Emily - Data Skills

[emilygoldblum]

Understanding queer isn’t just one type of person

The overall theme from my work during this program is acceptance. Accept that one group of people does not mean they all have the same goals or issues. Queer people all care about different things. Accept that queer people aren’t always recognizable, they don’t all look the same.

MICRO -  how my own work can change an individuals perspective What kinds of change could your journalism have?  1. Inserting myself in groups that normally wouldn’t accept me within the queer community so I can have a better understanding and share that understanding with the rest of society.

2. Writing/sharing articles that help eliminate discrimination through education

What are the metrics you’d use to measure this impact? 1. Emails or direct messages from members of that group For example, I went to a meeting for bisexuals and was at first slightly out-casted. I wasn’t allowed to take notes at all or record the session. They ended up accepting me into their group and seeing that me being there is beneficial for us both. I received an email from the group organizer letting me know how productive he felt my presence was for his bi-weekly meetings. He turned out to be a great source for many other stories and still helps me spread the word and leads me to even more sources.

2. Comments, words of assurance

As shown in a message below, I’ve had some reach out to me for content I might not see. 

MESO What kinds of change could your journalism have? 1. Creating more visibility using hashtags like #Biselfie/#OwnYourLabel

2. Triangle Times

What are the metrics you’d use to measure this impact? 1. Use TAGS to see use of hashtag

2. Likes/comments/direct messages/words of assurance I’ve had people come up to me in person to tell me that while they don’t always click “like” on The Triangle Times posts, they find it really helpful and always read the content.

MACRO What kinds of change could your journalism have?

1. Generate acceptance for marriage equality

2. Eliminate discrimination in the workplace

What are the metrics you’d use to measure this impact?

1. Staying on top of laws passing such as marriage equality across the nation

I can’t say my work with queer women has made any type of institutional change but I’ve written an explainer on the sexual orientation of those who identify as transgender, written an article on why marriage doesn’t define sexual orientation and a few other pieces that I felt made an impact on those who had read them. Also the more I share posts on The Triangle Times and keep those who aren’t up to date in the know of new laws

2. Laws progressively passing, state by state, protecting queer people in the workplace

This is similar to the first but more directed towards the laws being passed that help protect queer people state by state. Keeping readers in the know help spread the word.

[emilygoldblum]

Survey Results on Queer News

The survey I sent out received 33 responses and showed me some eye-opening results. I mainly promoted it by sending it out on Facebook, Twitter and some friends who had a bigger following than me shared the survey as well.

Some surprising results (besides that I got over 10 responses which was a surprise on its own) were regarding some questions such as “How well do you believe mainstream media covers the queer community?” – the average result from 1 – 5 (5 being extremely well) was 3. I feel that this result shows that readers are mainly neutral on the subject. This could mean they’re open to new sources making their way into the niche organizations or they’re indifferent to the idea.

Twenty-seven of respondents said they mainly use their smartphones over laptops/tablets and a majority also said they get their news from the web compared to Facebook/print/TV and News apps.

Some interesting comments specifically about what the respondents wish they could see more of in the news about the queer community: People of color (2 people mentioned this topic), LGBT families and their dynamic, sexualities and gender identities that fall outside of the binaries, career moves and mainly people just want to see more good news about queer people. Mainly what they’re seeing already is same-sex marriage, the fight for equality, out celebrities and discrimination in the news according to the results of the survey.

This confirmed my idea that the mainstream media isn’t doing as great of a job covering queer issues, as they need to.  When it came to pointing out that publications make errors while attempting to use queer terms, 90% of survey-takers said they have seen this occur. I reached out to a few people that I knew took the survey and an example of this situation was when Colorlines wrote “transgendered” in their headline.

All in all I think this survey helped answer a lot of my questions when it comes to how my community reads the news and if they’re even looking for it, which it looks like for the most part – they are.

[emilygoldblum]

Mapping Same Sex Couples in the U.S.

Using the limited data that's available on same-sex couples in the U.S. I'd love to map out where the highest number of same-sex couples live. I believe I'll have to use a similar tactic to how we broke out the fatalities in workplaces so it won't necessarily show the most in the most populous areas.

In the ACS Data on Same Sex Couples, there is data in tab 3 that shows the percentage of same-sex couples who consider their partner to be their spouse. There's even data within tab 1 that shows female-female households in which, if I can map this I would absolutely go back and find this out since I'm work mainly with queer women for my community.

Unfortunately I'm not able to find the raw data for me to play around with. What do you think would be the best way to view this data on a map (used from CartoDB like we had done in class). Would it be to transfer the data from tab 3 (numbers instead of percentages), and then use the formula as we did in class (total pop/same sex pop*1000)? 

http://cdb.io/1wgZD7E

Update** After moving around the data in an excel, I found the best solution were to take the state column, number of same sex households and narrow the percentage to households that have same sex spouses vs just those that have same-sex persons living in that household. I was able to take the geometric portion from the map we used last week (US State Shapefile) and merge it with the CSV I formatted. The results showed a map that presented the percentages of same-sex spouses of the United States. This is according to data compiled in 2013.

- Emily Goldblum

[emilygoldblum]

Deborah Rose - City Council Member in Staten Island

Since I've moved to Staten Island (a little over a year ago), I've seen Debi Rose in the Staten Island Ferry Terminal accompanied by those who support her, hand out flyers with everything she's done or wants to do. Rose was elected to the 49th Council District and focuses on issues such as school funding and health. She's also from Staten Island so I wanted to see if that's mainly where she gets donations from or if she has a greater influence outside of the island. In Open Refine, I saw a few things: 73% of the amount given came from New York. Even more specifically, 43% of that number was from the borough of Staten Island while the other major percentage came from NY, NY. From those that listed an occupation, retired (~$10k) and self-employed workers ($3k) gave the largest lump sum towards Debi's cause. Some of the companies that stood out to me were Scholastic which sent a little under $1k, Verizon, the NYS Insurance Fund, churches all around Staten Island, Department of Education, Fedex and even Barney’s. Given that she is an advocate for schooling and health care there are also numerous schools/universities, newspapers such as the SI Advance, as well as hospitals that donated.

[emilygoldblum]

A Year of Dog Complaints

Since I have a dog myself that has a small case of separation anxiety and depending on the day, barks until the dog walker comes, I wanted to see how the complaints laid out around NY. 

Brooklyn had the most dog complaints followed by Queens. My guess is that since Queens is the largest borough and Brooklyn is the most populous that this is a major factor for the results founded. 

Dog barking complaints seemed frivolous compared to some of the others like constructions after hours or alarms. I was surprised to see the amount of closed cases vs open. Based on the data, 96% more of the reports were closed than those that stayed open. 

To look a little further into the complaints, it was interesting to see if these cases were repeat offenders or if they were sporadic around the boroughs. In Brooklyn, an address on Devoe street had 55 closed cases. In the Bronx, Fish Avenue had 23 closed cases and 1 that was still open since 1/1/15. Within Manhattan, Avenue C had 39 closed cases and 5 open. When searching Staten Island I quickly searched my own address but luckily nothing came up. I'm guessing those who couldn't stand my dogs barking went straight to the super instead. 

I definitely understand that a dog's incessant barking can get to be a bit much but I never would have thought over 7k complaints in just one year.

- Emily Goldblum

[emilygoldblum]

Sexual Orientation in the U.S. - Emily Goldblum

A study was conducted in 2002 by the Center of Disease Control and Prevention and has a large amount of data regarding sexual behavior, attraction etc. The data used came from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). Here's the source.

In the findings, 6% of males have had sex/oral-sex with another male and even more specifically 2.9% or 1.77 million males have had a male sexual partner in the last 12 months. Although the number might seem small next to the amount of heterosexual activity, this is still a large number compared to what most of society might believe. Same-sex orientation amongst females is even more prevalent, results showing that 11% of women have had sexual contact with another female and 4.4% have done so in the last 12 months prior to the survey taken.  That's approximately 2.71 million women. Considering this survey was anonymous and even taken by some who were recently married it looks as if a lot of society aren't completely honest with their sexual preference. I can't help thinking what the results might be if this survey was conducted again, in 2015, now that getting married is legal for same-sex couples in 36 states.

This leads me to the second chart and set of data shown above, which shows a timeline of two things: same-sex marriage bans from 1994-Present and also legalization of same-sex marriages. This data comes from ProCon.org, a not for profit organization that provides non-biased data for controversial and important issues. You can find this data here.

More than a few times every year states have undergone changes when it comes to decisions on same-sex marriage or rights in general (DOMA, Prop 8). Right now we're witnessing a change to history, lifting bans and granting basic human rights to a large portion of the U.S. population. Although momentum has slowed down within the mainstream media, organizations such as ACLU, GLAAD and numerous others are doing their part to keep the issues regarding discrimination against LGBT people at the forefront of those with state power.

Those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, gender non-conforming etc might see this data and feel a bit more pride or confidence in being themselves.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence (NCAV) created a report to show the number of hate violence reports against LGBT people. In 2011, their yearly hate violence report revealed the highest level of hate violence murders ever occurred (Dixon,  Jindasurat, Tobar 9). According to the NCAV, gay people were 1.5 times more likely to require medical attention as overall survivors and victims (9). Another aspect that's interesting in this report is there are no questions regarding sexual orientation or gender identity within the U.S. Census, American Community Survey and the National Crime Victimization Survey making it extremely difficult for organizations and researchers to compare their own compiled sets of data. The Hate Statistics Data distributed by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division is the only place to access data that pinpoints sexual orientation.

Here's the source for this data.