POUND
SPRING 2017
FROM THE EDITOR HEY! Welcome to Pound Magazine! Welcome to the intersection of tech and culture. Welcome to hard-hitting, no-bullshit, fast-paced content. Our decision-making skills were nowhere close to matching the nature of our content, however. In the beginning weeks of Pound, we spent entire class periods going back and forth thinking about a common thread to string our whole class together. We’re all millennials. We all fit some parts of the millennial stereotype—short attention spans, constant preoccupation with screens, self-centered snowflakes, blah, blah, blah—but we also actively reject the stereotypes pressed upon us. We all have different interests. Gaming, social media, activism, Netflix, politics and fashion were some of the topics members of our team listed in areas of interest, forcing us to go back and forth about who we wanted to read our magazine, and what we wanted our magazine to be about (and therefore, conforming to another stereotype of millennials: fear of commitment). After a few weeks, it clicked. When arguing over whether we should settle for a tech magazine or a culture magazine, we realized that they both work together to shape and inform each other, making it hard to separate the two. We decided a magazine right at the intersection of tech and culture would be able to accommodate and encompass the epitome of the millennial experience. To accept, as well as reject, our millennial stereotype, we wrote short, concise pieces, and included TL;DR phrases (Too Long; Didn’t Read, for all of you media purists out there) to allow you to accommodate your short attention span, your fear of commitment, or more realistically, your fast-paced lifestyles. So here it is. Pound Magazine. Hard-hitting. Dialed-in. To the point. Pound doesn’t just sit back and watch the world change. We look at the evolving intersection of tech and culture, working to forge opinions about what it all means, because “just the facts” isn’t enough. Things are changing fast. Keep up.
-NORA ALLEN
cover art by Katie Heywood
S T N E T N O C REVAMPS >> 2
YouTube: A new entertainment Netflix v. millennials’ attention span Arby’s: They have the art
REVOLUTIONS >> 12
>>> A huge thank you to the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Jane Kirtley for giving us the opportunity to create a magazine from scratch. We are also forever grateful for Nance Longley and Peggy Rader, who were our guiding voices along the way. Lastly, we would like to thank our cover artist Katie Heywood for her talented contribution. Pound is made possibly by the Milton L. Kaplan Memorial Fund.
The “fake news” boom Social media users battle their conscience after the 2016 presidential election Put your money where your politics are (Sl)activism: The good, the bad and the bloggers eSearch and iSeizure
REVELATIONS >> 24
Body cameras don’t change the outcome Your brain on blue light The transferability of tech
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NETFLIX V. MILLENNIALS’ ATTENTION SPAN How are Netflix and binge-watching habits affecting the attention span of our generation? BY BARNEY MIN Netflix has become a trademark for relocating people from broadcast and cable TV to online streaming subscriptions over the past two decades. While other services such as Amazon and Hulu have entered the market of online streaming services, the name “Netflix” has become interwoven so deeply into our society that it’s now a pop culture shortcut that refers to almost any streaming service. “Is that on Netflix?” and “Netflix and Chill” are all trends giving way to a new concern of our generation: How are these streaming websites and our tendency to binge-watch shows affecting our attention span? According to Netflix’s ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, the average person only invests about 60 to 90 seconds while browsing shows to decide whether or not they’re willing to spend their time watching it. This data raised several eyebrows of millennials, concerned that we’re growing less tolerant of content that doesn’t immediately draw us in, and in return, losing our ability to focus for longer periods of time. The plethora of entertainment content presented to us diminishes our patience and drives us to constantly be on the lookout for more attention-grabbing products. On the other hand, GQ argues in their article, "The Human Attention Span Is Alive and Well, According to Netflix," that our ability to zero in on a show is a sign that our attention span has not deteriorated, but might be even better than ever. According to College Students and Netflix Addiction by Tech Infographics, binge-watching is defined as watching three or more episodes of a show in one sitting. Out of the 88 percent of
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Netflix’s audience that shows weekly trends of binge-watching shows, 18-29 year olds are the most likely to do so. In addition to these statistics, the study also found that nine out of 10 college students watch Netflix. For the students of the University of Minnesota, despite its ranking as the second most Netflix-watching college, the rising success rate at the school doesn’t appear to be impeded by increased show binging. University of Minnesota’s Progress Card shows that four-year graduation rates have increased steadily from 59.1 percent in 2009 to 65.2 percent in 2012. So what does this all mean? While some students end up developing bad time management habits due to their Netflix ventures, others believe that this stems from a lack of an ability to set limits. Sami Kinnunen, a junior at the University of Minnesota, said that he looks for entertainment alternatives such as hiking and exploring the great outdoors. “Netflix has had minimal impact on my life. I know several people who use Netflix as a form of procrastination. It almost gives a sense of achievement to reach an end of a show. While I know that some people are very interested in it, I am not one of them.” This discrepancy of data between student Netflix intake rates and performance correlates to GQ’s statement that our attention span is not negatively being affected by online streaming services and infers that instead, with such an influx of entertainment content presented to us, we’re all the more picky about what we are willing to buy with the currency of our time. TL;DR: A massive amount of watchable content to choose from online and a surge in bingewatching Netflix has created an interesting dynamic: Millennials especially are less tolerant of shows that don’t interest them, but are able to focus for hours on the ones that do.
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YOUTUBE: A NEW #6
To become the next Jenna Marbles or Zoe Sugg, it’s not just about making funny videos or getting a lot of likes on Instagram. Making the jump to *certified Internet famous* requires hard work and dedication, as well as a whole lot of cross-platform appeal. The key to success lies in not simply posting the same videos or pictures on multiple social media sites, but, instead, with cross promotion: promoting yourself based on that particular site’s unique features and audience. You can’t post a YouTube video to Twitter and get the same attention that a gif or a trending hashtag would get, and the people who have made this their living understand the differences. Social media experts from DBC Marketing say the trick is to tailor the post to reflect what you’re trying to market while staying true to the site’s audience. These YouTube stars have mastered the art of developing a brand, promoting themselves and making connections with their followers, allowing for a whole new branch of fame for kids to aspire to.
internet celebrities BY TAYLOR DANZ Justin Bieber, Pewdiepie, Jenna Marbles: these celebs all got their start on YouTube. How did these personalities manage to leverage their fame into real-world recognition—and realworld money—without fading away like so many others? Early adopters like "Crank That" rapper Soulja Boy, who uploaded his first music video a mere three months after YouTube launched in 2005, got the jump on a market that would soon become saturated with beauty vloggers, fitspo Instagrams and viral sensations like the "Damn Daniel" guy. The ability for YouTubers to share their work directly online with short videos paved the way for Snapchat, Vine and even Instagram’s video features. Today they seem so basic but 10 years ago, they were revolutionary. According to the Telegraph’s "How YouTube Changed the World," cultivating an audience had never been easier, and a new breed of celebrities was born: people who are accessible, relatively normal and able to make money by simply being themselves. However, vlogging isn’t all champagne and caviar, and some personalities get luckier than others. All Jenna Marbles (whose real name is Jenna Mourey) had to do to become a
some issues to overcome to translate YouTube fame to real fame:
millionaire was make a video every week featuring Kermit and vent about hating being a grown up, but there are hundreds of vloggers across the site that struggle to pay bills. Brittany Ashley, an actress for Buzzfeed, whose YouTube channels have over 17 million subscribers, found this out the hard way, according to a piece by Fusion. At a Buzzfeed Golden Globe party in 2015 she attended the event not as a celebrated personality, but as a waitress. A waitress with over 90,000 Instagram followers. For smaller YouTube stars like Ashley, vlogging comes at the price of privacy and a normal life: too famous to have a regular job, but too broke not to.
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Niche audiences: With YouTube, the idea is to cultivate a loyal following, many times bonding over something unique. The problem is that 2.2 million YouTube followers seems like a lot on the internet, but is next to nothing in terms of TV audiences. How do you market yourself past the niche? Do vloggers lose their main appeal when trying to open themselves up to a wider audience?
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Market saturation: There are hundreds of beauty tutorials, gamers, and buzzfeed-type writers and actors that are all vying for their own piece of the pie. Is it possible to gain a large enough following now, or is the heyday of YouTube long gone?
According to ad-agency MDG, the top 1,000 channels on YouTube make $23,000 a month in ad revenue alone, more than enough to live off of. However, many of these channels are big-name bands and artists. So what does an average beauty vlogger or comedian have to do to get famous these days? For Mourey, the trick is to be what she calls a D.I.Y. digital entertainer. She thinks up, shoots, edits and uploads her own videos herself, many times in just a day. In an interview with The New York Times, she said she doesn’t think of herself as a celebrity, but as someone who “just has a lot of Internet friends.” Her time off camera? She spends it connecting with fans on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Like lots of other YouTube stars, Mourey says she doesn’t go out a whole lot, contrary to popular belief.
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“For the most part, we all just stay in our houses, alone, making videos,” Mourey said.
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Different platforms: When YouTube was launched, it was the only thing of its kind available, and commanded the nearly undivided attention of an increasingly large audience as the internet became more accessible. With the rise of Snapchat, Vine, Instagram and even Facebook videos, it’s harder to gain a following on one platform. Taking advantage of different features: YouTube is obviously great for longer videos, tutorials and various rants, while Instagram users are looking for the highlights—aesthetically pleasing pictures and maybe a promotional teaser. Twitter is great for blurbs about videos and creating a #hashtag to put yourself out there a little more, and filters are a megahit on Snapchat, if you can create one.
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IT’S ALL RELATIVE
Much like television has certain genres, YouTube’s community is split into sections, with one of the top categories being British vloggers, or video bloggers. As a younger generation of viewers keeps dedicating more and more time online to watching these vloggers, YouTube content creators are becoming just as prominent as movie and television celebrities. Already, YouTubers have made appearances on TV, raised millions (yes, millions) of dollars for charity, made full-length movies and walked red carpets alongside some of the Hollywood’s top stars. However, there still looks to be an old-school networking structure that strings these new wave celebrities together. It seems that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Power couple Zoe Sugg and Alfie Deyes, or the Beyoncé and Jay-Z of the YouTube world, are a perfect example.
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BY ALYSSA BODDICKER + OLIVIA NOVOTNY
suscriber count social media handle
THE WILDER ROAD A Minnesota native’s quest for success, from Hollywood to the world of YouTube BY ALYSSA BODDICKER It was at the age of 15, in a room surrounded by men in overpriced business suits casting the next Nickelodeon star, where Makenzie Wilder was told she was too fat, too short, and had too much acne all in one sweep. After finally making it through the revolving door of castings to meet with producers that could make her career in Hollywood, just to be told it wasn’t her talent, but looks that defined her, Makenzie decided to take her dreams into her own hands. Now, after five years back in Minnesota, Wilder has almost 48,000 followers on her beauty Instagram, and her new YouTube channel has already gained over 13,000 subscribers. “My interest in the YouTube community is something that has been around much longer than my acting dreams," Wilder said. "It wasn’t until my experience in California though, that I realized I could become a creator myself and use YouTube as a vessel for my work. After moving home my junior year, I spent the next two years learning photography and saving up for equipment, as well as working up the courage and confidence to put myself out there.”
Many don’t realize the journey to success on the YouTube platform is just as taxing as going from audition to audition in California. “I spend about 20+ hours a week filming and editing a video (I often upload two a week), another 5+ hours just answering emails, responding to comments and interacting with my audience.” And this is just the time commitments. In order to create high quality videos on a consistent basis, the right equipment comes at a large cost. Wilder personally has spent well over $8,000 on filming and editing equipment to use for YouTube and other social media platforms. As both an account manager of influencers and an influencer herself, Wilder has a unique perspective on what it takes to make it, and the key, she says, is crosspromotion. “Growth on YouTube itself is next to impossible because of over-saturation and the way the platform is set up, so cross-promoting your channel on any and every other social media is key.” Looking toward the future, Makenzie Wilder is still trying to figure out who she is and who she wants to be in the social space without being sucked back into Hollywood, and the online mentality of “do like everyone else, be like everyone else.” As for what motivates her to push past the exhaustion of starting out, she said she likes to “see the extent that influencers change both the digital and traditional marketing worlds.” “We are truly entering a new digitally driven era and I’m beyond excited to be a part of it.” TL;DR: To become famous on YouTube, you need to take the path less travelled. It’s about who you know, interaction with your audience, cross promotion and cultivating a niche to break through the internet noise and set yourself apart.
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photos courtesy of Arby’s
BY JORDAN HAVLIK Arby’s current television ads are bold and loud. Golden Globe winning actor Ving Rhames declares, “Arby’s, we have the meats” as the camera tantalizes you with close-ups of roast beef, fries and shakes. The ad fits perfectly for television, but doesn’t necessarily fit on the internet where the audience is more fickle. Advertisers must constantly be aware of the viewer's ability to keep scrolling.
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You’ll see many different strategies to capture people’s attention on social media. For example, at the beginning of March 2017, Burger King’s Twitter was full of promotions for their new chicken sandwich—and man, were they boring. “The new Crispy Chicken Sandwich is here. Made with 100% white seasoned chicken,” read an update on March 2. Accompanying the statement was a close-up of a person holding the sandwich, and we don’t even see their face. Burger King is one of the companies that posts seemingly random Twitter updates. A post made on Feb. 28 simply read “Eat nuggets” which, one could imagine, was written by a marketing robot.
ARBY’S:
Facebook isn’t any better. While Twitter is often sporadic, likely due to the 140 character limit, Facebook’s advertisements are static and dry. Wendy’s Facebook harkens back to the days of magazine advertisements. You’ll get two different ads here: one where everyone looks like smiling robots designed to sell you something, and the other is a pair of hands holding whatever food the marketing team wants to sell to you. It’s Marketing 101: show someone enjoying the product you’re selling, or show the product in a flattering way. It lacks creativity or a soul. In this sea of boring monotony, one fast food company is subverting the expectations of advertising on social media. Arby’s has been doing so with a combination of art and nerd culture. “There are a couple people on my team that are into gaming and cosplay, so it was kind of a perfect fit,” said Josh Martin, senior director of digital and social media for Arby’s.
we have the art Despite confusion from the higherups, Martin and his team developed several posts for social media, starting with a post on Sept. 15, 2015 that read, “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this,” with an image of hashbrowns forming “The Triforce,” the iconic triangles of power from the Legend of Zelda video game series. The tweet was an instant success, and as of March 8, 2017 had 4,775 likes and 2,705 retweets. This positive reaction has continued over time. Their posts have been shared on video game culture site, Kotaku, a tabletop gaming website, Geek and Sundry, and Reddit. These posts are for a specific audience. At the moment, that audience is the video game-obsessed crowd. For example, at Sony’s Playstation Experience 2016, an annual conference made to promote the Playstation line of video game consoles, a Twitter post showed a silhouette of Crash Bandicoot made from Arby’s packaging. The post read, “So glad he crashed the party. #PSX16,” referencing the surprise announcement of the Crash Bandicoot remaster.
Staying relevant on social media is one of the hardest nuts for a marketer to crack, but Arby’s has found their niche, with a little help from some nerdy artists.
The catch is, Martin and his team didn’t know this announcement would be made ahead of time. They made two versions of the tweet, one for if Crash Bandicoot was mentioned and one for if it wasn’t. It’s posts like this that show the care Arby’s social media team has for the things they love. Crash is an old mascot for the first Playstation, so there’s a lot of nostalgia for this character, and seeing a large company participate with fan reactions is enjoyable. Unlike other companies’ social media, they aren’t afraid to take risks, or to appeal to a niche. “The average person, they read some of those posts and [don’t] know what it means,” Martin said. “We kind of like that.”
There’s an identity they’ve formulated that’s unlike any other fast food social media, and that’s one of community. Whether they’re appealing to fans of video games, anime, cartoons or even sports, the passion for that subject shines through. They’re still making advertisements, no doubt about that, but they don’t feel like advertisements. They feel like exactly what they look like: art. TL;DR: Arby’s has been changing the social media game by moving toward artistic ads that appeal to niches such as video gamers or anime lovers, and getting significant buzz for it.
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THE “FAKE NEWS” BOOM How do fake news stories shape the American political landscape? BY RYAN PARKS Fake news has become a hot topic in American media. These news stories are capable of spreading like wildfire on social media. We have a president who openly calls reputable news organizations “very fake news.” What’s fake news and how does it shape American politics? Despite popular belief, fake news isn’t news that someone disagrees with, it’s news that has been proven to be false information. Some fake news stories aren’t even coming from inside the United States. There are dozens of teenagers in the small town of Veles, Macedonia, who were producing fake news stories in support of Donald Trump during the election and getting rich in the process, according to an NBC News report. More than 100 fake news domain names have been traced to Macedonia. NBC interviewed a teen, who goes by the pseudonym Dimitri, who was one of the people creating outlandish stories to spread across social media. Dimitri earned $60,000 over a period of six months, thanks to Google AdSense, which allows websites to make money by distributing advertisements to people who visit content online. Google has since permanently banned about 200 publishers from its AdSense network for violating its policies. “Nothing can beat Trump’s supporters when it comes to social media engagement,” Dimitri told NBC. “So that’s why we stick with Trump.” Dimitri’s claim is backed by many studies. According to a study conducted by Stanford University and New York
University, fake news stories in support of Trump were shared a total of 30 million times, while stories favoring Hillary Clinton were shared 7.6 million times. Despite this, the study concludes that the impact of fake news on election results was minimal at best. Through the use of surveys, the researchers found most shared fake news stories were only seen by a small fraction of people, and even fewer believed them. Still, there’s a growing problem among young people and their ability to distinguish fake news from real news. A Stanford study of about 7,800 students, ranging from middle school to college, revealed that students are surprisingly poor at evaluating online information. For instance, more than 80 percent of the middle school students in the study believed that an advertisement was a real news story, even though the story was identified as “sponsored content.” So how do you recognize fake news? Ask yourself if you recognize the publisher of the story and see if it’s being reported elsewhere. See if you can find more evidence to support the claims in the story. If you still aren’t sure if something is real or fake, try to see if the story has been debunked, using websites such as PolitiFact that have dedicated sections for catching fake news. TL;DR: While ‘fake news’ may not have had a huge effect on the 2016 election, it is getting harder for young people to distinguish real information online from the sourceless fake stories.
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November 15, 2016: Twitter rolls out new mute options for keywords, phrases and entire conversations you don’t want notifications for.
November 8, 2016: United States Presidential Election.
December 21, 2016: Instagram adds ability to like a comment by “hearting” it, ability to remove followers if your account is private and anonymous reporting for others in case of self-injury.
social media post election users battle their conscience, sites see drop in activity
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January 11, 2017 : Facebook announces the Facebook Journalism Project which brought new features like Live and Instant Articles to news reporters and continues to improve news literacy through verifying eye-witnesses and offering journalists online training courses.
February 8, 2017: Facebook launches Safety Check which allows people to directly message and follow each other by location and category after a crisis.
February 7, 2017: Twitter makes a statement on standing for safety and taking action against abusive tweets. It’s all about the Safe Search.
BY MELISSA STEINKEN In the 2016 U.S presidential election, Trump voters flocked to Fox News while Clinton supporters headed to CNN, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. Overall, 40 percent of Trump voters received news from Fox News while Clinton supporters remained evenly disbursed with 18 percent getting news from CNN, nine percent from MSNBC and others. The third largest source of news? The social media conglomeration of Facebook. In the study sample, no voters named Buzzfeed as a source of news—a source that Trump deems “fake news” because he disagrees with it.
March 1, 2017: Twitter updates its safety notifications with options to mute from Home and manage how long and what content you deem muteworthy.
When tensions were high this past political season, voters were divided on news sources. Now, in the period after the election, students at the University of Minnesota have not changed their use of social media to match national trends that show news consumers’ loyalties are shifting away from companies supporting President Trump. But, at both the national and local levels there is a pattern of people aligning their political beliefs and sticking there, whether that be right, left or in the middle. In the week after President Trump’s election victory, the New York Times saw an increase of about 41,000 subscriptions, said Denis Muller, Australian journalist
at the University of Melbourne. He guessed the jump stems from a desire to support news organizations in the face of fake news allegations.
1600” in which four former aides to President Obama discuss the Trump administration and “Pod Save America”. Cucak skews independent as a voter.
Muller said in the wake of fake news trolling the internet, a journalist’s first priority is to get the facts right.
“Since the stances they’re taking align with my ideology, I wouldn’t see myself switching away,” Cucak said. “If a company I’m using or their social media supports the things I support then naturally I’m not just going to write that off.”
But how effective have “good” journalistic practices been? Well, Sean Spicer, a White House press secretary, announced the ban on news organizations like the New York Times and CNN from press briefings in February. The ban came after New York Times got some heat from the Administration for allegedly printing a false investigative story. (It wasn't.) Muller said there needs to be an emphasis on fact-checking news filtered through social media. “In a sense we have to treat social media output as raw material,” Muller said. “If it has gone viral and it has gone wrong, then we need a story saying this is all bollocks.” But remember, “fake” can be replaced by a new fad in merely a second on social media. Compared to roughly 15 million clicks in November 2016, in January 2017 Facebook had roughly 12 million clicks. Despite this drop off, of users, students interviewed at the University of Minnesota have not changed their social media habits. Aljosa Cucak, University of Minnesota junior, said he sought out news accounts via Twitter during the past election. Some podcasts he listened to included “Keepin’ it
Kalina Maricich, a University of Minnesota junior, kept using the sites but unfriended followers on Facebook when arguments filled up her notification tab. She asked herself, “Is this information even correct?” Facebook has made it easy to switch off posts that oppose the user’s views, further helping social media sites funnel biased news. In the end, Cucak said punishing people and companies for their political views is wrong. “I think of companies as more of supplying commodities and what they support and don’t support doesn’t really affect What their product is,” he said. While some companies like Google have started campaigns against President Trump’s immigration ban, other sites have issued less radical statements about quality of news coverage and diversity. At the beginning of 2017, Facebook announced the launch of its Facebook Journalism Project to aid in collaborating with large news industries. A new feature, Instant Articles, will allow users to see multiple news stories at a time.
Facebook will be partnering with Poynter Institute to offer online training sessions to journalists. Also in the works is the ability for journalists to go live with news which could add more pressure to get the facts right in the beginning. After the election, Instagram also announced measures to avoid discrimination on their site. In December, Instagram Press announced a new feature that allows users to turn off comments in advanced settings on a post and introduced positivity through the option to heart comments. Although Twitter has a mute option for silencing accounts that users don’t want on their feed, in November 2016 they opened a new feature for people to mute notifications spreading hateful conduct. According to their blog, Twitter’s hateful conduct policy prohibits conduct that targets people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, religious affiliation, age, disability or disease. The next question for social media users lies in whether it will be easy to identify the negativity.
TL;DR: Social media users find it all too easy to shut out opposing noise. Be aware of your echo chamber, and critically look at where news is coming from- even in years without an election.
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POLITICS
In the changing political climate, is it possible for Americans to separate their beliefs from their purchases? BY TIPHERET PEÑA It’s been approximately four months since Donald Trump took office, and in that time, dozens of major companies have come under fire for their connections to the new president and his controversial administration. Uber, whose user-friendly app and services have made traditional taxi services seem obsolete, has continued to increase its revenue in the past four years. According to CB Insights, it remains the most valuable privately-held tech company in the world with a valuation of $69 million. Yet according to the New York Times on Feb. 2, less than a week after Trump issued his first executive order, more than 200,000 people deleted their Uber accounts. In fact, the unexpected increase in deletion requests forced them to quickly implement an automated system to process the requests. Up until that point, requests had to be manually processed. The dramatic increase in requests followed after two Iraqi refugees had been detained inside Kennedy International Airport in New York due to Trump’s executive order. Protests began that filled the sidewalks outside the terminal, as well as three stories of the parking garage across the street, drawing hundreds to the scene. To show support, taxi drivers with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance stopped serving the airport during the height of the protest. Around
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the same time, however, Uber posted a message on Twitter saying they had turned off their “surge” feature, which increases the cost of rides in times of high demand. One user in particular called attention to the message and created the hashtag #DeleteUber, which began trending widely on Twitter over the weekend. Uber responded saying that they weren’t attempting to take advantage of the protest by capitalizing on the taxi drivers’ strike. Despite this, many users were not convinced. Hundreds of thousands still deleted the app and many have turned to Uber competitor, Lyft. The online boycott spread far and wide. Among those who deleted the app are celebrities Jordan Peele, Janelle Monáe, Taraji P. Henson and Jesse Williams. These and other celebrities took to Twitter to show their support. Many even included screenshots to confirm they were removing the app. Williams tweeted, “Went ahead and did that but don’t forget to support the Taxi Workers’ Alliance as well.” What users may not be aware of however is that two of Trump’s major supporters and advisers, Peter Thiel and Carl Icahn, own substantial shares in Lyft, according to the New York Times. Uber is not the first company to face backlash for its connection to Trump’s policies. In October 2016, Shannon Coulter and Sue Atencio created a website for those who wished to stop shopping at retailers who do business with the Trump family. What first began as a short list and hashtag has become a movement that, according to their website, was viewed over 700 million times on social media. The website is named after their original hashtag, #GrabYourWallet, in reference to a comment Trump made, as well as to the consumer power women hold.
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Grab Your Wallet maintains a list of the top ten companies to boycott, which currently includes Macy’s, LL Bean and Amazon. While the organization removed Uber from its list following the announcement that CEO Travis Kalanick would be leaving Trump’s economic and policy forum, the inclusion of Amazon on the list has continued to cause a stir on the internet. Although the online retailer, along with Facebook and Google, joined federal lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive order, they each have continued to contribute to what many have termed “fake news.” According to the Huffington Post, all three companies have continued to purchase advertising from Breitbart News, a far-right American news and commentary website known to publish conspiracy theories and intentionally misleading stories. The site is inherently tied to Trump and his politics, as Breitbart editor Steven Bannon became Trump’s Chief Strategist shortly after his inauguration. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Bannon played an instrumental role in implementing Trump’s executive immigration order. Since late January, Trump has added two more Breitbart staffers to his administration. Staff from the Huffington Post contacted all three companies after informing them that their advertisements were being displayed on Breitbart’s website. After letting Facebook’s press office know that their ads appeared alongside articles with titles such as: “Sorry Girls! But the Smartest People in The World Are All Men,” and “Milo: ‘Why Are We Surprised Muslims are Blowing Things Up? That’s What They Do,’” a Facebook representative responded by saying that the
company purchases ads through third-party networks to reach a wider audience and that they aren’t planning on changing their advertising buys anytime soon. A Google representative responded by saying that Google “review[s] sites on a regular basis for policy compliance … we are not going to comment on specific sites.” Meanwhile, Amazon representatives didn’t respond at all. Unlike Amazon, Facebook and Google, there are over 1000 companies that have changed their advertising efforts to reject Breitbart, according to the Huffington Post. Grab Your Wallet and Sleeping Giants, an organization created to make companies aware of Breitbart ads on their site, have made strides in a political climate that feels all too connected to our everyday lives and surroundings. Yet, on the opposite end from companies such as Amazon and Uber, there are companies like Thinx who have used the resistance against Trump and his presidency for their own personal gain. Thinx, a brand that designs underwear to replace other feminine hygiene products, has always used feminist ideals in its advertising. However, in the last several months, the company has begun to use anti-Trump messaging to reach its customers. Recently, the company’s Twitter posted a message of resistance, along with a quote that read, “The world is changed by your actions, not by your opinion.” Resistance exists both within organizations like Grab Your Wallet and for-profit companies like Thinx. What companies such as Uber and Thinx have demonstrated, is that our lives are now inextricably intertwined with our politics, whether we like it or not. TL;DR: After a divisive election, social media users are putting pressure on companies like Uber and Amazon to stay out of politics, or to stay on their side at least. Sites like Grab your Wallet and Sleeping Giants are helping consumers and companies alike resist Trump and his media puppets at Breitbart.
#17
(SL )ACTIVISM:
the good, the bad and the bloggers
photos courtesy of Stacy Hollmann
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How people are using social media to create social change BY TIFFANY LUKK The next revolution could start with a tweet. The number of protests in the U.S. organized over social media skyrocketed after the 2016 election and they show no signs of slowing down. There’s even an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to protests against Trump. One of the largest protests organized using social media after the election was the Women’s March on Washington. On Jan. 21, nearly 500,000 women attended the march, while many more supported them through social media.
A Minneapolis-based group, the Lady Cave, created GetKits that contained yarn and knitting patterns. People who ordered a kit were given materials to make a Pussyhat for themselves, as well as up to five more for other people. The kit included a way to return hats to the Lady Cave in order for them to be donated to the Women’s March in D.C. The owner of the Lady Cave, Stacy Hollmann, posted on Youtube, Facebook and her blog about the kits. “I posted it on Facebook and it became an exponential monster,” Hollmann said.
Organizations such as the Pussyhat Project and #ICANTKEEPQUIET connected people with similar political ideologies who never would’ve met otherwise. The Pussyhat Project organized an online knitting project where people made pink hats with cat ears, playing on both meanings of the name. Knitters who were unable to attend the march had the option to knit hats to give to people who were able to attend, but unable to knit. Non-knitters were able to reach out to participants of the Pussyhat Project and request a hat.
someone liking a post on Facebook and me seeing it.” Although the Women’s March was the largest march since Donald Trump’s election, protests have continued. For example, a major March for Science is scheduled for Earth Day, April 22, that may attract as many people as the Women’s March. At the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, the student group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), has been organizing protests and marches in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area. For President’s Day, they organized a ‘Not My President’s Day!’ protest outside the university’s student union. They have events planned monthly, and often reach out to other organizations and individuals. “We’ve been doing almost too much,” SDS member Marty Branyon said. “But you can never do too much.”
Kendra Plant heard about the Lady Cave through Facebook and immediately thought, “I want a Pussyhat!” She attended every event the Lady Cave had for a month before being offered a position at the organization. “It all started from
SDS prefers to talk to people face-to-face, but Facebook helps them organize their events and also gauges how events will go, Branyon said. “[Using social media] is a love-hate thing,” Branyon said. “It’s important, but it has its limits.”
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(SL)ACTIVISM: liking, tweeting and Instagramming can only get you so far BY ALYSSA BODDICKER Remember the #Kony2012 campaign? The 30-minute video with the heartbreaking plea of the little boy to stop Kony and his recruitment of child soldiers? Do you remember how the whole campaign fizzled out after a few months when people got bored of tweeting and Instagramming? Although Kony 2012 was successful in raising awareness and indignation as well as the attention of celebrities, the Kony 2012 plan, along with countless social media campaigns to follow, fell to the indifference of slacktivism. Slacktivism is activism that exists through a click on a screen, leaving the passion for each project to quickly dissipate. With the rise in the use of social media as a campaign platform slacktivism and hashtag activism often overlook and oversimplify issues, leading to unsuccessful campaigns. Calls to action such as those for the #Kony2012 and #BringBackOurGirls, the call to bring back 276 kidnapped girls from Boko Haram terrorists in Nigeria, offer sweeping solutions that rely on celebrity and “influencer” acknowledgement to change policy. The problem with this is actual policy makers don’t turn to celebrities for advice; rather, they turn to them for what everyone else does: entertainment.
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Another issue with slacktivism is the oversimplification of the steps required to reach a difficult end goal. Newsweek writer Johanna Herman, who examined both the Kony 2012 and Bring Back Our Girls campaigns, argues their failures were due to this oversimplification that made people feel accomplished by tweeting or Instagramming, even though success was not achieved. Evgeny Morozov, the author of “The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom,” believes there may be a place for the web as a political organizing tool, but is skeptical of the motives. “My hunch is that people often affiliate with causes online for selfish and narcissistic purposes,” he said. “Sometimes, it may be as simple as trying to impress their online friends, and once you have fashioned that identity, there is very little reason to actually do anything else.” Narcissistic tendencies sometimes do pay off. In the case of the #NoMakeupSelfie, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram users shared photos and donated money, to the point where they raised a total of $3.14 million in 48 hours and $12.57 million in six days in March 2014 for the charity Cancer Research, according to The Guardian. The American University School of Communication's Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI) came out with their study on hashtag activism focused on the Black Lives
Matter (BLM) movement and their use of social media activism. In "Beyond the Hashtags: #Ferguson, #Blacklivesmatter, and the Online Struggle for Offline Justice," the CMSI examined to what extent this online activism reached an offline audience. They discovered that Black Lives Matter networks were successful in “projecting their anti-brutality messages through various nonactivist networks; in criticizing the media harshly for their portrayal of anti-black police brutality; and in educating some audiences rather than simply preaching to the choir.” This study also examined the BLM social media strategies and those successes. It’s important to note that the primary goals with the use of hashtag activism among the study’s interviewees were education, amplification of marginalized voices and structural police reform, whereas the “evidence that activists succeeded in educating casual observers came in two main forms: expressions of awe and disbelief at the violent police reactions to the Ferguson protests, and conservative admissions of police brutality in the Eric Garner and Walter Scott cases.” These successes, although important in acknowledgement and education of an issue, have yet to produce concrete structural changes, such as required sensitivity training for police. Once again, the issue of moving online ideas to the offline world are
halted by the oversimplification of steps to solve issues, as well as admissions and guilt instead of actions towards change. Campaign after campaign, we see hashtags rise and fall from the “trending” sphere, and even though people are still supporters of these causes, once the hashtags have cycled out of the public eye, so has
the urgency to make change. With #BringBackOurGirls, there are 195 still in captivity. Kony, although his power has diminished not based on a single thing that hashtag has done, still has an army. Black lives still matter. We are not a world of uncaring people, but the way we choose to support campaigns, and the way these campaigns enable this type of
support is something that needs to be changed and developed in order to bring back passion to causes that deserve it. TL;DR: #Hashtags can spark social campaigns, but can also give a false sense of action when they fizzle out, having accomplished nothing more than the ever-elusive concept of ‘awareness’.
CROSSWORD
find the answers online at poundmag.sjmc.umn.edu
ACROSS
7 Resistance and rockets 9 Standing Rock resistance 12 Discussion of the 2014 Isla Vista killings 13 President Trump's favorite accusation 14 Defense of domestic abuse victims 15 Fundraising surge for Lou Gehrig's disease 16 Repurposed Reagan line 17 Colors of 'the dress' 18 Twitter bird 20 Protesting controversial Washington football 21 Followed the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris 22 Untouched Instagram photo 23 Most followed on Twitter
DOWN
1 Response to kidnappings in Chibok, Nigeria 2 Most retweeted tweet 3 Supporting SCOTUS decision in Obergefell v Hodges 4 Most used social issue hashtag 5 Criticizing 2015 Academy Awards 6 Response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman 8 2012 Invisible Children campaign focus 10 Heat at the 2016 DNC 11 More Instagram followers than there are people in France 19 Before it was the hashtag
#21
How electronic privacy turns traditional political allegiances upside down. BY LOGAN CARROLL It’s a cliche to comment on how fast technology is changing, deserving nothing more than “no sh*t, Sherlock,” an eye-roll or an inaudible gag. You should hate and scorn anyone who thinks “technology is changing fast” is a profound statement. However, it’s true and we have to talk about it because the full extent of what it means—culturally, ethically, politically—is just beginning to get worked out. We’re going to look at one facet of the problem here. Let’s get started. Do you own your email? Of course, you might say, who else would? But emails don’t really exist; they’re little missives hurling through the ether. Can anyone own pure information? If no one owns them, can police look through them without a warrant? Minnesota State Rep. Eric Lucero (R-Dayton) is a cyber security expert who’s thought about this a lot. He’s also the principal author of HF459, a bill that would beef up the law on civil liberties, explicitly adding electronic communication—including email, downloads, browsing history, texting, geolocation of cell towers—to the
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“unreasonable search and seizure” clause of the Minnesota Constitution. “The Fourth Amendment exists to protect persons, papers, houses and effects,” Lucero explained. “If the government wants to do a search or seizure or those specific things, the Fourth Amendment applies.” However, technology is changing fast. (Do you hate me? Good. That was a test.) The amount of electronic information that a person produces has grown, and it’s easier than ever to catalogue and track that data. “What my amendment seeks to do is make it clear that intangible data is equal in terms of its protections,” Lucero said. “The government must adhere to the same process as everything else.” Support for the bill is strongly bipartisan according to Lucero, but he sees pushback from government agencies. Thus did Lucero find himself allied with the American Civil Liberties Union, waging battle against state law enforcement. He’s pretty conflicted about it. One moment, he cited opposition from law enforcement as the primary reason a similar bill failed in the last
session. The next, he said “[officers] are under attack, and I have tremendous respect for the brave men and women of our law enforcement.” He asked me to leave out his mention of law enforcement altogether, “I don’t want to single them out.” Then he added, with a sigh, “but I don’t know any other way to put it.” Lucero declined to say which agencies are fighting the bill, but I spoke to Jim Franklin, the Executive Director of the Minnesota Sheriffs Association (MSA), which has a lobbyist at the capital. MSA has not taken a stance on the bill, and Franklin stressed that all his comments were coming from one, quick read. But he did form an opinion: “I, personally, don’t think very much of it.” His first complaint was semantic, “I don’t see anything in the proposal that remotely defines what an electronic communication actually is.” We decided to focus instead on the use of stingrays; dummy cell towers which law enforcement controls and which gather data from calls made in the vicinity. This was one of Lucero’s prime concerns.
According to the ACLU, both the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department have stingrays, though last year the sheriff's department told Fox9 they had only used theirs four times, then discontinued their use. Both agencies declined to comment for this story. “It’s my understanding that the use of those devices does require a court procedure to implement,” Franklin said. “All the other data is sorted out and [officers] focus on the phone number, and can only search for the phone number. They’re not listening, or tracking other activity, just the phone number and geographic location.” Franklin is technically correct, Lucero admitted, but cited recent headlines of privacy violations: According to that Fox9 story, stingray warrants were being
sealed indefinitely in defiance of state law. And KSTP reported last year that the Minnesota Department of Public Safety was facing a lawsuit over its use of GPS in ignition interlock systems used by convicted DUI offenders.
has also introduced a bill to limit the collection of student data. “As students move through their academic careers, their data is being stored, mined and sold to third parties... and profiles are being built.”
“The nature of government is to push and stretch and do what they can in areas that are not clearly defined,” Lucero said. “A single ruling by the Supreme Court is good, but what’s even better is to have the citizens of the state actually codify that into the constitution.”
The issue of electronic privacy is thorny, but Lucero has a way of cutting through the weeds: “Education, automobiles, health care, cellphones—in all areas of our life, data is being collected by government and shared with third parties. What are they doing with it? It is very alarming.”
Lucero is measured, but optimistic, in his appraisal of HF459’s chances: “It won’t happen this year, though it may happen next. I’m just hoping to get a bill hearing to continue the conversation.” To Lucero, HF459 is only one facet of that conversation. He
TL;DR: In the age of technology, the law can have a hard time keeping up with the times. One lawmaker is working to protect Minnesota’s online privacy in the form of electronic communications, and is fighting government agencies all the way. art by Logan Carroll
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RE VELA tions
>> >
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Will body cameras change the outcome? BY DOMINIC DAVIS Previous incidents have shown that footage alone won’t hold police officers accountable for their actions on duty. As cities around the country continue to implement the cameras, there are those that doubt this technology will bring positive change to communities. The purpose of the cameras is to enhance accountability and trust between officers and communities of color, though many people in Minneapolis don’t believe these cameras will build the good relationships the police are aiming for.
The Minneapolis Police Department’s implementation of body cameras won’t build trust in communities of color, say leaders of groups protesting police violence.
held more accountable. Sole mentioned that the cases of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Aiyana Stanley-Jones were all caught on camera, but there was no justice for them.
>> Jason Sole, president of the Minneapolis branch of the NAACP and visiting professor at Hamline University said there will be no change in how communities view the police if the police are not held to a higher standard. He has seen too many videos of police killing black people to believe officers are going to be
Since the technology doesn’t appear to be serving as a tool to prosecute wrongful police action, Sole said, he isn’t a big proponent. “Until that technology means something and says something other than ‘Yeah, we watched another black person get killed, another officer walks out,’ I’m not gonna honor the technology. I just can’t. Because it’s not leading to justice,” Sole said. The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) issued body cameras to each of their five precincts by October 2016. The policy went into effect on June 29 that year. Police Chief Janeé Harteau started working toward this as soon as she she was sworn in as chief in December 2012.
photos courtesy of Minneapolis Police Department
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.......................................................... Harteau said the cameras bring positive change to the police department. She said the cameras work well for the officers and the community. “We know that this is critical when it comes to transparency. It’s another set of eyes,” Harteau said in a press conference on Nov. 2, 2016. “It’s also important in accountability, both for the officers but also for people they come into contact with.” Officer Justin Churchill added that the gathering and retention of evidence from the footage has helped him do his job better. He said it may be beneficial to prosecution or to prove someone’s innocence. “Sometimes you miss an answer. Sometimes you miss a detail,” Churchill said in the press conference. “The great thing about these is that we can go back and actually review that and see what details we missed. And then that way we can include it in our report.”
THE DEBATE Officers’ access to the footage concerns some people. They don’t like the possibility that officers could alter their report based on what is shown on the camera footage. If a negative action by an officer wasn’t caught on camera, they could leave it off the report. Sole argues that the fact that officers can view the footage from the cameras before writing the report only leads to more distrust and holds the officers less accountable for their actions. He said he would rather see their reports compared to the video. “Now you got this person who got the video who can actually craft the narrative now and say, ‘This is what really happened. Before the camera came on, he gave me a look and I feared for my life’. That leads us back to the same trust issues we had before . . . If officers are gonna review
TL;DR: Body cameras for police officers theoretically lessen instances of police brutality and misconduct, but many members of the community have doubts. By being able to review footage before releasing and the ease of covering cameras and manipulating footage mean we still have a long way to go in trusting that officers will be held accountable for their actions.
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it beforehand, it just reinforces the way we feel about them, which is they’re shady, they don’t care about us, they want to keep harming us and getting away with it.” The city’s policy for body camera usage states that for critical incidents, incidents involving use of deadly force by or against the officer or that result in great bodily harm or death, the decision whether and when to allow the officer to view the footage is up to an investigating agency. The MPD requires an independent agency to handle investigations related to body-camera issues that arise. This has most recently been the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. People in the community have an issue with not having access to the footage after critical incidents. Sole said allowing the community to see the footage of what happened would lead to more trust in law enforcement. “As long as they control it and don’t want to relinquish it, we still back in the same space,” Sole said. “They got so much leeway and power that it creates a lot of ambiguity. They got so many different ways to lie and still cheat on the policies that we just don’t have any trust.” Protestors were demanding the footage from ambulance cameras after the Jamar Clark shooting in November of 2015 in Minneapolis. The tapes were not released in a timely manner. Even when footage started getting released, the quality was low or didn’t show the scene. The ability to manipulate or alter the cameras has people worried. Sole said this has been an issue before and doesn’t see why it couldn’t happen again. “As long as somebody can manipulate the tool and put they hand over the camera as we’ve seen with Paul O’Neal when he was killed in Chicago, we always got issues with it because you still got a person who’s controlling the equipment,” Sole said. Video was released from two of the three officers who fired shots at O’Neal. The third officer’s body camera footage, which would have captured the shooting, was not released because the camera was “either not working or fell off during the chase” according to ABC7, a Chicago TV station. This incident shows that Sole’s concerns with the behavior of some officers won’t change by simply implementing the cameras.
HOW REAL CHANGE CAN OCCUR White supremacy in law enforcement must be addressed before real change can occur, Sole said. “There are just certain conversations that need to take place. Any form of technology that will help us see what happened . . . is phenomenal, but the technology is not gonna solve the police-community relationships,” Sole said. “We just have to have conversations about the past harms. Then we can actually effectively move forward in the future, but because it’s been a racist, islamophobic, sexist past, the technology won’t fix that.” Sole believes officers are not truly held accountable. He said they need harsher punishment such as a felony when they dishonor the badge. Sole said people with power should be held to a higher standard, but that’s not what he sees in law enforcement. If officers are not held accountable, body-worn cameras will not bring real change. The footage gives families and communities closure, but Sole said he doesn’t think that is good enough. “Communities feel better if they can see how their person died, but I don’t know if it really helps them when you think about having that as a lasting image of the last day he took his breath,” Sole said.
#27
BLUE LIGHT YOUR BRAIN ON
[How constant blue light exposure is altering your body]
MORNING:
You wake up, hit the snooze button six times and then struggle to open your eyes, so you reach for your phone. The sudden rush of blue light, the light screens emit when mimicking the light of the sun, opens a floodgate of neural responses and, suddenly, you feel good. You scroll through your emails, your Twitter feed, the news, and once you’ve satisfied that instant need for information and screen time, you roll out of bed and start your day. This is a typical morning for many people in the modern age. In a 2015 consumer mobility report by Bank of America, pollsters found that 35 percent of people said the first thing
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BY MADISON RUDE they do when they wake up is check their phone—even before coffee!—but the majority of morning-scrollers probably don’t think about the consequences of that instant rush of blue light on brain function. According to a May 2016 study by sleep researchers at Northwestern University, heavy exposure to blue light can impact and even disrupt your body’s insulin production and metabolism. The researchers found that, although blue light exposure lead to more alertness, any perceived benefits are negated by the fact that the exposure is shifting the circadian clock. In other words, scrolling is only delaying your body’s natural sleep rhythm. This
creates a whole slew of problems, like weight gain and increased chances of developing Type 2 diabetes. Yikes. The problem is, most of us can’t help ourselves. The constant notifications and emails all come rolling across your screen and draw your eyes back to the light, and eventually you’re so “addicted” that you begin to look a little like a mosquito drawn to a front porch light. After you finish your morning scroll with that new dose of blue, you end up feeling more addicted to your screen and artificially awake. As the day wears on, you’ll be more likely to check back constantly to re-up your intake. That’s when the real trouble sets in.
photos by Janessa Palmer
#29
AFTERNOON: It’s been a pretty average Tuesday so far. You stayed up too late typing a paper last night, got up for an 8 a.m. class and spent your time falling down a Reddit hole at lunch. Now it’s the afternoon, and you’re close to four hours of screen time. If you’re anything like the average student or office worker, you still have plenty of blue light ahead of you. The early afternoon can be bearable before hitting a 2 p.m. slump. According to a journal of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society, blue light could be the best way to combat this. When comparing exposure to bright light during the post-lunch dip, results showed similar to a short afternoon nap, according to a 2015 study published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Catching up on Trump’s latest Twitter rant may seem like a better option for an afternoon boost than
BY JANESSA PALMER
a large latte, but the shakiness and restlessness caused by caffeine can also be present when you’re exposed to blue light. The trade-off for getting through your afternoon slump can be a reduction in your body’s production of melatonin. According to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, melatonin is crucial later in the day to induce sleep and relaxation as studies have connected its production to regulation of the circadian rhythm. The University of Maryland found that a disruption to your melatonin cycle in the afternoon may lead to an increase in anxiety, making you feel uneasy, nervous or abnormally agitated. Now you’re hitting the afternoon hard. You’ve reached quite a few hours of screen time already for the day, and with more to go, you can’t risk burning out. So now what? Number one, get into some bright light! While the blue light from your
computer can keep you awake, the negative side effects are still there, especially if you’re working on a screen in a dim room. If you need to continue working, go to a well-lit or windowed area. Second, if you can take a break from your screen, go for it. Get up and get active. The simple act of movement can remind your body of the time of day and help to produce hormones to keep you going. If you need to press on with work, try taking a few moments to move through some simple stretches. There are many lifestyle choices factored into how you may feel today, but blue light can be a pretty powerful influence. You may not be able to or want to avoid late night use (Netflix binges are so tempting) but you can combat this by reminding your body that the earth still spins.
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TL;DR: Blue light is present in nearly every electronic device with a screen and can be messing with our body’s natural rhythms. Have trouble getting to sleep at night? This is probably the culprit.
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Blue light can help elevate your mood and boost awareness, but chronic exposure to blue light at night can lower the production of melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep, and disrupt your circadian rhythm. #30
NIGHT:
BY NORA ALLEN
After a full day of staring at screens, followed by screen fatigue that even a large latte couldn’t fix, all you want to do is wind down at night. Maybe you’ve been day-dreaming about watching an episode of Jane the Virgin or Shameless all day. Or you just want to catch up on what Trump had to Tweet about today. Be it scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed, responding to emails or watching Netflix, this might not be helping you relax as much as you think.
“They don’t fall asleep until past midnight, one o’clock, two o’clock or even sometimes three o’clock,” Davis said.
According to James Davis, a sleep medicine fellow at the University of Minnesota, inhibited melatonin production toward the end of the day can not only disrupt your circadian rhythm, but could even result in circadian rhythm disorders, such as delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS). This disorder, he says, is most common in teens and college students, or people who consider themselves “night owls.”
Her research found that those using light-emitting device readers were more alert, had a harder time sleeping and experienced less deep sleep. In an interview with Scientific American Magazine in 2015, Chang said, “At home, I would expect people don’t have the motivation to turn off their devices and go to bed, so they would stay up longer and experience even more circadian delay and shorter sleep times.
Sound familiar? In 2014, AnneMarie Chang, a neuroscientist from Harvard University, and colleagues conducted a study involving the use of light-emitting reading devices and printed books. Chang had readers use their assigned devices until 10 p.m. every night, then try to go to bed, no matter how awake they felt.
The effects in the real world could actually be even greater.” Maybe this reminds you of “a friend of yours.” These behaviors can lead to sleep deprivation when folks aren’t allowed to sleep later to accommodate their delayed circadian rhythms, thus interfering with abilities to remain alert and maintain health. So what can we do to combat this vicious cycle? Davis said that the best thing to do is to avoid blue light for around three hours before hitting the hay, but with that said, Davis recognizes that this isn’t always possible for college students. For those die-hard “Night-Shift” lovers, the feature for iPhone that supposedly stops blue light emissions from your device, Davis said there’s no scientific backing for those claims just yet. Instead, he said to increase the distance the light is from your face, and work in a fully-lit room instead of the dark.
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the transferability of tech
What various sports can learn from each other to smoothly incorporate technology
BY CONNOR HOLT Whether it’s because of creative ideas, willing leadership, or just the nature of the game, some sports have been far more successful in their implementation of technology.
Three sports using technology effectively: Professional tennis tournaments use a system of cameras connected to a computer system to judge whether a ball was in or out. This “Hawk-Eye” technology is accurate within roughly one-seventh of an inch. A player chooses to challenge a line call and within moments, the players, the umpire and the fans in the stadium and at home see a 3D recreation of the landing spot in question. High-level basketball has utilized SportVU tracking systems for several years so teams, media, and fans have access
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to precise, useful data. Cameras located above the court capture the ball and the players 25 times per second to determine speed, movement and positioning. Once humans add basic context, specific stats like secondary assists or average dribbles per touch are computed. The modern iteration of fencing is entirely reliant on technology, although the machinery is unsophisticated. A fencer’s objective is to use their weapon to touch their opponent in the target area. Spring-loaded tips and wires inside the weapon and on the fencer’s body combine to send electric currents to the scoring machine when a touch has been made. While other sports have thriving technology of their own, here’s how they could take a page out of the playbook of the above sports to further improve their games.
Three sports that could learn something:
TL;DR: New tech is making it easier to keep tabs on your favorite sports, as well as changing the very way they’re played.
Baseball has grown friendlier to instant replay recently, but considering tennis’ success, maybe America’s pastime should take its tech a step further. MLB relies on umpires’ eyes and then hopes for perfect camera angles to review fair or foul calls in the field of play. Surely a Hawk-Eye-type system could work out the kinks and develop something to shorten the debates about such calls. The NFL has already put sensors in players’ shoulder pads and has made noise about placing chips in all the footballs. The main problem? Only a miniscule percentage of the data collected becomes public. The NFL should follow the NBA’s lead and set up a comprehensive, publicly accessible service. While the way technology is used in fencing doesn’t transfer easily to other sports, gymnastics is a sport where a similar dependence on tech feels conceivable. Put sensors on the leotards, springboard, bars, mat etc. and use data about power, torque, speed and height to determine the scores. This is years from being possible, let alone palatable, but many attributes deemed positive by judges are likely considered similarly by the data, without the unconscious bias human scorers are susceptible to.
photos by Sadie Betting
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