Tag Archive for: instructor-none-2

In terms of social media, the term lurking means to read and look through social media but do not post your own ideas or comments. Lurking is usually looked down upon in most social media communities. But for our assignment this week we were given the task to lurk on various social media sites to discover how the different communities communicate and open up ideas on our topics. For this week again I did my lurking on Twitter. But for my other social media site I decided to explore Reddit a website that I already lurk on.

For my lurk through twitter I started with the hashtag #mentalhealth and began exploring the top posters for this hashtag. I would occasionally open up twitter throughout the day on my phone and plug in the hashtag to see which posters would pop up. One of the recurring posters was this twitter account called @MHChat which is an open access community for mental health. On their twitter account they give a link to their actual website mhchat.com which is an open forum that allows people to post their views and experiences. The website also contains links to articles that describe whats going on in the world of mental health research. Other then MHChat the hashtag usually yielded results from everyday users who are either posting their problems or stories of others and links to sites that could help you or that could provide some support. Lurking on twitter was super easy for me because I’m always on twitter throughout the day and I never tweet anything so all I did was focus my attention to the hashtag and learn how the people that posted on their acted with each other.

For my other social media site I decided to use one site that I personally frequent a lot, Reddit. Reddit is a huge online community that self-coined themselves the “front page of the internet” because a lot of things like jokes or news articles usually get shared on reddit first. On Reddit itself you can scroll through the side and find various “subreddits” which are very similar to hashtags on twitter in the sense that these “subreddits” are topics and threads focused on the same thing, so for my lurk I used the subreddit r/mentalhealth. On this subreddit it was very similar to twitter where people posted their own personal experiences and how their experiences can help others. Sometimes users would post question on the site hoping that someone out there would have the knowledge to help them with whatever they are going through. I attached a picture of what the subreddit looked like on my phone just in case anyone was interested in seeing it.

Picture of the subreddit “mental health”

For me lurking was not all that bad because I usually lurked regardless on both of these sites. The only thing I had to do different was just frequent either the hashtag or subreddit that pertained to my topic. Things I learned during lurking was that twitter definitely had more people posting but I feel that reddit had more people commenting and actively trying to help their fellow redditors. The connections made on Reddit felt stronger since the community on Reddit has this weird feeling of closeness amongst themselves.

Overall lurking through these sites showed me many more sad stories and experiences and has proven even more that the mental healthcare in our country needs to be greatly improved.

It’s Week 8 of the semester, which means we are at the halfway point of the term!

Before you know it, it will be time for Portfolio Review.

Examine your work ethic so far and consider what might interfere with your ability to complete the class successfully.

Remember that you must complete all required drafts, meet all assignment expectations, and attend class regularly in order to submit a portfolio for scoring.

Don’t lose steam now!

What stood out to me in the marketing violence article was the negative characteristics with minority characters.  I have been aware that Disney movies specifically incorporate stereotypes in their movies.  I am native American and I would watch Pocahontas when I was younger.  I didn’t think anything of it at that time, but there is a part of the film that has a musical chorus stating that the Indians are “savages, barely even human.”  I don’t think that part of the film is appropriate for children because it is conveying that Indians are horrible people.   I think that race is a huge deal and I agree with the author that characters in movies and TV shows are given a persona of a “good guy,” and “bad guy.”  I think that children look more positively at the good guy characters and negatively at the bad guy characters.

There was a passage in chapter 5 that I admired.  “We blame media violence to deflect blame away from adult failings– our society’s failure to help troubled young people, who unfortunately we overlook until it’s too late.”  I think this is important because there are many cases that parents ignore their kids when they are misbehaving.  For instance, the Isla Vista shooting that happened a few years ago in Santa Barbara.  This young adult was already showing signs of odd behavior, however, his parents ignored it.  I find this case immensely interesting because he didn’t live in poverty, and many people assume that acts of violence come from people of low income families.  Ultimately, parents need to be aware of whats going on with their children, and take it seriously when they are acting differently.

This week’s challenge has been to lurk on two social media sites about our respective social problems. “Lurking” is the act of simply observing what others say about a topic on social media and not personally participating in it.

For my lurking experience, I lurked on Twitter and Tumblr in “#lgbt representation” and would scroll through results and read what people posted about it. For these two sites, it did not feel too strange to be lurking, because a majority of my time spent on those social media outlets is done by browsing and scrolling my feed (occasionally liking, replying, sharing and posting my own material). However, it was different to be within a certain tag for about 10 minutes every day. I do not usually go too deep into specific subjects.

Twitter and Tumblr offered similar results while I lurked. The only limit for my results on Twitter was the character limit for each tweet. Each tweet is only allowed 140 characters; so users must be short and to the point when posting. For this reason, what I read on Twitter was very concise and straightforward: users are looking for more representation in the TV shows they watch. They also use their small amount of characters to give praise to shows that actually do give a good amount of LGBT representation. Audiences seem so hungry for this sort of representation, that even the smallest amount of appropriate representation in TV will create a flurry of tweets by the watchers. How To Get Away With Murder is a current TV show that people are especially pleased with in terms of LGBT representation.

Tumblr on the other hand has no character limit, so this allows its users to speak more about the topic. Often, the posts I see in the tag on Tumblr are of people creating compilations and lists of shows that account for moments of LGBT representation. Users of Tumblr seem especially excited when children’s cartoons and shows exhibit representation because the TV stations are informing children at a young and impressionable age that being in the LGBT spectrum is normal. Here is a post someone made that compiles different scenes of LGBT representation on television shows for children: http://13eclaire.tumblr.com/post/114361939801/what-a-time-to-be-alive . TV shows are given bounds of praise for not constantly showing heterosexuality to be the norm because there are so many different relationship types and sexualities. On Tumblr, people also give lengthy responses to questions asked by their followers on their opinion regarding LGBT representation.

For both Twitter and Tumblr, users seem to be more comfortable in speaking their mind and using their own voice. They are not afraid to let their opinion be known, despite people reading their material and responding to it. Representation is important because there is not just one type of person. In order to feel like they can connect to a show or any type of media, people need to see their own traits be portrayed in popular culture.