#digrhetsp17

This week has to be one of my favorite topics. Social media. The use of online spaces and feminism, for gender equality.  In the readings for this week, we look into factors for social media which include connections, injustices, equality and everything that goes In and out of that topic. A Feminist Approach to Social Media explains 6 approaches we can actively practice, which include ways to be supportive, create a place that is safe, and builds on a community that builds each other.  I have agreed with most of these approaches however it seemed that the information provided was old news. While thinking about this approach, I think it is easy to think about feminism as a general topic and think about the kind of places we need to create to influence positive vibes. In Baby, We Were Born to Tweet it suggested that, “Early users of Twitter were finding ways to hack the writing space to fit their composing needs and "craft creative, meaty, and to-the-point messages that attract other people's attention" by using Grounded theory they influenced the way we did the thing and soon defined how the thing has been done and will continue to be done. “Grounded theory studies have the potential to continue to transform how scholars, teachers, students, and the general public understand the community-wide importance of composing, even especially in 140-character bursts.” The work seemed to be heavy in weight, however i felt that I got lost in the atmosphere, so much to read and acknowledge, while already understanding how hashtags worked.Springsteen fans, #bruceleeds, and the tweeting of locality tied hand in hand with what we were talking about in the earlier article, no comment really on the information, however I will say that hashtags are more meaningful when understood and related in topic.

One thing that I think that I’ve mentioned in almost every single one of my graduate courses is my love for social media. I absolutely love social media for what it has done for my life, what I’ve learned on various sites, and the power that it currently holds to change the world. 

Twitter specifically has changed the way that I view the world and has exposed me to various layers of inequality. There, I learned about womanism and ableism. I also learned more American and world history than I had been previously taught in school. 

It is admittedly painful to be on social media at times, as I have gotten exposure to the most insidious of perspectives. Also, at times, two seemingly “socially progressive” users get into arguments and I have to reevaluate my stance on certain issues. This is something that Alexandra Hidalgo and Katie Grimes point out in their video “A Feminist Approach to Social Media.” They discuss the “varying and contradictory ideologies that sometimes result in feminists arguing with feminists over social media.”

They also discuss the idea that some feminists discredit the work of younger feminists who focus on online activism. This binary, which concerns online activism versus protesting, is one of the topics that I think about often as I try to find my identity as an activist. Is it enough to advocate for rights online? Is it enough to only protest at marches? What do doing both of these things accomplish and can there be any grounds for understanding those who only want to do one or the other? I do like the idea of collaboration that they state as, “Following this feminist tradition, we propose a collaborative approach to social media at various levels, such as having more than one person involved in developing social media strategies and collaborating with organizations and individuals working toward similar goals on Twitter chats and campaigns.”

This week’s readings links in to the previous few weeks topics of procedural rhetoric and accessibility - movements around disability, ethnicity and gender rights which challenge the loss of credibility of traditional norms of what it means to be human. For Hayles this means that ‘bodies have lost their boundaries’. This also links in nicely with Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto which is, although ironic, a feminist project located in a desire to reconstitute identity politics, particularly as it concerns assumptions about gender norms.

So it begs the question ‘What does it mean to be human?’ or equally ‘Should we define humans by what we are not?’ Since Darwin showed that humans were not exceptional the barriers between humans and animals have been disappearing so maybe we should apply this same argument to advanced technology? Haraway and Hayles both emphasise the ‘disintegration of the liberal humanist subject as the core characteristic of posthumanism’. Moreover, they both suggest that this change in subjectivity leads humanity towards a situation where it treats seriously claims about the moral status of artificial life.

 I remember reading an article years ago on animal rights by Springer where he discussed speciesism and all 3 texts resonate with the same arguments. Why do we separate human and animal rights? Humanists argue that humans are exceptional and distinct from other life forms because we possess reason - but does a baby human have more reasoning ability than a dog or a robot? Haraway considers our relationships with animals and is critical of these sort of assumptions by humanists. Hayles’ also takes to task Humanists on the separation of mind and body and alludes that ‘disembodiment through cybernetics reveals a lack of fixity to humanness that also diminishes the value of stable biological distinctions, such as species categories’.

The article “The Policies of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones”  was especially interesting. I started out completely questioning the authors’ arguments. I was like “computer interfaces as maps that enact...gestures and deeds of colonialism” Whaaa? How? How are they doing that? A computer just sits there!

 #RIP Alan RIckman! too soon, too soon

And I was all righteous indignation when I read, “we work in an educational system that instructs students about oppression and inequity...even as we strive to erase such lessons from the official curriculum.” I was like “Not on my watch! That doesn’t happen here!”

How are computers not democratic spaces?! Selfe?? How? Aren’t computers the great equalizers? Don’t they give everyone access to everything?!

Ack! so much confusion! But then I got to the parts where “Drill-and-practice software” was discussed and it all made sense! And it kinda pissed me off

It all made so much sense! Things that I had taken for granted were suddenly clarified. I had a glimpse behind the curtain. And I didn’t like what I saw. 

This piece made it clear how English is the default for everything, creating another space where non-English speakers are automatically labeled as other. You are not as important. You are meant to be hidden behind “other” in some pull-down menu! Out of sight, out of mind. I thought it especially telling when Selfe points out that schools that actually need programs that are bi- and trilingual are the ones that typically lack the extra funds to purchase such “extras.” Schools, and therefore, students, are forced to “submit to the colonial power of language and adopt English as their primary means of communication.” 

Another part that especially struck a chord was the section that pointed out HOW computers are used and how that huge detail contributes to the disenfranchisement of minorities. Minorities usually access computers for remedial math and reading programs, usually on a limited schedule due to low funds and overcrowded schools, while non-minority students are using computers to perform more cognitively challenging tasks. These students are more likely to use computers on a daily basis, due to access both at home and at school. Moreover, they are using them to learn coding, web design, digital art, or computer science.  

It made me think back to my old floppy disk days. I remember being a couple of reading levels above my peers ( I was a total book nerd), and when we were lined up and walked down to the computer lab, I was super bored as I zoomed through the “curriculum” that had been set. My friends were busy clicking away at these reading games while I finished floppy disk program after floppy disk program. My teacher told me to just keep going on to the next one in my stack while she went to stand behind some struggling student. It was a few months before the teacher realized that I had done the entire year’s curriculum several times over. But I was never given anything else! I was never taught anything else about computers. I was forced to just sit there while the others worked on catching up! How much time did I waste?! And things haven’t changed. I watch the reading teachers line my students up in the hall as they’re walked to and from the computer lab where they work on remedial programs once or twice a week.

I had only sporadically thought about disability and access - usually when campaigns made the news or when discrimination cases made the local paper. I had NEVER thought about the accessibility of digital texts. The sense from the readings was that instead of focusing on helping and accommodation, we should be focusing on agency. The central theme in Wolff, Fitzpatrick and Youseff’s paper ‘Rethinking Usability for Web 2.0’ is the need to locate the user at the center of the design process - which links in very clearly to the Bogost and Ryan readings from the previous week. Procedural rhetoric illustrated the power of processes and designs that we rarely question in the digital or the analogue world and accessibility is one reason for the need to resist and challenge inbuilt discrimination at its source.

The readings build on the post-structural emphasis on understanding meaning through opposites. So the question becomes not ‘what does it mean to be disabled?’ but ‘what does it mean to be able-bodied?’ There continues to be issues around the identification of disability - especially with the stigma that accompanies many disabilities, such as cognitive disability and personality disorders. Many disabilities remain to be identified and may be very personal and individual. It was an eye opener to read Selfe and Howe’s article stating that in reality, we are all TAB - temporarily able bodied. Disability in this regards means anything that prevents equal access to a resource - be it old age or blindness. As the authors point out, disability is not an illness that needs to be cured but can be an opportunity to make a resource even better in its design for everyone.

The Normal family brought attention to the things that most of us fall short of. While it was obvious that the Normal family had their own life obstacles, the reality of the drawn out scenario is that it is the reality of most families. Acknowledging that are factors in life is hard on some people taking account that sometimes it is a new element, one that someone has not been around or seen before. Melanie Yergeau, addresses the predicament that follows in the classroom,  “Attention to disability, whether in a class exercise or major assignment, has tremendous potential to reshape the ways in which students come to understand themselves and the world around them.” This is where I believe it is important that educators need to step in to grant acceptance and acknowledge to material that will bring awareness yet stabilize the perceptions about what being disabled means.

In “Disability.” Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, it is stated that, “As teachers, we need to consider the ways in which our classrooms, and our own positions and privilege, recreate the dynamics that disability studies has long sought to dismantle: that of the distal researcher studying marginal subjects, without their consent in the subjects that concern them most.” While I felt like I knew what this field contained and how to go about my future class I was shocked that there was still a lot I didn’t know, “The Imagination Gap: Making Web-based Instructional Resources Accessible to Students and Colleagues with Disabilities by John Slatin,” help bring that to life. Because I do not have any disabilities I found it hard to understand what kind of modifications were needed in the digital life, I thought that computers and online websites were already pretty assessable and wow I was really wrong. If there was one thing I learned from that reading it was to think about all the things I could do right now and then take them away, and try to do things like before…… I could not, and that is the idea behind making the instruction accessible.

In  “Multimodality in Motion,” Kairos 18.1 “There’s no such thing as a universally designed text. There’s no such thing as a text that meets everyone’s needs. That our webtext falls short is inevitable.” We have to re think the normal, while addressing the needs of those around us who can not do something quite the way others can. Melanie expresses, “The importance of kairotic space will be more obvious to a person who—for example—can hear only scraps of a conversation held among a group sitting at a table, or who needs more than a few seconds to process a question asked of her in a classroom discussion.”

I found “Persuasive Gaming” by Ian Bogost to be absolutely fascinating! Initially the author talks about how video games aren’t widely accepted as a cultural form despite their commercial success. He states, “video games are considered inconsequential because they are perceived to serve no cultural or social function.” I immediately thought to myself, “Well, what if researchers looked at video games to see how they reinforce the status quo? Isn’t that valuable as a cultural or social function?”

Well, Bogost goes on to answer my question. He discusses how, “Video games can also disrupt and change fundamental attitudes and beliefs about the world.” He states, “we must strive to understand how to construct and critique the representations of our world in video game form.”

This text is actually coming at a perfect time. Yesterday, while in my pedagogy class, my professor asked us to go around the room and state our research questions as they relate to pedagogy. One of the ladies in my class stated that she is highly interested in video games and wants to focus on procedural rhetoric. This is, as we’ve learned in the text, “the art of persuasion through rule-based representations and interactions rather than the spoken word, writing, images, or moving pictures.” 

She said that one of her favorite gamers came up with this method called back scripting? ( I need to find out the exact name of the method, I might not have used the correct phrasing) and wants to use this method to teach players about empathy. Essentially, this game will take students through a series of challenges that show marginalized people in empowered situations. She gave an example of a girl being a doctor, solving crimes, etc. At the end of the game, the player will be introduced with a phrase such as “she hits like a girl.” Essentially, she is hoping that players will reflect critically about the messages that they might have heard throughout their life and learn how to empathize with others. I might not have gotten everything that said correct, and I know that she is still flushing out her ideas, but I found her proposed research question to be relevant and important.