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Publications

10/1/2021

NEW! SumOfUs. (2021). Eating disorders, plastic surgery, and skin whitening on Instagram: How young people are exposed to toxic content.

Choi, G. Y. (2021). Splashing pink in technology: Highlighting young women's participation and motivation in social media production. The Journal of Social Media in Society. htts://www.thejsms.org/index.php/TSMRI/article/view/615

Choi, G. Y., & Behm-Morawitz, E. (2020). Discovering hidden digital producers: Understanding motivation and creativity in social media production. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. doi: 10.1037/ppm0000240

Choi, G. Y. (2019). Transitioning from apps to apportunities for students: Examining the educational value of app production. The Journal of New Media & Culture, 11(1). http://ibiblio.org/nmediac/2019/appstoapportunities/index.html

Choi, G. Y. (2018). Learning through digital storytelling: Exploring entertainment techniques in lecture video. Educational Media International. doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2018.1439710

Choi, G. Y. & Lewallen, J. M. (2017). “Say Instagram, kids!”: Examining sharenting and children’s digital representations on Instagram. The Howard Journal of Communications. doi: 10.1080/10646175.2017.1327380

Choi, G. Y. & Behm-Morawitz, E. (2017). Giving a new makeover to STEAM: Establishing YouTube beauty gurus as digital literacy educators through messages and effects on viewers. Computers in Human Behavior, 73, 80-91. dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.034

Behm-Morawitz, E., Choi, G. Y. & Miller, B. (2017). Psychological perspectives on the impact of marketing and media on ethnic groups. In A. Blum (Ed.), Social issues in living color: Challenges and solutions from the perspective of ethnic minority psychology (pp. 283-304). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.

Choi, G. Y. & Behm-Morawitz, E. (2016). Teach me about yourself(ie): Exploring selfie-takers’ technology usage and digital literacy skills. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. doi:10.1037/ppm0000130

Choi, G. Y. (2016). “Who run the music? Girls!”: Examining the construction of female digital musicians’ online presence. Popular Music & Society, 40(4). doi:10.1080/03007766.2016.1174419

Behm-Morawitz, E., Lewallen, J., & Choi, G. (2016). A second chance at health: How a 3D virtual world can improve health self-efficacy for weight loss management among adults. Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 19(2), 74-79. doi:10.1089/cyber.2015.0317

Choi, G. Y. (2015). Book Review: The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World, by Howard Gardner and Katie Davis. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 92(3), 755-757. doi:10.1177/1077699015595634e

The dark side to prosumption

2/26/2015

I feel for companies. From a business perspective, it’s hard to get people’s attention these days because of digital media. People no longer rely on one medium, such as a television or a magazine, to be exposed to products. They have various social networking sites, such as Groupon, Yelp, and FourSquare, to help them decide on which products to consume. One of the concepts that stood out the most from this topic is prosumers. Tapscott and Williams describes presumption as the blur between consumers and producers (p.125). People no longer just accept advertisements and buy products, but they actively participate in providing product feedback and even engage in product productions through social networking sites. This is good. It demonstrates people’s power, and Jenkins’ concept of participatory culture. However, although it is easy to see positive sides to prosumers, there are a few concerns of being prosumers that should be explored.

To demonstrate this point, I want to bring up an example of YouTube beauty gurus. They are prosumers because they often do vlogs about product usages and opinions. The problem can occur when they get sponsorships from companies and/or when they develop their own products. Sometimes, companies send products to these gurus in hopes that they will make a video about them. Companies like to use these gurus because they can target specific audience and are cheaper than making advertisements. Even though there are YouTube beauty gurus who provide honest reviews on products, they might hesitate to give negative reviews because they might not get another sponsors. This can affect them because some gurus make living out of making videos and getting sponsorships. And there are YouTube beauty gurus who make their own products. For example, Michelle Phan (see the pic below) is one of the most popular YouTube beauty gurus, and she collaborated with L’Oreal to produce her makeup line called “em.” Some fans loved it, but other fans criticize her for becoming mainstream and materialistic. Altogether, these incidents all question whether prosumers are all working for companies at the end. Through sponsorships and creating their products, they are losing their authentic voices. They are basically becoming one of them (as in companies who aim to make money). Yes, we live in a capitalistic society; however, I feel like as people become immerse in prosumption, it’s very easy to forget your true motives and selves. In doing so, they are producing and selling same messages to consumers. I personally don’t find anything new or original about Phan’s “em” line. Knowing that she is a YouTube beauty guru who started out as an underdog, I was expecting something more out of her. I think she’s promoting the same messages of consumerism and how beauty is important. I give her mad propz for self-managing her career, but there are so many flaws to her line (e.g., overpriced, same color, similar designs). I believe she lost her voice as a YouTube beauty guru who was trying to defend beauty consumers and express their opinions against corporate beauty companies.

Another problem to prosumption is that it can threaten people’s identities. In Brown’s article, he talked about a made identity, which is defined as “the one you create for yourself” (p.32). Being prosumers requires people to take on another identity. I’m sure many prosumers have other real jobs. I follow numerous YouTube beauty gurus, and not all of them make YouTube videos for living. Thus, since they have virtual and real identities, and these identities intersect, how would they manage to distinguish their authentic self? Some YouTube beauty gurus are young as high school students. For these young people whose identities are growing and constantly constructed, wouldn’t they have a harder time to discover their true identity? Are they training themselves to become materialistic at an early age?

I guess my overall concern is that without proper guidance, being prosumers can be a way to lose one’s self into a materialistic world. One can argue that prosumption is a way to fight against companies and provide honest feedback to consumers. However, at the time, it’s easy to become one of them. Thus, how can we protect our authentic selves and protect ourselves from becoming corporatized when there are so many temptations (video views, sponsorships, likes)? I’m sure these questions do not have clear-cut answers, and they can illustrate that digital media can be a gray area for people.

Hm... Am i a Gamer?

2/15/2015

After getting my first computer when I was 6th grade, the first game I got into was Neopets (good old days…). Neopets is a virtual pet website. The graphic was not 3D unlike virtual world websites, such as Second Life, but it was 2D. I don’t use it now, but it was very easy to navigate back then. The pets were not ordinary, and they consisted of dragons and monsters (see the picture below). You earned points by playing games, and you used the points to feed/dress your pet. I guess I continued to use this site back then because I was pretty lonely. I just came to US, I didn’t speak English, and both of my parents worked. Thus, it did fulfill my loneliness and kill some time. I don’t play it now; however, this doesn’t mean my life is full of life right now, I guess I grew out of the game. Another game that I got into was those room decorating apps. I enjoy designing, and I always imagine what my ideal office or bedroom would look like. So that was fun… But I grew out of them quickly as well. This doesn’t mean I am currently super rich and have my ideal rooms. So the question is why? Even though there are so many gamers out there, and for someone who knows various appeals of games, why am I not a gamer?

In Proteus Paradox, the author explained various reasons why gamers play games. These reasons consist of having a sense of progress, getting social recognition, being powerful, understanding and dissecting rules, and using it for escapism (p. 30). Moreover, applying operant conditioning, players are motivated by rewards given in the game (p. 39). They also play to achieve and socialize with other people (P. 74). I think these reasons are general enough that they also apply to why people use social media. In social media, people can get social recognition by getting numerous likes or retweets. They can also escape from real lives by joining fan communities. For me, social media appeals to me more because it is more realistic (?!) and apply to my life. One of the reason why I stopped playing games online is that I realized that these points are not real, and I could’ve spend these hours producing something tangible. It could be also that these virtual worlds and/or video games do not immerse me because maybe they do not have narratives or aesthetics that engage me. I tried Second Life for a study, and I didn’t like how characters looked. Also, it didn’t have an actual story for me. People craft their stories online, but I didn’t know what my story was in this place. It’s not that I don’t like games, but I’m not engaged enough to call myself a gamer.

However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t see any benefits of virtual worlds and video games. There are so many! I can especially how these platforms can also enhance current education so students can have more fun with their educational materials. I was especially intrigued by an article that explained how one professor used Angry Birds to teach students about physics. Now, that’s a creative use of gamification. I think in the end, if virtual worlds and video games can expand more to other areas, such as education, to affect people’s real lives, there would be more gamers.

Re-Capturing culture through archives and interactivity

2/10/2015

It’s kind of funny and ironic. I tend to study topics that portray why Internet is full of rainbows and unicorns (e.g., creativity, education), but when it comes to critically analyzing digital media, I tend to be skeptical and cynical. Today’s question comes from whether new media technologies have the abilities to capture culture. I tend to stay away from discussing about cultures because I don’t want to frame myself as a cultural scholar (I think people assume that because of my racial identity), but I think this is an important issue to talk about. When I’m talking about culture, I’m more concerned about exposing people to diverse racial cultures through media. I don’t know if this is because I’m currently living in U.S., but media tends to be westernized. This concept can cause ethnocentrism in which people think western culture is the best and dominant over other cultures. Thus, it is important to expose people to different cultures. From this week’s readings, this can be done through archives and interactivity.

Gane and Beer stated that archives help to transition between public and private spaces (p. 74). Culture can solely exist in private spaces (I’m sure there are still gazillion cultures we don’t know about), but it can also be in public spaces due to new media technologies. By archiving pictures and narratives from different countries, people can represent diverse cultures online. Although Bauman argues that archives are about creating individualizations, they still represent different cultural communities. Moreover, cultural communities have consistent messages and themes that one person’s posting can represent a certain community.

People can also immerse in different cultures through interactivity. Gane and Beer insisted that people should look at interactivity beyond technologies and think of it as social/psychological interactions. One of the approaches to the concept of interactivity explained that interactivity provides a chance for people to engage in interpersonal communication (p. 97). This is certainly true. Because of media convergence, people from all over the world are virtually living in one digital space. Thus, whether it is through social media or news, people can talk about different countries/cultures online. Through these discussions, people can create a greater understanding of each other.

Now this is where Grace’s skepticism comes from: I don’t think it’s possible to “capture” culture. Even though Internet has been framed as a democratic space, it is still constructed by authorities. Whether those authorities are media institutions or dominant countries, cultures are selectively represented. I agree with Gane and Beer when they talked about the issues of power/knowledge and inclusion/exclusion (p. 84). There are always going be those with and without power, which means that representations of cultures depend on who frames them. If Facebook decides to shut down tomorrow, what will happen? When I’m talking about power, it can be simple as those who have the technology skills to post content online. I think older generations can explain more authentic cultural perspectives than younger generations. However, older generations might not have up-to-date skills to use technologies to archive content or interact with others to tell them about their cultures. I think this can lose cultural authenticities. I do think that we are still even struggling to increase the representations of minority cultures in media, but we should start thinking about if archives and interactivity are enough to capture people’s beautiful cultures.

However, this does not mean we are hopeless. Little by little, culture can be captured. This is where the participatory culture comes into play; I’m fascinated by the recent (?!) phenomenon of racebending existing media characters (see the example below). Through recreating these westernized characters, other people can attempt to capture cultures. However, even for this “Racebent Disney,” the creator is White. Thus, my hope is that more non-Whites can participate in archiving and interactivity to represent their cultures (tell that to myself, right?).

Bring digital revolution to our education!

2/3/2015

I'm really interested in how digital media can reform our educational system. I love digital media because it is full of creativity and fun things! So why not use it to change our educational system so students can learn better? Thus, the question is: how can computer-mediated communication (CMC) be utilized in educational settings? Whether it is student/teacher interaction or student/student interaction, education has relied on face-to-face (FTF) communication to sustain these interactions. However, as technologies expand and advance, online classes are blooming, and they show a possibility of replacing traditional education. One of the advantages of CMC in online classes would be when Ho and McLeod talked about the “equalization effect” phenomenon (Siegel et al., 1986). People might speak out more in CMC discussions because their status differences are not nearly visible as when they are engaged in FTF discussions. I think people would notice their status differences more today because CMC discussions often happen through using our social media identities. Anyhow, as someone who was very shy in high school days, I also would have preferred CMC discussions back then because I was too intimidated by others to speak up. However, I think this brings up an important self-development issue. Yes, students might talk more online, but in return, they might be missing out on learning social skills they need when they go out into the society. People skills are important when you are meeting new people, and through overcoming obstacles in FTF situations, young people can learn to deal with various people. Don’t get me wrong. I love CMC, but this might be “cop-out” for students. Perhaps, this favorability over CMC discussions can suggest educators that they need to find different ways to encourage those “shy” people to talk in classes.

Another advantage of CMC discussions can be explained through Media Richness Theory. This theory focuses on a medium and how its speed and abilities can transmit messages more effectively. These days, online communication can happen in various ways. People can communicate through avatars (e.g., Second Life), videos (e.g., YouTube), and photos (e.g., Instagram). Because each site has its unique features, people can take advantage of them to creatively communicate their messages. This is perhaps why many current educators are fond over incorporating Twitter to encourage more student interactions with educational materials. Although educators’ efforts to expand their interactions with students online should be applauded, people should develop an actual guidelines and creative curricula to structure these CMC discussions. I feel like educators often “jump on a bandwagon” to incorporate social media into their classrooms because it is trendy. However, just using a YouTube video in classroom lacks creativity. There are so much potential in these media to do more than to create a CMC discussion.

In the end, there are many positive characteristics on using CMC discussions in education. However, we are still too far from replacing CMC discussions to FTF discussions. Therefore, there is a need for more explorations. Perhaps, representative students and educators can come together to think of creative ways on how to blend CMC and FTF communications together to reform our current educational system.