Participatory Media Culture

The Internet is known for many cultural and popularity influence to all of us, especially when it comes to social media. In this day and age, it is the source of interactivity for human behaviours towards each other. Beside its huge impact, it also has become a major part of our lives. It is our interactivity with these weapon of mass distractions that influenced us to become more connected virtually and less connected realistically.

With the combination of multimediality, virtuality, interactivity and connectivity, I chose Instagram, YouTube and Facebook to be the strongest influences of social media that has been distracting me from work and uni assignments. With the combination of over 2 billion users of these three powerful social media apps, it has become clear that they are the most powerful weapons of mass distraction in this generation.

Instagram is a social media app that allows its users to post photos and videos of nearly anything and everything that happens in our lives. It also uses a creative marketing strategy called 'hash-tags' which allow its users to type in any words that are relevant to the content we post via using the hash sign. YouTube is a social media website and app that let its users to post videos of any content that they desire, whether for entertainment or education. Other people then can view the videos and choose whether to 'like' or 'dislike' it. They can also comment their opinions based on their theory and/or experiences. Facebook is social media website and app that has overtaken the majority of human population's lives in just a few years. It grants its users to simply post any contents (photos, videos, links) to their friends and families to share with.

With the advancement of technology, users of Facebook and Instagram can now integrate their content via each social media, so if they post a photo on their Instagram account, it may also be posted onto their Facebook profile. Generally, younger people (age 18-29) from across the globe spent nearly triple the amount of time to social networking sites compare to the older age groups. This explains that younger age groups are more connected and have more interactivity with one another in comparison to their parents and/or grandparents.

From my experience, I check my accounts (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube) daily and have become addicted to each of the contents posted by my friends. To me, I mustn't miss a day to not check at least one social media app. Participatory media culture is definitely a growing trend in this day and age and with the use of social networking sites, users can interact and connect with one another without the use of gaming.

Photo Source (1):
http://mlksolutions.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/bombs2-680x274.jpg

Photo Source (2):
http://knowledge.creatingresults.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Pew-Social-Networking-Site-Use-by-Age-Feb2013.MarketingCharts.png

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