Name

A digital life, but FoMO

Stepping into the 21st century, technology plays a crucial role in people’s day-to-day life.

Although living a digital life certainly brings a lot of convenience and benefits to everyone, it

also comes with subtle dark aspects that are not easy to detect, Fear of Missing Out (FoMO)

being one of many. A large part of the reason for the emergence of FoMO is due to the

prompt and quick feature of social media, which provides platforms for people to share their

rewarding experiences, while others could be left out of such a journey.

An article titled ‘Motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out’

has a comprehensive view of FoMO, with the conduction of 3 studies and experiments. It

suggests that there are 5 main aspects that link closely to this phenomenon, and there is a

scientific scale to measure such emotion from individuals. This article mentioned that

individuals often assign and evaluate self-value based on whether they are invited to certain

events posted online or not, which is significantly connected to the strong engagement of

social media in the current era. Furthermore, it discussed the psychological perspective of the

rising FoMO phenomenon, that is, social media nowadays is considered as an indispensable

tool to get in touch with others, develop social competence and reinforce social links, with

the awareness of being absent from any social events, individuals will gain shallow

satisfaction from themselves and their lives. FoMO serves as a mediator which connects

lacking psychological needs to redundant social media engagement. The results from the 3

studies support their hypothesis that the phenomenon of FoMO strongly correlates to life

satisfaction, social media engagement and how FoMO is distracting teenagers and younger

adults from many aspects of their lives, based on the scientific measure of the FoMO scale.
Overall, the authors recognize social media as a ‘double-edged’ tool in society. It has

definitely improved the quality of people’s daily life to a certain extent, though it also holds

nuanced negativity. The structure of this article is clear, going in steps and depth for readers

to know more about FoMO, the language used is professional yet legible, helping readers to

better understand the concept of the article. However, it is written 10 years ago(2013), and as

the authors admit, ‘little is empirically known about FoMO at the stage’, conveying this

article provides less understanding of this phenomenon, standing today, 2023. It has

definitely offered a comprehensive approach to analysing FoMO, but more research and

studies could have been done during the 10 years, meaning a deeper understanding of this

phenomenon could be gained.

Reference

Przybylski, A. K., Murayama, K., DeHaan, C. R., & Gladwell, V. (2013). Motivational,
emotional, and behaviroal correlates of fear of missing out. Computers in Human
Behavior, 29(4),1841-1848. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.02.014
A Digital Life (Big Data): Annotated Bibliography
As continuous technological advances have dramatically reduced the cost of data storage
and computation, social concerns such as cybersecurity risks, talent gaps, and compliance
complexities have arisen with the accelerated development of big data. I am committed to
weighing the advantages and disadvantages of big data to human beings from different scopes
such as technology, society and business, and from the deeper aspects of commercial and
advertising purposes, public safety and privacy violations, endeavouring to draw conclusions
about whether big data should continue or cease to exist. (87 words)

Wieczorkowski, J., & Polak, P. (2017). Big data and privacy: The study of privacy invasion
acceptance in the world of big data. The Online Journal of Applied Knowledge
Management, 5(1), 57–71. https://doi.org/10.36965/OJAKM.2017.5(1)57-71

Wieczorkowski and Polak (2017) investigated concerns about the manipulation of big
data, specifically the use of private data for commercial and non-commercial use. Their study
with higher education students from three Polish universities in the form of paper questionnaires
included 432 respondents over five consecutive semesters. Their results, organized into three
tables, distinguished between public trust in hacking private data for commercial purposes and
state agencies. On the societal, technical, and business dimensions of big data issues, they also
provided an overview of public understanding of current public safety threats by examining the
acceptability of invading private data for various purposes (i.e., advertising, detecting of tax
avoidance and traffic violations). Overall, researchers pointed to the increased association of
technological advances with privacy concerns, concluding that consideration should be given to
assessing international background and different social groups (i.e., age, types of university), in
addition to objectives, gender, and grade categories. (150 words)
Many of the justifications presented in this article, such as "respondents have a fairly high
level of trust in the state institutions" seem to be well-executed and appropriate (p. 69). Backed
by quantitative data to eliminate all subjective assumptions, 432 college students were analyzed
to verify the public's conjectures about the hidden dangers of big data. Personally, this article
divides public concerns into three aspects: social, technical, and commercial, which is consistent
with my classification. Thus, the details inspired me to delve deeper into issues such as
establishing trust in privacy monitoring through the legal system. In terms of credibility, three
contributors (Popiołek, Jurczyk-Bunkowska, and Polak), affiliated to three reputed universities,
ensured the reliability of the collected data, and ruled out the possibility of data falsification.
Obviously, whether it is big data or digital life, its rapid development has reduced the
timeliness of statistical data. Therefore, while the researchers point out that similar
questionnaires should be distributed to the participants, this 2017 article offers no insight into
2023 as to whether people have become more tolerant or concerned about the negative effects of
big data. Moreover, the data in this article mainly comes from Poland, so whether the
conclusions can reflect the world's perspective, or generalized with that of Hong Kong is
debatable due to regional differences. (219 words)
Name
28th February, 2023
Slow City Movement and Its Impacts
The focus of this research is the Slow City movement, a movement that emerged in 1999
with the aim of balancing economic development, sustainability and preservation of local
cultures. Originated in Italy, the Slow City movement has now spread to countries around the
globe, and has revealed a new possible direction of urban development. This research mainly
aims at investigating the impact of the Slow City movement on the quality of life of local
citizens and whether Hong Kong can be developed into a Slow City to make it a better and
more liveable city.
References
Mayer, H., & Knox, P. L. (2006). Slow cities: Sustainable places in a fast world. Journal of
Urban Affairs, 28(4), 321–344. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9906.2006.00298.x
This article analysed the Slow City movement as an alternative urban development agenda
based on Campbell’s framework of interrelationship between the economy, the environment
and social equity, which is also known as Campbell’s “three-E” framework (as cited by
Mayer and Knox, 2006). Through case studies of Waldkirch and Hersbruck, two Slow Cities
in Germany, the authors explained how the concept of Slow City allows a community to
achieve economic goals while paying attention to distinctive local cultures and equity in the
society. This provides an urban development model that differs from the traditional
corporate-centered one, which can benefit the society by increasing social cohesion, ensuring
sustainable development, and thus improving the quality of life of citizens.
This article provided me with a deeper understanding of the Slow City movement, which
emphasizes not only sustainable development of the community, but also local distinctiveness,
at the cost of a slower pace of economic development. While this may seem ideal, the ideas
of Slow City may not be easily adopted in Hong Kong due to the lack of several key factors.
Firstly, the economy of Hong Kong is externally oriented due to the frequent trades with
countries around the world. Hence, Hong Kong will need to keep on increasing its global
competitiveness to sustain its economy, which unavoidably results in a focus on business
interests rather than local culture and sustainable development when it comes to policy-
making. In this sense, Hong Kong is different from Waldkirch and Hersbruck, which are
small, prosperous and self-sufficient cities that are rather independent of the external
economy, and thus can tolerate a slower pace of economic development in return for the
balance between the three-E’s. Moreover, the population of Hong Kong is heterogeneous
even within a single district, with people from different socioeconomic backgrounds living in
the same district. This, in contrast to the small and homogenous populations in Waldkirch and
Hersbruck, leads to a weaker sense of belonging of Hong Kong people towards their
community and increases the difficulty for them to cooperate and strive for the same goal of
becoming a Slow City.