Focus Discussions
(In)visibility of the Plus Size Body: How Plus Size Women Use Blogs to Create Community and Voice
Focused Discussion Kathryn Wolfe, Traci Baxley
Strides have been made to include plus sizes within the fashion industry; yet, the plus-size body continues to be marginalized within a broader context. By understanding the experiences of plus-size female bloggers, and their creation of an online community for alienated individuals, the Body Positivity Movement (BPM) can be understood. This critical look into the public, online lives of plus-size bloggers serves as a counternarrative that relocates them from the margins to the “mainstream media landscape.” This community of activists utilizes blogging to establish and bolster an online platform. According to Cho (2012) blogging creates a “safe place to share your voice and finding a community” (p. 7). Blogging provides an avenue for plus-size individuals to find an audience and community in which to belong. Thus, these bloggers became social activists encouraging cultural representation and inclusion within media. Using a womanist lens (Collins, 1996), we examine the power of collective agency and the consciousness of raising a marginalized group. Womanism, is used to explore how the positionality, intersectionality, and the invisibility of plus-size females is both personal and political. Moreover, this will provide insight into how the BPM can aid girls and women in developing a positive body image.
Computerized Intimacy in Politics: Direct Mail and the Barry Goldwater Campaign in 1964
Focused Discussion Takahito Moriyama
This research analyzes the political impact of direct mail (DM) that has been overshadowed by mass media. The idea of DM was based on personalization and intimacy, which derived from an advertising strategy of direct marketing in the midcentury. DM differed from broadcast in that, instead of circulating same information to the mass, it sent personalized messages to prospective supporters according to a huge body of personal information recorded by computers. My presentation examines how DM influenced grassroots activism, investigating the Barry Goldwater campaign’s fundraising in the 1964 presidential election. In the 1960s when liberals dominated mass media, conservatives employed the new medium on behalf of Goldwater. Although Goldwater was overwhelmingly defeated in the race, his campaign achieved the first successful DM solicitation, collecting money from a great number of small contributors. While previous scholars of the conservative movement have explored the mobilization of conservatives in Sunbelt suburbs, I will excavate 1960s “big data” politics on Madison Avenue, which transformed “grassroots” movement from face-to-face interactions toward loose networks of various individuals. This historical research is an attempt to look at how the new communication technology affected political participation during the late twentieth century.
A New Frontier: Taking Students from a Personal Online Atmosphere to a Multimedia Classroom
Focused Discussion Willmaria Miranda, Christina Mastroeni, Malcolm Evans
How do we bridge the gap between students who engage in media in their personal lives (twitter, facebook, blogs, etc.), and using these same media in the classroom? Students show they are hesitant, and sometimes even unwilling, to take a familiar platform outside of their comfort zone. Students may not see the connection between the strategies they use to communicate in their private online personas, and strategies they could use in their more academic communications. Their comfort in media use varies depending on the audience they’re communicating with. This presentation seeks to explore ways to bridge this gap through taking students out of their technological comfort zone. We plan to take the knowledge students have, and transfer it to their academic or professional setting. We can train educators, and show them how to explore new technological adaptations for conversational settings and give students the skills needed to apply those new strategies to a variety of situations. Additionally, the presenters examine why this gap exists and explore the intersection between social media and conversation in the classroom. Incorporating meaningful use of media allows instructors to provide clear examples of how it is used for academic pursuits. These hybrid conversations continue after classes conclude. The goal moving forward is to provide a multimedia classroom which allows students to use their organic styles of communications to contribute to larger conversations that exist outside of our physical and online educational spaces (e.g. Blackboard and Google Classroom).
