We will not have class in our normal location. This week’s class activities are online. We will not meet during 3-6 pm, but will resume our normal schedule next week 10/28. Please review the course online activities for today under Unit Three. Please email me for any questions. I hope you find the activities, videos, and blog discussion exciting!
In my Lurking – Talking Tuition post last week, I addressed the usefulness of lurking on social media to find useful, live information on any topic, but in this case specifically, college tuition. I found a good deal of people discussing the same major articles on both Facebook and Twitter, and found that to continue to be the case this week. There is a wealth of new information that has accrued in the last week!
The hot topics of the week are the concept of a “tuition reset” , and not so recently, but still relevant, an analysis from September that was featured on The New York Times website that questions if tuition really is too high. I have also seen a photo going around that surrounds the presidential election.
There is a vast amount of outrage on both Twitter and Facebook regarding the photo in particular, but I consider that to be reflective of the wording in the text more so than the actual sentiments of voters.
There have been protests about the costs of college for as long as I can remember, but this week, I found myself drawn to protests in South Africa that lead to a shut down of two major universities:
Also in reference to my comments on Germany offering free tuition to Americans in a couple of my previous posts, I found this interesting tidbit on Twitter:
All in all, I have found a great deal of information this week that I think will truly help me to understand the topic in a better light and from multiple perspectives. I have found this week’s post to be a lot easier now that I truly understand the process and was able to dig in and find the “good stuff” much more easily.
Professor In Training, MGH
The post Lurking – Talking Tuition (Week 2) appeared first on Professor In Training.
For two weeks now I have been lurking social media to be twined in on a current refugee crisis. This issue was one I chose for our transfer class yet it was an issue for me prior to taking this course. There is an endless amount of reasons why we need to be in touch with this social uprising. Lurking and being conscious of an end goal is much more complex than simply lurking just to lurk. Now, I take on any new article or post that contributes to my issue and analyze it in depth. The contributions to my knowledge on these issues has been reinforced by not only learning the facts, but the opinions of millions of others on this same issue. One of the most interesting things to me is that this is not a two sided issue. All opinions are different based upon your upbringing and your beliefs, which makes this issue so versatile.
“Fewer than 2,000 Syrians have come to the U.S., though the war has displaced more than 12 million since it began in 2011. The refugees in America are scattered widely across more than 20 different states.”
This is an excerpt from an article published on NPR covering the experience of Omar Al-Awad and his newfound life here in America. This makes me feel proud. For the very reason that my own country is able to help such a humble family like Omar’s.
It inspires me to help another human regardless of where they are from.
The development of this project has made me more conscious, living in the moment you could say.
This week I continued my lurking on the social media sites Facebook and Instagram. The users I “lurked” were LGBTNews on Facebook and lgbttextposts (no caps). I am doing this to understand the social aspect of the LGBT community.
I found that people are much friendlier and more rancid on Facebook than on Instagram when comparing these two sites. People are often curious and ask genuine questions. There was one person who asked another “Off topic what does your profile picture mean?” This person had series of colors in shape of a heart as their profile picture. The person with the profile in question graciously answered, “It is the bisexual flag symbol, it just so happens to be in the shape of a heart.” “Oh, thank you.” The conversation ended pleasantly and all was well. Then I noticed as I scrolled down someone must have left some nasty comments as one of the persons told that individual to &*$7 off. I believe the person who left the nasty comments was blocked.
I also found that on Instagram there were much more people who blatantly were against the lgbt community. They were there to say hurtful things only or to preach, and when I say preach; I mean to invoke Christianity in the sense that being gay is a sin. One person actually wrote, “This is a sin.” Another replied, “Please tell me you’re joking.” Then the conversation ensued from there. I found also on Instagram that the user will post something, then ask the audience a question and most everyone will answer or tag a friend in the comment.
In the Facebook account this did not happen. Most people would agree with the post or not saying “Wow” or things like that or they would have full blown conversations. No one had a conversation on Instagram unless there was hate speech being used, there was preaching as I explained earlier, or of a person defending the lgbt community against the “trollers”.
Ok so this week I am going to be lurking on the same websites that I was lurking on the week before. If you did not see my last post or forgot the websites, it was the World Health Organization on Facebook and Startup Health on Twitter; and if you couldn’t figure it out these are both health organizations. The reason I am lurking is because I want to see the different interactions, comments, shares, likes, and what these organizations are putting on their feed.
What I find interesting about Startup Health is that there are no replies to their tweets, but there are a lot of shares and liking the topics. From this I can see there is a lot of traffic that comes in but not a lot of feedback. From what I see from the World Health Organization is that there is an average of about 1,500 likes 2,000 being the highest. There are some comments, around 35 to be the most. What I found interesting was that the organization would respond to the comments if a person had a question. So from what I can see is that they too have a lot of foot traffic, but I’m not sure how much of their information is getting out there.
From what I have found lurking on these sites is that the information they give out is basically the same and the interactions they get are the same. People come and look at their profile but don’t really participate. There are barely any comments, if at all, but we do know that people are viewing their profile. The only place they are really commenting is the World Health Organization and that’s only because that’s the only place where there are comments.
Here the links to these organizations if you want to check them out.
Hello everybody! For this weeks challenge we continued to lurk on social media that was related to our topic. For this week I continued to lurk on twitter and reddit and remained on the same hashtag and subreddit, checking periodically so see what the sites were up to. This weeks challenge was an extension of last week where we are lurking on various social media sites looking for information on our controversial topics. For the past few weeks I have been able to find valuable insight on my topic of mental health on both twitter and reddit.
As I continued to lurk on twitter and reddit I have realized that both kind of have similar helpful communities on them. On both twitter and reddit various users seem to enjoy posting stories of situations of where mental health has affected their lives and how they overcame these situations. Other similarities include users that post their personal stories seeking help from other users. Something that I found wonderful was that on reddit more times than not when a user was posting some sort of cry for help, users would comment on their post words of encouragement or ways that they can overcome their issues. Users would even go as far as finding links mental health pages to further help the user in need.
After lurking for two weeks things that have changed since the beginning till now is how I choose what posts to look into. After being on twitter looking at mental health I’ve noticed that their a lot of posts that keep leading you to different sites so I’ve avoided clicking links that lead to lists or other unknown sites. On reddit I’ve learned how to avoid to “troll” posts that unfortunately occur on sites were users try to remain anonymous. However, through all the lurking I have found mostly both sites are very helpful in helping people find ways to cope with mental help. The two following screenshotsare examples of how twitter and reddit attempt to help fellow uses.
The picture on the left is a reddit user trying to relate another users story to their own so they can try and help on the right is a screenshot of a twitter user posting an article about a therapy that could possibly help with schizophrenia.
This week we have continued to lurk on our social media sights. For those of you who didn’t read my last post, lurking consists of silently following a certain sight and watching what they are doing without commenting on anything or making your presence known. As I stated before I felt kind of weird doing this when I first started because I felt like a creeper, but once I got used to it I was able to understand the positive effects of it. Last week I was shocked to see the wide variety of positive and negative views on my topic of the refugee crisis, but as I’ve lurked more and more I have opened my eyes to both sides of this topic. I saw people becoming more involved with my topic by lurking more and this week I have examples of both from the sites I have been lurking on, which are YouTube and Instagram. On YouTube I came across this video on the five things media wont report about the refugee crisis. This video made me think, so here’s the link in case any of you would like to check it out. (http://youtu.be/UklocH91j0w) On Instagram, I came across a page of a woman who decided to actually put herself through the refugee crisis and write a blog about it. I really liked this because she could have easily just tried to go and fins some stuff out about the crisis and report it. Instead, she experienced it and is now writing from first hand experiences. She also takes questions on her blog post and posts lots of pictures from her experience so I am definitely going to continue following her blogs to learn more. Here is her blog in case any of you would like to as well. (https://medium.com/@I.am.a.refugee) I still believe that we should be taking these refugees in; although there is conflict I believe we need to help one another. I found a picture that really spoke to me and made me realize that we need to make a difference. I am attaching the photo so you all can see it, and I want you to remember the first thought you have when you read it.
So I guess when I was reading it sort of muddled together and I did a bit of both. I’m lurking on facebook and twitter. Anaylizng, comparing and contrasting what I find on a certain topic; mine is the affordability/cost of college tuition. This I found on twitter. Which is on the rising cost of room and board. I can relate to that that’s why I decided not to move to campus. Its much more expensive with an added meal plan you probably wont use and its non negotiable. https://twitter.com/urcollegeworld/status/586241936492724225
So before when I first started on this topic I didn’t see very many posts that gave facts on social media that weren’t for companies that wanted your business. But now I’m starting to see even more political posts and how people are going to handle the task if they get elected. http://www.washingtonpost.com/rweb/ideas/why-hillary-clinton-is-more-progressive-than-bernie-sanders-in-one-sentence/2015/10/06/bc5a1931bf71dfdbb32f9ea4c268256b_story.html?tid=kindle-ap
While on face book I came across another article that goes along with most things I’ve found.That the rising cost of tuition is continuing. How its adding up little by little.
–www.facebook.com/nytimes/posts/10150561736459999
This is just a photo I thought was funny
We don't want this to be your family. #collegeplanning #collegetuition #Sundayfunny #financialaid pic.twitter.com/ByR5lFbS2b
— PeachtreeCP (@PeachtreeCP) August 23, 2015
I’m starting to conclude that college is not affordable for most people who cant obtain help either financial aid or loans. To my dissatisfaction the facts are true college is super expensive Hopefully those that say theyre for change are really. But the the fact that costs have risen is alarming how ever some are over exaggerated to get the point across its not as high as they make it out to be..
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This week I continued to lurk about LGBT on Twitter and Facebook. I went back on the sites and searched the hashtag LGBT again. I realized that I can find more up to date content on Twitter since people tweet more often than people make posts on Facebook. I also noticed that some of the content overlap because some people/organizations have both media sites and share the same content on both of them. I enjoy looking through Twitter more because more content comes up on the page. Last week I made a comment about accounts being verified. What I meant by that was, the verified accounts of public figures/organizations. On the Twitter feed, it is really easy to see who made the post. I like looking at the verified public figure/organization accounts to see who is involved in some type of cause to the LGBT community. I came across a few people/organizations I recognized. Aja King with Matt McGorry, actors in the ABC shot How to Get Away with Murder, the NBA, Vice President Biden and the basketball team the Golden State Warriors.
Our professor Michelle asked about the SpiritDay hashtag last week in my images I shared. It was a second hashtag Kim Kardashian shared on her tweet along with the LGBT hashtag. I honestly didn’t notice it until i went back to check it out. I decided to click on it to see what it was about and the tweets above came up. It turns out, spirit day is a day where people wear purple in a stand to end bullying and support the LGBT youth. “Observed annually since 2010, individuals, schools, organizations, corporations, and public figures wear purple, which symbolizes ‘spirit’ on the rainbow flag” (GLAAD, 2015). These public figures above are just a few of those in support of the cause and it’s really cool to see how supportive they are even if its something as simple as wearing the color purple.
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