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Underserved Communities and Digital Discourse

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Underserved Communities and Digital Discourse Underserved Communities and Digital Discourse Underserved Communities and Digital Discourse Getting Voices Heard Edited by Victoria L. LaPoe, Candi S. Carter Olson, and Benjamin R. LaPoe II LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL Copyright © 2018 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available ISBN 978-1-4985-8516-3 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-8517-0 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America All authors’ proceeds go to the Native American Journalism Fellowship. More information about the fellowship and how to donate may be found at NAJA.com The authors thank their family, friends, mentors, and professors for assisting them in this academic journey, chronicling the history of underserved voices in media. The authors additionally send a special thanks to Liz and Ron DeMarse for the original artwork “Pluralism vs. Parts” designed specifically for this book and dedicated to Liz’s grandmother, who will forever support her. Contents Introduction: Community-Building in a Digital Era 1 Candi S. Carter Olson 1 “I Became More Aware of How Divided America Really Is”: Social Media Use, Fake News, and Spiral of Silence Before and After the 2016 U.S. Elections 17 Victoria L. LaPoe and Candi S. Carter Olson 2 “Absolutely Nothing Political in Nature”: Perceptions of Topics That Were Appropriate or “Too Controversial” for Social Media Discussion Around the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election 39 Candi S. Carter Olson and Victoria L. LaPoe 3 Digital Communication as a Promotion Building Community? Scholars’ Use of Social Media for Peer Communication 57 Stine Eckert, Candi S. Carter Olson, and Victoria L. LaPoe 4 Community Crisis and Coverage: Coping with Newsroom Compassion Fatigue 77 Victoria L. LaPoe, Mary A. Bemker, Candi S. Carter Olson, Mary T. Rogus, and Nerissa Young 5 Digital Crisis Community Communication: Tweeting the First Anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster: Responsibility, Recovery, and Commemoration 97 Victoria L. LaPoe and Andrea L. Miller vii viii Contents 6 Gender and Racial Real-life Discourse Around Fictional Programs: Sticking It to the Mother Myth: Discussing Race and Gender in Nurse Jackie and HawthoRNe Online 117 Benjamin R. LaPoe II, Victoria L. LaPoe, Daniel A. Berkowitz, and Mary A. Bemker 7 History and an International Community Perspective: “An Afternoon with Signor Lynch:” Roi Ottley’s World War II Frames 137 Benjamin R. LaPoe II and Jinx C. Broussard 8 The Black Press Tweets 157 Benjamin R. LaPoe II and Katie Lever 9 Online Momentum: Priming in the Native American Press 171 Benjamin R. LaPoe II and Victoria L. LaPoe 10 Ethics and Reporting on Native Communities: Going Beyond the Parachute Story 185 Victoria L. LaPoe, Rebecca J. Tallent, Tristan Ahtone, and Benjamin R. LaPoe II Conclusion: Clarity: Community-Building and Coverage During Convergence 205 Victoria L. LaPoe and Candi S. Carter Olson Index 213 About the Editors 215 About the Contributors 217 Introduction Community-Building in a Digital Era Candi S. Carter Olson Media creates community. Communication technology’s entire premise is based upon the supposition that human beings need to connect with one another, whether that’s in person or over long distances, and that the technol- ogy itself brings people together. Without the human element, communica- tion technology cannot exist. New communication technologies, however, have continually been disparaged as being divisive or as breaking down social bonds, particularly at the beginning of their integration into society. Of the shift from orality to literacy, Walter Ong (1982) argued, When a speaker is addressing an audience, the members of the audience nor- mally become a unity, with themselves and with the speaker. If the speaker asks the audience to read a handout provided for them, as each reader enters into his or her own private reading world, the unity of the audience is shat- tered, to be re-established only when oral speech begins again. Writing and print isolate (p. 72). Literate culture is divisive precisely because we cannot imagine two read- ers of the same magazine as being a unity without calling them an abstract “audience,” Ong said, while people having a face-to-face conversation are in community with one another. New communication technologies create new ways for people to connect, and therefore, they restructure the ways that we interact and become a community. This creates unease and confusion as people try to conceptualize what it means to have a relationship within a new communication paradigm. Community, then, is the issue at the core of debates about new communi- cation technologies. Do they create community? Or do they shatter it? Com- munity within the context of this conversation addresses any group of people 1 2 Introduction who are united by a shared set of values and identity, whether those people are in close proximity with one another or not. That idea of proximity is important when considering the idea of digital communities, which we will be address- ing in this book. Within Ong’s concept of community, only people within the same basic area or those who share a language can possibly be united together into a group with a shared set of values and identity. If you cannot speak orally with another person with a shared language, then you cannot possibly be in community with another person. However, the internet and the ability to digi- tally connect with people anywhere in the world creates an ever-changing idea of community that is important for creating and sustaining cultures. Carina Chocano (2018) writes: There’s an association that still lingers between a “community” and a physical location—the idyllic small town, say, or the utopian village, real or imagined. But the countless, ever-multiplying communities of today are something differ- ent: not collections of humans functioning in unison but random assortments of people who do the same things, like the same things, hate the same things or believe the same things. Life online is absolutely full of communities. (p. 10) Chocano (2018) argues that these communities, though, are controlled invis- ibly by large media companies that determine the tone and development of communities. Therefore, the communities are not so much organically formed entities as they are controlling powers that are invested more in money than they are in people. “They [the private companies controlling social media communities] eat away at the very thing that makes community worthwhile, until they’ve created something that’s not a community at all, but a simulation of one, a game with one winner and a community of losers” (Chocano, 2018, p. 11). The overwhelming claims of the internet’s divisive, isolating nature closely echo Ong’s words about the written word’s ability to divide and almost sound like history replicating itself. Researchers from Clemson Uni- versity and Texas Christian University found that “an individual’s tendency for online self-disclosure and online social connection led them to use the internet in more compulsive ways. If a person has poor face-to-face commu- nication skills that individual will likely be more attracted to the social fea- tures of online communication, which can foster [compulsive internet use]” (“The Negative Effects,” 2012, para. 3). The fears of isolation and addiction highlighted by this article are echoed in multiple sources, both academic and pop culture, and, ironically, on the internet itself. Clickbait headlines scream, “11 negative effects of internet on students and teenagers,” “17 harm- ful effects way too much internet can do to you,” “The negative effects of internet addiction in children,” “The negative effects of internet addiction.” Introduction 3 In perhaps a reflection of the internet’s anonymous and divisive nature trum- peted by the headlines, many of these clickbait articles had no author listed. The last one by Dr. David Lowenstein, an Ohio doctor who says that he is a frequent radio and TV guest and contributor to national magazines and newspapers, highlights four particular issues for people to worry about when it comes to internet use: the breakdown of communication, the increased need for instant gratification, an inability to focus on the present, and, as is highlighted in most of these articles, the internet’s effects on children (Dr. Dave, 2014). Again, all of these articles and studies highlight what Ong said of written language, which is that it segregates rather than unites. Within this context, only face-to-face communication has the ability to link people and create strong community connections. In contrast, several studies have found the opposite of this fear, instead concluding that the internet has the ability to bring people together, although the structure of those relationships is fundamentally different than relation- ships we have seen previously. In other words, communication technologies are remaking our relationships, not breaking them altogether. “The evidence of our work,” write Rainie and Wellman (2012), “is that none of these tech- nologies are isolated—or isolating—systems. People are not hooked on gadgets—they are hooked on each other” (p. 6). Technology is facilitating relationships on a scale never seen before, so trying to conceptualize the ways that people are connecting with each other in a series of networks that are not necessarily known to one another but are connected by an individual is dif- ficult to conceptualize for many people.
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