this chapter Shiffman wanted to highlight the difference between viral and memetic. She tries to distinguish what is a viral video is a single cultural unit, but a memetic video is always a collection of texts. The “Leave Brittney Alone” video is a great example of video that went viral first and then became a memetic video because of its derivatives. A viral video is not necessarily a memetic video, but a video that is not viral, it is very unlikely that it becomes a memetic video

Chapter 6:

She basically unpacks which features enhance the propagation of, and engagement with, internet memes. The first question that she asks is what makes content go viral, and to answer this question she lists the six Ps: positivity (the more a video spreads positivity the more likely It will go viral), provocation of high-arousal emotions (people share content that arouse emotions, whether they positive or negative emotions. Negative emotions such as anger or anxiety, because those feelings activate people to do something like sharing the content), packaging (clear and simple new stories are more likely to be shared), prestige (it is relate to the users’ knowledge about the content), positioning (the location of a certain article in digital time and space based on editorial decisions), and participation ( The virality of content may be enhanced if people participate by sharing it and by carrying out different activities related to the content).

Her other question was what makes content memetic? She lists the features that make content memetic, which are : Ordinary people( user-generated videos evoke more derivatives because responding to their video makes more sense and it’s more relatable),flawed masculinity( videos where men are the leading characters),humor(for a video to be memetic it has to be quirky and funny),simplicity (Content that is simple in their ideas and their construction of topics are more likely to be memetic, and this feature is similar to the packaging feature in virality) ,repetitiveness( it enhances memorability , which makes a memetic content succeed), and whimsical content (Pop culture is the only type of content that is salient in these memetic video).

Brand Me “Activist” (CMS/PL 312)

The chapter Brand Me “Activist” is by Alison Hearn is in the book  Commodity activism : cultural resistance in neoliberal times

This chapter of the book “commodity activism” argues that in order for significant change to occur, hegemonic formats for important selfhood must also be remade.  A lot of sociologists mentioned in the reading give different definitions of the self and how they view it; however, they all concur that self-production unavoidably includes the creation of a coherent narrative of self built up through “the possession of desired goods and the pursuit of artificially framed styles of life” In other words, the products that you buy , make up your personality and are a part of your identity, for example if you buy eco-friendly goods then you are an eco-friendly person, who craes about the environment. The “post-Fordist” mode of production in the modern time or the neoliberal times include strategies of permanent innovation, mobility, and change. Workers are encouraged to bring out their creativity at work. There’s an entrepreneurial cultural at work, which means that workers are expected to entrepreneurs at work. The selfhood that arises from these conditions is termed “the flexible personality”, which mean someone who is willing to innovate, and change personal affiliations on a dime. The price of this is that we no longer trust in any overarching system values. The chapter also talks about promotionalism, which is the dominant symbolic language and mode of expression of advanced commodity activism, and branding practices. The fate of the “self” in promotional culture is a “branded self”. Self-branding is reinforced by the types of activism on the three websites: Ecorazzi.com, Ecostiletto.com, and Friendsforchange.com. These sites have a promotional convergence between products, services, and celebrity brands, which serve as models for environmental activism.

To relate this to the Iraqi protests, Iraqi protesters are reviving a campaign as part of a larger effort to encourage Iraqi sovereignty, but this was mentioned in one of my earlier posts about commodity activism. The new thing that i want to add is the fact that the founder of the Facebook “Made in Iraq” has been requested many times from local factories and businesses seeking to advertise their goods on the page that has accrued more than one million followers.

“Our message is dedicated to local manufacturers," the founder of the group wrote. "In the same way we have expressed our solidarity by campaigning, the time has come for you to support our movement by creating jobs for our unemployed youth — the primary backers of ‘Made in Iraq’. They are the ones who are worthy of wages."

Schmidt, E., & Cohen, J. - The digital disruption: Connectivity and the diffusion of power/Dean, J. - Democracy and other neoliberal fantasies: Communicative capitalism & left politics (CMS/PL 312)

First article:  Schmidt, E., & Cohen, J. - The digital disruption: Connectivity and the diffusion of power Before i start talking about the article i want to talk about the authors of the article to have more background information, and to understand their point of views. Schmidt and Cohen both work at Google. Schmidt was the CEO of the company and later he was the chairman of Google. As for Cohen he was the director of the Google ideas This article mainly talks about the traditional press, which Cohen and Schmidt like to call “the fourth estate”, and how it has become the interconnected state: a place where any person who has access to the internet, regardless of their living standards or nationality is given a voice and power to effect change. They explain how the interconnected state is changing governments, legislation, and breaking down barriers. They also explain that this new technology empowers citizens to grow and to fight through virtual communities, leads governments to either become a more repressive or supportive of this new technique. For example, the government of the united states, Hillary Clinton to be precise, support the motto “the freedom to connect” and utilize this opportunity to connect in their favorable position. However, there are several repressive governments attempting to control their citizens from connecting in these virtual communities, there are social activists who will figure out how to find a way to sort out “virtual flash mobs” which lead to protests and other action against the government. In the 20th century, there was a huge advancement in technology, for example, radios, televisions, and the printing press, yet these were constrained by the abusive governments, which drove them to have control over their citizens. This still happens in places such as North Korea and it is known as propaganda. However, people chose to rely on sources like blogs, or social media posts especially in places like Syria and Iran

To relate this article to the Iraqi protest (2019-2020). In October 2019, the Iraqi government blocked all social media websites in all governorates after the protests that happened. The internet service returned in Baghdad and in southern governorates. Despite the return of the internet service, the blocking of social media was constant all over Iraq, except for Kurdistan. After all this, the Iraqi protesters still managed to resist the blocking of social media websites by rushing to download applications to bypass the block. This includes virtual private networks (VPNS) that give access to servers outside of Iraq.

Second article : Dean, J. - Democracy and other neoliberal fantasies: Communicative capitalism & left politics Jody Jean wanted to give an example of what is communicative capitalism, to do that he gave an example by describing what occurred before the invasion of Iraq by the US in March 2003. The reason why the American president, George W. Bush, was motivated to begin a war against Iraq was that there “evidences” of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but it was never proven. The media supported Bush’s decision; however, critical assessments of the government’s justifications for war circulated in non-US, alternative, and independent media. Prior to the invasion, there were big protests in London and later in Washington in September 2002. Their message that they were trying to send was against that they were against the war. The problem is that the message was not received. Bush recognized how there was counter-opinion, and hat the protesters had the right to express this opinion. He didn't answer to these protests, because he believed that he was obliged to answer to those protests. He didn’t think about reaching a consensus between the two opinions, which is his opinion and the protesters’ opinion. Democracy means governance by the people, and it’s practiced through communicative freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, and it depends on norms of publicity that emphasize transparency. In a perfect world, the flow of substance and media babble, affect and comprise official legislative issues. In the US, criticism doesn't require an answer since it doesn't stick as criticism; it is considered just to be another opinion offered into the media-stream. This democracy that talks without responding is called communicative capitalism.  The messages that we understand as freedom of expression are just contribution. They are profitable to capitalism, because they strengthen the structure of capitalism  

The author has already related the main point of the article to the protests that happened expressing their counter opinion against the Iraq invasion by the US back in 2003; however, I will try to relate it to the how the government has responded to the Iraq protests in 2019. The Iraqi government started taking actions after 12 weeks. The government made vague responses with the protesters, but has continued with the violent treatment. More than 500 have been killed and 19,000 have been wounded. The prime minister has resigned

Memes (COM 311)

Book : Shifman, Limor. 2014. Memes in Digital Culture

Chapter 1

The author first starts with talking about the video of the song Gangnam style, and the whole worlds started imitating it, and how this piece of culture was widespread across the globe. She suggested that the Gangnam style is an Internet meme. A meme is term coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins to describe small units of culture that spread from person to person by copying or imitation. Internet meme is applied to describe the propagation of items such as jokes, rumors, videos, and websites from person to person via internet. The participatory culture is describe in the meme culture with user-driven imitation and remixing, and they are highly valued pillars. To understand the utility of memes in the digital culture, the author decided `to position two premises: the first is that the intense emotions and dramatic statement characterizing both sides of the mem debates need to be toned. The second assertion is that we should look at memes from a communication-oriented perspective. The term meme has been used in all fields, but it has been ignored in communication

Chapter 2:

Memes are compared to genes because they undergo variation, competition, selection, and retention. They are constantly competing for the attention of the host, and the memes that get the most attention are the ones suited to their sociocultural environment. Internet mems can be treated as (post) modern folklore, in which shared norms and values are constructed through cultural artifacts such as photo shopped images or urban legends.

Chapter 3:

Memes that spread successfully incorporate longevity, fecundity, and copy fidelity. Copy fidelity is accuracy, this accuracy exists more in online communication than in offline communication. Same goes for fecundity, which is the number of copies made in a time unit). Three main attributes ascribes to memes are relevant to the analysis of contemporary digital culture: First mems are pieces of cultural information that pass along from person to person. They shape mindsets, forms of behavior, and actions of social groups .The second attribute is that they reproduce various by various means repackaging or imitation. The third attribute is amplified in digital environments is their diffusion through competition and selection

Jenkins, H. (2008). Convergence culture : Where old and new media collide (COM 311)

Jenkins, H. (2008). Convergence culture : Where old and new media collide. 

source:

This book talks about the convergence of the media. I will first start by defining convergence according to the definition that was given in the book:·         Convergence means the flow of content across multiple media platform, the cooperation between media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will almost go anywhere to search for the kind of entertainment that they want. The convergence of the media has changed a lot of things about people, for example: the way they communicate, they shop, they pay for things, they entertain themselves, and maybe even the way they interact with each other. Convergence has an effect on the everyday lifestyle of people, for example dating, which was done via newspapers classified ads. Dating now happens online through applications like tinder. Music, which was under the control of few studios, but now music is available everywhere on music applications, such as Spotify. Money has been greatly affected by the rise of the “bitcoin” in this post I will explore different types of convergence, and state examples

I will start with mentioning the first example that was mentioned in the introduction of the book. The introduction starts with a story about a Filipino-American teenager, called Ignacio. He did a collage of a cartoon character from Sesame’s Street with a picture of Osama Bin Laden (Leader of Al Qaeda), the collage was called “Bert is Evil”. The collage went viral and protester in Pakistan used it in their anti-American protests.in the wake of September 11. CNN footage showed the protests, and the creators of sesame streets threatened to take legal action, but they didn’t know who to blame: the kid that did the picture or the terrorist supporters who deployed the images. From his bedroom, Ignacio sparked international controversy. As the publicity grew, he became concerned, so he decided to dismantle his site. This story shows how convergence culture, where new and old media collide, where the power of the media producer and the power of media consumer interact in unpredictable ways.

Another type of convergence can be industry convergence, where companies blend to create new types of industries. Several other industries have converged, adapted, and changed radically in the last two decades, mostly due to the ability of the Internet and mobile devices to allow consumers to decide when and how they want to conduct their business.  Such convergence can be seen in the case of Disney started out as a leader in children’s animated movies and as the company grew, it acquired the television network ABC and the entire Star Wars catalogue from George Lucas and the creative animation studio “Pixar”. When the purchase occurred, the audience said it was a good fit; however, criticism was made, because Pixar films started following the Disney formula sequel after sequel, which ruins the creativity and uniqueness of Pixar.

Video Convergence:

The convergence of video production, consumption, and platforms has provided opportunities for video fans and video creators alike. Now, anyone can create a film, and anyone can watch it, across several types of devices, anytime and anywhere. For example, movies that are shot on the phones, and sometimes they’re Oscar-nominated films, for a very little cost.

Commodity activism : Cultural resistance in neoliberal times (CMS/PL 312)

Commodity activism in neoliberal times

Mukherjee, R., & Banet-Weiser, S.

 This book explores commodity activism, which means the participation and the contradictions inherent in grafting social action onto merchandising practices.Social activism may be shifting shape into a marketable commodity, Commodity activism offers peril insights into the promise and the perils of consumer-based modes of resistance as they take shape within the dynamics of neoliberal power. On the one hand commodity activism can be characterized as corporate appropriations, elaborate exercises in hypocrisy and artifice intended to fool the consumer, sophisticated strategies aimed at securing large profits. On the other hand, commodity activism may illuminates the nettled promise of innovative creative forms, cultural interventions that bear critically on modes of dominance and resistance within changing social and political landscapes

Activit, Citizen, Consumer: Historical Relations:

 Economic historians have noted that there remains a residual ethos that Americans acted first as citizens before transforming or deteriorating into consumers. These transformations originated in the late 20th and the early 21st century, encouraging consumption practices as “patriotic” and the transformation of social institution within the consumers’ republic. A superficial sphere emerged in this time dominated by the celebrities, advertising, and profit-oriented media institutions. These economic transitions facilitated the transition of a nation of citizens into a nation of consumers. For example: sifts from bourgeois consumption to mass consumption that began in the late 18th century were brought into bold belief within the industrial revolution of the 19th and 20th century.

Culture resistance in neoliberal times:

 The long duration of consumer activism in the US encapsulates a two-centuries-long trajectory that is scored with tensions over the ethics and expediency of consumer activism. As the neoliberal moment is to witness to ever-sharper delineations of the marketplace as constitutive of our political imaginaries, our identities, our ideologies, rights and identities are formulated within the logic of consumption and commodification rather than in opposition to them. Commodity activism reveals new challenges that become legible within historical and institutional particularities of neoliberalism. David Harve’s definition of neoliberalism is “in the first instance of a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private rights, free markets, and free trade”·The constitutive force is revealed in the practices of ethical consumption or corporate social responsibility (CSR)· CSR aligns corporate support of social issues with building corporate brands and consolidating brand revenues while social justice transforms into a strategic venture to secure the corporate. CSR is good for business, but David Vogel highlights the transformation in the meaning of CSR with a story about the consumer activists who protested pharmaceutical giant Dow chemical’s production of napalm for use in Vietnam War. In this case, moral virtue is re-framed with the interests of contemporary capitalism and commands an increase in cultural and economic capital.

Activist consumption and the enterprising self:

 Within the political economy of neoliberalism, it is not that social realms have become recoded as economic, but that consumer-citizens have become reconstituted as economically productive. Michel Focaut has argued that the consumer-citizens become key actors within neoliberalism, not only through a retreat from collectivity and public spheres, but also through a normalizing of individual entrepreneurialism and the branding of the neoliberal self. What distinguishes commodity activism from earlier consumer movements is its mode of mobilization, the emphasis is shifted from the larger political goals to consumers themselves. Consumer citizens practice moral and civic virtue through their pocketbooks. In the logic of commodity activism, doing good and being a good consumer are the same thing and collapse in the same time. The practices of ethical consumption need to be interrogated not only as a means to historicize shifts in relative autonomy enabled by neoliberal ideologies, but to understand what is lost in them, for example, ethical consumption practices are made for the wealthy people, not only because the products are expensive, but also the because most consumer activists tend to be more affluent and educated. Commodity activism produces market value in affective relations with brands, celebrities, and political virtue. This reading shows how new forms of labor are made available by the marketization of dissent.

Buying good, doing good: the contradictions of commodity activism:

  We theorize how the phenomena of commodity activism open up new possibilities for the construction of identities and solidarities. We focus on the role of the role of consumers in the formation of new cultural expressions within emerging economic landscapes.This reading shows the contradiction that are made visible by commodity activism. The authors hope to offer a variety of ways to understand and situate contemporary activism.The commodity in question is not only a tangible product, but can also be an intangible product, such as, culture responsibility, moral virtue, political ethics and social action itself.The question is how practices of consumption, structures of political economy, and the creation of political and cultural subjectivities are entangled within values such as neoliberalism. The authors’ answers to these questions are often partial, perishable, and provisional.

To relate this reading to the Iraqi protests of 2019-2020 is hard, since this article is so westernized, and has no covered the Middle Eastern angle at all; however, I will try to look at commodity activism from a slightly different angle, not from the angle of buying a product from a big corporation to help the people in the movement, but from the angle of boycotting international goods, and buying local goods to help with the economic state of my country. In January 2020, Iraqi protesters have been waging campaign to boycott foreign products in an attempt to promote local goods. Even though the number of protesters has decreased since the killing of Qassem Suleimani (Iranian Quds Force commander) and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, (Tehran-backed deputy leader of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units), these campaigns are continuing in cities like Baghdad. The social media campaign, Made in Iraq, went viral among Iraqi activists and internet users. The page has pictures of the Iraqi products, and it is asking Iraqis to buy them. Also, another social media campaign, that has the same goal as Made in Iraq, is asking the Iraqis to buy chicken and red eggs from cities inside Iraq. “These campaigns are positively reflected on increasing the gross domestic product and decreasing the unemployment rate.” Activist Abbas Faisal Al Mamouri wrote on his social media pages. He also said “Impressive results have been achieved by the campaigns. Local products began to invade markets, due to the higher demand on them.” He called on “the owners of factories and plants as well as Iraqi investors to work on improving the quality of the products to gain the confidence of Iraqi consumers.” In November, the Supreme Judicial Council prompted to tighten measures on importing foreign goods illegally, to support the domestic products. Financial adviser to the Iraqi prime minister told the monitor that this process requires the passing of two laws: the Product Protection and Consumer Protection Councils. He added ““Protecting the national product needs a national decision that takes three major factors into account: enforcing the law to protect the product, controlling the borders using military force to protect the country’s economic fence from smugglers and lawbreakers, and using an alternative customs tax system, in cooperation with international expert companies.”

Lessig's chapter 'Remix: how creativity is being strangled by the law' , The Social Media Reader (COM 311)

Lessig's chapter 'Remix: how creativity is being strangled by the law' , The Social Media Reader

 The author starts by saying that this book is not optimistic. He tries to prove his argument using 3 stories. He mentions that in one of them that the when he was a kid he used to sing with other kids in the summer. They used to sing old songs and new songs together. John Phillip Sousa was afraid that the phonographs will ruin the artistic development of music in this country. He called the younger kids singing together a culture where people participate in the creation and re-creation of their culture. He talks about how people should write, and by “write” he means more than just the essays in schools and college, where students just write crap about Shakespeare and other people. He says that the process of writing is so hard, and in the process of learning how to write, we learn how to respect people who know how to write. He thinks writing is a democratic form of expressions, because of citations. He starts talking about Copyright, which is an essential solution to a particular unavoidable economic problem. Limiting the freedom of some people to copy creates incentives to create more speech. The first point of regulation of the copyright should be to be able to distinguish between the amateur and the professional. Copyright needs to encourage both. We need to have incentive for the professional and the freedom for the amateur. Example is when Apple’s iTunes store allows people to download “culture”, which is an application, to their IPods. This gives people access to so much diversity for the first time in history. The second stage begins around 2004. Remixing is a culture, in which people would remix or mashup two pieces of art (for example, two movies or two albums) to get a mix of both.  Youtube has become a platform, where people talk to each other, it’s the modern day equivalent of Sousa’s “the young people together, singing the songs of the day or the old songs”. They do the same thing now, but with digital technologies, sharing creativity with others around the world. As for the copyright law, the law is fundamentally out of sync with technology, and the copyright law needs an update. Problem number two, is that people who live in southern California call the act of copying someone’s work “piracy”. The prohibition of copying people’s work has not stopped the problem, and the act was passed in the 2005, and the number of users has not decreased.The story of remix is a story of change, a story that is inspired by the development of hybrid economies. First of all, economies are repeated practices of exchange, over time between at least two parties. There are two types of economy: commercial economies, sharing economy.The internet has produced both commercial and sharing economies. Commercial economies, where people can leverage knowledge to produce financial value. Sharing economies, where people make their resources available to discover information. A hybrid economy is one where a sharing entity leverages a commercial economy. For example, Flickr was a photo-sharing site that built sharing into its DNA. It facilitated sharing by setting “public” as the default viewing state for all the uploaded images and giving people the option to license their photos explicitly under the Creative Commons license. This sharing enabled creative community creation.  Yahoo bough flick with the goal of leveraging value out of this sharing economy. Two changes need to happen. The law needs to stop being so obsessed with the copyright law, and they need to start differentiating between the amateur and the professional, because someone who is doing a copy is not the same as some who is doing a remix, which is something useful with the copy. Change number two is that we need to recognize that war on piracy has failed. The author’s instinct is to stop suing for kids and start suing for peace. Scholars have written proposals that can facilitate the compensation to artists without breaking the internet.· If we had those proposals a decade ago a lot would have been different: 1) artists would have more money 2) we would have more competition 3) we wouldn’t have a generation of criminals surrounding us. To end the chapter, the author said that copyright extremists need to recognize that there is a growing movement of abolitionism out there. There is no way for us to kill this form of creativity, we can only criminalize it.

The john Hopkins guide to digital media/Why Software Should Not Have Owners/Beyond WikiLeaks: Anonymous and the politics of leaking (COM 311)

The john Hopkins guide to digital media

Hackers are Technologists with penchant for computing and a hack is a clever technical solution  arrived at through nonobvious means. According to the hacker jorgon fire, it can mean the complete opposite of an ingenious intervention, a clunky, ugly fix, which completes the job at hand.The term hacker was used in the 1960samong technologists in MIT, whose lives revolved around making, using, and improving a computer software.Steven Levy conceptualized them as their unstated ethical code as hacker ethic commitment to information freedom, mistrust of authority, and heightened dedication to meritocracy, and the firm belief that computers can be the basis for beauty and a better world. In the 1980s, other technologists defined the term as individuals enthralled with tinkering and technical spelunking but whose history and politics were distinct .Their heirs are the phone phreaks who existed in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  These phreaks tapped into the phone system to make free phone calls. Phreaking shaped a subversive tradition that went as far back as the 1960s, and flourished more publicly in the 1980s and 1990s, only to change with the rise of the security industry and new laws criminalizing computer break-ins. Laws, such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, enacted in the United States in 1986, became the weapon of choice to prosecute hacker. The U.S. government has tended to criminalize hacking under all circumstances, unwilling to differentiate between criminal activities, playful pursuits, and political causes. Some hackers started to call those who hacked for illegal or malicious purposes “crackers”. Many also started to use the derogatory terms “script kiddies” to designate those who use scripts to circumvent computer security or deface websites.Who deserves the title of “hacker”?  Two hackers distinguished between builders:  found in free and open-source communities, whose lineage goes back to the university communities explored in Levy and builders: applying creativity and technical knowledge to bypassing defenses. “to hack” can thus mean distinct activities: Free and open-source hackers—those who have used legal means to guarantee perpetual access to source code—tend to uphold political structures of transparency. Hacker underground: These hackers have made secrecy and spectacle into a high art form. Some hackers run political collectives whose names are Rise up and May-first. Those are broadcasting their will for to make this world a better place. Politically minded hackers, who have name such as Anonymous, engage in hacking for the sake of leaking sensitive corporate and government information. Many information security hackers are committed to security and tend to steer clear of defining their actions in such overtly political terms, even if hacking tends to creep into political territory. Among these InfoSec hackers there are full disclosure, one should release a security vulnerability, and the antidisclosure, announce its existence without revealing details. Anti sec is a small, and extreme movement, and is against any disclosure, claiming that it is their “goal that, through mayhem and the destruction of all exploitative and detrimental communities, companies, and individuals, full-disclosure will be abandoned and the security industry will be forced to reform” Hackers of different nationalities have very different goals and do different jobs.  Pakistani hackers are routinely at war with their Indian neighbors. Chinese hackers are quite nationalistic in their aims and aspirations. In contrast to those in North America, Latin America, and Europe, whose stance makes many wary of joining government endeavors.

Why Software Should Not Have Owners

by Richard Stallman

 The copyright system grew up with printing.  It did not take freedom away from readers of books. An ordinary reader, who did not own a printing press, could copy books only with pen and ink, and few readers were sued for that. When information has digital form, you can easily copy it to share it with others. That's the reason for the increasingly nasty and draconian measures now used to enforce software copyright.

 The four practices of the Software Publishers Association (SPA) :

- Massive propaganda saying it is wrong to disobey the owners to help your friend.

- Solicitation for stool pigeons to inform on their coworkers and colleagues.

- Raids (with police help) on offices and schools, in which people are told they must prove they are innocent of illegal copying.

- Prosecution (by the US government, at the SPA's request) of people such as MIT's David LaMacchia, for leaving copying facilities unguarded and failing to censor their use.

Owners make several kinds of arguments for giving them the power to control how we use information:

·         Name calling: Owners of the softwares use words like piracy, theft, intellectual property, and damage. They’re comparing between programs and physical object to suggest a certain line of thinking to the public. Our ideas and intuitions about property for material objects don’t apply don't directly apply to making a copy of something.

·         Exaggeration: Owners say that they experience harm or loss, when people copy programs. There is no harm in copying a program.

·         The law: the suggestion that today's law reflects an unquestionable view of morality, yet at the same time, we are urged to regard these penalties as facts of nature that can't be blamed on anyone. It's elementary that laws don't decide right and wrong

·         Natural rights: Authors often claim a special connection with programs they have written, and assert their desires and interests concerning the program simply outweigh those of anyone else. The author call this ethical axiom a bunk, because people only feel any sympathy with the natural rights for two reasons: One reason is the exaggerated analogy with material objects. The second reason is that people have been told that natural rights for authors is the accepted and unquestioned tradition of our society. The author says that the constitution doesn’t require a system of copyright, and that’s why copyright must be temporary. Copyrights’ purpose is to promote progress and not to reward authors.

·         Economics: This approach is the only legitimate one, because it has a valid goal. It i clear that people will produce more of something if they are well paid for doing so.  But the economic argument has a flaw: it is based on the assumption that the difference is only a matter of how much money we have to pay. It assumes that production of software is what we want, whether the software has owners or not. If a program has an owner, this very much affects what it is, and what you can do with a copy if you buy one. The difference is not just a matter of money. The system of owners of software encourages software owners to produce something, but not what society really needs. And it causes ethical pollution that affects us all.

Beyond WikiLeaks: Anonymous and the politics of leaking

Gabriella Coleman

The term anonymous belongs to individuals and groups engaging in diverse genre of collective action, ranging from online stunts and political campaigns to expeditions in-person protests. Anonymous is described by a narrow band of words: hackers, hacking, and hacktivism. Anonymous is more open and participatory than WikiLeaks. In summer 2011, smaller groups of hackers became prominent fixtures within the Anonymous landscape, and thanks to media obsessed with hackers, these groups were catapulted into limelight. Anonymous’ hackers’ crew provoked controversy and anxiety. They were encouraged or at minimum tolerated often in the hopes that they would gather politically significant leaks in much the same way as WikiLeaks does.  Anonymous carried forward the experiment, which is leaking. The process of leaking arose over the course of mere months due to accidental discoveries, and took a distant course from WikiLeaks, which disturbed leaks sourced from others. Anonymous led hacking-leaking, which received more consistent media coverage than other anonymous campaigns, were still made possible with that WikiLeaks had set into motion and also were limited and shaped by AnonymousBefore 2008, the name Anonymous in the image board 4chan.org to deliver pranks, to troll,targeting people and organizations,desecrating reputations, and revealing humiliating information, and it was done in the name of lulz. Lulz is the internet slang done on the internet for the laughs.Anonymous was named the “the hate machine” in 2007, so they released a video proclaiming Anonymous “the face of the chaos”. It captured trolling’s terrifying potential, especially for those not in the joke. The activism soon began when Anonymous started trolling the church of Scientology in January 2008. The video was supposed to be serious and persuasive but internet geeks saw it as an    Anonymous political awakening was aided by the distribution of ‘Message to Scientology”, a video made for the lulz alone that calls for the systematic dismantling of the church “for our own enjoyment”. The video provoked Anons to protest and on Feb 10th 200, they protested in the streets against scientology. The protest were very successful and very organized.   It is no surprise that a lot of journalists descries Anonymous as inaccessible, inchoate, and spectral and identifying its attribute as the provocative spirit of lulz.  One of largest networks of the last year is AnonOps. It wasfounded in fall 2010, then it mobilized thousands to protets the action of Paypal and Mastercard. Prompted by Tunisian government’s blocking of WikiLeaks, Anonymous announced OpTunisia on Jan 2,2011. Anonymous leaned on a technical elite who could attack government websites and jam programs used by the dictatorial regime to spy on their citizens. It soon began to help citizens in the Arab spring for example to circumvent censors and evade electronic surveillance and sending care packages with advice and security tools.

The logic of connective action (CMS/PL 312)

The rise of digital networked action has been met with some understandable skepticism and criticism. How do they work? how are they organized what sustains them.  W. Lance Bennett & Alexandra Segerberg explain and answer all of these questions in detain in their article “ THE LOGIC OF CONNECTIVE ACTION “ . This article develops a conceptual framework of logics,such as, collective action and connective action logics. One has to distinguish between both.

 The digital networked action (DNA) at the core of connective action,lies in defining personalized communication and its role along with digital media in the organization of what we call connective action. These individualized orientations result in engagement with politics as an expression of hopes,lifestyles,and grievances. When enabled by various kinds of communication technologies, the resulting DNAs bear some remarkable similarities to DNAs in regimes, ex the Arab Spring.In personalized actions formations, the topic may resemble older movement or party concerns(environment,right,women’s equality,and trade fairness) The mechanisms become more personalized, they include the prosperity to develop flexible political identifications based on personal lifestyles.Weak-tie networks enable identity expressions . These networks are scaled through many kinds of digital technologies The two elements of personalized communication that we identify as important in large-scale connective action are 1) political content in the form of easily personalized ideas. These frames require little in the way of persuasion, reason,or reforming to bridge difference with how others feel about a common problem. 2) Various personal communication technologies that enable sharing these themes. We explore the different forms of content using personalized communication up to the point at which they enter the part of the range conventionally understood as social movements (collective action). Personal action frames don’t spread automatically, people must show each other how they can appropriate,shape,and share these themes. Other calls to action require joining with establish groups or ideologies. these are more likely to stop at edges of communities and may require sources beyond communication technologies to bridge the gaps or align different collective forms. 

Collective action requires people to make more difficult choices and adopt more self-changing social identities than connective action.It requires more education, pressure, or socialization, which makes higher demands on formal organizations and resources. It also requires varying levels of organizational resource mobilization deployed in organizing,leadership,developing communication frames, and brokerage to bridge organizational differences.On the individual level,collective action emphasizes the role of social network relationships and connections.

Connective action is the recognition of social media as organizing agents. when interpersonal networks are enabled by technology platforms of various designs that coordinate and scale the networks, the resulting can resemble collective action. It involves co-production and co-distribution. Co-productions is sharing based on personalized expression, looking at online newspapers,blogs,or political campaign makes it clear that the logic of the organization-centered world is often reproduced online. Taking action or contributing to a common good becomes an act of personal expression and recognition or self-validation achieved by sharing ideas and actions in trusted relationships. The sharing takes place in networking sites, ex: Facebook,twitter, or youtube. Such networks are flexible organizations themselves. Communication dynamics don’t change teh action dynamics in large-scale networks characterized by the logic of collective action. In connective action, they do. Digital networking mechanisms: organizational connectors (web links), event coordination (protest calendars), information sharing (youtube and facebook) 

There are three types of actions: The collective action and the connective action, the self organizing one and the organizationally enabled networks one

Placing teh Iraqi movement under one of the actions is a tough task, because in real life movements don’t abide by the descriptions of these actions exactly, and these actions tend to overlap a lot, but if i had to i would place it under the connective action the self-organzing networks one

Since there little organizational action, large scale personal access to multi-layered social technologies, and people are expressing their demands over social networks 

They take to platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to share the movement's news because many do not trust conventional outlets. "The authorities are only publishing information against the protests to make people scared," said Chaseb, who posts in his native Arabic as well as English to reach a global audience.

the caption of this tweet tarnslates into “chants of the students of University of Kufa in a march for the martyr Muhannad Wammid. “Muqtada el Sadr is a murder”. Muqtada el Sadr is an Iraqi Shia cleric, a politician and a militia leader.

Protesters are urging the people sitting in their homes to go to Tahrir square