Social Capital

Social capital is the term which explains the wealth we get from other people we communicate with and also that social capital gives us the connections we need. We get these connections through many social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and many others.
Within social capital you have strong and weak ties. Strong ties are the people you have on your network that are family, friends people you consider to be close to you people you can use for emotional support.
So weak ties are quite the complete opposite, people you don’t know very well or in some cases someone you don’t know at all which is the case when many people go through their friends on facebook. We tend to use the weak ties for resources for example we can find out about upcoming events due to one of these weak ties having the interests or hobbies as you. When going through my friends on facebook I tend to have mostly strong ties however I have to admit theirs probably 4-5 people I don’t have a clue who they are but just press confirm when they add me which is quite strange when I think about it because I would not go up to a random person in the street and start talking to them, but you feel more secure and safe whilst doing it on a social network because in some way that’s the whole point. Through weak ties we can get important information that would have been hard to get in the past.
Also within social capital we have bridging and bonding. Lets start of with bridging it refers to how you are linked to certain people through other people for example when I have had a friend request then look at mutual friends this relates to bridging that’s how some bonds are made through others. Also we get event links through other people in our network. Bonding is the people I have in my network that are the people close to me, people I would see in real life and would have no worries having a conversation with.
Maintained social capitals
Many people use or have used facebook and other social networks to connect with old friends or just to connect with people from the past for example a photo which you have been tagged in allows you to catch up with friends from past things that are so much harder to do with out the use of social networks.
I think the we gain so much from social capital and to some extent changes life’s with regards to finding people you have lost for some reason or another but you don’t just get information out of social networks you also put it in which makes you feel like you are helping someone. Robert Putman suggested that the better networks we are as a community the better it is for everybody. Overall I feel we gain a lot from social capital.

Participatory Culture.

Participatory culture is the idea of how you can have an active engagement into a particular culture of your choice. These cultures, in particular online gaming have low barriers of entry and allow anyone access as long as you have the correct software and hardware. The whole online gaming concept leads to participatory culture. Within online gaming there are many options of interaction for example forums. These lead back to the idea of participatory culture because when you comment on a particular topic or ask a question, you are participating in this online culture and you become a member of this online community.

However participatory culture has not only come into existence since the internet has come about in the past their used to be fanzines, I’ve never heard of these because I’m too young. Fanzines are a blend of fan and magazine are non-professional pieces of work, which allows people fans to take part in the particular culture.

Other ideas relating participatory culture is that of the idea of mentorship were you get something from the thing you are participating in. Also you get a sense of feeling apart of a community when you give out information that someone finds useful.

Participatory culture relates to the 5^th trait explained by Henry Jenkins in his New Media Landscape work. The 5^th trait was networked he explains that “media technologies are interconnected so that messages flow easily from one place to another and from one person to another.” This trait allows people of today to take part in participatory culture it is a major aspect into how online gaming works and can be used due to the millions of people participating in numerous things their has to be a large network.

So what culture do I participate in? Well I used to take part in online gaming via my PS3 only playing FIFA 11 but I say used to because my Playstation is currently broke so I don’t take part in any online gaming and to be honest its not good you feel like you are missing out because of all the new updates accessible via the gaming network. It was only last week that I posted my first ever video on Youtube but that was due to it being my campaign video. I know I wouldn’t do this out of choice, as it’s not my thing. I

Participate in the sense that I do view videos that I am a fan of or interested in but I have never left a comment on a video but sometimes read the comments of others, which I know everybody does even though some people wont admit it.

psychogeography Project.

View My drive Around Leicester in a larger map

Psychogeography refers to the way we connections we make between geographic and the human mind (the psychic). For my project i came up with a very basic idea to be honest, this wasn't the most enjoyable thing i have ever done. I decided to map out a route from my house to my cousins house via car. I didn't realise how much of a journey it actually was until i did this mapping thing.

Public Sphere.

So what is the public sphere? The media play a major role in public discourse. An idea of this would be the BBC politics programme Question Time. This programme allows politicians to inform the public but also allows the audience to question them back.

McNair came up with 5 points in relation to the media and Public Sphere.
1) Inform about events truthful and unbiased reporting of events
2) Educate public about facts in a impartial way.
3) Provide space platform of discourse were people can argue disagree – question time, phone in radio.
4) Give publicity to politics – make visible what they do good or bad exposures. (this point can be clearly seen in the exposure of the MP’s expenses.)
5) News make it clear they are coming from a political stance (Myth The Sun did it) when the sun decide to back a certain political party the win. Were as someone like the BBC have to be unbiased and cover everyone.

But with all these points criticisms have been found within them. Not all news is actually unbiased how can it actually be when someone such as Rupert Murdoch owns so much news that is distributed throughout the United Kingdom. With him owning so much news it is inevitable that his news will be biased and follow which party he chooses to follow.
Also that the press can manipulate things to get what they want and also that the news is so fluffy and biased we don’t actually find out all the facts we want to.

The above video Adam Boulton the political editor of SKY news interviewing politician Alastair Campbell. So of course this should be an impartial interview and the interviewer should be unbiased and not show in any way who he votes for. But this on the other hand is the complete opposite and also funny at the same time. But of course Adam Boulton has the same political views as Rupert Murdoch who is the owner of BSKYB. It is clear to see that Adam Boulton makes his views very clear on which political party he favours.

Now people are not only relying on what they get from the press people are starting to use facebook, twitter as platforms for democracy and using these to get information across. For example when something occurs in another country we can quickly find out what it is due to what people post on these social network sites and other sharing sites. In the past we would have to wait for the next day or wait for the news to come on.
Now to finish this off with the wise words of Barack Obama "freedom to access and publish information is a basic human right". Which is so true in this day and age and how easy it is now to publish information whether it be on facebook or youtube or whether you work for a News company.