edci338

10.1 Personas

10.2 Demographics

Target Audience

RED is a Chinese social media and e-commerce platform launched in 2013 with more than 300 million users and monthly active users on RED exceed 200 billion on 2021. Of RED’s 300 million users, about 80% are female and 70% are Millennials or members of Generation Z. Typically those using the app have higher than average disposable income. RED is used by Chinese people in China and around the world. We describe RED as a combination of Instagram, Pinterest and Amazon, where people can review products and share their shopping experiences with a vast community. Users post product photos with reviews and tips for other users to read, comment, and save to their boards as you would on Pinterest. Also, you can follow influencers and shop online within the RED app.

10.2.1 Can non-users browse or search content?

For non-users, if you download the app RED on your phone, you are required to create an account in order to browse and search within the platform. However, if you are using the RED’s website, you can have a quick browse of a few selected posts, but it is limited to 1 page, if you wish to browse or search more, you need to download the app. You can browse a post without creating an account only if when an existing users share the post as a link to you.

10.2.2 How are users connected?

On RED, if user wants to be connected to another user, you can simply follow them and you can follow anyone without them reciprocating. However, in terms of messaging, if the user you follow did not follow you back, you can only send three messages in total until they follow you back.

10.2.3 Can content be shared privately and how is content shared?

Yes, on RED, users can only the content privately use the following options: 1. Directly message to user you follow Users can share the content as a direct message to any user you follow 2. Generate a link or QR code Users can also generate a link or a picture of QR code of the content they wish to share There is also an option to share publicly: 1. Share via another social media platform You can share the content via three Chinese social media platforms: Wechat, QQ and Weibo, RED will first get approved to connect itself to the app user selected, then user can select if they want to share to the social media as a private message or a public post. 

10.2.4 How does content go viral?

Content on RED can go viral if the post is in the Explore section, which means there will be more users can see the post because most of the users will only browse the Explore section. Also, including a hashtag in the post can also help content to go viral. The screenshot below is an example of the Explore section, and you can tell most of the posts went viral. 

10.2.5 Company details

RED is founded in Shanghai in 2013 as a user-generated content community, and RED completed Series D fundraising with a valuation of over 3 billion on 2018. The main investors are listed below: 

10.3 Privacy and Surveillance

10.3.1 Privacy Protection

https://www.xiaohongshu.com/en/privacy_protection

10.3.2 Privacy Policy

There are only Chinese version available and I still list the link below https://www.xiaohongshu.com/privacy

10.3.3 ToS

There are only Chinese version available and I still list the link below https://www.xiaohongshu.com/terms

10.3.4 Key takeaways

After the authorization, RED allows to record image, voice, or video. According to the Xiaohongshu Intellectual Property Protection Policy, when others try to download my post images or blogs, it shows my own logo on images or blogs.

10.4 Social Media and your PLN in Education

10.4.1 How do people interact on RED?

RED is a platform for people to share and record their lives. The blog is based on their experiences and daily life. Visitors could double click on the images to express their liking of the content or leave comments in the comment section. Most of the creators love to reply to the comments and discuss.!

10.4.2 How do educators use the platform?

An example of a music instructor He Juan is a vocal instructor. She usually posts her content as a video. It is more convenient for her to show how to pronounce words and how to breathe properly. Since she teaches the pronunciation of each word, her audience is more suitable for beginners. The comment section is dominated by compliments or anticipation of her next instructional video content that is to her liking.

10.4.3 Posts and feedback

When we posted a note about a statistics class, one third of the reviewers were interested in the helpful post, such as which textbook the note was from or asking questions about the ununderstood part of the problem solving process. The rest of them say thank you.   We also did a post about restaurants in Vancouver. Comments on this type of post fall into three categories. One is to collect our posts; the second is the affirmation and love of people who have been to the restaurant; the third is their dissatisfaction and complaint based on the experience they once visited, but the third group is in the minority.

   In Red, the chances of a post being picked up are driven by likes and location. So most people respond differently to similar types of posts. What they respond to depends on the content of the post. If it’s the same post, they may not respond to the same post twice. Because of this mode, the way they reply is not based on a Persona of account.

10.4.4 Concerns that educators should be aware of regarding RED

As for my platform, educators should pay attention to copyright issues. As my answer to the last question, we can find many similar posts, such posts may be by some public accounts to transfer other people’s work for profit. It’s so common that visitors don’t really care who the original post is. Unless our account is one with a lot of followers, that might be a bit of a deterrent.

10.4.5 Things we notice that a curious educator might want to know about RED

Because our platform is a kind of sharing platform. Anything you want to know will be posted by a relevant person based on his experience. But one of the most fascinating things about our platform is that different people, different identities and different ages give different summaries. For example, when you want to remember a word, a professional will tell you what the word means. But in Red, there are also non-professionals who may be students or homemakers or whatever, who share their own ways of memorizing words. Learning about different summaries and experimenting with different approaches is perhaps the most attractive aspect of the platform.

10.5 Balancing your PLN and Public Discourse

10.5.1 How do notable, high-profile individuals use social media?

As we all know, there is not only one person running the account on the social platform of well-known celebrities. Behind each well-known account there is a team, one part is responsible for publicity, one part is responsible for video editing and manuscript editing, one part is responsible for business docking, and the most important one is responsible for the “performance” in front of the screen.

10.5.2 What are the benefits to being in the public eye and having a PLN?

Celebrities use social platforms for profit and business. By accumulating a certain number of fans to obtain the cooperation opportunities of the brand side.

10.5.3 Building community with online tools provided by an employer can be limiting, what are some possible restrictions and benefits?

Building a community using employer-provided online tools may involve copyright issues. Some platforms cannot have politically relevant content posted, and the content posted can be partially restricted. Content posted on employer-provided platforms needs to be vetted or authenticated and does not allow you to post what you want as a private user, and more needs to match the employer’s requirements. Some restrictions include copyright issues and the need to sign a contract for the content posted. For example, if you have already set up an account with an online tool provided by the employer, the content you post on this platform is not allowed to be posted elsewhere under the contract terms. The advantage of using an employer-provided online tool to build a community is that you have a regular group of followers. The platform can provide certain guarantees and policies to protect your interests and privacy. Compared to employer-provided platforms, your private community is relatively unstable. The content posted may be stolen, copyright issues may arise, and there is no formal platform to protect your rights favorable.

10.5.4 Delivering information in a connected society requires verifiable resources, how can you ensure that you build a PLN you can rely on?

This can be done by providing relevant information to obtain official review and certification or reliable copyright. Accurate name authentication, identity verification can be a source of account reliability. For example, on Red, you can prove your professional background or identity by providing professional certificates such as documents and information. The certified icon will be shown on the homepage to prove the authenticity and reliability, thus ensuring that the PLN is dependable. In most cases, reliable users have many followers, as these certified accounts are more reliable than private accounts. However, it is not possible to judge an account’s credibility based on the number of followers. Quality accounts are more likely to attract followers.

10.5.5 How do those who are veteran story tellers minimize the risk of sharing misinformation?

Before releasing information content, you can obtain reliable sources through regular channels, first self-audit, and then go to the relevant authoritative information. For example, on Red, most people share their personal experiences, and if it is health-related, the publisher has a formal nutritionist, fitness coach and other professional qualifications. Alternatively, when releasing information, they also share reliable information to ensure the reliability of the content. Most storytellers focus on sharing content related to their professional background, reducing misinformation through self-vetting and professional knowledge.

10.6 Digital Identity, Access and Inclusion, and Media Literacy

10.6.1 Digital Identity

We choose to show a more positive side of ourselves on social media by sharing our daily interests, such as desserts, food, landscape photos or favourite movies. All of our team members have multiple social media accounts, the social media we all use for sharing school and study-related content including Facebook, Messenger and Discord, and in terms of sharing our daily life, the social meadia platforms we use are RED, Wechat, Instagram and Weibo. We separate our personal and professional identities and use different social media when dealing with different people. We are more likely to use Facebook to communicate with classmates at school and WeChat to communicate with friends in our daily life. To conclude, We choose different platforms for different use, and what we have in common is that Facebook and Messenger are usually what we choose for study-related content.

10.6.2 Access and Inclusion

The platforms do not limit the people who use them, giving equal opportunities and access to the general public. Some social media nowadays will provide extra help to people with disabilities, such as voice broadcasting and sign language videos, which improves the principle of inclusiveness and accessibility in using the platforms. Moreover, nowadays, people with disabilities are treated very well on many platforms because some platforms will help promote content related to people with disabilities and encourage people to help these disadvantaged people because on online platforms actively, people are more sympathetic to people with disabilities, and when you go to search some homepages or personal accounts of people with disabilities, most of the comments underneath are from people who are encouraging and supportive. When consuming or producing on the platform, people can meet accessibility needs through sign language videos, voice broadcasting, or there will be professional service providers to help. Those who may be excluded can be helped by providing exceptional services such as a special hotline or service staff. Some anchors will post videos that encourage people to help people with disabilities to support them actively. By appealing to people through their traffic, they can include people who may be excluded.

10.6.3 Media Literacy, Trust, and Disinformation

The content published on Red needs to pass the audit, and each platform has a particular audit policy. In order to avoid spreading false information, the content that needs to be published needs to pass the verification of accurate and valid information. There is no way for false information to pass the audit, and if you need to buy goods on the platform, you will be provided with direct links to reliable and regular resources for purchase. In order to ensure that false information is not disseminated as misinformation, the content must first be vetted before it is posted to ensure that the source of the resource is reliable and regular and that certain guarantees are in place. After guaranteeing reliable resources and audits, publishing the relevant content can largely avoid false information.

10.7 Reference

[1] https://www.xiaohongshu.com/en [2] https://www.latmultilingual.com/blog/understanding-red-the-chinese-shopping-app/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaohongshu

Examine the application of social media to support learning

Throughout the course, my learning pod had chosen RED as our social media platform and supported our learning. To briefly explain a little bit about RED, RED is a Chinese social media and e-commerce platform launched in 2013 with more than 300 million users and monthly active users on RED exceed 200 billion by 2021. RED is also a Personal Learning Network and it simplifies our way of learning, despite educational information users can find on RED, they can also find all kinds of other useful information such as restaurants recommendations, discount information, hotel recommendations, etc. RED is a combination of a lot of social media platforms, users can generate posts, follow and unfollow influencers like Instagram, it also allows users to shop within applications like eBay. RED is one of the successful examples of social media platform that has a lot of functionalities, as I mentioned Metaverse in my Wow and Wonder post, Metaverse also combines a lot of functionalities and it has a strong connection with our real life because you can even sell and buy households within the platform, I cannot wait to explore the Metaverse and learn about it like how I learned RED.

Explain personalized learning and its relation to learning theory

While researching on RED, I think I have a better understanding of personalized learning, at the start of the course, I thought personalized learning is just a learning theory that we use in school, to come up with different learning plans for every single student, and these plans are based on how they learn, what they know, and what their skills and interests are. These plans are indented to make students learn better and it is the opposite of what learning theory we used in school right now which is only having one learning plan for all students. After our major project, I realized that not only educational institutions will apply personalized learning, but so are social media platforms, and social media apply this method even more than educational institutions. Nowadays, all kinds of social media platforms will learn users’ likes and dislikes then depending on each user and generate suitable content for users, RED uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to decide what to put on each user’s Explore section, so users can browse contents that are related to them.

Recognize that the Internet is not a neutral or equal space for everyone

Social media relies on the Internet heavily, and the Internet is definitely not a neutral or equal space for everyone, in my Wow and Wonder post I talked about privacy, when our privacy is being protected, some people seize this opportunity and do a lot of negative actions that they wouldn’t do in real life, they think the Internet is like a port for them to express their negative energy, sometimes they even harm others while expressing their feelings. I have seen a lot of negative and even vicious comments while researching on RED, under some influencers’ posts, there are some strangers who are willing to leave vicious comments which shows that the Internet is no doubt an unneutral and unequal space. However, when privacy is not being protected by the Internet, it will also cause a lot of problems, one of the most worrisome is information leakage; in this digital era, information leakage can lead to serious consequences.

Apply social media to develop a personal learning network in support of your personal and/or professional development

To develop a suitable personal learning network for myself on RED, firstly, I will aim for the Nearby function of the app. While researching on RED, I noticed that there are users who will create a group chat for each course, and then post the link to the group chats so that students who go to the same class can share information and discuss within. This is one of the aspects that I look for in supporting my professional development. As for my personal development, I will be mainly focusing on the Explore section on RED, since RED uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to calculate my interests, so most of the contents in this section will be something I enjoy. As mentioned in my teammate’s post, the development of science and technology brings more benefits in this case, and it makes your life on social media more continent.

Identify privacy issues and practice online behaviours that are legal, safe, consensual, and ethical

There are some severe privacy issues that existed on RED, I am a user of RED, and the advertisement that I see on RED is really connected with my daily life. For example, if the morning I talked with my friends about shoes I want to buy, and at night when I browse through the Explore section of RED, there is a big chance that I can see advertisements for shoes. It creeps me out because I feel like my privacy is being invaded too much, I heard about some conspiracy theory that your smartphones always spy on you so that social media will know exactly what to advertise to you. It is not legal nor ethical to invade people’s privacy this much, but I feel like it is a certain consequence of Connectivism, it is now a digital era, and it is inevitable to lose some of our privacy.

Recognize data ownership and licensing (Creative Commons, Copyright, Fair Dealing, and Public Domain) as a core practice when creating, sharing, or using resources online

There are some data ownership issues that existed on RED. Some users will simply use others’ posts or work that they see on some other platform and then post on RED to attract audiences. I have seen a lot of cases that which the original author commented below saying that the influencers have copied their idea or worst, use their identity. In Jessie’s post, she lost her credit card and then experienced her identity being stolen, and it is a really bad experience. Thus, the copyright issue is one of the major privacy issues. However, there are also some behaviours that are legal on RED: some users will tag the original influencers in their posts if they have used their idea or face picture, some others will comment below the posts and get the permission of the influencers then they will use their work.

Practice digital, networked, and open literacies in support of learning about social media and personalized learning

I enjoyed a lot doing our major project, because personally, I use a whole bunch of social media platforms, and it is helpful for me to know all the pros and cons while using social media platforms. I can now use all kinds of different platforms using the PLN method we learned in EDCI 338, and I am able to design myself the suitable learning plan. After learning about screen surveillance of social media, I can protect my privacy more carefully by not giving applications a lot of permissions. To conclude, I feel like this course taught me useful knowledge to better protect ourself in this digital era.

In the article “Developing Personal Learning Networks for Open and Social Learning“, I am introduced to the course EC&I 831, the general idea of why starting this course, the fundamental concept of hosting this course, and the feedback of this course. There are a lot of terms such as Connectivism that we have seen in the course EDCI 338, also, the general structure has a lot alike. I think I have already experienced the PLN within my learning pods.

For building the trusting relationship within my class, I feel like it is a bit hard because of the fully online in terms of teaching method. I wonder what can I do in order to better achieve this goal.

After watching the video Tresdancing, I feel like the main character’s privacy is being invaded, the glasses are recording her life almost every second of her life, and it tries to control her action by a pointing system. It is deeply intriguing because we have lived a life where we can only communicate via social media, and I’m glad my life did not turn out like hers. There needs to be a clear line between invading privacy and surveilling people, and it is hard to draw the line.

I wonder if, in the future, our life will be surveilled all the time with the omnipresence of technology.

After reading the article “It’s Not Misinformation. It’s Amplified Propaganda”, the thing that surprised me is that people are willing to spread information on social media voluntarily without confirming the authenticity of the information. I consider it highly irresponsible, we need to realize that fake information might lead to serious consequences, and social media needs to filter this unreliable information.

I wonder if in the future, social media will filtered out all the fake information, and what would it be like for us.

From all the things I learned from previous Wow and Wonder posts, I’m really interested in the incoming social media platform: the Metaverse and how will this virtual reality world influences our current life. This concept has its origin from the science fiction novel “Snow Crash” in 1992, and now the company Meta, owned by Mark Zuckerberg, is aiming to realize this platform. Before the conference of Metaverse, we have used this concept in a lot of our films and novels, for example, the film “Ready Player One” came out in 2018, it is based on this virtual reality concept. Therefore I want to talk a bit more about my thoughts on the Metaverse.

At first, I was amazed by the concept and it feels we are like getting a second life in this virtual reality world, we can practically do everything on this platform and it can benefit us in a lot of aspects: it fits great with the current pandemic time, and it can help us to do anything we want as an avatar, it can also improve homeschooling/ work from home experience with no doubt. Another important aspect is that it can definitely increase the affordability of a wide range of experiences and products, since it’s all in a virtual world, people can spend a minimal amount of currency to buy services or products that are considered luxuries in the real world. To link with what I learned in the past few weeks, with Connectivism being a new trend of learning method, I believe Metaverse can satisfy all prerequisites for this learning theory. The Metaverse is for sure a diverse and potential platform because of its variability and creativity, it is actually a combination of all existing social media platforms.

There are two sides to everything, including the Metaverse. We still have a lot of challenges we need to improve on the existing social media platforms, and one of the most important is the privacy violation. I experience privacy violations all the time, when I talk to my friend about purchasing anything on any social media platform, I will receive advertisements about the specific products later that day, it struck me how fast our information is leaked on social media. This is a serious problem and needs to be fixed as soon as possible, this is the first challenge the Metaverse will face, In Jessie’s post, she experienced identity stolen and used. In the Metaverse, it will be harder to protect users’ privacy because it’s virtual reality, and I wonder how they manage to do that. In terms of learning on the Metaverse instead of learning offline, after reading the post from Jingjing, I agree that this method is not for everybody, some people learn better in the traditional way which is learning offline, we need to find the balance of these two methods if the Metaverse comes out.

Personally, I look forward to this new social media platform, it is unlike any existing platform right now, I wonder how it will change our way of life.

The figure above is the visitors/residents map I’ve created after reading the article “Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement”. I listed most of the social media and platforms of my daily use and list them on the map according to the frequency of usage.

As for the privacy I learned from both the article and the quick test we did, I found out that while I use all the social media, I did not value my privacy enough, even though I pay a lot of attention try to protect my privacy, such as read most of the agreement before agreeing on them and etc. But as terms agreeing on cookies on each website when they first came up, I just simply on every single one for convenience. Also, I posted my pictures on social media with precise locations on them, this is also a bad move in protecting my own privacy.

After the materials we did this week, I wonder how does social media balance digital privacy vs cybersecurity?

After reading the article about Connectivism, I couldn’t agree more with the author. Technology has indeed changed our way of living: how we communicate and how we learn new things. Thus, I believe we need to adapt to this new theory of Connectivism because there is a lot of different varieties of knowledge on the Internet, for example, you might get 10 billion different search results searching for cooking recipes. We need to know how to filtrate knowledge and do not let it solidify our thinking.

I’ve born in a time when technology is not as advanced as it is right now, and all of the sudden without me realizing it, our life is filled with technology, whether it influences us in a good way also a bad way.

After reading the article “What is a Personal Learning Network”, combined with my own experience, I’m amazed by how Personal Learning Network affects and simplifies our life right now. I experience it from a time when we are mostly learning from books, school and experiences instead of digital information; however, I feel a bit sad that the process of learning is shortened way more than before, I enjoyed the time when you have to try really hard to learning something that you’re interested in bookstores.

We are doing way more on PLN platforms besides learning, and we are developing more platforms. The most recent and famous platform I’m aware of is a new social media platform called Metaverse, and people are buying and selling houses in this virtual reality world, I wonder how will it affect our current life?

Reference: https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/learning-network-age/0/steps/24644