Untitled

Hello lovely people of Tumblr, this is my last post of the “Things I learned for WRI227” series.

Here is a question I pose: Have you ever felt gaslit by a social media platform but couldn’t quite tangibly understand why you feel that way? Have you suddenly started seeing less and less LGBTQ+ related media? Have you ever had your Facebook account suspended because of your name? What was up with the Dylan Mulvaney Bud Light controversy? Do you ever wonder who monitors the millions and millions of content on social media platforms?

The Concept of “Black-Box Gaslighting”

I’ll be honest and say that I have never heard of this term ever used until this class. This term is for when someone intentionally utilizes the complexity of a situation in order to manipulate and deceive a person is called “black-box gaslighting” (Trusolino,2023). This can be prominent with the lack of transparency around algorithms, this can undermine the perceptions of reality for people and in turn question their own ability to perceive such reality clearly. This can be difficult for when you want to hold social media platforms accountable

2. TikTok’s shadow-banning of LGBTQ+ influencers might be a response to the increasing far right movement.

According to Pink News and article by Emma Maurice states that TikTok admitted to restricting LGBTQ related contents in different languages after the crackdown by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Especially restricting the terms “gay”, “lesbian”, and “transgender”. Shadow bans are a form of stealthy bans that don’t outwardly tell the user they are banned and some users may not been aware that they are being censored. TikTok has stated this was more a localized issue and such geo-blocking has been due pleasing more conservative governments.

3. Facebook’s Real name Policy affects people of non-normative identities.

During the Fall of 2014 and Summer of 2015, people of the LGBTQ+ community, Indigenous peoples, and sex workers banded together to go against Facebook’s real name policy cited a case study journal by Maggie MacAulay and Marcos Moldes. Their identities were not considered “real”. Whilst media depicted this protest as a problem as an inclusion problem, it goes deeper than that. This policy creates the a culture of policing people of non-normative identities and the consequences of disruption against the norm is erasure and isolation. Facebook often justifies it’s enforcement of policies as a safety issue and actually do little prevent the abuse that it perpetuates. This also allows Facebook to wield power of the state as they enforce personal information and ID documents to be submitted.

4. The idea of the Influencer economy and how the LGBTQ+ community and brand safety are tied into it

Since the advent of social media, influencers are a marketable and profitable industry for many advertisers. However, not all influencers are equal . Queer and non-gender conformative influencers are unsafe for market branding. A clear example was the Bud Light brand deal that Dylan Mulvaney had that resulted in backlash from the conservative customers of the brand with many refusing to buy Bud Light products which resulted in a 28% drop in sales in June of 2023. Now you might wonder why? Dylan Mulvaney is a trans influencer and the conservative right did not find it appealing to have someone like Mulvaney as the face of Budlight (Trusolino,2023). Sadly, this is where trans visibility stands in the US today. Dylan was ridiculed and reported feeling dissociative during the whole uproar. Dylan later added that BudLight did not even reach out to her during the whole fiasco and stated that “it was even is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all.”

5. People working as content reviewers are at a high risk of getting PTSD.

Content reviewers have arguably one of the hardest and emotionally draining work in the world. This is a topic that is overlooked as many content reviewers are under NDA and their works are often receive a lack of recognition (Trusolino,2023). The constant exposure to disturbing content including violence, hate speech, and self harm can lead to emotional distress. The emotional turmoil they experience is often overlooked as there is not a lot of proper support for counselling for the people in this field, and seeking emotional support is limited. This and other factors can amplify the feelings of anxiety and depression and hence repeatedly viewing distressing content can contribute to the development of PTSD.

Sources:

Trusolino, M (2023). Lecture 6: Social Media Policy and Community Standards(Class Slides)

MacAulay, M., & Moldes, M. D. (2016). Queen don’t compute: reading and casting shade on Facebook’s real names policy. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33(1), 6–22.

Maurice, E. P. (2020, September 12). TikTok admits it enacted a “shadow-ban” censoring several LGBT+ hashtags, including #I am a gay/lesbian. PinkNews | Latest Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans News | LGBTQ+ News.

Hello again people of Tumblr,

Today I will continue the lessons I learned from my social media and content creation class. Today’s topic will include themes of venture labour, SEZs, Foxconn and hustle culture

Venture labour is essentially allows companies to exploit people, especially women and minorities.

Venture labour refers to unpaid or uncompensated work that individuals often times women and people from marginalized communities, contribute to tech companies and other entrepreneurial endeavours. Such examples can be unpaid internships, volunteer work, equity compensations, and even emotional labour. In an article called “ The Unwanted Labour of Social Media: Women of Colour Call Out Culture as Venture Community Management”, Nakamura states that social media platforms can generate profits from the labour of volunteer community managers from their efforts to moderate hate speech and are often punished for the efforts form the online community. This labour is uncompensated in wages, and often employ other forms of currencies such as like, followers and sometimes praise by the industry. Other examples of venture labour, as I touched upon earlier, is the emotional labour. Communicating to the public and educating people about social justice issues, racism, homophobia and sexism are often overlooked forms of labour and are difficult and often times under appreciated.

2. Foxconn and its exploitation of workers in China.

Did you know that Foxconn is one of the biggest manufacturers of electronic parts and products, which supplies to various tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Sony. It’s well know for assembling products such as IPads, IPhones and other consumer electronics. In 2010, 18 assembly line workers attempted suicide, which was a tragically desperate plea for the improving the working conditions of the factories (Trusolino,2023).Workers of Foxconn face low wages, long working hours and excessive overtime.Reports have cited concerns of labour practices such as the need to make example of somebody for everybody else when a a manager has decided that someone makes a costly mistake. This practice is easy to perpetuate as American manufacturers take advantage of low wages, flexible labour laws and minimal worker rights in countries such as China, SouthEast Asia and Haiti (Trusolino,2023).

3. We do free labour for social platforms which extends to our data being unknowingly sold.

Have you ever gotten an ads that was so specific and something you might have just searched up recently? Welcome to the world of targeted ads. We assume that social media and other websites are free but in returns we pay it with our privacy. Companies like Facebook claim that they give access to user data if companies are Facebook partners, hence it’s not “sharing”. However, the Vice President of Advertising of Facebook claimed that they didn’t sell people’s data or share personal information. While targeted ads are not inherently bad, it can spiral into an algorithm that can push for content towards the user in order to dictate what they can view and consume as media (Trusolino,2023).

4. Growing Globalization leads to Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

Globalization causes people to more interconnected in this era and this means that there is more interest in exploring and exploiting new markets (Trusolino,2023). The proliferation of SEZ is established through the diversification of economies and more . SEZ encourage the diversity by attraction of industries that can go beyond the traditional sectors (Narula and Zhan,2019) . This diversification can then reduce the country’s reliance on a few industries within their homeland and can contribute to the economic stability.

5. Silicon Valley gave rise to hustle culture.

Silicon Valley and hustle culture are closely related in the sphere of the tech and start up companies. Silicon Valley is prominent for it being the hot spot for innovation. Hustle culture refers to the culture of hustling to make an income and balancing multiple gigs (Trusolino,2023). The competitive nature of the tech industry gave rise to constantly working and prioritizing achievement and even promoted high intensity and the fast paced lifestyle. Silicon Valley also has placed an importance in ambitious goals and most importantly yielding success from such goals . This mindset can cultivate a sense of urgency and determination to excel, which often can cause the neglect of other areas of their life. However, the glamorizations of hustle culture fails to mention the magnitude of stress and uncertain futures of the people involved.

Sources:

Narula, R., & Zhan, J. X. (2019). Using special economic zones to facilitate development: Policy implications. Transnational Corporations, 26(2), 1–26.

Trusolino, M (2023). Lecture 5: Political Economy of Social Media: The consumer and Free Labour(Class Slides)

Nakamura, L. (2015). The Unwanted Labour of Social Media: Women of Colour Call out Culture As Venture Community Management. New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics, 86(1), 106–112.

Hello lovely people of Tumblr,

Today I want to take a moment of your time to share what I learned in class today for my social media and content creation course.

The Loneliness Epidemic That Surrounds Today’s Society

The loneliness epidemic is the widespread and increasingly sense of loneliness that is observed in the modern society, which can be attributed to the digital media age and the advent of social media. 79% of Gen X reported that they feel lonely according to Statista and 50% of Boomers reported that they feel lonely which in total states that 61% of US adults feel lonely which had been a 7% jump from last year (Trusolino, 2023). This can be attributed to the fact that social media can create illusions of connection depending on the large number of “friends” and “followers”. Hence many people may spend more time interacting with the screens rather than engaging in meaningful conversations. Another facet may be the reduced face-to-face interaction which then can cause the missing component of emotional enrichment and social cues that one may come with face-to-face conversations.

2. Big Tech Companies prioritize profits over dismantling Anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric

According to the Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) of 2023 by GLAAD, the key findings included that many platforms are failing to mitigate hate speech and disinformation and do not enforce policies to protect people of the LGBTQ+ community which can place Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments on social media in real-world incidents against the community and people. Social media companies argue that moderating the hate speech and bigotry directed towards the community would be an expensive and difficult to achieve. This illuminates the fact that these companies could not utilize a portion of their billion dollar revenues into user safety and would rather focus on maximizing profits. This may not be new to many people, however many people are not aware that SMSI does a score that asses the corporate transparency and policies that can align with human rights policies. Twitter has a 33% score on this as the company has shifted to more far right rhetoric. Twitter does not disclose whether they have a feature that can add their gender pronouns to their profiles and does not share if they have an LGBTQ lead that can address the needs of the community. While the dark side of social media was discussed above for LGTBQ+ community, it has to be addressed that for many youth, social media is a lifeline especially those coming from unwelcoming families and communities (Trusolino,2023). LGBTQ+ youth often find identity and belonging in these online communities. That is to say, this is. All the more reason to implement better polices for the protection for LGBTQ+ youth.

3. Dialectics, Dialectics, and Dialectics and Social Media Logic

So I mentioned dialectics, but what is it ? Well, we need to visit dialectical theory in the first place. During discussion in class, in order to think and view dialectially, it’s to understand that things are never stagnant. It’s a state of evolving into something. Thinking dialectically can mean that you view things from different perspectives and that can evolve your awareness to the reality. How does this apply to media technology? Looking at technology for its wholeness is an important facet as you have to consider the good, the bad, what process they are in changing. The evolution can come from interactions of the programmers, users, the companies and the opposing companies. Such unity and wholes of opposites leads to constant change within media technology. According to an article by Jose van Dijick and Thomas Poell, a new term I didn’t know was coined: “mass media logic”. Mass media logic develops a discourse that is guided by the structuring of a public space. Mass media logic is defined as a set of principles or common sense that is cultivated in various institution of media that bleeds into every public domain and takes over its organizing structure. It’s a temperamental beast that can present the world as a continuous flow of event and people streaming in and out. A real world example can be TV, broadcasting media can create a program flow which can command the attention of the viewers. It does so effectively that it can even cause viewers to be glued to the screen. I am sure you have seen this phenomenon in your daily lives even with your parents glued to their phone, despite telling you to get off your phone. Many tactics that broadcasting agencies utilize to convey the sense of intensity and immediacy can be through shots of bloodied victims or presidential candidate debates. Therefore, it is important to observe the way media dominates your lives as well as thinking it through different lenses.

4. TikTok’s Growth Rate Is Surpassing Facebook and Instagram

Ahhh, TikTok, the epitome of of human expression, who needs novel, films, and meaningful conversations when you can observe the intricate art of storytelling in a 15 second video ( Can you tell my disdain for the app?). TikTok has been outgrowing both Instagram and Facebook and in the US the growth rate over the last two years has been a shocking estimation of 105%. It also has the highest engagement with a rate of 5.96% whilst Facebook has 0.13% and Instagram has 0.83% (Trusolino,2023). This rise in popularity can be due to the fact that it has a user-friendly interface as it is easy to use and makes it accessible to a wide range of people. It also an be due to the fact that in the modern age of short attention spans, TikTok can offer bite-sized videos that offer quick entertainment that can feed the habits of consumption for many people. I personally have tried downloading TikTok for a day, only to delete it within the same day. I could already observe a chunk of my time being dedicated to the app and how much it can affect the productivity of my days.

5. Influencer Recommendations Make an Impact on the Buying Decisions of Consumers

Did you know that 49% of consumers rely on the recommendations of the influencers to influence their buying decisions. It’s cited that almost half of these social media users agree to try brands when an influence has approved of it and markets it. The rationale behind this can be the trust and authenticity that influencers take on (Trusolino,2023). When an influencer recommends a product, their followers assume it as a genuine endorsement. Other factors can be that the lifestyle they are trying to sell to the consumers can motivate the consumers to emulate that lifestyle, appearances or choices. Buying the products that are recommended can maker them feel more connected to the influencer’s persona. The escapism and aspiration ties into this as many products can be viewed as a way to escape their reality and move closer to their desired lifestyle that is portrayed by the influencer.

Sources:

Trusolino, M (2023). Lecture 3: Social Media Today (Class Slides)

Van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2013). Understanding Social Media Logic. Media and Communication, 1(1), 2–14.