Social Networking (week #14)

Social Networking sites are everywhere these days and you are probably a part of two or three of them. Whether you belong to Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or Twitter, you are engaging in an online platform that offers modes of self-presentation and sociability. On any of these sites there is a convergence of public and private boundaries, because let’s face it your sharing your life with more people than you think. But these places are also a place to contribute to topics in more ways than just having a conversation face-to-face with someone. You can chat with people you never will have the chance to meet on a topic that is happening all around the world. In doing so, you can gain a perspective on the topic that you never thought you could have gotten. That is pretty cool if you ask me.  

Let us dive a little deeper into one of these Social Networking sites, Twitter. "Twitter is a microblogging site that allows users to send messages of 140 characters or less ("tweets") to people who have chosen to "follow" them..." (Florini, 2013).We all know about Twitter and how Twitter is famous for their use of the hashtag, right? Well if not, a hashtag is something used to organize everyone’s Twitter posts under what they put next to “#”, which used to be called the pound sign but now it is the hashtag (side note). Organizing ‘tweets’ based off of the hashtag that they are associated with is a great idea, because it allows anyone to do a search for ‘trending topics’ and gives anyone access to what people are saying about a particular show, a song on the radio, a celebrity, the list could go on forever. Honestly, the possibilities are endless when it comes to what you will find is ‘trending’ on a particular day.

Sometimes what people put next to “#” is funny or sometimes it is something that is happening in the world like a news event or if the day is a significant day in the month. Today for instance you can search what is trending on Twitter and the “Top Trend” is #EarthDay. As of 5pm on Wednesday April 22, 2015 there are 686k hashtags out on Twitter about Earth Day. #UnpopularActionMovies also comes up as a “Top Trend” coming in with 14.9k people using this hashtag. There really is a lot of diversity when it comes to what is a “Top Trend” on Twitter.
The thing that still baffles me is that people from all over the world can join in on what is trending by just using a hashtag. That way everyone’s voice is heard on a particular subject and the conversation can continue to grow based on everyone’s input. Maybe if in real life, as in life not spent in front of a screen, you are a shy person who does not really push yourself to join in on a conversation, with Twitter or any other Social Networking site you can get your opinion out there and get your voice heard. Social Networking sites are without a doubt a way to present yourself in a way that in real life you cannot. 

As much as Twitter can bring people together over topics, it can also create closed off communities based off of language used in the 'Top Trend'.  "Black users are most visible in the 'trending topics', a real-time list of the most tweeted about subjects. Twitter's trending topics list frequently features topics in which Black users are the majority or that have a direct association with Black American cultures" (Florini, 2013). Even though Twitter is open to everyone, sometimes words used in a particular community such as the Black community, people outside of that community do not really understand terms or phrases used within that community. "Signifyin' is a genre of linguistic performance that allows for the communication of multiple levels of meaning simultaneously, most frequently involving wordplay and misdirection" (Florini, 2013). 'Signifyin' is a way that the Black community on Twitter can use the space to "express Black cultural knowledge" (Florini, 2013). It is a way to create cultural difference and make a 'special group' on an otherwise open forum. Although Twitter is indeed open to everyone with access to the internet, it really is not open to all through the use of language. 

Public Service Announcements (week #13)

      Every time I get in my car and start it up this loud beeping occurs, BEEP BEEP BEEP!!! I look down at my dashboard and read the words "Buckle Seat Belt" and if I, the driver, or my passenger in the front seat, does not buckle up, my car will continue this beeping with about 30 seconds between each set of three beeps. Most of the time my friends get annoyed with this beeping, especially because my car does it within seconds of me turning the key in the ignition. I just tell them, "You better do it or she'll (yes my car is a girl) will continue beeping the entire time we are driving".  They are reluctant, but do it anyways because wearing a seat belt is the best and safest thing to do, to stop the annoying beeping. 

       For those of you without a bossy car to remind you to put on your seat belt, there are Public Service Announcements every where about wearing a seat belt or just general safety when you are behind the wheel of a motor vehicle. Public Service Announcements for vehicles are one of the most prominent PSA's in our society. Everywhere you look on a major highway there is a reminder to "Click it or Ticket" or "Buckle up it's the law". These PSA's are friendly reminders to help us use our seat belts.  

The Ad Council is also responsible for Seat Belt Ads that also help us remember to do this.  

     

      My high school even has a campaign for wearing seat belts called REMEMBER after one of our fellow classmates lost his life in a car accident because he was not wearing a seat belt. Our school even made glow in the dark REMEMBER bracelets so that whenever we got behind the wheel and looked down to start our car, we would REMEMBER  to wear our seat belts. This happened 11 years ago and every time I get in my car, whether I wait for the BEEP BEEP BEEP or not,  I am reminded to buckle up. Wearing your seat belt will continue to be a safety precaution that you can take before you begin driving in your car. 

      Even though wearing a seat belt is very important in the car, it is also important to put your phone away when you are behind the wheel. As technology seems to increase in our society, there seems to be more campaigns out on the road that tell us not to use our phones while driving. At least while driving on major highways in Colorado you can see multiple campaigns running on the digital highway signs telling you to basically get off of your phone and drive.

These campaigns are quite catchy with their use of "Get Your Head out of Your Apps", this statement is sure to make you look and think twice about what you are doing behind the wheel of your car. This campaign was started because last year in Colorado 480 people died on Colorado roads with 142 because of people driving under the influence. 

      But, texting and other distractions from cell phones are causing a new category of deadly dangers to emerge. Sending a text does not need to happen right away, whoever is on the other end of the text you just received can definitely wait until you are no longer operating your car for you to respond. The Ad Council explains that "texting while driving isn't multitasking, it's essentially driving blind". The Ad Council also says that, "34% of teen and young adult drivers said they never text while driving, increasing from 28% in 10 months" following the launch of their campaign. That is not a lot of people who say they are not texting and driving, which leaves a whole bunch of people who believe that sending that one text is worth their lives and possibly your life on the road. Are you one of those people who believes sending a text while driving is worth endangering your life or the lives of the people driving around you? I encourage you to think twice next time you reach for your phone while you are behind the wheel of your car. 

Public Relations (week #13)

         Favianna Rodriguez is a print maker and digital artist from Oakland, California. She is known for her use of high-contrast colors and vivid figures. Most importantly, she is known for her art that,“reflects literal and imaginative migration, global community and interdependence”. She brings new audiences into the art world by refocusing the cultural lens”. Favianna Bio  This is not a post about just art; this is a post about how art from Favianna Rodriguez has become a publicity campaign for undocumented people.

        “Migration is Beautiful” the campaign that is pushing towards social change about immigration. Rodriguez explains in a Huffington Post Article, “The anti-immigrant movement has successfully been able to dominate the immigration debate by pushing out messages about migrants that are inhumane, racist, xenophobic and hateful. But those of us who fight for migrant rights are not only fighting back, we want to reframe the way migrants are viewed, artists especially. We want to expose the tragic losses that have resulted from unjust immigration laws, and we want to inspire and challenge people to re-imagine migration as something beautiful and natural -- something we all do.” Huffington Post

          This campaign can be considered Social Justice PR because it is a publicity campaign that advances the voices of advocates who are working toward a more equitable social policy. It has purpose driven communication, such as a particular design, like the butterfly, that accelerates social change. Alright, so you may be wondering how Favianna Rodriguez fits into this campaign, she is the creativity behind the movement. She has chosen to use a monarch butterfly to be the symbol for this campaign. She states, “The symbol of the monarch butterfly has been adopted by various migrant rights organizations, artists, and lovers of justice. It was not my idea, but an idea that’s been circulating for years -- throughout the country and in Latin America as well. I was drawn to the butterfly because of the transformative nature of this creature. The monarch butterfly represents the beauty of migration and the right that living beings have to freely move.” Huffington Post 

         "Migration is Beautiful" is meeting the needs of a marginalized community or group that is otherwise disenfranchised in the legal or political system. It focuses on the big picture and daily lives of the undocumented individuals, while looking at access to resources, power and privilege to help make a change. In the Huffington Post Article Rodriguez was asked if she anticipates a shift in immigration policy she replied, “Yes, this is definitely starting to shift. You can see this not just in the polls, but in the ways that people are understanding the complexities of just how bad our immigration is. This is thanks to the amazing work that has been done by organizers, artists, cultural workers and most importantly, undocumented youth and their families. The strategy of undocumented folks coming out was not just a brilliant political strategy, but an important cultural one as well.”  

If you are interested in learning more about the "Migration is Beautiful" movement, check out these videos from Favianna's documentary! 

     Part 1 

Part 2 

Part 3 

Satire in RuPaul's Drag Race (week #11)

If you have never watched an episode of RuPaul's drag race, I highly recommend you stop reading now and go to logotv.com and check it out (the seventh season is currently airing). RuPaul's Drag Race is a show about, drag queens competing to be crowned America's Next Drag Superstar. The show has been on television since 2009 and right now you can catch the seventh season, which began airing on March 2, 2015. Throughout the series there are challenges so that some of the queens can be eliminated and the best queen left standing gets the title of America's Next Drag Super star.
RuPaul is the host of the show (obviously). RuPaul is an actor, drag queen, model author and recording artist.

Now that we all understand what this show is about (or have gone to logotv.com  to watch an episode) I want to focus on one of the challenges from a season. The challenge is called "Snatch Game", where contestants use their knowledge of drag to act out some famous people, like Beyonce, Tyra Banks, Amy Winehouse and Jennifer Lopez. This game is satire because it is a work that diminishes or derogates a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward attitudes of amusement. Satire is usually witty and often very funny, the purpose of satire is to criticize in order to shame someone. "Snatch Game" is a form of  indirect satire because the queens are expressing characters through narrative. In indirect satire the characters are the focus of the satire and they are not ridiculed by what is said but what they themselves say or do.

Watch the link above, it's my favorite "Snatch Game" to ever be played on the show! 

There are four techniques when it comes to satire: 

1. Exaggeration: the representation of something beyond normal bounds so that it becomes ridiculous 

2. Incongruity: present things that are out of place or are absurd in relation to their surroundings.

3. Reversal: present the opposite of the normal order

4. Parody: to imitate techniques or style of some person, place or thing.

Most of the contestants on "Snatch Game" do an excellent job at using exaggeration in their satire. For example, Raja the contestant who is playing Tyra Banks (in the clip above), does a fantastic job at exaggerating Tyra Banks' character (SPOILER ALERT!!! Raja goes on to win this season). Raja used to be a makeup artist on Tyra's show, America's Next Top Model this relationship probably helped Raja in impersonating Tyra in the game. The game also invokes the  parody technique of satire because the entire premise is to imitate techniques or styles of a person and it is also a parody of the Match Game. Yet again Raja does a fantastic job at this (It makes sense that she won!). She does so many things that Tyra does, from her hair, to her famous "smize" (smiling with your eyes) to how she presents her answer to RuPaul, as if she was getting ready to eliminate a contestant on her show America's Next Top Model. 

Cultural Appropriation/Exchange (week #10)

There have been many times I have seen people wearing a headdress because they think it looks cool or they want to use it as a form of self expression, but most of the time, they just do not understand that a headdress is used in Native American cultures to signify much more than something cool or as a way of creative expression. 

According to this website I found about the Indian Headdress (click on the link to go to the website), that only the "most brave and powerful of the tribe" wore them. For people to be wearing headdresses and not either be Native American or "the most brave and powerful" is a form of cultural appropriation. For one culture to wear the headdress as a commodity a culture, they can feel a sense of loss or that their cultural values are not being taken seriously by the culture who is wearing it out of how it should be worn.

Cultural appropriation is when you take an element of another culture (like a headdress) and present it in a shallow way
(Bell Hooks). 

When someone is seen wearing a headdress in a 'fashionable' way, you could say that they are using that headdress as a commodification because they are benefiting from the 'other' culture'. They are using it as a form of art as you can see by the Victoria's Secret model, Karlie Kloss, wearing hers down the runway or the other woman wearing hers for a picture. Them wearing the headdress in this way was not how the Native American culture had intended it to be worn. Victoria's Secret did issue an apology for the use of the headdress Click here to read the apology. Either way, neither of these women are wearing the headdress the way it was intended in the Native American culture. It is purely a way to express creativity or as a commodification. When someone turns another person's culture into a commodity this can come from an act of privilege, which shows the in balance of power that still exists between cultures.  There are social and historical implications that come from treating a marginalized group or cultures items of significance like a costume (Uwujaren, 2013). 

Click Here to read about Pharrell Williams caught in cultural appropriation by wearing a headdress on the Cover of Elle Magazine.

You may be wondering if it is ever a positive thing to wear something or use something from another culture, this is called cultural exchange. Cultural appropriation is different from cultural exchange because cultural exchange implies that there is mutual understanding, equality and respect between two cultures.

For example, you may remember from my Frames in a News Article post that I attended Arapahoe High School. Arapahoe High School, is associated with the Arapaho Tribe of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. My school had the Warrior as our "mascot", but it was not a typical "mascot because we did not have someone wearing a Warrior costume assemblies or sporting events. It meant that we would wear the Warrior icon (with the headdress) proudly on our clothes because we had made the exchange with the tribe that there would be a mutual understanding, equality and respect when we were representing the tribe. 

Click the link here to read about Arapahoe's Relationship with the Arapaho Tribe. 

Ethnic Representation on Television (week #8)

Remember last week when we were talking about Scrubs well this week we will still be looking into the show, but at a different character Carla, Turk’s wife. Last week we mainly focused on racial representation in television, but for this week let’s focus on ethnic representation. It is different because it is not as easy to look at someone and know their ethnicity, like it is for race. In this show there seems to be more of a lack of ethnic representation for the series as a whole. Although there are a few episodes, in later seasons, where Carla speaks about her heritage. 

For the majority of Scrubs, Carla does not engage in her Dominican culture, mostly because she lives in a place where majority of her friends and family speak English. (SPOILER ALERT) Even her own husband does not learn Spanish until later on until he secretly learns it to 'give' to Carla as a gift. But there are a few times where she does get to speak Spanish like when she talks to her mother on the phone or when her brother come to visit. Now her brother only speaking Spanish is another thing you will have to watch to know (SPOILER ALERT: he really knows English but he keeps speaking Spanish to please Carla) Also, after she gives birth to her daughter Izzie, there is a time when she struggles with what it means to incorporate her heritage into her daughters life. Making sure her daughter knows her Dominican heritage is very important to Carla, so she engages in Spanish with hopes that her daughter will pick up on it.  This is called acculturation where attitudes or beliefs are being modified as a result of contact with a different culture.

Check out this episode of Scrubs feel free to watch the whole thing, but if you want to jump to the part I’m talking about that is fine too. There’s a lot of jumping to clips here, but stay with me, first start from the beginning and watch up until 1:23 then jump to 7:33, 16:39 and 20:52

It’s clear from this episode that Carla is concerned with passing her culture down to her daughter. Integration is the synthesis of two cultures, which is not always half and half (Berry). So in Carla’s case, she wants to make sure that she is able to share her culture with her daughter so people do not just see her as African.  It is also evident to me as someone who has watched Scrubs too many times to count that ethnic representation in television is difficult. The clip above is from the seventh season of the show and it is the first time where being aware of your culture really pops up. Even though they are sending a good message in the episode about being aware of your culture and integrating it into the life you live, it still would be more impact-full if it was talked about sooner and more often.  

Minorities on Television (week #7)

We all have our favorite television sitcoms, you know those shows you watch for half an hour at a time, that have all the same places and all the same characters each time you watch? For me it’s Scrubs a sitcom show which aired from 2001 until 2010 showcasing life as either a doctor, surgeon or nurse working at Sacred Heart Hospital. For those of you out there who have never seen an episode of this show, I highly recommend you do, it’s full of hilarious jokes, great friendships and sometimes even some great lessons. I mean what more could you ask for in a 30 minute sitcom?

The main reason I’m taking this week to write about Scrubs because it has characters who are not just White in it. Minorities such as Blacks and Latinos are represented in a non-stereotypical way. One of the main characters, Turk is a Black man who is working at Sacred heart as a surgeon (SPOILER ALERT: he ends up marrying Carla who is Dominican).

Here’s how minorities were represented on television leading up to the Cosby era (when the Cosby show came out). They were either underrepresented or when they were represented, they were mocked or the laughable character on the television show. When the Cosby era came, minorities were represented, but still their characters were one dimensional. Then once the Cosby era was established, minorities began to be treated like White characters (Clark, 1969).

Since the Cosby show, who let’s face it set the precedent for the representation of minorities on television,  minorities are shown as upper class, being the comedic relief, being single (no family), and shown as the sidekick.

Scrubs Turk is best friends with J.D., who’s White. They are inseparable. And contrary to the typical stereotypes of Blacks, (SPOILER ALERT) Turk is the one who has his act together. He becomes a surgeon, has the same apartment for the whole series, marries Carla, and has children. Which is normally how we see Whites portrayed in television. J.D. on the other hand, becomes a doctor, jumps from apartment to apartment and couch to couch even ending up being ‘homeless’ for a while due to hard times, loses his license for a while (SPOILER ALERT) due to a D.U.I.,  does not have a steady girlfriend, does not end up getting married until the second to last season. So if anything, J.D. is the sidekick to Turk, because Turk has his life together more than J.D.

Showing all of Turks qualities in the show seems to explain how he has ‘made it’ in his life, he’s basically done everything by the book, despite the fact of him being Black. Enlightened Racism relieves viewers of the responsibility of inequalities and obscures the connection between race and class. Scrubs shows Turk with the qualities that most Whites have, which gives the viewer a break of seeing the minority character being shown as lesser than the majority characters. This may be a false sense of reality because the idea of enlightened racism and showing success of black characters in a television sitcom, infers to other blacks that they have failed because they may not be as successful (Jhally). It is a slippery slope, one where you are glad to finally see a black man who has a better life than his white best friend, but yet it still is sending the message of, 'if you do not have what Turk has, then you are not as successful as him'.

So here's my question to you, my readers: Will it ever be a positive thing for society to see a minority race 'make it' in a sitcom?