Internet access as a legal right in Finland

The problem of social stratification used to refer to the notion of social classes in society. The society was divided into working class, middle class and upper-class, where social, cultural and economic capital played an important role in determining where someone stands within society. Nowadays scholars often talk about two class society, information rich and information poor.

The information rich have access to information and information technology equipment such as many TV and radio channels, books, newspapers and journals, and of course computers and the World Wide Web. The information rich also have the knowledge to use the technology to obtain information to help them make informed decisions.

The information poor tend to not have access to the Web and probably find it difficult to access relevant books and journals. Even in general conversations a discussion about a TV programme shown on satellite TV will be lost on people who only have 4 or 5 terrestrial channels. The information poor may lack the skills or knowledge to access information.

The gap between the information rich and the information poor is often called the digital divide. It is not a gap between those with lots of money and those without, although money certainly have influence on this division.

The gap can exist between many groups in society such as:

* old and young

* english speaking and non english speaking

* third world and developed world society

* diffierent cultural groups

* rural and urban locations

FINLAND

One of the problems of digital divide is also internet access. And Finland is the first county in the world who made internet access a legal right. From July 2010 telecommunication companies in Finland are required to provide all 5,2 million citizens with internet connection that runs at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second.

Finland was already one of the most wired countries in the world, with 95% of the population having some sort of Internet access.

Enabling people to have internet access is of course a promising start in abolishing the digital gap, but is not enough. People get technical access to the internet, but if they don’t know how to use computers and internet, it doesn’t really change anything. Education is also an important chapter in the problem of digital divide between information rich and information poor. And by education I don’t just mean knowledge how to use computers and internet but also capability to find relevant information, to know how to discriminate between credible sources of information and questionable sources.

Finland certainly made a step forward, will other countries follow its lead?

Using Facebook to pump up your ego!

Danah Boyd and Nicole Ellison wrote in their article "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scolarship" that Facebook is egocentric network, because the individual is at the center of its own community. This differs from early public online communities, where topics, common interests or hobbies were central.

In my opinion Facebook really is egocentric, also from a different perspective. Facebook can be understood as egocentric tool because it helps individuals to pump their egos up.

SHOW OFF YOUR FRIENDS

Facebook enables people to make visible their social networks or if we put it simple, we can see how many “friends” an individual has. Of course we are not talking about real friends here, because it would be impossible for a person to maintain as many friendships as they have listed on Facebook. Anyways just because there is a counter of how many friends a user has, many people feel some kind of competition to have as many friends as possible, to show others that they are popular.

Here is an interesting article about collecting friends on Facebook, which reveals that most people have 5 close friends and an average of 150 people in their social network. The article also mentions so called “trophy friends” which mostly refer to Facebook profiles of celebrities.

Another interesting article about collecting friends on Facebook is available here and it also mentions an interesting phenomenon of “defriending”.

SHOW EVERYONE THAT YOU’VE ENJOYED YOUSELF

People are now able to share their photos from holidays, travels and trips with their friends. If we are honest, Facebook actually enables to “show off”, to let everyone see how you’ve enjoyed yourself and maybe even make them jealous.

TELL EVERYONE WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED TO YOU

When something amazing or terrible happens to you and there is no one around to tell him, you can just update your Facebook status and pour your feelings and thoughts to your wall and your friends’ news feed. Then you wait. You wait for the “likes” and comments and feel good about the attention you’ve received.

LET EVERYONE SEE WHERE YOU ARE PLANNING TO GO

When people confirm their attendance to Facebook events, they enable all of their friend to see where they will be at certain point of time. And maybe even latently brag about it.

Of course not everyone use Facebook in such way, but I’m sure that in some way people really do pump up their egos with Facebook. Admit it or not, you feel good when you publish something and gets many “likes” and comments from friends. Using Facebook for bragging or not, it is a fact that we do things there, we wouldn’t do in face to face interactions with friends.

And here is the proof! See it for yourself how our Facebook activities would like like in face to face communication.

The "new" in music industry

This week I've read an interesting chapter of a book, called Long History of New Media, which is actually not published yet, but our professor for this course (New media and society) enabled us to see the page proofs.

I’ve read a chapter by Devon Powers with a title The End of New Music? and it has really opened up some ideas for me. The author talks about the importance of “newness” in music industry. He reminds us how we are always anticipating new songs from our favorite artists and add the latest singles to our music collections or mp3 players and i-pods. But what really counts as new music? Is a remix of an old song, which just came out new music? How long does certain song count as new music? What about releases of an unpublished old recordings, is this new music? For example, Bruce Springsteen released his album The Promise in 2010, which is actually a compilation of an old, previously unreleased songs, is this new music? Who decides what new is?

Devon Powers explains that the concept of “newness” in music industry and also in more general terms is a discursive construction, which means that it is temporal and ontological, but certainly not natural. That is why we should ask ourselves: “Under what circumstances, and to what ends, does music come to be understood as new?” At this point, Powers connects the idea of “newness” with the capitalist system of our society and makes an excellent reference to Marx and Engels and their perspective on how novelty in its broadest sense aids in the perpetuation of capitalism. Music industry is structured to profit from newness and that is why it requires not just material products, but also a disourse that naturalizes its continued production. So how does music industry naturalize the idea of new? Through music journalism and music charts! They both have major influence on the popularity of artists, songs and albums and they both continually renew constantly. Bu ironically it is also true that once a music is “cemented” as new in charts, album reviews, it is also what causes that music to go out of style and be replaced. Powers summarized that “new music depends, both discursively and materially upon old music, regardless of whether or not that dependence is articulated.”

New media, new “newness”?

New technologies which have in some way helped to perpetuate the consumption of new music have also transformed the concept itself. Today, music is mostly available online even before the albums are released to the markets. Music journalism is no longer limited to specialized magazines, newspapers, nowadays everyone can open-up their blogs and comment upon or evaluate music. The conditions have changed and the concept of new has changed along. The charts are now measuring a “hype value”, which ranks the music according to what is garnering excitement at the moment. Even the artist sometimes leak their music to the web in order to gain attention. So when is music new in such circumstances?

Power suggests that instead of focusing on the concept of newness, we should consider concept of attention. We should be raising questions like “how innovations in musical style, sound technology, circulation and distribution inspire different kinds of attending practices over time?” and “how audiences at different historical periods and diverse cultural contexts learn to attend?”.

Althought in this chapter, Power is talking about the concept of newness inside music industry; he is also uncovering something very important about the concept itself, which we can also relate to the newness of the media in general. The newness is culturally and socially constructed phenomenon, which is not natural and not even stable through the time and place. And sometimes it even serves as a efficient marketing tool, since nowadays everyone is obsessed with “new” (Just pay attention to advertising and try to find commercials, where there is no use of the word “new” in it!)

I-PAD: Not so revolutionary after all?

Framing of computers into existing value system in society
For this week's assignment for the course New media and society I've read Jean P. Kelly's article: Not so revolutionary after all: the role of reinforcing frames in US magazine discourse about microcomputers. And it impressed me, or at least got me to thinking about it even after I've finished it.

In his article Kelly investigates the role of media discourse in the process by which the personal computer became common trusted technology in the USA from 1980s to 1990s. He systematically analyzed media content about computers from that period and came to conclusions that the most often frames, which were used to describe computers were TOOL and LITERACY frames .

When computers are presented within the TOOL frame, their efficiency, productivity, speed and business functions are emphasized. And when the computers are presented within the LITERACY frame, the computer mastery is presented as a skill, which is needed for academic and career success. What Kelly is trying to say is that such interpretation of the computers is typical for the capitalist societies, where work, profit and efficiency are much respected values.

The meanings, ideas and values that were ascribed to the potentially revolutionary device came from the existing social and cultural relations. In his article, Kelly explains how the particular values and characteristics inherent in existing power relations were associated with an object (the computer) in order to promote its acceptance, and how this in turn sustained these existing power relations rather than challenging them

The framing of I PAD
After reading Kelly’s article I tried to think of some new media technology that was recently introduced for the first time and how it was presented. I immediately thought of the Apple’s I-PAD, which is still something new (there is still some uncertainty about the device, its use and impact). I decided to find the introductory commercial for the I Pod and make a quick analysis, based on Kelly’s ideas.




As you can see, the answer to the question “What is I-PAD?” is directly offered in the video, as much as through the direct descriptions of its characteristics as through the visual representation.

The conclusions can be more or less drawn from Kelly’s findings about early representations of computers. The tool frame is also used for describing the I PAD (it’s thin, it goes anywhere and lasts all day, it’s crazy powerful, it’s 200 000 aps and counting, all the world’s websites in your hands). Even the visual representation uses the tool frame to emphasize its convenience and versatility (we can see different people using the I-Pad when sitting on the stairs, when in a café, when on train, carrying I-pod when walking, riding on motorcycle, using it for the navigation, for business…). The sentences “and you already know how to use it” and “it’s already a revolution” are somewhat contradictory, but they to exactly what Kelly notices in his article: they frame the new, unknown device as something revolutionary, which will change consumer’s life, but at the same time they comfort him that it is not so new and different that he wouldn’t be able to use it. In the commercial we can also notice some references to the existing values in our society, such as family (we can see a woman, who is reading a “book” on I-pad to a child and someone who is browsing photos of children on the I-pad).

So the I-PAD in this introductory commercial is actualy framed in the same way as the computer was, when it was first introduced in the market. This is of course not suprising, considering the fact that as Kelly says, frames are influenced by the values of society. And capitalsim is still some kind of a "general frame" of our society.