Class dates 2/21 and 2/23

The reading "How Black Lives Matter Uses Social Media to Fight the Power" was interesting because it paralleled with what I've learned in Africana Studies classes (AFAS) and also provided a bridge between the past and the preset. The professors in these AFAS classes stated when slavery was legal, it was illegal for Black people to congregate in groups and testify against white people in civil cases. Even in criminal cases, where they were allowed to testify, the likelihood of a Black person receiving a good verdict was extremely low. These laws were enforced to prevent violent uprisings and continue their oppression of people of African descent, enslaved or not. My professor also said that many white Southerners (especially politicians, who were very often plantation owners) believed that a race war would break out if Black people were not subdued. 

It was sad, albeit not surprising, to see that these old laws were in place in the 1960's, as seen in the Black population's need for a WATS line to organize their protests. I'm glad that the technology exists today for groups of all types to communicate and video tape their interactions with police officers. While most of the interactions that I have had with police officers have been fine, I have experienced one situation where I was scared and alone with one in a vacant lot in rural Virginia. I cannot imagine what it must be like for somebody that encountered racism and discrimination to go through much higher levels of fear and threat upon their personal safety on a consistent basis. Again, I am glad that body cameras are being used and I hope that everybody that feels in danger uses a car camera to protect themselves. My friend, whose Dad was a cop, told me that asking for their badge number might also cause them to change their behavior towards you.  There are a lot of good cops out there but the bad ones are the most memorable.

We also read Anti-racist Activism and the Transformational Principles of Hashtag Publics- from #HandsUpDontShoot to #PantsUpDontLoot, which discusses the flexibility of hashtags. It seems that the main point of this paper is to keep in mind that hashtags increase visibility to the public and it draws attention from a wide variety of people. Unfortunately, in this case it allowed bigots to publicly attack a peaceful equal rights movement.

We also read about Karpf, who explained how online organization changes politics. I thought Karpf was insightful and his three claims aligned with the movement that I wrote about (the Umbrella Movement). Below is a copy of Karpf's 3 main claims (via Dr. Daly on D2L): 

"Three claims by Karpf of how online organizing has changed politics

1st claim - organizing without organizations (organization or a specific group are not needed to assemble people)

2nd claim - clicktivism or slacktivism; no real effect on US politics?

3rd claim that Karpf is making - New media leads to advocacy groups that are lightweight, fast, difficult to attack, and easy to reassemble under new organizational names or leaders or places"

Below is a video made to recap the Umbrella movement:

Here is a video made by the organizers themselves. It's interesting to see how they used media to inspire change

Thanks and have a great day! 

Class dates 2/14 and 2/16

This week we read Where is Black Lives Matter Headed? by Jelani Cobb examines the Black Lives Matter movement. It states that there is a lack of unity amongst Civil Rights groups that primarily advocate for Black rights. I thought it was interesting that Black Lives Matter did not want to work with Obama because they believed that he did not address important issues, such as police brutality. I think that differing mentalities and methods of achieving ones goal is an important facet of group development that is easy to forget about because it is not covered very much in Tuckman's Stages of Group Development or Communities of Practice. 

A Black Lives Matter protest that hashtags helped organize

The lack of a figurehead and "hierarchal structure" of Black Lives Matter also puts it at odds with "old-school" civil rights movements. The lack of centralized leadership that the Black Lives Matter movement utilized has proven to be a double-edged sword. A positive aspect of decentralized leadership is that they can "catalyze a movement in our own community.” Centralized leadership from Jesse Jackson has also been rejected by the youth of the Black Lives Movement because they believed that he was injecting himself into a situation where he did not belong. On the other hand, the lack of centrality has lead to spontaneous protests that have not been organized by the movements leaders, as seen in the protest in Oakland where protestors halted traffic into Oakland on Martin Luther King Day. The intense criticism of cops has also lead to acts of violence against cops to be attributed to the Black Lives Matter movement. These issues have greatly tarnished the image of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Black Lives Matter movement has encountered widespread criticism from outside and within the Black Community.

We also read about Anti-Police Brutality Hashtags and the effect that it had upon awareness and protests against police brutality. The way that hashtags were utilized by those concerned with police brutality caused them to become a medium to strong collaboration because they were used to spread worldwide awareness and organized massive protests. The hashtags were generally used to converse amongst one another (and occasionally to argue with those that opposed their cause). 

Some results from a #MyNYPD search on Twitter

On February 16th, we read The Hijacking #myNYPD: Social Media Dissent and Networked Counterpublics. It discusses  the public relations campaign of the NYPD through the employment of the #myNYPD. The hashtag was "hijacked" by people who had encountered abuses and brutality from the NYPD and spread awareness of the state of affairs in New York. The "counterpublic" was able to connect with one another through mentions and retweets. They did not interact much with one another other than retweeting a few "central sources." The counterpublic's hijacking of #myNYPD was able to trend without the help of mainstream media. Most of the "hijacking" was conducted by women or people of color. I thought that this was interesting, because this demographic also statistically predominantly is apart of the Democratic party. This aligns with the picture shown on the first day of class that depicted how often the different political parties communicated with one another. 

Class dates 2/7 and 2/9

Class dates 2/7 and 2/9

On the 7th we read about Reddit and Suicide Intervention. This reading described Reddit, which is an online community that contains user-generated content and the users determine the visibility of each post by "upvoting" or "downvoting" each comment/thread. The ability of the users to determine the popularity of each post (at best) allows for Reddit to become an almost self-moderated forum with the best advice being the most visible. At worst, it can become a "hivemind", which consists of a large number of people attacking anything that does not conform to their narrow view perspective, therefore effectively stamping out all other opinions than their own through the utilization of the downvote button. The predominant demographic if each subreddit generally determines the nature of the content (for example, the men of Reddit tend to upvote sexual content or things that they find funny, which is sometimes at the expense of political correctness).

The up and down arrows to the left of each thread respectively upvotes and downvotes each thread. The amount of upvotes a post has determines its visibility. 

The SuicideWatch subreddit is different than Reddit is general because it is heavily moderated using guidelines set forth by licensed healthcare professionals. The moderators of this site state that Reddit is not an ideal place for those struggling to seek help, but it is frequently utilized instead of healthcare services. The frequent usage of the subreddit SuicideWatch also reveals some of the weaknesses of healthcare settings. These weaknesses in include many mental health websites being geared towards women (i.e. purple hearts on a mental health's webpage) which leaves men feeling alienated, formal healthcare is too expensive for some people, there is a lack of reciprocity between a healthcare professional and a patient (the patient is not able to help the professional and the patient is the only one emotionally vulnerable), the feeling that loved ones are pawning them off on mental health workers because they do not desire to help them, and many find comfort in anonymously sharing their experiences with a Community of Practice that they identify with. However, Reddit contains many weaknesses, such as users who are a danger to themselves are not receiving proper medical supervision and treatment, trolls harassing a suicidal user and the user seeing the comments before they are deleted, a "domino effect" where one user's suicide triggers other's, and some peoples posts not being replied to (which our guest speaker said can really hurt at-risk users).

Above is a screenshot of the top threads in Reddit's SuicideWatch on 2/11/17. The most popular threads are about issues that men typically struggle with, like a lack of physical intimacy or hiding their sadness to maintain their masculinity (the content of "People will be hell confused..." thread). The popularity of these specific threads reflects the overall demographics of Reddit and validates the reasons stated above on why men tend to gravitate to online communities to express their need for help. 

I am somewhat familiar with Reddit after being told about it by a coworker two years ago. I only use it to look at subreddits like SkincareAddiction (which is a small community of acne-sufferers like myself trying to solve our skin issues). I do not go on the front page of Reddit  because the general site contains some fake news that are propagated as fact, which to strips it of its credibility to me. While I have seen a couple of misogynistic comments on Reddit over the years, I have not had the experience described on the video (which says that women are targeted and spoken poorly about). To be completely honest, I have encountered many more misogynistic men in real life than I have on Reddit. This is probably because the subreddits that I go to are geared towards women (although there are some men that use the subreddits as well).

We also received a lecture by a guest speaker, that discussed how pro-ana groups were treated on Tumblr.  Anorexia is the deadliest psychiatric disorder and I sincerely hope that all of those suffering from that mental illness receive the help they need. The fact that some of these people trigger each other's deadly mental disorder worries me and I am glad that Tumblr provides links to places that they can receive help. However, their desire for finding a community where they can feel normal is understandable. I wish there was something that I could do to help them.

This is a website that informed the international community about the plight of the Zapatistas

On February 9th, we read The Zapatista Effect and the Untold Story of Women in the Zapatistas before class. These stories told of the effects of telling their story online and the international outreach and activism that resulted. The latter article also resulted in activism for the movement from feminist outlets, which was great to see. In class, we watched a video called New Media Technologies and the Zapatistas and Todd Wolfson: Zapatistas and the Power of the Internet. Both of these videos again described the power of the internet in saving the lives of Zapatista farmers. I think that Dr. Daly's timeline of the events on the board was a helpful in understanding the impact that the internet had upon the Zapatista movement.

I hope you have a great weekend!

Class dates 1/31 and 2/2

Class dates 1/31 and 2/2

This week we continued working on our presentations and watched a movie about Tuckman's Five stages of group development. I liked working with my group and after some technical difficulties I was able to finish our presentation five minutes after we finished class.  Based upon the assertions in the reading "The Secret to Smart Groups", I think that the group with the most women is most likely to be the best out of all the presentations.

The Secret to Smart Groups  written by Derek Thompson asserts that the overall intelligence of groups is not conducive to "smart groups". Instead, he states that amount of women in the group, "distribution of conversational turn taking", and social sensitivity of group members is what makes a group smart. It also stated that the higher the group member's RME scores were, the better their teams performed. To explain, RME score were based upon how well the participant was able to read complex emotions. Emotional intelligence is proven to trump IQ if the problem requires deep collaboration.

Warning: The below portion of this post may contain spoilers about the show Breaking Bad. If you haven't seen it and are interested in learning more about it, you can find more information here.


Group Dynamics by David Forsyth compiles research, empirical studies, and case studies to better understand groups.  A group is defined by David Forsyth as "two or more individuals who are connected to one another by social relationships." The size of groups can range from two to thousands of members. The average size of formal and informal groups are approximately the same, at 2.4 vs. 2.3, respectively. As groups increase in size, they become more formal. The quote that best helped me understand the nuances between planned and emergent groups is: " People found planned groups, but they often find emergent groups." A really helpful resource for further understanding important terms in this text is here.

Below are examples of main types of groups from one of my favorite TV shows, Breaking Bad:

• Concocted groups emerge when an external authority figure puts together a group to work together. 

The partnership of Gomez and Schrader are an example of a concocted group because they were paired up by their boss. They work together to achieve their common goal of eradicating drug related crime.

•  Founded groups are created by at least one member that remains within the group. 

Jesse and Walter's working relationship began organically when Walt approached Jesse and asked to work together. They are founding members of their group.

• Circumstantial groups are unplanned groups that occur when people around each other (often temporarily) form a group. 

Jesse and Jane's relationship began purely out of circumstance. They knew each other because he responded to a craigslist ad for an apartment. They shared common hobbies that led to them spending large amounts of time together and forming a relationship.

• Self-organizing groups begin when people have similar goals and adjust to other members within the group. Groups of friends hanging out together or drivers all leaving together are examples of this type of group. 

Combo, Skinny Pete, Badger, and Jesse spend time together because they have similar interests and enjoy each others company. They are a self-organizing group because they not only spend time together for social reasons but for business reasons. They all work together towards the common group of meeting their sales goals and loss prevention

•  Intimacy groups are small in size and are characterized by substantial amounts of interaction between members. They are typically "moderate in duration". 

Walter pictured with most of his immediate family. This group is an example of an intimacy group because the group is small and they frequently interact with one another. While Walt and his wife does not possess as long-standing of a bond that his wife has with her sister, they are still close. 

• Primary groups (such as family and friends) are intimate groups characterized by member identification and cohesion. 

Marie and Skylar's close relationship is an example of a primary group because it is small, long-term, and they get along very well. Membership and solidarity is important to the both of them. 

•  Task groups are goal focused groups often in employment settings. 

Gale and Walt meet while at work after being grouped together by their employer to accomplish an important task. They bond over their shared skill set and interests. 

• Weak associations are groups of people that have weak and transitory connections with one another. Examples include people waiting at a bus stop together, classmates in the same class, or living in the same neighborhood.

Walter White is conducting a chemistry demonstration to his students. The classmates exhibit weak social relationships with one another during the show. 

• Social categories are essentially groups of people who all fall under the same vast category (gender, nationality, job title) who have loose associations with one another. 

Pictured above is a group of men in Breaking Bad. This grouping is simply based upon gender, which falls into a social grouping category.