Socialisation Video

Watch our new video which discusses and illustrates social issues.

Or watch on YouTube: HERE

All images apart from blog logo were found online and used simply for illustration purposes and are not owned by the group members.
Video was created for education purposes as part of a university course project.

Song is Brother, My Brother by Blessid Union of Souls from the soundtrack to the First Poke'mon Movie.

Is social media a new vehicle for friendship

We have seen the ever growing popularity of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The question I believe are on the tip of most peopl's tongue is, what constitutes friendship? Seems as though friendship is via cyberspace and there is no real human contact anymore. People are finding it extremely difficult to hold a decent conversation when they are face to face with someone.

It's a 21st century phenomena. this has never been a real issue in the last 50 years or so, so what is the problem with society these days that we all must hide behind a computer screen to communicate? I believe it is much easier to convey messages through technological devices as it without being is understandably easier to convey how one really feels simply because some of us know that we will not be discriminated for our outward appearances or the odd idosyncrasies. For the introverts of the world; this is revolutionary.
Successful communication is in itself an art form, not everybody is wired to be great communicators. This however, leads to the question of, have we as a society created a monster? I guess that would depend on the individual themselves and how they perceive the world around them. There is no mistaking however, that the world has embraced this vehicle of communicatio. What does that say about the vast majority of us? We in some ways find face to face interaction to be really awkward because we know that there is that potential to be judegd off the bat and let's face it no one really likes to be judged when people don't really know us.
It is so easy to judge but we never really stop to think about how the other person may feel. I guess that is the nature of the beast in every single one of us.
Either way we look at it, the phenomena of socail media and communication is not going to go away anytime soon and it is believed that many of us see it as part of our lives and we cannot live without this vehicle of communication.
Soon we may find that people will not even leave their front door simply because we can access everything online and over social media. We see what all our friends are doing without even being there.

Is this a good or bad thing? I guess that's up to the individual but a little human contact doesn't really hurt anyone.

Better of the way

Internet communications seems changed a lot for the communication of the world. It seems people like to meet on the internet rather than meet outside, like we do the group meeting , communicate to each other via emails everyday. In some ways, it enhanced the communication. My grandfather likes write and receive letters. In his opinion, speaking via mobile phones is a biter of a bother. After i told him how beneficial the email is, he starts to send me email. A few strokes of the keyboard and a click and i know he will soon be smiling.

Sometimes there is a dangerous downside to the internet communication. Having no ideas of who sitting in front of other side of screen. We know only what others want us to know, we see what others want us to see. Whenever I turn on the TV, I see commercials touting the joy and ease of Internet dating. But then i pick up the magzine and see the horror it can bring.

There is an aspect to internet communication quite often overlooked. There is a large number of people in this world which for one reason or another and not by choice have little communications to others. Before the internet, they had little opportunities to talk to others. Like people who suffers autistic, they may not understand facial expressions and cannot look someone in the eye when speaking. However, internet can give people who lack of communication ability a chance to make friend.

While althrough the communication way changes in nowadays, it is no doubt we are still communicating...

Trolling...? No, it could be serious.

So the term 'Trolling' has been thrown around lately. 

A troll, according to the more traditional meaning would refer to a monster of some sort who lives or sleeps under a bridge.

This thing perhaps?

But who are we kidding? This is the INTERNET where nothing is about the traditional.

It's about the new age, an age of innovation, of constant change and of constant advances in how we as human beings communicate. So, what exactly has this medium of the internet created among social interaction for us as individuals?

For many, it has created a new medium for where anyone is able to communicate with anyone else, provided they want to. What does this mean?

It means that for those who have trouble communicating with others in real life, social interaction does not end there. It is no longer the be all, end all. The internet has created a new community, where the shy, the fat, the asian, the white, anyone, can interact with anyone else.

Excuse my stereotyping there...but let's be honest society can often hinge on stereotypes like nothing else.

Yet, what is seemingly a positive step for us socially which the internet provides can in many ways be the exact opposite...

And what do i mean by this? Well lets get back to the topic of trolls shall we...

So i log into my facebook and i post a status update. 1 minute later, i receive a notification of a comment from an individual i barely know, and was oblivious to the fact that he existed on my friends list. There's no question that his voicing of his opinion was deemed offensive towards me, by me, at the time, and so i retorted in the way i know best. An offensive post of my own. For the record, i simply stated my plans for the day and he deemed it reasonable to talk about how "noone cares you idiot." So, without knowing it, i was dragged into the naivety of my own inability to control my emotions, leading to an open argument infront of an open community in Facebook, where everyone on my own friends list and possibly his could see what in hindsight was a pointless conflict of words. And in the end...there was simply nothing to it. He was just "trolling." 

But where does such a distinction end? It might be useful to note that the definition of a 'troll' on the internet refers to someone who puts inflammatory remarks to specifically incite some sort of adverse reaction or simply for their own enjoyment. But it is equally useful to note that we live in a world full of people and the internet has simply created a greater scope of a medium for us to interact with each other upon. This is in a lot of ways a great thing. Contacting family and friends overseas is easier. Business meetings done internationally without delay. Important news spread in an instant. Never before could society communicate with each other on such an broad basis so easily and instaneously.  

Yet, it is also a veil. A veil where unidentifiable aliases can hide an individual's true persons to the people they communicate to on the internet and ultimately creates extreme uncertainty sometimes about just who we are talking to and what we are talking about. So the point is, has the internet in fact created a more dangerous medium of communication? In many ways, the internet does define how we as individuals act as it is probably the most influential form of media to which this world looks to, on an international basis anyway.



There's no doubting it...it's a dangerous place to put your trust in...and interact with others

I mean...just look at the privacy issues to which social networking sites have...

FACEBOOK KILLER

Yeah exactly, pretty chilling eh? And the craziest thing is that the internet cannot be controlled. The facebook killer exploited this innocent woman's personal interests. In fact, it was probably there for all to see...the seemingly innocent wall posts, the pictures, the links that were posted. Even the initial friend acceptance. Yet noone suspected a thing.

The simple fact of the matter is that the internet is easy to manipulate, on an individual basis and as a collective.

It can also be dangerous...

Not that the trolls on reddit.com would know though.