Internet is changing our viewing habits

I was just watching my favorite TV series on my computer and I thought about an important aspect of the new media, which relates to people's free time. Although I'm not a big fan of spending time in front of TV, I admit that sometimes it feels really nice and relaxing to just sit down and watch some movie or series or show that is on. But I think that the TV program here in Slovenia is not very good, because the same movies and series are being played over and over again. And before internet came along, you just didn’t have other options than to accept it.

But now, you don’t have to be a passive TV consumer aka “couch potato”. You can choose. And not just between different TV programs, but also between series and movies, which are broadcasted all over the world. You just need a computer, fast internet connection, and you can have an episode of your favorite series on your computer few hours after it was premiered in some US television station. It would be interesting to investigate the viewing patterns of different groups of people, because I think that more and more people download series and shows, which are not available on their national TV programs.

Political propaganda on Facebook

This week's readings for our course referred to the new media and politics. And just this Sunday, there was a referendum about the organization of student work here in Slovenia. The campaigns against and for the suggested reform were quite huge. But what seemed interesting to me, was the propaganda on Facebook. I confirmed my attendance on Facebook event, which was called something like “On Sunday I will vote against the small work”. I was following the debate on this Facebook page for some days and it became obvious to me, that there were two or three users, who constantly promoted the law about little work, presented their arguments (which were exactly the same as the government’s arguments) for acceptance of the law and sometimes they even directly assaulted people, who expressed their disagreement with them as stupid o naïve and out-dated. I became suspicious about their postings, because it looked like,they were on that Facebook page all day and answered to different post almost simultaneously as they were published. I decided to check their profiles, and I found out that they were probably fake. One of them didn’t even used a real name, but called himself Mavrični Bojevnik (Rainbow Warrior) and has joined only groups, which had something to do with politics, mostly pages about premier Pahor, governmental party SD or the mentioned law about little work.

Obviously, political parties are aware that with new media, new places for deliberation and political organization are emerging and are trying to influence them. I am pretty sure that they've payed someone to follow the debates about this new law on Facebook and try to discredit different beliefs and opinions. As results of the referendum showed, they didn’t succeed.

Annotating PDFs

In previous week we had an assignment to try some tools, which are available for annotating text. I tried Zotero and it bothered me that you couldn't edit PDFs, whereas most academic articles are in such format. I tried to find another program for annotations, which enables editing of PDFs and I found a tool, called PDF Annotator.

It's very easy to use and it enables you to highlight text in different colours, write comments in a form of "sticky notes" or even paste stamps next to the text to mark important arguments or things you find problematic in the article. I found this tool very useful, but unfortunatelly it is available for free only for 30 days trial period and then you have to pay €69,95.

The tool is available for downloading here !

Grandma is going online?

Few days ago I was visiting my grandma and she told me that she needs to buy herself a computer and get internet connection. Although my grandma is a very active person, she really doesn’t get along with technology. She can’t even figure out her mobile phone’s functions or set channels on her TV and VCR and now she suddenly wants a computer? I was pretty skeptical about her idea, so I asked her why she thinks that she needs computer and internet. She said that everything is on internet nowadays and she even complained about the commercials which are always referring to companies’ websites and say: read more on our website. And that really bothered her, because she felt that she is excluded from certain part of modern life, because she doesn’t have a computer.

In my last blog post I wrote about digital divide and this conversation with my grandma got me to thinking about the social exclusion of older people, who don’t know how to use a computer. And besides that I have been working in Statistical office of the Republic of Slovenia where we’ve just finished a telephone survey about the use of communication- informational technologies in Slovenian households. I worked as a telephone interviewer, so I spoke to many people, who answered questions about their use of computers and internet. It was very hard to convince older people to participate in our survey because when they heard that it is about computers and internet, they immediately refused with excuse that they are too old for and that they don’t know anything about these new technologies. But on the other hand, there were some older people who learned how to use computers and internet by taking classes, organized specifically for older generations. They often told me that they decided to take such classes because in modern times, you just cannot afford to not know how to use internet if you don’t want to be excluded from numerous activities.

It really seems that technological exclusion of older people is quite a problem, because it also means that they are socially excluded from society. For younger generations it feels almost natural to have a computer and know how to use it, because we ether grew up with computers and mobile phones and internet, or got in touch with these new technologies at very young age. But older generations on the other hand were already grown up, used to certain way of life and the suddenly those new technologies emerged and changed everyday life. So we should really consider their difficulties with accepting these technologies and their efforts to try to follow the developments and even encourage them to try it and comfort them that they are never too old to learn new things and get new experiences.

So let’s held our grandma’s and grandpa’s to get online if they want to! :)