Below are the rapporteur notes from last class. My apologies for the appearance at times, Blogger formatted it a certain way that I couldn't override.
Class presentations will be on the last day of class,
everyone will give a 5-7 minute presentation about the key data utilized,
methodology, and arguments. A Q&A period will be built in to solicit more
opinions, think of this as the peer review we did for the first paper.
Discussion of Current Events (racial tension @ University of
Missouri)- what comments can we make about our engagement with social media?
Two
people arrested after threatening comments at Mizzou
Timeline
of events before comments on Yik Yak (swastika in feces, stopping of Chancellor’s car during parade, hunger strike, football team refusing to play,
various hate acts against black students)
Hateful
comments posted after Black Anthology here at Wash U
Role of social media in helping aid revolutions (Arab Spring,
BLM) – is this revolutionary?
People are able to create
provocative posts and have discussion, but goes away as hype dies down. People
assume it’s fixed, and we need to not let the media dictate where our interests
are.
SM offers the promise to make your
message known, but there’s an ephemeral aspect to it – do we trivialize what’s
going on, or do we democratize events by allowing people to talk?
Talk about showing solidarity vs.
“actually doing something”. Disconnect between “trending” and actually connecting
people through a shared struggle. People seem to be on different sides about
this.
New meta-narrative around the
correct way to care and be socially literate.
Galvanizing nature of SM, and
knowledge gaining. People become more educated, and people are able to show emotional, spiritual support to each other.
What about the fact that we often
restrict our posts, and they don’t reach other people? What good is saying “I
agree with this political message,” is that demonstration of solidarity actually doing? How does wanting to change your scope (making it public or
private) affect anything?
Solidarity created through SM has
a purpose, whether or not it will actually be seen at Mizzou.
With anonymity, people have the ability to shout their
thoughts, and like to troll if they think there might be little consequence.
Anonymity can be beneficial, but can also be highly abused (case in StL of
mother posing as 13y/o boy and girl’s subsequent suicide)
Expectations are different according to the media used. If
we text someone something private, we might have the expectation that it would
stay that way. Technology platform creates different expectations of usage –
communication ideologies?
Regardless of the medium used, if there is trust with a
person, that is not really going to change actions. Sending pictures to someone
might seem like a good idea at the time.
Mizzou professor’s inappropriate response to concerns of
black students in light of comments and threats (threats are just bullies)
What about someone who actually might
be joking, how do we handle that? We know not to make jokes about bombs at
airports, is Yik Yak the same? We should take every post seriously, there is
the possibility that they are not joking.
Racist posts as performative, meant
to engender certain reactions and stir up the pot
Someone at Hannah’s school
sentenced for things he’d posted online (planning to blow up mall, but didn’t
have equipment – does this constitute a threat?
What
is the role of declarative announcement and online space, the catharsis seems
to be inviting, being heard and making feelings known. The formality of an
email adds to the threatening aspect.
Are people who have terrible plans
actually wondering if anyone will try to stop them?
We
should probably take seriously any kind of announcement regarding hurting mass groups of people
China: cyber-vigilantes, “human flesh search engines” people
hunt down those worthy of punishment. Duke student targeted by angry Chinese
who posted her information and forced her parents into hiding. Vilified and
portrayed by Chinese National news as “most disgusting Chinese student abroad”
Context matters when communicating, how does the form of
media change the way we engage with each other?
“You Can’t Text Message Breakup” – portrayals of anger and
revenge at being broken up with, or making fun of the response that one might
have at being broken up with. The bf was actually cyberbullied for breaking up
with the girl via text after two years.
It
matters how you end the relationship, apparently how you do it makes a big
difference.
Doing it
a certain way gets framed as cowardice, a breaching of social norms.
Breaking
up with someone before was likely a larger affair, had to be in person,
Difference in sensibilities with respect to media
ideologies: formality of emails. Seems that millennials have an idea of this
usage as more formal. Can email be too impersonal because it can be seen as too
formal, and text message might be thought of as a joke.
Theory is helpful (media
ideologies) because certain things might become outdated. How did people
experience texting as new, there wasn’t as much of a widespread consensus.
We have social media circles, and
we don’t stray outside of them as much as we might think. We develop
conventions within them, and act upon them regularly.
Broader
shared cultural phenomenon, or shared practices between a few people.
Discussions of conventions via
text and facebook, how particularized they are. They might change depending on
situation and age. People have distinctive ways of expressing themselves, and
conventional priorities. Technology and it’s the structure itself might have a
certain bearing on how we construct sentences.
Our use of technology has
interesting implications for how we engage other media which are note as
advanced, e.g. trying to touch a screen that is not a touchscreen, symbols
become detached from the thing they used to represent (floppy disk as save
icon)
The only way we have to understand
something is by the other things around it. We can only understand what it
means to be dumped by email/text/etc by understanding the other possible
options. Responses to modern media are in conversation with older ways of
communicating.
Expectation that you have to
constantly be talking because you are able to, the idea that it’s awkward when
you run out of things to say. We depend so little on proximity to our friends,
where do we still place the value of physical face-time?
What about the next generation, we
have the potential to arrive at a point where breaking up with someone via text
is acceptable, media ideologies have the potential to change.
Helen brings up the idea that it is
hard to just sit down and talk without doing anything else. Is moving forward
necessarily an evolutionary process, advancements don’t appear to strive toward
any particular end. Result of technology seems to be to make technology itself
necessary. What’s popular is what has been able to survive the market, and not
necessarily what was meant to better our lives.
Fixed: The science/fiction of human enhancement
Technology
that changes the physical being that makes you into a normative model.
Desires
of people with disability for accommodations.
Idea of disability as a social
construct, why should we view able bodies and minds as the standard by which we
judge people. This entails a paradigm shift wherein we alter explicit practices
of infrastructure and languages.
Our
conventions (“stand up for 12 hours”) are often unintentionally exclusive.
Idea that someone is completely
healthy if they don’t appear to have a physical disability. If you can’t see
it, it’s not real.
Women on PLM feel like they are not fulfilling certain roles
and thus reach out for support. Why does this space only exist online?
What happens online is still very much real, emotions
created which transfer over to the human experience.
