Food committed porn?

Accordance to the advancement of technologies, IT industry is now facing intense competition in producing mobile devices, especially in aspects of the features and specifications such as processor and camera, as mobile users nowadays are being more and more demanding. As these advancements have been created, it is most likely to lead to a new peak of trend – taking photos of food and keep it updated on SNS.

It seems common in these days to see the photo of food being flooded in social network sites (SNS). This phenomenon has now being termed as ‘food pornography’. This term has been added to tagdef  on May 10, 2012; a website which to help in discovering the meaning of hash tags, it is referring to the food that is so great; it makes you feel guilty, like when you watch porn; whereas Your Dictionary defined it as enticing food imagery. There is even a page, set for the intention of food sharing, and recipes, named Food Porn Daily.

(Figure 1 – screenshot detail on Food Porn Daily, adapted from foodporndaily.com)

Okay, now I have to admit this. Some of the time, it is really thanks to those food pornographers who shared food porn and sometimes checked in location for those foods. Due to these, we are able to find nice food which is strongly recommended by the local to fulfill our taste buds. This is somehow similar to the intention of pornographers share those photos. I believe their share is aimed to introduce delicious food to more crowd of people. While, some, with bad intentions, are to ‘seduce’ their friends

 (Figure 2 – Screenshot of hash tag of food porn on Instagram)

However, on the other perspectives, some may not that addicted to food porn thus take this as a spam. Personally, I am not the type of person who is not really addicted to food. Whenever I see my friends posted food porn on SNS, my responses are – glance through, scroll through, ignore it; it hardly makes me stop and view through the photos in detail.

(Figure 3 – Even food porn also owns a Twitter account, source from: twitter.com)

Towards the end of the day, food porn eventually does not help for the sharing purposes especially when the café or restaurant has just opened, where everyone is so addicted to it; or when a person is in ‘hanger’ – a term use to describe a person who is in anger due to hunger, source from Facebook.

(Figure 4 – Hanger: definition, source adapted from Google+, https://plus.google.com/+Curiositydotcom/posts)

References

Definition of #foodporn. (May 10, 2012). Retrieved from https://tagdef.com/analytics/foodporn

Foodporn. (n.d.). Retrieved May 4th, 2015, from http://www.yourdictionary.com/foodporn

Vent Dissatisfaction and Negative Emotions: Social Media

Social network is a dedicated website which allows users to communicate with people by posting statuses, images, comments and information (Pempek et al., 2009). The examples of social networking sites are Facebook, MySpace, Instagram and YouTube as well as micro-blogging sites which include Twitter, Flickr and blogs. Social networks allow hundreds of different people to communicate together in a central location. Nowadays, people spend a major part of their daily life to interact with others through social networks.

Social networks provided benefits for network users to create social relationships, form identity, entertain and also use it for academic purposes. Besides that, people use social network as a platform to share content and their daily routine as well as to vent their dissatisfaction and negative emotions (Clark, 2013). Social network serves as a complaint channel for network users to complain about their personal issues, family problems, friendship problems, dating life issues, financial problems and education problems. I noticed that people tend to update their status on social networking channels to express their emotion in a negative way. For example, people will update their status when they feel sad, unhappy, disappointed and angry. 

Bicycle lost… Get solutions from Facebook’s user

Struggle with hunger…

Feeling emotional when failed to complete the task on that day.

One of the most famous social networking sites, Facebook provides a platform for Facebook user to express their feelings and what is going on with their lives through status update. Hence, other Facebook users can use the Facebook feature button such as “like” or “thumbs up” and comment spaces to give responses.

Farnadi et al. (2014) found that female social network users are more emotional in their status post than male users. In other words, female users are more likely to express more emotions when they update their status compare to male users. According to Jalonen (2014), women are more likely to use negative words to attract other people attention to their dissatisfaction in order to get the solutions. Besides that, when people disclose about their negative experiences through social media, this can actually prevent other people from suffering a similar incident or similar negative experience (Jalonen, 2014). 

So, what is your way to vent your dissatisfaction or release your emotions? Do you prefer to vent dissatisfaction on social network or tell your family and close friends about your problem? Why?

References

Clark, J. (2013). Conceptualising social media as complaint channel. Journal of Promotional Communications, 1(1), 104-124.

Farnadi, G., Sitaranab, G., Rohani, M., Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D., Moens, M., Davalos, S., & De Cock, M. (2014). How are you doing? Emotions and personality in Facebook. Proc. of Empire, 25-56.

Jalonen, H. (2014, April). Social Media: An arena for venting negative emotions. International Conference on Communication, Media, Technology and Design. (pp. 224-230). Turku: Finland.

Pempek, T. A., Yermolayeva, Y. A., & Calvert. S. L. (2009). College students’ social networking experiences on Facebook. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(3), 227-238.

Blog : Cikepal vs Womens Health

Hello..

Hari ini saya ingin berkongsi kepada anda semua mengenai dua blog yang saya sering kunjungi di laman internet ini iaitu cikepal.blogspot dan womens health blog.

Pada mulanya saya tidak berminat untuk membaca blog-blog ini, tetapi kawan saya banyak berkongi mengenai blogger-blogger yang terkenal dan banyak menyentuh mengenai soal kecantikan dan kesihatan, makanan, tempat-tempat pelancongan, pelajaran dan juga politik. Tetapi saya kurang berminat untuk mengunjungi blog yang banyak menyentuh isu-isu berkaitan politik dan hanya tertumpu pada blog kesihatan dan pembuatan kek.

Saya gemar membuat pelbagai jenis kek sehinggalah mencari pelbagai resepi di laman internet dan akhirnya terjumpa sebuah blog yang banyak berkongsikan mengenai resepi membuat kek yang sedap. Blog tersebut adalah blog cik epal. Saya amat berminat untuk membaca blog cik epal ini kerana beliau banyak berkongsiakan pelbagai resepi untuk  membuat kek dan makanan lain. Selain berkongsi mengenai respi makanan, cik epal juga banyak berkongsi mengenai produk-produk kecantikan, kesihatan dan banyak lagi.

blog cik epal

Selain itu, blog kedua yang saya kunjungi adalah blog yang banyak memberi tips kecantikan dan kesihatan kepada orang ramai terutamanya kaum wanita. Blog ini adalah womens health blog  yang banyak berkongsikan mengenai kesihatan, kehidupan seharian, tips-tips kecantikan dan banyak lagi. Blog ini sesuai dikunjungi oleh semua lapisan masyarakat terutama kaum wanita yang banyak menjaga mengenai kesihatan dan kecantikan. Selain itu, trend pemakaian terkini sering dikemaskini dalam blog ini. Saya sendiri suka mengunjungi blog ini kerana banyak manfaat yang saya perolehi berkenaan cara pemakanan yang betul ketika sedang dalam diet.

womens health blog

Women's Right News Page

The site that our group chose to discuss is a Facebook site which is Women’s Right News page. This site was founded in 2009 and it successfully attracted the attention of many Facebook users. It hits 982k of people to like this page from all over the world. A total of  3521 Facebook users has liked this page this week which is from 29/4/2015 to 2/5/2015. This site talks about women movement, gender equality and human rights as well. Information is spread by using photos, videos, news, posts and sharing throughout the page.

Who these site primarily address? 

The target audience of this site is women from all over the world as it talks about women’s issue and gender equality. However, other than the primary audience, this site also targets and includes everyone to understand more on global gender equality and feminism. It also talks and addresses issues such as rape culture, domestic abuse, human right issues, sheroes and so on. Other than the Facebook page, Women’s Rights News has a official website in which the contents are more informative than those in the Facebook page. There are more complete news on women, more photos and more videos to be read and watched. The URL for this website is http://viralwomen.com/.

This is how the official website of Women's Right News looks like.

However, the response in the official website is not as big as in the Facebook Page where the audience did not comment much on the official website but the Facebook page. This phenomenon occurs because netizens nowadays are more active in social media such as Facebook than other websites. According to Pew Research Centre (2014), Internet users who age between 18 – 29 are the most active users in social networking sites followed by adult who age between 30 – 49. Young generations view Facebook as one of the information sources to them. This leads them to put less attention on other websites.

% of Internet users within each group who use social networking sites by Pew Research Center

Who is allowed to participant and how? 

The site is opened to everyone and they can comment, discuss, talk about their feelings and share Women’s News Right posts to their own  Facebook account’s timelines. Open discussion and giving opinions are allowed. According to Women’s Right News, they offer a stage where the readers can listen and practice tolerance, offer advice and express their thoughts and feelings. The site also mentioned that the readers are equal and equally important. They provide support and will listen to everyone. Facebook can link to their official website where more news on women right can be found. However, although everyone is able to comment and view the news on Facebook, some Facebook users commented and complained that they could not read the whole news through Facebook unless they access to the official website. Debate and discussion were done through Facebook. The netizens did not choose to comment on the official website but the Facebook Page.  Hence, through their responses, we realize that the official website is not as popular as the Facebook Page.

It is obvious that there is not much comment on the official website.

    There are more shares, more "likes" and comments on Facebook compare to the official website.

   How do these sites deal with dissent and disagreement both from users and guests?

    This site deals with dissent and disagreement by having open discussion and allow everyone to speak. The admin of the page never mention who is wrong or right but remain neutral. Because they are concern about human right as well, they allow everyone to speak and have debate. They believe in equality too. Moreover, they never delete comment although some users did complain them or use some rude words to fight against them. What Women’s Right News continue to do is believe in what they believe and fight for women’s right although there are disagreement, oppositions and a lot of anti-feminism websites and Facebook pages these days. There are no wrong and right between these pages and everyone has the choices to choose what they believe in.

     

     Reference:

    Pew Research Center (2014). Social networking fact sheet.     Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-  sheets/socialnetworking-fact-sheet/

Will citizen Journalism replace professional journalism?

The emergence of social networks shows that new sources of information are available on the internet. People can access internet to create blogs, websites and profiles to discuss and update anything about the world. For example, social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging are tools that can publish articles or news. These social networking sites are the platforms to express opinions and thought of the citizen journalists to public. The advancement of technology has allowed anyone with a camera mobile phone and a laptop to be a citizen journalist.

As all of us know that everyone can access to internet to get the information and news immediately by scrolling their smartphone, switching on their laptop or checking their mobile devices rather than watching the television, listening to radio and reading newspaper.

What is Citizen Journalist

According to Goode (2009), citizen journalism is related to the internet. Internet is used by citizens not only to receive information but also is a way to transmit information (Mecano, 2015). According to Mecano (2015), citizen journalists are non-professional who collect, write, edit and distribute the information to public. Citizen journalist is when ordinary people do basically what professional reporters do – report information which is in the forms of text, video, pictures and audio (What Is Citizen Journalism,2015). The information that published by citizen journalism can be found on their blogs. However, citizen journalism does not always stay in online. We can find the news that written by citizen journalism in the print media which provides some columns for citizen journalism which is called soapbox features (Goode, 2009).

Who is the professional journalism?

Professional journalists are being employed in a press company and being trained as a journalist (CitizenJournalism, 2012). Journalists are considered as a job with its rules and ethics. Professional journalists have the knowledge and they are trained in writing news in the right format. For example journalists will write the news based on inverted pyramid structure which is the most important information on top of story and the least important at the bottom (The Newswriting Format, 2015). Besides that, one-sentence lead of no more than 40 to 45 words that summarizes the most newsworthy and important aspect of the story (The Newswriting Format, 2015).

People should be wary of citizen journalism

A citizen journalist can actually captures news worthy events as it is happening and shares it with the rest of the world. The scope of the citizen journalist is not limited to breaking news events. However, citizen journalist is also someone who can simply comments, reposts or tags pictures on particular websites. Hence, sometimes citizen journalist reports inaccurate information (What Is Citizen Journalism, 2015). 

Citizen journalists have no formal training in reporting and writing the news such as editing news in an inverted pyramid like what professional journalists do. This may cause the credibility of news difficult to verify and lack of objectivity. For example, rumors about the deaths of famous celebrities are often made until spreading false information via online can cause negative impact to ownself and themselves. Citizen reporters do not have any ethics of being a professional reporter. For example, what exactly do a reporter define a news? What kind of news is considered important and has the new value? Besides that, citizen journalists are not trained on the libel law. They do not have the knowledge about what they can or cannot say in a news story. Citizen journalists tend to be bias. Everything about what he or she thinks will straight away publish on internet.

According to Stverak (2010), thousands of traditional journalists had been fired and the readers, viewer and listeners had fled. As all of us know that, today is the age of technologies, traditional or professional journalism should follow up the trend and culture of sharing in internet. If not, more long times, professional journalists will be replaced by citizen journalists one day.

What do you think about citizen journalism? Do you think it is less valuable than professional journalism? What information sources do you trust most?

References

Citizen journalism. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.freebase.com/m/02hpjd.

Goode, L. (2009). Social news, citizen journalism and democracy. New Media and Society, 11(8), 1287-1305.

Mecano, T. (2015). Citizen journalism. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/8478508/Citizen_Journalism.

Stverak. (2010). The pros and pros of citizen journalism. Retrieved from http://franklincenterhq.org/1352/the-pros-and-pros-of-citizen-journalism/.

The newswriting format. (2015). Retrieved from http://journalism.about.com/od/citizenjournalism/a/whatiscitizen.htm.

What is citizen journalism. (2015). Retrieved from http://journalism.about.com/od/citizenjournalism/a/whatiscitizen.htm.

Are you a tech addict?

Results of a simple survey for technology addiction

A total of 117 respondents responded towards our survey form that were distributed in order to know how addicted users are towards technology. Most of them were females, with the age range of 18-25 years old. 84.4% of them find themselves clung to the internet, realizing that the amount of time spent on digital devices and internet had been increasing. Most of them have at least two digital devices in hand. People rate themselves average from the scale 1-5 anticipating to go online, feeling uncomfortable for leaving out their devices or unable to connect to the internet (Wieland, 2005). In 2005, 9-15 million people in United States used the internet every day. Every three months the rate of use increases by 25%.  

"As of March 2014, there were 176 million addicts, up from 79 million in the same period last year. Females accounted for 52 percent of addicts, while the rest were males. It comes as no surprise that teens and college students are part of this group as their youth has coincided with the mobile revolution" (Harjani, 2014).

It is obvious that the generation now is getting attached to digital devices, and this lead them to include the need of Wi-Fi into their hierarchy of needs. However, technology helps in many ways. As for university students living far away from home, technology is the only hope to keep in touch, to carry on research, to complete assignments and for entertainment purposes. People evolve with time, slowly changing to cope with the pace of the society. We improve with technology. Technology yes indeed has its pros and cons. Cons is the addiction towards technology can be dangerous just like phubbing when you no longer see people's face because all they are facing is their mobile phone. No matter how much addicted you are, no doubt that technology bring us together. Be in control with what you use and who you are.  

References

Harjani, A. (2014). Mobile addiction growing at alarming rate. Retrieved from http://www.cnbc.com/id/101608691

Wieland, D. M. (2005), Computer Addiction: Implications for Nursing Psychotherapy Practice. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 41: 153–161. doi: 10.1111/j.1744-6163.2005.00038.x

Lets Speak Internet, No Longer English.

As in the title, this blog is going to discuss about internet language used nowadays,

but before we do so, let's talk about some evolution of mobile devices.

Watch This To Have Some Idea

The Evolution Of Mobile Phones

The first mobile phone that was introduced to the public back in 1983 by Motorola Company which used analog technology that was much less reliable than the digital technology we used today. They were very large in size and were very inconvenient. However, after a more than 30 years evolution process, the mobile phone today which had took over the whole society are completely different. The purpose of a mobile device, from simply calling and connected with people, has been extended to much more function including messages, social life, educational purpose and entertainments.

The average time consumption on mobile device for an adult is around 3 hours a day, according to a survey done by BI Intelligence on Flurry data.

The Average Time Spend On Mobile Devices

As the mobile device nowadays became more and more convenient: small in size, easy to carry, sensitive touch screen, finger friendly, people tend to send text messages rather than make calls.

According to a record from the famous mobile apps "WhatsApp", this app now has more than 430 million monthly users and sees more than 50 billion messages cross its servers each day. Under this circumstances, a new language, or so call "Internet Slang" is born.

Rather than using proper English, people on the internet, mostly the teenagers, prefer to use internet slang. What is an Internet slang? It refers to a variety of slang languages used by different people on Internet. It is difficult to provide a standardized definition of Internet Slang due to the constant changes made to its nature.

Watch this " How to Speak Internet "

Why is this internet slang being used? It is because using abbreviations and acronyms to communicate and chat with others helps those who are familiar and good with technology to chat faster while saving times. Due to the constant feed of media, news, and technology to keep up with daily, those who are familiar with internet slang are capable of easily multitasking without taking too much time to send a formal letter, email, message, or chat reply.

These are some of the example of Internet Slang:

1. OOTD  : Outfit Of The Day
2. POTD   : Picture Of The Day
3. WOLO  : We Only Live Once
4. YOLO   : You Only Live Once
5. OOH     : Out Of Here
6. GEEZ   : Jesus
7. AIUI     : As I Understand It
8. HCIT    : How Cool Is That
9. NBTW  : Now Back To Work
10. IMMD   : It Made My Day
11. 4EVA    : Forever
12. ONNA   : Oh No, Not Again
13. YUM     : Said when something tastes good or is attractive
14. WUWU : What's Up With You?
15. <4          : More than love (<3)
16. BBAM  : Be Back After Meal
17. WAY     : Where Are You?
18. HDYDT : How Do You Do That?
19. IDK        : I Don't Know
20. OMGD   : Oh My God Dude

Why is it important to understand internet slang today? If you are a parent or even your working environment is technology related industry, understanding internet slang is essential to keep up with modern times in society and methods of communication. Understanding more about internet slang is a way to know whether or not your child may be receiving threats or even using inappropriate languages themselves. As a university student, a certain level of internet slang usage is unavoidable, but still we need to manage our grammar and only using it for informal purposes.

Learning Internet Slang is like a self-advancing process, technology evolution is a one direction flow, you can't against the flow, but only keep it up whatever you can.

References:

Gantt, C. (2014, January 20). WhatsApp sees 50 billion messages per day, more than all SMS combined. Retrieved from TweakTown.com: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/34968/whatsapp-sees-50-billion-messages-per-day-more-than-all-sms-combined/index.html

InternetSlang.com. (n.d.). Trending Web Abbreviations. Retrieved from InternetSlang.com: http://www.internetslang.com/trending.asp

Khalaf, S. (2014, November 18). Flurry from Yahoo. Retrieved from Mobile to Television: We interrupt this broadcast (Again): http://www.flurry.com/blog/flurry-insights/mobile-television-we-interrupt-broadcast-again#.VR0hltKUfcT

NoBullying.com. (2014, September 27). Understand Internet Slang Today. Retrieved from NoBullying.com: http://nobullying.com/internet-slang/