Activism has changed much in the last 20 years. When people 20 years ago heard the word "activism", they probably pictured in their mind, masses of picket sign holders chanting some kind of catchy phrase about what they are for or against. While that type of activism still happens to this day, the landscape of activism has changed dramatically. With the advent of the internet, social media, and Web 2.0, different types of activism have arisen.
Mental health has been a topic that has a lot of activism behind it for a while now. One of the main things that mental health activists want to end is the stigma around mental health disorders. A stigma is a "mark of disgrace" associated with some type of condition. People generally do not talk openly about mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and OCD. This is especially true with males. When someone talks about these types of things, they are seen as weak. That, or that they are complaining too much. Both of these ideas are antiquated and incorrect. Although the stigma is less than what it used to be, social media activism has played a role in reducing the amount of stigma surrounding these things.
Hashtags are words or phrases that are preceded by a pound("#") sign that help people find posts with that same hashtag. Hashtag activism has become incredibly popular at raising awareness for all sorts of causes. #blacklivesmatter is probably the most famous example of this. It's presence is now ubiquitous, and the hashtag has turned into a full on movement. A hashtag relating to mental health is #endthestigma. People will put this hashtag after a post of them explaining their experience with mental health disorders, for example. Then, if someone wanted to see similar content to that, they can click the hashtag (if the website allows) and it will bring them to a page with that same hashtag. This allows for people to share their stories and for their stories to be read by an audience that is interested in them.
Another form of activism that has been proven to often be quite effective is the online petition. Online petitions are just like the paper petitions that you see at your school, in the park, on city sidewalks, etc, but they are all electronic. They can be petitioning for anything, including mental health things. So, for example, if a government stripped funding for a heroin addiction center, for example, a petition could be started to oppose that since addiction is a mental health problem. Online petitions are usually emailed to the appropriate person who they are petitioning. Sometimes, some online petition websites will have a custom text field where you can write your own message to the receiver of the petition.
Another interesting form of online activism that, at the time of reading this has passed but is still worth noting, is the ALS ice bucket challenge. For this, a person would intentionally spill a bucket of ice over their head and then say something about ALS and how you can help, and then they would challenge 3 people to do the same thing. This was an incredibly popular camping, with high profile celebrities, politicians, and public figures joining in.
Social media tools have given birth so many novel, and often very effective, forms of activism and activism campaigns. It will be interesting to see what news techniques people will use to do their activism online. One thing is for sure though, it is a constantly changing phenomenon.
Monday, March 27, 2017
Monday, March 20, 2017
Crowdfunding, Crowdsourcing, and Mental Health
Crowdfunding is a byproduct of Web 2.0. Crowdfunding is when people use the internet to contribute to causes they want.
GoFundMe is a website that was specifically designed for crowdfunding. Someone can set up a campaign for a cause that they want to help and people can donate as much or as little to the fund as they want.
When it comes to mental health, crowdfunding can be invaluable. Take a look at this project on GoFundMe. To date, Katie has raised around $3,500 toward her mental health treatment and Master's degree to help other people with mental illness.
This is related to the topics of previous weeks, such as social and financial capital. By using crowdfunding, Katie is increasing her social capital by putting her goals on the internet for all to see, colleagues, potential investors, or just friends who are in a similar situation as she is. She is increasing her financial capital by raising money.
Crowdsourcing is when people make media assets themselves, be it stock photos, stock videos, music, etc, and then post in on websites such as iStockPhoto for other people to either download for free or pay for a greatly reduced price as compared to something like Getty Images. Some websites, such as PublicDomainPictures, also has images that you can use for totally free and you don't even have to attribute their creator. There are other licenses, such as the Creative Commons license, where you don't have to pay for them, but there are varying degrees of attribution and other rules, such as distributing under the same license, and mandatory remixing of content.
For example, if a startup company, say one that focuses on helping anorexic people recover, had limited financial capital, they could make an (almost) free website by self-hosting Wordpress, and then using stock photos and videos as their featured images or videos.
Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are invaluable for people who do not have a lot of money and ned help. They are one of the positive byproducts of Web 2.0.
GoFundMe is a website that was specifically designed for crowdfunding. Someone can set up a campaign for a cause that they want to help and people can donate as much or as little to the fund as they want.
When it comes to mental health, crowdfunding can be invaluable. Take a look at this project on GoFundMe. To date, Katie has raised around $3,500 toward her mental health treatment and Master's degree to help other people with mental illness.
This is related to the topics of previous weeks, such as social and financial capital. By using crowdfunding, Katie is increasing her social capital by putting her goals on the internet for all to see, colleagues, potential investors, or just friends who are in a similar situation as she is. She is increasing her financial capital by raising money.
Crowdsourcing is when people make media assets themselves, be it stock photos, stock videos, music, etc, and then post in on websites such as iStockPhoto for other people to either download for free or pay for a greatly reduced price as compared to something like Getty Images. Some websites, such as PublicDomainPictures, also has images that you can use for totally free and you don't even have to attribute their creator. There are other licenses, such as the Creative Commons license, where you don't have to pay for them, but there are varying degrees of attribution and other rules, such as distributing under the same license, and mandatory remixing of content.
For example, if a startup company, say one that focuses on helping anorexic people recover, had limited financial capital, they could make an (almost) free website by self-hosting Wordpress, and then using stock photos and videos as their featured images or videos.
Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are invaluable for people who do not have a lot of money and ned help. They are one of the positive byproducts of Web 2.0.
Monday, February 27, 2017
User Generated Content and Mental Health
User generated content is any content that is created by someone that gets posted to a website, whether they own the site or not. Many sites run almost exclusively off of user generated content, namely social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. The recent influx of user generated content has a lot of consequences, some good and some bad. Whether it is for the greater good or bad is up for debate, but one thing is certain, UGC is not going away anytime soon.
There are upsides and downsides to UGC. In a nutshell, some of the upsides include the availability of highly targeted and customized consumable content, the ability to create and publish your own content, and the democratization of information. Some of the downsides include the lack of a oversight to ensure that the content is factually accurate, the possibility of being falsely represented by someone, and how it could possibly be putting traditional journalist's jobs in jeopardy (which could be an upside or downside depending on one's current opinion of traditional journalism).
I'd like to share my own experience with UGC as it relates to mental health and well-being. I have OCD, not the cutesy "I have to have all my pencils aligned parallel lol", but like washing hands so much that they sometimes bleed OCD. This is obviously not normal, and falls into the domain of this blog, psychology and social media. So how has UGC helped me with this? I have found amazing resources from Youtubers, Facebook groups, and personal blogs about things people have tried to help their OCD, how OCD is treated professionally, how to stay calm during an anxiety attack, how to try to cope with OCD in a healthy and productive manner, etc. This is something that would probably not be explored into as much depth in Psychology Today magazine as it is in some Youtube channels and such that I have gotten information from. Some channels are devoted to just OCD, and deliver content covering many different and idiosyncratic elements within the domain of OCD. This is why UGC can be a good thing in terms of mental health.
However, the very thing that makes UGC so valuable to mental health patients is the thing that can be harmful to them. That is, the fact that anybody can say (almost) anything, even if they don't have any credentials or experience with the subject matter at all. So for the OCD example, someone could get on and make a Youtube video about how when you feel the need to "ritualize" (which basically means doing the action or thought that will make the anxiety temporarily cease), you should ritualize just to make the anxiety stop and keep doing that to stop the anxiety when it comes and basically run away from your problems and fears. That is, according to the theory of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a very unhealthy coping habit, and will only make the condition worsen. But since the information was delivered via a UGC platform, anyone could upload a video saying that, and the ignorant viewer may not know it is bad information, which could possibly make their condition worse. One of the ways the can sort of get an idea of whether information is good is to read any comments or rating systems that video has on the website it was posted on. Sometimes the community of commenters will provide further information on whether the information in the video is true or false, but then again, since the commenter is using a UGC platform, they could be right or wrong. This means that if you are using UGC to get health advice, you should always cross-check it with credible sources like doctors, licensed therapists, nutritionalists, scholarly articles, etc.
Even though UGC has downsides, I think it is ultimately for the better. It is important that consumers of UGC that pertains to important things, like health advice, career advice, etc, exercise diligence in cross-checking claims to make sure the information they are getting is good. In my opinion, if one exercises this type of discipline, UGC content will most likely be beneficial to them since it will probably contain information that they might not find in traditional information sources.
There are upsides and downsides to UGC. In a nutshell, some of the upsides include the availability of highly targeted and customized consumable content, the ability to create and publish your own content, and the democratization of information. Some of the downsides include the lack of a oversight to ensure that the content is factually accurate, the possibility of being falsely represented by someone, and how it could possibly be putting traditional journalist's jobs in jeopardy (which could be an upside or downside depending on one's current opinion of traditional journalism).
I'd like to share my own experience with UGC as it relates to mental health and well-being. I have OCD, not the cutesy "I have to have all my pencils aligned parallel lol", but like washing hands so much that they sometimes bleed OCD. This is obviously not normal, and falls into the domain of this blog, psychology and social media. So how has UGC helped me with this? I have found amazing resources from Youtubers, Facebook groups, and personal blogs about things people have tried to help their OCD, how OCD is treated professionally, how to stay calm during an anxiety attack, how to try to cope with OCD in a healthy and productive manner, etc. This is something that would probably not be explored into as much depth in Psychology Today magazine as it is in some Youtube channels and such that I have gotten information from. Some channels are devoted to just OCD, and deliver content covering many different and idiosyncratic elements within the domain of OCD. This is why UGC can be a good thing in terms of mental health.
However, the very thing that makes UGC so valuable to mental health patients is the thing that can be harmful to them. That is, the fact that anybody can say (almost) anything, even if they don't have any credentials or experience with the subject matter at all. So for the OCD example, someone could get on and make a Youtube video about how when you feel the need to "ritualize" (which basically means doing the action or thought that will make the anxiety temporarily cease), you should ritualize just to make the anxiety stop and keep doing that to stop the anxiety when it comes and basically run away from your problems and fears. That is, according to the theory of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a very unhealthy coping habit, and will only make the condition worsen. But since the information was delivered via a UGC platform, anyone could upload a video saying that, and the ignorant viewer may not know it is bad information, which could possibly make their condition worse. One of the ways the can sort of get an idea of whether information is good is to read any comments or rating systems that video has on the website it was posted on. Sometimes the community of commenters will provide further information on whether the information in the video is true or false, but then again, since the commenter is using a UGC platform, they could be right or wrong. This means that if you are using UGC to get health advice, you should always cross-check it with credible sources like doctors, licensed therapists, nutritionalists, scholarly articles, etc.
Even though UGC has downsides, I think it is ultimately for the better. It is important that consumers of UGC that pertains to important things, like health advice, career advice, etc, exercise diligence in cross-checking claims to make sure the information they are getting is good. In my opinion, if one exercises this type of discipline, UGC content will most likely be beneficial to them since it will probably contain information that they might not find in traditional information sources.
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Week 4 - Social Capital: Now vs. Then
If one looks at the timeline of technology, the rise of social media websites is incredibly recent. Creatures have been using technology long, long before Homo sapiens came along about 200,000 years ago. The oldest known tools were made of stone around 2.3 million years ago, in a period of time called the Oldowan Industry.
So if we take 225 years, and divide it by 2.3 million years of technological innovation, we get 0.00009782608, or 0.009782608%. This means that even if we take a very generous number, social media technologies have only been around for less than 1/100th of 1% of the history of technology. If We take a more conservative approach and take a starting point of when the first social media websites came along, the number is obviously even smaller. If we start with what is often considered the first social media site, SixDegrees, created in 1997, we get 0.000869565%.
Either starting point you use, it's still an extremely small amount of time that these technologies have been around, yet, they are changing our world INCREDIBLY fast. When we were evolving in our tribes, our sphere of influence consisted basically of the people in our tribe, or within walking distance of other tribes. With social media technologies, our sphere of influence is all around the world.
And this is where the idea of social capital is important. We learned this week that social capital is the assets that come from our relationships with other people. We can bounce ideas off each other, support each other emotionally (or physically if we are with them in real life), and meet people with similar goals, values, and interests.
With new social media technologies, our social capital goes up dramatically from what we used to be able to have. If I have an idea for, say, a website that you could upload a picture to and it would scan a database of pictures to find your Doppleganger, I could contact a graphic designer in Sweden to do the designs, a marketer in Australia, and a programmer in Canada, and never even have to meet them in person to make the site. I could feasibly do it all without even leaving my apartment. This gives individuals much more power than they used to have. Or does it?
Something that I think is wort thinking about is, if everyone has access to this potential level of social capital, does that make us all equally powerful, or equally powerless? I have 2 thoughts on this. The first is I think that one can use the internet to gain social capital faster if they are driven to do so, and also are smart about how and where they gain these relationships from. People who have a goal, or people who are savvy about fostering relationships for these sorts of things, will probably have more social capital than someone who only uses the internet to post food and cute animal pictures (NOTHING wrong with food and cute animal pictures, I post them all the time, but it should be in moderation).
The second thought I have is that these technologies for gaining social capital is possibly widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. Individuals who have a personal computer are probably going to have more power than people who have to go to a library to use one, and the people who have access to one at a library are going to probably have more power than people who do not have access to one at all. However, I think these technologies could be extremely beneficial to humanity if everyone had immediate access to these resources. So people in third-world countries could use it to help their businesses, etc. There are some websites, such as Kiva, that use the internet to help poor people, so that is an example of this power for good, even if the poor person does not have a computer themselves. This is obviously just scratching the surface of whether social media technologies widen or lessen the gap between the rich and poor because there are so many factors to consider, but it will be interesting to see how it keeps affecting the gap in the future.
To put this into some perspective, I am going to give a percentage of how long social media technologies have been around compared to the history of technology. It is difficult to define exactly when social technology was invented, but to start I am going to give a very liberal number and say 225 years ago, when the telegraph was invented in 1792. I am counting the telegraph as a social media technology since it allowed communication from long distances using technology, like an extremely rudimentary version of Facebook.
Either starting point you use, it's still an extremely small amount of time that these technologies have been around, yet, they are changing our world INCREDIBLY fast. When we were evolving in our tribes, our sphere of influence consisted basically of the people in our tribe, or within walking distance of other tribes. With social media technologies, our sphere of influence is all around the world.
And this is where the idea of social capital is important. We learned this week that social capital is the assets that come from our relationships with other people. We can bounce ideas off each other, support each other emotionally (or physically if we are with them in real life), and meet people with similar goals, values, and interests.
With new social media technologies, our social capital goes up dramatically from what we used to be able to have. If I have an idea for, say, a website that you could upload a picture to and it would scan a database of pictures to find your Doppleganger, I could contact a graphic designer in Sweden to do the designs, a marketer in Australia, and a programmer in Canada, and never even have to meet them in person to make the site. I could feasibly do it all without even leaving my apartment. This gives individuals much more power than they used to have. Or does it?
Something that I think is wort thinking about is, if everyone has access to this potential level of social capital, does that make us all equally powerful, or equally powerless? I have 2 thoughts on this. The first is I think that one can use the internet to gain social capital faster if they are driven to do so, and also are smart about how and where they gain these relationships from. People who have a goal, or people who are savvy about fostering relationships for these sorts of things, will probably have more social capital than someone who only uses the internet to post food and cute animal pictures (NOTHING wrong with food and cute animal pictures, I post them all the time, but it should be in moderation).
The second thought I have is that these technologies for gaining social capital is possibly widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. Individuals who have a personal computer are probably going to have more power than people who have to go to a library to use one, and the people who have access to one at a library are going to probably have more power than people who do not have access to one at all. However, I think these technologies could be extremely beneficial to humanity if everyone had immediate access to these resources. So people in third-world countries could use it to help their businesses, etc. There are some websites, such as Kiva, that use the internet to help poor people, so that is an example of this power for good, even if the poor person does not have a computer themselves. This is obviously just scratching the surface of whether social media technologies widen or lessen the gap between the rich and poor because there are so many factors to consider, but it will be interesting to see how it keeps affecting the gap in the future.
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Introduction to this Blog
Hi! I'm Jake, and I am taking CDES 219 at Chico State in the Spring 2017 semester.
This blog is focused on the relationship between the rise of social media technologies and psychology. I am hoping to explore topics such as whether social media web sites make us feel more or less connected as a whole, whether mental illness goes up or down with increased social media use, and how people use principles of psychology in their social media advertising to attract and keep their target audiences.
I'm excited to do some research and reflection and post it here and hopefully interact with you as well! Have a great day!
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