Week 9- Online Argument

Over the past few months, concerts are back to being held in venues. A big factor in this is the covid 19 vaccine. Most venues and artists on tour have required the attendees to provide proof of vaccination before entering the venue or a negative covid test. This has caused a lot of disappointment and backlash among fans and has resulted in arguments between fans in the comments and just overall negative mean comments. I am a fan of reading these arguments among vaccinated and nonvaccinated fans for entertainment and was going to a post on one of the comment sections but, negative comments about vaccine requirements have resulted in bands removing their comments sections on a certain post. While looking for an article around this issue I found this article and started reading it along with the comments. 

This article was about a woman who was once antivaccination due to the common belief of vaccines cause autism in children, which she said has been debunked since. So the woman has had a change of heart about vaccines and has gotten the covid vaccine as result. She also explained that becoming antivaccine didn’t happen overnight it happened over years of intense personal beliefs around health and exposure to beliefs that catered to hers. Her recent come around also came from life changes, and is supported by individuals who were patient with her coming around to the covid 19 vaccine. This article was very interesting because the woman admitted that her being an antivaccine person as a result of consuming and being exposed to content that aligned with her beliefs which of course led her to be ridiculed in the comments. 

A lot of the arguments in the comments in regards to the article were other antivaxers criticizing this woman's recent change of heart and her pushing getting the covid vaccine or saying things like the vaccines are not vaccines they are gene modifiers. In the mix of all this I found an argument between a “vaxxer” and anti “vaxxer” which I will post below: 

So there are some screenshots to create a better picture of the arguments in the comment sections also click the link above to read more. Three things about this argument I found in the comments I found negative was 1.) How anti-vaxxers couldn’t let an anti-vaxxers change their mind and opinion on the issue to what she thought was best, instead they ridiculed her. People are allowed to change their minds despite what others think. 2.) How all these individuals felt the need to flock the comment section to debate their ideologies when it is supposed to support advocacy to get vaccinated so their comments should be “ glad she had a change of heart!” or "glad she helping spread the message” these comments are really just arguing with one another trying to push different agendas on each other, nothing positive. 3.) The last negative thing I notice despite what believes I have and what I agree with was that all these people fighting just come off as extremely self-righteous none of these arguments are well thought out or going to change anyone's mind like the article was intended to. They’re just people bickering about whose view is more valid and both sides of this argument don’t really seem to care about each other viewpoints they both just want to be right. I'm not sure how to address the divide out there or this misinformation circulating around but arguments in comment sections like these are not going to get us there.

I am not one to argue online and any time I have I don’t say nasty I just make statements like “ well that's not what I meant or well that's not what this post was about it's about this, or ok but that not what I met I met thing. People online can be very out there so I try not to fuel the argument if I can help it. It's been a while since I fought with anyone online but I try to be very emotionless and direct when responding if I'm going to respond at all. 

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These are my five online argument rules for arguing online: 

1. )   Evaluate the post or the argument you’re about to chime in on, is it worth responding to? 

2. ) Are the people in the argument making any logical sense or is it so confusing you can’t follow it? This is a sign not to comment back 

3. If people are commenting or fighting to spread their specific agenda just say right but I don't agree with that because of __. People arguing online don’t do well with pragmatism or not picking a fight back. 

4. If you are going to argue, the argument shouldn't just be based on the personal belief it should have some factual backing to like website you can lead them to educate them on things they swear they know. 

5. Don’t allow this person or people to harass you there are settings for a reason block people you need to, opt-out or mute notifications, stop responding, or report them if you really have to. People online can just have too much energy for these arguments you need to know when to pull back and when things are not worth a response just like in real life. 

 I have attached this youtube video about arguing online: 

Week 8- The Toulmin Method Applied

 

                

    According to the communicating online text, the Toulmin method is “ a method of analysis that helps readers use critical thinking of an argument and detect the weaknesses in that argument.” ( p. 317). This method of analyzing arguments includes the following setup:  Claim, Qualifier, Grounds, Warrant, Backing, Rebuttal. 

A good example of the Toulmin method being currently used online was a website called procon.org. Procon.org is a website that provides both sides to topics commonly discussed and debated in our society by providing a list of multiple pros and cons on the topic. Each pro and con for the topic applies the Toulmin method with the claim being the initial pro or con followed by a qualifier, grounds, and a warrant. These all lead up to the study around the topic being used to back the pros or cons being discussed. A direct example I am going to use to break down the Toulmin method on this website is a con argument for zoos, which I have linked here. Con #3 states “ Zoo confinement is psychologically damaging to animals.” this is the initial claim of the argument. It is followed by the warrant being that Animal behaviorists have seen psychological changes in animals not seen in the wild such as OCD, or depression. This links us to the grounds which say that this occurs from what zoo animals are exposed to in captivity such as limited space or change in diet tying us back to the claim. The qualifier in all of this is the fact that zoos have provided psychiatric programs as a result. For the backing of this con, there was a study cited about negative behavior in captive whales and captive chimpanzees. The rebuttal or pro # 3  to this argument was “ Zoos save species from extinction and other dangers” which one can see the Toulmin method applied. 

   This website is a great example of well-thought-out debates where the user can see the rebuttals listed side by side and provides well-thought-out arguments to get users to critically think about each opposing viewpoint.  According to the websites about me section, procon.org was created to “make readers more comfortable debating and discussing their views with others by critically evaluating information” (https://www.procon.org/about-us/ , retrieved Nov 19,2021.)  Lastly, the creators of this site believe that having the pros and cons listed side by side gets individuals to do a comparison of each argument, and honestly, it did make me think about the validity of both viewpoints which can be broken down even further using the Toulmin method.

 

Week 7- Podcast

 One of the major themes in this course this semester was the positive and negative effects of online communication and the role social media plays in this theme.  The podcast I found for this assignment discusses this major theme along with content moderation and politician mobilization. I found a podcast called The Media Show on the podcast website player.FM is a podcast run by the BBC radio. In the shows about section, it states “ that it is a program all about a media revolution” (The Media Show, https://player.fm/series/the-media-show-1301223) that discusses topics about breaking news, faking news, social media, and anti-social media topics. The episode I listened to and will attach in this post was called “ Why can’t social media companies stop online abuse?”. In the first half of the episode the host interviews two people in the British sports scene and how social media affects some of the biggest UK football players and the recent acts of racial abuse African American football players are experiencing in the U.K online. BBC reporter Andrea Catherwood wanted to know why would these football players have social media profiles at all if treated in a negative way, did the positives out way the negatives? 

When interviewing  Henry Winter, Joey D'Urso, and Mayowa Quadri three football reporters in the U.K.  they explained the rise of hate comments being left on African American Instagram pages including racial slurs, hate speech, and even racist emojis. They all agreed that this was the dark side of sports stars in England sharing themselves on social media but followed these comments stating that these players shouldn’t even be burdened with such bigotry. Raising the question, of how should these types of slanders and hate crimes online be handled even if they seem as harmless as a rude Instagram comment? With the consensus among the interviewer and the three guests being more content moderation on these sites.  To quote Winter and D’Urso “ Someone needs to moderate these hate comments and social media companies should be held responsible” even bringing up the possibility of charging commenters. 

On the flipside, Mayowa stated that sites like Instagram allowing these players to share more of themselves was a good thing. It allows fans to get to know the players better, share their side of the story of being African Americans in British sports, helps create a better narrative of their experiences, and allows them to share causes they care about and get civilians engaged which does outweigh the negatives.

In the second half of this interview, political mobilization is discussed by the New York Times reporters  Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang who wrote the book the ugly truth (Caterwood,2021).  Although last week we discussed the many ways social media has benefited mobilization this same power to raise awareness for positive social changes is also used for the negative. Sheera and Cecilia discussed how the power of Facebook political mobilization is what led to the storming of the capital on Jan 6th of this year.  Sheera discussed how the day after the election Facebook groups called “Stop the Steal” started to emerge on the platform with these groups planning to storm the capital claiming the election was stolen. She also shared her own personal experience reaching out to Facebook executives before the riots occurred. Sheera emailed Facebook’s headquarters asking them if they were going to do anything about these groups. She said, “ These groups are sharing images of assault rifles, and talking about storming the capital, is anyone going to take these groups down?”(Caterwood,2021) I think “Stop the steal” groups are also a good example of the agenda-setting theory.

 

Facebooks algorithm shows us what we know we want to see. Whether it’s plants or intense right-wing ideologies it caters to our personal agendas. Facebook is one of the biggest mediated communication networks in the world and has the ability to alter our views based on what we look up and what the site thinks we would like. By doing this Facebook is setting our personal agendas by filtering and catering to the media’s overall agenda by personalizing content to specific groups of people and that is why the “stop the steal groups” were able to gain the momentum that they did. But when is this agenda-setting too much?  When it is catering to a large portion of hateful individuals. To sum up, this podcast tied to many of the subjects in this course from the positives and negatives of social media, political mobilization, online moderation, and even agenda setting. 

Source: Caterwood, A. (2021, July 17). “ Why cant social media companies stop online abuse? The Media Show. BBC Radio. https://player.fm/series/the-media-show-1301223/why-cant-social-media-companies-stop-online-abuse

Week 6- Social Media and BLM

Back in the day when civil rights movements were happening, the only way people were exposed to what was happening during those times or kept up to date is if they were watching the news on tv that day or if they happened to be watching at the time the news broke out. It still reached people and people were still aware of what was happening but you could never really feel the effects like we can today. One of the biggest differences between civil rights movements today as opposed to ones in the 90s, 70s, 60s, etc. is the scale at which we were all exposed to it because it was all happening right in our back pockets and as a result, it came to be an at-home issue for most people. Thanks to social media, issues like the black lives matter movement can not only move us nationally but in our own backyards. It wasn’t just big cities protesting and mobilizing it was happening in small towns and neighborhoods. This is because people are able to utilize social media to communicate with local people and organize marches, and other advocacy groups and can lead to more people getting involved in something that was more difficult to accomplish. Any group you joined, or march people attended was the most likely word of mouth. Social media allowed for the black lives matter movement to mobilize at a rate that other black activists might not have been able to do previously.  Social media has become a powerful mobilization channel because of the rate at which it can reach people and the number of people they can get to come out. This is because people can share meeting places, times, create groups, or mass post on all different platforms to reach people who care about the same causes which are why the civil rights movement was so big in 2020.

I would say the way social media is changing the way we document history by providing us with a living archive that is constantly changing. When something happens, within the last 15 to 20 years it is almost automatically documented online via social media or the news. Since the internet is permanent historians will always be able to utilize the internet to pull up posts, tweets, news articles to reference, conduct research and try to understand what was going on during a specific time for example how people reacted online during the 2020 civil rights movement, the pandemic, women's marches, etc. or how social media was able to expand a cause. They will also use social media and internet archiving to compare and contrast the way things have changed in the future.  Historians have already been known to do internet archiving it is just a part of their research and work to document history correctly.

 Questions:

How has social media played a role in the 2020 civil rights movement and protests? How has social media become a powerful mobilization channel? How is social media changing the way people document history?