“We suspend accounts that violate Twitter rules.” – Such information appeared on Donald Trump’s official profile on a social networking site. This movement essentially deprives the president of his most powerful platform, through which he reached more than 88 million viewers.
Twitter thus joined Facebook and Instagram, who had previously reported that they had blocked the president’s accounts “for an indefinite time, at least for the next two weeks until the peaceful transfer of power. Mark Zuckerberg himself informed this. The head of Facebook called the recent events on the Capitol Hill “shocking”.
For years, Twitter has been an important tool in Trump’s policy. The president had tweeted several times a day during his presidency.
Blocking an account in almost all social media channels triggered comments on freedom of speech and the role of social media in society.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is critical of the blocking of US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said in Berlin on Monday. “The right to free speech is a fundamental right. – he stressed.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador also negatively assessed the decision to ban social networking, adding that it was a “bad sign” that private companies were allowed to censor opinions.
Activist Alexei Navalny found this censorship unacceptable. He also pointed out that countries like Russia will be very eager to cite Trump’s case to show that there is nothing strange about censorship since even the US president suffered it. The Russian pointed out that the reasoning behind restricting Trump’s access is almost the same as the one the Kremlin uses against Navalny. Navalny also wrote that Trump’s blocking is the result of emotions and political preferences of social network executives.
Taking down a private Twitter account of still acting president of the US is something unprecedented and worth paying attention to. Especially while considering that it was – so far – the main way of communication with the public.
No doubts that it will trigger further discussion about the relationship between Big Tech companies and the state. Government controlling Big Tech seems not to be a good solution. Neither Big Tech controlling government (and this is how the above case may be assessed). Solution to the problem must be a balance and hopefully, it will be worked out during legislative work.
June 2020, Sony unveiled the long-awaited PlayStation 5 video game console. A month later, the brand’s competitor, Microsoft, showed the new Xbox Series X console.
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S / X pre-order openings showed next-gen consoles in high demand – store sites were struggling to keep up.
However,Some retailers have unilaterally canceled PS5 pre-orders.
The most important quality is time. Few gadgets can boast an expiration date like game consoles.For examples,smartphones come out from under the car every year, PCs replace each other every two to three years. The past generations of PlayStation and Xbox are seven years old.One of the cons is that throughout the year, both the PS5 and Xbox Series X boasted that the increased 4K display with HDR support will now hit record 8K. But for transcendental 8K, you need a plasma that is worth exorbitant money and is not sold everywhere, plus not all games that are currently in development are optimized for this resolution. That is, graphics that look more realistic than reality itself are very expensive and will not be available when it is clear.
Another innovation is the streaming service. Xbox offers Game Pass, nicknamed “Netflix for video games,” which lets you play over 100 games for $ 10 a month,but in this sony loses.
Moreover,unlike Sony, all Xbox exclusives will be available to Microsoft too, so if you have a powerful PC you won’t need a new console
XBOX is more powerful, but most people buy PS5 and this is a paradox
All in all,it is impossible to choose the definitively best next-generation console – each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The Xbox Series X is geared towards high-definition gaming with beautiful graphics and low input lag, while Sony presumably does much the same, but at a lower resolution.
European soccer leagues are losing revenue in the hundreds of millions due to the Corona pandemic. Now the leagues in Germany, Italy and Spain want to set up marketing or tech companies together with private equity firms to generate new revenue in the long term.
“There’s a lot, a lot of money in markets around the world right now. At the same time, investment opportunities are very reduced. That means capital is now actually looking for lucrative investment.”;
“In this respect, it comes as no surprise that capital providers are now entering soccer, because it naturally forms a very suitable platform internationally, on which, in addition to quite a lot of soccer, can still take place in the future. And here, international capital is looking for and finding the form of investment that promises returns in the future.”
describes Henning Vöpel, director of the Hamburg-based WeltWirtschaftsInstitut.
And meets a soccer landscape that must respond to the financial consequences of the Corona pandemic.
With the help of investors, then, among other things, revenue losses in foreign marketing are to be compensated for in the long term. Subsidiary Bundesliga International currently markets Bundesliga and 2nd League rights abroad and has suffered revenue losses due to the pandemic and changes in the market. From 250 million euros, revenues have dropped to 200 million. As a strategic development, a digital content platform is to be built to increase revenue in the long term. The expected costs are at least 200 million euros. Some of the future revenues would then have to be shared with investors. But the alternatives are significantly less attractive. Either the DFL would have to forego innovative further development. Or it would have to finance such a development from its own funds, which would mean in effect: The clubs would have to do without the income from the sale of international media rights for a season. No club can afford that at present.
The Serie A has already implement exactly this. The Italian league has sold ten percent of a newly founded marketing company for national and international media rights. The investors will pay 1.7 billion euros. For league boss Paolo Dal Pino, this investment is important for further raising the profile of the Serie A brand worldwide.
But there are also other alignments, explains economist Vöpel:
“We know that in the digital economy, in the digital economy, it’s all about data, about platform and reach, so that’s a vehicle, which doesn’t come as a surprise and that, at the same time, will certainly characterize the competition, between the leagues in the future.”
The best example is the Spanish league. The latter wants to sell shares in its subsidiary LaLiga Tech. The company offers digital services, and so far 70 other sports organizations are using the service. Among others, MotoGP promoter Dorna and the Belgian professional league are supplied with anti-piracy tools. Initial talks with the league are already underway, with investors looking to acquire up to 60 percent of LaLigaTech.
Social media became an essential habit in our everyday life over the years, a “fast world” as some may like to call it, people went from sending a letter that would take a few days to reach its destination to shooting a text that would instantly get delivered.
This obvious change revolutionized todays world with social media being around, the benefits are plenty, and a person can use the online world to their advantage, however it could be a double-edged weapon.
In todays generation it is almost unheard of to find a kid in their adolescence years without being familiar with at least one social media platform, now for younger kids, they can easily get influenced by the wrong people or “fake role models” posting their life activities online, a very good example of that is how a lot of hip hop rappers who have millions of followers on all types of platforms and the main content 90% of the times is about drugs and women, now being in a young age listening to your favorite rapper promoting drugs on his songs is fun in the beginning , but at some point in life when you are at a very low point, you might think about trying one of those pills that your favorite rapper mentioned to get you through your dark night.
Another sad reality about social media is how people became addicted to their phones, in our everyday life, all of us are seeing how people spend their few waiting minutes in a metro or it could get even worse when you see a group of friends hanging out at a restaurant for instance , and every one of them is using their phones instead of actually communicating to each others , people became obsessed with social media , it got to a point where a person would go and spend a good amount of money on some clothes just to wear them and show it off on Instagram, to impress other people. The latest study was done in the United States which shows that the average time spent daily on social media is 144 minutes per day
Social media could be very helpful if you know how to use it correctly, a lot of people are connecting how their emotions would be throughout the day depending on what they see online, it literally got to a point where Instagram can control how you feel, you can see your favorite actor posting a picture of a luxury car parked in a huge mention , and then reflect to your own life based on that , then you start feeling unsuccessful because you start comparing your life to theirs and therefore you feel depressed and unhappy, you should be in full control of your emotions.
At the age of 24 Monica Lewinsky fell in love with the wrong person (who happened to be the president of America at that time) and became the first victim of online worldwide humiliation. Her life changed overnight and created a digital revolution that controls our lives nowadays. The news were delivers only by newspapers, television and radio before that, but this story was the first one to boom online and changed our lives. She calls herself :”a patient zero of losing a personal reputation on a global scale almost instantaneously”. Even though it happened in 1998, before social media were around, people still were able to comment and share information online. She became #1 “joke” around internet and people used this story to sell newspapers and banner ads online.
She was shamed all over the world for being “that woman” and this is how cyberbullying first time ever appeared. She lost almost everything and was publicly silenced for a decade. Her friend taped their phone calls, and made the personal information they contained, a public property. There she confessed her love for the president and people made her life unbearable as they, without any compassion, used her own words against her. Since that time, any scandal was discussed online and people gathered together to ruin lives of others, that only happened to make a mistake. And when Monica was strong enough to survive this, people like Tyler Clementi finish their lives by suicide. He was only 18, when he jumped off the bridge after his private affairs with another man were filmed by his roommate and online world literally shamed him to death.
If you never experienced cyberbullying, consider yourself lucky, because around 60% of kids, teenagers and young adults experience it worldwide as of 2020 and around 6-8% of them attempt suicide. And parents usually learn about it when it is too late.
When Monica heard about Tyler’s story in 2010, she decided to do something. She became an activist to make people see cyberbullying as seriously as any other health epidemic. Not so long ago she started an anti-bullying campaigne “The Epidemic” and her campaign video helps people to see the pain caused by online harassment and how to deal with it when you are a target.
Right now online bullying takes more lives then offline, and this statistic is horrifying. A research from 2014, shows how humiliation is a more intensely felt emotion than either happiness or anger. And online, technologically enhanced shaming is amplified, unconfined and permanently accessible.
Because of the quarantine a lot of concerts are postponed or canceled altogether: venues are empty, and musicians are staying without earnings. But everything is not eternal, and this period will end someday.
In April, the charity Global Citizen and WHO hosted One World: Together At Home, an online marathon featuring performances by Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Paul McCartney and a lot more. The eight-hour broadcast was followed by users around the world and donated $ 128 million. Travis Scott gave a concert in Fortnite.
Online concerts have finally taken over the Internet and many listeners are quite satisfied with this arrangement. Often it is not just an opportunity to consider every wrinkle on the face of a favorite artist, but also to ask him a question and communicate in person. Some artists give live shows or answer questions from chats. Yes, of course, it’s impossible to recreate the atmosphere of a concert at home but no one pushes you every five minutes, trying to get closer to the stage.
The main problem with online concerts remains their monetization. Online concerts are more of a tool to ‘stay heard’. First of all, such performances provide the closeness of the audience with the artist, something for which many people go to concerts. In order to earn money from their work, artists hold closed online concerts, organize donation or perform at platforms, where you need to buy a ticket to watch the performance.
Most likely, mass events will return to our lives gradually and with an increase in the number of participants, because of this they can “spread” in time and space: take place in several days or at different sites to avoid a large crowd of people. There will be many of them is a fact. For the majority of artists, concerts are the main source of income, and we still miss live performances, although we don’t want to refuse concerts of James Blake on Instagram.
The pandemic has quickened the move towards a more computerized world and set off changes in the manner online media is utilized by individuals that are probably going to have enduring impacts.
Since the pandemic has started, most of the countries introduced lockdowns, closing down exercises that require human social gathering and interactions – including universities, schools, shopping centers, sanctuaries, workplaces, air terminals, and railroad stations and all of the entertainment places. The lockdown has brought about a great amount of people taking to the web and web based services to communicate, cooperate, and proceed with their work obligations from home. Internet providers have seen ascends in utilization from 40 % to 100 %, contrasted with pre-lockdown levels. Video-conferencing platforms like Microsoft Teams have seen a ten times increment in utilization, and content conveyance platforms like Akamai have seen a 30 % expansion in substance use (Branscombe, 2020). Urban communities like Bangalore have seen a 100 % expansion in web traffic.
Distant socialising
In these long days of “separating” orders influencing about a portion of the total populace, online platforms are presently fundamental for everyday life. Physical distancing does not necessarily mean social separating since web-based media and video-chats services enable individuals to keep in touch with loved ones.
In the previous years, many people were increasingly choosing smartphones, creating an industrywide center around mobile. Nowadays, most of the time we spend at home, with computers close nearby, people have all the earmarks of being recalling how unsavory it tends to be to squint at those little telephone screens.
Since most of the gathers have been forbidden, people all around the world are turning to web-based platforms like Netflix and YouTube, and hoping to associate with each other via web-based media sources like Facebook.
Moreover, some platforms like Netflix, have introduced new options to help household members stimulate group gatherings such as spending time together and watching a movie. Netflix Party enables people to watch together the same movie, with an option to chat while watching the film.
With the sport centers like swimming pools, gyms and fitness classes, individuals are going to platforms such as: FightCamp, Peloton, Fressi and Tonal. These kinds of websites organize fitness routines or stream fitness classes to maintain healthy and fit life, spending most of the time at home. Moreover, the engagement of streaming audio and online multi-player games is also increasing.
A generation of creators
Today’s social media is all about going viral or going home.
Discovering amusing or engaging content is the third most famous explanation we go via online media today (33%), simply behind occupying save time (34%). As it could be seen in the chart below, this concrete motivation is mainly cited by the younger generation – Gen Z (40%) – however it is also popular with millennials (35%).
The possibility of social channels advancing into entertainment platforms is something that is known for a long time, however the flare-up has moved the concentrate away from simply watching it, to users likewise making it.
Making and uploading short recordings on social media platforms like TikTok is one of only a few online practices quickened by COVID-19 that has seen expanded engagement since the pandemic started in April.
Commonly, the primary group of users is intended for Gen Z, however the TikTok has also attracted a more diversified audience. More and more parents are creating as well as uploading videos with their children.
When parents join their kids in creating the videos, they bond with them, which is one of the reasons why the prevalence of family content is expanding on TikTok. Domino’s virtual film celebration crusade, which prizes fans for making home recordings, is a great representation of how brands can take advantage of this pattern.
Working and learning
As organizations were advised to shut down their physical offices and employees were advised to stay in their homes, numerous organizations rushed to implement the virtual working environment platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. Although not every work can be done remotely, these services enable many firms to keep operating during these difficult times.
The new way of learning has been changing the manner in which education is conveyed over the previous decade, change has been moderate and eLearning apparatuses have normally increased conventional ways to deal with instruction at most schools as opposed to supplanting them. Since all schools at all stages have been forced to close, e-learning is rapidly turning into the essential methods for education.
What is the future of the digital world?
It is well understood that a pandemic has its serious consequences, including changing the political form of the world and decimating domains. The digital economy and digitalisation have been developing so quickly and changed how we carry on with our lives in basic manners that it’s anything but difficult to underestimate it. Moreover, the effect of the coronavirus crisis will have severe consequences, however online platforms have offered many new options to adapt to the situation that a lot of them are proceeding to work. How this whole situation plays out is mostly dependent how people will respond to forming of the arising trends.
Bibliography
De’, Rahul, et al. “Impact of Digital Surge during Covid-19 Pandemic: A Viewpoint on Research and Practice.” International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier Ltd., 9 June 2020, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7280123/.
Koeze, Ella, and Nathaniel Popper. “The Virus Changed the Way We Internet.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 Apr. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/07/technology/coronavirus-internet-use.html.
Phill White Research Scientist Global X-Network. “How Digital Platforms Are Helping Us Manage through the Coronavirus.” Platform Value Now, 20 Apr. 2020, platformvaluenow.org/signals/how-digital-platforms-are-helping-us-manage-through-the-coronavirus/.
Trifonova, Viktoriya. “How Coronavirus Has Changed The Way We Use Social Media.” GWI, 13 Aug. 2020, blog.globalwebindex.com/chart-of-the-week/social-media-amid-the-outbreak/.
Reading Time: 2minutesImage of the “Ares Station” of Astroland in a cave in Cantabria.
Astroland, the Spanish company offers astronauts a station that emulates life on Mars inside a cave in Cantabria Bringing a human being to Mars is the next milestone in aerospace research, a goal taken very seriously by entrepreneurs such as Tesla Elon Musk’s founder, who plans to send people to the red planet in six years with his company SpaceX and claims he is selling properties to finance the construction of a future human city on Mars.
The Spanish company Astroland has taken another step forward, building a permanent station that emulates the living conditions that astronauts will have to face on Mars inside a large cave 1.2 kilometers long and 50 kilometers high located in the Cantabrian municipality of Arredondo.
“In less than 6 years people will be able to travel to Mars”
Elon Musk
Since then, they have been carrying out different “missions” with different objectives in areas as different as engineering, biology or psychology, since they also put a lot of emphasis on the psychological preparation of the astronauts who will have to survive for a long time in an isolated space.
“This gives them a unique vision to attack Earth’s problems from a different point of view, and develop products and services that not only serve to survive on Mars, but to improve life on our planet. Space exploration fosters innovation”.
One of Astroland’s objectives is to convert its experiences into technology transfer projects in which research can be carried out into products and services applicable to the market, from which projects such as ‘Cyberhut’ housing, a model of environmentally friendly housing, autonomous on an energy level and with technology to control the health of its inhabitants, whose first prototype is being built in Cantabria and will be available at its headquarters in Santander.
Participants in one of the first missions organized by Astroland.
“With this project we want to bring to market everything we have learned about healthy habitats, about generating and storing energy, recycling waste, multifunctional spaces … All this has been reflected in a house that is manufactured differently from how it is done in the market; they say. Whose objective is that these homes can be deployed in several points, so that the user pays for a service that allows you to use the different sites at will.
During quarantine many people started doing many creative things, one of them was TikTok.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a social media application, targeting the age group 13-20. The main function is creating and posting short videos from 15 or 60 seconds long, with the content which is creative, educational, funny and emotional. It was established by the Chinese company ByteDance in September 2016.
Why is it so popular?
TikTok is skyrocketing its popularity among generations. It is easy to use and create short videos.
Celebrity endorsements – several celebrities, including Jimmy Fallon, have helped drive TikTok’s popularity
Localized content – the app often runs local contests and challenges and captures local trends using localized hashtags.
But most importantly, TikTok is very entertaining, so many people are not posting but only watching. You can find everything you are interested in. TikTok contain:
Many funny videos to brighten your day
Dancers and singers so you can enjoy some art (especially during COVID-19 times)
Educational and craft videos to learn something new
And much more.
Why is TikTok is so addictive?
TikTok has a special algorithm to chose videos you will enjoy based on your history, likes and followers. Moreover, the app s very easy to use, and you see so many exciting videos, but you never knew what is coming next. Last but not least, the videos are short, compact and brief.
Especially in these times, mobile phones, tablets and computers have become an integral part of our lives. Today, for many people, whether through quarantine or fear for themselves or their loved ones, they have become the only connection to the outside world.
In the 1990s, many people already had a mobile phone, this technology was becoming increasingly popular, computers became more and more popular at the same time and the Internet became more widespread. This led to the fact that in 2019 in Poland, as many as 70.5% of Poles used the Internet and 91.2% have mobile access to the network.
What are New Media?
In simple terms, these include social media, web portals, emails and other such tools. What makes them stand out from traditional media is that in the new media the situation changes very quickly and after just five or ten minutes the situation may be completely different, which means that knowledge-hungry teenagers by nature often check what new things have come up in the case they are currently following. This is because, unlike traditional media, thousands, if not millions, of people have access to constant monitoring and participation in an event on an ongoing basis. Permanent access to commenting on an event and engaging in dialogue about it makes it difficult for someone who is interested in a topic to ‘unseal’ from the monitor.
Teenagers “let in” on the Internet
On average, the young man spent three hours a day surfing the net. In a study carried out by CEBOS in 2013, 20% used the net one hour a day, 28% two hours, 22% three hours and 21% four to five hours. However, an alarming number of hours, with between six and eight hours a day, were spent by 7% of the young people surveyed, while 2% spent an alarming nine or even more hours. In 2019, the NASK Institute conducted a study entitled ‘Teenagers 3.0’ conducted in Polish primary, lower secondary and upper secondary schools, from which it obtained the following results: In 2019, an average teenager spends more than four hours a day online. For this purpose, he usually uses a smartphone, without which many young people currently cannot imagine life. The results of these studies can be seen in the diagram below.
When putting these studies together, it is not difficult to see that the percentage of teenagers spending between 6 hours and 8 hours or more online has increased dramatically compared to the 2013 study.
Dependence on New Media
Referring to the same NASK study from 2019, almost 60% of young Poles browse social media, almost 19% of news and about 18% of mail. Using social media is one of the higher scores in the survey, only listening to music (65.4%), watching movies and series (62.1%) and contacting loved ones through chat rooms and communicators (61%) were higher. All these studies only show how long the Internet and its capabilities can hold us together. It is appalling that 12% of the teenagers surveyed spend eight hours or more on the internet, given that this is one of the first generations to be born in the age of the widespread and so developed internet. What makes teenagers addicted to the most is the social networking sites where they browse all the videos and memes, all kinds of online games (I used to play a lot of MMO RPGs myself), different chats and many more.I use social networking sites quite a lot myself, I browse through memes and write with friends and for the time lost before this type of entertainment I don’t even look at it so I don’t know how much I spend on it.
