Tag Archives: Summary

Summary 6: Better Online Living through content Mode Ration

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King, Melissa. “Better Online Living Through Content Mode Ration”. Model view Culture 28, ( 14 October 2015), web. 6 March 2016.

The title of this article is Better Online Living Through Content Mode Ration written by Melissa King. The article is about how content control offers features like block and ignore functions, content/trigger warnings, block-lists and privacy options, which is helpful to people who need to moderate their time online. Some users may suffer from PTSD and need to avoid topics and people that trigger their anxiety. Post traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) can occur after you’ve been through a traumatic event. Other users may simply understand the limits of their patience and choose to make their online experience less irritating.  The other topic is about the argument against content control like how the reactions are out of .

Some of the users who use these tools are labeled as weak and sensitive. So the criticizing of social modern tools leaves users in a culture that pressures people to experience far more catastrophe. Any issues that arise becomes entirely the victims problem when their attacked online and how they need to” just deal with it”.  A good example of this would be cyber bullying. Content control is helpful in limiting the worst of these effects which can cause PTSD if it’s very severe or long enough.

One Major argument against content control it that people blow the abuse and harassment they receive out of proportions.  Also, how they should try to be “less sensitive”. The argument draws an informal parallel to Exposure Therapy, which is a type of therapy designed to combat severe anxiety through gradual and exposure to its source. Its not about having random internet strangers hurl insults and thetas and somewhat they want to become mentally durable. However, without controlled exposure some suffering from PTSD is likely to have their trauma magnified when face with trigger content.

Also, another argument against content control rely on the myth that it’s just mean words on the internet with no real threat to safety. The idea is that harassment can’t cause PTSD according to pop culture its something that only veterans can get. For example, licensed clinical psychologist/ professor of Psychologist Caleb Lack specializes in treating anxiety states that ” Bullying has long been known to have a severe impact on the mental health, particularly if the bullying is repeated and prolonged”, ” Yes, you can get PTSD from twitter”.  He also goes on to stat that its specifically the bullying or harassing that could lead to PTSD or PTSD symptoms. long-term exposure to threatening situations like harassment can for fact cause problems and is one of the major causes of PTSD.

Blacklists is one of the more recent content control to be added in direct response to hate groups. Like Gamergate, TERFs, and white supremacists. In response it has gathered vehement objection  and reproach of users, mostly using legal action. The most compelling argument comes from people who do not harass or threaten people, who are in “middle of the road” and paint both sides on the issue as unreasonable. Suggesting that dialogue is in order to solve the whole harassment problem.

 

Summary 5: Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments

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The title of this Article is Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments written by Mary Hocks. There are  two main topics of her article one is how visual rhetoric operate in academic hypertexts. The other one is the three key terms of Visual Digital Rhetoric: audience stance, transparency, and hybridity and how each effects the transformative process. Analyzing the three terms/ hypertexts on the article Monitoring Order and the television program Xena The Warrior Princess.

Visual Rhetoric also known as visual strategies is used for meaning and persuasion, its importance amplified by visual and interactive hypertext and media writing. Hypertext( non-sequential) writing is defined as the underlying concept defining the structure of the world wide web. For example, professional Anne Wysocki created a hypertext titled Monitoring Order and professional Christine Boese crafted a hypertext titled  ” The Ballad of the Internet Nutball”. Another example, is a website on the theater performance topic of colorblind produced by Spellman college students enrolled in a Shakespeare course.  Hock stated that by putting their work on the web, the students were creating ” New Knowledge For A Real Audience”. Also, since the appearance of hypertext and other new media it’s difficult to separate words from visuals or privilege one over the other

Audience Stance refers to the interaction of the audience with the online piece of writing and Aristotelian concept of ethos; the audience can effect the audience interaction with the website. Transparency refers to the way in which  the outline writing resembles the culturally familiar scenes with their own conventions. Which includes print, graphic, design, film, and web pages. Hybridity refers to the way online writing mingles visual and verbal elements in its overall presentation. Which can be the aesthetic response in online writers and in audience.  For example, Boese does a ethnography and analysis of the fans and cult like dedication to the television program Xena the Warrior Princess. She describes the audience stance as the opening screen though music, images, text, and hypertext structures.

Boese creates ethos that is engaged insider, co-participant, and scholarly investigator, that assumes an engaged online audience of fans. She also refers to the audience fans as the ” co-authors”. Her visual strategies are also important to her argument used to motivate and engage in the online culture called the Xenoverse. Yet Boese interface design is not very transparent offering an unfamiliar multidimensional structure, which takes advantage of non-linear hypertexual form. Using multiple frames, linking strategies, and multiple media. Bouese uses several forms of navigation like a  picture of Gabriele ( who is one the main characters and sidekick to Xena) that leads to the narrative reading texts.

Hocks demonstrates she knows that she addressing a knowledgeable professional audience. She begins her article by addressing the recently scholarly emphasis on ” the central role of the visual rhetoric for writers”. She also takes into account recent scholarly work that tries to combine rhetoric with hypertext by authors like Gary h. and Patricia Sullivan.

 

 

 

Hocks, Mary E. ” Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments”. College composition and Communication 54.4 ( June 2013): 629-56. web. 5 March 2016.

Reading Summary 3: Recognizing campus Landscapes as Learning Space

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The article starts of describing how American higher education are facing changes and challenges in providing good learning spaces for diverse and evolving needs of college children. Like continued enrollment growth, technological challenges, and financial challenges. In 2009, 20.4 million children were enrolled in 2 or 4 year colleges/universities. Enrollments are also expected to rise 2019, 9% for students under 25 and 23% for students over 25.  The article talks about confronting the traditional notions of how university spaces are designed and used for effectiveness.

How Americans expect their universities to look different then other places because it expresses the academic life. Todays universities most encompass more than technological, classroom additions, and its academic buildings. The entire campus including the open spaces most be perceived as a holistic learning space that provides a holistic learning experience. Learning takes place throughout campus not just indoors in designated instructional spaces. Only one-fifth of the students time is spent in the classroom, contributing to one quarter of the learning variance. Open spaces on campus can play an important part in students learning and a strong influence on students initial and long standing experiences. Which promotes a sense of belong to the learning community. However the influences of open spaces are usually overlooked.

The college experience is a stimulating and demanding time in a students life which requires frequent and heavy use of direct focused attention and concentration. Which puts university students at a higher risk of attentional fatigue. Increase in technological use also increase the odds of students attentional fatigue. Campus natural open spaces have sadly not been systematically examined for replenishing cognitive functioning for attentional fatigued students. One way to  examine this is to consider the entire campus with its building and natural open spaces as a well-networked landscape system that supports students learning experiences. Highlighting the two concepts: 1. direct and indirect attention and restoration, 2. a holistic landscape.

American colleges and universities were self-sufficient and usually in rural areas with dormitories, dinning halls and recreational areas. Many university founders desired to create a ideal community that was a place apart, secluded from city desecrations but still open to the larger community. The advent of land-grant intuitions through the Morrill Act of 1862 required new buildings to be built with laboratories and observatory space in agriculture. Unlike the classical designs of America’s first institutions, the physical campus of the land- grant was designed to significant contribute to student learning. Fredrik Law Olmstead worked with the philosophy that physical landscape features had a direct impact on shaping human behavior, and offers students experimental education passive or theoretical learning.

 

Scholl, Kathleen & Gowri Betrabet Gulwadi. “Recognizing Campus Landscapes as learning Spaces”. Journal of Learning Spaces [online] 4.1(2015): n pag. web. 16 Feb. 2016

Achohen.”A Beautiful Space, a Usable Space: The Balance of Library Design “. The Library Incubator. Web. 13 April 2015. 16 February 2016.