Tag: toward

At Catholic Colleges Students Leave With Less Positive Attitudes Toward Gay People Than Their Peers – But That’s Not The Whole Story
Journalism

At Catholic Colleges Students Leave With Less Positive Attitudes Toward Gay People Than Their Peers – But That’s Not The Whole Story

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Students at Catholic colleges and universities begin their studies with more positive attitudes toward gay, lesbian and bisexual people than their peers at evangelical colleges and universities, our survey found. But that’s no longer the case by the time they graduate. Multidisciplinary research teams at Ohio State University, North Carolina State University and Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based nonprofit, surveyed 3,486 students attending 122 institutions of various types, sizes and affiliations. Our study, the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey, polled the students three times over their time in college – in the fall of 2015, the spring of 2016 and the spring of 2019. W...
Here’s How Instagram’s Redesign Shifts Toward Shopping Can Be Harmful
BUSINESS, SOCIAL MEDIA

Here’s How Instagram’s Redesign Shifts Toward Shopping Can Be Harmful

Recently, when I opened Instagram, I noticed that the usual spot for checking notifications is now a Shop tab. The Instagram blog post announcing the redesign said that the change will support small businesses and connect people with their favorite brands and creators. This made me pause. As a researcher who studies social media, people and society, I’m concerned about the effects of surveillance capitalism. This includes social media companies profiting from collecting user data, making algorithmic inferences about people’s preferences and using this information to target people with advertising. Features like Instagram’s Shop tab facilitate surveillance capitalism, so it’s important to look at their consequences. Many people use Instagram to share their lives with other people, but the...
Memorial for Lynching Victims a First Step Toward Reconciliation
Journalism

Memorial for Lynching Victims a First Step Toward Reconciliation

It offers a place of reckoning for generations of racial trauma. When she saw the name Ed Bracy on a placard in the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, 68-year-old Sophia Bracy Harris felt goosebumps. “I just went frozen for a moment,” she recalls. This was the relative she remembers hearing about as a child growing up in Elmore County, just north of Montgomery, Alabama. The story goes, Ed Bracy was hanged for his work organizing tenant farmers in the mid-1930s. “In that moment, I was aware that this was a family member, that this was a direct connection to me,” she says. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched from 1877 to 1950, giving rise to The Great Migration—as over 6 million African Americans left the South to resettle in the North and West. African Ame...