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E-tutorial #1: Foundational Social Media Analytics for Research

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E-tutorial #1: Foundational Social Media Analytics for Research

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image: 'Strawberry Recipes' public board

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Comparing and Contrasting both applications

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Comparing and Contrasting both applications

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Pocket and Pinterest both share the same concept: they are both apps to save various content and ideas with. Pocket focuses on showcasing articles, podcasts and videos from different publishers across the web whereas Pinterest is more centred around visual content, such as images and videos. They both allow users to create lists/boards, meaning they can save multiple content into one folder. One major difference between both sites is that you cannot search for content on Pockets. This severely hindered my experience in looking for stories that interest me to save, and the range of articles I could read. I had to constantly refresh topic pages to browse different articles, or navigate through Pockets created by other editors. Users would have to pay 4.99 USD a month to get ‘enhanced’ searching tools, such as a ‘full-text search’. Pinterest, however, has a free search bar where users can search for either pins, boards or users within the app. I am already very familiar with the affordances of Pinterest as I use it for personal use, so I found the app and website a breeze to navigate and save what I like. Pocket took a while for me to understand its navigation. Although I enjoyed some of the articles and podcasts I’ve saved on Pocket, I wish users were given much more freedom in searching content to make the experience more personalized and enjoyable..

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image: before pressing record on ScreenPal

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image description: editing captions on YouTube Editor

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Daily Streams of 'yes, and?' by Ariana Grande

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Daily Streams of 'yes, and?' by Ariana Grande

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Daily Streams of ‘yes, and?’ by Ariana Grande (11/03/24)  | Created with Datawrapper

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Create interactive, responsive & beautiful charts — no code required.

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The use of these digital technologies have given me broader insights into how to optimize my use of these applications to become a better digital citizen. Not only have I gained new skills in using some software, I have also learned new ways to use the applications I’m incredibly familiar with in regards to finding, managing, creating and storing information.

Our first task was to use the social bookmarking tools Pocket and Pinterest to collect and manage information. Pinterest is a social site I am already very familiar with, as I use it to create visual mood boards. However, I was new to using it in the context of finding and bookmarking information rather than visual images. Although the affordances of Pocket are slightly similar to Pinterest, the absence of a search feature on Pocket made my experience with finding information incredibly frustrating. Seeing through my frustration, it helped me recognize how Pocket almost doesn’t restrict the user to a certain niche of topics, restricting an ‘echo-chamber’ environment and allowing for a broader variance of content in comparison to Pinterest which recommends content based on your activity. If a user was to interact with a pin in any way on anti-vaccination, they would be recommended that content thereafter. The volume of anti-vaccination content is one pressing issue in sites like Pinterest, where 74% of pins are of anti-vaccination content and there are no external governmental sources to back up such views (Guidry et al., 2015). To give an example: my first search on Pinterest was ‘strawberry recipes’, so my recommended content after performing the search was on strawberry recipes. In Pocket, I only could navigate the ‘Food’ topic to attempt to find recipes. However, I was open to content I wouldn’t think to search for specifically, such as ‘fruit soups’ which I saved into my pocket account in hopes of trying it out one day. Pocket also introduced me to insightful articles on the concerns of ‘quantifying oneself’, as fitness apps feed users their data, usually visualized and easily digestible, which in turn creates anxieties for users to hit fitness goals and become dependent on their tracking devices (Craven, 2022).  It explores a negative to managing information about oneself.

I have always enjoyed the concept of data visualization as I enjoy seeing statistics being presented visually, especially in unique ways. Infographics are a great way to present information in an easily digestible way, and often grab the attention of users more in comparison to data shown just by text (Kunze et al., 2021). It is also an effective way to show data in very few words. A graph could be in a language a viewer may not understand, but the visual aids give the viewer a sense of the data being represented. (Ritchie, 2023). We were tasked with creating our own infographic content. The most challenging part of this task for me was finding statistics by country in order to create a complete data map for Europe. I decided to make a data map of total daily streams of Ariana Grande’s new song ‘yes, and?’, as it is a very popular song currently charting in many European countries. Creating an Excel spreadsheet was incredibly tedious, which led me to be impatient with inputting data. After completing my custom graph, I researched further into websites that can help with the tediousness of manually drafting up a data spreadsheet. I discovered the website Statista, which offers statistics and ready-to-download spreadsheets that may help with drafting infographics. Discovering Statista removes the burden of manually inputting large amounts of data, especially for someone like me who is not proficient enough with Microsoft Excel. This experience further improved my digital literacy as I confidently researched extra tools to aid in curating and publishing infographics and data maps.

Our final task was to create a 30 second how-to video using ScreenPal and Youtube’s editing studio. I was excited for this task as I have previous editing experience so I was confident that by the end I would have a well-edited video. I was also unfamiliar with ScreenPal and Youtube’s editing studio so I was excited to play around with its features and affordances. ScreenPal was a relatively easy application to use to screen record my how-to. I decided to do a how-to on how to win a game of Wordle. I wanted to use the voice-over feature to record and describe my process, but the audio quality of Screen Pal was not good, so I had to eliminate that idea. I then became increasingly worried about the quality of my video, as ScreenPal and Youtube editor did not have a feature to add text to video, so I had to adopt new ways to communicate what was happening in the video. I ended up using the captions feature for Youtube as my ‘text’ element. Although I feel a lot more could have been done with my video, each application has features that I could benefit from if I combine them with my usual editing tools. ScreenPal has a feature to add royalty-free music, which really assists in ethically using other people’s content in my work, a digital literacy skill further discussed by Fulton & McGuinness (2016). The use of royalty free music, subtitles and keeping the video under 30 seconds all aided in creating an efficient and engaging social media video (Salamander, 2024).

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Craven, J. (2022, May 11). How my fitness tracker turned me against myself. FiveThirtyEight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-my-fitness-tracker-turned-me-against-myself/?utm_source=pocket_collection_story

Fulton, C., & McGuinness, C. (2016). Chapter 6: Finders Keepers. In Digital Detectives: Solving Information Dilemmas in an online world (pp. 77–94). essay, Elsevier Science & Technology.

Guidry, J. P. D., Carlyle, K., Messner, M., & Jin, Y. (2015). On pins and needles: How vaccines are portrayed on Pinterest. Vaccine, 33(39), 5051–5056. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2015.08.064

Kunze, K. N., Vadhera, A., Purbey, R., Singh, H., Kazarian, G. S., & Chahla, J. (2021). Infographics are more effective at increasing social media attention in comparison with original research articles: An altmetrics-based analysis. Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopic &amp; Related Surgery, 37(8), 2591–2597. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arthro.2021.03.056

Ritchie, J. (2023, May 26). What is an infographic? why they’re great & how to create them. Column Five. https://www.columnfivemedia.com/infographic/

Salamander, G. (2024, March 4). 11 tips for creating amazing social media videos. eclincher. https://eclincher.com/11-tips-for-creating-amazing-social-media-videos/

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E-tutorial #2: Data Visualisation for Novice Researchers

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E-tutorial #2: Data Visualisation for Novice Researchers

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This privacy policy (“The Privacy Policy”) addresses the needs and wants of a user (“us", “we”, “our”) of the social media app TikTok (“The Platform”) with regards to our right to privacy and choice on the platform.

Many decisions were made to consider what to include and exclude as part of this Privacy Policy. This policy is split into five parts that each provide a spotlight to privacy concerns and wishes I feel are the most important to discuss regarding TikTok and its use of our data. This policy includes discussions around the use of automated processing technology to process content that has not been shared publicly yet, younger audiences on tiktok, data used for advertising purposes and so on.

With Regards to Content Created and Shared

Content Characteristics and Features: Characteristics of content (trees in the background; a person’s face or leg, to give examples) are automatically processed data on the Platform, even before they are posted. Users should be given the choice to decide whether such data should be processed. Although this is understood to be for automatic moderation purposes, this data used to ‘recommend’ filters and audio can be seen as invasive.

Content Removal:  When a user chooses to delete content, we wish for all data associated with the post to be deleted automatically also. As we hold the right to be able to remove any content that we have put up, the content should be completely erased and stripped off its data, rather than retained by TikTok to be used.

With Regards to Our Data

Data Shared: We wish to know the list of vendors, services and third-party apps that TikTok is exchanging and sharing users data to. As TikTok and the outside parties are benefiting from our personal data exchanged, users deserve to know where this information is shared and with whom. Users should also be allowed to revoke access to data and information from services on the list.

Screen Time Data: A feature should be automatically implemented for users to know if they’ve spent prolonged periods of time on the app. An automatic notification should be set when a user has surpassed a certain time frame on the app (an hour - two hours). This would be considered better use of our data.

With Regards to Our Privacy

Direct Messaging: Communication between users should be encrypted, and data should not be shared to advertising vendors. It is an invasion of privacy, especially communication regarding personal matters or matters you would not want to be reminded of through advertising.

Contacts and Cross-Platform Friends: Suggesting our account to other contacts or cross-platform users should automatically be a turned off feature that a user can choose to turn on manually. If a user does not know the feature can be turned off, their TikTok account is freely suggested to others that either open a link that the user shared or when another user syncs contacts that the user is in.

With Regards to Our Safety

Younger users: As younger users engage in the platform among users of age, users of age should have the option to mark their content for a more mature audience. As TikTok does regulate content shared to younger audiences, automated moderation may miss out on some content, so this allows for extra protection for younger users of TikTok.

With Regards to Our Understanding of the Platform

Upon signing in, users should be shown a short and condensed version of the Privacy Policy, in simple terms, to understand better what they're signing up to. This is especially helpful to younger audiences who may not be familiar with certain jargon used in the full policy.

Relating back to suggesting accounts, all features that require personal data to be shared should all be turned off, to allow for users to turn on the feature themselves manually after prior research or understanding of the feature.

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750 million+ members | Manage your professional identity. Build and engage with your professional network. Access knowledge, insights and opportunities.

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I was opened to a vast variety of applications, social media sites and resources in this module that I learned can simultaneously expand my digital learning and support my online presence. Although the majority of applications I was familiar with, I was shown new ways of optimising the way I use them.

Populating my Linkedin page made me more conscious of the information I share of myself online, especially on work-related social media platforms like Linkedin. The most mundane tasks such as uploading a profile picture, choosing my cover page that accurately conveys my personality while maintaining professionalism and uploading a professional summary  made me self-aware of the digital presence I wanted to have on a platform like Linkedin. People often adapt their online identities to align with their perceived notion of a certain application. Instagram would often be seen as a space for personal expression versus Linkedin for professional networking. However, the lines are more blurred with who can access what information about you on social media platforms. Technology has advanced to the point where there are AI tools that can be used by recruiters to collect data on candidates (Knight, 2024) so we are to be more aware of our digital footprint that we leave of ourselves online. In the modern age where everything is digitalised, we do not have that luxury of keeping our private lives private. Fulton & McGuinness (2016) stresses how every action we make leaves a permanent trace of ‘digital crumbs’, and how each action we perform on social media is a make-up of our perceived online persona that can never truly be made private, thanks to data accumulated of our activity in the form of digital footprint. Considering this, we need to be conscious of the information we share online to foster a safe environment in the online space, and to avoid sensitive information being traced back to us.

We were given the task to rework our own version of a Privacy Policy for any social media platform of our choosing. As the app is still relatively new compared to its competitors and has been in the spotlight for how it handles its users’ data, I chose the popular app TikTok. Tiktok’s privacy policy is in a lengthy text format, although the wording of the policy is in simple terms which makes it an easy document to read. This particular task was a challenge, as I had to carefully choose out of many paragraphs what information to include and omit from the policy. Rewriting the policy made me consider how social media platforms need to opt for more user-friendly, accessible ways for people to read privacy policies, so that users know how their data and privacy is being handled in these platforms. Anderson (2017) rewrote Instagram’s privacy policy for children so that they understand what the platform is asking of them, and also for parents to open a conversation on internet safety on these platforms. This is important, especially considering that platforms continue to misuse the data of their users, no matter their age. Steifield (2016) also discusses how when users engage with the privacy policy, they are more aware with how to navigate these platforms and would be more inclined to call for changes and demand “more transparency” with how their data is being handled. Performing the task of reworking Tiktok’s privacy policy was crucial in understanding how privacy works in these platforms and to be more informed and cautious online.

A part of our E-Portfolio B task was to create an infographic of our personal digital strategy as we navigate digital platforms. We were given the recommendation to use the Canva site, which I was already familiar with from previous projects. In my infographic, I compressed all the information needed to be a good digital citizen in appealing visuals. Curating an infographic of this topic helped me visualise and quickly digest the behaviours I discussed into being conscious of navigating the online world and using digital technologies. Otten et al., (2015) discusses how “infographics leverage the brain's most dominant capacity-visual processing-they can be a faster and more effective way of communicating information than text alone”. An infographic is also good at reducing large amounts of data, only displaying important information on a topic that a reader can read and understand in a couple of seconds. (Ovans 2014). Creating an infographic of my personal digital strategy highlighted the main points and courses of action that I can take on board to control my digital presence, in a form that is easily digestible compared to how, for example, a privacy policy is often presented.

The use of these techniques and digital technologies helped me consider the ways in which I could use them to be a better and smarter digital citizen in a space full of finite amounts of data, on ourselves and on others.

References

Anderson, J. (2017, January 6). A lawyer rewrote Instagram’s privacy policy so kids and parents can have a meaningful talk about privacy. Quartz. https://qz.com/878790/a-lawyer-rewrote-instagrams-terms-of-service-for-kids-now-you-can-understand-all-of-the-private-data-you-and-your-teen-are-giving-up-to-social-media

Fulton, C., & McGuinness, C. (2016). A Hidden Agenda. In Digital Detectives : Solving Information Dilemmas in an Online World (pp. 179–203). Elsevier Science & Technology.

Knight, R. (2024, May 16). Your Social Media Presence Can Help You Land (or Lose) a Job Opportunity. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2024/05/your-social-media-presence-can-help-you-land-or-lose-a-job-opportunity

Otten, J. J., Cheng, K., & Drewnowski, A. (2015). Infographics And Public Policy: Using Data Visualization To Convey Complex Information. Health Affairs, 34(11), 1901–1907. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0642

Ovans, A. (2014, April 22). What Makes the Best Infographics So Convincing. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2014/04/what-makes-the-best-infographics-so-convincing

Steinfeld, N. (2016). “I agree to the terms and conditions”: (How) do users read privacy policies online? An eye-tracking experiment. Computers in Human Behavior, 55(B), 992–1000. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.09.038