Hello week 1 Networked Media!

In today class, I have realised that one particular reason why we chose Networked Media as one of our courses is an interest in social media aspect. I believe that most of the students have at least one social media channel (facebook, instagram, twitter, tumblr, etc.). Therefore, I feel that we might be related to the ground idea of this course in some way. As for me, who constantly uses social media everyday and have a big interest in working with social media and online space, I think this course would also benefit me a lot and I hope to gain an understanding and knowledge about online media in more depth.

This week is just the first week, however, our class discussion already motivated my curiosity about blog and social media, as one of the topic we talked about in class is ‘a relationship between social media and blog’ (and focus especially on instagram)

For my past three years, I have never once thought about a relationship, a difference or a similarity between social media and blog before, I thought that those two are completely separated from each other. I see a blog as a blog, a space where people write down their own story, while instagram is just a place to show images and videos.

However, after considering about it, I try to link the idea of why we blog and why we use instagram and other social media channels and how it different or similar to each other.

I think that our social media is more like a daily diary, a space where we post our daily life, today’s meals, my moods, and other unnecessary stuffs that I just want to write it down or post it somewhere to show what is going on in my life at that moment. What I post on social media is more real-time and informal. I do not really think much about stuff I wanna share, I can literally post ‘lol’ or a photo of my hand. It is just a sudden thought or mood that I feel right away. While the idea of blogging is more formal, productive, conceptual, and contextual. For me, blog is a place to express my thought towards particular topics after considering them and reflecting on them over and over. Because I need to assure that what I write is really what I want say. I think that a difference between blog and social media is the readers. As Miles (2006) said that what you write about needs to be expressed in such a way that it makes sense for other readers. Thus, the audience is what I have to concern when I write a blog post, I need to ensure that my writing makes sense and would not confuse my readers which is really different from posting on social media.

Despite being different from each other, I still find some similarities between blog and social media. A blog can be linked to by others (Miles, 2006). Blog has been developed to be able to commented, tagged, and shared which is kind of similar to how social media—especially instagram works.

For someone who has never thought about a relationship between blog and social media before, this topic really interests me.

 

 

Reference

Miles, A 2006, “‘Blogs in Media Education: A Beginning’.” Australian Screen Ed, vol 41, pp 66–9.