#wgst

[lennieelay]

Week 10 Blog 10/28/20

Although the case of Grandpa Wiggly doesn’t seem harmful, what is its impact on trolling?

Trolls are usually users on the Internet provoking other people by leaving harmful messages in order to mess with them. However, not all incidents of trolling need to be mean in order for someone to fall victim to it. For example, in the case of Grandpa Wiggly, the character created by his “grandson,” he seemed to be a harmless Reddit user posting about his failed condiment recipe and stories of his wife. After a couple of users attempted to research Grandpa Wiggly, his real identity soon “quickly unraveled”, and it turns out that Grandpa Wiggly does not exist but instead, his “grandson” was the mastermind behind this account (Bergstrom, pg. 4). This calls into question how this is considered trolling. The creator of this account pretended to be someone they were not by creating a fake backstory as well as providing pictures that weren't really him. Many people on the Internet use this form of trolling as a way to fake their identity and phish people online. Although harmless, Grandpa Wiggly’s account is a great example on how users can create a false identity and use it to trick other people on the Internet.

Is trolling an even bigger problem now that the Internet is at our fingertips?

Trolling, defined as a person “whose real intention(s) are to cause disruption and/or to trigger… conflict for the purposes of their own amusement,” is now a bigger issue than when it first began in 1992 (Phillips, pg. 60). The Internet is easily accessible nowadays which makes anyone prone to being a victim of trolling. Anyone can fake their identity and use it as a way to retrieve information from other people as well as bullying users online. Many people are able to get away with faking their identity because they create a fictitious back story in order to make themselves look like real genuine users. Especially with the many different social media apps out there, it is easy to troll and catfish online. 

What is the significance of Leslie Jones’ horrible experience on Twitter?

In the screenshots provided for this week’s blog post, Leslie Jones’ was a serious victim of trolling. This troll made a fake account pretending to be Leslie Jones and said really derogative and inappropriate tweets that would make the public hate her. Although it wasn’t really her, many people believed the fake account and was shocked to see what Leslie Jones was saying. It is such a cruel joke for someone to go this far and paint her in a bad light. The impact of trolling is seen throughout her tweets, one of them she even says, “I feel like I’m in personal hell” which shows how hurt Leslie Jones felt during this time (Silman, pg. 4). In a world where our lives are displayed for the world to see, negative interactions like these can be extremely detrimental to a person’s mental health. 

What has your experience of trolling online been like? Have you been seriously impacted by it?

As I mentioned in one of my previous questions, anyone is susceptible to being trolled online. Similar to Leslie Jones’ experience, there was one specific incident of trolling online that I remembered happened to me back in middle school. Someone had made a fake Instagram account of myself and began to follow my friends and family. They soon started posting pictures that I had already posted of myself on my actual account, and posted it along with mean captions. At the time, it had a big impact on my mental health because not only was I being trolled, but I was also being bullied. Fortunately, I was able to report the account and have it deleted and that was the end of it. I know there are countless people out there who have experienced the same problem and might’ve dealt with it differently, but i was lucky enough to fix my issue. Trolling can have a huge impact on someone’s mentality and it is not cool to do it. 

Bergstrom, K. (2011). “Don’t feed the troll”: Shutting down debate about community expectations on Reddit.com. First Monday, 16(8).

Phillips, W. (2015), “Defining Terms: The Origins and Evolution of Subcultural Trolling”. This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture. pp.55-57.

Silman, A. (2016). A Timeline of Leslie Jones’s Horrific Online Abuse

[hypbaest]

women have endured so much. have been so many things. have created and sustained innumerable and infinite cultures and traditions.

what have men done?

[christaporm1]

Week 4 blog post

What did African Americans in the 90s have to look forward to on the internet considering it was and sometimes still is a powerful voice for racist ideas?

The internet gradually taking in more and more African American users throughout the 90s has been amazing because it has created a safe space for black ideas, voices, and experiences. The internet has been used as we have seen today in many grassroots movements such as “Black Lives Matter” and the “Me too” movement these have been prominent in our society. This occurrence of online grassroots movements has been a commonality since the 90s. The following excerpt from the Revolution will be digitized highlights my claim “ the democratizing potential of the Internet, especially given its demonstrably pivotal role in mobilizing a throng of grassroots activists in 1997 Million Woman March on Philadelphia (Everett 2002).” This passage shows that change is possible when viewing grassroots movements begin on the internet they can turn into physical action. As the internet has ‘welcomed’ African American users we have seen a gradual but the real change in awareness in our communities.

  How do someone’s name and the algorithms program into everyday technology work to perpetuate racially discriminating stereotypes?   

In today's day and age, much of our daily lives are dictated by algorithms and we don’t even know it YouTube Facebook Twitter and even airport security is powered by algorithms. Algorithms have the power to decide whether or not you receive government benefits, whether or not you get flagged on the next flight you’re going on because of your name. Many of the algorithms that we have power in our society today were built with racist ideologies built into the infrastructure of the program itself. The following excerpt from The New Jim code exemplifies how algorithms can be used to stereotype and harm people because of the way they look or where they’re from “Normal” names have power by virtue of their perceived They trigger stories about what kind of person is behind the name - their personality and potential, where they come from but also where they should go (Benjamin 2019).” This passage is a shiny example of how someone’s name can dictate the treatment they received from someone else this along with “Objective” Technology makes it easier for those with racist ideologies or discriminatory ideas to discriminate on those who look sound or are slightly different from them. It is important to view and give technology the same responsibility of being equal towards all people before giving it an objective status of neutrality.

I have been using the internet for my whole life why have I not seen any examples of the discrimination described?                               

I asked this question very purposefully because many of the people who deny claims of racism discrimination on the Internet citing that they haven’t seen any widespread examples of racism and discrimination, especially in large well regulated online spaces. I chose this question to highlight examples of systemic racism within the technology companies that we trust most like Google. The following passage from the power of algorithms highlights just how deeply ingrained some of these ideologies are within our day-to-day technological platforms “In 2015, U.S. News and world report reported that a “glitch” in Google algorithm led to several problems through auto-tagging and facial recognition software that was intended to help people search through images more successfully. The first problem for google was that its photo application had automatically tagged African Americans as apes and animals (Noble 2018)”…Another instance on April 7, 2016, when looking up the keyword “gorillas” an African American couple appears at the images. There is a long-standing racist stereotype that stereotypes African-Americans as subhuman this permeates within white supremacist culture and ideology and it’s not hidden away and it’s not hard to find the tooth samples above sure that these things don’t happen on a one-off they happen often and frequently every day to all kinds of people and these examples are just some that I recorded the Internet is a vast and wide expanse of knowledge it’s easy to imagine all the other things that have gone unnoticed.

What important role do the black operated press and internet forms have in giving a platform for black voices to speak?

African Americans have long been a discriminate group within the United States and I believe nowadays this is common knowledge. However, although there has as of recently been a lot more attention given to marginalized groups including African-Americans there has been no powerful. The black operated press and Internet forms that are African-American operated playing important role in dispersing African-American ideas feelings and culture it is and it is important to continue to give his voice is a platform for speech. The following excerpt from the revolution will be digitized highlights my point that African-American voices need to be heard that they can continue to create change and uplift the communities within and around them “Conceived from the outset as both a political and ideological weapon for the eradication of slavery and other antebellum atrocities, the earliest black political pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, and other forms of black writing established a tradition of protest literature that has been a prominent feature throughout the history of the press’s “uplift” mission or journalistic freedom fighting (Everett 2002).” As stated before this passage highlights how African-American journalistic freedom and platforms for these freedom fighting create a tradition that can help uplift and continue to bring African-Americans and if applicable to other cultures out of this sort of second class citizen status that has been put on them by the racist white counterparts. 

Anna Everett; The Revolution Will Be Digitized: AFROCENTRICITY AND 

THE DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERE. Social Text 1 June 2002; 20 (2 (71)): 125–146. 

Noble, S. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: NYU Press 36-38. 

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code. Cambridge: Polity pg 23.

[thestudyglow]

7.11.17 I'm really gonna try and get better at posting original content! Today I'm doing some reading on schools and social institutions for my Women's and Gender Studies class. (I'm in high school but I'm taking two college classes this summer)

[aug-wgst]

The Augusta University Women's and Gender Studies Program invites you to register for our 2017 biennial WGST Symposium entitled "Year of the Woman? Gender and Power in Action." Students, professors, and researchers from around the southeastern United States will be presenting all day long from 8am to 5pm on the Augusta University Summerville campus Saturday, March 18th.

Follow this link to reserve your ticket: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/augusta-university-wgst-sympos…

Registration is free for Augusta University students not ordering lunch.

[lennieelay]

Week 13 Blog 11/20/20

Determine what kind of social media site you are creating. Then answer the following questions, explaining your decisions. (Remember the key here is to create an ethical algorithm model).

The social media site I’m creating would be similar to TikTok, but it would be Jambon. I really like the layout and purpose of TikTok because it’s a great way to view videos from different creators, anywhere around the world. Jambon would still serve the same purpose for a user that wants to look at entertaining videos, however, the videos featured will have more inclusivity and diversity.

What will you measure? (ex: likes, hashtags, how long someone stays on a page, etc) Be sure to explain all your decisions.

For my app, I would measure these important factors: views, likes, hashtags, shares, comments, the duration of how long a user stays on a certain video, and demographics. With these factors, it’ll be useful for the algorithm to pick up on what videos should have more exposure compared to a video that already has a million views. Some flaws I’ve noticed on TikTok is that small creators often have a hard time making it into the spotlight and are often shadowbanned. Jambon’s algorithm would use the factors listed above to help boost viewership for small creators, especially those with an ethnic background.

How will you weigh these factors? (rank factors from most important to least important)

From the factors listed above, my app would focus mainly on the user’s demographic since it’s a goal to promote inclusivity and diversity. From there, likes, comments, views, and shares would be weighed equally since they have to do with interaction from other users. Hashtags would be weighed last since it’ll be easy for users to find videos specifically labeled with the hashtag.

What factors will not be measured? (what will not be measured in your algorithm and why)

I would not be measuring how often a creator posts, if the video is saved, or if the video is original content or a repost. I wouldn’t measure these factors, primarily because a bigger creator would obviously post more since they receive a lot of attention compared to a smaller creator who would probably post less. I think that if these factors aren’t measured, it would help the algorithm give a fair chance to other creators.

How will the model learn or adapt to new information? (this can include changes in language, etc)

The model will be able to adapt if it is created by people who don’t have any preference or bias towards certain skin color, sexuality, physicality, etc. This would help eliminate any racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia from the beginning. From there, it would also be closely overlooked by workers who have an open mind and are not judgemental.

What biases will be built into the model? How will this change the algorithm’s outcome?

Some biases built into the model would include looking people in these communities: POC, LGBTQ+, and living with a disability or mental illness. The app’s focus is to promote smaller creators who have a difficult time receiving the spotlight because of their background. The algorithm’s outcome is to help fix this issue and give the same amount of viewership, if not more, compared to a white creator.

How will the model live out the (un)ethical practices we have discussed?

The model created would help live out racist, ableist, sexist, homophobic practices used in many, many social media apps. The algorithm would be overlooked and monitored by a team who recognizes the flaws in many apps and want the same goal of fixing this issue.

[lennieelay]

Week 2 Blog 9/2/20

What is the significance in using racial fears as a core method in pushing out biased lead information?

As media began to emerge, companies and publishers mainly catered to its white audience. Even in current times today, a small fraction of news forums represent diversity among their platforms. People of color make up at least “33 percent of the US population in 2005,” but only a small minority of them own media outlets such as radio and television stations (Gonzalez and Torres, page 6). A main reasoning behind the lack of representation on news mediums, have to do with media owners “exploiting racial fears...[as a] reliable way to increase newspaper sales and broadcast ratings” (Gonzalez and Torres, page 4). The significance of using this approach has instilled notions of prejudice and racism against people of color. It has created a major rift in news outlets to give accurate information to its intended audience. By continuing to use racial fears, information given to the public is highly questionable and cannot always be trusted.

How do both articles portray how Americans are misinformed through news and media sites?

In the first article, Americans are misinformed through tactics that systematically excluded people of color from accessing news outlets. Since the surfacing of the news, minorities have not been given the equal chance of being represented like how the white community is. As mentioned in the first article, “even today...newsrooms, even the most liberal and progressive ones, still employ minority journalists far below [caucasian journalists]” (Gonzalez and Torres, page 8). As a consequence, news and information from people of color are often overlooked or not heard from at all even though the United States is highly diverse.

In the second article, it demonstrates how Americans who use social media and news sites are misinformed because in order to understand social media, one must look at it critically. Generally, users of social sites do not ask critical questions in regard to who these sites are targeting and what their purpose is. Fuch’s states that thinking critical thinking is relevant because it will create concern about “the structures of society and the media” which everyone should benefit from, but do not (Fuch, page 10).

What is it about slacktivism that makes it so easy to participate in? How are its effect damaging?

Slacktivism is just performative activism. “Activism” that is mainly just for show. It is so easy for anyone to partake in, that many do not even realize they are slacktivists. Especially with today’s circumstances, there have been countless times in which performative activism has been present in social media. For example, during June of 2020, there was a pivotal moment in the Black Lives Matter movement where many Instagram users posted a black screen with just the caption as #blackouttuesday, which users thought it would help spread awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement, but it did just the opposite. Posting the black screen was super misinformative because it blocked out important information since a majority of people were using #blacklivesmatter instead of #blackouttuesday. A significant amount of people relied on getting their information through the Black Lives Matter hashtag, but since it overflowed with black squares, it restricted many users from accessing important news.

How does being in the position of power impact the role social media sites?

Social media is a powerful outlet for many celebrities, politicians, and companies to communicate different ideas and messages to their audience. Typically, users of social sites often follow powerful people/companies who they share common interests with. As a result, it puts many celebrities and politicians in a position of power which allows these influencers to spread messages and push out different ideas that represent their agenda. By having a large following, these same companies, politicians, and celebrities are put in a position of power, but it also means that they are “benefit[ting] or harm[ing] others and society at large” (Fuchs, page 8). This means that often times their large following allows their flaws to be overlooked without facing consequences. Being able to publish information with having little to no repercussion allows these people/companies in power to shape social media fit for them.

Fuchs, Christian. 2017. Social Media: A Critical Introduction. 2nd Edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Gonzalez, J., & Torres, J. 2012. News for all the people: the epic story of race and the American media. Verso.

[lennieelay]

Week 7 Blog 10/7/20

How does this “colorblind” racist ideology impact minorities?

The concept of being colorblind refers to someone not recognizing the importance of “color” which refers to someone’s skin tone. It means that a person with this mindset, views a white person and a person of color the same, regardless of their skin differences. However, this mindset is a type of privilege because everyday people are shaped through their experiences from their race and color. In Senft’s and Noble’s article, they provide an example of “black and brown [people] fail[ing] to secure a home mortgage attributed to [their] ‘laziness,’” whereas white people are unable to obtain a mortgage because “of the failure of the banking system” (Senft and Noble, pg 110). This demonstrates how although none of these people were able to get a mortgage, minorities are portrayed as being lazy, yet white people are not blamed for getting a mortgage, but rather it is the bank’s fault. It is important for people to realize that there is a special privilege embedded in our everyday systems that makes living easier for white-skinned people.

Why does Senft and Noble mention “Black Twitter”? What is the importance of it?

Throughout the past seven weeks of this semester, many articles have mentioned cyberspace and its significance. Similarly to those articles, Senft and Noble discuss Black Twitter and how many people use the platform as a way to connect with other users. Black Twitter, similar to “White” Twitter is not monolithic and is actually very diverse. Many people considered to be using Black Twitter share their “concerns, experiences, tastes, and cultural practices” which creates a sort of safe space for those to share vulnerable information about them as a way to connect to those with similar lifestyles (Senft and Noble, pg. 114). Users of Twitter, specifically falling under Black Twitter, help reject the issue of “colorblindness” and instead, recognize white privilege and understand its consequences.

Is it important for companies to use tokenism in their advertisements as an attempt to reach out to diverse communities?

In order for companies to build and grow, it is necessary for them to expand and reach out to more potential customers. One tactic many companies are using in order to gain more exposure involves tokenism. Implementing diversity by using people of color in their advertisements has its benefits and disadvantages. More frequently, advertisements are trying to cater to different audiences such as the African American and the LGBTQ+ community. Although this might create profit within the company, the downside to this is consumers will criticize the company’s decision to promote diversity

How have platforms like Netflix’s tailored marketing given the illusion of multiculturalism? Why does this set back attacking the problem of racism and xenophobia at a larger scale?

Platforms like Netflix have given the false pretense that society has progressed more in terms of cultural diversity. Netflix is able to pinpoint or approximate one's ethnic or racial background by their viewing history and selection. By having this information Netflix is able to then push movies and TV shows that have minorities casted in or appear on the cover. As a result, Netflix gives the illusion that they, like other media outlets, stand with inclusivity of culture, race, and gender. However, this is not the case, Netflix tailored marketing does nothing to face the real problem of racism, sexism, and xenophobia at a larger scale in society In his article, Benjamin explains, “Marketing counterparts, are encoding race, ethnicity, and gender as immutable characteristics that can be measured, bought, and sold” (Benjamin, pg. 46). Netflix’s only purpose for pushing and producing more inclusive media is due to the lack of tolerance that has been seen in the last couple of years when it comes to diversity. If they were to not do this they would face backlash, therefore bringing in less money. This realistically does nothing to help the real problem and does more harm than good. It persuades the false narrative that problems like racism, colorism, and patriarchal hierarchy are getting better when realistically there is still consistent discrimination of race, sex, and sexuality all over the world.

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the new Jim code. Cambridge: Polity, 41-88.

Senft, T., Noble, U. N. (2014). Race and Social Media. The Social Media Handbook, 107-125.