Community and culture in the Blogosphere

With the rapid development of technology, Internet is been used more widely in people’s social life. Traditional forms of media are replaced with digital media in recent times. Blogs can be seen as the transforms of dairy. More and more people like to use blogs to write down their daily observations or record some interesting things and share with their friends. Blogosphere is a new culture of media to provide a public sphere and form a discussion area to let people engage in. It made up with all the forms of blogs including microblogs. There are some well-known websites such as Google Blog, RenRen and Sina Microblog.

Community is a particular sub-culture as there are many different communities associating with various purposes in Blogosphere. For example, ‘the Blogosphere can be a vehicle for worldwide interactions and formation of global Muslin community, the ummah ’ (Lim, 2012). Especially in Indonesia, Muslin bloggers use the blogs as the new communication way to discuss about Islam relative issues. Every community has the power to force a small topic center that allows other social members to engage in discussion among Blogosphere. Community also assembles people who have the same interests or religions and push them together to form the particular theme blogs on the websites.

 

Culture is the important factor that can influence the trend of Blogosphere. Different countries have the different culture background, therefore, the domestic bloggers may focus on news and topics which are popular in their own countries. For example, American bloggers could write an article about how capitalism progress with the analysis of America current situation. Moreover, ‘When discussing terrorism, Arab bloggers are overwhelmingly critical of terrorists. When the US is discussed, it is nearly always critically’ (Etling etc, 2009). This draws the fact that people’s thoughts, opinions can be affected deeply due to the native culture background, especially in the ways of their thinking, writing and speaking. This is the diversity between in different cultures and forms the characteristic themes, topics and news in relating to Blogosphere.

Reference

Etling, B Kelly, J Faris R and Palfrey J 2009, ‘Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent’, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2009/Mapping_the_Arabic_Blogosphere .

 

Lim, M 2012 ‘Life is Local in the Imagined Global Community: Islam and Politics in the Indonesian Blogosphere’, Journal of Media and Religion, vol.11, pp 127-140.    

http://www.google.com.hk/imghp?hl=zh-CN&tab=ii&biw=1366&bih=576

Blogosphere and public sphere

Can the blogosphere act as independent and impartial public sphere?
 

The blogosphere is made up with all the forms of blogs includes Google Blog and micro blog platforms such as Twitter and Sina microblog. ‘It also a term some writers have used to describe the grassroots and interactive journalism in blogs and the symbiotic relationship between bloggers and traditional journalists’ (Rouse, 2006). In general, blogosphere is the particular media form that allows users to post short or long texts, comment on others’ articles and share their interests in such a public sphere.

 

(This is the capture picture of my Twitter)

Public sphere defines as an area in social life that individuals can come together to discuss freely and identify social issues. Public sphere provides a site to let the publicity discuss with their thoughts and opinions. The audience will fully engage in the activities in public sphere by using various communication devices. In relating to blogosphere, it provides the entry in a wide range to those audiences and writers to assume people involve in the public discussion area independently.

Apparently, most bloggers like writing in personal and diary-style observations to record some interesting things during their social life looking forward comments. ‘But when they write about politics, bloggers tend to focus on issues within their own country, and are more often than not critical of domestic political leaders’ (Etling etc, 2009). This is true because domestic bloggers are more likely to stand for their country policy and political leaders due to their growing background, and be more affected by the native situations. In that case, blogosphere could not act in an impartial way because of the various blog writers are in different country background. Additionally, when people talk about foreign political issues, they may not give a just view in terms of they focus less on international news partly, and easily be influenced by others’ opinions.

Blogosphere gives a free media platform to arouse people independent ideas, opinions even critical judgments in some popular news. However, with some sensitive political issues, there still exists a part of limitations due to some particular policy in some countries. For example, in China, any articles associating with the seditious speech or reactionary doctrine are be banned in discussion in public sphere also includes those public blogs.      

 Reference

Rouse, M 2006, ‘Blogosphere’, Retrieved on March 2006, <http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/blogosphere >.

Etling, B Kelly, J Faris R and Palfrey J 2009, ‘Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent’, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/publications/2009/Mapping_the_Arabic_Blogosphere >.

 https://twitter.com/Melodyyuki

 

 

Innovators or Pirates

Are all remixers (including mashup artists, DJs, pastiche and bricolage producers and digital media artists) innovators or thieves? Should you pay for every sample used in a recording or piece of video art?

Personally speaking, I think remixers cannot be divided into innovator or thieves absolutely, because the artists have their own creative but sometimes by using others ideas for the inspiration. This is legal when they use others original works to make some editions or changes to form their own artistic productions. ‘The problem is that innovation does not exist in a vacuum. Ideas and inspiration bubble up from the sources around us’ (Gettler, 2004). I agree with this statement because our world is full of different kinds of information, any productions may take examples by others relative productions. For example, before MP3 comes out, people use Walkman to listen to music, MP3 can be seen as the advanced results of ‘Walkman’.       

Remix includes many types of artistic creations such as mashup artists, pastiche, DJs and various mainstreams. In relating to music field, remix is a musical form to use many other types of music such as hip-pop, R&B, Jazz etc. to take shapes in a particular remix music production. Remixers can be seen as a creation of artistic style, it blends diversified elements in different views of arts, but it uses for reference of those existent artworks. For instance, a song with a remix version is based on the changes of the original song. Furthermore, many Japanese singers like to make remix versions of their songs to create a new music album, then selling in the market for some commercial purposes. There is a remix version of <Heaven>, the original song is made by piano instrumental. It sang by a famous Japanese female singer Hamasaki Ayumi.

‘The development of the Internet and MP3s – digitally compressed music files – opened up an alternative mode of distribution’ (Martin, Moore & Salter, 2010). With answering the question should I pay for every sample used in a recording or piece of video art? My response may be no. Actually, nowadays many people will choose to download music from the Internet rather than to buy the album CDs. It becomes a convenient and fast way to enjoy the music better than pay for it. However, this may impact to those music industries, downloading MP3 freely on the Internet can cause the decrease of selling recording CDs. Despite the defect, Internet is a good platform for those digital media artists, they can create their artworks by using Internet sources freely and made to their own artistic creations.

Reference

Gettler, L 2004, ‘Balancing battle between pirates and innovators’, retrieved 30 April 2004, < http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/29/1083224515491.html>.

Martin, B, Moore, C and Salter, C. 2010, ‘Sharing music files: tactics of a challenge to the industry’, First Monday, vol. 15, no. 12 <http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2986/2680>.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wqDEKywPxs

Pop music influence my view of culture

In the modern world, there are many genres or styles of arts, I choose the pop music as the particular genre to talk about how does it influences or changes my view of culture. I think there are lots of people like pop music and listen to it every day. Pop music is a quite normal music genre that popularizes many countries in the world. ‘The pop culture of movies, television shows, music CDs, audio cassettes, books, magazines, newspapers are all have been increasingly flowing about the world ’(Hachten & Scotton, 2002). It seems like the world shares a popular culture in developing media and arts filed. There are many great American pop music singers like Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Christina Aguilera etc. Through the impact of their songs, I know more about American pop music culture rather than I determine the culture background by myself.

Personally, before I listen to pop music, I really don’t know what is it or what kind of music it is. For example, my pervious view of American pop music is just about the Rap or Hip-pop. However, through the American pop music spread to my country, I find that American has lots of types of pop music, such as R&B, Jazz, Country music etc. All of these kinds of music bring me a new perspective on American music even in their arts culture. Furthermore, American pop culture even shapes in many countries and bring a big impact in the development of arts in other areas. I know pop music by listening to those kinds of music rather than I just think of the theory or definition. In other words, I have my own view on the pop music by touching this genre of arts and influenced by the pop culture background. Nowadays, media progresses rapidly, there are many styles of arts flow in the world in conducting to the media industries. Personal views of cultures will be affected or changed by the shapes in arts field reasonably.   

 

At last, I share a pop music song  <Diamond> from Rihana. I like it very much.

 

 

 

 

 

Reference 

Hachten, WA, Scotton, JF 2002, ‘News communication for a new global system’, The world news prism: global media in an era of terrorism 2002, Iowa State Press, Ames, pp. 3-14  

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWA2pjMjpBs