Evan Alman ENC 1102 Professor Leslie Wolcott 4/1/14

Social Media in Politics, Policy, and Your Personal Life

Introduction & Review

I would like to open by discussing the implications of Social Media within the field of Political Science and the realm of educational centers, specifically in the U.S. There's an immense amount of importance centered on these (social media) mechanisms of information diffusion and creation, reflected by the number of people using these technologies and the frequency of use. SMT (Social Media Technology) is representative of a melting pot of various consistencies, flavors, and temperatures. Some, such as LinkedIn, are for professionals, whilst some, like Facebook, are considered much less professional. At its very core level, SMT aggregates news, opinions, random gibberish, and everything else in between. It is mostly used for spreading and sharing information, rather than documentation.

When considering the studies and information available, governments and higher education institutions have incredible influence on many modern social media practices. As such,

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the responsibility they respectively bear is unique in and of itself. Higher education institutions each have their own special commitments, as do governments. These commitments tend to have varied and highly volatile effects, such as prompting organized rebellion through the aforementioned social media or outright disregard of what is passed down from above (e.g. new school policy, new government mandate). What social media in modern times has the capacity to do is entirely nix this phase; replacing it instead with a possibly interactive, transparent phase that can reliably impact lives in what could ostensibly benefit peoples lives in a positive way. Regarding modern administrators and educators throughout governments, educational institutions, and everything in-between, there cannot afford to be misinformation and a broadening disconnect between the benefits of SMT and the people who refuse to acknowledge its merits, lest modern educational and cultural progress halt.

When discussing the institutionalized usage of SMT, one of the first orders of business is a cost vs. benefit analysis. This is where many studies fall apart. There is no common standard for what reasonable usage of SMT is (i.e. overuse, underuse, diction, rapport), and this causes inconsistencies and a struggle to compare apples to oranges. It is for this reason that generalized conclusions in this topic field are border-line useless, aside from establishing basic premises. Seeing as SMT has only gained traction over time, rather than backslid, it would be reasonable to assume that its usage in recovery institutions may have been covered in the past. However, this is not the case. It is for this reason and a multitude of others that I wish to delve into the world of social media in mental institutions, in the context of what its significance is to patients with preexisting conditions of psychological irregularity i.e. conditions of psychological irregularity in youths that have existed before interaction with the SMT.

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What factors into institutionalized usage of SMT and its varied outputs is a cavalcade of straightforward, well-reasoned, and far-reaching implications and facets of SMT as a whole. Beginning this procession is the subjectivity of SMT. With a user base of varied ethnicities, financial brackets, religions, etc. as well as the frequency with which said users operate SMT, they are all operating it for different reasons with different results. (Blair, Cope et all, Cottle et all, Draskovic et all, Jeong et all, Ives, Kelm, Parmelee et all, Skovsgaard et all, Souleles) This is how it should be, though there are positive and negative ramifications of this. False information is a very unfortunate reality. However, for some people, that false information becomes their safe haven from the real world, the real information that they dont want to hear, that they dont believe exists.

A direct tie-in to the subjectivity of SMT is the interactivity of SMT. Not everyone interacts with SMT the same way. Some people only use Facebook, while others may only use Buzfeed and Twitter. People of different mental-statuses vary their usage habits as well. This can be seen by looking at IQ-based studies, political-party studies, and other distinguishable mental-state studies. This variety in usage propagates interesting patterns that can be incredibly unpredictable. (Blair, Berry et all, Cope et all, Cottle et all, Draskovic et all, Meredith, Ives, Jeong et all, Kelm, Mihailidis, Parmelee et all, Rolland et all, Skovsgaard et all, Souleles, Zaal)

This unpredictability will, from time to time, lay the groundwork for a rabble-rouser. The main controversies present in this field of study are the possible biases when collecting data, how

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quantitative data can be tough to collect in a meaningful way, and that too much value is being placed on social media. Most of these are unfounded, cynical gripes clawing for attention. When there is merit to any of these claims, it is fairly evident early on and any credence laid to the accused researcher(s) and their claims is disavowed. There is no distinguishable controversy in my niche of the psychologically ailed youth due to the lack of data as well as current lack of analysis and understanding of subject matter. Considering the scope of usage, as well as the future impacts of SMT, this issue will only grow. Diagnoses of psychological ailments have only increased over time, as well the fact that this could be valuable information for social scientists in regards to the effects of forced social abnormality/social restriction.

Before the proposal begins, two main, reasonable assumptions must be made and taken into account; that the general culpability present throughout SMT is incredibly low compared to many other modern forms of media, and that mental abnormalities are not desirable, generally speaking. In this regard, a certain level of trust must be presupposed for some of these analytical studies to hold any merit. What this implies is that with informational integrity comes the integrity of those providing the information. The international outlets as well as U.S. ones supplying information on mental illness and irregularity both tend to heavily lean upon certain facets of data or opinion without really acknowledging another, sometimes equally relevant, piece. These core issues in mind, the educators, administrators, and people in power to make good changes should take heed to the varied thoughts and reasoning laid out through my project proposal below.

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Research Proposal

I propose to collect data and expound upon the benefits and downsides of SMT usage by those of psychological ailment, as well as information related to their experiences. Due to an inordinate number of variables, the most efficient and plausible manner of data collection is a survey. Because of the unique predicament of the survey receivers, certain provisions must be put in place to keep the prized data authentic and still valuable. For instance, this means that rather than taking everyone one-by-one into a booth, or sitting everyone down to computers all at once, the method must be more nuanced. Many if not most of these people that are institutionalized do not wish to be there, and will operate as such when presented with something given to them by their captors. Those that do not feel captured may still hold some form of psychological resentment. Because of this, the survey presentation must feel impartial and important. Only a handful of people a day are authorized to take it, with a new face in the administration there to oversee the proceedings. This breeds an aura of importance and seriousness of the affair, that each person is unique and relevant to the survey process. The survey must be multiple-choice, considering uniformity is necessary to interpret data with the utmost certainty, as well as the fact that many of the subjects may not know how to express their thoughts properly themselves.

The survey process should be uniform. The receivers of the survey should be varied; ethnicity, financial background, IQ, educational background, religion, etc. The administrator will present the taker with the survey, and explain why they are taking it, with them both standing.

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This establishes a mounting sense of importance, and gives the taker the sense that they are not being talked down upon, rather that knowledge is being imparted upon them and it is for their own good to listen and apply it. The questions should be a true/false response, 1 to 10 scale (1 will always be the lowest, 10 will always be the highest), or a strongly disagree to strongly agree metric. Certain questions should be baits for comparison data e.g. is depression overblown? Survey regular kids within their age bracket and compare overall results e.g. public policy questions, party dogma and its influences, celebrity culture, etc. Did the children with mental ailments suffer in these topics from inconsistency; do they differ from their counterparts? Caveats for this process are that they must be able to think for themselves, circle their own answers, and that they did not develop their conditions through SMT itself. The results must be corollary to the establishment and post-establishment progression/digression of their ailment.

Examples:

1. Before being diagnosed with ________(insert disease, disorder, etc.)_________, how often did you use SMT? 1 __2__3__4__5__6__7__8__9__10

2. After being diagnosed with ______(insert disease, disorder, etc.)_______, how often have you used SMT?

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3. SMT influences who you are T/F

3a. If 3 was answered T do you Mildly Agree, Agree, or Strongly Agree with that statement?

4. Do you think your mental status affects your usage of SMT? T/F

4a. If 4 was answered T do you Mildly Agree, Agree, or Strongly Agree with that statement?

Further questions must pull from topics such as governmental influence on their lives, party politics, what role administrators and educators should fill, how to properly use SMT, and interaction with friends and family through non-SMT sources e.g. old-fashioned phone call. Discussion of what being a youth to them means, what politics are to them, and how they use and interpret SMT are all top priorities.

The results from this presumably extensive survey will take time to be properly compiled and analyzed. The mean scores of 1-10 metric questions, frequency of certain responses relative

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to the responder (certain kind of mental ailment, or a common normal response), as well as figuring out the propensity of different kinds of responders to feel different strengths of emotions from the Strongly, Moderately, etc. Agree/Disagree style questions are expected topics of analysis. More will arise, considering a survey like this done to its full and proper extent could easily be 200 questions.