Celebrity or cheap publicity?

As a usage of technology is becoming more and more prominent, it has anchored itself deeply in modern society. Social media has change our life routine more efficient and convenience especially among celebrity. Marshall defines a celebrity as "a particularly powerful and persuasive trope for contemporary culture" (2013) and celebrity has embracing the use if technology and social media in to life in natural way. In recent years, the world has changed and has become more globally with the invention of media with the globalization of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and now Instagram are the stepping stone for celebrities. There are also some of the celebrities who are looking for cheap publicity to raise their name. hmm?  To be frank, celebrities that became popular because of the media should feel lucky because the media has certainly placed them into the arena of art. To become a famous celerity seems not difficult at this time, but to become a talented celebrity, debatable. But the question then is, how they can become famous by using only social media? As an examples of artists who have become rich because of social media, who else if not Justin Bierber. 15 years ago, who knows he will be a popular celebrity in the world? Bierber is a normal boy who ride bikes without any paparazzi broke into his yard. At least Bierber showed his talent to make his popularity. (just want to make it clear, I am not his fan this is just a thought) rather than a singer (which her voice was not that good anyway) made a video swinging on the solid ball while naked and get criticism all over the world! 

On the other hand,celebrities who were popular before this could also sell their name and talent using social media so that they can protect themselves closer to the fans so that they are not be forgotten. Marshall indicated that this is called as "specular economy" (2010) in the celebrity culture. 

References:

Marshall, P. David, 2013. Persona Studies:Mapping the Proliferation of the public self. Sage Publications,  pp 2-18.

Marshall, P. David, 2010. The Specular Economy. Springer Science Business Media, , pp 498-502.

Gaming World....

In this week topic, to be honest i did not know what aspect to discuss because I am not a big fan of games especially online gaming. This is because, my personal opinion towards people who have been addicted to gamers is very typical and negative for example, to me online games can make people lazy and waste heir time if they do not put any rules on it. Moreover, there are some negative aspect in relation to online games such as violence and sexism.

As an example of the most widespread online games, Counter Strike which involves heavy violence such as weapons, murders and war.  It may not give any effect to adults because they are able to think with matured mind, but not to children and even adolescents. They may get influenced by what they see, especially when they spend hours  in front of their computer and television in a day. Undoubtedly, the element of sexism is also something that can influence the gamer. For example, female character wear clothes which expose, a slave to men character and many more. People need to be more sensitive in this particular issue because it will give a big impact to people in a long run. (Raessens 2005, p. 376) explains that 'representations are thus not only reflections of society they also play an active role in shaping it'.

Raessens, J. 2005, ‘Computer games as participatory media culture’, Handbook of Computer Game Studies, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp. 373-388.

Higher Educational Blogging rock!

Downes (2004) says that blogging is ‘the most beautiful tool of the world and it allows us the most magic thing’. Blogging has become popular over the years , because it is considered something that  of up-to -date among users. To be honest, when the first time I knew that this unit requires me to write a blog post for a few weeks, I was quite surprised and not sure whether i can manage to write things that based on my experiences and daily life support by scholarly resources. Generally speaking, as an international student I found that blogging helps myself to express my thoughts and opinions directly to the reader. The reason why i stated that is because usually in class, i would rather sit back and relax with no face expression every time during group discussion. With blogging, i took it as a platform for me to write my opinions, thoughts and idea and based on (Robertson 2011, p.1631) higher educational blogging 'can be a medium for reflective writing’.

Robertson (2011) indicates that  the educational affordances of blogs offer opportunities for students to become self-directed learners in a supportive social environment. With this anyone can learn directly, for example off campus student consider as a way of learning to always stay alert to what is happening inside the campus. Besides that, distance learning can also be embedded right in this topic . Therefore it is not impossible for student who are living in Australia and studying at any university in United State of America. There are also advantages and disadvantage for blogging in high education because people need to stay alert and stick on their computers or gadgets at all time seems like theres no life out there. In addition, it require high commitment and good time management in this case so that we are not left behind especially for off campus students.

Downes, S 2004, 'Educational blogging', Educause review, vol. 39, pp. 14-27.

Robertson, J. 2011 ‘The educational affordances of blog for self-directed learning’, Computers and Education, vol. 57, pp. 1628 – 1644

Blogsphere in the public..

In line with developed countries with the rise of technology, we should be poses a question of reliability and we should not believe everything posted on the internet . According to Brandi Bell, an online blog acts as a space 'in which public and private overlap (Bell, B 2007). We should have to know how to evaluate something we see or hear on so that we did not get influence to the wrong party. Technology or in a more specific sense is the internet, is seen as a platform where as an individual they have rights to share what they wanted too. But as a human who are living in this modern era,  we have to be intelligent to filter all sorts of information that have been display on the internet be on so that we do not believe on the wrong side. Brandi Bell went on to explain that blogging is not easily defined as their ability to adapt, change and evolve to adapt to their audience with their needs (Bell, B 2007). For example, whether the qualified bloggers to write heavy issues such as the government, the economy is right personality got him just high school students. Unless you are fond of reading fashion blogs written by a student of fashion. This is because the nature of the blog is open to the public and blog sphere not be considered complete public areas because we are living in a country that have laws stricter monitoring. There are also blogs that has received money from organizations that sell products to target the audiences. Therefore, it is recommended for an individual to 

consider buying product or service through a blogs or what ever you call it. 

Bell, B 2007, ‘Private writing in public spaces: girls’ blogs and shifting boundaries’, Growing up online: young people and digital technologies 2007, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, N.Y, pp. 95-105