Digital Youth, Social Movements,

After watching the video by Raquel Recuero - Digital Youth, Social Movements, and Democracy in Brazil I found a common theme from other presentations and readings. The common theme that I have understood about social media blogs is that anyone at anytime can start a blog. As long as you have access to the internet whether by a computer or smart phone it is very easy to do. Just because you start a blog does not mean that it will be followed. There was also a point that 80% percent of the internet traffic for blogs are for the more popular and sometimes funded blogs. Some also seem that a blog might be a basic conversation between a couple of people in reality it is many conversations overlapping each other at the same time.

Raquel Recuero brought up in her video which has been the same opinion I have had for many years From being in the Information technology and security field is the internet has opened up sites like face book to be used as a tool for cyber bullying and a place where too much personal information is on the web about people. For example: one child could have postings about themselves on many sites because their grandparents might post something, then they aunt might post something and then cousins may post something etc. As you can see this one person now has personal information on the internet and is all over the place. Al of this information can be a treasure chest for thieves to break into homes, cars and even steal a person’s identify.

She also spoke about the problem of blog sites being used for things like making fun of women because different groups use social media to back their cause such as the example of sexism. This is a huge problem in Brazil, however, at the time of the video there was not laws being out into place to fight any of this. The best advice was to stay off the internet, limit you’re posting of information on social media sites such as face book and twitter and from experience form some investigations I was a part of, I agree fully with that advice and practice it as much as possible.

After watching the Video of TEDxNYED - Henry Jenkins - 03/06/10 we come to find out that blogging really is nothing new and is in its third century so far. If we look at the history of blogging and  going back to the 1800’s when printing presses where used we come to find out that many of the abbreviated words or images such as lol have been around because back them they had to hand set the type and abbreviated when possible and  were used back then. We also find out as the technology changed over the years the bloggers would use the latest technology that was available to them such as the radio blogger of the 1960’s. What I found interesting is that all of these cutlers tended to overlap each other to show what his theory of participatory culture was about and how it has developed over history.

Since the time he created the video that we watched a lot has changes and at least in the higher education field we are seeing more and more use of the technology and social media playing a stronger role in the learning environment.

As I read chapter 3 of the Reading Images by Kress and Van Leeuwen, I found it very interesting how a good amount of the chapter is being used today. For example on page 79 they discuss the term taxomies and a couple of pages going in detail about them and how they can be laid out visually and for better understanding. This tied into tree structures which are not only used to show relationships but to show a hierarchical structure of an image. This also can be represented in many different tree forms depending on the need of the structure needed to show the hierarchy needed. This can be used to show operating strategies. Depending on how you may look at these images or trees I think that this can also be a symbolic process as well because we are using a symbol to either get a point across or to sell an item.

A picture is worth a 1000 words can be true. As we read the chapter about images and semiotic theory which is the study of these still images or the study of signs’.  It was very interesting to read about what we may think of something such as a simple picture might be filled with a lot of information about the image or the history of that image. It was very interesting to learn that the interactive participant is the one who either painted or took the picture of the material and have something for us to learn or they are trying to tell a story. This made me think about how it these images are used in WebPages for example. A real estate webpage will have picture of a house. The description of the house may only be a couple of lines however when you look at a couple of the picture of the house you can see the size, color, condition and even some options it has such as a pool.

We can take that same picture and look at it from the represented participant side and use it to ask questions like what is the picture about? What is the picture trying to tell me? Are there vectors in the picture and if so what is the history of maybe the people in the picture like the two examples at the beginning of the chapter in the book. I thought id was very informative to learn to look deeper into a picture in order to get something out of it.

From my understanding of what I had read in the assigned reading material, I fell that the authors are referring to that there is a new environment being developed as it pertains to texts and we now need to treat all texts as meaningful.  I think what they were trying to say is that every part of a text has a meaning whether it is a single letter, word or even a symbol. What this means is that text is no longer words in a book and texts have changed from their origin meaning from telling a story to more detailed instructions that can be used to carry out task or learn from or even a symbol like a road sign. When we see the text or image of a stop sign we know that we have to stop at the intersection before proceeding on our way.

 

The author used an example in the reading about using symbols to change the direction of a ship’s path. It is not just turning the steering wheel to get the ship to let’s say turn to the left in order to enter the harbor. It’s a matter of instrument symbols and human interaction in order to get the ship to change its course in an effort to get to its new intended location. Since, we as human know what certain symbols mean we know what instructions need to be carried out in order to get the ship to veer left. Part of the instructions might be yellow light flashing to decrease speed as we turn the steering wheel in order prevent the ship from tipping.

 

In using the example above I feel the author is trying to prove the point that text can be changed and when it is changed, it can change the entire meaning of the material that is being presented and how it is being received by the person using it to learn.

This is a test blog !!!!