I struggled with seeing myself as an online publisher. Publication prior to this course felt very creative to me, such as the creation of a book and all the processes that go into releasing such a creative venture into the world. For my entire life, many made the assumption that due to the ferocious amount of reading I did, that naturally I must have this burning desire to write a novel of my own. I have never been the creative type through. I have never been what Debbie Chachra describes as a “maker” (Chachra). I am not a maker, I critique, and I comment, but I never have and probably never will create my own story. This lack of creation does not mean I am not my own publisher though. Reviews are an integral aspect of the book publishing industry as coming from my own experience as a reader a company’s marketing strategy has to be creative and enthralling to hook me into picking up one of their latest releases, whereas certain reviewers I trust to the utmost degree and I would read absolutely anything they would recommend without question.

Shaping my online publication did not just occur in the blogosphere rather all aspects of my internet experience underwent an evolution. Over the years I had built my own “personal cyberinfrastructure” (Campbell) which encompasses everything I have cultivated online, which is grown to encompass more than just my love of reading, but also some of my passions such as history and U.S. politics. It has been over the course of the semester that my “personal cyberinfrastructure” was honed into representing who I am online specifically into my online brand, ClaryNathanWill. My brand is centred around my love of New Adult literature and my desire to decrease the stigma surrounding the genre through introducing readers to the genre and making them fall in love with it through my reviews and recommendations. My online publication occurs through multiple channels from Twitter, to Instagram, to Goodreads, and to my blog which will all assist me in achieving my goals of decreasing stigma and increasing readership of New Adult books.

Through all the channels that showcase my online self, I have built and cultivated an audience. Tara Chittenden discusses female teen identity and the blogosphere she specifically looks at “the importance dialogic interaction with other bloggers for how teens come to understand their own identity and cultural tastes” (Chittenden, 505). I cannot deny that who I am as a person has been shaped by the internet and the interactions I have on multiple platforms. Growing up with the internet informed my interactions on it, causing me to be honest and open with people online. Therefore, I have been open with my cultivated audience as well. There is an intrinsic trust within the New Adult book community, as the topics are taboo, and some readers are more comfortable than others about declaring their love for the genre outside of safe spaces online such as the many Facebook groups set up by authors for their fans. There are many authors within the genre that write under pseudonyms in order to keep their work from falling into the hands of their family members and friends. The majority of the community, and those who take in my content whether it be blog posts, or tweets are primarily not teens, but I am still and in my last year of my teens I have really come to understand my identity through interactions within the online community I am a part of. With continuing my blog, I hope to create another safe space for new adult readers, young and old and to be a place for the breaking down of the stigma, a place where more and more readers can be more comfortable with expressing their passion for new adult literature.

My public did not just extend to fellow fans of New Adult books, but to the authors themselves. The course concepts that have stuck with me the most have been the aspects of John Suler’s Online Disinhibition Effect. The effect of minimizing authority (Suler), is most applicable to my audience. I have interacted with authors both in public and online, both circumstances have had varied results. It took meeting my favourite author Cassandra Clare three times in order for me to speak coherent sentences to her. Online through I have interacted with her and many other authors easily, using both Twitter and Facebook. As both my public and blog grow, I hope to speak with even more authors and thanks to the effect of minimizing authority many of the roadblocks that existed before the internet will not stop the flow of conversations online between readers and authors.

The work I have done the last semester in growing my online self, my online publication and my online brand is work I will continue. I was blogging before this semester started and I intend to keep blogging for years to come. I have always desired to help others find books to fall in love with, and blogging will help achieve this goal. My blogging goals consist of continuing to post regularly into 2019 and to start a series of weekly wraps up in order to review even more books alongside the ARC reviews that I have been doing for months. When it comes to reviewing, I am so grateful for all the opportunities I have had and I cannot wait to review even more amazing books next year.

Bibliography

Debbie Chachra. 2015. “Why I Am Not a Maker.” http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/why-i-am-not-a-maker/384767/

Gardner Campbell. 2009. “A Personal Cyberinfrastructure.” EDUCAUSE Review 44 (5). http://er.educause.edu/articles/2009/9/a-personal-cyberinfrastructure

John Suler. 2004. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” Available from: Cyberpsychology & behaviour 7.3 (2004): 321-326. http://truecenterpublishing.com/psycyber/disinhibit.html

Tara Chittenden. 2010. “Digital dressing up: modelling female teen identity in the discursive spaces of the fashion blogosphere.” Journal of Youth Studies http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13676260903520902

The post Essay #2: My Publishing, Blogging, and Online Journey appeared first on ClaryNathanWill.

This democratic dialogue that existed in the first place, was born out of widespread access to social media. John Suler writes on the online disinhibition effect, and how it presents itself in two ways, benign and toxic. Someone can choose to either put the good or bad parts of themselves online. Being the evil version of yourself is easier on the internet, you have the anonymity and invisibility that is unavailable to you in face to face interactions (Suler). The concept of the minimization of authority has had the greatest effect on how dialogue is facilitated online. No hierarchy exists online (Suler), as long as someone articulates themselves they can hold their own in an online discourse with anyone, even with the leader of their country.

In Myanmar, an extreme example of toxic disinhibition occurred as many used the internet as a means to incite violence. As the internet has become more accessible for all Burmese, officials have used Facebook to encourage violence against the Rohingya minority. In the Burmese case, Facebook was used to aggravate and incite a genocide through the use of sham accounts and false stories attacking the Rohingya.

Within the borders of Myanmar live a Muslim minority group, the Rohingya. The Rohingya have been settled in Burma dating back to the seventh century (Charney). Myanmar being a primarily Buddhist country, there has always been tensions between the rival religious sects for centuries. The last few decades the lives of Rohingya have worsened as the government has denied them citizenship, forcibly seized their lands, and inflicted violence (Charney). These actions have ultimately led many to flee Myanmar into neighbouring Bangladesh, a state that is unable to provide for the immense number of refugees.

Ethnic tensions have reached a new low in Burma, as a campaign of ethnic cleansing was launched against the Rohingya. Over seven hundred thousand had fled across the border by the end of 2017, fleeing from massacre, rape, and arson inflicted by both large mobs and regiments of soldiers (Beech). It is estimated that thousands of people have died as Rohingya villages were burned to the ground, as a means to eliminate both the Rohingya people and to erase them from Burmese history, by destroying their homeland (Beech). Instances of massacre and arson are increasing as the anti-Muslim, anti-Rohingya message is spread online. It was social media, specifically Facebook that gave extremists the platform to bolster their support and to spread Islamophobia across all of Burma (Ghodes). Facebook sees this exploitation from extremists due to the way internet was implemented in Myanmar.

The rapid introduction of the internet in Myanmar has had dire consequences. Places where the internet has not existed or has not been in widespread use, see more immediate effects on political, social, and cultural issues when compared to areas that see a gradual introduction of both the internet and social media platforms. In the Burmese case in 2014, less than one percent of the population had access to the internet, and then Facebook was introduced (Ghodes). This introduction saw ten million users a month on the Facebook site and around twenty percent of the population was online in just a few years (Ghodes). The spread of the internet and of Facebook occurred in tandem causing the confusion of many Burmese who actually believe Facebook is the internet, rather than just a small part of the large entity (Mozur). Facebook and other social media became a place for organization and mobilization, as radical ideas spread and galvanized people into joining the mobs that threaten the existence of all Rohingya in Myanmar.

Facebook has made an attempt to squash the hate speech proliferated on their platform. In the summer of 2018, many military and religious leaders were banned for committing or enabling “serious human rights abuses in the country” (Beech and Nang). Facebook was forced to do this as human rights groups blamed the platform for enabling propaganda that encouraged the violence against the Rohingya The propaganda campaign consisted of fake names and sham accounts that were run by hundreds of military officers who acted as online trolls (Mozur).

The response by the majority of the Burmese which many posted onto Facebook itself ironically, was that a boycott of Facebook should occur, asking many to question whether or not Burmese Facebook was creating a democratic space for dialogue. Most importantly the examination of whether or not space should be allowed for hate speech and xenophobic language in internet dialogues. Ultimately many in Myanmar believe the government of the day, which insists that the United Nations and many other countries around the world have fabricated the genocidal massacres that have caused hundreds of thousands to flee to Bangladesh (Beech and Nang). Many also believe that it is non-Rohingya who are being persecuted as many of the troll accounts circulated sham photos of the evidence of Rohingya-perpetrated massacres (Mozur). In reality, there are no groups of Rohingya retaliating in this fashion. Both the denial and the victim blaming are common traits among groups of genocide perpetrators, as a means to justify their actions.

As Facebook cracks down of these troll accounts, Myanmar is seeing an increase in users of VKontakte, more commonly known as VK, a social network that is very popular in Russia. In other countries, VK is actually banned due to its pro-Russian nature (Beech and Nang). A former presidential adviser named U Nay Zin Latt summed it up best when he encouraged the Burmese to “Move to VK, which is suitable for nationalists [and to] leave dictator Facebook” (Beech and Nang). The perception of Facebook in Myanmar is that it fails the task of the internet which is to allow for all dialogue, even posts that are false, and incite violence.

The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar has issued a report calling for the U.N. Security Council to refer this case to the International Criminal Court, and for the court to set up an international tribunal. This tribunal would investigate accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing in a similar fashion to the proceedings of the tribunals set up after the genocides in Rwanda and in former Yugoslavia (Cumming-Bruce). Besides these suggestions, no further action has occurred, and many countries refuse to acknowledge the genocide occurring in Burma. Even with Facebook banning those on their platform who incite violence through hate speech, xenophobia is increasingly difficult to banish from the wider internet. Through the use of other platforms such as VK in Myanmar’s case, the internet there will remain a place for all dialogue, even if it promotes genocide.

Bibliography

Beech, Hannah. “Year after Rohingya Massacres, Top Generals Unrepentant and Unpunished.” The New York Times [New York], 25 Aug. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/world/asia/rohingya-myanmar-ethnic-cleansing-anniversary.html?module=inline. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.

Beech, Hannah, and Saw Nang. “In Myanmar, a Facebook Blackout Brings More Anger than a Genocide Charge.” The New York Times [New York], 31 Aug. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/world/asia/myanmar-genocide-facebook-military.html?module=inline&login=email&auth=login-email. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.

Charney, Michael W. “ROHINGYA.” Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, p. 94. Gale Virtual Reference Library, go.galegroup.com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/ps/retrieve.do?resultListType=RELATED_DOCUMENT&userGroupName=sfu_z39&inPS=true&contentSegment=9780684314198&prodId=GVRL&isETOC=true&docId=GALE|CX3403702528. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.

Cumming-Bruce, Nick. “Myanmar Generals Should Face Genocide Charges over Rohingya, U.N. Says.” The New York Times [New York], 27 Aug. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/08/27/world/asia/myanmar-rohingya-genocide.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.

Gohdes, Anita R. “Studying the Internet and Violent Conflict.” Conflict Management and Peace Science, vol. 35, no. 1, 2018, pp. 90-106. SAGE Journals Online, http://journals.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/doi/full/10.1177/0738894217733878 Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.

Mozur, Paul. “A Genocide Incited on Facebook, with Posts from Myanmar‘s Military.” The New York Times [New York], 15 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html?module=inline. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.

Suler, John. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” Cyberpsychology & Behaviour, vol. 7, no. 3, 2004, pp. 321-26, truecenterpublishing.com/psycyber/disinhibit.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2018.

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