Media and Society Week 2

Topic 1

I’ve had Twitter for about a year now, and to be honest, I don’t like it. At all. It annoys me that you can’t say much, and frankly, I’m too busy to be tweeting this or that all day. I like my thoughts to be shared in person or pretty much any way except through a tweet (and whoever came up with the name seriously needs to rethink their life). But I’ll stop ragging on Twitter enough to discuss it.

On Twitter I follow mostly news organizations, politicians, some specific journalists and a few friends and students. I follow Al Jazeera News to get a fresh perspective on global news. Since this organization is based out of Qatar, it’s a totally different perspective on developing news than what you’d find at the BBC or any American news station. It gives me some insight into the views and social movements held in parts of the world that are very different from American culture. They are also pretty on top of their game when it comes to being on top of a story and releasing incredible photos and footage. I also follow Samantha Swindler, an editor/columnist at the Oregonian. Not only is she a kick-ass local journalist, we interviewed her during Rob’s Newswriting class last year, and her tweets are usually comedic gold, even when making a newsy announcement. I certainly hope to meet her in person and pick her brain someday; for now I’ll just Twitter-stalk her and link her to all of my stories in flagrant self-promotion. Margaret Jacobsen is the person who organized Saturday’s historical protest, the Portland Women’s March. I began following her last week after I figured out who she was and her role in the march, she is also a young writer, journalist and poet. It’s probably best to keep tabs on all the incredible local writers; they have the most interesting and relevant things to say. I got to meet her and do a quick interview on Saturday after sneaking backstage, and she’s pretty powerful in person.

The Tweet that most recently worked as clickbait for me was a link to an article by the New York Times. It’s probably because I’d just watched the video in which Kellyanne Conway speaks about such a thing as “alternative facts,” so the tweet which promises to reveal all the “alternative facts” of the Trump administration recieved my attention rather quickly.

While social media has indeed increased the connections I make and keeps me up-to-date on breaking news, it also becomes overwhelming in the great deluges in which it occurs, and this, in turn, encourages me to totally disconnect myself. I’ve found that while I occasionally pay more attention to current events because I’m on social media, it’s almost like it’s forced upon me when I open my phone or computer, instead of actively making the choice to engage reading or watching the news. I’d rather make a clear choice to get up and watch the news in the morning and not just open my Facebook or Twitter to whatever people happen to be sharing. Facebook feeds continue to freak me out when people share graphic images of dead animals killed by abusers or something equally horrible; I mean come on, Facebook, I really didn’t want to wake up to that! I’ve delete the app from my phone a few times, but I’ve always had to bring it back for my own purposes as a student journalist. When using it to post updates and breaking news when on a story, I find it clumsy and time-consuming when instead I could be out talking to people and making real connections or taking photographs. However, I’ve felt very connected when faraway friends of mine at political protests “go live” and I can see exactly what is happening at Standing Rock, for instance. For this reason, it excites me. I watched my friends march through the streets of Seattle, and saw people be shot with water cannons and rubber bullets in freezing North Dakota weather in real time. This is truly breaking news, and I hope to be able to use this type of instant video communication to connect and share information as a journalist in the future.

Social media has also allowed me to inform myself and take positive action in my own life on a very personal level. I have endometriosis, and I have an advanced and severe case. There is so much misinformation surrounding this disease, directly from the mass majority of misinformed doctors, including almost every doctor I’ve seen in my life. (Check out my post “Invisible Disease”) However, I stumbled on to two major support networks on Facebook, both of which were started by healthcare professionals (expert doctors and nurses) to connect and inform women suffering from the disease and help them find access to the proper forms of health care and relief. It is because of these groups on Facebook that I was able to find a surgeon in Portland who went out of her way to take my insurance, and who was skilled enough to perform an extensive excision surgery; this is a surgery which requires extreme and rare skill. These Facebook support groups have changed my life and given me the power of knowledge, community, and doctors who really, truly care. If I am having a flare-up, I post on this group, and these doctors respond almost immediately. It’s incredible; not to mention all the other women on their who share their experiences, speak about their trauma, and offer emotional support.

 TOPIC 2:

In an article on The Daily Beast, “The Trump Parody Video Going Viral In Japan,” the author explains the climate in Japan when it comes to American election politics and some possible consequences of Trump winning the U.S. election-- what dire consequences it could have for Japan. The author also disseminates some of the intense visual imagery in the video and what it means. The videos simultaneously pokes fun at Japanese pop culture and America’s fascination with Donald Trump. I’d agree with this assessment; the video seems to fondly recreate Donald Trump’s character as a cute animation and yet as someone who uses fearsome military power to build a wall and transform into a robot to blow up the world. Those are two pretty different extremes, and it’s part of what makes the video so fascinating. The article says that the imagery of Trump’s head floating as a blossom in all the cherry blossom trees may represent the impermanence of a Trump presidency; traditionally in Japan cherry blossoms represent the impermanence of beauty, which makes it all the more beautiful and rare. Comparing Trump to a beautiful cherry blossom is one thing, but let’s just hope he falls off the tree before he makes it to the part where he blows up the world. Most likely, people are just over-analyzing this video that is just meant to be funny and visually entertaining and to incite people to over-analyze.

The same person who made the “Japanese Donald Trump Commercial” made one for Hillary Clinton, too. It’s called “Hillary Clinton: Meme Queen 2016.” Similarly, this video is fully of pop culture references, picking up pace and finally turning into what seems like a one-sided rap battle/video game, featuring an actress that looks pretty close to Hillary. It starts of with a man in a frog costume riding a unicycle, immediately referencing Donald Trump’s co-opting of Pepe the frog meme by the alt-right, originally becoming a white-supremacist frog and then Donald Trump. The video punches with this first reference and then goes straight into a "Damn Daniel" meme reference starring Hillary Clinton, a red backpack and her education policy. There's definitely something going on with Lipton Tea, but I'm not getting the reference. Pretty quick after that it becomes a video game of Hillary destroying, alluding the the military power she's weilded in her political career... as the music bulids, Hillary becomes more sinister, and not long after that, her creepy floating head asks "I'm sorry, are my memes too dank for you?" as a wheel of pizza, smiley faces and a swimming fish spin behind her. The whole thing is visually stunning and chock-full of references to internet culture. Both videos seem to make fun of pop culture and American politics in a very dark way. It's almost as if the video creator, Mike Diva, is just playing on how messed-up and entangled politics have become with populist internet junk, how this type of misinformation or communication is the driving force behind a lot of power in our nation, and the dark implications of this relationship.


Also this vine compilation is pretty awesome.