Monthly Archives: November 2018

A dating industry senior analyst, Caitlin Moldvay says that “Societally, we are going to increasingly meet more of our romantic partners online as we establish more of an online presence in terms of social media“.

A survey of 19,000 individuals married in the years 2005 to 2012 revealed that relationships that began online are more happier and less likely to end in divorce or splitting up. The findings of this survey are that 35% of these relationships which ended in marriage began with the individuals meeting each other online and 45% relationships began with them meeting each other on dating sites or social media platforms. In this modern age, with social media at flourishing as it is, meeting people and dating can be done with just the swipe of your finger (literally Tinder). According to a study done by Pew Research Center in 2015, about 75% of college students use Tinder and 80% of Tinder users are millennials.

All of these surveys and researches reveal that social media and dating sites contribute to a significant portion of the current age’s relationship “searching” tool rather than actually meeting people in real life. Everything from text, audio and video is shared through social media which almost eradicates the need for people to search for a partner in real life. Simply put, it is much easier to meet potential partners over social media and dating sites compared to actual real world interaction as one could walk past a person who 99% compatible with them but would never know it – but through social media he/she could look at their interests, their music taste, the movies they like and a whole array of information about a person(should they choose to reveal it).

In lieu of this, it is evident that in this digital age, most people prefer the convenience of social media and technology in the pursuit of a relationship, thereby creating a new social dynamic – a social dynamic where people are more inclined to meeting people online through the help of social media or dating sites rather than actually meet-meeting them, not only because it is easier, sure the convenience is a major plus point as people are just a literal swipe away, but also because relationships which start off like these have a higher success rate.

The firing of director James Gunn this past summer points out a unique capability of social media. In July, the director, who was slated to direct Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy 3, was removed from the project after some objectionable tweets came to light. The tweets, which were posted nearly ten years ago, contained inappropriate jokes about rape and pedophilia. Social media played a decidedly large role in this incident, highlighting a new usage of such platforms.

Although James Gunn’s tweets were inexcusably vulgar, a controversy was formed on the fact that it took place so long ago. After being let go, Gunn promptly responded with an apology, where he articulated that he was not the same person as when he posted the tweets. It’s impossible to definitively gauge Gunn’s level of sincerity, and perhaps that’s why social media’s ability to dig up the past is so troubling. Because Gunn’s words were the source of the problem, the credibility of his subsequent comments was damaged.

It wasn’t long before conspiracy theorist, Mark Cernovich, claimed responsibility for being behind the Gunn incident. Supposedly, these types of social media attacks on right-leaning public figures led him to employ the same strategy against politically left celebrities. Cernovich was quoted saying:

“I enjoy just the raw human visceral reaction of jumping into the arena and just swinging the hammer and seeing what is left over afterwards. Twitter is just modern-day gladiatorial combat.”

As he suggests, social media has introduced a new type of warfare. Social media creates a timeline of a person’s life on a scale that never existed before. Even the most careful record-keeping cannot rival the level of permanence of social media. Comments posted online are public and have a wide audience—unlike most personal records—so there is a higher number of witnesses, increasing the likelihood of those words being remembered and sometimes saved.

Additionally, no other documentation captures the minutia of day-to-day life. People tend to use social media in a way that reflects the now: how they’re feeling, what they’re doing, what they’re thinking about in the present. As a result, when used impulsively, social media can be a record of a person’s worst moments and, as Cernovich demonstrated, even when the comments are deleted they can be recovered. This ability to reveal the past can be beneficial, such as when it’s used to bring a criminal to justice, or it can be used for personal gain, like in James Gunn’s situation. Regardless of how we interpret these events, at very least we should be compelled to reflect on our own use of social media and the impact it has on others.

The #MeToo movement on social media always had a vision from the beginning- to address both the lack of resources for survivors of sexual violence and to build a community of advocates, driven by the survivors, who will be at the forefront of creating solutions to interrupt sexual violence in their communities.

In less than six months, the viral #metoo hashtag,led to a vital conversation about sexual violence that had been thrust into the national dialogue. What  started as local grassroots work had expanded to reach a global community of survivors from all walks of life and helped to de-stigmatize the act of surviving by highlighting the impact of a sexual violence worldwide.

Along with allowing a safe space for victims to open to up about their experiences,social media and it’s widespread influence also made notable changes in the workplace dynamic of multiple industries and companies.Before the movement was this prominent, the workplace dynamic for the accusers was characterized by the ignorance and the lack of explicit action on behalf of the coworkers. Social media boosted this campaign and in turn changed the mindset of the individuals within a workspace. Hundreds of tweets and thousands of instagram posts of survivors, led to a conscious effort on the part of the coworkers to identify any wrong doing in their surroundings and take justified action for the same to ensure that the victims have a safe space to work in. Justice and compensation was given in the form of the termination of the contract of employment of the accused or aid in the form of emotional therapy.

An example of this was the dissolution of the  ‘Phantom’ production house, which was a prominent part of the Hindi Film Industry.  One of the famous and strong voices who spoke against the accused CEO of the company- Vikas Bahl, was the actress Kangana Ranaut which led to the company ceasing their operations. Thus emphasising the function of social media and its effects on institutional spheres.#MeToo movement, being a campaign crafted on the infinitely expanding medium of social media, is able to have this prominent impact mentioned above.

The #MeToo movement garnered positive attention and led to the creation of multiple non-profit organisations that focuses on empowering silent victims of sexual abuse.

What has been more surprising is the support and trust that the readers place into the the victims story and believing it unquestionably.  Influential powers have also shown that the movement has spread like wildfire, making them take decisions that would determine the future of an industry as a whole as well as of an individual.

Rose McGowan is a sexual assault survivor of Hollywood’s infamous Harvey Weinstein. A traumatizing hotel room incident in 1997 caused her to obtain an influential voice in the matter, fighting for the women who experience sexual assault everyday. She shares her voice on many online platforms with Twitter being the major one (Chan). On October 12th 2017, McGowan tweeted about Weinstein’s maltreatment to speak out against the issue. Twitter then suspended McGowan’s account, with their reason being that she violated one of their policies by including a personal phone number in the series of tweets, as reported from The New York Times. After posting on Instagram that her account had been suspended, she called on her followers and anyone who wanted to join the fight to “be her voice” (Chan).  In this case she had no voice because of Twitter, so other women decided that they weren’t going to either. #WomenBoycottTwitter started trending on October 12th and the next day, Friday October 13th, women’s voices were silenced in protest against the platform (Zhang).

“Participatory culture”, defined to be “a range of different groups deploying media production and distribution to serve their collective interests”, is directly linked to fandoms as described by Henry Jenkins in his article “Why Media Spreads” (2). McGowan’s fandom, referred to as the “Rose Army”, was a force not to be reckoned with due to the power they held in circulating the same media, which was the thousands of posts using #WomenBoycottTwitter (Jenkins 1; Bonazzo). McGowan created a social dynamic from participatory culture that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible without the existence of social media.  Her voice on the online platform made it possible for people to come together in such large masses and stand up against this societal issue instead of shying away from it. There would be a definite lack of communication and numbers needed to speak out against people like Harvey Weinstein and to stick up for his victims without social media platforms like Twitter. In McGowan’s case, Twitter acted as a positive and negative factor. It gave a portal for people to share opinions and band together to start conversation but it also acted against that conversation. Twitter shouldn’t be silencing individuals who are creating conversation about serious issues of sexual harassment, especially in this day and age. Their response to the controversy was deceiving and lacked personal touch, like they copied and pasted it from their library of automated responses: “Twitter is proud to empower and support the voices on our platform, especially those that speak truth to power. We stand with the brave women and men who use Twitter to share their stories, and will work hard every day to improve our processes to protect those voices.” (Twitter). Twitter or any platform of social media may or may not attempt to protect the voices of their users but if they choose not to, they will face the forceful social dynamic of their own users in protest.

Works Cited

Bonazzo, John. “The Biggest Twitter Storms of 2017.” Observer, 26 December 2017, https://observer.com/2017/12/social-media-controversies-year-in-review/. Accessed on 1 November 2018.

Chan, Melissa. “Here’s Why Rose McGowan’s Twitter Account Was Suspended.“ The New York Times, 12 October 2017, http://time.com/4980004/rose-mcgowans-twitter-harvey-weinstein/ . Accessed on 1 November 2018.

Jenkins, Henry, Ford, Sam, and Green, Joshua. “Introduction: Why Media Spreads.” NYU Press, 2013.

Twitter Safety, 12 October 2017,                                                                                         https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/918502757102903296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E918502757102903296&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Ftime.com%2F4980004%2Frose-mcgowans-twitter-harvey-weinstein%2F. Accessed 1 November 2018.

Zhang, Laura. “Banning of Rose McGowan prompts a Twitter boycott by feminists.” The Independent, 13 October 2017, http://theindependent.sg/banning-of-rose-mcgowan-prompts-a-twitter-boycott-by-feminists/. Accessed on 1 November 2018.

In August of 2015, Kelly Osbourne, a co-host for the television show “The View”, aimed to call out Donald Trump on the issue regarding immigration and the racist comments he made. Her attempt failed miserably as she made the crude statement: “If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet, Donald Trump?” The comment was not well-received by her co-hosts as well as the show’s viewers and soon after, Twitter was flooded with infuriated responses to her comment using the hashtag #QueridaKellyOsbourne. Though shortly after the controversy Osbourne released an apology on Facebook stating that she misspoke, this social media event not only raises several questions about social dynamics between the citizens of the United States of America and immigrants but also about accountability of public figures making uninformed statements regarding race on social media.

In recent years, the United States of America has had an unstable socio-political climate with regards to immigration and there has been a great amount of discourse related to the Latino community and its impact on the economy. There has been an increasing amount of antagonization of Latino communities by anti-immigrants which has resulted in several hate crimes and racial profiling, physically and virtually. Social media serves as the primary medium for the spreading of information and in this age, social media can also influence how behaviours and interactions between social groups are spread. Osbourne’s comment magnifies this existing social dynamic since it is a prime example of how the rise of such views on social media platforms can create racial conflict. By reducing Latinos all over America to a janitorial status on live network television with a viewership of millions, Osbourne proliferates the idea that Latino immigrants are solely responsible for the lower job sectors and thus are not benefitting the economy. Though Osbourne claims to be liberal, her comment suggests that her ideologies are not in line with those of pro-immigrants who believe that immigrants are not just a small part of a larger labour force, but in fact in some areas of the country, they are the labour force. This reinforces a larger social problem of the financial superiority that white people have over people of colour in the United States of America, which is evident when a rich, white individual degrades immigrant jobs on national television.

Overall, this event not only reveals how there is a social conflict between immigrants and non-immigrants but it also displays how social media can magnify those negative behaviours. This controversy, more importantly, draws attention to how public figures on social media are responsible for the propagation of misconceptions regarding several social groups and they essentially are ‘spokespersons’ that can help determine social dynamics.

Works Cited:

“Kelly Osbourne’s Remarks On Latinos And Trump Stir Viral Response.” NBC News. N. p., 2015. Web. 7 Nov. 2018.

“Latino Immigration And Social Change In The United States: Toward An Ethical Immigration Policy On JSTOR.” Jstor.org. Davies, Ian, 2018. Web. 7 Nov. 2018.

“Search Twitter – #Queridakellyosbourne.” Twitter.com. N. p., 2018. Web. 7 Nov. 2018.

If you use social media regularly, chances are you have probably seen pictures of delicious food all around your social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Or you may be the one posting those pictures online. Today, after pornography, food has been the second most search-for content on the internet. It is understandable since the sight of food automatically affects our ‘visual hunger’ or the natural desire to fulfill the sufficient nutrients for survival. Therefore, people feel comfortable viewing pictures of food. The thing is, most people are not aware of what’s following when they see lots of food photos in digital media.


According to Jason Thomas’ study on social influences on eating, our dietary behaviour is strongly influenced by social context. In this manner, food network creates the cultural expectations and environmental cues that make people more likely to follow the eating norm they saw on social media sites. In the modern days, many food networks have become more
dominant in people’s appetite. A popular media platform like BuzzFeed’s Tasty, for instance, focussing on the video series of worldwide instructional recipes play an important role in our eating choices. Tasty itself has more than ninety-five million likes on Facebook. Evidentially, its videos acquired over 2.2 billion views in March 2017. A research “Brain and Cognition” explains that more than 70 percent of food Americans eat is influenced by digital media.

https://www.facebook.com/buzzfeedtasty/videos/vl.1307011139415082/1774752866110688/?type=1

The research shows that our brain responses to images of desirable food, or in another word, food porn or gastro-porn. Food porn is a new concept of glamorized photos and videos of palatable food on the internet. Although pictures of food are nothing new. We have always seen them on commercials and magazine ads for years, but in this case, the nature and types of pictures are more sophisticated and photographed from the different vantage point. They are magnified and often the center of the media. The drawbacks came when we are exposed to the more appetizing images of food which are often high calories. Apparently, food networks like Tasty likely propose the basic American dishes that contain high calories and can be considered not a healthy food.

Seeing the photos, our physiological responses get to prepare our body to receive that food. As a result, the virtual food exposure psychologically stimulates hunger and induces the viewers to eat more frequently, disrupting the usual dietary routines. Moreover, in 2015, a survey of nutritional gatekeepers proved the correlation between viewing cooking shows, food in social and printed media, and having a higher BMI (Body Mass Index). People tend to eat regardless of the satiety but the desire to consume whatever they found appetizing on social media. After all, our eating intakes are changed. The growing obesity crisis proves that we failed our eating behaviour. But not all to blame food porn, many factors have led us to worse dietary habits. Still, we could deny that the excessive sight of desirable food on social media is triggering our hunger to consume over the appropriate amount.

Reference:
Suzanne Higgs and Jason Thomas (2016), Social influences on eating, Diet, behaviour and brain function, Current Opinion in Behavioral Science, 9:1-6, Elsevier Ltd. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.10.005
Susan Albers, Psy.D. (2012), “Food Porn?” The Hidden Risks, Eat, Drink, and Be Mindful: How to End Your Struggle with Mindless Eating and Start Savoring Food with Intention and Joy, Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/comfort-cravings/201208/food-porn-the-hidden-risks
Charles Spence, Katsunori Okajima, Adrain David Cheok, Olivia Petit and Charles Michel (2016), Eating with our eyes: From visual hunger to digital satiation, Brain and Cognition, 110:53-63 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2015.08.006
Lizzy Pope, Lara Latimer and Brian Wansink (2015), Viewers vs. doers. The relationship between watching food television and BMI., Appetite, Elsevier Ltd. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.02.035

Social Media has been a big influence to everyone’s life now. The activity or action to update one’s life has become a necessity. This platform maybe stated as a boon or bane. With the recent controversies social media has taken a new turnover and a new platform to represent. One of the recents is the #MeToo movement, which is still ongoing and perhaps one of the biggest controversy on the social platform.

It all formerly began as an effort by activist Tarana Burke more than ten ago, and set aflame after a tweet by actress Alyssa Milano. Currently the movement is being followed up in India. Everyday a new revelation is shared through the medium of social media. A huge number of celebrities and other survivors are coming forward to share their terrifying stories which have given the hashtag suction. The controversy has become a huge shock and realization that woman are still taken for granted.

Via my research I found an article stating according to a recent study #MeToo hashtag was used more than 19 million times on twitter which is more that 55,000 uses of that hashtag per day. Social Media has definitely contributed its best in spreading this movement and making every person aware about their story. Social media has given its best to convey the unity and courage to the victims. The exploitation of woman had generally been a conversation but with the proper usage of social media the message has magnifically shared to another level. Social media has over 71% (approx) users globally hence the news takes on and becomes viral helping the information to spread out and help other victims to share their stories too or maybe someone might realize his mistake and stop this act. The hashtag has an exceptional influence because it showed the ability of woman and survivors of sexual harassment and violence.

Through the #MeToo movement in twitter the Indian film industry is collectively taking a decision to walk out from the accused people’s project or keeping it on hold waiting for the final verdict of the accusation. But the use of the phrase stormed on twitter after the events like Golden Globe Awards and also when Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford testified before a Senate committee. The movement reached its peak point after Time magazine name #MeToo activities as person of the year and the day after International Women’s Day.

There is definitely no calm to this storm until the accused pay for their shameful act.

References:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/10/13/metoo-impact-hashtag-made-online/1633570002/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-metoo-sexual-harassment-tech-mobile-phones-social-media-a8606756.html

So, I’m sure everyone has heard of the opinion-expressing media-breaking friendship-ruining Yanny/Laurel debate of 2018 by now. This interesting phenomenon split the social media literally in half where 47% of listeners insisted that the recording was saying “Yanny” while the remaining 53% believed that the voice clearly said “Laurel”. But before all of this mess and online warfare, there was only a dictionary.

The Yanny/Laurel debate firstly began on May 11, Katie Hetzel, a freshman at Flowery Branch High School in Georgia, was studying for her world literature class, where “laurel” was one of her vocabulary words. She looked it up on Vocabulary.com and played the audio. Instead of the word in front of her, she heard “yanny.” She then proceeded to put the audio recording on her Instagram story. Soon, a senior at the same school, Fernando Castro, republished the same audio clip on his own story where one of his buddies, Roland Camry, saw it and posted it on reddit under the title r/blackmagicfuckery where people of all sorts publish unusual nature-related events.

But most importantly, other than causing a massive cyber battle, this small audio clip debate between a kid’s high school class resulted in a massive media outburst where people from all countries, ethnicities and religions could experience this event. However unimportant and unnecessary this particular audio clip may seem, it undeniably sparked a massive wave of spreading throughout many media platforms such as newspapers, Facebook , Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, 9GAG and many more. This is a very clear example of how impressive the internet and the web has become in distributing information.

Social media, I believe, although having a great part in popularity, just reveals and magnifies an already existing topic and social dynamic such as it was in the Laurel/Yanny case. The controversy was definitely affected greatly by the influence of social media to help it spread and grow. But social media itself did not create the argument and controversy in the first place. Social media in general merely took part in the distribution of the news, not create them

Works Cited:

Matsakis, Louise. “The True History of ‘Yanny’ and ‘Laurel’.” Wired, Conde Nast, 18 May 2018, www.wired.com/story/yanny-and-laurel-true-history/.

“Laurel – Dictionary Definition.” Vocabulary.com, www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/laurel.

The internet has long been a dark and mysterious entity, hosting a platform for anonymous interaction often accompanied by very little repercussions. One site made possible by this unique platform is 4chan, a purely anonymous imageboard in which posts are sorted in chronological order. This foundation of anonymity, when mixed with its light treatment of moderation, only further drives the controversy often invoked by this infamous site. Controversy such as that which broke out August of 2014, the beginning of Gamergate. 4chan played an instrumental role in this controversial pseudo-movement that snowballed from a blog post written by the ex-boyfriend of the game developer Zoë Quinn (1). This pseudo-movement fabricated an issue of unethical relations between game developers, like Zoë, and game journalists. However, it was later found out that Gamergate was almost entirely orchestrated by 4chan users who went as far as to use “sockpuppet accounts” on social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit to artificially push Gamergate into the mainstream media’s attention (1).

This situation of Gamergate created a social dynamic which has never existed before 4chan’s internet influence. Although sensationalized media has been around much longer, the degree at which such a small number of internet users were able to turn a small hoax into a global controversy was never seen before. If anything, this signified the evolution of a preexisting social dynamic seen on social media, the ‘internet troll’, someone who uses provocation to incite emotional reactions while maintaining anonymity (2). While previously ‘internet trolls’ tended to work alone, or at least with little organization, what Gamergate showed was the extreme power ‘internet trolls’ were capable of, given the chance to use platforms such as 4chan to organize themselves while maintaining anonymity.

After 4chan established this pseudo-movement, they were able to continue their harassment now further protected by a falsified notion of social justice. Under this flag of social justice they gained supporters from vast isolated like-minded groups that had formed over the years on different social media platforms (3). A level of recruitment on this scale was made possible only through social media, as social media tends to create a mob mentality rather than a collaborative community of different ideas. Fueled by this mob mentality, 4chan users, along with their pseudo-movement’s supporters, went as far as to hack Zoë’s computer and leak nude images of herself to her father (3). They also similarly targeted her sympathisers including Anita Sarkeesian (1) and Phil Fish; Phil later left the gaming industry as a result (4).

In the end, what 4chan set out to do was accomplished. They hoped to cause chaos for chaos’ sake, rather than any genuine social agenda. 4chan, organized by their anomalous social media platform, were able to abuse the naive mob mentality of social media communities.  Therefore, we can conclude that the ‘newness’ of this abusive dynamic lead directly to 4chan’s success as no one knew how to deal with the situation.

Works Cited:

(1) Johnston, Casey. “Chat Logs Show How 4chan Users Created #GamerGate Controversy.” Ars Technica, Condé Nast, 9 Sept. 2014, arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/new-chat-logs-show-how-4chan-users-pushed-gamergate-into-the-national-spotlight/. Accessed 6 November 2018.

(2) Moreau, Elise. “Here’s What You Need to Know About Internet Trolling.” Lifewire, Dotdash, 5 Oct. 2018, www.lifewire.com/what-is-internet-trolling-3485891. Accessed 6 November 2018.

(3) McKeon, Lauren. “How Gamergate Pioneered the Backlash Against Diversity.” The Walrus, The Walrus Foundation, 11 Sept. 2017, thewalrus.ca/how-gamergate-pioneered-the-backlash-against-diversity-in-technology/. Accessed 6 November 2018.

(4) Johnston, Casey. “The Death of the ‘Gamers’ and the Women Who ‘Killed’ Them.” Ars Technica, Condé Nast, 29 Aug. 2014, arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/the-death-of-the-gamers-and-the-women-who-killed-them/. Accessed 6 November 2018.

#GamerGate was a harassment campaign organized on Twitter, 4chan, IRC and Reddit. It was an attack on women, feminism and diversity in video games under the guise of ethics in game journalism. #GamerGate initially started as an attack on game developer Zoë Quinn, who was trying to publish Depression Quest, a text-based game based on her struggles with depression. Many male gamers in the community discredited her work saying it was not “a real game”, but much of the subtext of the criticisms surrounding Quinn’s game was more to do with her being a woman. #GamerGate really exploded when Quinn’s ex-boyfriend published a blog post accusing her of cheating on him with men working in games journalism. Much of the gaming community accused her of having “unethical” relations with games journalists. The harassment also included other targets like game developer Brianna Wu and feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian. These women were doxxed (had their personal information, including home address, phone number, personal email, etc, hunted down and published publicly on the internet) and received rape & death threats.

With the role social media played in this controversy, it revealed already existing social dynamics in the gaming community. The gaming community is a subsection of the geek/nerd community which includes computer programming nerds, comic geeks, etc. These communities are rife with misogyny and prejudice. They were historically male-dominated spaces. Any women gamer had to face men discrediting their interest in games, with many accusing them of being “fake gamer girls”, which was something I saw a lot personally as a young girl gamer. Female gamers also had to deal with harassment from male gamers on multiplayer games. The role social media played was publishing these misogynist behaviours. It allowed for people to organize themselves to conduct harassment campaigns, that’s not really all that different from witch hunts of the past. Social media essentially provided new tools for misogynists of the world to harass women and commit violence against them. It was only natural that misogynists find each other on social media, as social media was only a means of communication and publication, what people do with it is up to them.