Social Media - A Reflection

social media, n

“Websites and applications which enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.”

Social Networks and Digital Humanities

Social media is already a part of many people’s daily routine and it is thus being pulled into the world of academia. Many websites perform work in academic in terms of spreading news about projects, conferences, and engaging scholarly communities online, but to what extent should they be studied at an academic level? As a major part of many contemporary cultures, I feel that it too should become a space of analysis.

Beyond this though, Sarah Spangler poses this question: “How can scholars rethink their own roles as academics in digital spaces in order to become more involved with activist movements?”. It brings me back to the concept of the citizen scholar - in which we are tied as humans to both the needs of the academy but also the community at large. Moreover, the social problems faced by minority groups are not limited to the world outside academia. In order to combat the problems within the academy we must also pay attention to the world at large - a move toward scholarly activism. But this must be done with an air of caution - Robin Boylorn points out that “scholars have particular privileges and platforms that can be used to help forward movements, including social media activist movements, but it is important to understand that not everything needs to be theorized”. In a sense, sometimes the scholar’s place is in the struggle.

Big Brother is Watching You

Using social media we often sign a contract in order to access the website and use their services. Often we say that we have read the terms and conditions without actually having done so. Essentially, we are often signing away our right to privacy. Personalization allows for what we engage with to categorize our identities into an algorithm in order to sell us things specific to our interests. The issue is though that our data is being sold to any number of organizations.

Internet Propoganda

The internet has always been a space of contention but more recently in the age of fake news it has been a site of propoganda. The media is characterized by lying media meant to mislead and it can be difficult to discern what is real and what is not. Because of the speed at which information can spread, when perusing the internet it is important to think critically about what is real and what is not. Almost everything has a motive and it is thus imperative that media is analysed deeply rather than taken immediately as fact. Although many people immediately believe information that appeals to the values their already believe it is important that we continue to question everything rather than become complicit. Below are some helpful hints from “10 ways to get started fighting internet propaganda” by Kris Shaffer.

How do we spot propoganda?

-Propaganda is manipulative and social, not reasoned and intellectual. -Propaganda hides its source. -There is somebody guilty behind propoganda intending to manipulate those who are innocent.

In order to resist propoganda we must collaborate - the true DH motive.

How do we resist propoganda?

-Fact check. -Don’t share. -Follow the right people. -Be skeptical of the right things. -Don’t duplicate work. -Learn a few good application programming interfaces. -Get comfortable with web scraping. -Compare multiple networks. -Don’t dox.

This is not a solution that will fix all the problems with internet propogranda but at least it’s a start. If we begin questioning what we read and following these steps then perhaps they will become more common. It’s a start.

Links

Spangler, Sarah et al. What relationship does the digital humanities/academy have to social media activist movements?

Tracking Russian Influence Operations on Twitter

Documenting the Now

Kris Shaffer, Ten Ways to Get Started Fighting Internet Propaganda

Kris Shaffer, The Botnet Cometh

Kris Shaffer, Something is Rotten in the State of Arizona

Martin Hawksey, TAGS Tricks: Making a searchable location map of your top Twitter contributors with Geocode by Awesome Table

Martin Hawksey, Twitter Archiving Google Sheets Project

Ed Summers, Analyzing Retweets

Tressie McMillan Cottom, 2015. “Who Do You Think You Are?”: When Marginality Meets Academic Microcelebrity Ada 7

boyd, danah and Marwick, Alice E., 2011. Social Privacy in Networked Publics: Teens’ Attitudes, Practices, and Strategies A Decade in Internet Time: Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, September 2011.