July 20th, 2012 at 1:12PM
As much as the government tries to control information through censorship, there are all these user strategies to overcome it, too. There’s a new thing called “long Weibo,” which allows you to paste in a whole essay, and it converts it to a JPEG. It’s small, but you can click on it and it fills your screen so you can actually read the whole essay right there. It’s something small but critical in understanding how social media operates in China. Likewise, in the U.S., I like observing how users hack around social-media platforms, because ultimately these behaviors are rooted in culture. — What Twitter Can Learn From Weibo: Field Notes From Global Tech Ethnographer Tricia Wang | Fast Company (via kenyatta)

(via kenyatta)
59 notes Source: Fast Company #tricia wang#china#ethnolography#instagram#social media#weibo#internet culture
July 13th, 2012 at 2:30PM
kenyatta: I spoke with An Xiao Mina for her story in The Atlantic today about the parallels between the spread of Travon Martin and Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng in Internet Culture. Everyone here knows about people posting photos of themselves in hoodies in support of Martin, but did you know that something similar had already taken place in China ? Remarkably, just a few months prior, China’s internet had experienced a similar explosion of activity. In November 2011, net activists began posting photos of themselves wearing sunglasses on Sina Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like microblog service. It started as a trickle but soon grew into dozens and dozens of photos and comics. Wearing sunglasses, like wearing a hoodie, is by itself apolitical. The power lay in the collective action, distributed across a network of supporters. The thing that fascinates me most about the life of political memes isn’t necessarily the spread (they’re fairly easy to map) but the “anti-memes” that will occasionally pop up to try and counter and stop the original meme from spreading: “There were a number of images that went viral with bad information,” noted Cheese. “These mostly fake images of Trayvon were posted on Facebook with false information about him and his background, trying to paint him as this unsympathetic character.” The meme provided a countervailing and, soon, overwhelming alternative picture of the young man. Like culture jamming or Ralph Reed-style astroturfing of the 1980’s taught us, sometimes you don’t need mass participation to raise awareness. If the issue is volatile enough, you just need to figure out the polar opposite of “common” sentiment and the media will write about you. (‘Trayvoning’ anyone?) (via A Tale of Two Memes: The Powerful Connection Between Trayvon Martin and Chen Guangcheng - An Xiao Mina - The Atlantic)

kenyatta:

I spoke with An Xiao Mina for her story in The Atlantic today about the parallels between the spread of Travon Martin and Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng in Internet Culture.

Everyone here knows about people posting photos of themselves in hoodies in support of Martin, but did you know that something similar had already taken place in China ?

Remarkably, just a few months prior, China’s internet had experienced a similar explosion of activity. In November 2011, net activists began posting photos of themselves wearing sunglasses on Sina Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like microblog service. It started as a trickle but soon grew into dozens and dozens of photos and comics. Wearing sunglasses, like wearing a hoodie, is by itself apolitical. The power lay in the collective action, distributed across a network of supporters.

The thing that fascinates me most about the life of political memes isn’t necessarily the spread (they’re fairly easy to map) but the “anti-memes” that will occasionally pop up to try and counter and stop the original meme from spreading:

“There were a number of images that went viral with bad information,” noted Cheese. “These mostly fake images of Trayvon were posted on Facebook with false information about him and his background, trying to paint him as this unsympathetic character.” The meme provided a countervailing and, soon, overwhelming alternative picture of the young man.

Like culture jamming or Ralph Reed-style astroturfing of the 1980’s taught us, sometimes you don’t need mass participation to raise awareness. If the issue is volatile enough, you just need to figure out the polar opposite of “common” sentiment and the media will write about you. (‘Trayvoning’ anyone?)

(via A Tale of Two Memes: The Powerful Connection Between Trayvon Martin and Chen Guangcheng - An Xiao Mina - The Atlantic)

7 notes Source: The Atlantic #politics#internet culture#memes#trayvon martin#chen guangcheng#hoodie meme#sunglasses meme#weibo#sina weibo#twitter#an xiao mina#the atlantic#political memes#pop culture