User talk:MissusBrightside

Hey cyber universe.

I'm here for a class project, working on my university degree. Heroically trekking into the unknown from this keyboard.

Fear not. I come in peace. Happy voyaging.

MissusBrightside (talk) 13:39, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Class Project: Wiki Exercise #1:
My Digital Self

There has always been a difference between the way a person chooses to portray themselves to outsiders, given the opportunity, and who they are. What's changed is our medium; our communication channels. The space between the versions of ourselves now exists in the difference between a digital world and a physical one; between followers and friends.

In my case, the gap is substantial. My instagram is littered with photos from the few trips I've been able to take in this year abroad of mine. I look like a world-traveling healthy-eating slightly better version of, well, me. And I am far from alone in that bit of false advertising for one simple reason: when we are able to choose what the world sees so specifically, we only show the best-looking snippets of our selves. While the societal trend of promoting an ideal version of one's self is nothing new, the extent to which this digital age has allowed it to grow is unprecedented.

Some questions have necessarily emerged. Is it right? Which version of myself is the most real? How many of the accounts I follow are just a facade of their owners? Is it even them? Is it even me? Jaron Lanier argues against the movement in his manifesto, "You Are Not A Gadget." Lanier states simply, "a fragment is not a person." In the effort to define our online presence, it becomes necessary to define what it means to be a person.

A person is the combination of it all: the good, the bad, and the unphotogenic. Until we make the decision to bridge the gap, to project every piece of ourselves to the rest of the digital community, our online selves will never be more than fragments.

Class Project: Wiki Exercise #3:
Burbules, N. (2001) Paradoxes of the Web: The Ethical Dimensions of Credibility. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In this publication, Burbules reviews the issues surrounding the credibility of online materials in order to reveal the ethics behind online credibility assessments and standards. The author aims to define and analyze the dimensions of credibility in an ever-evolving network. Burbules accomplishes these aims by citing a number of recent and historical sources regarding the concept of credibility and the conditions of the world wide web. The scope of the article is almost unmanageably wide, encompassing the entirety of online materials. While the credibility analysis of the article could be useful to my research on franchise communities and original content sold in them, many aspects of the publications are a tangent from my primary focus. The publishing date and the changes in the world wide web since 2001 limit the article significantly, and it is very broad in it's core focus. Further research will need to be conducted, but the analysis of online credibility made by the author can be directly applied to my research on online franchising communities.

Class Project: Wiki Exercise #4:
Wikipedia is an extremely unique platform. Wikibooks is a beast all its own. According to the Wikibooks page, "What is Wikibooks", it is simply a collection of open-content textbooks and annotated texts. It is completely free for all with internet access. What makes the platform so unique is it's multidirectional communication channels. Readers, users, and creators are all able to communicate and contribute freely. It has been a decent channel for creating this class project, and has fostered an online community between the users. For the topic my group specifically wrote about, online communities, Wikibooks was especially fitting. It is especially easy to learn from other collaborators on the platform because it is so easy to see coding and footsteps. Because of this, contributors are constantly unknowingly helping each other. Unfortunately, the network has a few drawbacks in the specific case of this class project as well. Despite the discussion page and the credit we each receive for using it, we quickly found ourselves resorting to simpler means of communication, like facebook messenger. I think the collaborative benefits of Wikibooks were minimised. I also believe that the time and effort spent learning and navigating the platform will go largely unused for most of us when this class is over. That being said, Wikibooks is something I knew almost nothing about several months ago, and I am grateful for the knowledge that this project has given me.