Online Shiz (I can't think of a creative title)

Good morning blog! Today I'm going to discuss about the hazards of utilizing the world wide web, internet, social media, and social networking sites. However you call the crap!

But wait, why don't we start on differentiating/defining these terms?

So I googled over these and here are the definitions I found.

According to Beal (2010) in her webopedia.com article, the internet is the massive collection of interconnected networks that connects millions of computers around the world while the world wide web or the web is more of a tool or a search engine which utilizes scripts such as HTTP (Beal, 2010). The web uses browsers like mozilla firefox and google chrome to access web documents (Beal, 2010).

So in simple terms, the internet is the network (of computers) and the web is the tool, the way, or the instrument to access different information.

The same goes with the definition of social media and social networking (sites) except that both are tools. Social media is macrolevel and it reaches a wide range of audience while social networking is personal (microlevel), two-way and engages small group of persons and individuals (Hartshorn, 2010). Hartshorn (2010) further defined social media as similar to the channel which broadcasts messages (it's like newspaper, radio, and TV) while social networking centers to conversations, where people with similar backgrounds form relationships (Hartshorn, 2010).

So it's like this. In social media, you are talking to a large audience and it's difficult to respond to them one by one while in social networking, you are talking to another person or a small group of persons that's why conversation is easy.

So why am I talking about all these bullshit?

Well last Friday, we conducted this interview with Gang Badoy of Rock Ed Philippines. Rock Ed is an organization which does volunteer works and also does educational discussions while rocking (playing music) at the same time, thus the name Rock Ed.

We were tasked to interview her (actually not to interview her but to gather data about our topic) for our Comm Res 197 class (Special Topics in Communication Research: ICTs, Civic Engagement, and Social Mobilization). By the way, I took this subject because I have a crush on our professor here (kilig laugh).

So we went to this restaurant in Kalayaan Avenue in Quezon City and met Miss Leslie of Rock Ed and conducted an interview with her while waiting for Miss Gang Badoy. A little bit later, Gang arrived. An awarding ceremony for the last year's winners of the Colgate Fresh Confidence Fresh U contest was happening when we arrived there. Finally, we were able to talk to Gang Badoy.

I learned a lot from our interview with her I'll just share the highlights.

I learned that social media and social networking (sites) are public spaces. We should be wary of what we click, what we post, and what we publish here. Social media, social networking sites, blogs among others are not like diaries that you can keep or hide in some secret place and let others read when you die. Online accounts are public and what you post here does not assure you privacy.

So when we post all that we feel like posting, we better think twice before doing so. We may harm other people or harm ourselves by a simple post. I'm not advocating the "Think before you Click" campaign of GMA News TV. I'd like to quote what my Pol Sci 14 professor would write in our test papers: "answer hapzardly on your own peril". In my case "post haphazardly on your own peril".

Moving on, she also shared that if we become famous and the time comes that we are faced with an issue or a controversy, the best thing to do is to remain silent and don't spill a thing. Eventually the issue will slacken and will fade, people will forget about it. Gossip, if it keeps on recurring becomes true and credible.

Talking about credibility, as much as possible we should use our real name (or "close-to-our-real-name" name) in our online accounts for validity purposes. This is one problem Badoy faced during the Ondoy relief operations.

I want to end it here. I'll write again next time. It 4:30. I haven't had a good sleep, I only slept a few hours after (or before?) I ate dinner yesterday. Woah! This blog post is so cool it has a reference list! Very cool.


Reference:
Badoy. G. (2011, September 16). Personal interview.

Beal, V. (2010, June 24). The Difference between the Internet and World Wide Web. Retrieved from http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2002/Web_vs_Internet.asp

Harsthorn, S. (2010, May 4). 5 Differences Between Social Media and Social Networking. Retrieved from http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/194754