Sunday, December 22

Tag: social

Social networks aim to erase hate but miss the target on guns
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SOCIAL MEDIA

Social networks aim to erase hate but miss the target on guns

As Facebook faces down a costly boycott campaign demanding the social network do more to combat hate speech, CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced plans to ban a “wider category of hateful content in ads.” Twitter, YouTube and Reddit have also taken additional steps to curtail online hate, removing several inflammatory accounts. But as social networks refine their policies and update algorithms for detecting extremism, they overlook a major source of hateful content: gun talk. As a researcher of online extremism, I examined the user policies of social networks and found that while each address textbook forms of hate speech, they give a pass to the widespread use of gun rhetoric that celebrates or promotes violence. In fact, the word “gun” appears but once in Facebook’s policy on “Viole...
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Confederate flags fly worldwide, igniting social tensions and inflaming historic traumas
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Confederate flags fly worldwide, igniting social tensions and inflaming historic traumas

The United States isn’t the only country debating Confederate symbols. The Confederate flag can be seen flying in Ireland, Germany, Brazil and beyond. Sometimes, the red-white-and-blue-crossed flag is seemingly displayed as kitsch, a kind of Americana. Brazil’s ‘Festa Confederada.’ Organizers say the annual event celebrates their Southern American heritage, but some Black Brazilians disagree. Jordan Brasher, CC BY-SA Other times, its display conveys a political meaning more reflective of the flag’s origins in the slave-holding, Southern American republic. Wherever the Confederacy crops up, controversy usually follows. My academic research as a cultural geographer traces how Confederate iconography gets stitched into the cultural fabric of places thousands of miles from the United States....
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When states pass social liberalization laws, they create regional advantages for innovation
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POLITICS

When states pass social liberalization laws, they create regional advantages for innovation

What conditions lead to world-changing innovation? It’s an important question for business and government leaders. Contrary to the traditional notion of the solitary scientist, new products, services and technologies are rarely conceived by a single person. Instead, they’re developed and refined through feedback from colleagues, end users and collaborators. So it’s not surprising that characteristics of the social context can influence innovation. But how can you create the social context that facilitates innovation? My collaborator and I zeroed in on the idea of looking at social liberalization policies – laws like those that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, for instance – as a measure for a more open and diverse social environment. We found that states that impleme...
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How fake accounts constantly manipulate what you see on social media – and what you can do about it
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SOCIAL MEDIA

How fake accounts constantly manipulate what you see on social media – and what you can do about it

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram started out as a way to connect with friends, family and people of interest. But anyone on social media these days knows it’s increasingly a divisive landscape. Undoubtedly you’ve heard reports that hackers and even foreign governments are using social media to manipulate and attack you. You may wonder how that is possible. As a professor of computer science who researches social media and security, I can explain – and offer some ideas for what you can do about it. Bots and sock puppets Social media platforms don’t simply feed you the posts from the accounts you follow. They use algorithms to curate what you see based in part on “likes” or “votes.” A post is shown to some users, and the more those people react – positively or neg...
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Workplaces are turning to devices to monitor social distancing, but does the tech respect privacy?
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TECHNOLOGY

Workplaces are turning to devices to monitor social distancing, but does the tech respect privacy?

As we emerge from the coronavirus lockdown, those of us who still have a workplace may not recognize it. Businesses, eager to limit liability for employees and customers, are considering a variety of emerging technologies for limiting pandemic spread. These technologies can be loosely divided into two types: one based on cellphone technologies and the other using wearable devices like electronic bracelets and watches. Both approaches focus on maintaining social distancing, nominally six feet between any two workers based on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and supported by some modeling. Most workers will have little choice whether to participate in their employer’s risk mitigation. As a networking and security researcher, I believe that it is essential that...
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Doctors can’t treat COVID-19 effectively without recognizing the social justice aspects of health
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COVID-19, SOCIAL JUSTICE

Doctors can’t treat COVID-19 effectively without recognizing the social justice aspects of health

Recent data shows that black, Latino, indigenous and immigrant communities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19, due in large part to the persistent legacy of structural racism – practices and policies that systematically benefit white people and harm people of color. From the Bronx and Queens, New York to the Mission District in San Francisco, to the Navajo Nation and black communities of New Orleans, Detroit and Oakland, the message is clear: COVID-19 highlights our societal failures at the intersections of public health, health care and social justice. If health inequities weren’t severe and oppressive enough, add on the layer of police brutality that takes black lives on a regular basis. No matter where we look, our system has continually devalued black bodies and lives. As an...
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HOTTOPIC: 4 ways COVID-19 has exposed gaps in the US social safety net
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COVID-19

HOTTOPIC: 4 ways COVID-19 has exposed gaps in the US social safety net

The United States is experiencing its steepest economic slide in modern history. Tens of millions of Americans have filed new unemployment claims as the coronavirus shutters businesses and forces companies to lay off staff. People need support to help them through the crisis in a few key ways – cash to meet immediate financial needs, health care to cover them should they become ill and housing even if they can’t make rent. Despite federal stimulus efforts north of US$2 trillion – so far – it is likely that some of those currently being affected will fall through the cracks. As a scholar who studies how people enroll in public programs, I and my colleague Cecille Joan Avila, who researches social programs related to women’s health, have seen how well-intentioned policies can sometimes fai...
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Social distancing is no reason to stop service learning – just do it online
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EDUCATION, Journalism

Social distancing is no reason to stop service learning – just do it online

At Troy University in Alabama, students went online to help a county with a high infant mortality rate in the state of Georgia to analyze health disparities and develop solutions. At Cornell University, where I teach, law students are providing legal services online to death-row inmates in Tanzania and children and young farmworkers in upstate New York. At five state universities in the U.S. heartland, students are helping Michigan towns create government websites. These are all examples of “e-service learning” – that is, service learning that takes place online. Service learning refers to a wide range of student experiences meant to help a community organization, local government or business. I am an education researcher and – along with my colleague Yue Li – I am investigating the b...
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How cafes, bars, gyms, barbershops and other ‘third places’ create our social fabric
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IN OTHER NEWS

How cafes, bars, gyms, barbershops and other ‘third places’ create our social fabric

Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic implies many painful losses. Among them are so-called “third places” – the restaurants, bars, gyms, houses of worship, barber shops and other places we frequent that are neither work nor home. The third place is a concept in sociology and urban planning that recognizes the role these semi-public, semi-private places play in fostering social association, community identity and civic engagement. In giving people a familiar setting for social interaction among regulars, they encourage “place attachment” – that is, the bond between a person and a place. Now, experiencing the coronavirus from the fortress of our living spaces, we may enjoy the feeling of being in a haven that protects against this invisible new enemy. But we’ve lost the social an...
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We’re measuring online conversation to track the social and mental health issues surfacing during the coronavirus pandemic
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SOCIAL MEDIA

We’re measuring online conversation to track the social and mental health issues surfacing during the coronavirus pandemic

The big idea Social media posts and news reports are rich sources of data about people’s attitudes and behaviors. Using artificial intelligence techniques, it’s possible to sift through billions of words to discern trends in a population’s well-being, or social quality. Performing this analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing the damage the pandemic is doing to the social and psychological well-being of the U.S. At the AI Institute of the University of South Carolina, my colleagues and I have processed more than 700 million social media posts since the beginning of March and more than 700,000 news articles about the COVID-19 pandemic. We are monitoring these information sources to capture the evolving human experience in the U.S. during the pandemic. We have found troubling indi...
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