Happy 2019, Let’s Make It a Good One

One of the traditions from the old site was to give an end-of-the-year review that would focus of the issues surrounding computer-mediated communication, cyberculture, or some tangent of those themes and what I thought might happen in the upcoming year regarding those concerns. I thought it would be a good time to revisit this tradition as I have a little time before going to a New Year’s Eve celebration and as a way of celebrating bring many of my old works under one banner. It seems appropriate to change this ritual a little borrowing from the wisdom of both Merlin Mann (in the spirit of “Fresh Starts & Modest Changes”) and Katie Nolan (in the spirit of revising the “Best of” shows and list).

Three lessons came from 2018 that we should learn from and apply to 2019.

1. Being careful with who we share our content and information with as we may not know what those individuals and organizations are doing with those datapoints.

Privacy and data protection was the top story in the area as Google, Facebook, and even Marriott was involved with breaches of data and exposing customers’ data to unauthorized individuals. Beyond those criminal acts, companies like Amazon, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon all have taken part in selling customer data without the consent of those customers. The European Union has taken some step to protect citizen living in those countries with their revisions to the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR that force companies to explain what steps are being taken to protect people’s private information. It’s a good start, but more can be done.

My takeaway from this lesson is trying to limit what information is either exclusively shared with one platform or minimizing online exchanges. The first point is one of the reasons I’ve been focusing more on using this site as means of interacting with online platforms. I still post on social networks (and sometimes use semantic jamming and social chafing as a means of taking back some of my privacy online). One of the significant disadvantages with this model is that the channels of communication are technically being reduced, which makes backup and protection a vital addition to the workflow.

This solution is not perfect for everybody as it requires a little more effort in producing content and a lot more technical knowledge to ensure the smooth status quo of information. It also means that I would expect more from anybody connected with me on those social media platforms. They would need to click on a link as opposed to simply reading a post or looking at some mediated content on their app. The more reasonable solution for many could be being more aware of how much time, focus, energy, and (most importantly) information is being used and shared online. This awareness goes beyond when those individuals are sharing and thinking more about their own media habits.

2.  The nature of viral content and memes means the audience should be thinking more critically about what is being presented.

2017 was a turning point in understanding how memes and viral videos can influence audiences. Slacktivism criticisms became the concerns over the weaponization of memes in the form of propaganda. Content via social media tends to easily pass from one user to another, especially if it hits all of the right mental rhetoric points between the users. Viral content tends to have the right balance between just enough logic avoid failing the sniff test, the right amount of sourcing to provide a sense of “credibility” to the content, and hitting the emotional centers of the individual to drive that person to act on the content in the form of sharing, commenting, and taking the time, focus, or energy in support of a cause. Those memes and viral content are necessarily bad until the purpose of the content is to sow discord within a national and misinform the public on a massive scale.

It seems one way to provide tools for thinking about this type of content without mindlessly passing it along to the next person. I hope my class on memetic communication can give my students the rhetorical and critical tools needed to be less defenseless against bad information and hopefully educate others about how to avoid spreading misinformation. This education will hopeful help with the last lesson from 2018.

3. We need better tools to go beyond the prevent misinformation and look for means of defusing toxic interactions online.

I wish I had a good means of preventing harm online. I hope that awareness that this issue is a program can help begin a conversation about how to engage with an online community that is dealing with multiple social and cultural issues in a way that is productive without reducing those experiences to nothing more than soundbytes, flame wars, and bad memetic content.