Digital Literacy for St. Cloud State University
Filters have never been more prevalent – and it’s leading some people to have fillers, Botox and other procedures. What’s behind the obsessive pursuit of a flawless look?
The phenomenon of people requesting procedures to resemble their digital image has been referred to – sometimes flippantly, sometimes as a harbinger of end times – as “Snapchat dysmorphia”. The term was coined by the cosmetic doctor Tijion Esho, founder of the Esho clinics in London and Newcastle.
A recent report in the US medical journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery suggested that filtered images’ “blurring the line of reality and fantasy” could be triggering body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a mental health condition where people become fixated on imagined defects in their appearance.
A 2017 study into “selfitis”, as the obsessive taking of selfies has been called, found a range of motivations, from seeking social status to shaking off depressive thoughts and – of course – capturing a memorable moment. Another study suggested that selfies served “a private and internal purpose”, with the majority never shared with anyone or posted anywhere – terabytes, even petabytes of photographs never to be seen by anyone other than their subject.
However, a 2017 study in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications found that people only recognised manipulated images 60%-65% of the time.
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more on social media in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+media
January 17, 2019 LUCIAN KIM
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/17/685973630/young-russian-musicians-struggle-under-government-scrutiny
The crackdown on a new generation of Russian musicians began in late November of 2018, when Dmitry Kuznetsov, a 25-year-old rapper known as Husky, was prevented from performing in the southern city of Krasnodar and arrested. His arrest set off a wave of protest by fellow rappers that eventually came to the attention of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Two years ago, Russians were surprised when young protesters turned out in masses for anti-government demonstrations, called for by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who communicates directly with his supporters via YouTube and Twitter.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46584554
16 December 2018
Rap and other modern [forms of art] are rested upon three pillars – sex, drugs and protest,” he (Putin) said. “I am most worried about drugs. This is the way towards the degradation of a nation.”
a survey conducted by nonprofit organization Project Tomorrow.
https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2019/01/state-k-12-it-survey-highlights-cloud-technology-and-security-infographic
Eighty percent of K–12 districts are using cloud-based software to improve everything
With the incorporation of cloud-based tools, K–12 schools are starting to consider more effective privacy and security measures, such as identity access management and managed cloud services from third-party vendors that can take responsibility for overseeing security.
https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/data-where-do-teachers-get-their-ideas.html
January 10, 2018
a September 2017 online survey from the Education Week Research Center of a nationally representative sample of more than 500 K-12 teachers.
Twitter lost 9 million users worldwide in the third quarter of 2018, according to the latest company earnings report.
Facebook grew during the same period in every market except Europe, where it lost a million monthly active users. But it has faced a backlash since a whistle-blower revealed in March 2018 that some 87 million people had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. It was the beginning of a months-long scandal that revealed the network was slow to respond when Russian operatives used it to spread misinformation to influence U.S. elections.
The Polish-born sociologist is skeptical about the possibilities for political change
https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/01/19/inenglish/1453208692_424660.html
Leeds University where he is now Emeritus Professor of Sociology.
his theory of liquid modernity in the late 1990s – which describes our age as one in which “all agreements are temporary, fleeting, and valid only until further notice” – he has become a leading figure in the field of sociology.
People no longer believe in the democratic system because it doesn’t keep its promises. We see this, for example, with the migration crisis: it’s a global phenomenon, but we still act parochially. Our democratic institutions were not designed for dealing with situations of interdependence. The current crisis of democracy is a crisis of democratic institutions.
If you want more security, you’re going to have to give up a certain amount of freedom; if you want more freedom, you’re going to have to give up security. This dilemma is going to continue forever. Forty years ago we believed that freedom had triumphed and we began an orgy of consumerism.
The situation in Catalonia, as in Scotland or Lombardy, is a contradiction between tribal identity and citizenship. They are Europeans, but they don’t want to talk to Brussels via Madrid, but via Barcelona. The same logic is emerging in almost every country. We are still following the same principles established at the end of World War I, but there have been many changes in the world.
Q. You are skeptical of the way people protest through social media, of so-called “armchair activism,” and say that the internet is dumbing us down with cheap entertainment. So would you say that the social networks are the new opium of the people?
A. The question of identity has changed from being something you are born with to a task: you have to create your own community. But communities aren’t created, and you either have one or you don’t. What the social networks can create is a substitute. The difference between a community and a network is that you belong to a community, but a network belongs to you. You feel in control.
Social media don’t teach us to dialogue because it is so easy to avoid controversy… But most people use social media not to unite, not to open their horizons wider, but on the contrary, to cut themselves a comfort zone where the only sounds they hear are the echoes of their own voice
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more on sociology in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=sociology
Gen Z is coming to your office. Get ready to adapt
Janet Adamy, Sept 6, 2018
https://www.wsj.com/graphics/genz-is-coming-to-your-office/
Early signs suggest Gen Z workers are more competitive and pragmatic, but also more anxious and reserved, than millennials, the generation of 72 million born from 1981 to 1996, according to executives, managers, generational consultants and multidecade studies of young people. Gen Zers are also the most racially diverse generation in American histor
With the generation of baby boomers retiring and unemployment at historic lows, Gen Z is filling immense gaps in the workforce. Employers, plagued by worker shortages, are trying to adapt.
LinkedIn Corp. and Intuit Inc. have eased requirements that certain hires hold bachelor’s degrees to reach young adults who couldn’t afford college. At campus recruiting events, EY is raffling off computer tablets because competition for top talent is intense.
Companies are reworking training so it replicates YouTube-style videos that appeal to Gen Z workers reared on smartphones.
“They learn new information much more quickly than their predecessors,”
A few years ago Mr. Stewart noticed that Gen Z hires behaved differently than their predecessors. When the company launched a project to support branch managers, millennials excitedly teamed up and worked together. Gen Z workers wanted individual recognition and extra pay.
Much of Gen Z’s socializing takes place via text messages and social media platforms—a shift that has eroded natural interactions and allowed bullying to play out in front of wider audiences.
The flip side of being digital natives is that Gen Z is even more adept with technology than millennials. Natasha Stough, Americas campus recruiting director at EY in Chicago, was wowed by a young hire who created a bot to answer questions on the company’s Facebook careers page.
To lure more Gen Z workers, EY rolled out video technology that allows job candidates to record answers to interview questions and submit them electronically.
LinkedIn, which used to recruit from about a dozen colleges, broadened its efforts to include hundreds of schools and computer coding boot camps to capture a diverse applicant pool that mirrors the changing population.
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more on Gen Z in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=gen+z
Five Good Alternatives to YouTube for Finding Educational Videos https://t.co/BrKUw5Q4d1
— Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) May 19, 2019
Even if you use the search refinement tools in YouTube, it can be a challenge to find a clip that is appropriate for your students.