Social Media

Black Twitter Is the New "Green Book"

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Black Twitter Is the New "Green Book" Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/11/2022 - 00:00

Lisa Marshall

More than a half-century after the last publication of the The Negro Motorist Green Book, a modern-day version is flourishing in the online community of Black Twitter, finds new ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder research.

“The Green Book was designed to help Black people navigate a racist society, and unfortunately we still exist in a racist society,” said Shamika Klassen (PhDInfoSci’24), a PhD candidate in the College of Media, Communication and Information. “Black Twitter provides a powerful space in which Black people can share tips and experiences about navigating it.”

Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book provided guidance on how to resist discrimination everywhere from hotels to state parks. Black Twitter is not a separate platform, but rather, as Klassen described, it is an “open secret waiting in plain sight for those who know how to find it.” Users connect via hashtags related to shared Black experiences, like #BlackLivesMatter, #DrivingWhileBlack and #COVIDWhileBlack.

For a recent study, Klassen collected more than 75,000 tweets and conducted 18 in-depth interviews with Black Twitter users.

She found that users rely on it much like they did the Green Book — to seek out recommendations, call out racist businesses and plug into political activism. But they also complained of “outsiders”posting racist comments, police hovering to gather information, discriminatory moderation and “culture vultures” who appropriated tweets without giving credit.

As someone who studies how social justice intersects with technology, Klassen sees online communities like Black Twitter as vital resources for underrepresented communities. And, she noted, these communities are often underrepresented in the tech world. She hopes her research will inspire companies to work harder to support and protect such spaces, with guidance from people who need and use them.

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Photo courtesy Sara Hertwig Photography (Shamika)

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder research by PhD candidate Shamika Klassen shows how Black Twitter serves underrepresented communities.

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TikTok Ethics: Is Social Tech Such a Threat?

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 07:00:00 +0000

TikTok Ethics: Is Social Tech Such a Threat? Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/11/2022 - 00:00

Grace Dearnley

When Casey Fiesler posted her first TikTok in November 2020, she wasn't expecting much.

She had shared her expertise online through op-eds and YouTube videos. But, after a YouTube comment mentioned TikTok might widen her digital audience, Fiesler tried it out, albeit skeptically.

“I didn’t think of TikTok as an educational platform,” said Fiesler. “And then it surprised me.”

Within months, several of her videos had hundreds of thousands of views, and one about the Wall Street Journal’s investigation into TikTok’s algorithm had been watched 1.3 million times.

It seemed TikTok users craved insight into the ethics of their favorite platforms, and Fiesler was poised to give it to them. An assistant professor, National Science Foundation CAREER Grant recipient and researcher in technology ethics, internet law and policy, and online communities, Fiesler makes a living scrutinizing technology — especially social networks.

Her philosophy errs not on the side of demonizing big tech, but instead empathizes with the unique challenges companies face in taming digital platforms. According to Fiesler, the websites aren't inherently unethical — social platforms present ethical conundrums.

Social platforms have been scrutinized for creating and perpetuating racial biases. While creators and programmers tend to be blamed for the flaws in social platforms, Fiesler says the issue is more complex.

“Obviously there are biased people everywhere, including in technology design. But ... for AI, these systems are typically based on data that is coming from somewhere — historical data or user engagement and user behaviors, for example.”

In other words, human biases become machine biases.

For example, TikTok has caught controversy over claims its “For You Page” recommendations favor white creators, but Fiesler isn’t convinced TikTok is the only party to blame.

“When it comes to suppression of certain communities on TikTok, it could be intentional, but it could also be based on the biases of the people who are scrolling past some content and watching other content,” said Fiesler, explaining the platform may be reflecting users’ existing discriminatory tendencies, amplifying a problem that was already there. “However, there are strategies that TikTok could be using to mitigate the resulting inequities.”

Whatever the scandal, from racist soap dispensers to unfair content moderation, Fiesler’s viewers wanted to learn more. So, Fiesler adapted her “Information Ethics & Policy” class for TikTok, and everyone’s invited.

The public digital class is complete with micro-lectures, a syllabus and office hours held on TikTok LIVE. It sparks comment-section debate over classic ethical problems and discusses topics like deontology and self-driving cars.

What drives Fiesler’s passion project? To better the digital realm through education and empowering critique. She believes users will create positive change if they know how to hold social platforms accountable for their ethical shortcomings and to act responsibly on the apps.

As Fiesler’s TikTok followers grow to nearly 100,000 and counting, more users understand the implications — both positive and negative — of the technology they use to shape and share their lives.

“Social media is really good for people, and social media is really bad for people,” said Fiesler. “Those two things can be true at the same time.”

One can enjoy the internet and hold it accountable: Fiesler’s work empowers people to do so.

“I love social media, and I think it has done amazing things for the world. That is why I critique it,” said Fiesler. “We need to critique the things we love because we want them to be better.”

Follow Casey Fiesler on TikTok and Instagram and Twitter.

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Illustration by Franziska Barczyk

CMCI’s Casey Fiesler was awarded a $500,000 NSF Career Grant to study ethical implications of technology design.

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Forever Buffs Network Launch

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 06:00:00 +0000

Forever Buffs Network Launch Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/09/2020 - 23:00

Mechanical engineer Chip Bollendonk (MechEngr, MS’17) wants to meet other Buffs in his field, especially those working near him in the Denver area. He also hopes to reconnect with former hallmates from his first year on campus.

The new Forever Buffs Network makes it easy to meet new Buffs and find old friends.
The online community for ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder alumni launched this September and functions like a ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ-only social media platform allowing Buffs to connect with each other over jobs, businesses and ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ memories.

“Within my first 15 minutes on the platform, I had imported my professional profile from LinkedIn and was reminiscing about my residence halls, clubs and activities at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ as I noted my different affiliations,” said Bollendonk.

In addition to mentorship and volunteer opportunities, alumni can post jobs, individually message former classmates or search and add to a business directory with Buff-owned businesses in a given area.

“I can’t wait to get off a plane in any city and search for a Buff-owned restaurant for dinner that night,” said Julann Andresen (Mktg’85), Alumni Association senior director of events and outreach who helped launch the network.

The network — which is compatible with LinkedIn — includes names and basic degree information for more than 270,000 alumni. Once an alum officially registers, information such as employment, location, former ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ residence hall and more can be made visible to other Buff users.

The Forever Buffs Network will soon include ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder students, faculty, staff and parents for even broader engagement. Smaller groups, tailored to colleges and schools or affinity groups, allow Buffs to connect and share across common experiences and interests.

Said Andresen: “This tool allows Buffs to connect no matter where they are in the world.”

Find out more or register for the Forever Buffs Network at foreverbuffsnetwork.com.

The new Forever Buffs Network connects ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ alumni worldwide.

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When the Government Speaks

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 06:00:00 +0000

When the Government Speaks Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/01/2019 - 00:00

Eric Gershon

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Law professor Helen Norton, author of the new book The Government’s Speech and the Constitution, examines the nature, complexities and limits of government expression — including whether the president may block you on Twitter.

Could you define ‘government speech’?

When I talk about the government’s speech, I’m referring to the speech of a governmental body like an agency or a legislature — think of the surgeon general’s report on tobacco or a congressional committee report — and the speech of an individual who speaks when backed by the government’s power, like the attorney general announcing official policy or a police officer interrogating a suspect.

What’s the difference between the government’s free speech right and an individual citizen’s?

The First Amendment gives each of us the right to be free from the government’s unjustified interference with our speech. But because governments have to speak in order to govern, the First Amendment doesn’t forbid the government from speaking on its own behalf — from expressing its own views.

This explains why tobacco companies don’t have a First Amendment right to force the surgeon general to deliver their opinions on the benefits of cigarettes, and why the President’s critics don’t have a First Amendment right to share the podium at the State of the Union address. What the First Amendment protects is dissenting speakers’ freedom to write their own reports and hold their own press conferences.

Are there any unambiguous legal restraints on government speech?

Think of government threats that silence dissenters as effectively jailing them, or government lies that pressure targets into relinquishing their constitutional rights as effectively denying those rights. When the government’s speech inflicts those sorts of injuries, it violates specific constitutional rights.

But difficult questions arise when we disagree — and often we do — about whether the government’s speech has actually caused those harms.

May the President of the United States legally block you on Twitter?

Is there a distinction between ‘the government’ and individual government leaders?

Often it’s clear when individual government officials speak for the government rather than in their capacity as private citizens — for example, when they issue press releases on government letterhead or otherwise specifically invoke their governmental power. On the other hand, government officials can and do speak as private citizens when they speak on matters unrelated to their governmental position — think, for instance, of a government official’s social media platform devoted to her thoughts about soccer or her summer reading list.

In your book, you note many examples of speech by U.S. presidents, including President Trump’s tweets. Does a U.S. president using his official Twitter account have the right to block a U.S. citizen from viewing his messages?

Not if he does so simply because he disagrees with them.

When a government official conducts official business on Twitter or other social media platforms, he is speaking as the government. This means his critics don’t have a First Amendment right to stop him from tweeting or to change his tweets to their liking — just as they have no First Amendment right to grab his microphone at a public speech.

But when a government official chooses to speak to the public about the government’s work through platforms like Twitter that permit the public’s commentary, the First Amendment forbids the government from excluding members of the public just because the government doesn’t like their views.

Are you following any interesting government speech cases?

Helen Norton

A federal appellate court in July issued an opinion in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, which involves the issues you raised in your last question. The bottom line is that the court correctly recognized that the First Amendment allows the government to speak to us, including through social media, but denies the government the power to silence or punish our dissent. This case gave the court the chance to remind government officials about the constitutional consequences of their expressive choices.

What got you thinking deeply about government speech?

I helped lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division during the Clinton administration, so I have some experience with the issues that arise when speaking for the government. After I entered academia, my early work in this area focused on the value of the government’s speech so long as its governmental source is made clear. As the years passed, I also became interested in the dark side of the government’s speech — the government’s destructive expressive choices. This led me to wonder whether and when the Constitution limits the government’s speech.

I hear you’re a volunteer firefighter as well as a law professor.

Shortly after my husband and I moved to the mountains, nearly 10 years ago, we were evacuated for the Four Mile Fire. Our neighbor, a volunteer firefighter, helped keep our home safe while we were gone, and we wanted to pay it forward. I never expected to become a firefighter in my middle years, but I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve seen and done things I never expected to see or do.

What do you make of the U.S. Forest Service’s Smokey Bear campaign?

The Smokey Bear campaign is one of the longest-running and arguably most effective examples of government speech of all time. Through Smokey, the Forest Service tells us that “only you can prevent ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ” — and nobody wants to disappoint Smokey!

Condensed and edited.

ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Law professor Helen Norton examines the nature, complexities and limits of government expression — including whether the president may block you on Twitter.

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Life After Death on the Internet

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 17:00:00 +0000

Life After Death on the Internet Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/01/2018 - 10:00

Lisa Marshall

As our lives go digital, Jed Brubaker is studying what happens to all that data after we die.

If Jed Brubaker were to die tomorrow, his husband, Steven, would become the steward of his Facebook page.

His profile picture would remain as it is today, a neat headshot of the 36-year-old assistant professor sporting a goatee, pale blue glasses and a slightly mischievous smile. His cover image might be switched to the lake in Utah where he’d like to have his ashes spread. Above that picture would be a single word, “Remembering,” carefully chosen to alert visitors that he was gone but, in this sacred online space, not forgotten.

Brubaker has painstakingly thought through this scenario, not because he is obsessed with death or Facebook, but because it’s his job to think about it.

As one of the few scholars in the nation to study what happens to our data — including our social media presence — after we die, he’s been instrumental in developing Facebook’s Legacy Contact, the feature that enables users to determine the postmortem fate of their profile. Now, as a founding faculty member in ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder’s new information science department, he’s working to further improve the ways people experience death online, via new algorithms, apps and features designed to sensitively acknowledge a fact tech companies have tended to ignore: People die.

“In social computing, companies think about designing for all kinds of different aspects of our lives — wedding anniversaries, birthdays, you name it,” said Brubaker. “But they have overlooked perhaps the most profound one of all, which is when those lives come to an end.”

That’s where he comes in.

“I’m that guy,” he said. “I’m the death guy.”

Pathways

Brubaker’s circuitous career path wound through the arts, psychology and tech before leading to a nascent field that manages to incorporate all of the above.

Growing up in Utah, where he was an avid dancer, he dreamed of a career in theater. But his empathetic nature drew him toward psychology. He earned that degree at University of Utah while doing web design on the side, a gig that detoured him into the tech startup world for five years.

Once that life ceased to fulfill him, he pursued a master’s in communication, culture and technology at Georgetown University. When his adviser suggested he get a PhD in information science, he shot him a blank look: “I said, ‘What is information science?’”

The field, which explores the messy intersection of social science and computer science, seemed a perfect fit.

“I tend to gravitate toward the stuff that doesn’t make sense yet, where the fundamental research question is WTF?” he said.

In 2009, while working toward his PhD at the University of California Irvine, he was scrolling through the Facebook page of an acquaintance when he sensed something odd.

Posts on her “wall,” or digital message board, seemed to come mostly on birthdays and carried a somber tone. A few more minutes of scrolling confirmed his sinking feeling.

She was dead, but Facebook had continued to send out birthday reminders and advance her age in her profile. Online, she was 23. In the flesh, she never made it to 20.

“It was eerie,” he recalls.

Jed Brubaker

Not long after that, Facebook launched a well-meaning algorithm called “Reconnect” which sent a message to users encouraging them to “share the latest news” with Facebook friends who hadn’t logged on for a while. The launch, shortly before Halloween, was a PR disaster, as many users got messages nudging them to post on the walls of people who hadn’t logged on for good reason. They’d died.

“It was a technical screw up with very deep social consequences, but how could Facebook have done any differently?” Brubaker recalls. “If people are dead, they can’t remove their own accounts, and if Facebook doesn’t know they are dead, how can they exclude them from these algorithms? It was a bigger problem than anyone realized at the time.”

As Brubaker watched heartbroken family members express their frustration on social media — one woman was asked to contact a friend who had recently been murdered; another was encouraged to post on the wall of her deceased son — he arrived at his next research project.

He would spend the next five years interviewing hundreds of social media users about their encounters with postmortem accounts.

“He saw this issue emerging and took it upon himself to completely redefine a new research area,” said Gillian Hayes, a professor of informatics at UC Irvine and Brubaker’s adviser at the time.

Digital Tombstone

Almost overwhelmingly, people he interviewed about their interaction with the pages of dead loved ones said they liked having a sort of “digital tombstone” where they could post messages, share stories and grieve.

But privacy settings often had sad unintended consequences.

At the time, Facebook managed member deaths — if it learned of them at all — by “memorializing” or freezing their account. The profile still existed for people to post on, but no one had access to control it or manage it.

In some cases, adolescent users died suddenly, leaving behind a profile photo their parents found objectionable (a party pic, a snarky cartoon). When loved ones asked to have the photo changed, Facebook — lacking any idea what the deceased person would have wanted — would decline. In one case, a grieving father who was not friends with his son on Facebook asked if he could be added as a friend so he could participate in the remembrances. He couldn’t be.

I’m that guy— The death guy”

Once the company got wind of Brubaker’s research, it enlisted his help, not only to provide insight into the problem, but to help solve it.

In February 2015, when Brubaker was still a student, Facebook launched Legacy Contact, allowing users to designate a steward of their account who could write a final post, change or update profile or cover photos, add friends and even download photos to share with loved ones not on Facebook.

The carefully chosen word “Remembering” would gently indicate the person had passed, while inviting visitors to interact.

“It can often be so hard for young researchers to get the outside world to care about their research,” said Hayes. “To have Facebook launch this product based on his research while he was still writing his dissertation was just amazing.”

A Kinder, Gentler Wake

Brubaker continues to work with Facebook to study and refine Legacy Contact, and his research has inspired other social media companies to explore how they deal with user deaths.

At his Identity Lab on the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ campus, Brubaker also has begun exploring other challenges related to online discourse about life, identity and death.

Because social media enables us to rediscover acquaintances we haven’t spoken with for decades, for instance, we are now subjected to more individual deaths than any generation that has come before us. That raises sticky questions.

“How are you supposed to grieve the death of someone you would have otherwise forgotten?” he said, noting that when people grieve too openly online, they’re often accused of “rubbernecking” or “grief tourism.”

In one recent study co-authored with Katie Gach, a doctoral student at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ’s ATLAS Institute, the duo analyzed thousands of online comments responding to the deaths of Prince, David Bowie and actor Alan Rickman. They found that commenters routinely mocked others. Some even dissed the dead.

“These people were fighting in what was essentially an online wake. This would never happen in a normal, prenewsfeed world,” said Brubaker, who believes subtle changes could be made to algorithms so the most toxic online comments (which tend to get the most clicks) don’t necessarily rise to the top.

I hope death is a little bit kinder to people”

He and his students are also mulling outside-the-box ideas that could someday extend the way we interact with the dead via their data.

Want to go to grandma’s favorite restaurant and order her favorite dish on her birthday? Maybe you could tap into her Yelp data to find out what it was.

Missing an old friend? Maybe you could summon a data-driven, holographic representation of her.

Brubaker knows this sounds creepy. But there was a time when photographs or videos of the dead seemed creepy to the living. As technology changes, we change too.

“Whether it will be acceptable or not all depends on how it is designed,” he said.

How would he like to see his own memory live on?

“I just hope that as a result of my work, death is a little bit kinder to people.”

Illustration by Josh Cochran/ Photo courtesy Jed Brubaker

As our lives go digital, Jed Brubaker is studying what happens to all that data after we die.

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Social Media a Possible Lifesaver During Disasters

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Social Media a Possible Lifesaver During Disasters Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/01/2009 - 00:00

In June, Twitter awed the world with its potential for breaking news during the Iranian election protests. Meanwhile, the number of users on Facebook has skyrocketed from 50 million to 300 million users in just two years.

As the popularity of online social networking sites increases, assistant professor Leysia Palen of computer science thinks some of the cyberspace chitchat that occurs during a crisis could help save lives. She hopes to develop a way to filter seemingly reliable information from Facebook, Twitter, various blogs and other social media and make it available in one place through a web or mobile application. This cache of valuable information could help officials and citizens make better decisions about how to react in a situation.

The National Science Foundation awarded her research team $2.4 million to develop the program.

“When situations are dire, and the magnitude of an emergency affects a region, we know that people are quite resourceful at doing what they can to survive and help others,” Palen says. “Today this means turning to online sources to collate information from many places to try to make the best decisions possible.”

In June, Twitter awed the world with its potential for breaking news during the Iranian election protests.

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Social Media

Black Twitter Is the New "Green Book"

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Life After Death on the Internet

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