Assignment 8: Review of my DMS155 class Webpage/Forum

Site Name: New Media DMS 155

Site URL: http://newmedia.gothacked.org/newmedia/

Function of Site:

This website was made and designed by my DMS155: Introduction to New Media professor, Chris Ferrari. The site was made so that the students in the class can interact with each other through forums and so that the students can look up homework on the forum and reply to them with the completed assignment. The site was also set up so that we, as students, can look at each other’s work that we’ve done in Adobe Photoshop and comment on the work, making the site very interactive between students, as well as the professor.

Site Design:

This site is designed as a blog/forum in order to increase interactivity within the class. On the front page of the site, the most recent and important blog entries from the professor are shown. Each entry on the front page is only a preview, so in order to view the entirety of the entry; you must click on the heading. Also on the front page, fingernails of the Photoshop works of the students are presented in a column on the left hand side. Each time you go to the site or each time you go back to the home page of the site, the fingernails will rotate so that you see different ones each time. When you click on a fingernail, it will link you to Flickr, an interactive website which allows you to create a username and post photographs that you have taken or made for others to view and to comment on. As a class, we use Flickr in DMS155 as our posting site for all of our photographs that we have made for assignments or just for fun.

On the top of the front page of the site there are different tabs that you can click on: Home, Syllabus, Blog, Links, Contact Us, Search, FAQ’s, Forum, and User Links.
The Home tab is the front page which I just described above. The Syllabus tab takes you to a page in which the class syllabus is located. The Blog tab takes you to a page, almost like the front page, but with more blog postings that the professor felt weren’t as important as to post those to the front page, but important enough to include them within the site. The Links and User Links tabs give us students reference links to use to help us with certain homework or to clear up some things that we have gone over in class that we might not understand very well. The Forum link is one of the most important links on the site. The Forum link allows all students in the class with a username and password for the site to communicate through forum topics such as: homework assignments and group project discussions.

Social Aspects of Site:

This site is very interactive between not only the students of the class, but also between the students and the professor. All assignments from the class are done through this site, making it a key aspect of the class. When it comes to group projects, the site is very important because it allows specific forum topics for each group, giving each group their own way of non-confusing, convenient feedback and communication on input of ideas. This site also allows people to form groups for projects because of similarity in interests that can be found by looking at each others past assignments and projects through the blog replies and through the Flickr photographs. This site is also very beneficial for students because if, say I miss a class, then I am able to look up the homework on the site instead of going through the process of e-mailing either the professor or somebody else in the class and then awaiting a reply before I can even get started. This site is very interesting in the way in which the professor made it specifically for this class because I had never even heard of anybody doing that before. It makes class more interesting and more interactive at more convenient times and also benefits the professor by not having any papers to keep track of, but instead just has to log in to the site.

This site, I believe, is very comparable to sites such as Blogger in that it is a continuous stream of blogging, replying, and commenting, but I also believe that it is a bit more interesting of a way for a class to be and keeps students involved

Assignment 7: Be Selfish! Take Advantage of Your Community Resources

When discussing the term community, Wikipedia suggests that, in general, a community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. In human communities, conditions that may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants of the community include: intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks as well as a number of other conditions. A community that can be found on the World Wide Web, however, is different. This particular type of community can be described as an online community, a virtual community, or an e-community. An online community is then defined as a group of people that primarily interact via a computer network rather than face-to-face. Examples of these may include: instant messaging programs, e-mail, list serves, blogs, etc. Although these two communities may seem very different, they share a purpose, a purpose in which I am going to identify through my own, personal interaction within these two different communities.

An online community in which I belong to is the Communications major list serve. This specific community is set up so that the Communication advisers can easily get in touch with every student within the major who chooses to become a part of the list serve and serves to bring information to all students within it, including: scholarship opportunities, meetings, internship/job opening and opportunities, times in which advisers are available, and any other information that the Communication advisers perceive to be important enough to inform the entirety of the student body within the major. This type of online community reflects the Lasswell Model of Communication in that communication flows one way with very little to no multi directional communication within the community. Any feedback that does occur occurs indirectly by students participating in the opportunities offered by the e-mails sent through the list serve. This type of technology used also affects the development of social ties by increasing the competition within the major.

Because opportunities such as scholarships and internships are being sent to everybody within the major, competition naturally increases with the number of people who know about the specific opportunity because, theoretically, the more people who know about a certain chance for personal gain, the more people who will participate. Because of these reasons, the online community of the list serve is an ego network, a network that is centered on an individual, that individual being the adviser who sends the e-mails through the list serve. In contrast to this type of network, a community outside of the virtual world in which I participate in is more of a whole network (Miller, 2006).

A real-life community in which I consider myself to be a part of is my work community at the Gap. In this community, communication has a multi-directional flow, no longer focusing on one individual within the network, making it a whole network. Within this community, there are many different kinds of communication that takes place, affecting the development of social ties in a different way in which technology would. Naturally, communication between co-workers, customers, and managers is different, therefore forming different relationships within the community. Although all relationships within my work community are weak, the weakness factor varies within them, as well as formality. My relationships with my co-workers are definitely a lot more informal than with my managers and my relationship ties with the customers are extremely weak compared to the ties I have with my co-workers and managers. These weak ties do not necessarily harm my relationships, however; several weak tie relationships contrasted to few strong tie relationships increase social resources as well as opportunity within the given community or network. An example of this would be my co-worker, Sam. I am currently in the process of looking at places where I want to live next year at school and I was discussing this with Sam, who lives in the South Lake apartments. With this conversation, I built a resource in which I can go to in order to learn more about living in on-campus apartments. Had I not been a part of my work community and developed a weak tie with Sam, I would have never gained a close resource to go to in order to get such specific and trustful information from (Miller, 2006).

Although these two communities are very different in almost all ways, there is one way in which they are the same. Both the Communication major list serve and the Gap community develop relationships in which opportunity is increased. The list serve does this by informing me of internships and scholarships that are available for the major and my job does this by increasing my weak tie resources as well as developing relationships that may help me within my community at work. By forming a positive relationship with my managers, my chances of getting a raise will most likely increase, as well as the chance of getting the hours that I want. I have learned, from the experience of being a part of both online and offline communities that, if you want to get ahead in life, you should take advantage of your community resources that help you gain positive opportunities as best you can in order to help yourself!

Citations:

(2007, Oct 13). Community. Retrieved October 17, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community#Types_of_community

(2007, Oct 14). Virtual Community. Retrieved October 17, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_community#Increasing_participation_in_virtual_communities

Miller, Katherine (2006). Organizational Communication Approaches and Processes. Belmont, CA: Thomson Higher Education.

Assignment 6: Know Everybody, Trust Nobody

As discussed in last week's blog, privacy is considered to be one of the biggest issues, or concerns, when it comes to new technologies such as the internet. We also agreed that, generally, privacy is your own personal willingness and ability to withhold information about you from others and deciding who can be exposed to this information. This can be done through several online identities. An online identity is a social identity that network users establish in online communities. Examples of these identities include: an account name, identity in voice and language, and the signature. I personally own two of the three of these identities, which include an account name and an identity in voice and language; however, the one that I use most often and is the most familiar to me is the account name.

An account name is the most basic as well as the most straight forward form of online identity. These names occur in the virtual world almost everywhere you go, including e-mail, instant messaging systems, and also on networking websites such as facebook, myspace, flickr, and even the one you are using right now while reading this: blogger. These names that are chosen to be used build a reputation for the user in their online community, making it the deciding factor in whether or not other users should trust the person on the opposite end of the account name.

When using my online account names, I find that I use them most prevalently while using my e-mail account or while instant messaging via AOL Instant Messenger. Because I use an institutional e-mail account which I received from the University, my account name greatly reflects my real name, also affiliating myself with the university because of the domain name @buffalo.edu. Because of this, it is easier for people to identify me through my account name and therefore putting more trust into what my message is saying and also building a good online reputation for myself because of my affiliation through UB. AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) accounts, though, are different. Other programs and sites that are not affiliated with any type of university or corporation are available for sign up for free or sometimes for a fee. These types of accounts are called commercial accounts.

These commercial accounts also require you to make up an account name for yourself, but not requiring you to do so by using your own personal identity in any way. AIM is the most widely used instant messenger service in the United States, providing millions of screen names to people and sometimes several different names to the same person. Although I choose to use a screen name which makes it easy to identify myself through messenger systems such as this one, many people do not. These people may use an account name to specifically deceive others, and quite possibly trying to take on another person’s identity. For these reasons, it is very hard to build a good reputation through AIM if you are using an account name in order to chat with people who you do not know and who do not know you. This is much harder especially if you have a name that does not identify you in a positive, trustworthy way. Many may have more than one account, using one to build a good reputation by having positive interactions with people while using the other to deceive people into thinking that they are somebody who they are not. Once again, privacy plays a role in your identity. You get to choose not only who knows your account name, but what information you divulge to people on the internet through this name. Whether this information is fictitious or not is completely up to the user, making commercial accounts much more dangerous to build a reputation on than institutional accounts because of the amount of trust that you can unknowingly put into somebody over an instant message because of who they may say they are (Donath, 1996). This trust that people put into people who they do not know could even lead to some dire consequences, which were also discussed while talking about online privacy.

Citations:

(2007, Oct 2). Online Identity. Retrieved October 5, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity

(2007, Oct 5). AOL Instant Messenger. Retrieved October 5, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_instant_messenger

(2007, Sept 15). Reputation. Retrieved October 5, 2007, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation

Donath, Judith S. (1996, Nov 12). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Retrieved October 5, 2007, from Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community Web site: http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html