Author: gppatter

Reflection

In September, I made a joke on Instagram about wanting to start a lifestyle blog but my professor having other ideas.

At its conception, the goal for my writing was to explore the creation process and progress of popular social movements throughout recent history, and in generational context view their development through the lens of digital (heavily social) medias. For me, my subject choice was centered heavily around my experiences in Oxford, especially during an election year as the political climate across the South continued to change, in many cases, rapidly. As the semester progressed, my scope not so much widened as it did refocus. My writing, in tandem with the assigned projects, progressed beyond the inception of movements like Black Lives Matter, Me Too, and March For Our Lives and focused more on the challenges developing movements can and will face due to digital media. The largest takeaway was not heavily researched based, but instead showed how easily my weekly topics intertwined with those of my classmates. Reading their posts, I consistently found additional information that I hadn’t first considered as either an effect or a consequence, but upon second look, heavily shaped the way the movements I was writing about developed.

Originally booked as a replacement class for my major requirement, this class pushed me far beyond my expectations. In many scenarios, I was intimidated by the workload and the complexities of the projects that felt well out of my comfort zone. The result was my creation of meaningful work that I felt inherently connected to, and then pushing those ideas into different mediums and expanding upon them. As far as developing ideas, I have always been more of a conceptual person. Creatively, I love sitting and discussing ideas, however I rarely get past the early stages of development; I think much of this is due to my fear of failure, my tendency to feel inadequate if having to develop tangible products or create something through a medium I’m unfamiliar with.

That wasn’t an option this semester. With several projects that dealt with design or the building of something beyond the conceptual stages, the Google search bar and I became very well acquainted. The most enjoyable, and by all means most difficult project, this semester turned out to be the mobile application concept and development. I talked about it to friends and family in a near-constant manner, bouncing ideas off of one another, making notes along the way. Activ8 was deeply rooted in the development of the movements I was writing about, but required heavy research and looks into what was happening in real time not only in Oxford but in major cities across the U.S. The final product was something I felt was intensely personal, as well as being something useful for a new generation of a socially conscious online community. It is something I hope to continue working on and evolving, eventually into something tangible. 

The resulting portfolio looks nothing like I originally intended as I published my first post in late August. Instead, it is far beyond my first intentions, and in similar fashion to the platforms I was writing about, heavily influenced by the input of my peers. It definitely isn’t a lifestyle blog, but honestly, it might be better.

“I don’t know, just Google it”

Wikipedia defines fake news as this: “a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media.”

Though the term has been in existence since the nineteenth century, the introduction of social media and online communication has pushed it to the forefront of communicative issues. Wikipedia’s article on the issue identifies seven distinct types of fake news, and though all are relevant to the daily production of content- especially in online arenas- imposter content and fabricated content are two that affect the development of the issues I discuss in my writing.

Like many social movements that have developed since the time of Occupy Wall Street and Arab Spring, most that continue to gain momentum are organized within a political context. Within its’ political subheading, the Internet Activism page on Wikipedia outlines the influence “Online Political Citizens” or OPC’s hold within their social circle both online and in person.

“According to some observers, the Internet may have considerable potential to reach and engage opinion leaders who influence the thinking and behavior of others. According to the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, what they call “Online Political Citizens” (OPCs) are “seven times more likely than average citizens to serve as opinion leaders among their friends, relatives and colleagues… Normally, 10% of Americans qualify as Influentials. Our study found that 69% of Online Political Citizens are Influentials.

Contributors admit that younger generations that have grown with the Internet are not as likely to fall for fake news articles, however it is an issue that can hinder development beyond certain demographics if it is not controlled. From my perspective, I see fake news as having the potential to not only harm the credibility of established movements but potentially preventing parties from becoming involved due to an increase in false movements and stories. This, of course, is all speculation that within the next ten years (and with the introduction of Web 3.0) could be phased out with the introduction of artificial intelligence and programming.

Human(esque) Contact and the World Wide Web

As argued on LifeWire, the future of the web (Web 3.0, as it is so aptly named) holds the power to shape much of society’s experience as online media becomes increasingly ever-present in daily life.

What LifeWire describes as an artificially intelligent web, has the potential to cultivate a user-oriented online experience that is unprecedented. For example, social bookmarking as a search engine can provide more intelligent results than using Google. You’re getting websites that have been voted on by humans, so you have a better chance at hitting something good.

However, one must factor in the humanity of this social addition; results can be manipulated, resulting in skewed content presentation. With the addition of artificial intelligence, we may soon be able to separate the good from the bad it web results. Introducing this intelligence into the realm of social and online activism could potentially aid in the decrease of spam, bots and false events.

With the development of my mobile application, Activ8, the effect of bots and spam accounts were not something I considered when beginning. Instead, it was a topic that began to raise concern as I more clearly developed the experience and use of the app. In theory, had this come to fruition ten years from now, the addition of artificial intelligence is something that, I think, would greatly benefit mobile and online development from a usability perspective.

A Lesson In Usability

 

As if building a mobile app wouldn’t difficult enough for a girl who admits she is technologically challenged…

 

Spurred by the grassroots elements of social movements across America, the concept of Activ8 is inherently crowd-sourced for and by its’ users. Because of this, a primary concern when screening events for users to attend is the submission of fake events.

 

This would have a considerable effect on the usability of the app itself. Not only would it make it more difficult for users to find planes events in their area, but it would drastically affect the credibility of the brand and experience of the app.

 

However, with the aid of algorithms and programming it should be more easily scan for bots and known spam for increased usability.

 

Crowd Sourcing Social Change

Within the past five years, social media applications have provided an accessible platform for many popular movements like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and the Women’s March to begin spreading their message. However, it has become increasingly difficult for small movements- ideas that have just begun to bloom- to build deep roots amongst so many trending topics that seem to leave as rapidly as they came. When addressing this question, Twitter was the first app that came to my mind, but I realize it is not specific to a cause. Though it has served as the jumping-off point for many recent calls for social change, I couldn’t help but wonder if there were such a site specifically addressing these topics in real time.

A quick search of “social justice app” brought me to quite the list of websites, including The New Yorker and Tech.co; the one I found most interesting, however, is web-based app called CrowdVoice. This website and its corresponding app are specifically designed to “track voices of protest.”

The site hosts both “feature voices” and “current voices” with an array of headlines featuring protests and grassroots movements, both nationally and internationally. This could be useful for those seeking to share a cause they a working passionately to build via the app’s “Add A Voice” option, or useful for researchers like me, not only looking for popular causes, but those that have not bloomed via social network.

The website is effective due to both its usability and accessibility; the home page features between eight and ten current protest headlines. These headlines are followed by statistics that are easy to read and categorically organized by recent updates, new facts, or feature stories.  

Website like CrowdVoice allow for interested parties to not only better understand what is happening in the world around them, but to plant the seeds of meaningful change in movements that affect them in an arena that is much easier to navigate than a traditional social media site like Facebook or Twitter.

Brain Matter: Activism and Intellectual Property

Within my writing, much of the content, of the ideas I am exploring, finds roots in other people’s ideas. Social movements are the creative work of one person or a group’s ideas on love, on religion, on economics…

All of that is to say, that in its simplest context, I find my words and inspiration to write at the hands of other people. Without the ideas that spurred movements like Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, and the Women’s March, I would not have the means to produce new content: original content that is inspired by other’s original content. The line of ideas can be traced back far before this blog had even been considered.

James Boyle poses this within his question of the Public Domain:

“But does intellectual property work this way now, promoting the ideal of progress, a transparent marketplace, easy and cheap access to information, decentralized and iconoclastic cultural production, self-correcting innovation policy?”

On a larger scale, specifically within professional writing how many times does a writer ask “Am I allowed to use this? I don’t want to get in trouble.” I would say the number is infinite. With the creation of new content, there is always the question of whether or not the use of information will result in penalty.

In her TEDxMaastricht presentation, Animator Nina Paley goes on to present the idea of “Permission Culture.” In her terms, the less information flows, the more it stagnates; evolution, progress, and innovation stall. All of this, she insists is due to the control of what information comes in, and in return, what flows out.

With this in mind, I believe that original thought cannot be a product of a world without free information flow. Through this, the ideas that spawn from a piece of writing, a song, an art piece, can then lead society to address larger social themes and create meaningful involvement within a culture.

Like an American

Picture this: five twenty-something college women pile into a red sedan and set off for Washington, D.C. on a cold January night. It takes them 14 hours and almost 900 miles, but in the glow of the morning twilight, they unfold pink signs from their backseat and join hands. They march with more than 500,000 people that day.

18 months later the driver of that red sedan is walking down the same road, this time with her family. This time, she marches for those in search of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

This is a space for those that were there and those that hope to be some day.

In a study on millennials published by the American Press Institute, only 23% of them fall into the “Activist” category. That being said, most are well-educated and they boast the most ethnic diversity of any group discussed. “Nearly half of Activists have at least a college degree (43 percent), which is the highest proportion of the four groups, and another 26 percent have some college or technical training.” They, unlike younger millennials and Generation Z, join online platforms to stay informed and have engagement to online news sources.

What does this say about the other 77%? If anything, they may be a bit harder to reach.

My hope is to engage a younger millennial and Gen-Z audience; one that uses social media, you know, socially. The University of Pittsburgh Communications Department says this: “An effective speaker must be able to show their audience why the topic they are speaking on should be important to them.” I want to create something accessible, something thought provoking; writing that is filled with contradiction as it twists its’ way through questions with no black or white answer. I think this is precisely the space America (and Americans) hangs in today, waiting for words to inspire our next step forward. 

 

 

An Instant Revolution

Since I was a little girl, I have always loved to tell a story. Sometimes it was more along the lines of a white lie, only so I could spend the night at my best friend’s house. Other days it was the grand conquer of a new land in my neighborhood woods. At night I would sit silently, soaking in every word of a story my dad told at dinner. He talked of long nights driving back roads during campaigns, even longer flights to the far East and bullet trains through snow-capped mountains. I like to think that he taught me how to talk like that, too.

 

Twenty years later, I am still telling stories. Some are about me, of course, but my favorites are of those that surround me, capture me, teach me something new. I believe that telling a story is the most compelling (and effective) way to convey a message. Through this writing, I seek to tell the stories of those that are working to change the world. Addressing social activism will be difficult; so many gray areas leave room for interpretation, or, in some cases, misinterpretation. My writing will be based in story-telling, in giving life to movements that have built themselves through their activity in the media, specifically in the digital realm.

 

In his New Yorker article “Small Change,” Malcolm Gladwell insists as where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools. Is revolution possible in the digital age? Can their be lasting change when gratification is instant and what’s trending seems to flash by even more quickly than the day before? I’m not sure, but there are sure a whole lot of people trying.

 

Furthermore, what is a revolution without music? To address this (the answer, I’m pretty sure, is no), I will include a playlist to accompany my weekly post. This week’s includes a few of my favorites and others I have had on repeat as of late.