I found the Neiman Report addressing the Parkland coverage and student activists very fascinating. I realized that I also have a hard time finding the line between activism and journalism. Is “activist journalism,” which takes an opinionated stance on an issue, really just inherently propaganda? Is there a space at all for activist journalism that is separate from propaganda? Parkland student Schneid argued that all journalism is inherently a form of activism, since it lifts up often unheard and silenced voices. This is absolutely true and an amazing way to use the journalistic process. However, I believe that while all journalists do have un-repressable biases and opinions relating to the events they are reporting on, their job is to relay hard facts alongside multiple, varying truths—it is not to argue their own truth with fervor. So in my current state of mind, I don’t know if I can agree that activist journalism has a place in the journalism business.
However, to the question of whether or not reporters should be able to be politically involved outside of the newsroom, I believe that reporters should be able to engage in whatever level of political action or inaction they choose as long as they do not let their beliefs dishonestly sway their coverage. If they are candid about their biases and beliefs to begin with and then present all varieties of beliefs as well as the facts that go along with the event, then I don’t think their life outside of the newsroom should be of anyone’s concern.
Going back to last night’s readings a bit, mainstream media of today absolutely does support—whether knowingly or not—the ideologies that uphold the status quo. In class today, we discussed the gendered nature of school shooting coverage that is never acknowledged and is often not even noticed until close inspection. Victims interviewed are often female and are shown distraught to uphold the gender stereotype of female sensitivity. Media outlets then play off of this stereotype to increase the feeling of tragedy behind the event. That is just one example of the ways in which binary-upholding ideologies often frame and shape coverage of events.
Like another Neiman Report expresses, implicit biases are incredibly prevalent and upheld in all areas of society, especially in media and news coverage. Producers and journalists as well as viewers hold and are impacted by these biases or variations of these biases. They become so ingrained in us that we stop noticing them and their impact on the ways in which things are portrayed or covered. That is why if we want to keep journalism honest and trustworthy, it is incredibly important to start acknowledging biases that exist in both the minds of the viewers as well as the journalist.
After reading about grounded theory I realized that my “Mythbusters” group is taking that approach by letting our survey responses shape the way we piece together our various interviews. Our video presentation will be developed from our interviews grounded in the data we have from our survey. In other words, our story board is being drawn directly from data gathered from the survey. We are not creating our own story for the video, the survey is. I think this is a good technique because it allows us, as creators, editors, interviewers, and students, to produce work that is empirical rather than producing work that is “objective” yet still driven by our own thoughts, beliefs, and ideas. John McManus stated that “objectivity is about as reliable as judge character by the firmness of a handshake. So I propose we junk objectivity in favor of a more accurate, honest, and demanding standard-empiricism- the scientific method of inquiry base on careful observation from multiple perspectives…” (1). I believe McManus’ statement makes a nice point that reporting can never be truly objective no matter how hard the journalist tries. Why? This is because we all bring our own unique, intersecting identities that create one-of-a-kind tinted glasses of which we view the world through. The inherent lens that we see our own reality or truth through is something that is always changing, but can never be taken away. McManus inserts that journalism should not shy away from utilizing the power of everyone’s glasses, or view of the world, in an empirical manner because it more realistic, gives many partial realities, and is a self-reflective method of seeking truth and solution through conversation rather than lecture (2). Issac Bailey’s piece on implicit bias in journalism also reinforces the idea that pure objectivity is unrealistic due to subtle implicit biases that distort our collective reality.
Side Note: If you are interested in implicit biases you should check out the book “Whistling Vivaldi” by Claude Steele, it was my first-year summer read and contains invaluable information about our biases.
I would also like to comment on our positionally as a class of engaged journalists at Colorado College….After hearing about everyone’s interviews and the perspectives that they have gotten I was shocked at how many connections each and every one of us with stakeholders in the matter of guns in schools. I think we should acknowledge how lucky we are to be able to connect with a wide variety of perspectives! We are very privileged to have access to a variety of stakeholders via a variety of technological sources (Skype, quality recording equipment, fancy software, social media, Qualtrics, etc.) . That privilege comes from both our personal (families, friends, acquittances, etc.) and academic (being a student at CC) lives. We are very lucky, let’s not forget that in the process of completing our final papers, , media projects, and our community event during fourth week!
W3D4 - Positionality and Process - Isabella McShea
In what ways has your identity and positionality (meaning your position in the social and political world) shaped our class project and interviews? Consider both your individual positionality as well as our collective positionality as Colorado College students.
As a cisgendered white woman, I exist in the United States (and throughout the world0 with extreme privilege. Although perhaps somewhat marginalized as a woman within our patriarchal systems, my whiteness has benefited me so much that it almost has mitigated the realities of my womanhood. Within this project, it has become clear to me that whiteness has a lot to do with how we have approached the topic. From discussions of why white shooters are not seen as terrorists and that the majority of gun violence in schools happens primarily communities of color, race has been an integral part of our discussions.
I believe that my identity as a woman and my passion for work surrounded gender-based discrimination and violence has informed much of my work in the class project. I wanted to work with the demographic/mythbusters group in order to help expose the racist and sexist realities within the topic of guns and guns in schools. I attempted to try and limit the number of “leading” questions within my interviews, however, I assume that my bias came through in one way or another. Additionally, I was very adamant that we kept questions in our survey about gender and race which may affect what we put in our final video. Finally, as students within a primarily white institution of higher learning, we have access to many resources and space for conversation that most of our interview subjects may not have in their lives. Assuming that people understand the nuance and complexity of the type of theoretical discussions and concepts that we have had is a tough road to navigate. However, by asking statistical questions that many people within our class didn’t even know I hope that we avoided alienating any of our subjects thought the online survey or in-person interviews. Although journalism may claim to be subjective, I fully understand that my experiences, identities, and positionalities fully informed how I approached and executed this project wit my peers.
In what ways have elements of this process shaped the product? In other words, how has the way you/we have gathered data shaped the data?
I can speak mostly on this question concerning our survey. Throughout creating and editing the survey, we were able to tweak and include various questions and information that has shaped how we will gather the data. Initially, we did not have space for people to share identity factors they deemed important. People were more willing to share demographic information than I anticipated which will impact how we analyze the data. Additionally, we left space for people to share contact information who wished to be interviewed further. We will be interviewing two people who filled out our survey further on this issue which I believe is a good representation of how engaged journalism can shift and change throughout the process to create the best possible final product! Finally, we included our sources within the survey and put in the correct survey answers so people could learn and research the subject further. I believe this is an important aspect of our process that I will carry with me as I do my sociology thesis my senior year and could be an important point to report back to RMPBS in our final guidelines for this type of work.
All of our readings tonight touched on the falsity of objectivity we’ve been discussing throughout the entire block. On the subject of grounded theory, Charmaz argued that “neither data nor theories are discovered…rather, we are part of the world we study and the data we collect.” Bailey explored the impacts of implicit biases on journalism, and McManus asserted that we should replace the journalistic standard of objectivity with “empiricism.” Finally, Blanding interrogated the line between activism and journalism, emphasizing the impossibility of approaching a piece entirely ‘objectively.’
In thinking about my identity and positionality within the context of our project and interviews, I first looked up demographic information about gun ownership in the United States and discovered the most common demographic of gun owner is ‘white male,’ and more specifically, with some college or less in the rural South (Pew Research 2017). Given I am a middle-class white woman with a college education from Washington D.C., besides my neighbor Dick Heller, I knew hardly anyone who had a gun or believed fervently in the Second Amendment growing up. According to Pew Research’s findings, I was in the wrong part of the country surrounded by the wrong people for that. Thus, I grew up with limited exposure to the ‘other side’ of my own liberal opinions surrounding background checks, guns in schools, automatic weapons, etc. With that said, it is unsurprising that the two people I’ve interviewed so far have both been ideologically and politically aligned with me on this issue; the people I’m interviewing are in my social circle, and my social circle is limitedly diverse in these arenas and on this subject in particular. Therefore, my positionality has had an explicit impact on my interviews so far in determining the people I’ve interviewed and the opinions they (re)presented.
Continuing this thread of social circles, I argue my group’s Digital Media Campaign was similarly limited by a lack of ideological and political diversity. In order to better ensure at least some response on our Facebook group, we intentionally invited people to become members rather than simply waiting for members of the ‘public’ to join and post. However, these invitees were our personal friends, and thus, most were aligned with our group regarding ideas about guns in schools. We tried to combat this ‘liberal,’ anti-gun bias by reaching out to pro-gun groups, such as the NRA. However, they never returned my message, which is unsurprising given I have no previously established connection with them. After experiencing this road block with Facebook, Reddit proved to be a more diverse platform. On Reddit, there are no ‘friends’; you simply post to different pages, and members can respond. Thus, there was a much broader array of folks reached by our Reddit posts, representing more diverse opinions on the matter.
In thinking about moving forward with our data and choosing what the subject of our final video project will be, my group and I plan to include the wide array of opinions and responses we garnered through our DMC. In this way, we intentionally plan to highlight opinions that are not our own because they are just as crucial to this conversation and should be included. However, I was struck by Blanding’s discussion of the ‘two-sides’ falsehood and that, sometimes there are not in fact two sides to an issue that deserve representation—for example, white supremacy. Thus, in the final two days of our campaign, as more responses come in, if some of the responses support gun violence in schools, we as a group will need to have a serious conversation about whether or not those comments are also important to include.
My positionality as a white woman, but also as someone who grew up in Massachusetts and now attends a liberal arts school in Colorado, places me firmly on the pro improving gun law side of this debate. When interviewing the two people I talked to, I found myself nodding along to a lot of what they were saying in wholehearted agreement. In retrospect, I’m not sure if those interviews were the most productive use of my time. To an extent, I stayed within my echo chamber; the world of liberal academia where most people agree on controversial issues.
One takeaway from this block was realizing how hard it is to escape my social bubble and facilitate meaningful dialogue between people with different viewpoints. Our facebook page was mostly posts from people we had connections to, stating their dislike about the idea of guns in schools. Reddit gained more diverse responses but often times ‘conversations’ (exchanges of messages) spiraled into people being rude and not listening to what the other had to say. I realized that fostering dialogue over the internet is difficult, as people have no qualms about stating their opinion in harsh, polarized manners, most likely because their words have less of a consequence and they can remain anonymous. The internet is a great resource for initial connections and for organizing large groups but it has a limit to its greatness. The importance and productivity that lie in having face to face conversations will continue to remain.
Blandings argument was interesting; two sides need not be represented at times, because some ‘sides’ lack productivity. Our DMC gleaned a lot of unproductive back and forth that may not be necessary to involve in our final video. If anything, the final video should include the polarization people feel in tandem with their ability to see and emphasize with both sides of the issue. I’m hoping that our video will be able to communicate the complexities of this issue.
I am personally a very liberal person; I can completely admit that, and at the same time I can also acknowledge how I have become more open. When I was starting to become very political around the 2016 election, I was extremely closed off in my views and I didn’t accept criticism. Living in a more conservative environment, however, eventually I would learn to become more open in order to survive; and when engaging in balanced conversations, I’d often learn real reason for what seemed to me like incredibly ludicrous decisions. Since then I’ve wanted to expand my knowledge and learn as much about different ideologies and reasons as I can. I’ve tried to bring that openness with me into my interviews and very obviously in the project where my initial idea was literally to take raw ideas from the community. I think this curiosity is shared by many students at Colorado College, though I know that there is also a few very polarized students. Because I am very liberal, it goes without saying I’m not particularly fond of guns. I’ve tried to not let this shape the project, although I did interview a friend who I share beliefs with and is also vehemently anti-gun. However, I am interviewing people who feel comfortable around guns, possibly because I am so interested in why people like guns. Despite my own beliefs, I have a determination to keep my questions as unbiased as possible and to take in as many different opinions as I can. Thus the project was created with the idea of getting as many different opinions as possible from all sorts of people: gun owners, teachers, hunters, protesters, students, etc. Everyone fulfills different and multiple roles within the community, and thus they have different ideas. Sadly there was little time to collect physical responses, but there has been a great amount of digital responses; and they are almost more important because they reach farther and more broadly than our small town of Colorado Springs or our College, which is notoriously liberal. Since we have used a lot of digital outreach, we have a lot of anonymous data, which also means a lot more passionate, and possibly more honest information because there is less threat of being exposed. We’ve also gotten a lot of information which may have not come forth if we didn’t approach it digitally. People are much more shy in person.
I think the positionality from which I came from, as most of the blog posts above have also stated, was as a liberal, white woman. It’s interesting that so many in our class identify this way -- and important to note that, at CC, there are a couple of main identifiers that many people share. Namely, we are a primarily liberal and white school. This collective positionality hugely sways our discussions. My campaign group talked a lot about this, especially immediately after our dialogue. The coolest part of the dialogue was that we had incredibly different voices, with very different opinions. At CC, though we all have nuances to our opinions and form them in slightly different ways, there is often a strong culture of agreement. It was challenging and rewarding to hear other perspectives, and recognize that our own points can be made much stronger when they are actually challenged. We understand our opinions better if there is controversy around them that we have to explain. This is so important. It is important that we remember that the rest of the country does not share the same demographics as CC, and that if we want to instigate positive social change, we need to be able to listen and understand the viewpoints of those who think differently than us. We need to do so in a kind and respectful way, and make the knowledge that we are immensely lucky to have accessible. I think CC students often react negatively to opinions different than their own, and can be very bogged down by the details of specific rhetoric regarding topics. This is largely inaccessible to many people -- especially if they don’t have a private liberal arts education. When others don’t understand things that many CC students have spent hours discussing, and have had the privilege of time to process and think about, CC students often disengage or consider the other people’s opinions wrong, uninformed, or invalid. I think that is hugely problematic and will not serve us well post-grad. We cannot roll our eyes or laugh at other people's’ opinions. It was definitely a good experience for me to hear the opinions of many people that differed from mine, and I think that my own convictions are stronger because of it. This whole spiel here is, I suppose, our implicit (and sometimes explicit) biases, many of which we are not expected to face as CC students.
I’m from Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. It’s a pretty liberal place and I grew up around a lot of people concerned about guns. In my work in our Community Letters group, I have learned a lot about the conversation about guns in schools. People in Bethesda don’t feel very educated about guns. It always felt like people were anti-gun and that’s cool and all, but I didn’t see very many productive conversations about guns. It just felt like people were emotionally afraid of being in a scary situation with a gun in a school, and these people (specifically peers and teachers at school) just weren’t talking with facts and knowledge. Maybe I’m just primed by all the r/guns and r/gunpolitics users I’ve been interacting with, but I really haven’t gotten a good sense of effective gun conversations in this country.
But maybe that just speaks to my limited perspective on the conversation. Other than attending the American Legion close to my summer camp, I don’t have much interaction with traditionally conservative communities. And when I have, I’ve mostly heard those people just being angry that the government is trying to violate their rights and take their guns away. I’m looking forward to our community dialogue because it gives room for us to create good conversation.
My conviction of being anti-gun is one that I brought into this project, and through my research, I’ve acquired a much more nuanced view. I know that guns are scary and dangerous and should be limited, but there’s definitely space for guns in a trained manner. I hear a lot about the “the only way to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun,” argument in the Reddit posts I made, and the way that some users were able to break down the situation kinda convinced me. I feel like I should probably talk to some more people before being sure about that, though.
The way I’ve gathered my data has shaped the project in that these Reddit users on these specific SubReddits that I targeted are the ones shaping my narrative. Our Community Letters mission was to just get a bunch of opinions from people, and I was successful in doing so. I got a lot of responses- some helpful, some not, and those responses gave plenty of different perspectives on guns and guns in schools. This project has made me optimistic that I can just ask people questions about things and they will answer with something interesting. Wasn’t super sure about that beforehand.
In thinking about how my identity and positionality has shaped our class project and interviews, the limits of my personal network comes to mind. I come from a suburb of Seattle, generally a very liberal area, and now attend a generally very liberal college - CC. As pointed out by Blanding and McManus, complete objectivity is unachievable. In my case, I have likely lost most of my objectivity in who I have reached out to, both in my interview and for my DMC group survey. The responses we received in the survey are surely to some degree skewed to heavily represent the perspectives of my friends and family, most of which are educated, urban/suburban, liberal and in many ways privileged.
Though I'm happy my group briefly escaped this limited range of perspectives by venturing downtown for our interviews, this is where our collective identity as CC students may have come into play. Our interviewees may have approached us with caution, and some skepticism, seeing that we are non-professional students from a liberal college that has had fraught relations with the greater Colorado Springs community.
I am not yet entirely sure how my beliefs and convictions have shaped the project, to be quite honest. I did not come in with many strong or solidified convictions regarding guns in schools. However, I did come in with a fairly negative sentiment toward guns and their place in our society, and this surely influenced my perspective on our "Mythbusters" survey. Had I been strongly pro-guns/pro-Second Amendment, I would have likely pushed for the inclusion of some facts indicating positive results of the increased security and presence of guns in schools.
As mentioned above, I am glad that our process allowed us to meet with "strangers" in downtown Colorado Springs. This allowed us to garner more diverse perspectives and build some connection to community members. I learned about new perspectives that people such as "John from Alaska" bring to the table. Further, by meeting these people randomly on the street, without staging the interaction, I would like to think that we received peoples' frank, honest opinions and reactions. Conversely, the online survey is not perfect as there are some ambiguities in our phrasing of questions, that people taking the survey apart from us cannot easily ask us about. Thus, some of our questions may have been misunderstood and the data skewed accordingly. Overall, I am happy that we have combined these two approaches in our product.
My identity and positionality has shaped my network of connections, and my approach in more ways than I know probably. Being from San Francisco, I was able to connect with stakeholders from a liberal perspective. I have a pretty politically diverse extended family so I was also able to interview more conservative stakeholders. However, everyone I interviewed, and I think most people that the rest of our class interviewed, come from some level of privilege, which is a limitation. As a Colorado College student, and as someone who is pretty liberal (which is known to the people in my network), the people I interviewed had an idea of where I stood on these issues without me talking about it during the interview. i wonder how this might have impacted there responses. Doing the community letters project, businesses In town weren’t interested in participating. I wonder how our positionalities as CC students, not as natives to the springs, or other aspects, could have affected this turn out. All of these factors deepen my belief, in agreement with the reading, that objectivity is impossible. Every aspect of your positionality, of your identity, of your beliefs, has potential to impact your understanding and your perspective, I’m sure in more ways than you can be conscious of. I think it’s interesting that objectivity seems to still be advertised as a core tenant of journalism. I think that instead an understanding and awareness of our biases should be strived for. Reaching out through social media means only people with access, or desire, to be a part of these networks was included. The different questions we asked seemed to attract different kinds of people, so I’m sure that affected the data as wel.
I am from Denver where I think my first memory of a big news story was the Aurora movie theater shooting. I was always very scared going to a movie theater afterwards. I think that as a kid growing up in the era of mass shootings, whether I am pro gun control or not, issues of gun violence are apart of my life. And while I have grown up in a very liberal household and community, I was taught from a young age the importance of listening. I strive to be the best listener I can to everyone I cross paths with. Therefore, I may lean towards the more liberal side of the issue— I think that there needs to be greater restrictive gun policy, but also greater access to compassionate resources like mental health professionals— while also attempting to be less polarizing and more open minded. I grew up going to family reunions in West Virginia and Southern Ohio, where a lot of my family hold strong conservative values that are strictly opposite to me and immediate family.
I think my background has made someone who is overly committed to this issue and this project. Some one who has their political leanings but does not let them predetermine anything. And I think because of my focus on being the best listener I can which has suited me well to report in the best way I can.
In previous years, I was never very politically active. I mostly only looked in the local newspaper for the sports section as I was involved in a lot of sports in high school. After working in NYC this summer, I found myself becoming more politically active. Through my internship, I learned about activism and different political viewpoints throughout New York.
My identity has shifted greatly because of this internship, but also because of my involvement at CC. I have made friends who have taught me so much about what’s going on in the world, and how to get involved. I’ve now joined various organizations and volunteer work.
I found the Neiman Report addressing the Parkland coverage and student activists very fascinating. I realized that I also have a hard time finding the line between activism and journalism. Is “activist journalism,” which takes an opinionated stance on an issue, really just inherently propaganda? Is there a space at all for activist journalism that is separate from propaganda? Parkland student Schneid argued that all journalism is inherently a form of activism, since it lifts up often unheard and silenced voices. This is absolutely true and an amazing way to use the journalistic process. However, I believe that while all journalists do have un-repressable biases and opinions relating to the events they are reporting on, their job is to relay hard facts alongside multiple, varying truths—it is not to argue their own truth with fervor. So in my current state of mind, I don’t know if I can agree that activist journalism has a place in the journalism business.
ReplyDeleteHowever, to the question of whether or not reporters should be able to be politically involved outside of the newsroom, I believe that reporters should be able to engage in whatever level of political action or inaction they choose as long as they do not let their beliefs dishonestly sway their coverage. If they are candid about their biases and beliefs to begin with and then present all varieties of beliefs as well as the facts that go along with the event, then I don’t think their life outside of the newsroom should be of anyone’s concern.
Going back to last night’s readings a bit, mainstream media of today absolutely does support—whether knowingly or not—the ideologies that uphold the status quo. In class today, we discussed the gendered nature of school shooting coverage that is never acknowledged and is often not even noticed until close inspection. Victims interviewed are often female and are shown distraught to uphold the gender stereotype of female sensitivity. Media outlets then play off of this stereotype to increase the feeling of tragedy behind the event. That is just one example of the ways in which binary-upholding ideologies often frame and shape coverage of events.
Like another Neiman Report expresses, implicit biases are incredibly prevalent and upheld in all areas of society, especially in media and news coverage. Producers and journalists as well as viewers hold and are impacted by these biases or variations of these biases. They become so ingrained in us that we stop noticing them and their impact on the ways in which things are portrayed or covered. That is why if we want to keep journalism honest and trustworthy, it is incredibly important to start acknowledging biases that exist in both the minds of the viewers as well as the journalist.
After reading about grounded theory I realized that my “Mythbusters” group is taking that approach by letting our survey responses shape the way we piece together our various interviews. Our video presentation will be developed from our interviews grounded in the data we have from our survey. In other words, our story board is being drawn directly from data gathered from the survey. We are not creating our own story for the video, the survey is. I think this is a good technique because it allows us, as creators, editors, interviewers, and students, to produce work that is empirical rather than producing work that is “objective” yet still driven by our own thoughts, beliefs, and ideas. John McManus stated that “objectivity is about as reliable as judge character by the firmness of a handshake. So I propose we junk objectivity in favor of a more accurate, honest, and demanding standard-empiricism- the scientific method of inquiry base on careful observation from multiple perspectives…” (1). I believe McManus’ statement makes a nice point that reporting can never be truly objective no matter how hard the journalist tries. Why? This is because we all bring our own unique, intersecting identities that create one-of-a-kind tinted glasses of which we view the world through. The inherent lens that we see our own reality or truth through is something that is always changing, but can never be taken away. McManus inserts that journalism should not shy away from utilizing the power of everyone’s glasses, or view of the world, in an empirical manner because it more realistic, gives many partial realities, and is a self-reflective method of seeking truth and solution through conversation rather than lecture (2). Issac Bailey’s piece on implicit bias in journalism also reinforces the idea that pure objectivity is unrealistic due to subtle implicit biases that distort our collective reality.
ReplyDeleteSide Note: If you are interested in implicit biases you should check out the book “Whistling Vivaldi” by Claude Steele, it was my first-year summer read and contains invaluable information about our biases.
I would also like to comment on our positionally as a class of engaged journalists at Colorado College….After hearing about everyone’s interviews and the perspectives that they have gotten I was shocked at how many connections each and every one of us with stakeholders in the matter of guns in schools. I think we should acknowledge how lucky we are to be able to connect with a wide variety of perspectives! We are very privileged to have access to a variety of stakeholders via a variety of technological sources (Skype, quality recording equipment, fancy software, social media, Qualtrics, etc.) . That privilege comes from both our personal (families, friends, acquittances, etc.) and academic (being a student at CC) lives. We are very lucky, let’s not forget that in the process of completing our final papers, , media projects, and our community event during fourth week!
W3D4 - Positionality and Process - Isabella McShea
ReplyDeleteIn what ways has your identity and positionality (meaning your position in the social and political world) shaped our class project and interviews? Consider both your individual positionality as well as our collective positionality as Colorado College students.
As a cisgendered white woman, I exist in the United States (and throughout the world0 with extreme privilege. Although perhaps somewhat marginalized as a woman within our patriarchal systems, my whiteness has benefited me so much that it almost has mitigated the realities of my womanhood. Within this project, it has become clear to me that whiteness has a lot to do with how we have approached the topic. From discussions of why white shooters are not seen as terrorists and that the majority of gun violence in schools happens primarily communities of color, race has been an integral part of our discussions.
I believe that my identity as a woman and my passion for work surrounded gender-based discrimination and violence has informed much of my work in the class project. I wanted to work with the demographic/mythbusters group in order to help expose the racist and sexist realities within the topic of guns and guns in schools. I attempted to try and limit the number of “leading” questions within my interviews, however, I assume that my bias came through in one way or another. Additionally, I was very adamant that we kept questions in our survey about gender and race which may affect what we put in our final video.
Finally, as students within a primarily white institution of higher learning, we have access to many resources and space for conversation that most of our interview subjects may not have in their lives. Assuming that people understand the nuance and complexity of the type of theoretical discussions and concepts that we have had is a tough road to navigate. However, by asking statistical questions that many people within our class didn’t even know I hope that we avoided alienating any of our subjects thought the online survey or in-person interviews. Although journalism may claim to be subjective, I fully understand that my experiences, identities, and positionalities fully informed how I approached and executed this project wit my peers.
In what ways have elements of this process shaped the product? In other words, how has the way you/we have gathered data shaped the data?
I can speak mostly on this question concerning our survey. Throughout creating and editing the survey, we were able to tweak and include various questions and information that has shaped how we will gather the data. Initially, we did not have space for people to share identity factors they deemed important. People were more willing to share demographic information than I anticipated which will impact how we analyze the data. Additionally, we left space for people to share contact information who wished to be interviewed further. We will be interviewing two people who filled out our survey further on this issue which I believe is a good representation of how engaged journalism can shift and change throughout the process to create the best possible final product! Finally, we included our sources within the survey and put in the correct survey answers so people could learn and research the subject further. I believe this is an important aspect of our process that I will carry with me as I do my sociology thesis my senior year and could be an important point to report back to RMPBS in our final guidelines for this type of work.
All of our readings tonight touched on the falsity of objectivity we’ve been discussing throughout the entire block. On the subject of grounded theory, Charmaz argued that “neither data nor theories are discovered…rather, we are part of the world we study and the data we collect.” Bailey explored the impacts of implicit biases on journalism, and McManus asserted that we should replace the journalistic standard of objectivity with “empiricism.” Finally, Blanding interrogated the line between activism and journalism, emphasizing the impossibility of approaching a piece entirely ‘objectively.’
ReplyDeleteIn thinking about my identity and positionality within the context of our project and interviews, I first looked up demographic information about gun ownership in the United States and discovered the most common demographic of gun owner is ‘white male,’ and more specifically, with some college or less in the rural South (Pew Research 2017). Given I am a middle-class white woman with a college education from Washington D.C., besides my neighbor Dick Heller, I knew hardly anyone who had a gun or believed fervently in the Second Amendment growing up. According to Pew Research’s findings, I was in the wrong part of the country surrounded by the wrong people for that. Thus, I grew up with limited exposure to the ‘other side’ of my own liberal opinions surrounding background checks, guns in schools, automatic weapons, etc. With that said, it is unsurprising that the two people I’ve interviewed so far have both been ideologically and politically aligned with me on this issue; the people I’m interviewing are in my social circle, and my social circle is limitedly diverse in these arenas and on this subject in particular. Therefore, my positionality has had an explicit impact on my interviews so far in determining the people I’ve interviewed and the opinions they (re)presented.
Continuing this thread of social circles, I argue my group’s Digital Media Campaign was similarly limited by a lack of ideological and political diversity. In order to better ensure at least some response on our Facebook group, we intentionally invited people to become members rather than simply waiting for members of the ‘public’ to join and post. However, these invitees were our personal friends, and thus, most were aligned with our group regarding ideas about guns in schools. We tried to combat this ‘liberal,’ anti-gun bias by reaching out to pro-gun groups, such as the NRA. However, they never returned my message, which is unsurprising given I have no previously established connection with them. After experiencing this road block with Facebook, Reddit proved to be a more diverse platform. On Reddit, there are no ‘friends’; you simply post to different pages, and members can respond. Thus, there was a much broader array of folks reached by our Reddit posts, representing more diverse opinions on the matter.
In thinking about moving forward with our data and choosing what the subject of our final video project will be, my group and I plan to include the wide array of opinions and responses we garnered through our DMC. In this way, we intentionally plan to highlight opinions that are not our own because they are just as crucial to this conversation and should be included. However, I was struck by Blanding’s discussion of the ‘two-sides’ falsehood and that, sometimes there are not in fact two sides to an issue that deserve representation—for example, white supremacy. Thus, in the final two days of our campaign, as more responses come in, if some of the responses support gun violence in schools, we as a group will need to have a serious conversation about whether or not those comments are also important to include.
My positionality as a white woman, but also as someone who grew up in Massachusetts and now attends a liberal arts school in Colorado, places me firmly on the pro improving gun law side of this debate. When interviewing the two people I talked to, I found myself nodding along to a lot of what they were saying in wholehearted agreement. In retrospect, I’m not sure if those interviews were the most productive use of my time. To an extent, I stayed within my echo chamber; the world of liberal academia where most people agree on controversial issues.
ReplyDeleteOne takeaway from this block was realizing how hard it is to escape my social bubble and facilitate meaningful dialogue between people with different viewpoints. Our facebook page was mostly posts from people we had connections to, stating their dislike about the idea of guns in schools. Reddit gained more diverse responses but often times ‘conversations’ (exchanges of messages) spiraled into people being rude and not listening to what the other had to say. I realized that fostering dialogue over the internet is difficult, as people have no qualms about stating their opinion in harsh, polarized manners, most likely because their words have less of a consequence and they can remain anonymous. The internet is a great resource for initial connections and for organizing large groups but it has a limit to its greatness. The importance and productivity that lie in having face to face conversations will continue to remain.
Blandings argument was interesting; two sides need not be represented at times, because some ‘sides’ lack productivity. Our DMC gleaned a lot of unproductive back and forth that may not be necessary to involve in our final video. If anything, the final video should include the polarization people feel in tandem with their ability to see and emphasize with both sides of the issue. I’m hoping that our video will be able to communicate the complexities of this issue.
I am personally a very liberal person; I can completely admit that, and at the same time I can also acknowledge how I have become more open. When I was starting to become very political around the 2016 election, I was extremely closed off in my views and I didn’t accept criticism. Living in a more conservative environment, however, eventually I would learn to become more open in order to survive; and when engaging in balanced conversations, I’d often learn real reason for what seemed to me like incredibly ludicrous decisions. Since then I’ve wanted to expand my knowledge and learn as much about different ideologies and reasons as I can. I’ve tried to bring that openness with me into my interviews and very obviously in the project where my initial idea was literally to take raw ideas from the community. I think this curiosity is shared by many students at Colorado College, though I know that there is also a few very polarized students.
ReplyDeleteBecause I am very liberal, it goes without saying I’m not particularly fond of guns. I’ve tried to not let this shape the project, although I did interview a friend who I share beliefs with and is also vehemently anti-gun. However, I am interviewing people who feel comfortable around guns, possibly because I am so interested in why people like guns. Despite my own beliefs, I have a determination to keep my questions as unbiased as possible and to take in as many different opinions as I can. Thus the project was created with the idea of getting as many different opinions as possible from all sorts of people: gun owners, teachers, hunters, protesters, students, etc. Everyone fulfills different and multiple roles within the community, and thus they have different ideas. Sadly there was little time to collect physical responses, but there has been a great amount of digital responses; and they are almost more important because they reach farther and more broadly than our small town of Colorado Springs or our College, which is notoriously liberal. Since we have used a lot of digital outreach, we have a lot of anonymous data, which also means a lot more passionate, and possibly more honest information because there is less threat of being exposed. We’ve also gotten a lot of information which may have not come forth if we didn’t approach it digitally. People are much more shy in person.
I think the positionality from which I came from, as most of the blog posts above have also stated, was as a liberal, white woman. It’s interesting that so many in our class identify this way -- and important to note that, at CC, there are a couple of main identifiers that many people share. Namely, we are a primarily liberal and white school. This collective positionality hugely sways our discussions. My campaign group talked a lot about this, especially immediately after our dialogue. The coolest part of the dialogue was that we had incredibly different voices, with very different opinions. At CC, though we all have nuances to our opinions and form them in slightly different ways, there is often a strong culture of agreement. It was challenging and rewarding to hear other perspectives, and recognize that our own points can be made much stronger when they are actually challenged. We understand our opinions better if there is controversy around them that we have to explain. This is so important. It is important that we remember that the rest of the country does not share the same demographics as CC, and that if we want to instigate positive social change, we need to be able to listen and understand the viewpoints of those who think differently than us. We need to do so in a kind and respectful way, and make the knowledge that we are immensely lucky to have accessible. I think CC students often react negatively to opinions different than their own, and can be very bogged down by the details of specific rhetoric regarding topics. This is largely inaccessible to many people -- especially if they don’t have a private liberal arts education. When others don’t understand things that many CC students have spent hours discussing, and have had the privilege of time to process and think about, CC students often disengage or consider the other people’s opinions wrong, uninformed, or invalid. I think that is hugely problematic and will not serve us well post-grad. We cannot roll our eyes or laugh at other people's’ opinions. It was definitely a good experience for me to hear the opinions of many people that differed from mine, and I think that my own convictions are stronger because of it. This whole spiel here is, I suppose, our implicit (and sometimes explicit) biases, many of which we are not expected to face as CC students.
ReplyDeleteInes Siepmann!
DeleteI’m from Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. It’s a pretty liberal place and I grew up around a lot of people concerned about guns. In my work in our Community Letters group, I have learned a lot about the conversation about guns in schools. People in Bethesda don’t feel very educated about guns. It always felt like people were anti-gun and that’s cool and all, but I didn’t see very many productive conversations about guns. It just felt like people were emotionally afraid of being in a scary situation with a gun in a school, and these people (specifically peers and teachers at school) just weren’t talking with facts and knowledge. Maybe I’m just primed by all the r/guns and r/gunpolitics users I’ve been interacting with, but I really haven’t gotten a good sense of effective gun conversations in this country.
ReplyDeleteBut maybe that just speaks to my limited perspective on the conversation. Other than attending the American Legion close to my summer camp, I don’t have much interaction with traditionally conservative communities. And when I have, I’ve mostly heard those people just being angry that the government is trying to violate their rights and take their guns away. I’m looking forward to our community dialogue because it gives room for us to create good conversation.
My conviction of being anti-gun is one that I brought into this project, and through my research, I’ve acquired a much more nuanced view. I know that guns are scary and dangerous and should be limited, but there’s definitely space for guns in a trained manner. I hear a lot about the “the only way to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun,” argument in the Reddit posts I made, and the way that some users were able to break down the situation kinda convinced me. I feel like I should probably talk to some more people before being sure about that, though.
The way I’ve gathered my data has shaped the project in that these Reddit users on these specific SubReddits that I targeted are the ones shaping my narrative. Our Community Letters mission was to just get a bunch of opinions from people, and I was successful in doing so. I got a lot of responses- some helpful, some not, and those responses gave plenty of different perspectives on guns and guns in schools. This project has made me optimistic that I can just ask people questions about things and they will answer with something interesting. Wasn’t super sure about that beforehand.
In thinking about how my identity and positionality has shaped our class project and interviews, the limits of my personal network comes to mind. I come from a suburb of Seattle, generally a very liberal area, and now attend a generally very liberal college - CC. As pointed out by Blanding and McManus, complete objectivity is unachievable. In my case, I have likely lost most of my objectivity in who I have reached out to, both in my interview and for my DMC group survey. The responses we received in the survey are surely to some degree skewed to heavily represent the perspectives of my friends and family, most of which are educated, urban/suburban, liberal and in many ways privileged.
ReplyDeleteThough I'm happy my group briefly escaped this limited range of perspectives by venturing downtown for our interviews, this is where our collective identity as CC students may have come into play. Our interviewees may have approached us with caution, and some skepticism, seeing that we are non-professional students from a liberal college that has had fraught relations with the greater Colorado Springs community.
I am not yet entirely sure how my beliefs and convictions have shaped the project, to be quite honest. I did not come in with many strong or solidified convictions regarding guns in schools. However, I did come in with a fairly negative sentiment toward guns and their place in our society, and this surely influenced my perspective on our "Mythbusters" survey. Had I been strongly pro-guns/pro-Second Amendment, I would have likely pushed for the inclusion of some facts indicating positive results of the increased security and presence of guns in schools.
As mentioned above, I am glad that our process allowed us to meet with "strangers" in downtown Colorado Springs. This allowed us to garner more diverse perspectives and build some connection to community members. I learned about new perspectives that people such as "John from Alaska" bring to the table. Further, by meeting these people randomly on the street, without staging the interaction, I would like to think that we received peoples' frank, honest opinions and reactions. Conversely, the online survey is not perfect as there are some ambiguities in our phrasing of questions, that people taking the survey apart from us cannot easily ask us about. Thus, some of our questions may have been misunderstood and the data skewed accordingly. Overall, I am happy that we have combined these two approaches in our product.
ReplyDeleteMy identity and positionality has shaped my network of connections, and my approach in more ways than I know probably. Being from San Francisco, I was able to connect with stakeholders from a liberal perspective. I have a pretty politically diverse extended family so I was also able to interview more conservative stakeholders. However, everyone I interviewed, and I think most people that the rest of our class interviewed, come from some level of privilege, which is a limitation.
As a Colorado College student, and as someone who is pretty liberal (which is known to the people in my network), the people I interviewed had an idea of where I stood on these issues without me talking about it during the interview. i wonder how this might have impacted there responses. Doing the community letters project, businesses In town weren’t interested in participating. I wonder how our positionalities as CC students, not as natives to the springs, or other aspects, could have affected this turn out.
All of these factors deepen my belief, in agreement with the reading, that objectivity is impossible. Every aspect of your positionality, of your identity, of your beliefs, has potential to impact your understanding and your perspective, I’m sure in more ways than you can be conscious of. I think it’s interesting that objectivity seems to still be advertised as a core tenant of journalism. I think that instead an understanding and awareness of our biases should be strived for.
Reaching out through social media means only people with access, or desire, to be a part of these networks was included. The different questions we asked seemed to attract different kinds of people, so I’m sure that affected the data as wel.
I am from Denver where I think my first memory of a big news story was the Aurora movie theater shooting. I was always very scared going to a movie theater afterwards. I think that as a kid growing up in the era of mass shootings, whether I am pro gun control or not, issues of gun violence are apart of my life. And while I have grown up in a very liberal household and community, I was taught from a young age the importance of listening. I strive to be the best listener I can to everyone I cross paths with. Therefore, I may lean towards the more liberal side of the issue— I think that there needs to be greater restrictive gun policy, but also greater access to compassionate resources like mental health professionals— while also attempting to be less polarizing and more open minded. I grew up going to family reunions in West Virginia and Southern Ohio, where a lot of my family hold strong conservative values that are strictly opposite to me and immediate family.
ReplyDeleteI think my background has made someone who is overly committed to this issue and this project. Some one who has their political leanings but does not let them predetermine anything. And I think because of my focus on being the best listener I can which has suited me well to report in the best way I can.
In previous years, I was never very politically active. I mostly only looked in the local newspaper for the sports section as I was involved in a lot of sports in high school. After working in NYC this summer, I found myself becoming more politically active. Through my internship, I learned about activism and different political viewpoints throughout New York.
ReplyDeleteMy identity has shifted greatly because of this internship, but also because of my involvement at CC. I have made friends who have taught me so much about what’s going on in the world, and how to get involved. I’ve now joined various organizations and volunteer work.
^bailey
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