Week Thirteen: Celebrity Culture (Extended Blog Post)

Celebrity culture been always a hot and social topic and their culture influence people globally. Today, people often receive the news and gossips about celebrity mostly from social media sources. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, pp. 59-60) describes social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content”. Social media is “the process where people participate in conversations and share content online”. Social media is not like the traditional media. The traditional media is mostly one way communication but social media is two way communications because people can participate in the message and conversation. Therefore, this week I will discuss about social media and how it is influencing our way in engaging with news and global affairs, focusing on celebrity news and gossips. And with social media, I will also discuss more about the globalisation media flows, Americanisation and globalisation in general.

Social media changes the way we engage in news and global affairs. According to Heinonen (2011), people are not “passive recipients” of information anymore on social media but they are now “contributing actively” to the content. People don’t just receive news and gossips about celebrities from the television, newspaper or magazines, but they can receive the news and gossips faster if they go on to the social media sources. From time to time, the traditional media even has to gather their sources from social media first until they get a more reliable source. About global affairs on social media, can you believe that the breaking news people get about the death of Osama bin Laden was from Twitter? Yes! According to NPR (2011), a man in Abbottabad, Pakistan, tweeted about the details of the U.S. raid on bin Laden’s hiding place and the man’s home was near the place. According to Sysomos, in NPR (2011), within hours, the death of bin Laden was the hot topic on Twitter with more than 2.2 million mentions and nearly 40,000 blog posts. People are now going to social media for news first and if they need more details, they will go to traditional media. Evans (2008) describes that people use Twitter to share interests, information and to find out news and what is happening in the world in real time.

Social Media Usage in Australia (Source: Sensis, 2012)

According to Sensis (2012), Facebook is the leading social network platform for Australia, with 97% of social network users using Facebook, and that is about 10.7 million users. 16% are on Linked in and that is about 3 million users, 14% on Twitter, 8% on Google+ and 9% on other social network platforms. Facebook is the main social media that Australians use, and with 10.7 million users, that is almost half of the Australian population. This statistics show that more and more people are using social media and it is very likely that people will receive news about celebrities and other global affairs on social media. On Facebook, they can ‘like’ the celebrities’ fan page or other fan pages of the celebrities. On Twitter, fans can also ‘follow’ their favourite celebrity’s account. From Twitaholic (2012), it can see that the top 5 most followed accounts are celebrities. Lady Gaga is first with more than 30 million followers and Justin Bieber is second with more than 28 million followers. Just this week, Justin Bieber vomited during a concert and he tweeted about it, “and…Milk as a bad choice! Lol.” (Sydney Morning Herald, 2012). And people can also find many videos of him vomiting on stage on YouTube, which is the most watched YouTube videos this week. In less than one week, one of the videos been already has more than 14 million views and it has more than 40,000 comments.

To show how easy people can get news from social media sources, I found a blog showing the announcement of Facebook reaching one billion monthly active users. On Socialbakers’ (2012) blog, it shows the Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook announcement. As seen on the Facebook post, it received more than 450,000 ‘likes’ in less than 4 hours. This means that people first heard about the news on Facebook and it has reached hundreds of thousands of people just on the social media platform within hours. But what does this one billion monthly active users mean? It is globalisation! As discussed in the week one post, globalisation brings together the different opinions and views people has, and as time goes on, this changes other people’s opinions and views as well. On Facebook, there is a globalised society of one billion users who can interact with each other and share their story and culture.

Americanisation is also more obvious because of social media. Social media has the power to influence people more than the traditional media. Americanisation simply means that the rest of the world is influence by the American culture. First, how did Facebook even reach one billion active users? This can explained because of Americanisation. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all come from America, and because of the increasing popular of the social media platforms, people from around the world started using it as well. They are popular because it can connect people from everywhere and people can learn about interesting things about other parts of the world that cannot be seen in where they live at. The Chinese popular social network platform, Weibo, is also created because of Americanisation. Weibo’s features are entirely the same as Twitter. Not only are people Americanised by the American social media use but social media also help bring other American cultures to the rest of the world. This is especially true for the celebrity culture because as showed on Twitaholic (2012), the top 5 most followed accounts are American celebrities. If we look down more, the top 27 accounts are all owned by Americans. This means that they have the most influence to the rest of the Twitter account from around the world.

I will also discuss about globalisation media flows in terms of social media. Media flows are about the rapid increase and uniting of the global media empires. None of the social media platforms can officially called as global media empire, but their influence is definitely very powerful. YouTube is the most popular social media platform for video sharing. It is the main source of entertainment of videos from people around the world. It is not the uniting of media empires, but it brings together all the videos shared by people. These videos even include the ones that can be seen on the traditional media such as news, television shows, television series, movies and more. Sometimes it is not legal but media is flowing on to a globalised platform, YouTube.

From this blog post, we can see the big influences social media has, and more and more people are moving away from traditional media to social media for news and global affairs, as well as news and gossips about celebrities. People are influenced by celebrities through social media more now. Social media changes the way people connect with each other and it can said that social media brings more people together to a virtual globalised community.

References

Evans, D. (2008). Social Media Marketing: An hour a day. John Wiley & Sons.

Heinonen, K. (2011). “Consumer Activity in Social Media: Managerial Approaches to Consumers' Social Media Behaviour”. Journal of Consumer Behaviour. Volume 10. Issue 6. pp. 356-364.

Kaplan, A. M. & Haenlein, M. (2010). "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media". Business Horizons. Volume 53. Issue 1. pp. 59-68

NPR. (2011). On Social Media, Americans React to Bin Laden Death. Retrieved on October 5^th, 2012, from < http://www.npr.org/2011/05/03/135932108/on-social-media-americans-react-to-bin-laden-death>

Sensis. (2012). Yellow Social Media Report. Retrieved on October 5^th, 2012, from

<http://about.sensis.com.au/IgnitionSuite/uploads/docs/FinalYellow_SocialMediaReport_digital_screen.pdf>

Socialbakers. (2012). Socialbakers Congratulates Facebook On 1 Billion Active Users. Retrieved on October 5^th, 2012, from < http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/897-socialbakers-congratulates-facebook-on-1-billion-active-users>

Sydney Morning Herald. (2012). Justin Bieber vomits on stage. Retrieved on October 5^th, 2012, from

< http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/justin-bieber-vomits-on-stage-20121001-26u54.html>

Twitaholic. (2012). Retrieved on October 5^th, 2012, from < http://twitaholic.com/>

YouTube. (2012). Justin Bieber Throws Up on Stage in Arizona. Retrieved on October 5^th, 2012, from

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoNmdAQkH8A>

Week Eight: Celebrity Culture

This week we have Professor Marshall as guest speaker and discuss about ‘Celebrity and the Specular Economy’. Professor Marshall (2010), in his article, discuss about how people and celebrity care about how they look to others and how others think of them. It describe that we are like celebrities, we also ‘mask’ ourselves when we present ourselves in life, especially on media like social network websites.

I love the Korean culture but it is heartbreaking to hear that most Korean celebrities do plastic surgery, and this encourage the young girls and boys and the general public to also get plastic surgery because they want to look pretty and handsome like the celebrities but they are actually ‘masking’ themselves. The statistics below from International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery show that South Korea is the country with the most people to get plastic surgery and Australia is ranked 15^th.

This week we also talk about how celebrities sometimes really don’t have privacy. Paparazzi like to capture the ugly and humiliating moments of celebrities because this is what people actually want to see. People want to see the ‘unmasked’ celebrities. Recently, Prince Harry got caught with naked photos and this is the side that people never see of Prince Harry.

Professor Marshall discuss that because of new media like social media. It is easier to spread news and gossips about celebrities and their culture influence is higher. Traditional and main channel media now also rely on social media to get their sources.

Reference

Marshall, D. (2010). ‘The Specular Economy’. Society. Vol.47. Issue6. pp. 498-502. EbscoHost.

Image

http://www.koreabang.com/2012/stories/south-korea-tops-plastic-surgery-tables-again-netizens-react.html

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/22/prince-harry-naked-photos-surface-online/

Week Four: The 'Ridiculous' Patent War

"Why on earth are these proceedings (Apple v.s Samsung) going ahead? It's just ridiculous"

This is said by the Australian judge on the continue patent war between Apple and Samsung. This week in class we learned about patents protection for innovators. Patents is give to the inventors for their work to prevent other people to copy their work. But is it abusive when two parties kept suing each other using the patent law in public to prevent the other party from selling their products? The Australian judge think it is because Apple and Samsung keep suing each other in public court when they can settle on their own.

Apple and Samsung have the biggest market share in the tablet market. They do this because they want to take each other’s market share. Samsung’s Galaxy 10.1 tablet is already banned in America but it fail in United Kingdom. Samsung is already losing hundreds millions dollars because of the ban in America and so they want to try and ban Apple’s products in other countries as well. The fight keeps will not stop because technology advance so fast and there will be more new inventions created by both companies and they will still sue each other copying each other’s work. The irony is Samsung is the largest supplier to Apple but they still fight each other for patent rights.

Soon, the war will be joined by Microsoft. Microsoft is also going to be releasing their new tablet as well this year. Patent law is good to protect inventions but what happens when people abuse it? What can they do different?

Reference
BrisbaneTimes (2012). "Samsung, Apple dispute 'ridiculous', judge says". Retrieved on August 3rd 2012 from, <http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/world-business/samsung-apple-dispute-ridiculous-judge-says-20120723-22jnq.html>

Image
http://www.androidguys.com/2012/06/13/apples-request-for-early-injunction-against-samsung-denied-galaxy-s-ii-will-launch-on-time/apple-vs-samsung/

Week Three: Cocalization

Cocalization talks about how the world’s culture is so influenced by Coca Cola because it is such a powerful brand. The Coca Cola brand is young and fun. We are all influenced by the young and fun culture of Coca Cola and we love the brand for it! In the picture below, we can also see Cocalization in the Arab culture. 

From this week’s class, we learned about how big companies have significant influence around the world. McChesney (1997) discuss the “global media giants”, particularly the films and news industry. The article shows that Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom and Rupert Murdock’s News Corporation were the largest and most powerful media empires that dominate the entire global media system. Even today, they still dominate. This is an old article but it still shows how powerful these companies are and how they can easily gain control over the market.

Coca Cola gains its power with the help of this global media empires. They advertise a lot on all of their different channels including movies and news. Coca Cola is always one of the biggest sponsor for the Olympics. This year, it’s the same. It shows the young and fun culture again in their Olympic video. 

From the video, it can see that Coca Cola gathered Olympians from different countries. This shows that Coca Coca is making the influence to the world not only on traditional media but also new media like on the social media and social network websites. 

Reference

McChesney, R. (1997). “The Global Media Giants: We are the world”. Fair. Retrieved on July 28^th 2012 from, < http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1406>

Image

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrepipa/2794670886/

Video

YouTube (2012). Moved to the Beat of London 2012 Commercial – 2 minutes. Retrieved on July 28^th 2012 from, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYcsbNtlbvg>

Week Two: Globalisation Flows

Last week I discuss about the definition of Globalisation and how it can influence us. This week I will be talking more on how Globalisation can exist. How are people linked together to form the globalisation society? This is because the flows of globalisation that connect region to region, nation to nation and people to people. There are some flows that show this but today I will discuss only two that will  explain my topic view. This is from the reading in class.

Cultural flows refer to the different "objects, skills, beliefs and practices" from different parts of the world that travel around. This can be music, food, religious beliefs, languages, clothing, foreign films, etc. For example, American music and films are listened and watched by a lot of people across the world. That is the reason for why people from the other part of the world are influenced by the “American culture”.  When so many cultures link together, we can see new culture being created. 

Information flows refer to the flow of information across the world. People from around the world are able to exchange knowledge and information from anywhere.  For example, people can search for any information they want on “Google Search” which is a very useful tool that brings together all the websites from around a world.

In my opinion, technologies and social media make the world link together that evolves to a Global world.   We are more close together, better communication, through technologies and media. A lot of culture flow now is passed on by social media and social network websites. Globalisation/media technologies make every single person can look at the entire world and involved in other people's life. Nederveen Pieterse (2004, pg.9) discuss the important Information and Communication Technologies that play a big role in globalisation and the flows.  

Reference

Nederveen Pieterse, J2004, ‘Globalization: Consensus and controversies’. Globalization and culture: global melange, Rowan & Littlefield , Lanham, Md., p.9

Image
http://advedupsyfall09.wikispaces.com/file/view/world-connect.jpg/

http://blog.cloudprime.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Connecting-the-world-712301-resized-600.jpg.png

Week One: Defining Globalisation and its Impact

In this blog, I will be discuss a lot about Globalisation.We need to first understand, “What is Globalisation and how does it influence everyone in this multicultural society?”. 

Nederveen Pieterse (2004, pg.7) talk about that Globalisation is like a prism in which questions of capitalism, inequality, power, development, ecology, culture, gender, identity, population are under dispute where “globalization did it”. There is Globalisation because of these common but different opinions in this multicultural societies we are in. In Globalisation, there are changes that can come from a region, to a nation, to the whole world. This can be  changes like politics, economics, trade, finance, lifestyles and cultures (Hachten & Scotton, 2002, pg. 3). Globalisation is basically the combined of this elements.

Is Globalisation good or bad then? It brings together the world’s similar and different things to form a globalised society.  Globalisation might be good when countries partner together, sharing knowledge and resources, and improve its each other's nation. It can be good when the public share their cultures and lifestyles across world, so that people understand more about each other. However, Globalisation can also be bad!  It can only be good when people come to a understanding. When they don't, there can be wars between nations. So, should we push for Globalisation? You decide.


Reference

Nederveen Pieterse, J2004, ‘Globalization: Consensus and controversies’. Globalization and culture: global melange, Rowan & Littlefield , Lanham, Md., p.7

Hatchen, WA & Scotton, JF 2002, ‘New communication for a new global system’, The world news prism: global media in an era of terrorism, 6^th edn, lowa State Press, Ames, p.3

Image

http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/eduwiki/doku.php?id=students09:topic_globalisation

First for Start

Hi all! This is my first blog post! 
This is a new and exciting experience for me. It will be fun to interact with people through this blog.
This blog is for my University assignment.  
I will be discussing about topics around "Globalization and the Media" in the following months.