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Blog Post #10 Week 13

What leads to the infringement of rights after 9/11?  One of the main reasons that rights were infringed upon with things such as the Patriot Act after 9/11 was because the government treated it like war time. Not only did the government treat it like war time but the same amount of fear was spread across the American people. When people are scared they are more willing to give things up in order to get back their safety. A lot of the time they don’t care whose rights are being violated as long as the end result is them feeling safe again. They don’t take into account the fact that these infringements of people’s civil liberties will not lead to their safety and that it will actually take advantage of so many minorities and marginalized groups. The real issue is not even that these rights are taken away during war time but rather that they are never returned to the American people. Every time we have an issue in our country that makes us scared we give up more and more rights and we never get them back. Regardless of whether or not we should give up our rights during times of fear the issue is that those liberties are not restored leading to a severe infringement into so many of our civil liberties.

Should the government be using social media to police thoughts and ideas? While the way that the government has been utilizing social media to infringe upon peoples rights is absolutely abhorrent I do think that if the government did not use social media as a tool they would really be putting themselves at a disadvantage. So much of what happens in today’s world happens on social media and it is therefore necessary for different government agencies to use it as a tool. Furthermore I do think it is the social media users responsibility to control what they put online. Making death threats of any sort online should have consequences. You should not be allowed to exist on social media without consequences for your actions and just because so many people are trusting social media as completely private area does not mean that we should excuse that. But on top of that any form of entering into someone’s private information on their technology that truly should be private cannot be excused. Regardless of the reason. Even if someone threatens to kill someone on their notes app the government does not have the right to search that because you could not have known until you saw that. The reason for this is because so many government agencies would love to take this as an opportunity to take advantage of marginalized communities.

What do we have to do to keep protests? The issue with protests is that if we want to allow protests for things that we want to protest we also have to allow protests for things we don’t agree with. There is a famous case where a group of people protested outside a veterans funeral saying that these veterans were killed by God as punishment for homosexuality. Not even that these veterans were homosexual just in general all the soldiers dying for their country was actually God punishing us for allowing homosexuality. When I first heard of this I thought there has to be some way to avoid allowing protests like this. These people are just trying to mourn their children who died fighting for their country and here are people shouting blasphemous things saying their kids were gonna rot in hell. Unfortunately this is the hard truth of protests. We cannot limit any amount of speech we dislike because then no speech is protected. We have to be okay with hearing the hecklers in order to make sure everyone’s voices will be heard. So in order to keep protests the first step is making sure not to try and limit other peoples speech and use introspection to ensure that we can be okay with other people saying things we don’t like. But you might ask what is the solution to the terrible things these people are saying. Well the solution to bad speech has always been and will always be better speech. 

How does the vague language in laws policing terrorism lead an infringement of rights? When we allow the law to become vague and up to interpretation we allow for nuance that can become dangerous. There is a reason laws take so long to write and seem to plan for every contingency. On top of that there is a reason why laws are written and rewritten and paired with accompanying laws wherever possible. The nature of the law is to try to plan for every loophole and contingency possible and block them. With vague language people can twist laws and loopholes to their desires and attempt to use it in ways for their own personal agendas, or vendettas.

Parenti, C. (2003). Fear as Institution: 9/11 and Surveillance Triumphant. In The Soft Cage. Basic Books.

Power, M. (2010). How your Twitter account could land you in jail. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/police-twitter-riots-social-media-activists/

Tech, T.. Data Detox Kit. https://datadetoxkit.org/ 

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Week 12

Can we opt out of surveillance? Can you consent to surveillance?

One of the questions we were offered after watching the video in class this week is can we opt out of surveillance and can we consent to it. To answer the first question the answer is not really. We cannot truly opt out of surveillance because the option is not given to us everywhere. And even when it is offered it can easily be overridden on the side of the surveiller. So either you don’t get the option to opt out or the opting out is not guaranteed. Now for the second part can we consent to surveillance. We cannot truly consent to surveillance as even if we are given the opportunity to consent it is definitely not informed consent. This may be because people are too lazy to read terms and conditions, because companies make it impossible to read or understand everything they are saying, or because companies obscure the truth of the depth of their surveillance.

Can social media be more of a hinderance or a help to making people feel more secure in their natural features? This is in reference to specifically the article about natural hair blogs but this can extend beyond that to other features. Many people like to say that social media makes it so people are insecure because everybody edits things or only shows their best self there. But in this case the fact that social media is so accessible it will eventually allow more people to join and make people feel accepted for their features just through representation. Representation is so important because when you can see someone who has similar features to yourself being proud in front of everyone online it gives you something to relate to and allows you to see those features represented as normal. So many people are scared of things they don’t’t understand. We often don’t understand things because we haven’t seen them enough to learn about them but people using the internet to show their natural selves helps represent the things we could have been scared of and allows them to seem “normal” which can be so important for a young person that is feeling insecure online.

How does cancelling get swept up in bigoted undertones? When we see a group try to cancel someone online or critique their content because it is problematic the main source for this is to use the internets policing powers to enforce rules that the majority thinks the internet should take. This can start from a good place such as trying to keep information accurate, authentic, or remove bigotry. This unfortunately often ends up not being the end result. For example sometimes you have instances like that in the Hathaway article where one of the people being critiqued even if it is rightfully is a woman especially in a field where women are not often found. This can lead to more hate than necessary or being allowed to get away with attacking them because they are an easier target and the society (gamer community) is more accepting of a woman being attacked. It can also open a door for people who wanted to hate on this creator just because she is a woman and cause an onslaught of online hate. I’ve seen this countless times with creators liking one artwork while disliking another artwork even though they are very similar seemingly just because one is a man and the other is a woman. They don’t usually say it outright and they often have many reasons to explain it away but this casual misogyny is so blatant when you are able to take in the content and their differences for yourself.

Can online spaces be solely for users? While I am tempted to say no due tot he way so many online spaces are monetized and exploited so often. Even things that we never would have thought could become monetized are becoming that way. But I have personally seen some examples of internet spaces that are made by users for users and are kept outside of those advertised spaces. So it is possibly but it must be for a respectful user base and I would even argue a grateful user base. For example wikipedia is one way where it relies on user donations and still is run by people but it relies on creators who care about the site and want it to run smoothly.

Lee, L. (2015). Virtual Homeplace: (Re)Constructing the Body through Social Media.

McLaine, S. (2001). Ethnic Online Communities: Between Profit and Purpose. In D. Gauntlett (Ed.), Web.Studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age. Arnold Publishers.

Hathaway, J. (2014, October 10). What is Gamergate, and why? An explainer for non-geeks. Gawker.

O'Neill, M., & Peltz, P. (Directors). (2020). Surveilled [Film]. HBO Documentary Films.

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Week 11

How can the anonymity of social media negatively impact the ability fo people and color to create communities online?

We discussed in previous weeks how online we can explained our identities because nobody really knows what we look like. This can lead to people pretending to be certain demographics as a way to spread mis or disinformation.People can try to infiltrate certain communities such as “Black Twitter” in order to spread deceit and cause issues within that community. That being said I don’t think it would be an easy task in early social media days because people still existed like social media was new and weird causing them to be a little bit wary of it. Even if at the time people didn’t have as much internet safety drilled into them.  Because of this it probably made it harder for somebody to blend in while causing strife. As opposed to now where your username doesn’t relate to anything and your profile picture isn’t even a picture of you so when you comment something that make you seem to be a part of one group people just go along with it.

What are some issues with online activism? As mentioned in some of the articles online activism can be hard to organize in the sense that you don’t know truly how many people are supportive. We have heard the term slacktavist and the media has only contributed to this. It is so easy to like and repost something or change your profile picture as we mentioned in class but getting those people to actually go out and fight for change or vote for change or even just spread the message of change through word of mouth rather than social media can seem like an impossible task. Especially with the current climate online where people’s attentions spans last about two weeks before they move on to the next thing. Even more so it can be hard to take the numbers of online supporters into the real world and find out how many people are willing to actually show up and protest. Furthermore being the person trying to organize this can be extremely difficult because while the internet does give you access to unprecedented amounts of people it also leads to having to manage and direct those people which can be quite difficult as the number grows. 

How can misinformation be spread? I’ve actually interviewed people about the Arab spring before and they told me about their perceptions of the time and it was quite shocking. They told me about how right before the Arab spring Christians were peacefully protesting and this would only lead to the massacre of Christian’s. They told me about how unsafe the Christians were and during the Arab spring when extremists were in charge of the government before the military coup there were many christian churches being burnt down. Some of the people I interviewed were of the belief that the government was actually the ones setting fire to Christian Churches in order to cause chaos and infighting so that they could keep control. All of this goes to show just the length that misinformation can be spread even from governments. Freedom of speech is so important because even as it almost causing more misinformation to be spread it is the only opposition to disinformation. As stated by the Supreme Court the cure for bad speech is better speech. 

How can social media positively affect a movement? Social Media can allow for grassroots movements as we previously discussed in class. It allows for people to connect across space (geographical) and time (zones) to unite together with a common cause. One thing to keep in mind is that social media is only one tool in our toolbox. As long as we insure we are using it in combination with so many of our other tools we can be successful in using social media to help a movement progress.

Lee, L. A. (2017). Black Twitter: A response to bias in mainstream media. Social Sciences, 6(1), 26. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6010026

Vegh, S. (2003). Classifying forms of online activism: The case of cyberprotests against the World Bank. In M. McCaughey & M. D. Ayers (Eds.), Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and practice. Routledge.

Bogost, I. (2020). The Quiet Revolution of Animal Crossing. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/animal-crossing-isnt-escapist-its-political/610012/

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Week 9

How can social media aid in radicalization to an extent that has not previously been seen?

One way that social media can truly lend toward radicalization regardless of the direction is through the anonymity it allows. When we start to become more extreme in our beliefs without having to back it up in person or get worried what other people might think about it it allows us to become more radical about it much quicker. We don’t have to worry about how our words and actions affect those online because the consequences are not right in front of us. Another thing that can lead to this is the echo chamber that is caused by our current digital state. Social media feeds you things that you are interested in and react with to an extreme. If you start liking mild things in a certain ideology the algorithm on different social media platforms will start to give you more and more extreme stuff within that topic until suddenly all you get is the most extreme versions of that. Not only that but it wont show you things in opposition to that because people choose the news they want. If somebody says something that disagrees with your ideas you can easily block them and never have to see that again or interact with it. This may lead to people believing that there is no one disagreeing with them because all the people they see online have the same ideas and thoughts as them. They may also seek validation from this online community that might help them disparage people with opposing views that cause the person to start to see the other side as inferior. Overall radicalization in the social media sphere can be like an invasive species overtaking everything else on your feed streamlining the process to radicalization.

What is one way social media supports the radicalizer?

We have all heard about the social media algorithms. Those algorithms are designed to boost content that gets a lot of engagement regardless of whether that engagement is positive or negative. It encourages creators to make more content that is attention grabbing which is now leading to a rise in ragebaiting. If you don’t know what ragebaiting is it is basically when a creator says something they know will get people mad or does/says something wrong on purpose so that people comment about it on the post or send it to friends to talk about. The algorithm promotes extreme content such as ragebaiting that encourages creators to put out radical content in order to get their piece of work to go viral and get more attention. All of this helps not only encourage creators to make radically content but also promotes that content and puts it on more peoples feeds in order to be interacted with. 

How does social media affect grassroots movements?

Social media can help with political mobilization in a way we have not seen before. It helps give access to smaller political movements in way that may not require as much money in order to reach a lot of people. It helps people get their ideas and messages out to a large group with minimal effort across demographics. It also can help these movements to better target each demographic by showing them the main demographic on each platform to help them better target their message and be more convincing. It can also allow them to not just get their message out but engage with, and easily organize their members. People who are interested can easily ask questions and get quick and easy answers. People who want to make change and go out on behalf of the movements can easily be organized and mobilized. 

How does the wealth of knowledge on the internet impact peoples beliefs? 

When thinking about radicalization you must also think about the amount of information on the internet that people can access. Especially when considering echo chambers we need to think about how much and what types of information people can engage with. With the mass amounts of information on the internet it makes me think of a supreme court case that set the precedent that the counter to bad speech is better speech. This meant that we shouldn’t censor speech but rather just increase the amount of good speech. I recently learned in my media literacy class that this is not entirely the reality for what is happening. As we continue to engage with what might be considered “bad” speech it propels that up in social media and makes it more popular. And that speech may be funny or unbelievable but as we share it and watch it more people see it. Also with the mass amounts of information on the internet it can seem impossible to wade through everything on there in order to find the “better” speech. 

Daniels, J. (2009). Cyber racism: white supremacy online and the new attack on civil rights. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Elin, L. (2013). The Radicalization of Zeke Spier: How the Internet Contributes to Civic Engagement and New Forms of Social Capital.

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Week 8

What might a world without gender look like? 

A world without a gender binary could be a dream for some and a nightmare for others. A world without gender would include a distancing from gendered language. No more policeman or fireman. No more businessman or waitress. Our words would evolve as they are currently doing to include more gender neutral plural terms such as y’all in order to better navigate our society. A world without gender would help to do away with gendered clothing. No more people assuming your gender based on what you look like and how you present yourself. Now the real question is would the world have no gender at all or just eliminate a gender binary. Some people do like having gender and expressing it. A world without any sort of gender at all might actually limit self expression and the ability to feel good about how you present yourself. I think that the most important thing to remember when thinking of a future world without a gender binary is that there have already been society’s with more than two genders. That colonists and western society came in and superimposed their own beliefs about gender onto everybody else eradicating that diversity within previous societies.

Are cyborgs truly without gender? Why or why not?

When I think of cyborgs I would say that they are not without gender. Most of them are given female sounding voices and even if they have capabilities that sexism would suggest women are not strong, or powerful enough to have at the end of the day a cyborg is a service tool. The purpose of most pieces of technology is to serve humans and/or make their lives easier. Now this sexism would agree with; as society has so much casual misogyny ingrained in it it’s unsurprising that with that knowledge cyborgs tend to lean more female  and are often viewed as female.

One thing we discussed in class is how the transition of white characters to people of color was reacted to with much outrage. So one thing I want to discuss is why so many characters that were white and transitioned into African American characters were also gingers?

I saw a video online breaking down this phenomenon. At first it was presented as a silly thing to notice but the creator then went on to discuss how gingers were typically irish immigrants in the states and more specifically irish immigrants with outward signs that were easy to identify. I think we have all seen that people within marginalized communities that have more obvious visible identifiers tend to receive more bigotry. The creator went on to discuss how gingers were often considered bad luck and were considered the lowest class of the white citizens. They also discusses how every African American show when we were younger always had the red headed best friend even going so far as to give the red headed best friend to latinx characters as well. 

What can be the negative impact of the oversexualizaiton of women in media and furthermore the lack of character diversity? As a woman myself I can say that I have personally felt the lack of representation caused by the one dimensional female character. When deciding who I want to play in a game it’s usually not going to be a brown woman because that is usually just not an option. On top of that it’s usually not going to be able to be a woman with m body proportions because we only see two types of woman in media. The overweight woman who is seen for nothing but comedy and the hot, skinny, woman with big boobs that is seen for nothing outside of her sexual appeal. This reinforces the beauty standard of the white man allowing us to only see one type of beauty standard and often view ourselves and impossible to measure up. This compounds with the over-sexualization of women  that creates impossible body standards that literally don’t exist in real life. But we are taught that they are and with the help of just a million surgeries you too can look like an imaginary person that never existed to begin with. Furthermore we have tons of men online who don’t ever interact with women in real life and therefore entirely believe that these women portrayed in animations are what real women should look like and often find it ridiculous when newer animations come out with more realistic body proportions because it doesn’t feed their porn addled image of what a woman looks like.

Daniels, Jessie. (2009). Cyber racism : white supremacy online and the new attack on civil rights. Lanham, Md. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Haraway, D. (2006). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late 20th century. In: Weiss, J., Nolan, J., Hunsinger, J., Trifonas, P. (eds) The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments.

O’Riordan, K. (2006). Chapter 21 Gender, technology, and visual cyberculture: Virtually women. In D. Silver & A. Massanari (Ed.), Critical Cyberculture Studies. New York, USA: New York University Press.

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Week 7

What are some ways that this show hints towards the cycle nature of poverty?

In the episode of Black Mirror we watched “Nosedive” it showed ways that societal movement, in the society depicted in the tv show, can become limited due to lack of social standing. In other ways in order to be in an area that would help with upward social movement you already had to be high. If you are a low three you can’t even attempt to socialize with people who can rate you higher or move into apartment buildings around fours. Your access to tools that can help you increase your position do not exist around you. Similarly in real life you can see examples of how poverty can breed poverty. Like if you are homeless even if you can reach out to try and get job interviews you don’t always have access to things like showers or nice suits and that can lead to you not being chosen for a job. This is because a lot of the time hygiene is actually considered a sign of social status which can allow homeless people or people with mental health issues to not be as able to get access and opportunities. Or another example is when you are working a lot for very little you don’t always have the time to prepare meals and instead can choose to buy food which can then take a large portion of your paycheck out causing you to have to work more and just creating a cycle that is hard to get out of.

How could this episode have changed if it touched on race and beauty in the society it portrayed?

I honestly think it was such a missed opportunity to not touch on how this type of meritocracy can be affected by race. When you live in a society that has its beauty standards centered around white features it can cause women of color to be seen as masculine unless they go for extreme Barbie levels of beauty every single day. This can cause casual racism in just how we view beauty around us. And in this society that creates a social hierarchy based on pleasantness, beauty goes hand in hand with that. Obviously because we are watching a tv show they are not going to cast people who are unattractive but its interesting to see that the people who were considered lower status were also often not the ideal beauty standard that the high fours and fives were considered to be. Also the way that we see diversity and inclusion in real life is allowing a few of the “good” people of color through to the top in order to say hey we have diversity but not allowing others through. It can also lead to people of color who are let through being forced through societal pressure and fear of losing their own status to join in on this casual racism that can’t even be called out as racism. This episode could have spoken so much more on how casually social redlining can happen which we have seen examples of in our class through technological redlining. In order to be on top of a hierarchical system you need to create and maintain reasons to keep people below you. It would have been so interesting to see how this played out in the society of social ratings and even further how casual racism and unconscious racism showed up in different peoples ratings.

How do we discuss white privilege to those who don’t understand what it is or that they have it? 

I’ve come across a lot of conversations just like what was described in the text about attempting to discuss with someone their white privilege and they respond with arguments to how they aren’t. I’ve even had conversations with people of color confused that a lot of Europeans are also considered white. So how do we go about discussing this with people. In my experience I’ve found that explaining to people what white privilege you must also explain its nature as something invisible. White privilege is not segregation with big huge signs that say white only that you can point to as wrong. It’s the subtly that can only sometimes be shown with statistics or only be explained with a feeling. Sometimes there will not be any tangible proof of the white privilege at all. For some people closer to my age cohort I will explain it like pretty privilege. We can all see when someone is drop dead gorgeous just the same way that’s somebody’s race especially for darker skinned people of color is not a hidden thing. But when you see your pretty friend do things like be able to park for free in a place she shouldn’t be able to you get kind of confused. You might brush it off as the worker not wanting to go out of their way to charge you for parking so they just say yeah its ok. Because just like white privilege its so easy to brush off. It still happens though and it still affects people. One thing to do is to understand that you won’t get through to everybody and some people aren’t easy to convince with one time talking to them. 

Race as a technology and why does it make sense?

As I mentioned in an earlier response, in order to have power over people and considered the top of the hierarchical chain you must create and maintain this hierarchy and create reasons to why other people should stay below you. Whether that be through the color of their skin their gender, their perceived usefulness or skill set, their attractiveness, their religion, their personality, etc.. Anything that they can to keep other people down and in order to do that it must be systematic working almost like an algorithm on a computer to find and exploit weakness of other or even just things that can be portrayed as weaknesses to keep them below you. Everything we know in our society to be was constructed by someone or a group of someones. And when things are new and created they are considered tools and technologies. Just because the technology of systematically lowering other people has been around for a lot time does not mean it is no longer a technology. Forgive me a moment because I am going to connect this to economics. In economics the only way to improve the output of a society without trade is new technology and the technology of making other people seem lower in a hierarchy has shown through human history to be extremely beneficial to those who are utilizing it.

T. Senft, S. Noble (2015) Race and social media. In J. Hunsinger and T. Senft (Eds.), The Social Media Handbook (pp. 102-125). Routledge

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

Brooker, C. (2023). Black Mirror: Nosedive. Netflix

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Week 6

Week 6

How can racism find its way into technology through media? 

In “The Revenge of the Yellowfaced Cyborg Terminator” by J. Ow the author mentions how the creators of a computer game created a character that has inherent racist imbedded in its creation with beliefs and ideas that were left behind from the ignorance that came along with colonialism. Another example of this that is quite prevalent in media is the way villains are portrayed. When the villains of stories are darker skinned people that speak english with heavy slavic or arabic accents. Even in tv shows where the shows are centered around an asian or arabic cast the villains are still going to be the darker skinned people that are a part of that ethnic group. Furthermore when we see representation of different culture it often excludes people with darker skin tones. For example when we see a movie like Crazy Rich Asians where there are people of Asian descent with a darker skin tone with main roles. Or how the main male lead in that movie was criticized for “not being asian enough”. Or in Tv shows like Moon Knight where the main Arabic lead is still white passing without darker toned Middle Easterns and North Africans being represented.

What are some negative side effects to the way identities become fluid in the online space?

One major negative side effect of the disembodiment that happens when we enter the technological realm is the idea of anonymity. When we go online we magically become part of a crowd even as we sit alone. Some of the issues with crowds include the bystander effect, groupthink, and anonymity. Now how do these things translate into the online space. The bystander effect is the idea that when something is going wrong the crowd will just stand by and watch it happen. This effect gets worse the larger the crowd gets because when you are one person in a group of 100 it is much easier to believe that you personally do not need to be the one helping as one of the hundred other people there will help. This allows you to diffuse responsibility into the crowd. When we go online this group of one hundred can become groups of millions. It allows us to watch horrific things on the internet and choose not to do or say anything because somebody else can or will take care of it. We watch racism, cyberbullying, sexism, and prejudice happen all over the place and say nothing. Next we have group thinking which is the idea of following in line with what the majority is doing which ties into the bystander effect of not wanting to stand out or stand alone against something. It also includes the anonymity we can experience as we become part of a large group which can allow us to feel faceless especially when aided by the disembodiment of the online space which can allow us to feel as though we can say things with no consequences for our actions because one we are not being seen and two we are just part of the crowd and therefore unable to be individually identified. 

What can be an effect of being unaware of the idea that cyberspace and race are both social constructs as mentioned in “Race in Cyberspace: An Intro” by Kolko, Nakamura and Rodman?

One way that this can be a bad thing is through its relation to the concept of “The White Man’s Burden”. This was something that was created during the slave trade and as a result of colonialism. When all these white people were treating other humans as less than them they had to create a way to get rid of the cognitive dissonance in their heads of treating people worse than animals and wanting free, easy labor as well as wanting to feel superior to other people. You may have seen examples of the excuses people would give and believe wholeheartedly such as that African Americans are naturally stupider than white people. But the way this manifested through “The white man's burden” was a way to convince white people that people of color did not have the cognitive abilities to take care of themselves, or to take advantage of resources nearby them. We can see this through the way other cultures were labeled primitive or savage because they did not do things the rich white european way. This allowed people to believe that colonialism needed to happen because otherwise people of color and specifically African Americans would not be able to take care of themselves. This was a direct result of the construct of race that was created by society in order to attempt to create a social hierarchy. When we forget that certain things are entirely made up by the minds of men, people can often allow themselves to believe ridiculously untrue things that rely entirely on these man-made social hierarchies. When people online speak as though those who are not online or don’t know about things that are happening in internet spaces are ignorant we allow ourselves to start readopting the views of vilifying those who are not a part of the man made hierarchies.

 What are some positive effects of anonymity in the online space?

One positive effect on anonymity in the online and technological space is the way it allows people to avoid or point out prejudice. In this week's readings we discussed the different types of racism in online spheres and in the Nakamura video about the Five Types of Online Racism she discusses how some of these are only seen or are most prevalent in video games. Online there are people who can disguise themselves as other genders or just omit their gender and allow the other players to assume their gender to be male. This also ties back to previous weeks readings on how the online space can allow us to explore our gender. Some real life examples I have seen of this is people online who dress up as a girl as a joke to pretend catfish online who then realized that they are gender fluid or trans due to being allowed to try this new gender. Another example i see of this is this one girl who will play COD online and play a couple of rounds muted and the second she starts to talk all of her other teammates will start saying extremely sexist things to her which allows her to spread awareness of the sexism still so overly prevalent in video game spheres.

Kolko, B. E., Nakamura, L., & Rodman, G. B. (2000). Race in Cyberspace. Routledge. 

Nakamura, L. (2011). TED Talk: 5 Types of Online Racism and Why You Should Care. TedTalk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT-G0FlOo7g. 

Ow, J. A. , Kolko, B., Nakamura, L., & Rodman, G.(2000). Race in Cyberspace. Chapter 4, The Revenge of the Yellowfaced Cyborg Terminator, (1st ed.). Routledge

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Blog Post #3

What can be considered intersectionality?

One thing that can help define intersectionality is culture hegemony . Culture hegemony is just about what ideology is considered “normal” or more common by society. As so many classifications that we identify ourselves by today are social constructs and therefore ideologies these two things can go hand in hand. For example race and gender are both social constructs and ideologies. This allows certain things such as a gender binary to be the culture hegemony. This is because it is the most common system of gender and is considered “normal”. Another example is christianity it is the culturally hegemonous religion. This can help us to define what falls outside of these categories. If someone is not part of this cultural hegemony in more than one way those two aspects of themselves can be a point of intersectionality. 

Why is intersectionality important?

Intersectionality is important because of the way we approach issues. When we speak on issues we may forget to include aspects and identities that are not righ tin front of us. Sometimes identities can seem like check boxes for us. When we speak on the violence to people in communities such as the African American community we may forget to include women or queer people who may be facing violence due to any one of these things. On the same side when we speak about the struggles of women in the work place we may forget to include queer women or women of color. When we argue about a woman’s right to choose we often forget a woman’s right to choose her religion and shun Muslim women especially Muslim women who wear hijabs or other types of religious coverings. It is important to understand and study intersectionality in order to better understand the struggles of people who exist in those intersections. When we try to be inclusive sometimes people can see it as a checkbox. If you consider media that tries to represent people of color how many of those people are handicap-able. It even reminds me of interracial couples portrayed in media that forget that interracial couple don’t require a white person, they don’t have to be straight, they don’t have to be cisgender, and they don’t have to be Christian.

What are some of the side effects of being labeled a criminal at a young age? 

In class we discussed how some people are being labeled as criminal for interacting with gang members even very loosely and how some databases were putting one year olds in as gang members. One negative side effect of being labeled a criminal at such a young age has to do with the psychology of learning. There are studies that show that elementary schoolers can tell when they are behind at a very young age and that they can even give up hope in themselves by fourth grade. By the time you are ten years old that is all it takes to notice that you are struggling with learning a little bit more than your peers and give up. Now imagine if from the time you are one years old, before you are even able to create long term memories, you are being treated like it is your destiny to become a criminal. When everyone treats you like there is no other path for you than becoming a criminal it almost feels like fate. How are you at ten years old supposed to do anything other than agree and go along with it. By ten years old you might see that you are treated differently than your peers and just give up.

How can our digitized criminal system lead to negative side effects on society?

Ever since I was a kid I had it drilled into me that the internet is forever. My seventh and eighth grade teacher used to tell us that we wouldn’t be able to go on a field trip to JPL because they would go through our social media even if it was private and find a picture of us with a red solo cup and regardless of what was inside assume it was alcohol and not allow us to go. She even brought in somebody who worked for the government to tell us horror stories about applicants who had gone through multiple difficult sets of interviews only to be blacklisted at the final stage due to something that popped up on their social media. Mind you this was in 2018.  When we put people into criminal systems online that lasts forever. This can cause certain marginalized communities that are being watched more than others to be sent to prison for things so many other people would get away with. Furthermore prisons have had studies done on them about how nonviolent offenders can go into prison especially at a young age and get taught in prison that violence is the only way to survive causing them to become violent reoffenders down the line. Putting people on watchlists online means that these things stain their records forever even if it was an accident or a non serious watchlist. This can then lead to them going to prison for things that no one else would be seen doing in the first place and cause them to come out more violent and more likely to reoffend.

Benjamin, R. (2020). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity. 

Everett, A. (2011). “The Revolution Will Be Digitized: Reimaging Africanity in Cyberspace.” Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace, State University of New York Press, pp. 147–82. 

Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York University Press.

TED. (2016, December 7). The Urgency of Intersectionality I Kimberle Crenshaw. Youtube.

Youth Justice Coalition (2012). Tracked and trapped. Youth of color, gang databases, and gang injunctions. https://youthjusticela.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TrackedandTrapped.pdf

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Week 3

What are some spaces of the internet that you subconsciously view as gendered and how might that negatively effect society?

Some spaces my friends and I have had conversations about being gendered are tumblr and reddit. We were joking when we spoke about it but there is a bit of truth to it in my eyes. We were discussing how both spaces are for chronically online people but reddit is more degenerate male whereas tumblr is more for degenerate women. One way this could be negative is by creating echo chambers which we have already seen from both of these websites in that they reinforce peoples incorrect and stereotypical beliefs because it is being reinforced by people who don’t interact with the subject of interest in real life. 

Does the internet’s “safe spaces” lead toward echo chambers and what can some of the effects of this be?

I think the internet’s “safe spaces” can one hundred percent and have become echo chambers. Obviously having a safe space can be a good thing but on the internet it can go to the extreme. This is because people on the internet have groupthink and depersonalization that allows them to do and say whatever they want with little to no repercussions so in turn people on the internet will guard their spaces more strictly which will lead to echo chambers with no dissenting thoughts because the internet is not conducive to healthy debate.

Daniels rethinking cyberfeminsinms argues that people go online and end up in spaces that are specific to them for example going to websites specifically for queer people or women. How has this changed over time?

For myself I would argue that I don’t actively seek out websites that exist for my specific demographic to interact on but with the way algorithms work on things such as instagram, tiktok, youtube, etc. cause you to be placed into certain groups just by what you interact with. Without even actively seeking it out you become echochambered on the internet causing a limitation of access to people who think differently than you.

Does the ability to switch gender or race online easily help or hurt overall? While I am tempted to argue that it does more harm than good I have always been of the belief that tools that help people even if the tools themselves can be misused are better if they help even a few people. While some people might use this to cause harm and spread misinformation others might use this to explore their gender or sexual identity and get an insight into how other cultures and races are treated and the experience of them. 

Daniels, J. (2009). Rethinking Cyberfeminism(s): Race, Gender, and Embodiment. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 37(1-2), 101–124. https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.0.0158

Greenhalgh, S. (2006). Red Flags. Elsevier EBooks, 5–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-443-10140-3.50005-3

Race and Technology - YouTube. (2024). Youtu.be. https://youtu.be/d8uiAjigKy8

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Jan 31 blog post

When working with my church to go feed the homeless we have a little bit of a weird system doing it. To start at my church we will make all the food and pack it up in trays and then we drive everyone volunteering to LA in one to two vans. This group  tends to be high schoolers and college kids who might be doing it for the first time and occasionally junior high kids trying it right before they enter high school. Then we get to LA stop at a spot set up a table make a bunch of plates until people stop coming up to us, then go hand out more, then pack up everything and move down a block and restart until we run out of food. This leads to a lot of people in small spaces all trying to do the same thing. As they say too many cooks on the kitchen. THis allows me due to the trust of the leaders to guide most of the people into certain jobs and help them streamline the process knowing what to do, when they should do it, and how fast they should do it. It allows me to make the process more streamlined and gives me experience in directing groups of people to work together so that we can all work together in the most efficient way that works towards everyone’s skills. This all started when I visited Chicago a year ago and because the city has an underground with two layers on top of it my apple maps could barely tell me that I was in the city of Chicago. I feel like at this point my phone should be able to figure out where I am. Everybody is always saying apple is spying on us which I believe but why can’t they seem to figure out how to tell me where I am. I have about four different apps on my phone that track my location constantly and none of them can tell me where I am. Disappointing.