Hey everyone! My name is Eden Eaton, and I am a senior at the University of Arizona pursuing an ISTA (Information, Science, Technology and Arts) major. This blog will serve to analyze the contents of my eSoc 211 class, Collaborating in Online Communities. I'm not a fan of pictures, so I have graced you all with a nice picture of my cat, Jude Paw. Hope you all enjoy my blog!
Hey everyone! The semester is almost coming to an end, so this will be my last blog post. I feel like I have really learned a lot in my ESOC 211 class about what it means to collaborate in online communities. I have collaborated with many of my classmates on projects such as the Women's March website as well as a recent project about Rape Culture. If I had not collaborated with my peers, I know these projects would not have come out as great as they did. I also became a part of the Wikipedia community which was a great new experience! My favorite topics that I talked about in my blog were the Teamwork and Group Developments, as well as the post on the Culture of Reddit vs Pinterest. I also interacted quite a bit with my peers in their blogs, as you can see here:
I was influenced by many of my peers in this class, but I particularly enjoyed working with Katie McCready, Miros Jocz and Amanda Delgado. I worked with Katie on both unit projects and we did a really great job! I also think her blog is very detailed and interesting. Then I worked on the Unit 2 project with Miros, along with a couple other students from the class. He had a great attitude the entire time we worked together, and I really enjoyed reading his blog as well! At the beginning of the semester I collaborated a lot with Amanda on in-class activities, and we worked pretty well together too. She has some really great stuff on her blog so be sure to check those out!
Anyway, I hope you have all enjoyed reading my blog as much as I have enjoyed writing it!
This week we read part of the introduction to a book called Spreadable Media, which discussed the importance of making all media accessible and sharable. We talked about the spreadability of our unit two project, which is coming up soon. For this project, my group and I would like to focus on rape culture and the social movement that goes along with that. Rape culture is when society has a certain attitude about sexual assault and abuse that causes it to be normalized. This is a large part of our culture because it happens to many times where the victims are viewed as the ones at fault for rape and sexual assault because society says so. People often make comments about what the victim was wearing, what they were doing, etc., and imply that they are at fault for not preventing the event from happening, when in reality, sexual abuse and rape or acts of violence and the perpetrator is the only one who is at fault.
So for our upcoming project, we would like to create a short parody video that shows just how ridiculous this phenomenon is. Rape culture is especially large problem and universities and colleges, so we know it would create a big impact for the people here at the University of Arizona. The idea for this project came from a post that I saw on Pinterest.
We would like to make a video of this post and spread it to others to show how harmful these kinds of comments are and how we need to refocus the blame in rape and sexual abuse to the attacker, rather than the victims. We will post this video on Vimeo and add #RapeCulture in the description in the hopes that the spreads. When thinking about how we want our project to be spreadable, we consider this quote from the reading, "What material is produced according to a one-size-fits-all model, it imperfectly fits the needs of any given audience. Instead, audience members have to retrofit it to better serve their interests" (27). We do not want our project to be simply catered to one specific audience, but rather to anyone who is willing to listen. For that reason, we are adding #RapeCulture, #Feminism, #FriendZoning, Etc., in order to reach bigger audiences. By adding these tags, our viewers can spread the video as much as they wish. Anyway, thanks for reading!
Hi everyone! Last week we had to do a training in Wikipedia in order to learn how to be able to contribute to that community. The training consists of four main parts: the welcome and introduction section, Wikipedia's core principles, a section on basic editing and communicating skills, and finally a small section on some advanced topics. When going through this training, you have the option of creating a Wiki account that you can then use to make significant edits to any wikipedia entry that exists, or you can even make your own! If you are interested in doing this training, click here! This training was very beneficial because I always wondered how Wikipedia became what it was. You can a wiki entry on almost anything that has every happened, and they are all pretty informative. This is because it is a collaborative community of people who just want to provide accurate information about different topics. If you happen to know a lot about a certain topic, then you can contribute to it on wikipedia! I joined with a few of my classmates, and we contributed to a wiki stub in order to get our feet wet. We added information to a page about baby furniture, funny enough. If you want to check out that page, click on the photo (Note: This page was edited by my group in April of 2017 and is subject to change):
Contributing to this page was fun, and we actually felt good because we were a part of something much bigger than us. Wikipedia is a great way to get involved in a collaborative community, and I recommend trying it out! Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this week's post and here is a cute video to get you through the week:
Hey everyone! This week we watched a documentary called "RIP: A Remix Manifesto", and it's a documentary that talks about issues with copyright and fair use laws. The movie argues that it is hard to create music and movies these days because of the amount of copyright laws that there are. I really enjoyed the manifesto that they wrote:
I really like this manifesto because I feel like it captures what creating is all about. The first one states, "Culture always builds on the past", which is true. First came the wheel, and then the wagon, and then the car. And the point here is that the idea of the wheel was not stolen, but rather used in the creation of something new and better. Where would we be now if someone had taken a copyright on the wheel?
That brings me to the second point that states, "The past always tries to control the future". People always have a tendency to want to control the future, and so they take measures in the present in order to do so. The best example of this is when Disney was given the rights to the "Happy Birthday" tune. They didn't even come up with it, but they saw the profit they could make off of it and so they claimed the rights to it.
This goes along with the third point, "Our future is becoming less free". Since Disney was given the rights to the Happy Birthday song, then anyone who uses it (such as restaurants and literally anyone who sings happy birthday) is legally required to pay royalty fees to Disney. Which is ridiculous in my opinion.
And finally we have the last point, "To build free societies you must limit the control of the past", which is what we need to start doing. If we want to create a better future, then we need to take the ideas of the present and transform them into new and greater things. But we can't do that if everyone in the present is claiming their rights on every piece of media. Copyright laws need to change and adapt to the present before we move into the future. Anyway, I hope you all have a great week. Until next time!
Hey everyone! This week we talked about a subject that I am very passionate about: female representation in STEM fields. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and these fields are usually dominated by males. We also watched a video called CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap. Check out the trailer to this awesome documentary:
Here is a small infographic that illustrates those statistics:
We had a guest speaker come to our class and talk to us about the large under-representation of women in computer science as compared to information technology. It turns out that a few more women graduate from IT than from CS. We were exploring possible reasons as to why that might be, but no one really knows for sure. In light of this topic, I would like to share my own experiences with being a female and a minority in the STEM field. I started out my college career as engineering major but quickly realized it wasn't for me and switched to math. I liked math just fine, but often found myself in classrooms filled with all men, and maybe a handful of women, and hardly any hispanics (my ethnicity). I often felt out of place, and almost never felt comfortable enough to create study groups with my peers. After a while, I decided to switch to Computer Science, and it was the same old song and dance. I was one of a few women in all my classes, and again one of a few hispanics. In fact, in one of my classes of about 40 people, I was the only hispanic woman. This can often be discouraging because you don't have other people to relate to. I even had this situation in one of my CS labs where I was paired with a white male, and he never took my suggestions seriously. I would try and help with our code, and he would brush me off and ask his male friends for advice instead. I knew what I was doing, but he never believed I was capable of coding at his level. After all that, I decided to finally settle in Information Technology, and I am the happiest I have ever been with my major. I feel like I am being taken seriously, and I am still in the STEM field. I hope that one day, this feeling will change, but for now it is our reality. Here is an encouraging photo for STEM women everywhere:
Be your own Rosie and pursue your dreams even if it means going against the odds. Have a great day everyone!
This week had been crazy for us U of A students because of
For that reason, we have not really discussed any new material in our ESOC 211 class. So for this week's post, I will be sharing some of my classmates' blogs! First up is Katie McCready's blog, a junior ISTA major at the UofA. In particular, I wanted to share her third post where she talks about the different types of groups that exist: primary, secondary, planned, emergent, self-organizing, concocted, founded, circumstantial, intimacy, and task groups, as well as weak associations. She provides a really great example for each type of group by using all the different groups that exist in the popular TV show Breaking Bad. So check out her post if you want to learn more about groups! Next I decided to look at Ryan Sutton's blog; Ryan is a sophomore E-Society major. I especially enjoyed his fourth post about the ways that the internet has empowered different groups around the world. These are the examples he talked about:
Zapatistas used the internet as a "white flag" against the Mexican Government, calling the public's attention to the issues they were facing.
People contemplating suicide can look to Reddit for help.
Gamers can join online gaming communities to discuss new games and tactics.
Check out Ryan's blog to learn more about our class! Finally, I looked at Amanda Delgado's blog, a freshman studying Communications and E-Society, specifically her post on February 28. She talked about the website that she and her group members created on the "Free the Nipple" movement. They presented their website in class, and I found the movement very interesting because it really shows the continuing fight for women's equality. To learn more about this movement, check out their awesome website by clicking on the photo:
I hope you all enjoy these blogs as much as I did. I won't be posting next week because it's Spring Break, so have a great next week everyone!
These past couple of weeks have been very busy, filled with a number of fun projects that I have finally completed! The first was a website on an important, recent social movement: The Women's March on Washington! This event, which took place January 21, 2017, was the biggest social march in the history of the United States. If you would like to learn more about this event, check out my team's website by clicking on the image below:
This week I also worked on a blog about virtual reality. If anyone is interested in that topic, take a look at that blog as well:
Anyway, this week in class we talked about the Umbrella Movement of 2014, which began as a protest for fair elections in Hong Kong. The umbrellas were significant because they were often used as protection from tear gas used by law enforcement during their protests. The movement was organized through an online forum called HKGolden, and volunteers, with the help of donations, were able to organize medical care, clean up, and other basic necessities. To learn more about the Umbrella Movement, watch the video below:
I also wanted to comment that Zootopia, the movie I mentioned earlier in my blog, won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film of 2016!
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the content in this week's post. Have a great rest of the week!
Last week in class we had a discussion about the uproar regarding the trend on Twitter, #myNYPD that was popular 2014. The hashtag was created by the New York Police Department in order to show that police had a kind side to them, and were not just about police brutality:
However, that idea backfired and it led to people using the hashtag to display police brutality. To learn more about the incident, watch these two videos by MSNBC and WSJ.
I collaborated with a few of my peers and we discussed the factors that contributed to their failed collaboration, and this is what we came up with:
"The NYPD was trying to release positive content on their Twitter page with the hashtag "#myNYPD". The purpose of this was to engage with the community and show people their positive side, but the citizens answered with negative photos that displayed police brutality instead. The NYPD did not achieve their goal of uniting the community with the police, which brought new issues to light and actually created a bigger divide between the two groups. According to MSNBC news correspondence, one of the main reasons for this failed collaboration is that the NYPD did not go through the "listening/research stage". The NYPD did not look at the community they were addressing or at the perception of the community toward them. It seems as though the NYPD was naïve about the negative stigma toward them, and they were not realistic about the kinds of responses they would get from this hashtag. The marketing strategist of the NYPD underestimated how powerful people's voices are on social media; they were under the false belief that since they are a government entity, their voices would be louder than the rest. They did not realize that their original intent would be drowned out by everyone else's responses."
Something that we did not touch on is that I believe they tried to do this in a time where there still strife with law-enforcement. It was too close to all the incidents of police brutality, so they quickly tried to recover by doing something they thought would help. I think the idea would have worked better if it were centered around a time when the police really helped people, such as during 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing, rather than as a distraction for the wrong they were doing. It was mostly a matter of bad timing, and what could have been a good idea turn into the backfire of the century.
On that note, I do just want to say that not all police officers are bad people. The ugly acts are always the ones that make it into the news, but the simple acts of kindness rarely do. I have had my share of good experiences with law enforcement, and after watching the recent movie Patriot's Day, I gained a new appreciation for law-enforcement. Try taking the time to thank an officer every once in a while. Some of them really do care for our well-being:
Hey everyone! I'm sorry about the late post this week, but I have been very ill since Monday. :(
Last week in class, we talked about Reddit and Suicide Intervention, and how Reddit has provided a platform for people who are looking for help working through suicidal thoughts. I remember in class, one of my peers asked what Reddit was, and I explained to her that Reddit is like Pinterest but for guys. We then discussed how Reddit is usually preferred by males because there tends to be a fair amount of misogyny on this site. I just thought that was interesting because when I described Reddit to my classmate, I was basing it off of my own personal experiences with my male friends being Reddit users and with me being a Pinterest user; I had no idea that there was actually an explanation to this phenomena. For that reason, I would like to pick apart the design differences between the two websites that might explain why males and females prefer one over the other. Log-In Page:
Pinterest
Reddit
Just by looking at the log-in page, right away we can see that Pinterest is much more colorful and lively. Its main focus is an artistic photo, while Reddit is simply provides a place to log-in/sign-up. Pinterest looks like a magazine, which might attract more women to it. It also has a "cuter" logo, with a cursive P, while Reddit has a robot logo which could be viewed as more masculine. User Profile:
Pinterest
Reddit
Here we can see the user profile page, and again we can see huge differences between the two. The Pinterest page is more organized and has boards in which to save different categories of posts, which can be controlled by the user. It also has cute shapes like squares with rounded edges and a circle for the profile picture. With Reddit, there is no profile picture or any information about the user, but we can see any posts that the user has made and any Sub-Reddits they have saved. Again, I feel like the Pinterest page looks much more colorful and feminine, while the Reddit page is more straightforward and is not as customizable. Homepage/The Fun Part:
Pinterest
Reddit
This is where all user posts get displayed. With Pinterest, they are organized into columns and the comments on each post can be changed. On Reddit, posts are viewed as picture icons with text next to each one describing what is in that post. I personally believe that Pinterest is more visually appealing, which might attract more female users. Culture:
Pinterest
Reddit
Here is where the gender divide between the two websites can be really seen. If you click on the explore option on Pinterest, you get different categories to choose from. Those categories range from food, DIY (do-it-yourself), and beauty to quotes, travel, and men's style. The content on Pinterest definitely seems to be more geared towards women, which explains why they may find themselves on that page. Reddit, on the other hand, has more general content. However, in class we talked about how Reddit users can often post misogynistic comments, which is what turns women away from the site. All in all, I think it is clear why certain genders prefer one website over the other. I am a die-hard Pinterest user, but I can appreciate the content that Reddit has to offer as well. Anyway, I hope everyone has a good rest of the week!
This week, I really wanted to focus on the article we read, "The Secret to Smart Groups: It's Women". The article was about some scientists from MIT who did a study on what makes a group smart, and believed that the "c factor" (or collective intelligence) was what makes a group successful. However, they found that the true identifier of a cohesive team is something they called "average social sensitivity". Basically what this means is that people who can read non-verbal cues tend to make better team members, and the scientists found that women are actually much better at this than men. This article made me think about the recent movie that came out called Hidden Figures. Here is the trailer, in case you don't remember what it's about:
This film showed a number of teams that were successful because of the women that were involved with them. In particular, there was a scene where one of the women taught the rest of her team how to code because it was the upcoming advancement. Once the new computers were installed in NASA, her team was the only one who knew how to program those computers. I just really enjoyed this article because it talked about a special skill that women have that gives them the edge when it comes to being an effective team member. Hooray for women!
Last week we talked about Colvin's "What Really Makes a Team Work". I particularly enjoyed the example about Steve Job and how he designed the Pixar headquarters around a central atrium in order to optimize teamwork. The design forced employees to always pass each other when heading to different offices, and it encouraged interaction outside of the office. A large part of what makes a team work is how effectively that team communicates both in and out of the office. Here is an image of what the Pixar headquarters look like:
Click here for an additional article that expands more on how the central atrium encourages unplanned collaboration. My favorite story of unplanned collaboration is when the Andrew Stanton, John Lasseter, Pete Docter and joe Ranft met up at Hidden City Cafe and came up with the ideas that later became A Bug's Life, Monster's Inc., Finding Nemo and Wall-E. If they had not met, then we wouldn't have the movies we all know and love today!
Hidden City Café
We also talked about Tuckman's "5 Stages of Group Development" and looked at the Prezi that used Remember the Titans to illustrate those stages. I liked this project so much, that I decided to do my own illustration of the 5 stages of Group Development using one of my favorite movies, Zootopia (Warning: Spoilers ahead!).
Zootopia is about a bunny named Judy who dreams of becoming a cop in the big city named Zootopia, and she teams up with a fox named Nick in order to solve a case. Animals in the movie are separated between predators and prey, which is the underlying theme of the movie. Nick is a predator, and Judy is prey.
**Note: If video doesn't play, click on link that says "Watch this video on youtube".
Step 1: Forming
Forming is the stage where team members first come together to accomplish a still undetermined goal. The first instance of Judy and Nick working as a team is when she recruits his help for solving a missing mammals case. Judy blackmails Nick into helping her, and so he begrudgingly agrees to help her find clues for the case.
Step 2: Storming
This is usually the stage where conflict occurs because roles are still being established. Nick makes a couple of attempts to sabotage Judy's investigation because he does not want to be working as a cop. He does a number of things such as taking her to a Naturalist club and to the DMV, which takes up a lot of time (Judy must solve the case in 48 hours).
Step 3: Norming
This stage is when the roles are established and a common goal is achieved; team members start to contribute to meet that end game. The first instance of Nick starting to help Judy out with her investigation is after she is almost fired from the ZPD. He saves her job and then comes up with an idea that gets them closer to solving the case.
Step 4: Performing
The performing stage involves the team working effectively. All group members want to achieve their goal, they take care of each other and they solve disagreements in a positive way. Judy and Nick work as an effective team when they find the missing mammals, and also when they solve the bigger mystery close to the end.
Step 5: Adjourning
The adjourning stage involves the team members accomplishing their goals and moving on to other tasks. This stage is important for recognizing success and leaving the door open for future collaboration. The movie ends with Nick officially joining the ZPD and becoming Judy's work partner.
Well, that concludes my blog for this week, I hope you all enjoyed!
We hit the ground running in this class and have learned a lot so far! We started out with three images and what each one represents.
This is an image that represents social networking. The red dot represents an individual, and the rest of the dots represent all the people who are connected to that individual, and people those people are connected to as well.
This image represents the Democratic and Republican tweets about Ferguson. For the most part, each party remained in their own domain, but occasionally there were crossed paths where tweeters went back and forth on this political issue.
This final image represents online communities. Many communities tend to overlap with each other.
After the first day, we had our three readings, the first of which was titled "What is Collaboration Anyway?" (which was written by a lot of people). One of the more interesting aspects about this reading was differentiating between the different types of collaboration that exist (weak, strong and intense).
Weak collaboration is when people do their own thing, and somehow all their works end up being put together into one larger project/picture. For example, if you type in the phrase "Corgi Puppies for sale" into a google search engine, you get something back that looks like this:
Each link leads to a potential breeder or adoption agency who have nothing to do with each other, and yet they are all put together into one convenient location!
Then we have strong collaboration, which is open peer to peer sharing, like movies, games and music. Click here for an example of what strong collaboration looks like! The great thing about this type of collaboration is that the public joins forces to provide easily accessible media on a single platform.
Lastly, there is intense collaboration (when people intentionally get together to create something). The most popular example of intense collaboration is Wikipedia. Anyone can contribute their knowledge to this site, and experts working for Wikipedia are hanging around to fact check all the new material.
Hopefully now we have more of an idea of what collaboration really is...!
Our second reading this past week was Tina Fey's "Rules of Improvisation", which was hilarious (I mean, who doesn't love Tina Fey?) She talked about the rules of improvisation, which essentially boil down to making agreements, contributions, statements and opportunities. It is important to agree with your team on a project before moving forward with something they have no idea about, and it is also crucial for each member to contribute to said project. Contributions should not just be questions, but also statements that keep the conversation rolling. And of course, it should be understood that incidents should not be viewed as mistakes, but as opportunities to learn lessons. Now, here is an image of the police hamster Tina Fey mentioned in her article.
The last thing I would like to talk about is our third reading from this week, "Collective Intelligence" by Pierre Lévy. More specifically, I wanted to focus on one specific quote that I liked very much, which was "I believe that imagination, and especially collective imagination, produces reality". I love this quote because it is absolutely true; nothing in this world would exist if someone hadn't thought of it first. Where would we be today if Netflix had never been invented?? Probably out on the streets doing activities, and who wants to do that? But did you ever stop and think, Netflix just started out as an idea, a figment of someones imagination. Well it did! One day Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph were sitting around and Hastings said, "Hey Marc, imagine if there was a website that allowed people to rent or watch movies and tv shows right from their PC's!" and Randolph answered, "Yeah man, that sounds great!" And thus Netflix was born**. It started in their imagination, but it blossomed into something we all know and love today.
**Disclaimer: This story is not an accurate representation of what really happened.
So, to end this weeks blog I would just like to invite you all to collaborate *wink* and share what you think about these topics! Thanks for tuning in, and enjoy this cute picture!
