itsallyzhu

[itsallyzhu]

Week 13 Short answer#3 Due 11/20

1.     What kind of social media sites?

For this assignment, I want to create a blog post page similar to Twitter. It will exclusively for women only, for women to share their same concerns and same problem. Some problem such we as female all experiences, the menstrual cycle problems, social stereotypes, unfair treatments, and other mental illness that is easily triggered as women such as depression and eating disorder. Therefore, providing support for each other. Regardless of ethnicity, only female is allowed to register for the site. LGBT will be allowed as well. The site will contain different categories or hashtags of different topic of discussions. The home page or me page will only show the people followed or idea related to the blogger’s viewpoint. Even though the site has varied topics, but it is up to the blogger’s choice to decide where they participate that day.

2.     What will you measure?

The site will measure retweets and the hashtags that blogger participate, that help knowing what is most popular and talked about. Comments will also be measure, in case for any falsely identified themselves as women. Measure comments also help to control offensive languages.

3.     How will you weight these factors?

I will monitor comments left under posts or retweets, if any sign of harassment or discriminatory speech. If any comment does not follow the guidelines, the site will flag the comments and user as well, later removing the account and comments. For retweets and hashtags, I will use these to place recommendation on personal page.

4.     What factors will not be measured? And why

Factors of past experience will not be measure, any violent language based on the past experience will not be measured because we are unable to determine the creditability of it. Will not be measuring age, and race. Since the site only focus on gender and concerns.

5.     How will the model learn or adapt to new information?

The model will learn or adapt to new information by a option of “adding to original”, clicking that will allow add additional information and recommendations.

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

A bias will be built in is the block and report option. This will change the outcome by bloggers within the community now voluntarily report suspicious and inappropriate contents and comments.

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

The model will live out the unethical practices because it red flags inappropriate comments, also give the participants the chance to report and block things that they do not wish to see. Limiting the possible racism and stereotype to the minimum.

[itsallyzhu]

Week 12 blog due 11/11

1. How did Animal Crossing demonstrate with reality?

Animal Crossing is much similar to reality in personal opinion. Since I am a player myself, even thought you do the same thing everyday, but I did not lose interest. Some similarity is that every labor counts, you can sale and receive profit for every sticks or wood material, and fish. Another interesting feature was the house mortgage, the player did not know about the debt before the house's construction finish.  It demonstrated a trap in long-term debt, even before we as younger generation to have a chance to consider take out a loan. Having holiday season also made the game most compatible with the reality, because we now celebrate and enjoy the holiday in a different world that we created for ourselves. 

2. What is Virtual Homeplace? And how some blog act as a Homeplace for certain people better than their home? 

According to Lee, Virtual Homeplace is a real or imagined place that offers comfort and nurture, where one seeks for safety against the racial or/and sexual oppression they possibly face in real life. Some ways that some cyberspace act as a Homeplace by creating a site of affirmation, a space to discuss issues, provide support for each other, and resist hatred; it is also a space providing economic independency and dependency; lastly, it provided a place to recover and heal from the oppression they face in reality. It give more senses of safety than home because it is free to speak out on there, and one will understand one another. Where husband and family might not understand the same in the house, we have to consider the rate of domestic violence is very high. That is why cyberspace and some blog site had became the homeplace for these disadvantaged and oppressed minorities. 

3. What is the #Gamergate? What does it fight for?

The "Gamergate" is an online movement ostensibly concerned with ethics in game journalisms and with protecting the "gamer" identity. The participant in this movement think that the games are corrupted, and they fighting to get that out. The reason for this they say is there are too many writer who maintain friendships or other close relationship with game developers. Which I consider ridiculous, it is saying a book get published is because the publisher was friend with the author. But they are all carefully examined and tried on before consider for publication. So are the games, in market wise, I don't believe that relationship get you a big win. I think both relationship and ability are needed. It was a question that was the gamer attacking the game or the one who invented the game, because the women being attacked in the movement was frequently from underrepresented identity groups and was a female. I believe that these two factors are enough for these angry player to attack her. I don't think men are happy when the game the play is created by a minority women.

4. What is digital default? How did it enforced racism as an endless loop?

According to Mclaine, the digital default is a sequences of human characteristics, it is white, male, heterosexual, middle-aged, middle-to-upper class. This default status reinforce the Internet's default status of whiteness. The internet is also a "social leveler", its neutrality is only valid since the issue of race and ethnicity are avoided rather than accepted. It enforced racism as an endless loop on Internet because the digital default serves a deterrent to minorities with access to and interest in technology. 

Hathaway, J. (2014). What Is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-Geeks. Gawker.

Lee, L. (2015). Virtual Homeplace: (Re)Constructing the Body Through Social Media. 91-111.

McLaine, S. (2003). Ethnic Online Communities: Between Profit and Purpose. 233-254.

[itsallyzhu]

Week 11 Blog due 11/4

1. What is choreography of assembly and where is the leader?

According to Fuchs, choreography of assembly means the use of social media in directing people towards specific protest events, in providing participants with suggestions and instruction about how to act and in the construction of an emotional narration to sustain their coming together in public space. The word choreography, gave some insight to what it mean when I was understanding this word. First, suggest the act of any form of protest are not completely spontaneous. Second, the soft leaders who are for the most not visible on the stage or at least do not take center-stage as it were. Even though it repeatedly claimed itself to be leaderless, there are soft leaders who make use of social media for choreographing protests and therefore constructing the choreography of assembly. 

2.What is Black Twitter and how is it powerful?

Black Twitter is an online subculture largely consisting of black users on the social network Twitter focused on issues of interest to the black community. The purpose of Black Twitter is challenging and resisting dominant degrading narrative placed on black and brown bodies through mainstream news coverage. Black Twitter is powerful because its participatory democratic nature of the space, emphasized the idea the users' creation of ironic hashtags create a space to address social issues of racial bias and discrimination. 

3. How had racist hashtag and surveillance had been thriving in our history until today?

There are numerous examples of news bias portraying black and brown bodies. This poor representation of black bodies harks back to the 18th century with the fear of social insubordination and the disruption of capitalist norms and accumulation. Some similar action that was token to in the history was slave passes, manumission paper, and slave hire badges as the identification. Similar to now how we uses hashtags online while posting to identify one's stance and race. A popular and well-known surveillance was the runaway notice that were posted in the local newspaper in the past, every town resident will help to bring back the runaway person. Nowadays, people of color are surveilled in community wise. People are separated in the area they live in, where it's easier to be control and watch over by the authorities. 

4. What is battleground and playground as the metaphor of the body?

For battleground, it is how the body is directly involved in a political field with power relations having an immediate hold on it, it creates perpetual battle for self-determination. It is an important site that is constantly under attack of control. Playground is the logic work to destabilize the resistance struggles of the battleground.

Fuchs, C. (2014). Social media and communication power. In Social media: A critical introduction (pp. 69-94). London: SAGE Publications Ltd doi: 10.4135/9781446270066.n4

Lee, L. (2017). Black Twitter: A Response to Bias in Mainstream Media. Social Sciences, 6(1), 26. doi:10.3390/socsci6010026

Vegh, S. (2003). Classifying Forms of Online Activism The Case of Cyberprotests against the World Bank.

[itsallyzhu]

Week 10 Blog Due 10/28

1. What is troll? 

Troll appeared early in mythology, defined as supernatural creatures with less than benevolent intent. Troll used to make its appearance in stories and fairy tales. Now be a troll on internet is to describe behaviors online that often brings with certain ideological baggage, to have negative intentions or wishing to harm or discomfort the audience. Even though most thought about a troll is negative, it could also be a positive tool to punish those who go beyond an online community’s norms. 

2. How does Phillips describes memes?

According to Phillips, memes are groups of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, memes were created with awareness of each other, and memes are circulated, imitate and transformed within the Internet by users. Memes had also describe to be a bridge language, that unit participatory online space. Memes are only make sense in relation to other memes as well. While we are use memes today while texting and posting certain things, we all abided to these description. There are memes that is thriving the internet we all know, one could remember the picture meme by just quoting the text in the picture. 

3. How is lulz claimed within internet and how it is conflict by itself?

Lulz is a particular kind of unsympathetic laughter. Lulz common claim as equal opportunity laughter within the troll space. This claim is contradicted by the fact that significant percentage of the laughter is directed at people of color, minorities, women, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ) people. Historically dominant groups are white christians and republicans in particular along with groups of white committed to a common cause. It is conflicted with its claim and what it really is. 

4. Can someone be a troll without the intention to be a troll?

According to Donath in Bergstrom’s article, a troll is intentionally disseminating bad advice and damaging trust within the community. Without the intention to do so and cause a specific malicious result, I personally do not consider as being a troll. Similar to the criminal law class I am currently taking, a criminal conduct is not establish without the concurrence of a criminal intent triggering a criminal act. For being a troll, similar that without the intention to cause harm to a community and spread bad advice, one cannot be truly call a troll. 

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

Duggan, M. (2014), “Online Harassment” Pew Research Center, pp. 1-11.

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.

[itsallyzhu]

Weekly blog due 10/14

1. What is Daniels referring to when he said "white supremacy has extended from the print-only era to the digital era"?

When Daniels states this, he refers to the root of masculinity and white supremacy of US history. Such as since the beginning of print era, newspaper and articles are published by white males, and companies producing these products are own by whites. Regardless of political stance or the area of production, it was started and own mostly by whites since the early age of forming communication platforms. Now, it is not surprising that internet companies are owned and run by whites. Even though there is acceptance of people of color to work in the field, we see ads that are mostly whites and few people of colors. 

2. What is translocal whiteness? 

According to Daniels, translocal whiteness is the possibility that whites from a range of nations and disparate global regions choose to identify across boundaries. An example given in the article regarding screen names is that one person uses one of the greatest king in Bohemia as their screen name on social media root in US. That is translocal whiteness because these participants at the same platform living in US and Canada reinforce their shared white identity across boundaries by drawing on historical example from the third nation. 

3. What are the three distinctions that make political fictional analysis possible according to Haraway?

According to Haraway, the first distinction is biological-determinist ideology,  which opened up the argument for the meaning of human animality, that is between human and animal. The second distinction is between organism and machine, stating the idea that our machines are we created are disturbingly lively, and we are frighteningly inert and lifeless. The last distinction is the boundary between physical and nonphysical, stating that our microelectronic devices are everything and invisible, roleplaying the Father's pervasiveness and spirituality. The last distinction really got me chills, reminding a book that I read by George Orwell. A famous quote “big brother is watching you”, the book was about how technology is everywhere and invisibly acting the role of surveillance, it is described as the role of big brother or a father that control all of his citizens. 

4.  Why is female use as the dominant figure in technologies such as animation and sound effects?

The reason for this is because of female symbolically represent a mother figure. Quoting from Riordan that "when Mother continues to be understood as female". Which we can understand because our mother are presumably female. Who nourished us and gave birth to us. It is a tension of movement toward and away from the mother. Toward the mother which we can relate these technologies more friendly and comfort, away from the mother that changing the mother figure using technologies that producing female doing much different things. 

Daniels, J. (2009). Gender, White Supremacy, and the Internet. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights (pp. 61-86). Rowman & Littlefield.

Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149-181). Routledge.

O’Riordan, K. (2006). Gender, Technology, and Visual Cyberculture. Critical Cyberculture Studies (pp. 243-252). New York University

[itsallyzhu]

Week 7 Blog due 10/7

1. As Noble quoted beginning of the article, what does “white is a metaphor for power” means?

“White is a metaphor for power” means broadly, it might not be obvious in our lives now. But little details will prove themselves true. If you are white in a white restaurant, then you fits in. If you are while in a foreign type of restaurant, you will drawn a lot of attention, however not bad attentions. Both ways, the skin of your color determined you received equally treatment or others, and being the center of attention. It had been marked in our history, white was the first to allow presidential voting. 

2. Why had Twitter take the hands-off approach to violent and hate-filled content?

As Noble noted, white nationalist had ride the digital wave with great success, especially with Twitter. They use to spread their words, expand their network, then sometimes generate harassment campaigns that target people of color. Twitter takes the hands-off approach, because more traffic and communication is happening, more profit is generated. As white supremacies topics get heated on Twitter, it is benefitting the company. 

3. How is visibility is a double-edged sword to minority groups?

Visibility is a double-edged sword to minority groups, because at one level created an understandable desire for more and better representation in forms of public sphere. But yet increase visibility for minorities on the agenda of multiculturalism, the invisibility provided white with distinct advantages, to define themselves to be faceless. 

4. What are the 3 ways to tell the story of race and social media?

First, we speak race as a property and of racial inclusiveness as an unalloyed good. Second, remind the readers even when they were few in number, although the people of color have gather in online communities from the earliest days. Lastly, understand race not as a fixed property, rather as an ideological system that classifies through the process of radicalization. 

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.

[itsallyzhu]

Week 6 Blog due 9/30

1. What is binary switches, how does racial subject fits into the category?

To my understanding, binary switches means the very strict option in chooses or control. It is either completely on or completely off, with no in-between or in the middle. Race fits into the category well because it can be completely off and completely on, but not in the middle. It is completely off, because it's concurrently unmarked and undiscussed. It is completely on because of it's heated topic and it's debates. 

2. How is the social constructionist view of race contradict with reality?

The social constructionist view of race states that there is no basis in our biology or genetic that should be for dividing the world's population into distinct racial groups. However, our genetic do have influence on separating us into different racial group, and some consider superior of another. Our genetic determines our skin, eyes, and hair. Also we are more attracted  to people that have similar physical appearance. Regardless of this statement, the world is divided by genetic basis.

3. How does white supremacy cause harm online?

According to different countries' estimations, among Europe, United Kingdom, France and Southern Poverty Law Center, the lowest number of 762 active hate groups online. While it is not surprised that a lot of these originate in the U.S. Young people today typically "live" in internet and online, it is more than easy to access different informations. So is the white supremacy messages. When a white supremacy message is post, it is traveling worldwide through internet. It makes racial equity even harder. It could also ignite people to act violently and cause harm. If a message such as "people of color should knee down in front of other color", it is not surprising that someone will find it real and beat up people of color the next day on the street. 

4. What are a similarity between Daniels and Kolko's article?

One similarity that I found is that both racism and white supremacy are binary switches. There is no in the middle or in between. It is all or none. It is either avoided and not talked about, or it brings completely attention and overheated debates. 

thank you for reading. have a great day:)

Kolko, B. E., Nakamura, L., & Rodman, G. B. (2000). Race in Cyberspace: An Introduction. Race in Cyberspace (pp. 1-13). Routledge.

Ow, J. A. (2000). The Revenge of the Yellowfaced Cyborg Terminator: The Rape of Digital Geishas and the Colonization of Cyber-Coolies in 3D Realms’ Shadow Warrior. Race in Cyberspace(pp. 51-68). Routledge.

Daniels, J. (2009). White Supremacy in the Digital Era. Cyber Racism: White Supremacy Online and the New Attack on Civil Rights(pp. 3-16). Rowman & Littlefield.

[itsallyzhu]

Week 4 blog due 9/16

1. How is redlining happening in everyday life that we can see?

- Redlining is defined as the institutional practice of discrimination, the idea or practice of discrimination where banks and real estate agency will only how color family particular location to live in. It is obvious while driving, where you would see most color people family and restaurant. And the opposite side would be for another color. It is similar as zoning and drawing line on the map to  assign location for specific people to live in. 

2. According to Benjamin, how is the New Jim Code similar to the Jim Crow Laws?

- Jim Crow Laws were state in local laws that institutionally enforced racial segregations. Under the Jim Crow Laws, it was lawful to separate public area for people of color, it was required that people of color to drink from another fountain, required color of people to sit in the back of public transportations, and even schools are separated. It was legal because it institutionalized the principle of “separated but equal”. The idea that even though it was separated, they are still equal. Which is never true. Still not today. As today, it is legal to have coded racial pictures and ideas in browsers. It will be explained as the fault of the coding system, while they don't consider the fact that the coding system was created by people. Discrimination within technologies is everywhere, because we can't live without internet, google and other search engines. 

3. How is racially coded affecting us?

- We can't argue the fact that we all conceive people’s name as appearance before seeing the real person. We are rigid with names, we expect Abigail, Allison, and Heather are white. It is even ranked with whitest and blackest. That is how racial code are severe in our minds. It is funny how we always say do not interpret people with appearance, when we are judging people by names. Names that sounds like people of color are given less job interview callbacks. Their opportunities are being taken away because what they sound like and expected to look like, instead of giving an equal chance to show who they are for themselves. 

4. Combining Benjamin and Noble’s ideas, how does technologies serve as the base of discriminations today?

- According to Noble, technologies served as base of discrimination today by spreading discrimination contents on their search engines, while people search the word black girl, the first thing popped up is pornography. Also other example such as image of First Lady Michelle Obama is monkey’s face photoshopped. He argues that we are using search engine that was coded by designers that discriminate, when something happens, we will blame the coding system but not the person that created the system. Which will not solve the problem from the root. As Benjamin, he argues that while we fight for equality, it is excused to discriminated online and with technologies. 

Thank you for reading. Have a great day! 

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology: Abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge: Polity.

Everett, A. (2002). The Revolution Will Be Digitized: Afrocentricity and the Digital Public Sphere. Social Text, 125-146.

Noble, S. (2018). Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism. New York University Press.

[itsallyzhu]

Week 3 Blog Due 9/9

1. Considering our right to privacy, how is our right being invaded by technologies and social media?

- In my opinion, the technologies we have today not only benefit our needs. But it also invaded our rights of privacy. It is funny how our home and property cannot be search, but our purchase history, message history, and even our locations are complete visible to the companies. The first time I notice that I am being “watch over” was when I was messing my friend about a product that I was looking at, and the next thing is I see its advertisement on Instagram. I was feeling invaded and anxious. Because it feels like someone is monitoring everything I am saying and doing. Personally, I dislike this feeling very much, but it is almost impossible to cut out technologies and social media in our life. And this is ridiculous. 

2. According to Daniel, women have the increasing rates of participation online, even thought women remains the poorest global citizens, why is that?

- While women remain the poorest global citizens, due to reality oppression by male or other factor. Women find it easier to share emotions, opinions, and stories online. It is not surprising that women lag behind men in technology uses, due to economic resources. In personal knowledge, men have more access to technology, and they have more power or control in real life. So they are less care to share or participated online. Men sometimes consider cyberspace as resources, instead of a tool. To women, cyberspace becomes a tool for them to take control or to speak out, also to connect with others globally. For women of color, who have been usually excluded from mainstream civic engagement, cyberspace and online organization becomes the way for them to take a stand.

3. How are cyberfeminism contradictory?

- One contradictory is that the internet inherent ability to disengage the user from their physical body versus users utilizing the internet to engage directly with their bodies. An example Daniel talked about was the pro-ana girls. While pro-ana girls are engaging their bodies directly using internet, to find comfort and purpose of their disordered eating behavior. Another group of women is using internet to take away their physical appearance, making a stance. 

4. What is identity tourism?

- According to Daniel, identity tourism refers to when a member of one group actively try on the description applied to a member of another race or gender. It includes identity switching, where one person actively join another group or race. Also gender switching, where male can be in the role of female. However, gender switching is only acceptable within narrow boundaries. Additional research shown that instead of gender switching in cyberspace, people use cyberspace as resource to physically changed their gender along the axes. 

Thank you fo reading. Have a great day! :)

[itsallyzhu]

Week 2 Blog Due 9/2/2020

1. According to Gonzalez and Torres, how did media play a pivotal role in racial bias among the population?

- According to Gonzalez and Torres, media had become the base of the racial bias because of it’s power to spread fast and widely. It’s affecting everyone that has access to either newspaper, radio, or television. It exists not only if you are intentionally turn on the television or radio, it also affect the population very early on with newspaper. With this great amount of power to spread knowledge and opinions, these medias routinely portray minorities as threats to society. It also reinforced racial ignorance, hatred speech, and discriminatory government policies. 

 2. How does stereotypes influences the journalist’s ability to perceive events correctly?

- It is the journalist’s job to witness events in the world from years ago to now. It is their job to witness and convey information to the population as soon as possible. However, a journalist’s ability to perceive an event correct is limited to their personal stereotypes, things such as race, education, class, religion and even gender. Not every journalists have all the information and knowledge about an event or a subject as hand. Therefore, rushing to produce the newest news lead to making a blurred and not necessarily clear representation of the event or subject to the public. It might not be entirely fake, but at least not clear and biased with their personal knowledges and belief. 

3. What is the difference between localism and centralism?

- Localism and centralism is different in the region the serve. Centralism primarily serve the intelligence needs of a national and international market. While localism serves the educational and political needs of citizen in local communities. 

4. What are the four forms of sociality Fuchs talked about and how are they related?

- According to Fuchs, the four forms of sociality are information and cognition, communication, community, and collaboration and co-operative work. To my understanding, these four forms are intertwine with one another. Information and cognition recognize the medias as the platform for sociality. Therefore communications happens, an exchange of symbol and information between two actively participating humans. As communication happens and expand, community forms. As community forms, collaboration and co-operative work takes place, because now the communication within the community can work together to solve certain problems or obstacles. 

Thank you for reading! :) Have a great day. 

[itsallyzhu]

Week 1 Blog

One time that technology failed me was earlier this year, I was driving back from Texas to California. It was a long drive, and I planned to play some exciting and catchy music for myself to boost my energy. But when I told siri that I need some catchy music, Siri played me the sad and cold music instead. Which really disappointed me because it was the one time that I needed Siri to do the right thing, but it failed me when I need it the most since I cannot hold my phone while driving.