I attended the first session of the Black Lives Matter Symposium where Teresa Zackodnik talked about “Intense Continuities.” To be completely honest i had a very hard time hearing most of what she said, there was a problem with the microphones and I was sitting toward the back of the room. But i did notice that she talked a lot about “taking the hashtag outside.” I know that the Black Lives Matter movement is based largely on their social media. They do a great job of utilizing their social media platform to reach people everywhere and to help get their message out there. I think that in the era everyone is on social media in on form or another, and it is very easy to sit behind a computer screen and speak you peace, and talk about how great of a movement Black Lives Matter is, and how you support their cause. But what is even more important than that is getting out, and going to the events they host, show up and stand with them in their fight. It is not just enough to write a Facebook post, a tweet, or post a photo on Instagram. In order for this movement to be successful there need to be more activism and support at the events, and not just online.

When I tried to Google myself I was unable to find the actual Alexandra Johnson. Unfortunately, I have a very common name. However, I love social media so it was easy picking which profiles to use. The three social media profiles I chose to examine more closely was my Facebook account, my Instagram account, and my Twitter account. Each one very similar and very different at the same time.

On my Instagram account I liked to portray myself as this fun, adventurous, and involved person. I kind of look at Instagram as a site for you to show your best part of you on it. The main things you will see on my Instagram is me going to fun places/ events and all my sorority pictures. I post my pictures for the goal of getting the biggest likes on my pictures. For some reason I feel the the like feature on Instagram is extremely important in my world. Which thinking about it is really sad. If I feel I wont get a any likes I will not post it. A large majority of girl’s post pictures with the intent of getting the most likes.

On my Facebook account I portray myself and the most honest part of me. I don’t put any filters on my pictures and I don’t post pictures with the intent of getting the most likes. Most of my timeline is pictures and posts that my mom and grandma tag me in. Most of my family and my family friends are the people that look at my Facebook. My age generation doesn’t really use Facebook as much as Instagram. On Facebook I do not feel that I am getting judged for a photo. I like to use Facebook to update my family what I have been up to in my life. It is a good form of communication to family that lives far away.

I like to use my twitter account as my form of opinion on social media. I don’t really post any cute pictures of myself. I don’t really make any tweets about myself. like to post my opinions and I like to retweet things that I think is funny and that I think is important to post. When people pull up my twitter account you wont see really anything about me all you will see is a bunch of random stuff. I like to post funny stuff with the intent of getting the most subtweets which mean other people think its funny too.

 

I have to admit that I use my social media to stock people. When I get bored I like to stalk all my friends to see all the interesting things about them. All in all I like to perceive myself of social media as the cool and interesting person. I want people to see all the fun stuff I do and I want people to see how funny I am. Social media helps me express myself. When looking at other peoples profile it helps me think about the person that I want to be perceived on social media.

 

How this connects to Black Mirror is social media is like a timeline of your life and all the stuff you did which is what Black Mirror was talking about. Black Mirror kind of shows the comparison how social media is always permanent and what you post does not go away.

I believe that social media is a good thing in the world. It changed the way that people communicate and it helps people express who they are and their opinion.

 

Alex Shaw

So in total I only have 2 social media platforms, Facebook and Snapchat. On my Facebook profile all of my security settings are maxed out which means no google search will find my profile. For the most part anything I share or show is only shown to those I want and nothing can be seen on my profile without being my friend first. The reason for having my Facebook completely secure is majorly due to my current occupation and future occupation in the Air Force where anything from my personal life could be used against me for extortion or to hurt those I care about. On my snapchat account I only send pictures and talk to a handful of people while only posting stories of events or food. I only accept friend requests on both accounts from people I know and trust or those I am getting to know, if I receive a request from someone I don’t know, I ignore them. After googling my name I found nothing having to do with me, even further searching and going to the mythical page two of google there was still nothing. In images, there are plenty of people with my name but none of the pictures show me. It’s surreal to see yourself on google when googling yourself, but it’s even more so when nothing of yourself shows up. It may sadden some people to see that their not coming up but for me, I find it great. In my career and future career having a presence online could not only be dangerous but could be negative for my career especially when getting a top secret security clearance.

On social media I am more of a lurker (sounds weird but it’s an internet term) I rarely post things online and only to do so when I need to. For the most part, my posts involve air force activities and my relationships at that time. This makes me seem not very active but for the most part I just don’t see a reason to post most of the things I do. I feel that somethings are better enjoyed in private and aren’t needed for the world or friends I’m not close to, to know and for the most part, I forget to post whatever I’ve done. For me, the way I’m seen on social media is perfectly okay with me but for others it is a problem. The problem arises from relationships where those you date want you to be more active on social media with the relationship and share all the things you do. I feel however you are on social media whether you constantly update or never update is completely okay and everyone will use it differently. There is no set way to use social media other than the way you want to.

In connection with Black Mirror which can show how having the ability to rewind every memory, every word can be detrimental in the end, that’s how I see social media. Some important memories are always good, birthdays, vacations, fun events. But day to day life isn’t something that has to be a permanent memory for all to see. And sometimes, not all the time, can even cause trouble in your life. Obviously in black mirror, this was good because it exposed a cheating wife for the husband, but in the end it caused harm to two other people. The ability to look back can also cause pain because it brings up memories that you had forgotten, a lost friend or family member, a time when everything was okay. All this is not to say that having memories online is all bad, and for the most part it’s good; but the times where it is bad, can be devastating.

At the Black Lives Matter symposium, I watched and listened to Teresa Zackodnik talk and discuss how social media plays a large part in getting the word out into the public about the problems that go on within the black community. One of the things I remember Teresa saying was “take the hashtag outside”, as if we applied the things that we post on Twitter or other social media accounts and applied it to the real world that we could change the world. Although I couldn’t hear all of what she was saying, I thought she brought up some good graphics to help with her presentation, like the maps of where social media played a big part, and how she compared the newspapers from previous years to hashtags that are used nowadays. It was difficult to hear what she was saying most of the time, but the main points that she made were that social media has some effects on how people see and what they do when it comes to serious things such as protests, and how a lot of things get started on social media. A key component that I got from this symposium is that what we post on social media could change how things are looked at in the real world, whether its for the best or for the worse, taking a stand could start with a hashtag.

We could do this the boring way… Searching up my full name (Crystal Guan) does absolutely nothing. I don’t post anything interesting in regards to my personal life. Even my Facebook page is near empty. So we’re doing this the fun way.

Kazzandrah. That’s been my pseudo-nickname for the past near decade of my life. The search results are actually hilarious. Take a look:

Twitch? That’s me.
Final Fantasy XIV? That’s me.
League of Legends? (I quit after Season 5.) That’s me.
Facebook? That’s me. (Well.. My online persona’s (stream’s) Facebook.
Dotabuff? That’s me.
Twitter? That’s not me. I was wondering who took my handle.
World of Warcraft? Uh… Yea that’s me… I think.
9GAG? Holy cow - I thought I deleted that account. But yea, that’s me.
And the images that show up in that line? All of them except the second from the left - all me.

So… Let’s go with Twitch, Twitter, and my various gaming profiles (Dotabuff, WoW, etc.)
Twitch - This is probably the biggest exposure of me you’ll ever get. My followers/friends/viewers have described me as… Well… Many things. Hyperactive, loud, scaredy-cat, forever hungry, entertaining to watch… The list goes on and on. I will say though, this “Crystal” is the person that I want people to look up to. Someone that people can see as a role model, someone that they know will always be there with a smile and ready to make them laugh.

This is the first image of me you can find. It’s literally the image I have across all social media platforms, so that’s not surprising. So thanks… Me?
Twitter - Dead. I literally only use this to promote my stream (tweet when I’m going live.)
Gaming profiles - I should be ashamed by the number of the times my name has popped up on the first page alone just for the games I’ve played. I. REGRET. NOTHING. I’ve spent a ridiculous number of hours on every game shown though… Where has my life gone.

I literally was playing FFXIV until I forced myself to log off to do this blog post. (I’m currently trying to level my monk to 60.)

All in all… At least 95% of the results from Google (granted, there was only 5 pages,) were all my profiles for some sort of gaming thing (usually.) A lot of it is Twitch-related things (apparently my stream was broadcasted on some Chinese website… HA?) And I think I’m happy with this. If I could make a living streaming, that’d be THE awesomest job ever. Being so easily found? Not so awesome. But with great rewards come great risks… Right?

In other words: LEROYYY JENKINSSS!

TreAndrea Russworm’s speech on race, technology and the problem of recognition for black lives matter was split up into 4 points starting with what she called recognition and representation talking about black people and specifically black women in films. she bases her points off of Hegelian recognition pointing out that recognizing specific points of that person means there going to base judgment solely for that reason. Black women in films are often stereotyped as evil and even not recognizing their own offspring and other rituals that are represented through films. Out of this people will either always feel empathy for the person or and understanding (spectating or relating)

she then goes on to hashtags, data sets, and black subjectivity which focuses on actions making them noticeable. The idea “I don’t want to be a hashtag” was brought up to represent that black people don’t want to be failed recognition, to only to be represented as another number on the death count.

Her third point is on black death as viral. Only the most potent videos are the ones that go viral that are picked by the media. From this what Russworm calls a new “online Jim Crowe” was introduced with lawers distorting the information that was taken from the video to place blame back on the black life.

Her last point was on gaming representation. she introduced biometric blackness and used the new NBA2k17 as an example of black people giving out their facial feature to whoever collects that data.

These are some of the points taken from her lecture about race, technology and the problem of recognition.

Social Media Archives and the Ethics of Documenting Social Movement

Bergis Jules

Archivist

University of California, Riverside

 

Before Professor Bergis Jules began with thee talk, he started with showing us how African American teenagers are the highest group of using social media, especially Twitter. Challenges appeared as activists when they documented the movement, for example is where they need to learn more if they collecting social media. Report says that the CIS had Angle Funding for social media data mining. “The investments appear to reflects the CIA’s increasing focus as monitoring social media” –The intercept. One particular site appeared more often is Geofeedia which is an app that would give you a lot of headlines like how the Seattle Police illegally purchase ACLU. This type of surveillance might danger the colored people sine it is targeted to them which surprised the impact of social abuse. One of threats were shown in the site was the Threat Actors. This showed how DeRay McKesson and Johnetta “Netta” Elzie who appeared in The Baltimore Rising after the shot of am police officer. These are connected with the site that updated and categorized them as the Threat Artists, these would also be a business for selling their profile to threat the movement of Ferguson. Not Twitter is included in the library of congress, we can check our complete log from them. But on the other hand, to fix all these problems we need to engaged directly with people instead of online, because collecting datas affects them directly

Who I am in the social media’s digital self would be a little different than my real life’self. In social media I tend “to try” to make my posting or photos not too inappropiate. After I tried to search my name on Google, I barely see anything inappropiate, for example, how when I put “Nabila Hanifah,” gave me my facebook page and Google’s ( since I logged in ) and a web called My Way. With so much privacy I have been activated, I found that my web pages are more secured, I have to looked at it so hard to find my Twitter posts on the web. While I put “Nabila Nur Hanifah,” (“Nur” is my middle name), I barely found some web sites showing myself and just one or two more photos. I used Facebook app. the most anytime I’m bored or regarding meetings from my organizations (or usually email). Since I kneew that my audience is also with my family members whether they’re my uncles, my aunts, my cousins, and most definitely, my parents and sisters, I tried to make all my photos and posts far away from cussing and had any offensive languages.

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I usually went to social media whenever I had a free time to think. I would check posts and pictures on Facebook and Instagram, or videos/snaps from Snapchat, which I honestly know it was a waste of time rather than doing more homework or reading books. “Many of which we are utterly unaware we programmed into them in the first place…” (12) which lead us to be “…marrying our time based bodies and minds to technologies that are biased against time altogether, we end up divorcing ourselves from the ‘rhythms’, ‘cycles’, and ‘continuity’ on which we depend for coherence (12)…because computer code is biased away from continuous time, so too are the program built on it, and the human behaviors those programs encourage” (22). These social media checking while I was bored really affects me regarding my productivity. Social media really made me different in certain ways as I could check more updated news of recent events happening (e.g. the President Debate and the Mass Shooting in Florida) but also made me spent most of my time checking my phone when I’m on a break or have nothing to do.

What I am in different social medias reflected how different I am in each one of them. For example: I knew I have more family audience in Facebook, a little less in Instagram (just cousins), and Twitter (which only my mother surveilled me). I tend to posts pictures less-showing-skins, and anything regarding about engineering life or just nerdy jokes on Facebook. While in Instagram I was not too shy to post a photo when I was wearing a dress, shorts, or tank tops (these were because my parents are a bit worried when I’m wearing clothes that tend to show more skin which on the comparison pictures below).

What I want to be in social media is mostly not to be someone who post somethings too often which-who I am right now still often posted something-and rather just posts something more educational than less about my feelings. I realized I am tired seeing my old Twitter posts since I wrote literally everything I felt whether it was just “Oh, look, I am about to eat a cinnamon roll,” or “I’m so sad that he ignored me when I texted him, why not he didn’t reply, hmmm….” Just for the record, these were me when I was in elementary-to-middle school-phase which it was pretty rare for me to be able to post around nine thousands of tweets, honestly.

(Safe posts in Facebook and Twitter)

VS

(Photos courtesy of my Intagram which might not too much showing skin for others while it’s pretty too much for rules I’m growing up and also from my parents and religion)

 

On October 7, 2016, speaker TreAndrea Russworm spoke about Race, Technology, and the Problem of Recognition. In the speech, she addressed hashtags which initiate computational actions. Categorical flags makes things transparent. In other words, the unseen is visualized in concrete detail. Hashtags also represent data which tracks our personal lives. According to Russworm, hashtags are interpretations of data which will be used for oppression. Russworm also uttered, “I don’t want to be a hashtag.” This serves as a depressive counterpart; basically stating that she felt as if not only her but other African Americans are always one police encounter away from becoming a hashtag. It’s striking because it’s not only alluding to not dying but also to a digital war zone on African Americans. Being a hashtag means being searchable but only through digital memory. The murdered black subject is recognizable; the cruelty is that to be a hashtag is of failed recognition. It shows that black humanity in the end, was never valued.

Black Death As Viral

One participant said, “If i were a hashtag, I’d want the video out there…all the people who know I don’t have a criminal record…I want them to see this and ask is that enough? What will it take?” The movement is charged by videos of blacks being murdered. We’ve used technology to document the death of blacks for over a century, specifically with lynching. Photographs offer certainty. The records we think we’re looking at is an objective representation of reality. Capturing and documenting a death reinforces the nation’s scope…to remember to forget the violence of African Americans. Russworm also quoted, “The repetition of representation of black life’s failed recognition is always highly co-optable.” Opinions are mistaken for sound facts. We have to remember our historical relation to race.

Gaming Representation

In the game that Russworm showed us yesterday, you play as a 7 year old black girl who stumbles upon and witnesses police brutality. She has a choice to eat, cross the street, etc. However, no matter what she does, the police will shoot her. This shows a vocal example within politics and recognition. Grand Theft Auto online cinemas are also created for Black Lives Matter which seems to be the recurring theme in many videos. They seem to show levels of gaming representation by using theories to show what we’ve learned during dark times. These were made to create a world to better reflect our relationship to technology.

In conclusion, Russworm states these points about politics on computational representation. #1. Textual reflexivity and self-conscious critical awareness about some of the stakes around race, representation, and technology. #2, creation of active discourse communities around computational representations as such. #3, imagines a path for social change. Lastly, #4, maintains a dialogic relationship to the preexisting media histories on representing race.