Discussion Post One

Anika Sands Professor Daly ESOC 211 November 14th, 2017 Thousand Word Meme Post?  For the thousand word blog post, I decided to write mine about what I felt was most interesting about the class we have learned so far. I am going to look at the statistics of memes and how they become famous, interesting facts, and how they became what they are today. Another aspect that I am going to focus on is how many memes go un noticed, and never get any actual real recognition, and what sets apart the memes that actually go viral and become something that everyone knows.  I started by looking at the popular memes, and knowing what we had learned in class, I know that most of these memes  spread almost overnight into internet sensations, things that almost everyone with a twitter, facebook, instagram or any type of social media would know. Using my own knowledge, I know that things can become popular by retweeting. I think that retweeting is a way that large numbers of p...

Anika Sands Professor Daly ESOC 211 November 9th,2017 Today in class we looked at the article,  Wikipedia and the Death of an expert . I thought that this article was very eye opening and made me start to think about how much humans depend on the internet in the modern days, and how much information you can learn from even just starting at a phone screen. 30-40 years ago, there was absolutely no way of having an app update you about current news, communicate instantly with people across different countries or continents, and have access to so much more information. I think that it comes to show that online collaboration can be very important to helping the internet be a better and more diverse place with lots of information that anyone can share. Although wikipedia gets a bad reputation, I think that it is very useful most of the time to look up quick information or get the answer to what you were looking for. Image courtesy of Wiki Commons:

Anika Sands Professor Daly ESOC 211 November 2nd, 2017 This week, we have been looking at memes, and their relation to this class by talking about spreadability and how they become a meme and are able to take over the internet and become so popular. There are many ways that memes can "go viral" on the internet and we have been exploring all the different ways that memes become spreadable. With the use of the internet today, you don't have to be a celebrity to get publicity. For example we looked at Bad Luck Brian, Overly attached girlfriend, and many other meme people that just made funny videos and posted them to a public forum. I think that the main reason that memes spread is become of reliability. If people can relate to something, chances are that people will think something is funny. The more people that you can relate to, the easier your meme could easily spread. Memes started out as a joke, but are becoming more and more powerful as everyday people can now sp...

During Tuesday and Thursday of our class, we have been talking about how social media has changed the way that we can access information. We watched a Ted talk, and also talked about Black Lives Matter and the organizations that support it. Also examined how #BlackLivesMatter does not have a leader, but more of individualistic protests and stories from Twitter, and other social media platforms that can convey a message in a whole new way. The lady from the Ted Talk also talked about the journalists from Turkey, and how someone does not have to go into a violent area of the world as a journalist anymore, there are people that are live and in the country that can post about it right from their smart phone. I think it is really interesting how the way of protests are changing, and really anybody can voice their opinion now. To watch the Ted talk, follow the link  here. Photo Courtesy of: Wikipedia Commons

Anika Sands October 19,2017 ESOC 211 Professor Daly This week, we looked at the article, "how to make gaming more collaborative and less toxic" . I thought that this article was very interesting for two reasons. First of all, the researcher studied neuroscience at the University of Washington, and worked in Bellevue, Washington which is where I'm from. Also, the experiment that they did had lots of factors that had never been researched before. I think that they picked a great game to do the experiment on, (League of Legends) because of the type of people that play the game, and also the collaborative based format of the game. Studies keep finding that when things are communicated to people in a positive and not negative way, the reform rate is much higher. Photo courtesy of: Pixels 

Anika Sands October 12th, 2017 During this week of class, instead of meeting online, we collaborated online as a class. I think it is very cool that even though we were not in a classroom all together, we were all still able to learn and discuss together the information that we learned. I liked the way that Tophat  asked questions throughout the reading, and brought a lot of interesting information to the table. The topic that I am going to focus on that was discussed in the reading is, civil inattention. According to the reading, civil inattention is, "the common understanding by you and by others in society- that you don't get into other people's business. We were asked to respond to "do you practice civil inattention online?", I think that it is very hard with social media to follow civil inattention. People are constantly following their friends, family, celebrities, companies and almost nothing is private anymore. It is so easy for screenshots or...