Tara L. Conley Racial Literacy Roundtables Talk

On Monday, October 14, 2013 I presented at this year's first Racial Literacy Roundtables talk at Teachers College Columbia University. I presented on my current and ongoing research involving participatory design and working with young people who are involved in foster care and juvenile/criminal justice systems to develop TXT CONNECT, a free mobile platform for court-involved youth in NYC.

Highlights from the talk include:

• Ways to conceptualize and re-imagine participation.
• Reviewing youth demographic statistics in NYC, highlighting, in particular, the disproportionate number of Black and brown youth involved in juvenile/criminal justice systems and foster care.
• Reflecting on what it means to engage multiple stakeholders in the process of designing a technical and digital artifact with and for young people who are often disconnected and lack reliable access to information.

Some notable statistics (references included in slides below):

• 25% of youth (< 18-years-old) in NYC are considered Black/African American, yet make up 65% of the juvenile justice population in NYC, and 59% of the foster care population in NYC.
• 35.5% of youth (< 18-years-old) in NYC are considered Hispanic, and make up 30% of the juvenile justice population in NYC, and 27.4% of the foster care population in NYC.
• White youth make up 25% of the youth population in NYC, yet make up less than 5% of the juvenile justice and foster care population in NYC

This was the first time I was able to present my research, in depth, to my peers and others in the academic community. The conversations that emerged from the chat were inspiring, particularly as it had to do with the ways educators and researchers are currently thinking about how social and digital media can, and ought to be used as meaningful tools in the classroom and beyond.

So often we assume media are something young people simply and only consume, but in fact, we're learning that young people are also integral mediamakers and designers in the "stuff" they use.

Below is a highlight video from the talk.

Tara L. Conley Racial Literacy Roundtables Talk from Media Make Change on Vimeo.

I've also posted my presentation slides HERE.

For more information on my current research, please visit www.taralconley.org

Credits: Lalitha Vasudevan (photography and videography), Joe Riina-Ferrie (videography)

MEDIA MAKE CHANGE Remembers Joshua C. Watson

It is with a heavy heart that we share the devastating news about the passing of Joshua C. Watson. Josh was an inaugural fellow of the 2012 Community Producers Program that MEDIA MAKE CHANGE co-authored with the Beyond the Bricks Project. He was known as one of the most brightest fellows in his Atlanta cohort. Josh is shown in the video below speaking proudly about his work and his hopes for the future. We learned yesterday that Josh was victim of an apparent robbery while walking home from work. He was murdered on Christmas Eve.

From the Beyond the Bricks producers, Derek Koen and Ouida Washington:

18 year old Joshua C. Watson, one of the young men that graduated this past June from the first cohort of Beyond The Bricks Community Producers Program, was murdered in Atlanta, GA December 24, 2012, robbed on his way home from work. I had the pleasure of meeting Josh in person once, I spoke with him a few times over Skype and we awarded him with a certificate for his dedication to the program. The entire BTBP team was horrified to hear the news that yet another young person with so much promise and potential was taken away forever. Josh was the result of hard work, sacrifice and love by a community of people; evident by the way he presented himself to the world. We here at Beyond The Bricks Project struggle to make the message clear, we ALL have a role and duty to give ALL our children brighter futures and the chance to live their life the best way possible. Senseless violence that we see almost daily in news headlines, in our communities and in our schools is destroying this country. In the life of Josh, lest we forget that too much has already been lost.

If the person who took Joshua from this earth can some how come across this message, I would like you to know that this is not acceptable you deserve to be punished and you are redeemable.  To you all, we would like to introduce you to Joshua C. Watson.

We share the sentiments expressed by the BTBP team. The news of Josh's death only strengthens our desire to ensure the work that we do at MEDIA MAKE CHANGE benefits young people like Joshua Watson. He was an inspiration, shining light, and a gift to us all. We would like to send condolences to the Watson family and express our deepest sympathies to anyone who had the pleasure of befriending Joshua during his short eighteen years on earth.

You can pay tribute to Josh's memory on RIP Joshua C. Watson Facebeook page made in his honor.

To Live and Die in Social Media: What We Can Learn From Amanda Todd and Felicia Garcia

On September 7, 2012, Vancouver teen Amanda Todd posted an 8-minute black and white YouTube video, "My story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, self harm" chronicling her struggles with being teased and harassed by fellow classmates. Todd doesn't speak at all throughout the video, and instead holds up placards in front of a webcam. Each piece of paper outlines her story while viewers are provided with a glimpse into Todd's experiences as a victim of cyberbullying, and as according to Naomi Wolf, a victim of adult male cyberstalking. Others have noted that Todd was also victim of slut shaming, or the idea of "shaming and/or attacking a woman or a girl for being sexual, having one or more sexual partners, acknowledging sexual feelings, and/or acting on sexual feelings" (Finally Feminism).

When describing an altercation she had with her classmates at school, Todd writes, "After I got home all I saw was on Facebook - 'She deserved it. Did you wash the mud out of your hair? - I hope she's dead.'"

On October 10, 2012, approximately one month after Todd posted the video on YouTube, she was found dead after an apparent suicide attempt.

On October 24, nearly two weeks after Amanda Todd reportedly committed suicide, Felicia Garcia, a Staten Island teenager jumped in front of a moving train in New York City. Friends and family said Garcia was bullied in school and online because rumors were spreading that she'd been sexually active with football players at her high school. The last words a friend heard Garcia speak right before falling backwards in the path of a moving train were, "Finally, it's here."

Though Garcia's classmates didn't seem to think she was in trouble, a quick glance at Garcia's Instagram pictures tells another story.

Similarly to Todd posting on YouTube, Garcia posted, what I believe to be her last cry for help via Twitter twelve days before she decided to take her own life.

It's heartbreaking to watch our young people take their lives as a result of being bullied by other teens and adults online. As a researcher, I wonder why our young people, girls and boys, decide to use social media as one of the last forms of communication before killing themselves. While it seems like a classic case of cry-for-help, social media further complicates this psychoanalytic narrative by the so-called spectacle in the form of retweets, @ replies, favorites, and likes.

I have to wonder what Amanda and Felicia felt while uploading and posting. What did they really wish to communicate? And has social media now become an alternative to the handwritten suicide letter?

I recently spoke with The Media Bytes about young people in the digital age. I mentioned Amanda Todd in our conversation, in that I believe we failed this young girl in many ways. We had access to knowing and seeing her struggles in a mediated and visible space, yet still we were unable to, or not willing to intervene. During the interview I mentioned that perhaps seeking out social and public spaces while struggling essentially comes down to our basic human need to connect with someone; anyone who will watch our videos and read our tweets.

I understand this need to connect all too well as I also struggled, and was diagnosed with severe depression and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after my father passed away in 2008. I took to singing on Youtube early on while my father was sick. It was a cathartic response to coping with death and dying. It still is. I'm sure if I revisit my Twitter streams, Facebook updates, blog posts, and even SMS text messages during that time immediately after my father's death, I would see myself in my most rawest and vulnerable form. There was something about singing and talking to a camera, then uploading to a public site that allowed me to let go. To where and to whom I let go in this public space was, and is always a risk. But for Amanda and Felicia it was more than simply letting go publicly online, it was a permanent disconnection from a space so-called the 'real' offline world.

Now we are left with YouTube videos, tweets, and Instagram photos that will continue to remind us of our failure as a tribe in the global village.

That said, however, ubiquitous use and mainstream presence of social and mobile media provide a unique opportunity for adults (and anyone else who cares about the well being of young people) to better address youth in crisis. I recognize that the idea of 'crisis' itself carries with it a ton of baggage; what exactly is meant by crisis? Is crisis a word we only use for certain 'kinds' of communities? Is the very idea of wanting to un-do crisis problematic because it automatically assumes something needs to be fixed? And might that 'something' be the child? One look at the comment's section of this post, and the constant victim blaming that ensues, reminds me that we, as a collective, still haven't fully grasped what it means to be empathetic in a crisis situation. So, I recognize the conundrums.

But I also recognize that something unlike anything I've ever witnessed before is happening with our young people in this digital moment. We live in a hypermediated and interconnected world, so much so that we now craft our identities in these public and mediated spaces like corporations do; as brands. We've always created elaborate narratives of ourselves, but now it seems as though these narratives are beginning to take on a posthumous life of their own.

It's fascinating when you think about the posthumous digital life. Yet, I still wonder where do we stand in the midst of this crisis as our young people both live and die in social media?

We simply can't be satisfied with mourning the deaths of these young girls after the fact and behind our computer screens. What keeps us from nurturing our young people while they are alive? What keeps us from engaging them as they explore their multiple and contradictory identities? What keeps us from being more attentive as they express themsevles in these public places---not as a way to police or to monitor inappropriate behaviors---but as a way to gain insight into what's actually happening in their media-rich, public, and interconnected worlds?

Part of what I wish to do as an academic and social entrepreneur is to create spaces where young people like Amanda Todd and Felicia Garcia (who was in foster care) can go to retreat, reconnect, and rebuild. And I believe media and technology can play a transformative role in mediating what I'm calling nurture-networks. But we have to be deliberate and thoughtful in how we further encourage media and technology in the lives of young people, particularly those in crisis.

I recently applied for the Media Ideation Fellowship and my idea is to specifically address the needs and concerns of young people in crisis, namely court-involved youth who are tethered to multiple social institutions like foster care, juvenile, and welfare systems. I'm hoping to create a localized SMS Texline co-developed by and serving the needs of court-inolved youth in New York City. While I understand that media and technology is not *the* answer to address ongoing and dynamic problems young people face in today's world, I do believe that media and tech tools can help to support deliberate efforts in (re)building what's seemingly been broken. As evident with Amanda Todd and Felecia Garcia, our young people are living and dying in these social and mediated spaces, isn't it about time we meet them where they already are?

**Update***

I just discovered that Amanda Todd sang too.

On Our Radar: Kickstarter Media Projects

There's some awesome Kickstarter media and arts projects on our radar that focus on everything ranging from body politics, gender stereotypes, urban communities to transracial identity. Check 'em out below and support if you can.

Girl Model (Ashely Sabin and David Redmon)

Project Type: Film

Funding Goal: $12,000

Funds Raised So Far: $3,956 (as of Saturday, July 21st)

Why we think this project is awesome: We love it when creative folks begin their journeys with questions, and the filmmakers of Girl Model do just that by asking, why are young girls drawn into the unregulated modeling industry, and what happens to these young girls and "deeply ambivalent" model scouts who search for them? The film's trailer provides a glimpse into a world where young girls in Siberia and Tokyo are prepped and picked over with the hopes of establishing successful modeling careers. Body image and politics are indeed addressed throughout the film. But perhaps most unique about the film is the artistic and "lyrical" approach the filmmakers take in examining the lives of young models. Though one might squirm at scenes depicting scouts telling young models that their hips are too wide or that in Japan "they love skinny girls", one thing seems evident, Girl Model is a necessary look into an unregulated, and often brutally bias industry of modeling.

Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (Anita Sarkeesian)

Project Type: Video Webseries

Funding Goal: $6,000

Funds Raised So Far: $158,922

Why we think this project is awesome: We know, we know. This project is already well-funded, and met it's initial funding goal in less than 24 hours. But still, this project is so cool and unique that we had to give it an extra hat tip. Sarkeesian wants to expand her already popular webseries and blog Feminist Frequency to "produce a 5-video series (now expanded to 12 videos) entitled Tropes vs Women in Video Games [that will] explor[e] female character stereotypes throughout the history of the gaming industry." Awesome.

Focus: HOPE - A Detroit Photo Retrospective on Diversity (Focus: HOPE)

Project Type: Photography

Funding Goal: $8,300

Funds Raised So Far: $4,338 (as of Saturday, July 21st)

Why we think this project is awesome: Detroit is definitely in the building. HOPE, a civil and human rights organization is bringing together teens from southeast Michigan using photography to creatively express and produce a retrospective of their urban environments. In efforts to "break down racial and economic barriers" with 120 still photos, teens capture the spirit and life of their inspiring, yet often misunderstood, communities.  We don't need to tell how much MMC admires youth projects with a purpose, and certainly this projects deserves shine. There's only 13 days left to donate to this project. Go support.

Honorable Mention

Though this project isn't necessarily in the same media and tech veins as the above projects, it's still pretty darn cool. UNGRATEFUL DAUGHTERS is a one-woman show about Lisa Marie, who was adopted by white parents (who are not famous white people, by the way) in the early 1970's. It's a funny, yet honest story about transracial and multiracial family politics. It's unique and inspiring, and the project is less than halfway to it's goal with 10 days left! Check out Lisa's project below . . . oh, and go donate!

Community Producers Program is Thriving!

A few months ago Media Make Change partnered with the Beyond the Bricks Project to create a comprehensive media literacy program that serves young Black males. The Community Producers Program is a four-month course that invites young Black males to interrogate media images and subsequently create their own stories using digital media technology. We're elated to report that the program, now in it's second month, is thriving. Take a look at the new campaign video featuring several young men currently enrolled in the program at Teachers College, Columbia University--a sponsoring university.

We encourage you to donate to the summer fellowship program, an extension of the Community Producers Program, so the young men can continue to produce awe-inspiring work. If you are unable to donate, then please consider spreading the word to your various networks and encourage family, friends, and co-workers to contribute to this project.

On behalf of Media Make Change, I want to thank all of those involved in creating this program from the ground up, including Derek Koen, Ouida Washington, Dana Salter, Nisaa Ali, Bianca Baldridge, and Jose Vilson. I'm overjoyed and proud to have been a part of this project with all of you.

Interested in working with and/or contributing to Media Make Change? Contact us directly at mediamakechange [at] gmail [dot] com.