Convergence Culture

1. Jenkins' says, "It also occurs when people take media in their own hands. Entertainment content isn’t the only thing that flows across multiple media platforms. Our lives, relationships, memories, fantasies, desires also flow across media channels." Jenkins believes convergence culture is when everything combines  and flows all through different media channels.

2. Jenkins' talks about how creative users can be when they take media into their own hands. Most creative engagement happens by early adopters and white, middle class, educated males. These are the people who are getting involved with media and getting involved with all aspects of media and combining them. These creative users can take a brand and move it across different mediums. 

3. Participators engage by simply being involved, engaged and participating. It is when the producers and the consumers are not separate though not all consumers are equal. These users are not separated by different media content, they are connected and reach out to other mediums and stay connected. The convergence truly starts through the brain of the consumers and their social interactions with others. 

Overall media convergence is something that Jenkins' sees as taking all that we have to give and let it combine through different channels. This creates this convergence culture that users are embracing and letting change the way we consume media. 

Three things to help stop piracy!

For so long people have taken the easy way out and downloaded movies, music, and digital content for free. There are three ways I think that the media and government can help reduce this easy act.

1. The first way would be to create more viruses on the popular downloading websites. I know personally I avoid the downloading websites solely to avoid viruses. If these downloading websites people use completely shut down your computer when you tried to download music or movies people would start to stop. Trying to contain viruses and clean out your computer is a difficult process and people would want to avoid that. Basically the viruses will cause a set back for users.

2.  The next step would be to actually punish people who are doing the free downloading. I know there were efforts before to try to stop piracy but those efforts weren't enough. If the government would take hasher actions on piracy by enforcing the laws and executing punishments, people would download less.

3. Lastly if companies like iTunes and Spotify would lower their prices just a little more, things like that would be more affordable. If they stripped the option to illegally download music and movies and lowered the prices of companies who stream music and movies people would have no choice but to purchase them. If the government completely took away the options to illegally download then there would be no other option but to purchase music and movies legally. Spotify and iTunes already offer free options for users already. The government should take away the convenience of illegal downloading and create a demand for purchasing this digital content.

Privacy-enhanced Personalization

In the article, Privacy-enhanced Personalization, it is discussing the relationship between personalization and privacy. Through research the studies have shown that some consumers value personalized content and on the other hand those consumers are worried about exposing too much of their personal content.  Therefore it brings in the issue of privacy and how personalized systems can invade the privacy of others. This article offers up ways to design the personalized systems to avoid invading someone’s privacy.

The Privacy Calculus:

They have tried to make different calculations for privacy. They came up with factors that play a role in the Privacy Calculus. The factors are: personality and culture based privacy attitudes, the type of information to be disclosed and its deviance from the average, the recipient, the value being assigned to personalization benefits, the extent to which users know what information has been disclosed and can control its usage, and various trust establishing factors. These factors are further explained throughout the article.

Individual Privacy Attitudes:

There are three types of attitudes: Privacy fundamentalist who have extreme concern about their privacy, Privacy Unconcerned who have mild concern about their privacy, and Privacy Pragmatists who have a general concern about their privacy.

An important point to make is as long as developers show their users clearly the benefits of their services it will provide more value in those personalized systems.

Most users just want control over the usage of their personal information.

Design and operation of a Web site:

Key factors to a trusted website are: the absence of errors, professional design and usability, the presence of contact information, links from a believable Web site, links to outside sources and materials, updates, and quick responses. Trust is a huge motivational factor for someone to disclose personal information.

There are several techniques in the research process that can help with privacy protections. The four techniques to help with collaborative-filtering are Distribution, Aggregation of encrypted data, Perturbation, and Obfuscation.

The question I pose is: At some point in the future will the idea of privacy be stripped away from us?

5 ways new media is changing politics

First off the most important part of this article is the date it was published. It was published in 2010 which is four years ago. Therefore it is safe to say that new media has progressed even more since this article. This article talks about the five ways that new media is changing politics. The communications director of the White House made a statement about how in today's time viewers and listeners can choose what they want to listen to and what they want to hear. They can control their news consumption just like they can control what they download to their iPod. The second way that media is changing politics is through the idea of sharing things. How in today's time people like Obama and Sara Palin shared their political views and ideas through Facebook and text messaging. Through mediums like that their messages went viral. This coincides with technological determinism,   it show how technology can have a power over our culture. It has changed our culture in the political world. The third thing that changed politics was the concept of being able to like something on social media. Now with someone running for a political party they don't need their voters to tell them what they like, they can just like it on Facebook which takes away the idea of physical transportation between people. The fourth way new media is changing politics is the idea of time. In a blink of the eye you can tweet something, like something, or share something. Political organizers had to personally hand out fliers and now graphics can be shared over the internet. The last way new media has changed politics is used the internet to donate. Political candidates would much rather have individuals donate in bulk versus corporations. With traditional media is just created audiences but with new media is creates users. Users that can be involved and donate to causes and help political candidates. The article just shows a few examples of how new media has changed the culture of the political world. 

Network Law

There are three network laws that describe three different perspectives on how networking works when it comes to value. These laws help lay out a calculation or a description of how a network can be valuable. The law that I agree with the most is the Reed's Law which talks about how social media plays a huge role in how valuable your network is. 

Social media is taking over the way we communicate. If you don't have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any of the other forms of social media, you are looked at as anti-social, weird, boring, or the typical "what do you have to hide"? The other networking laws have some type of calculation to determine the value of the network. Social media has a calculation of its own. The value of a network is determined by likes, comments, shares, favorites, retweets and follows. 

The complexity in social media is the underlying reason in why people like or favorite something. Are they doing it because they truly like it? Are they doing it because that person is popular? Are they doing it because it was an accident? When you discover why someone is liking and sharing your posts on social media it is easier to post more things and get more likes. I couldn’t agree more that Reed’s Law is the way to determine value, especially in today’s time. 

Going along with social media, I think that is the route we are headed in the future. We already get everything sent to our phone to notify us. I believe the notifications are just going to get worse and worse. Soon even if we don’t want information given to us we will receive it anyway. It is only a matter of time before information overload takes over. I think in the future we will be able to have access to any information we want in a matter of seconds. Of course, “any information we want” is very broad but I am talking about the things we search on Google, or look at on Facebook. Soon we will be able to receive information in a quick manner whether it is a new device that can deliver any information even if you don’t have a phone or revamping the phone to send information even faster. Our source of information is going to be instant, more instant than now.

Why we blog!

When it comes to blogs anything is possible, there are numerous motivations and countless subjects. You can honestly blog about anything and anyone can read it. Sometimes people blog just to be expressive and sometimes people blog for a specific audience.  There are five key motivations for why someone would blog. The first is simply to document one’s life. The second is to provide commentary and opinions. The third is expressing deeply felt emotions. The fourth is articulating ideas through writing. The fifth is forming and maintaining community forums. These five motivations are the root of why anyone blogs. Though regardless of the motivations, bloggers have a voice and they are expressing it to a worldwide audience. With blogging there isn't that much feedback which is different from other social mediums. It is rare to have feedback on a blog post, which allows the author of the blog to say whatever they want to say. According to bloggers, it is easier to write because “no one is forced to pay attention”. Overall blogs are a new social medium that still has room to change and grow.

Blogging is like having family, you have your close family members, you have family members you don't want to talk to and you have family members you see every single day no matter what. The family members you see every single every day no matter is your audience. The family members you don't want to talk to are people you make sure don't read your blog. The family members that are very close to you are the people you let know you wrote another blog post. Though regardless of who it is in your family you are seeing or talking to, it is always personal.

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