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!