Cultures about Differnet Online Discussion Forums

Although there are different meanings for the word “culture”, for me, culture is anything that can represent a particular kind of community or groups of people. Also, it can distinguish that group or people from others.

In the Internet, different online cultures are embodied in various online discussion forms. For example, the cultures of forums 3boys2girls (link: http://www4.3boys2girls.com/index.php), she.com (link: http://www.she.com) and HKGolden forum (link: http://forum8.hkgolden.com). For 3boys2girls, most of the members are teenagers. I find that it is very common for them to post their own photos in the thread in order to make friends or gain attention from people for chatting. Some of the teenage girls even post some sexy photos in the forum. They don’t think that it is a problem which is quite different from the Chinese conservative ideology in the reality. For she.com, the members usually are young women. Member usually address each other as 絲打 or sis which means sister. The discussion topics are often about cosmetics, fashion, beauty and intimate relationship. For example when a member has a problem in her intimate relationship like having an argument with her boyfriend or being dumped; she may create a thread to talk about the problem to seek for advices or gain supports from those “online sisters”. For HKGolden forum, most of the members are male. They address each other as 巴打 which mean brother. I notice that members often add different emoticons in the replies and it is very common for them to include swearing words in the replies. I think that using those emoticons is the unique culture of HKGolden forum. Sometimes members can know what the meaning is even there is just an emoticon in the reply. Here are some of the emoticons used in HKGolden forum:

 (Link: http://hkgicon.googlecode.com/files/screenshot.png)

  

By the way, do all of you know that one of the participants of the MTR DIY Train Car Design Contest used the emoticons of HKGolden forum as the design and won the contest recently? Now, this design is really printed on the MTR. I feel it’s really cool and funny.  I really hope that I can luckily travel on this train because only two trains are printed with those winning designs.

 

(Link: http://i.imgur.com/SUUar.jpg)

(Link: http://i.imgur.com/uFKzY.jpg)

The Attention Economy

We all experienced multi-tasking before like singing when having a shower bath. Actually, multi-tasking is not anything new or related to digital phenomenon. Even without computer, we still have multi-tasking every day. At the beginning of the lesson, Christoph asked a few questions about whether multi-tasking is inefficient or stressful. For me, I feel that multi-tasking when doing the assignment is really inefficient. But it is sad that I can’t help myself to concentrate on doing the assignment only when using the computer. I keep checking the Facebook updates frequently even though there are not much updates at all. Besides, I chat with my friends on MSN. These totally hinder my assignment progress. It really makes me feel that is so inefficient. But the fact is that I just can’t control myself to put all the attention to do the assignment only. Quite often I feel frustrated about my inefficiency as I have to spend the whole day to sit in front of the computer and do the assignment that originally can be finished in a few hours.

Games, Learning and Literacy

Compared with my friends, I did not have much experience in playing video games. This is because my parents did not like me to play video games as they thought that playing video games affects academic study. As a result, I have concept that playing video games is harmful even though I like playing them. Actually, I never think that playing video games can also be a part of learning like collaborating with other players in order to achieve a goal in online games. But there are differences between reality and virtual world; what we learnt in video or online games may not be applied in the actual world. Besides, we need to aware of what those games are promoting. I think many of those popular video games are promoting violence for example players have to kill the enemies to accomplish different missions. Of course we adults do not think that it is a problem because we can distinguish what is right or wrong. But this may have a consequence on children. Here, I am not mean that those children will kill people in the reality but I think that they will tend to be unpeaceful.

Working Together on the Web

Before having this lesson, the only thing that I know about collaborative writing is Wikipedia. I never thought that collaborative writing changes the relationship between customers and producers. Now, the relationship between customers and producers is much dynamic then before. Customers can share their ideas for fun and producers take advantage by providing channels for customers showing their intelligence. This is really a win-win situation.

In Hong Kong, there is a website which is more or less the same with Wikipedia in nature but it only includes the things about Hong Kong. It calls the Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities in Hong Kong (EVCHK) which can illustrate collaborative writing in Hong Kong. (Link: http://evchk.wikia.com/wiki/%E9%A6%96%E9%A0%81) I find EVCHK very interesting because of its ironic style. For example, the Financial Secretary Mr. John Tsang Chun Wah released the 2009-2010 Budget and there were many negative feedbacks for the budget and many Hong Kong citizens criticized Mr. Tsang. In the page about Mr. Tsang, there is picture that looks like the cover page of the Budget but the content is all changed in order to satire on the government.

Picture's Link:  

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090227081218/evchk/images/b/b2/2009budget_kuso2.png

More than Words

At the very beginning of the lecture, the changes of newspaper were discussed. Newspaper texts are enriched with more images than before. But that’s not enough with images nowadays; we can notice that most of the Hong Kong online newspapers include a video for the news. As I read Apple Daily online every day, I’ll talk Apple Daily as an example to talk about this. Some of the news videos include CG animation which shows the whole incident or accident. Like this news, it talks about a man who swooned and fell down on the track. Luckily, other passengers save him.

 

This CG animation makes the readers feel as if they were there and witnessed the accident. People who don’t know any Cantonese can still understand what happened after watching those CG animations. On the other hand, there is a concern regarding those CG animations; they make reporting news like story-telling which is narrative more than just describing the facts. But I really think that the CG animations make reading newspaper much interesting than before.

My Digital Life

It seems that we can't live without digital media in this era. For me, it would be a disaster if there are no digital media and communication devices because I rely so much on digital media in different aspects. I spend most of my leisure time on the Internet. Every day, I logon to Facebook to see there are updated news feeds from my friends. Also, I play social games like Pet Society on Facebook. I love Google so much because it really helps my academic study. Every time when I need to write an essay or do an assignment, I research the information and materials by using Google search engine. Among different search engines like Yahoo and Bing, I find the searching results by Google are the most appropriate.

Last month, I brought a new mobile phone and the OS of mobile phone is Android; I find Android is really fantastic. I can download different useful apps from Android Market.  For example, I've download Spanish-to-English Dictionary from Android Market and installed it in my phone as I'm now learning Spanish. This helps me a lot as I need not to bring a heavy dictionary. Once I have any Spanish words that are not understand, I just need to check these by using the dictionary in my phone. It really facilitate my learning progress. Recently, I downloaded a video game which is called Angry Birds from Android Market. This game is really addictive and the characters are very cute. It is very popular and many of my friends play this game also. I usually play this game when I travel on MTR or bus. As I love this game so much, I started to search the information about Angry Birds on the Internet and I found this amazing Angry Birds trailer which I‘ve shared on Facebook with my friends also. Here is the link

As digital media is important in our daily life, I expect that I will learn how the use of those media, technologies and device shape peoples' world view and value.