In this week's topic, we talked about netizens versus participatory culture. When scouring the internet, I found a shirt about Anonymous, which is a group of hackers who claim to expose government activities to the public. Their work would go beyond this post and I am not a member/affiliate of such a group. But when I read about their group, I was not sure if Anonymous members would be netizens or if Anonymous could be classified as a participatory culture. When going through this week's readings, I could say that a netizen is trying to convey some message, ideology, political, social messages. By contrast, participatory culture consists of people with a similar hobby, activity, who collaborate. As an aside, I found the above shirt, which has word art about Anonymous. The three main words are "freedom" , "expose" and "truth". I think Anonymous is mostly participatory culture. Yes, it would seem like they are netizens, because of their activities, but it seems like the group is exclusive to hackers who like to create conspiracies. This ties into the concept of social media being a tool for information and propaganda. Are we really free on the internet? Or is the content on social media being used to reprogram or shape how we view our offline, day-to-day lives?
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