February 26, 2020
Social media engagement civic discussion sheds light on issues Matt Self
Washburn Review
A social media and civic engagement discussion occurred on campus hoping to shed light on some issues. The discussion took place at 1 p.m. on Monday Feb. 24. A group of panelists met in the Rita-Blitt art gallery to discuss the future of journalism, the impact of incivility on social media and the topic of false news reports. The panelists discussed a variety of topics related to journalism and its future. They included Maria Stover, Ashley Muddiman and Joseph Kendall-Morwick. The discussion began with Maria Stover, the chair of the mass media department at Washburn. Growing up in a country where free speech was stifled, Bulgaria, Stover related the benefits of having the ability to write and publish without fear of reprisals. “I told my grandparents that I wanted to be a journalist,” said Stover. “Journalists, as a professions, a lot can be said of the importance of free media and free democracy. We have a role to keep things like the government in check with our reporting.” Stover then began to address some of the major issues facing journalism and the news industry today. Chiefly concerning sensationalism. Stover related how less research was being conducted for articles and how they are mainly relying on eliciting an emotional response from their viewers. “The word of the year in 2016 was post-truth,” said Stover. “We have bad manners, fake news, incorrect facts and a president who
openly disagrees with the media. All of these challenge basic democratic norms and undermine clear communication among citizens.” Following Stover was Muddiman from the University of Kansas with her presentation on the civility of people on popular social media platforms. Muddiman’s recent study mainly focused on the comment sections of news pieces on the New York Times’ website. What she discovered through her research was a trifle unsettling but not wholly unexpected. “Many people engage in political discussions on social media, it’s not all bad stuff but the bad stuff is pretty bad,” said Muddiman. “The downsides to this language hasn’t been fully studied yet. The risk of participating in these discussions is that you could get some things thrown back at you. We’ve found that women and people of color tend to get the brunt of the damage from uncivil comments.” Muddiman’s research found that uncivil comments not only hurt the targets of them, but also the reputation of the news site. She found that if a news article had negative comments on it, the people reading it would garner negative feelings towards the site itself. A correlation can also be made with these findings with political candidates who garner negative feelings with the comments they post online. However, her research did find that some good came from political discussions online. Those who participated in uncivil discussions were more encouraged to interact and participate.
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Volume 146, Issue 19
washburnreview.org
Puppies invade Washburn’s Coffee Talk
WASHBURN REVIEW - Lou Collobert
Ready for my close up: Estes stops to pose for the camera. Estes is a 2-year-old border collie.
‘Pet me’: Achheta Shaleya, a sophomore computer science major, takes a study break to pet a puppy. Shaleya stopped by the Union Underground after a computer science class.
Chihuahua: Tomoka Komiya, freshman business major, snuggles Prissy, a chihuahua mix. Both enjoyed the much needed affection.
Open education week offers scholarship opportunity Alyssa Storm Washburn Review
Washburn University will be promoting open education resources week next week, March 2 through 6. Open education week is an international awareness week to inform the academic community about what open education is and how it can be accessed. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation defines Open Educational Resources as teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing. OER includes course materials, textbooks, videos, tests and any other tools, materials or techniques used to support access to knowledge. OER are online, easy to access and always free to use by yourself or in a classroom setting. “Open Educational Resources can be easier to get in a practical sense; for instance, not having to order a book and wait for it to arrive,” said physics professor Brian Thomas. “It is a better way for students to get correct information by possibly making your course materials cheaper.” Students can access any OER at any point in time – it works throughout the whole year.
ONLINE
There are textbooks, videos, podcasts, scholarly articles and much more that are available for use. Licenses allow for full printing access to all articles. “There’s just a lot out there so I’m trying to educate the campus community about it,” said Amanda Luke, open access librarian at Mabee Library. “Once you know about it you can use it and explore it and even add to it.” There are hundreds of websites and topics that are offer OER, but it might not go in depth as much as it is needed for some upper level courses. Thomas uses what is called a “hybrid” in his classes. “I also like using a ‘hybrid’ model, where some resources are open, but some are not,” said Thomas. “That allows me to lower cost but still get functionality that isn’t possible for me to reproduce.” Along with a week’s worth of fun activities, there is a chance to win a $250 scholarship that will be going on throughout the week. It is a six-picture story contest; there will be six different images and students will write a one-page story, including the pictures into the story in some way. For more information on OER week events visit https://libguides.washburn. edu/open/OEWeek2020 For more information about OER visit https://libguides.washburn.edu/Open.
Article: Who’s Who at Washburn Brief
Article: Does Washburn need more counselors?
photo courtesy of Mabee Library
Weekly schedule: This has all the events for open education week. This is the fourth year Open Educational Resources has been modified to fit into Washburn University’s community. Gallery: Men’s tennis defeats McKendree Bearcats
Gallery: Women’s basketball vs Lincoln