Blog Post #1

1. What does it mean to network using social media?

People using network are mainly focus on receiving world information, learn new knowledge and skills. The social media is for people to connect with different groups of people whether they are familiar with each other or they are completely strangers. Therefore, using social media in the network means people can “gather, collect, communicate, create and also share knowledge and experience with a group of connected people, anywhere at any time.” （Gutierrez, Karla, 2016). People could develop new skills, accept new information, learn new knowledge through communicating with world-wide populations according to their experiences.

2. How are we motivated to participate in networked publics?

People are motivated to participated in networked publics because “Your networks also allow you to find appropriate, constant support when the need arises” (Rajagopal, Kamakshi, et al. 2011) . When people desire to know something they don’t know, or they have some suspects that eager to be shared and verified, or even sometimes they are spending boring time, all these needs could be solved by participating in networked publics. People could communicate with professionals to obtain the answers of their problems; people could talk their suspects with others which they have kindred spirits; also, people could play online games with different amount of people to spend their boring time. Therefore, people would be motivated to participate in networked publics because their needs could be satisfied.

3. What are the risks & rewards of public communications?

As the last two questions mentioned, the public communications could bring individuals several opportunities to learn, talk, share or collect information with other individuals so that the connections between person to person, country to country could be formed. However, the risks of public communications exist too. People always think they could completely control the networks as they want to protect their privacy. However, “One slip-up or data leakage and whatever was once protected can easily enter into a networked public where it may enter broader databases, be aggregated with other data, and circulate. ” (Boyd, Danah. 2012). This means even people act to protect their information in the internet, but negligence still always happen and make their protections become useless. As their private information enter into the broader database, the information could be searched by others, then create a situation of information leakage.

References:

Gutierrez, Karla. What Are Personal Learning Networks?, 21 June 2016, www.shiftelearning.com/blog/personal-learning-networks.

Rajagopal, Kamakshi, et al. “View of Understanding Personal Learning Networks: Their Structure, Content and the Networking Skills Needed to Optimally Use Them: First Monday.” View of Understanding Personal Learning Networks: Their Structure, Content and the Networking Skills Needed to Optimally Use Them | First Monday, 27 Aug. 2011, firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3559/3131.

Boyd, Danah. “Networked Privacy.” Surveillance & Society, 12 Dec. 2012, ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/networked.