Newtown: A Storymap

 Storymap of Newtown

Growing up in Auckland, my earliest memories of Wellington all took place in Newtown. I first visited as a young child, staying with family at a house on Wilson street. I visited Wellington Zoo on the same trip and was mesmerised. My mother was born at the hospital in Newtown and my first Wellingtonian flat was in Newtown so it is an area I will forever feel quite intimately bonded with. The Storymap app affords me the ability to connect these personal anecdotes with a geographic location and relate those stories to the narrative of the wider community, composing an interactive map through which multiple stories can be told (Hutchby 2001, 447).

Newtown is popularly known as a café and shopping district along with a capital for the arts and a location for family friendly days out. Café owners, shopkeepers and artists thus have a strong influence on the representation of Newtown. Artists develop aesthetics which contextualise the suburb. They create impressions of the space in the form of music, dance and painting etc. that tell narratives of the wider community and its underlying feelings. Café owners are the gatekeepers of the latest trends and brews of the world of coffee culture. Along with the stimulation of caffeine, café owners provide spaces of communal leisure, predominantly frequented by millennial clientele. Shopkeepers in Wellington curate the local fare. Fashion and craft are pivotal in the storytelling of the area and without a hive of switched on shopkeepers the culture would be significantly lacking. While I have identified these three roles as important story-tellers of Newtown, it is very important to note that social media has deconstructed the asymmetry of narratives of spaces and that where formerly narratives were formed by a few ‘floor-keepers’, tools such as Storymap disseminate the privilege of telling the story of a place across everybody with access to Web 2.0 technologies (Page 2012, 1).

Historically Newtown has been regarded as a ‘working-class’ area. It was originally settled for the means of farming around 1840 but was very scarcely populated until the end of the 19^th century. An upswing in population occurred in the late 19^th century aided by the construction of the Wellington regional hospital, population increased steadily ever since. Medium to high-density housing was introduced from 1980 to accommodate this continual growth and as the property market in Newtown extended, gentrification begun to occur. The duality of an area where accommodation is increasingly a reservation of the wealthy yet the predominant demographic is under 40 and largely student based is complex. The story I aimed to tell of Newtown is one of a welcoming cultural hub popular with the youthful, artistic and thrifty which is concurrent with the popular conception of Newtown. However, what I wish to represent in a different light is that while the suburb is still popular with those belonging to both upper and lower class economic backgrounds, Newtown is on a precipice between cultures of inclusion and exclusion. If rental and housing prices increase at the current rate it may only be a few years until Newtown becomes a suburb exclusively for the economically mobile and an end to the days of quintessential student life in Newtown is witnessed.

In the Web 2.0 world I am empowered to share my own perspective of Newtown and contribute to the grand narrative or ‘brand’ of the space through online tools such as Storymap (Christodoulides 2009, 141). Newtown is a space that is very significant both to me personally and to Wellington as a city. I have attempted to communicate this significance through anecdote, by assigning historical context to popular sites in Newtown and simply by telling the story of how Newtown is seen and interacted with most frequently. Through my story map I have placed emphasis on Newtown’s cultural side as I believe it is integral to the identity of the community and geography. If not for the rich culture of the arts in Newtown I would have perhaps never moved there in the first place and witnessed the story of Newtown first hand. My story map is also purposed to communicate the pressure on renters, particularly students as the housing market is flooded with young professionals, upmarket investors and economic migrants. Newtown’s cultural image is largely dependent upon its ability to accommodate students and young creatives who comprise a significant portion of the arts community, without these people Newtown stands to lose a proportion of its identity as it exists today.

 

Works Cited:

 

Christodoulides, George ‘Branding in the Post-Internet Era’ (Birmingham, University of Birmingham, 2009)

 

Hutchby, Ian ‘Technologies, Texts and Affordances’ (London, Brunel University, 2001)

 

Page, Ruth E. ‘Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction’ (New York, Routledge 2012)

 

Image Credits for StoryMap in order of appearance:

 

‘Welcome to Newtown’: https://www.flickr.com/photos/travelling–light

 

‘Wellington Zoo’: https://wellingtonzoo.com/

 

‘Wellington Regional Hospital’: http://www.kiaorahauora.co.nz/wellington-regional-hospital-visit

 

‘Newtown Street Fair’: www.newtownfestival.org.nz/

‘Op-Shops Galore’: vinnies-wellington.org.nz

 

‘Rental Squeeze’: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/property/89925140/perfect-storm-as-wellingtons-rental-squeeze-spreads-to-suburbs

 

‘Rising House Prices’ & ‘Age Demographics’: https://www.qv.co.nz/suburb/newtown-wellington-1020/sold

 

 

 

Activism or Slacktivism on Change.org

For the twelfth and final blog post of this course I have chosen to write about a topic very close to my heart. Youth Suicide. Last week I lost my best friend to suicide, he had just turned 21. It is important that we can talk about the issue of mental healthcare but even more important that we can enact the changes that we feel need to be addressed within the healthcare system.

Pictured above is a Change.org petition regarding yet another young Kiwi who felt the need to take his own life.

Change.org is a website on which anybody can create a petition that they can then share across social media. Anybody can then sign the petition by entering their name, email address and locale with the option of adding a note or re-sharing the petition. Change.org allows the mobilisation of petitions to areas and people which would have been unreachable via traditional physical copy petitions. The petitions come with descriptions including goals/demands and a recipient.

The petition pictured above is addressed to the NZ Health Committee, further down the petition states a list of eight demands.

As Henrik Serup Christensen puts it, slacktivism is a term used to “belittle activities that do not express a full–blown political commitment.” and to describe actions which are “more effective in making the participants feel good about themselves than to achieve the stated political goals”. As this petition clearly dictates a set of actionable and consequential demands and addresses them directly to the Health Committee, this petition is an instance of activism, not slacktivism.

 

Image Credit: https://www.change.org/p/health-commitee-my-son-took-his-life-urgent-independent-nationwide-mental-health-inquiry-needed/

^NB: I encourage anybody reading to sign the petition linked above.

NB: Helplines – Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand

Representing Space & Place at the Kelburn Library

The Kelburn library is a space used by students, staff and visitors of the campus. Traditionally purposed as a venue for reading, researching and working, the library lends itself to a wide range of other interpretations. To some it functions as a workplace, to some a place for social gathering and to many it stands as a beacon of of solitude among an oftentimes overwhelming university environment. While largely interpretive as a space, the social and institutional authorities of the library influence how these spaces are interpreted and inform the portrayal of these spaces in other spheres.

       One of the library’s entrances

As the ‘About us’ page on the Kelburn library’s website reads: “To accommodate your study needs, the Kelburn Library’s study spaces have been divided into two zones. Green zones are for group work and conversation. Blue zones are for quiet, individual study.”. This exemplifies the way in which the institutional authors are able to influence the interpretation of the space and speaking from personal experience, this zoning is adhered to the majority of the time although there does exist persistent defiance.

           

‘Bad Memes for Suffering Victoria University Teens’ narrative encourages adherence to the rules of the ‘blue zone’

 Where library users fail to respect the guidelines established on the institutional level, other forces are present which seek to correct any transgressions which may disturb the wider community of the library. The ‘Bad Memes for Suffering Victoria University Teens’ Facebook page, for example, makes use of its social authority, authority reified by its large number of Facebook likes, to broadcast narratives which function to maintain an agreeable order of behavior within the library.

Many of today’s students would rather be told what to do by a meme page than a cardboard sign outside the library

 

Image credit:

Library photo from Kelburn Library webpage 

Both memes from ‘Bad Memes for Suffering Victoria University Teens’

Snapchat: Risk & Reward in the Age of Over-Sharing

Snapchat, as with all social media platforms, has a unique set of norms which are informed primarily by the collective values of the participatory community and how said community interacts with the platform based on the platform’s affordances. These norms are reinforced over time and evolve continually to reflect changes in the nature of its userbase. Perhaps the most overt distinction between Snapchat and other popular social media platforms is the absence of permanence. Whereas media posted on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram remains accessible for long periods of time, often perpetually, Snapchat is designed in such a way that constrains sharing between users to rapid, short lived and ‘in the moment’ communications. This constraint contributes largely to the formation of Snapchat’s norms i.e. the nature of content users would expect to send and receive over the platform and the content users would deem as inappropriate.

Snapchat is a mobile based social media platform which was originally launched in September, 2011 (Colao, par.8). It allows users to send and receive both photos and videos, these media are referred to as ‘snaps’. Photo snaps can be set to disappear from one to ten seconds after being opened, or until they are closed by the recipient. Video snaps are also constrained to ten seconds in length but can be sent as a ‘multi-snap’ which is a succession of up to six snaps recorded concurrently. The length of the snap is at the discretion of the sender who utilises the timer icon, which is found on the camera screen, to alter this setting.

The ‘Camera Screen’ of Snapchat which is the default screen of the app.

The ‘Edit Screen’ of Snapchat which appears once the Snap has been captured.

Snapchat is used as a mode of ‘pictorial conversation’, an increasingly common format of communication in a world dominated by the ubiquitous ‘smart phone’ (Villi p.42). Such communication has taken the place of postcard sending, in which images are integral to the communication but not necessarily the referent object of the communication. Unlike postcards however, snaps establish a connection between the message and the ‘real-time’ context. Given that smartphones are highly portable, it is not uncommon for users to take their devices into areas not traditionally regarded as suitable venues of communication. For example, people will often bring their phones with them into bathrooms when using a toilet or preparing for a shower and continue using their device to communicate up until it is no longer possible for them to operate their device. Such an act would have been considered reprehensible prior to the advent of mobile smartphone technology, yet as we have further adapted as a society to mobile phone attachment, there has been an observable shift in norms. A 2013 article published by The Daily Edge titled “Nine dodgy Snapchats everyone sends but probably shouldn’t” identifies “the toilet snapchat” as a common type of snap shared between friends. While Facebook, Twitter or Instagram users would not be expected to share such vulgar and personal photographic insights publicly or even over a private messenger, Snapchat apparently establishes itself as an appropriate host for communication of this nature. The reason for this differentiation comes down to the fact that Snapchat does not afford for the permanent hosting of images and thus users have confidence that any media shared person to person will not survive beyond the context and time in which it is sent and received. Because of this it is considered a norm of Snapchat that informal and unflattering images are shared regularly between users whereas images hosted on the aforementioned platforms tend to present a much more tailored and refined self.

The ‘Toilet Snapchat’ is an overt example of over-sharing.

Snapchat’s time limited photo/video messages afford the ideal platform for the sharing of intimate and explicit imagery. Despite the platform’s perceived convenience for this nature of communication, sharing content of such a personal nature over Snapchat does not come without significant risk. Should the recipient of a snap decide they want to retain the image beyond the established time limit, they may circumvent the images self-deletion by capturing a screenshot on their device, usually performed by the pressing of two buttons on the device whilst holding one finger on the screen so as to keep the message open. Snapchat does not prevent users from capturing screenshots although it does notify the sender in the case of the recipient screenshotting their message. In this aspect, Snapchat affords a means of social surveillance, whereby users can monitor the behaviour of the users they interact with and keep track of any norm-breaking activities (Marwick p.1). The norm-breaking activity in this instance being the permanent retention of media which was intended to be shared for only a few seconds by means of screenshotting. These interactions between users and the architecture of Snapchat contribute to establishing a cultural field within which the norms arise, acting as unspoken rules which regulate acceptable standards of behaviour (Danaher et. Al. p.22). When these rules are transgressed, the culprit’s reputation, and subsequently their social capital, is damaged. This reprimand plays a pivotal role in the function of social capital to maintain social order. An Icelandic study into the role of sexting within Snapchat found that respondents most commonly perceived users who collect private snaps as being immature, mean, sad, obsessed and disrespectful (Guðmundsdóttir p.44).

Another aspect of Snapchats architecture that affords a means of social surveillance is that it informs senders of the status of the snaps that they have sent. The three steps a snap travels through from being sent to being received are: “Sent”, this means your snap has been sent away to the ‘cloud’ of Snapchat but has yet to arrive to the recipients device, “Received”, your snap has entered the recipients inbox but they have yet to open it, and “Opened”, the recipient has viewed your snap. Seen in similar manifestations across other platforms such as the “Seen” feature of Facebook’s Messenger app, this information enforces the norm of reciprocated communication. Without such a feature, users would be able to selectively respond to and ignore communications via Snapchat without detection, if this were the case it would be easier for users to be less engaged on Snapchat as there would be no social pressure to establish and enforce the above-mentioned norm. It is in the interest of Snapchat to maximise the engagement of its users and so in establishing this norm (through implementation of the “Opened” feature) it is able to trade off the discretion of its users for an increase in pressure to respond to snaps. Whether or not a recipient has a genuine reason for not being able to send an immediate response, the silence of the recipient implies the message that they are intentionally ignoring the sender. Pre Web 2.0 modes of communication such as post and early text messaging afforded discretion in this sense, whereby senders had no real way of knowing whether or not their messages had been read or even received and thus ignoring communications was more commonplace. As our abilities to conduct social surveillance on the people we communicate with increases, the norms of communication are shifting to a point at which friendly and casual communication, due to the unspoken pressures assigned to response, becomes increasingly invasive.

Sometimes silence says more than words ever could.

“(Snapchat) has been built to hide information from unintended audiences in exactly the reverse of Facebook’s super-public system”, this explains why Snapchat users feel less apprehensive broadcasting more private and less flattering snapshots into their lives than users of other platforms (Prado 91). Due to the increased willingness of users to send private media, the consequences of context collapse are significantly higher (Marwick, The Public Domain: Social Surveillance in Everyday Life 1). A commonly overlooked risk associated with Snapchat is the accidental sending of snaps to unintended recipients. Because of the fast pace of sending and receiving Snapchats and the layout of the “Send to…” screen, it is very easy to select the wrong contact and click the ‘send’ arrow before realising the error, once the snap has been sent there is no possible way for the sender to intercept the snap. This is no great error when the accidental snap is of an innocuous nature but in instances of accidentally sending explicit snaps, or ‘nudes’, to unintended contacts, including but not limited to: friends, co-workers and family, the social consequences can be extreme and pose serious real-life ramifications. An example of such ramifications was demonstrated when in Florida in 2016 a young woman commited suicide after the nude Snapchats of her were leaked throughout her school (Klausner 1).

Snapchat as a social media platform affords many new possibilities for social interaction through its unique affordances which have adapted a cultural field within which there is great emphasis on hyper-personal sharing (or over-sharing) and unprecedentedly rapid, real-time communication. These affordances encourage Snapchat users to be increasingly engaged with each other and thusly the platform and contribute to the growing culture of our attachment to social media outlets. New norms have been established which reflect the Snapchat community’s values of instantaneous exchange of media and immediate response which subsequently intensify the social pressures involved with Web 2.0 interaction. While Snapchat allows for highly personalised communication, it also presents new and significant dangers which are amplified by the community’s apparent willingness to post unfiltered and oftentimes highly private media. Certain norms exist to encourage users to respect one another’s privacy i.e. the discouragement of screenshotting and distributing said screenshots without permission, these norms are crucial as at this point in time little is done by law enforcement to protect the privacy of users globally. Finally, as we become further inclined to recklessly overshare and further distanced from traditional norms of privacy it has never been more paramount for the Web 2.0 community to become conscious of the potential consequences of the very behaviours which Snapchat breeds and thrives off.

 

WORKS CITED

 

Colao, J.J. “Snapchat: The Biggest No-Revenue Mobile App Since Instagram.” Forbes. 27 Nov. 2012. Web. 24 September 2017.

 

Guðmundsdóttir, Andrea. Sexting, Snapchat & Social Norms:

Because everybody is doing it? MA thesis. Erasmus University Rotterdam, 2015. Web. 26 September 2017.

 

Klausner, Alexandra. “Nude Snapchat blamed for teen’s suicide.” New York Post. NYP Holdings, Inc., Jun. 2016. Web. 28 September 2017.

 

Leitch, Alex. “Exclusive Space.” Social Media and Your Brain: Web-Based Communication is Changing How We Think and Express Ourselves. California: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2017. 91-92. Google Books. Web. 27 September 2017.

 

Loftus, Valerie. “9 Dodgy Snapchats That Everyone Sends, But Probably Shouldn’t.” The Daily Edge. Journal Media Ltd, Aug. 2015. Web. 25 September 2017.

 

Marwick, Alice E. Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age. Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2013. Jstor. Web. 24 September 2017.

 

Marwick, Alice E. “The Public Domain: Social Surveillance in Everyday Life.” Surveillance and Society 9.4 (2012): 378-393. ProQuest. Web. 28 September 2017.

 

Villi, Mikko. “Visual Chitchat: The Use of Camera Phones in Visual Interpersonal Communication.” Interactions: Studies in Communication and Culture 3.1. (2012): 39-54. University of Helsinki Research Portal. Web. 26 September 2017.

 

Webb, Jen, Tony Schirato and Geoff Danaher. “Cultural field and the Habitus.” Understanding Bourdieu. (2002): 21-44. SAGE Knowledge. Web. 25 September 2017.

 

Image Credit

 

Annotated Snapchat screens both from: “How to Start Posting Snaps on Snapchat app for Iphone” http://www.iphonehacks.com/2016/12/how-to-start-posting-snaps-snapchat-iphone.html

 

Toilet Selfie from: “9 Dodgy Snapchats that everybody sends, but probably shouldn’t” http://www.dailyedge.ie/snapchats-everyones-guilty-of-sending-2256049-Aug2015/

 

‘Seen’ meme from: Life Looks Better in Black blog https://lifelooksbetterinblack.com/2014/07/

Reverse Image Search, a Farewell to Privacy

In an article published by The Wireless, Megan Whelan questioned where we, as a society, draw the line on matters of online privacy. In the absence of clearly defined boundaries, online interactions can often cross over into territories in which social media users find their privacy, even safety, compromised.

Megan’s article gave examples of boundary crossing involving the use of ‘reverse image searching’, a tool afforded by most search engines which enables users to trace the origins of image files.

Reverse image searching affords a range of possible uses, for example you may come across an image promoting a concert that piques your interests, yet it has been posted without an identifying caption, a simple reverse image search enables you to quickly establish the name, location and date of the concert.

This is cool.

Reverse image search being used for the powers of good

Now say you’re on a dating site looking for a hookup, you find a potential date, due to the privacy measures of this website details on this person are scarce and they have ceased replying to your messages, you wish to further communication with this person so you enter their profile photos into a reverse image search engine, voila, a Facebook profile pops up, you now have this persons real name, hometown and workplace.

This is not so cool.

Stalking has become normalised and privacy is no longer the norm

While such features afford innovative means of consuming information online they are also problematic in that they also afford a means of circumventing measures which exist to make the internet a safer place. As the status of privacy as a social norm evolves in our modern culture of over-sharing, so too must our consciousness of what we are sharing and with who.

Mistaken Targeted Identity

This week I was the victim of mistaken identity, manifesting as a barrage of oddly irrelevant, ‘targeted’, advertising.

The Social Media Collective blog defines this algorithmic marketing as “an effort that combined human activity and computational analysis”, yet it reads more like a blind man’s interpretation of the Mona Lisa.

Facebook targeted me with: clickbait generators Revcontent, an ANZ Air Points Visa and Conqa, a construction quality assurance firm.

I can’t help but find the targeted ad for Revcontent a little ironic. I had actually visited their website that same day in order to get to find the culprit responsible for generating the odd clickbait ads that seem to follow me across the internet. The other two seem to grasp my geographic location, but not much else.

Based on my browsing history, Facebook seems to perceive me as a business owner with capital to invest in advertising, overseas trips, and a property portfolio. I honestly can’t fathom – outside of my brief visit to the Revcontent website – where this idea came from but I must say I am flattered.

While my days of Mi Goreng noodles and crowded bus trips up to Kelburn might contrast a little from the life of a corporate hot shot, it’s nice to think of myself in such a way. Hey, maybe one day I’ll take ANZ up on their offer of an airpoints credit card. And who knows, perhaps Facebook has developed technologies to predict the future and are just trying to do me a solid by recommending the services of Conqa, you know, for all the buildings I’ll be putting up.

A little quality assurance never hurt anybody, right?

Kid Cudi: Facebook v. Twitter

Twitter and Instagram are social media platforms that are used by celebrities to connect with a global audience. Californian rapper Kid Cudi interacts with the respective architectures of these platforms to communicate with his fanbase. Ultimately, they afford Kid Cudi a means of sharing personal insights with fans and an marketplace for promoting events and merchandise.

Both platforms have mobile apps and thus afford communication between celebrities and followers to occur instantly and virtually anywhere. Instagram only allows post to be made via mobile applications whereas twitter allows posting from any point of internet access.

(instagram: @kidcudi)

Instagram’s primary mode of communication consists of sharing photo and video content with followers. Upon review of Kid Cudi’s Instagram profile it is notable that the majority of his posts are self taken images, reflecting the constraint of Instagram’s features mentioned in the last paragraph. Through this restriction, Instagram promotes impromptu and personal posting, providing fans intimate insight.

Kid Cudi’s Twitter profile paints a different picture completely. Unlike Instagram, Twitter’s main communicative feature is text based. Limited to 140 characters, users can post ‘Tweets’, text posts which appear in the Twitter ‘feeds’ of followers. Posters can also ‘retweet’, hashtag content and use the ‘@’ symbol to direct their tweets to any of Twitters 974 million profiles.

(twitter: @kidcudi)

As pictured, Twitter’s architecture affords Kid Cudi a platform to acknowledge and reciprocate support from his fanbase by retweeting and, also, an avenue to market his music to a targeted audience.

Utilising the affordances of both platforms increases Kid Cudi’s audience and diversifies his social media presence, constructing more possibilities for engagement with fans.

The #memehistory of the First Photograph

As a “digitally literate netizen” I felt it my responsibility to engage in what Nicholas John describes as “the constitutive activity of web 2.0 sharing“, so, I created and shared a ‘meme’. Uploading it to the social media platform ‘Twitter’, using the ‘#memehistory‘ meme, I was able to poke fun at modern selfie culture and, simultaneously, the inventor of the camera, Joseph Niepce (1765-1833).

The advent of technology since the early 17^th century has continually stretched the bounds of consumable and producible media. With great technological change has come immense social adaptation and in today’s world we can observe this via the small devices we carry around in our pockets to photograph ourselves (…among other things of course).

‘#memehistory‘ refers to the usage of memes to explain and satirize significant historical events and ideas.

The #memehistory format creates a lens through which digital natives can connect ideas which are familiar to them – like tweeting pictures of Kermit the Frog – to historical happenings many young people feel far disassociated from. The format achieves this by utilising a modern and highly influential mode of humour referred to as ‘Black Twitter’ jokes and transposing them onto an image linking the two ideas.

By adding a caption to this image of a man photographing himself in a mirror with a large, antiquated camera – and posting it to social media platform, ‘Twitter‘, with a hashtag –  I am commenting on how the vanity of mankind has evolved in response the technological advancements of media and juxtaposing the modern motif of the ‘selfie’ with the idea of a photograph that was captured in 1827 to humorously reference the gradual change in social norms afforded by technological revolution.

 

Carter Simpson, MDIA104

 

(Image credit: chan.tymoon.eu/)