There are several hinderances and conflictions embedded within the nature and subject matter of this topic. The most obvious is due to the social media aspect and the fact that my entirety of data comes from a source that is ever changing, shifting in focus, and audience participation. I recognize that I will never be able to fully analyze and research the data content of social media fully. This research never ends, but merely finds a stopping place when repetition is recognized.
The concluding point of my research came simply due to deadlines, for this type of research, I think, could never reach a final and cohesive end. I began my topic selection early in the semester with simply wanting to examine misogyny in social media through celebrity accounts, but consistently changed my focus to become more detailed, as I continued to gain more knowledge in class and participate in discussion regarding the current political climate. My minor is in Women’s Studies, so I thought that I would benefit from expanding my knowledge and exposure to current news, discussions, and interaction on an active platform. I recognized that I also had distant personal exposure to rape culture and felt that I could use this to my benefit in the way of understanding, empathizing, and analyzing the data I collected.
My thoughts on the data I would find before I officially began searching social media platforms would be that I would come across a majority of sexist, ignorant trolls and flamers who argue that rape culture doesn’t exist and their pet eagle who is dyed red, white, and blue agrees. Damn it. Trump forever! This may stem from my more biased expectation that I have of social media in regards to stimulating topics such as this one, and that may stem from the resistance I have personally received on this topic. The first bit of social media data that I used was my muse throughout my research process, for it was social media that I was a direct participant of. It was a Facebook post in which an individual was ignorant of rape culture and feminism to the point of calling rape culture “crap” and using false biblically and biologically based logic as an argument. I responded in the best way possible of the time, but to no end.
When I began researching, I did so hesitantly, for I was not looking forward to seeing the negativity that I thought would follow. I searched Twitter for posts that included the hashtag “#rapeculture” to see what I would potentially be dealing with. The accuracy in variety of these tweets is not really substantial due to the fact that the Twitter users who would use a hashtag like this would either be strong advocates or strong denouncers of rape culture. I found that most who used this hashtag were being more positive in an advocation stance towards rape culture and were pointing out various truths in society in relation to this topic, many that are able to connect to the current political climate.
I then extended my search to Trump’s tweets themselves that were based upon sexism or misogyny, the comments beneath these tweets, and tweets about Trump’s words and actions specifically in relation to the subject of rape culture. Due to the trends and algorithms that are built into Twitter as a platform, it is hard to evade biases when searching for specific content. I knew that I would not find the trollers and flamers without having some personal connection with them, because you just can’t really search for that kind of content without running into a trending tweet and a whole lot of basicness that isn’t really helpful. I chose to use tweets from individuals both more and less known on a social and professional level. The one semi-troll that I came across was a less known individual and was responding to a more well-known individual and Twitter user. He became lost amongst the tweets of the more educated. Poor guy. Hopefully he learned something.
I found a lot of helpful material from news websites that had social media content included in their analysis and I followed he bread crumb trail even further due to the insight that they gave. I searched until I started to see a pattern, which was that I was consistently surprised with the level of positivity in which people were speaking with in their advocation for rape culture in the wake of the election.
My research ended with personal testimonies to bring it back down to Earth and make it hopefully make it more real and relevant. This may have not have been necessary or helpful to the argument I attempted to make, but I felt personally that it needed to be included, for it correlated with my topic.
No comments:
Post a Comment