Browsing by Subject "activism"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Advocacy in Mental Health Social Interactions on Public Social Media
    (2022-02) Cornet, Victor P.; Holden, Richard J.; Bolchini, Davide; Brady, Erin; Mohler, George; Hong, Michin; Lee, Sangwon
    Health advocacy is a social phenomenon in which individuals and collectives attempt to raise awareness and change opinions and policies about health-related causes. Mental health advocacy is health advocacy to advance treatment, rights, and recognition of people living with a mental health condition. The Internet is reshaping how mental health advocacy is performed on a global scale, by facilitating and broadening the reach of advocacy activities, but also giving more room for opposing mental health advocacy. Another factor contributing to mental health advocacy lies in the cultural underpinnings of mental health in different societies; East Asian countries like South Korea have higher stigma attached to mental health compared to Western countries like the US. This study examines interactions about schizophrenia, a specific mental health diagnosis, on public social media (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) in two different languages, English and Korean, to determine how mental health advocacy and its opposition are expressed on social media. After delineation of a set of keywords for retrieval of content about schizophrenia, three months’ worth of social media posts were collected; a subset of these posts was then analyzed qualitatively using constant comparing with a proposed model describing online mental heath advocacy based on existing literature. Various expressions of light mental health advocacy, such as sharing facts about schizophrenia, and strong advocacy, showcasing offline engagement, were found in English posts; many of these expressions were however absent from the analyzed Korean posts that heavily featured jokes, insults, and criticisms. These findings were used to train machine learning classifiers to detect advocacy and counter-advocacy. The classifiers confirmed the predominance of counter-advocacy in Korean posts compared to important advocacy prevalence in English posts. These findings informed culturally sensitive recommendations for social media uses by mental health advocates and implications for international social media studies in human-computer interaction.
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    "But the half can never be told" : the lives of Cannelton's Cotton Mill women workers
    (2013) Koenigsknecht, Theresa A.; Morgan, Anita A.; Robertson, Nancy Marie, 1956-; Dichtl, John R., 1965-
    From 1851 to 1954, under various names, the Indiana Cotton Mills was the dominant industry in the small town of Cannelton, Indiana, mostly employing women and children. The female industrial laborers who worked in this mill during the middle and end of the nineteenth century represent an important and overlooked component of midwestern workers. Women in Cannelton played an essential role in Indiana’s transition from small scale manufacturing in the 1850s to large scale industrialization at the turn of the century. In particular, this work will provide an in-depth exploration of female operatives’ primary place in Cannelton society, their essential economic contributions to their families, and the unique tactics they used in attempts to achieve better working conditions in the mill. It will also explain the small changes in women’s work experiences from 1854 to 1884, and how ultimately marriage, not industrial work, determined the course of their later lives.
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    "Cuando Actuamos, Actuamos Juntos": Understanding the Intersections of Religion, Activism, and Citizenship within the Latino Community in Indianapolis
    (2014) Logan, Ryan Iffland; Vogt, Wendy A.; Hyatt, Susan B.; Dickerson-Putman, Jeanette
    Undocumented immigration from Latin America is a heated and divisive topic in United States' politics. Politicians in Washington, D.C. are debating new legislation which would provide a pathway to citizenship for some 11 million undocumented immigrants. While several federal immigration reform bills were debated in the early 2000s, each one failed in either the House of Representatives or in the Senate. The Indianapolis Congregation Action Network (IndyCAN), a grassroots activist group in Indianapolis, is organizing the Latino community through faith and shared political goals. Undocumented Latino immigrants are utilizing IndyCAN as a method to influence progressive policy change. However, anti-immigrant groups challenge these efforts by attempting to define who can be considered an "American" and are attempting to block legislation due to their negative perceptions of Latinos. Debates about citizenship have racial discourses and reveal the embeddedness of race and ethnicity. Despite this, many Latino immigrants are forging their own identities in the United States and are engaging in a political system that refuses to grant them a legal status. Through an enactment of activism called la fe en acción [faith in action], these immigrants ground their political organizing with IndyCAN and attempt to appeal to the religious faith of politicians. I explore issues of race, political engagement, and religion in the lives of Indianapolis’ Latino community. In this case study, I demonstrate that IndyCAN is acting as a vehicle through which undocumented Latino immigrants are engaging in the political process. This political involvement occurs through religious strategies that seem apolitical yet are implicitly an enactment of activism. Ultimately, I reveal how undocumented Latino immigrants in Indianapolis are impacting the political process regardless of their legal status.
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    Dick Gregory and Activist Style: Identifying Attributes of Humor necessary for Activist Advocacy
    (2013) Rossing, Jonathan P.; Department of Communication Studies, School of Liberal Arts
    Human rights advocacy is often austere, if not funereal. Nevertheless, humorists have long engaged human rights activism through their art. Against claims that humor weakens action or conservatively maintains the status quo, this essay argues for humor as necessary element in human rights activism. At its best, humor awakens communities by providing new perspectives on reality and sharpening understandings of injustice. It provokes dialogue and action and humanizes all parties in a struggle. This essay explores humor as a necessary, if not sufficient, component of an activist political style through a case study of comedian and activist Dick Gregory. Using evidence from Gregory's performances and speeches as well as public discourse about Gregory, this essay establishes humor as an integral characteristic of an activist political style.
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    Slacktivists or Activists?: Identity Work in the Virtual Disability March
    (ACM, 2018-04) Li, Hanlin; Bora, Disha; Salvi, Sagar; Brady, Erin; Human-Centered Computing, School of Informatics and Computing
    Protests are important social forms of activism, but can be inaccessible to people with disabilities. Online activism, like the 2017 Disability March, has provided alternative venues for involvement in accessible protesting and social movements. In this study, we use identity theory as a lens to understand why and how disabled activists engaged in an online movement, and its impact on their self-concepts. We interviewed 18 disabled activists about their experiences with online protesting during the Disability March. Respondents' identities (as both disabled individuals and as activists) led them to organize or join the March, evolved alongside the group's actions, and were reprioritized or strained as a result of their involvement. Our findings describe the values and limitations of this activism to our respondents, highlight the tensions they perceived about their activist identities, and present opportunities to support further accessibility and identity changes by integrating technology into their activist experiences.