My Campaign

I don't think my campaign failed, but it wasn't wildly successful either. Coming up with original content proved a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, so many of my posts were sharing links and sharing other Facebook posts. I did begin my page with a personal post about why I was beginning the page and that did receive a lot of positive feedback. I shared it on my personal page as well and encouraged my friends to go like the page. Some more friends shared that or commented with names of friends they thought would be interested. I hit the thirty likes I needed very quickly, but getting likes over the course of the next few months was difficult.

One way I saw success was through receiving contact from the other side of the country. A woman back east sent me her story about signing and I was able to share that along with a video on my page. That was when I felt like my page might actually be making a difference.

I had some goals set at the beginning of the semester including posting tutorials once a week. I ended up not posting that many tutorials and I definitely think my page suffered from that. I became worried about balancing original content with the many links I wanted to share and never quite reached that balance I had wanted.

I did learn that posts involving personal stories or something about me, myself, were a lot more successful. The last post I did was a video taken of me and my mom. I was signing a little bit and we were showing how my mom had learned a few signs herself. That post received a lot of positive feedback and was viewed way more than the posts prior to it. 

In discussing my goals, I did talk to some of the students in the ASL classes here at Dixie, but I did not get any follow through from them in regards to sending content to the page. I thought that would be a big source for my posts, but it turned out to be extremely disappointing. My last goal was to have a contest involving likes in order to win some ASL gear. I planted the seeds by sharing some of this gear and the Etsy pages I planned to order it from on the page. When it received disappointing feedback I decided it would be illogical to continue with the contest idea.

Overall, I'm happy I created this page because I know it broke up the negative news feeds that many of us encounter every day. My page would have been more successful had I stopped second guessing myself and posted more often. 

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Attitudinal Responses

The idea of automatic attitudinal responses is an intriguing concept to me, particularly because I’ve felt that I have had very different responses than people in my normal social group. This has been a significant source of frustration for me in every day conversation and other heated discussions. As I ponder on what has caused me to have the responses that I do, the thing that comes to mind is first my family, but then more particularly my dad when it comes to disagreement. My dad consistently pushed me to question all sides and challenged me when I couldn’t back up my own position. I think all of the discussion with my dad has caused me to side with him without question at this point. I’d like to think that I still have a brain of my own though, very much thanks to my mom. My mother, very opposite of my dad, doesn’t have those big discussions with me, but she has taught to keep an open mind and be very sympathetic towards others. This means after immediately picking my side, which usually lines up with something I’ve learned from my dad, I step back and question things like my dad taught me and then try to understand like my mama taught me.

So my parents are definitely very influential in shaping my initial reactions, but I know I have had my own experiences that speak to my responses. Some of my interactions and situations I’ve dealt with in college definitely shaped my reaction to the use of trigger warnings, which I discussed at the beginning of the semester. I don’t know that trigger warnings are things that my dad would support, but some traumatic experiences I’ve had definitely made me quick to snap at those in the class who thought they were stupid and unnecessary.

Being biased isn’t a bad thing. We all have biases and I think discussion, or more likely argumentation, is far more productive if we let those biases influence our words. In addition, being objective isn’t any fun. These biases become a problem though when we let them blind us completely from another’s point of view. I have been unfriended on Facebook for being controversial and offering an alternative perspective. I think that’s a problem. If a person’s automatic attitudinal response is to get pissy and unfriend someone who has a different opinion, that person won’t be able to gain anything from the situation. If all you’re doing is looking for someone to agree with you, it’s probably best not to say anything. To be able to grow and to view things from different perspectives, we need to let our biases play a part, but not so big of one that we are no longer able to consider an alternate view.

On The Media: The Polling Conspiracy

This week I listened to The Polling Conspiracy from Poor Judgment. The first thing I realized when listening to this was how much more complicated polls are than I thought they were. Apparently I am not alone in that either because Donald Trump seems to not know exactly what some of the terms mean or how they are conducted. He does not understand what oversampling or voter suppression are. He believes the polls are being manipulated to give the impression that Hillary is doing better than she is.
Gingrich talked about two alternative universes that we've created and I guess I agree. I don't think there is enough poll participation or correct use of poll information for us to all be on the same page. They used the example of one 19 year old black male being counted for like 30 times, giving the impression that Trump was doing better with black voters than he actually was. When this particular voter stopped participating in the polls, the numbers were thrown off greatly again. People change party affiliation, without necessarily changing their registration, people don't respond to requests to participate in the polls and take surveys, and use of the internet in gathering data is still a bit unclear.
Pollsters can travel the country, make a million phone calls, and study the demographics all day and night, but I really think all we know for sure is that we don't know what's going to happen because polls have been very wrong before and the way they are conducted is changing. I think that's the general theme of this election as well. We don't know what's going to happen.

On The Media: The ISIS Propaganda Slowdown

This week I listened to The ISIS Propaganda Slowdown. Donald Trump chose to divert attention from his obvious perpetuation of rape culture, which he claimed was just locker room talk, and then center the attention on ISIS. I'm not saying that one is necessarily more important than the other, but I do find it interesting that Trump tries to connect these two totally unrelated topics. For the sake of homeland security, tackling ISIS is obviously more important. However, I personally do not want a president that makes comments and has acted in a way that has spent his lifetime degrading women because I think having him in office sets the clock back on rape culture and equality, which is a big social concern for this country. This was only a small part of the podcast though, so I'll end my tangent there.

What this podcast really focuses on are the changes we've seen with ISIS recently. The propaganda for ISIS has died a lot within the last year though. Not only has the physical spread of ISIS slowed because of loss of territory, but the media servers are doing a lot better at halting the efforts of ISIS online. There have also been some very big names in ISIS that have been taken off the map recently. This combination has slowed ISIS down a lot, but the educated guess in this story is that it is just a game of time now. ISIS might be waiting for a Trump presidency to enact their next major terrorist acts. Hillary Clinton even asserts that Trump's words have been used as pro-ISIS propaganda. While this is not part of any official ISIS propaganda, we still have instances that support this to some extent.

I would agree that ISIS would benefit from a Trump ruled America, but only time will tell. No matter which way the election goes, ISIS isn't going away. I hope whoever our next president is will be able to actively and effectively defend against and take down ISIS. This lack of propaganda, particularly online, is just the calm before the storm.

Well Informed 2.0 Tribalism

This week I chose an article from July of this year entitled "America, we must not give in to tribalism." This article, written by Samuel Rodriguez, talks about race baiting and the racial divides that are currently damaging the United States. It's a fairly short article, but it sums up his thoughts in his last paragraph when he says, "You might have a different skin color, political party, religion, sexual orientation and bank balance than me, but you are not my enemy. You are my brother. You are my sister." I would love for everyone of different backgrounds to get along. Simple. However, I think he oversimplifies what is going on. Rather than addressing specific issues and offering solutions, he gives a bit of a Rodney King attitude - can't we all just get along?
Rodriguez is a reverend, so I'm sure he promotes peace and national unity to his congregation and those he interacts with every day, but I don't think he can reasonably talk about getting along in his news articles without expressing what steps we need to take. I find talking about problems without expressing possible future action to be a pointless endeavor. I'm not saying Rodriguez is wrong, but if a person has the ability to share their voice, I think they should be sharing solutions. The only thing that sounds like a solution to me is when he says, "You see, we must be able to differentiate race baiting and political opportunism from since cries of injustice." I guess that would be the first step - learning to see clearly. But then what?
I'm not saying I have the solutions, but I am saying that with racial tensions very high and divides based on them (tribalism - Black Lives Matter, etc.) we need more steps to take because wishful thinking doesn't equal progress.