Action 6: Investigating digital citizenship, community building, media / social media through the actions of craft making (physical and maybe digital?), co-creation (challenging for me!).
Digital Citizenship
This week marks one year after one of the most distressing experiences of my life. The government shut down the internet for a whole week, while massive protests were taking place on the streets all over the country. One of the most important means of communication was disrupted, not only between citizens but also between us and the whole world. We couldn’t hear each other. Unfortunately, I can’t elaborate on the events, but I can talk about my feelings. To put it simply, during those days, besides the immense anxiety, I felt lost. I felt like a part of me was missing. I felt less of a person and less of a citizen. I always knew that my lifestyle had made me dependent on the internet; for work, education, or entertainment, but only then I realized that my connection with the digital platform is much deeper than a user and a service. I have developed a digital existence during the last years, and it is now, undeniably, part of my identity. Reflecting on this experience made me think of the term “digital citizenship” without knowing about its academic backbone and research. After doing Action 6, as I’m writing this blog, I am very intrigued to read the papers and materials around this topic.
Besides being introduced to this platform at a young age (as a millennial / generation Z), I can also trace back my special bond with the internet to the limitations I’ve faced in my physical environment. This platform has provided me several freedoms that I couldn’t possibly have without it. This kind of liberating experience is related to my geopolitical location, and perhaps someone from a different political setting and background would not feel the same way.
Digital Community
I’ve been active on Instagram for around 6years now (Link to profile). At the moment, I have more than 11,500 followers and can claim that I’m involved in a small digital community. I’ve decided to use my platform and obtain random data from my followers. However, I didn’t want to include any meaning in the data. I merely wanted to engage with them and make something with the collective information. My initial idea was to build an interactive platform that eliminated my presence, but that needed JavaScript and web development and was not feasible in this setting. So, I decided to start with more basic tools and play around with the data first.
2 random numbers between 1-50 / A color choice between red – green – blue / A choice between + & –
I have this giant paper with all this information, now what?
How can I store it?
Turning it into a booklet.
The proportions were extracted from Microsoft Excel.
Does putting in time necessarily add value to something?
*This video might trigger photosensitive epilepsy, don’t play it in case you’re sensitive.*
On Oct 25th, in less than 12 hours, 408 people tapped 1224 times on their smartphones and chose between + and -.
(Motion made with processing / Java analyzing 408 +,- in order
black = + / white = -)
Tangible Data
