Research /cmcinow/ en Poll-arized /cmcinow/2024/08/16/poll-arized <span>Poll-arized</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2024-08-16T15:08:32-06:00" title="Friday, August 16, 2024 - 15:08">Fri, 08/16/2024 - 15:08</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/democ_billboard.png?h=9392394d&amp;itok=BjmxXrPH" width="1200" height="800" alt="Town billboard"> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/84"> In Conversation </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/8" hreflang="en">Advertising Public Relations and Media Design</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Communication</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/44" hreflang="en">Information Science</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/22" hreflang="en">Journalism</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/54" hreflang="en">Media Studies</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/189" hreflang="en">faculty</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-row-subrow row"> <div class="ucb-article-text col-lg d-flex align-items-center" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="small-text"><strong>By Joe Arney</strong></p><p>Deepfakes. Distrust. Data manipulation. Is it any wonder American democracy feels like it has reached such a dangerous tipping point? &nbsp;</p><p>As our public squares have emptied of reasoned discussion, and our social media feeds have filled with vitriol, viciousness and villainy, we’ve found ourselves increasingly isolated and unable to escape our echo chambers. And while it’s easy to blame social media, adtech platforms or the news, it’s the way these forces overlap and feed off each other that’s put us in this mess.</p><p>It’s an important problem to confront as we close in on a consequential election, but the issue is bigger than just what happens this November, or whether you identify with one party or another. Fortunately, the College of Media, Communication and Information was designed for just these kinds of challenges, where a multidisciplinary approach is needed to frame, address and solve increasingly complex problems.&nbsp;</p><p>“Democracy is not just about what happens in this election,” said Nathan Schneider, an assistant professor of media studies and an expert in the design and governance of the internet. “It’s a much longer story, and through all the threats we’ve seen, I’ve taken hope from focusing my attention on advancing democracy, rather than just defending it.”</p><p>We spoke to Schneider and other CMCI experts in journalism, information science, media studies, advertising and communication to understand the scope of the challenges. And we asked one big question of each in order to help us make sense of this moment in history, understand how we got here and—maybe—find some faith in the future. &nbsp;</p><p class="text-align-center"><strong>***</strong>&nbsp;</p><p>Newsrooms have been decimated. The younger generation doesn’t closely follow the news. Attention spans have withered in the TikTok age. Can we count on journalism to serve its Fourth Estate function and deliver fair, accurate coverage of the election?</p><p>Mike McDevitt, a former editorial writer and reporter, isn’t convinced the press has learned its lessons from the 2016 cycle, when outlets chased ratings and the appearance of impartiality over a commitment to craft that might have painted more accurate portraits of both candidates. High-quality reporting, he said, may mean less focus on finding scoops and more time sharing resources to chase impactful stories.</p><p><strong>How can journalism be better?</strong></p><p>“A lot of journalists might disagree with me, but I think news media should be less competitive among each other and find ways to collaborate, especially with the industry gutted. And the news can’t lose sight of what’s important by chasing clickable stories. Covering chaos and conflict is tempting, but journalism’s interests in this respect do not always align with the security of democracy. While threats to democracy are real, amplifying chaos is not how news media should operate during an era of democratic backsliding.” &nbsp;</p><p class="text-align-center"><strong>***</strong></p><p>After the 2016 election, Brian C. Keegan was searching for ways to use his interests in the computer and social sciences in service of democracy. That’s driven his expertise in public-interest data science—how to make closed data more accessible to voters, journalists, activists and researchers. He looks at how campaigns can more effectively engage voters, understand important issues and form policies that address community needs.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>You’ve called the 2012 election an “end of history” moment. Can you explain that in the context of what’s happening in 2024?</strong></p><p>“In 2012, we were coming out of the Arab Spring, and everyone was optimistic about social media. The idea that it could be a tool for bots and state information operations to influence elections would have seemed like science fiction. Twelve years later, we’ve finally learned these platforms are not neutral, have real risk and can be manipulated. And now, two years into the large language model moment, people are saying these are just neutral tools that can only be a force for good. That argument is already falling apart.</p><p>“You could actually roll the clock back even further, to the 1960s and ’70s, when people were thinking about <em>Silent Spring</em> and <em>Unsafe at Any Speed</em>, and recognizing there are all these environmental, regulatory, economic and social things all connected through this lens of the environment. Like any computing system, when it comes to data, if you have garbage in, you get garbage out. The bias and misinformation we put into these A.I. systems are polluting our information ecosystem in ways that journalists, activists, researchers and others aren’t equipped to handle.” &nbsp;</p><p class="text-align-center"><strong>***</strong></p><p>One of Angie Chuang’s last news jobs was covering race and ethnicity for <em>The Oregonian</em>. In the early 2000s, it wasn’t always easy to find answers to questions about race in a mostly white newsroom. Conferences like those put on by the Asian American Journalists Association “were times of revitalization for me,” she said. &nbsp;When this year’s conference of the National Association of Black Journalists was disrupted by racist attacks against Kamala Harris, Chuang’s first thoughts were for the attendees who lost the opportunity to learn from one another and find the support she did as a cub reporter.</p><p>“What’s lost in this discussion is the entire event shifted to this focus on Donald Trump and the internal conflict in the organization, and I’m certain that as a result, journalists and students who went lost out on some of that solidarity,” she said. And it fits a larger pattern of outspoken newsmakers inserting themselves into the news to claim the spotlight.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>How can journalism avoid being hijacked by the people it covers?</strong></p><p>“It comes down to context. We need to train reporters to take a breath and not just focus on being the first out there. And I know that’s really hard, because the rewards for being first and getting those clicks ahead of the crowd are well established.” &nbsp;</p><p class="text-align-center"><strong>***</strong></p><p>Agenda setting—the concept that we take our cues of what’s important from the news—is as old an idea as mass media itself, but Chris Vargo is drawing interesting conclusions from studying the practice in the digital age. Worth watching, he and other CMCI researchers said, are countermedia entities, which undermine the depictions of reality found in the mainstream press through hyper-partisan content and the use of mis- and disinformation.</p><p><strong>How did we get into these silos, and how do we get out?</strong></p><p>“The absence of traditional gatekeepers has helped people create identities around the issues they choose to believe in. Real-world cues do tell us a little about what we find important—a lot of people had to get COVID to know it was bad—but we now choose media in order to form a community. The ability to self-select what you want to listen to and believe in is a terrifying story, because selecting media based on what makes us feel most comfortable, that tells us what we want to hear, flies in the face of actual news reporting and journalistic integrity.” &nbsp;</p><p class="text-align-center"><strong>***</strong></p><p>Her research into deepfakes has validated what Sandra Ristovska has known for a long time: For as long as we’ve had visual technologies, we’ve had the ability to manipulate them. &nbsp;Seeing pornographic images of Taylor Swift on social media or getting robocalls from Joe Biden telling voters to stay home—content created by generative artificial intelligence—is a reminder that the scale of the problem is unprecedented. But Ristovska’s work has found examples of fake photos from the dawn of the 20th century supposedly showing, for example, damage from catastrophic tornadoes that never happened.&nbsp;</p><p>Ristovska grew up amid the Yugoslav Wars; her interest in becoming a documentary filmmaker was in part shaped by seeing how photos and videos from the brutal fighting and genocide were manipulated for political and legal means. It taught her to be a skeptic when it comes to what she sees shared online.&nbsp;</p><p>“So, you see the Taylor Swift video—it seems out of character for her public persona. Or the president—why would he say something like that?” she said. “Instead of just hitting the share button, we should train ourselves to go online and fact check it—to be more engaged.” &nbsp;</p><p><strong>Even when we believe something is fake, if it aligns with our worldview, we are likely to accept it as reality. Knowing that, how do we combat deepfakes?</strong></p><p>“We need to go old school. We’ve lost sight of the collective good, and you solve that by building opportunities to come together as communities and have discussions. We’re gentler and more tolerant of each other when we’re face-to-face. This has always been true, but it’s becoming even more true today, because we have more incentives to be isolated than ever.” &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p class="text-align-center"><strong>***</strong></p><p>Early scholarly works waxed poetic on the internet’s potential, through its ability to connect people and share information, to defeat autocracy. But, Nathan Schneider has argued, the internet is actually organized as a series of little autocracies—where users are subject to the whims of moderators and whoever owns the servers—effectively meaning you must work against the defaults to be truly democratic. He suggests living with these systems is contributing to the global rise of authoritarianism. In a new book, <em>Governable Spaces</em>, Schneider calls for redesigning social media with everyday democracy in mind.</p><p><strong>If the internet enables autocracy, what can we do to fix it?</strong></p><p>“We could design our networks for collective ownership, rather than the assumption that every service is a top-down fiefdom. And we could think about democracy as a tool for solving problems, like conflict among users. Polarizing outcomes, like so-called cancel culture, emerge because people don’t have better options for addressing harm. A democratic society needs public squares designed for democratic processes and practices.” &nbsp;</p><p class="text-align-center"><strong>***</strong></p><p>It may be derided as dull, but the public meeting is a bedrock of American democracy. It has also changed drastically as fringe groups have seized these spaces to give misinformation a megaphone, ban books and take up other undemocratic causes. Leah Sprain researches how specific communication practices facilitate and inhibit democratic action. She works as a facilitator with several groups, including the League of Women Voters and Restore the Balance, to ensure events like candidate forums embrace difficult issues while remaining nonpartisan.</p><p><strong>What’s a story we’re not telling about voters ahead of the election?</strong></p><p>“We should be looking more at college towns, because town-gown divides are real and long-standing. There’s a politics of resentment even in a place like Boulder, where you have people who say, ‘We know so much about these issues, we shouldn’t let students vote on them’—to the point where providing pizza to encourage voter turnout becomes this major controversy. Giving young people access to be involved, making them feel empowered to make a difference and be heard—these are good things.” &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p class="text-align-center"><strong>***</strong></p><p>Toby Hopp studies the news media and digital content providers with an eye to how our interactions with media shape conversations in the public sphere.</p><p>Much of that is changing as trust and engagement with mainstream news sources declines. He’s studied whether showing critical-thinking prompts alongside shared posts—requiring users to consider the messages as well as the structure of the platform itself—may be better than relying on top-down content moderation from tech companies. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>Ultimately, the existing business model of the big social media companies—packaging users to be sold to advertisers—may be the most limiting feature when it comes to reform. Hopp said he doubts a business the size of Meta can pivot from its model.</p><p><strong>How does social media rehabilitate itself to become more trusted? Can it?</strong></p><p>“Social media platforms are driven by monopolistic impulses, and there’s not a lot of effort put into changing established strategies when you’re the only business in town. The development of new platforms might offer a wider breadth of platform choice—which might limit the spread of misinformation on a Facebook or Twitter due to the diminished reach of any single platform.” &nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p class="text-align-center"><strong>***</strong></p><p>CU News Corps was created to simulate a real-world newsroom that allows journalism students to do the kind of long-form, investigative pieces that are in such short supply at a time of social media hot takes and pundits trading talking points. &nbsp;</p><p>“I thought we should design the course you’d most want to take if you were a journalism major,” said Chuck Plunkett, director of the capstone course and an experienced reporter. Having a mandate to do investigative journalism “means we can challenge our students to dig in and do meaningful work, to expose them to other kinds of people or ideas that aren’t on their radar.”&nbsp;</p><p>Over the course of a semester, the students work under the guidance of reporters and editors at partner media companies to produce long-form multimedia stories that are shared on the News Corps website and, often, are picked up by those same publications, giving the students invaluable clips for their job searches while supporting resource-strapped newsrooms.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>With the news business facing such a challenging future, both economically and politically, why should students study journalism?</strong></p><p>“Even before the great contraction of news, the figure I had in my mind was five years after students graduate, maybe 25 percent of them were still in professional newsrooms. But journalism is a tremendous major because you learn to think critically, research deeply and efficiently, interact with other people, process enormous amounts of information, and have excellent communication skills. Every profession needs people with those skills.”</p></div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content-media ucb-article-content-media-right col-lg"> <div> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--media paragraph--view-mode--default"> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>Where do we go from here? CMCI experts share their perspectives on journalism, advertising, data science, communication and more in an era of democratic backsliding. </div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Traditional</div> <div>0</div> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle large_image_style"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/large_image_style/public/feature-title-image/democ_billboard_0.png?itok=bWQw2Vp1" width="1500" height="844" alt> </div> </div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Fri, 16 Aug 2024 21:08:32 +0000 Anonymous 1086 at /cmcinow The race to make tech more equal /cmcinow/2024/08/14/race-make-tech-more-equal <span>The race to make tech more equal</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2024-08-14T15:54:10-06:00" title="Wednesday, August 14, 2024 - 15:54">Wed, 08/14/2024 - 15:54</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/bryan_semaan_cropped_and_resized.png?h=16c9a161&amp;itok=VysqWUaT" width="1200" height="800" alt="Bryan Semaan"> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/24"> Features </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/44" hreflang="en">Information Science</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/297" hreflang="en">center for race media and technology</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/189" hreflang="en">faculty</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p><strong>By Joe Arney</strong><br><strong>Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18)</strong></p><p>Back when Bryan Semaan’s mom had a Facebook account, doomscrolling wasn’t part of her vernacular.</p><p>The Iraqi culture she was raised in compels celebration of accomplishments and milestones, “so any time someone posted something, she felt she had to interact with it,” Semaan said. “That personal engagement runs very deeply through our culture.”</p><p>But it became exhausting for her to keep up as her network swelled into the hundreds, so she deactivated her account. For Semaan, it’s a fitting metaphor for his research—which challenges the assumptions tech developers make about the users of their products and services. And it’s the kind of problem he wants to study through the <a href="/center/crmt/" rel="nofollow">Center for Race, Media and Technology</a>, which the University of Colorado Boulder unveiled in the spring.</p><p>“The people developing these technologies are in Silicon Valley—so, mostly male, mostly white,” said Semaan, director of the center and an associate professor of information science at CMCI. “A lot of the values we bake into these technologies are being forced onto people in different cultures, often creating problems.”</p><p>As a first-generation American, Semaan said he identifies with the liminal moments faced by others living between worlds—immigrants, veterans, refugees, people of color or Indigenous people—and the challenges of adopting to Western societal structures. Technology plays a big part, and the discipline’s blind spots are a key focus of Semaan’s research, which asks how these tools can create resilience for people in those liminal moments, such as a climate refugee fleeing disaster or a queer teenager anxious about coming out.</p> <div class="align-right image_style-small_500px_25_display_size_"> <div class="imageMediaStyle small_500px_25_display_size_"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/small_500px_25_display_size_/public/article-image/ruha-mug.jpg?itok=BGcWvIy5" width="375" height="375" alt="Headshot of Ruha Benjamin against a dark background."> </div> </div> <p>To kick off the center, in March, <a href="/cmci/news/2024/03/08/center-race-tech-media-ruha-benjamin" rel="nofollow">CMCI welcomed Ruha Benjamin</a>, a professor at Princeton who’s developed her scholarship around what she calls the “New Jim Code”—a nod to both the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation and the biases encoded into technology. Benjamin, he said, “focuses on how people consider technology to be a benign thing, when in fact it isn’t—tech nology takes on the values of those who create it.”</p><p>Fortunately, Semaan said, we’re at a moment when society is recognizing&nbsp;the importance of equity and justice, while seeing technology as a problem, a solution and a thread tying together the great challenges facing humanity—political polarization, disinformation, climate change and so on.</p><p>He’s optimistic that the Center for Race, Media and Technology will collect the broad perspectives needed to make, as he put it, “the intractable problems tractable.”</p><p>“What I imagine for the center is encouraging collaborations among the experts we bring together,” he said. “And I’m really hoping my research direction changes as a result of getting to work with the amazing people I’ll meet.”</p><p>If it’s collaboration he wants to get out of the center, Semaan’s successes to date have been more about tenacity. Early in his career, he said, some of his colleagues tried to steer him from migrants and veterans, dismissing his interest in making technology equitable as “a diversity ghetto.”</p><p>That didn’t deter him—and, with the benefit of hindsight, those rejections made him a better scholar.</p><p class="hero"><i class="fa-solid fa-quote-right fa-2x fa-pull-right ucb-icon-color-gold">&nbsp;</i>&nbsp;These bigger challenges are going to require people thinking together at a much grander scale, which means changing how we work.”</p><p>Bryan Semaan</p><p>“In my research, the people you work with are incredibly vulnerable, or are so busy surviving that they can’t talk to you,” he said. “You have to be passionate about that work, and prepared for long-tail effort before you make progress.”</p><p>The work of the center will be a long game, but if successful, Semaan said, it will put Ҵýƽ at the center of the conversation around purposefully designed technology.</p><p>“It dovetails with the university’s broader mission around diversity,” he said. “It’s not just saying we’re going to increase diversity—it’s the issues we are approaching and the support we are building for different scholars across the university. Because these bigger challenges are going to require people thinking together at a much grander scale, which means changing how we work.”</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>A new center at CMCI is organizing faculty thought leadership to answer big, systemic questions about technology’s role in issues of social justice.</div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Traditional</div> <div>0</div> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle large_image_style"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/large_image_style/public/feature-title-image/bryan_semaan_cropped_and_resized.png?itok=tljyWket" width="1500" height="719" alt> </div> </div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Wed, 14 Aug 2024 21:54:10 +0000 Anonymous 1084 at /cmcinow #GreenAds /cmcinow/2024/05/08/greenads <span>#GreenAds</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2024-05-08T16:54:20-06:00" title="Wednesday, May 8, 2024 - 16:54">Wed, 05/08/2024 - 16:54</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/3_minute_thesis_kimberly_coffin_spring_2024.jpg?h=0b68c389&amp;itok=0ZD-O5ue" width="1200" height="800" alt="Saima Kazmi presenting her research"> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/46"> Trending </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/10" hreflang="en">APRD</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p><strong>By Joe Arney<br> Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18)</strong></p><p>Her experience in advertising and public relations means <a href="/cmci/people/graduate-students/advertising-public-relations-and-media-design/saima-kazmi" rel="nofollow">Saima Kazmi</a> knows the power of a good story to change minds and hearts.&nbsp;</p><p>Now, as she completes her doctoral studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, she’s trying to understand a story with the potential to shape the future of the planet.&nbsp;</p><p>Kazmi (PhDStratComm’24) studies green advertising campaigns that prompt people to make choices that support sustainability and environmental well-being—effectively using the advertising playbook, which is so good at urging people to buy things, to encourage less consumption.&nbsp;</p><p>Specifically, her research examines why consumers tend to reject such prompts.&nbsp;</p><p>“People see an environmental message, and they immediately shut down,” she said. “There is always pushback when you’re asking people to change their behavior, but I really want to understand what it is about sustainability that causes those cognitive barriers to raise.”&nbsp;</p><p>She’s studying different messaging strategies that can overcome that resistance to change—work that will continue now that she’s accepted a role as an assistant professor at the University of Oregon for the fall.&nbsp;</p><p>“I’m so grateful, happy and honored to work at a place where they have so many sustainability initiatives,” Kazmi said. “They have a whole communication department working on climate science, which is exactly the type of people I want to work with to move my research forward.”</p><h2> <div class="align-right image_style-medium_750px_50_display_size_"> <div class="imageMediaStyle medium_750px_50_display_size_"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/medium_750px_50_display_size_/public/article-image/3_minute_thesis_kimberly_coffin_spring_2024-2.jpg?itok=E9EBwDpE" width="750" height="501" alt="Saima Kazmi presenting her research (1)"> </div> </div> You have three minutes</h2><p>Academic research sometimes gets a reputation for being too theoretical or esoteric to effect meaningful change. Kazmi said she knows that isn’t an option for her work, which is part of why she competed in Ҵýƽ <a href="/graduateschool/services-resources/professional-development/three-minute-thesis" rel="nofollow">Three-Minute Thesis</a>—a competition in which graduate students are challenged to describe their research to a general audience in no more than three minutes. She was one of two students from the College of Media, Communication and Information to advance to the final round of the competition, which concluded in February.&nbsp;</p><p>“I thought it would be a lot like my job search, where you’re giving research presentations—but I had all this jargon and messaging that was tailored for faculty and search committees,” she said. “You have to think—if my grandmother was in the audience, how would I be able to get her to understand this?”&nbsp;</p><p>A voracious reader and seasoned advertising expert—as a consultant, she did work for brands like Unilever and Nestle—Kazmi found a way to make her pitch a relatable story, which helped her search for jobs and defend her dissertation.</p><p>“I was talking about this whole phenomenon of water being drained from the Colorado River for agriculture, and I shaped it almost like a dystopian novel, where we knew what was happening but people ignored all the messages,” she said. “Learning how to get my point across to a general audience was so valuable to me.</p><p class="lead"><i class="fa-solid fa-quote-right ucb-icon-color-gold fa-3x fa-pull-right">&nbsp;</i> “Only 1 to 2% of people get to be researchers and create knowledge. And if that knowledge is not accessible, we’re missing out on an opportunity to have an impact.”</p><p>Saima Kazmi (PhDStratComm’24)</p><h2>Far-ranging research implications</h2><p> </p><div class="align-left image_style-medium_750px_50_display_size_"> <div class="imageMediaStyle medium_750px_50_display_size_"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/medium_750px_50_display_size_/public/article-image/harsha_circle_0.png?itok=hgbMTKuQ" width="750" height="750" alt="Harsha Gangadharbatla"> </div> </div> <a href="/cmci/people/college-leadership/harsha-gangadharbatla" rel="nofollow">Harsha Gangadharbatla</a>, professor of <a href="/cmci/academics/advertising-pr-and-media-design" rel="nofollow">advertising, public relations and media design</a> and associate dean of faculty development at CMCI, said Kazmi will have no trouble creating impact at a place like Oregon. And he ought to know, having taught there for five years before coming to Ҵýƽ, where he eventually became one of the college’s founding chairs.<p>Gangadharbatla described Kazmi, whom he advised, as especially hardworking and dedicated, in addition to doing interesting research that has such wide-ranging implications for different industries.&nbsp;</p><p>“When she takes something up, she sees it to the very end, which is admirable in and of itself,” he said. “But she’ll also do well on the tenure track because she’ll have a sustained, focused body of work with very real implications—not only to different areas, like advertising, public policy and sustainability in general, but for us all.”</p><p>Kazmi called Gangadharbatla a powerful influence on her career—particularly his love of teaching—and said faculty and peers helped smooth an academic journey that included the challenges of virtual work amid the pandemic and raising three small children while her husband worked overseas. Gangadharbatla said it was “amazing, how she cared for her family by herself while taking courses, writing a dissertation and teaching,” and joked that “my partner and I have two children, and between the two of us we’re struggling to survive.”&nbsp;</p><p>For Kazmi, success was about her willingness to work hard and the community of which she was a part.&nbsp;</p><p>“So many people in CMCI guided me on publications and helped prepare me for the job market,” she said. “And my classmates, too—they’re going through the same struggles that I did, and they’ve become friends as we all go on to such different next steps in our careers.”&nbsp;</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>Advertisers are very good at getting us to buy things. A PhD graduate wants to use the same playbook to encourage more sustainability and less consumption.</div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Traditional</div> <div>0</div> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle large_image_style"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/large_image_style/public/feature-title-image/3_minute_thesis_kimberly_coffin_spring_2024.jpg?itok=5o_NBeAL" width="1500" height="1002" alt> </div> </div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Wed, 08 May 2024 22:54:20 +0000 Anonymous 1068 at /cmcinow Outstanding senior: Bianca Perez /cmcinow/2024/05/01/class-2024-bianca-perez <span>Outstanding senior: Bianca Perez</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2024-05-01T16:39:42-06:00" title="Wednesday, May 1, 2024 - 16:39">Wed, 05/01/2024 - 16:39</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/bianca-lede.jpg?h=c49a1a2e&amp;itok=lNcdXF66" width="1200" height="800" alt="A portrait of Bianca in front of the library."> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/24"> Features </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Communication</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/54" hreflang="en">Media Studies</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/291" hreflang="en">graduation</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="small-text"><strong>By Joe Arney</strong><br><strong>Photos by Kimberly Coffin (CritMedia, StratComm’18)</strong></p><p>When Bianca Perez called her mom in the middle of the day to tell her she’d been accepted to a prestigious doctoral program at one of the nation’s foremost universities, she expected there might be some tears.</p><p>She wasn’t wrong. But it wasn’t her mother who cried.</p><p>Perez’s mother, Leyda, was born and raised in Mexico, while her father, Ernesto, came to the United States from Peru. For almost 30 years, they have worked tirelessly at growing Perez Cleaning Services, in Steamboat Springs, in order to provide their daughter with opportunities they couldn’t imagine—and don’t always understand. When she explained that she was applying to schools to be a doctor, Perez (Comm, MediaSt’24) would clarify “a doctor of words,” since her family thought she was maybe interested in a medical career.</p><p>Now, as she explained on speakerphone that she was accepted to the PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Annenberg School for Communication, in Philadelphia, “my mom wasn’t sure what to make of it,” Perez said. “I could tell she was happy because she could hear the excitement in my voice.”</p><p>But the client her mother was speaking with when Perez called couldn’t believe his ears.</p><div class="ucb-box ucb-box-title-hidden ucb-box-alignment-right ucb-box-style-fill ucb-box-theme-lightgray"><div class="ucb-box-inner"><div class="ucb-box-title">&nbsp;</div><div class="ucb-box-content"><p class="lead"><i class="fa-solid fa-quote-left fa-2x fa-pull-left ucb-icon-color-gold">&nbsp;</i>What I have is like a wish coming true. You can work very hard and that can still not be enough, and I’ve seen that happen to people around me my whole life.”<br>Bianca Perez (Comm, MediaSt’24)</p></div></div></div><p>“He was like, ‘Did I just overhear that your daughter's going to graduate school at Penn?’” she recalled. “And I could hear him start crying, and my mom said to me, ‘Oh, no, I have to go, one of the clients is upset.’ But he wasn’t—the guy went to UPenn for his undergrad, had wanted to go to grad school there but couldn’t, and he was so happy and excited for me.</p><p>“I think for my mom, seeing a random person cry like that and be so joyful, helped her understand just how exciting this was for me.”</p><h3>Driven to change the world</h3><p>It’s not the first time she’s had to overcome the barrier separating her lived experiences from those of her parents. But her working-class upbringing—combined with her curiosity, care and enthusiasm for working hard—has already made her a promising scholar in the realm of artificial intelligence and labor.</p><p>“It’s because of her humble background that she understands that the ability to be in college, to read books and write for a living, is a privilege,” said Sandra Ristovska, an assistant professor of <a href="/cmci/academics/media-studies" rel="nofollow">media studies</a> at the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Perez’s advisor. “It’s unsurprising she’s interested in questions around technology and labor because she is seeking, through her research, to improve the lives and livelihoods of working-class people, immigrants and people of color.”</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p>Perez studies generative artificial intelligence and labor through the lens of copyright law. In the past year, artists and publishers have sued tech companies that have used copyrighted work to train generative A.I. platforms like ChatGPT, opening up a larger question of how to fairly value labor—not just of plaintiffs like J.K. Rowling, Stephen King and The New York Times, but everyday social media users, whose likes and shares train algorithms to better recommend content that keeps people online.</p><p>Because that data is disassociated from the users, the labor of whoever generated that data—those likes and shares—is obscured, meaning they can’t be compensated. And these are, of course, some of the world’s deepest-pocketed tech companies, whose forays into the development of A.I. are far ahead of gridlocked government regulators and already-alarmed ethicists. &nbsp;</p><p>“We have no way to check these models, even though we’ve all been producing them through our work,” Perez said. “It’s a new and complex expansion of wage theft. They’re taking all our labor and remixing it to make something else—but it’s still our labor. How is that fair?”</p><h3>Fairness focus</h3><p>That question of what’s fair is central to Perez’s identity. Just the time and space to work as hard as she does, she said, is a privilege, especially when in high school she would see other smart, ambitious students fall behind because of work or family commitments.</p><p>“I always feel that there’s only a few degrees separating me being a migrant daughter who’s picking cherries, to my being here,” she said. “My parents taught me how to work very hard—I can’t underscore that enough—but what I have is like a wish coming true. You can work very hard and that can still not be enough, and I’ve seen that happen to people around me my whole life.”</p><p>Fairness also ties into her related research interest in the exploitation of Black and Latino tech labor—like DoorDash drivers during the pandemic, or Amazon warehouse workers toiling in hotter facilities in a warming climate. The combination of her interests has resulted in some unique scholarship that’s already getting noticed: This summer, Perez will present her thesis at the annual conference of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, in Christchurch, New Zealand—an honor usually reserved for PhD students and faculty.</p><p>Ristovska, her advisor, also attended a prestigious conference as an undergraduate before going on to Annenberg for her PhD, and is excited to see how sharing her work at one of the field’s most prestigious events influences Perez’s future work.</p><p>“What she does is bring the human back to the discourse around A.I. and technology,” Ristovska said. “Her work makes us think about how human creativity and human engagement are central to the development of A.I., and why it’s so important we figure out labor protections now, before the technology is even more advanced.”</p><h3>‘Someone who knows how to push me’</h3><p>Perez called Ristovska “an incredible influence on me—someone who knows how to push me and who has held my hand on this journey, even though we were going uphill sometimes.” Among her mentors, she also counts professors Omedi Ochieng and Danielle Hodge, of the <a href="/cmci/academics/communication" rel="nofollow">communication department</a>, as well as Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe, who is pursuing a PhD in media studies; Perez called her first course with Bledsoe the foundational moment of her time at CU.</p><p>Bledsoe recalled Perez for both her insatiable curiosity and her writing talent, which she called “refreshing and invigorating in an increasing sea of generic ChatGPT.”</p><p>“Bianca will be successful in her PhD for the normal things, like being diligent and curious, but also for her inimitable voice—both creative and critical—that I have no doubt will contribute to our field and make it better,” Bledsoe said. “People would benefit from being a little more like Bianca, by following your passion until it blooms in full force.”</p><div class="ucb-box ucb-box-title-hidden ucb-box-alignment-right ucb-box-style-fill ucb-box-theme-white"><div class="ucb-box-inner"><div class="ucb-box-title">&nbsp;</div><div class="ucb-box-content"><p>“Her work makes us think about how human creativity and human engagement are central to the development of A.I., and why it’s so important we figure out labor protections now, before the technology is even more advanced.<i class="fa-solid fa-quote-right fa-2x fa-pull-right ucb-icon-color-gold">&nbsp;</i><br>Sandra Ristovska, assistant professor, media studies</p></div></div></div><p>Perez’s focus wasn’t always so direct. She arrived at Ҵýƽ thinking she’d major in media production, given her interest in documentary filmmaking, but after exploring different paths, arrived at her current combination after briefly considering information science. At commencement, she was honored as the William W. White Outstanding Senior for both communication and media studies, the first time a student has been recognized by two departments. The White awards are chosen by CMCI faculty and honor students for their academic accomplishments, professional achievements and service to the college.</p><p>“My different majors helped me discover different frameworks of thinking about the topics I was interested in, which has helped me think about my research more critically,” she said. “It wasn’t always a specific lesson I was taught, but professors like Dr. Hodge showed me to think about whether what I’m working on actually speaks to the community—and you do that by speaking with that community.”</p><p>It’s a new twist on what Perez said is the most important lesson she learned at home.</p><p>“The best thing my parents taught me was to actually care about what you’re doing—to show up for others when it matters,” she said. “Maybe cleaning is trivial to some people, but their business is pretty exceptional in our town, and it’s because they care very much for their reputation and the people they serve.”</p><p>That’s why her mentor is convinced Perez will make her CMCI professors proud years after she has graduated.</p><p>“Whether she chooses an academic career or the policy realm, I really think she’ll make the world a better place, because her commitment to justice is ingrained in her,” Ristovska said. “I’m so excited for what comes next for her.”</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>A CMCI graduate’s working-class upbringing has given her a unique perspective on tech, wage theft and exploitation, which she’s bringing to an Ivy League doctoral program.</div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Traditional</div> <div>7</div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Wed, 01 May 2024 22:39:42 +0000 Anonymous 1055 at /cmcinow Student Work Gallery: Spring 2024 /cmcinow/2024/02/27/student-work-gallery-spring-2024 <span> Student Work Gallery: Spring 2024</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2024-02-27T14:26:40-07:00" title="Tuesday, February 27, 2024 - 14:26">Tue, 02/27/2024 - 14:26</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/library_screenshot.png?h=7639a74e&amp;itok=3XsqISRt" width="1200" height="800" alt="Preview of Student Work Gallery"> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/4"> Beyond the Classroom </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/8" hreflang="en">Advertising Public Relations and Media Design</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Communication</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/50" hreflang="en">Critical Media Practices</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/26" hreflang="en">Graduate Students</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/44" hreflang="en">Information Science</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/22" hreflang="en">Journalism</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/209" hreflang="en">Media Production</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/54" hreflang="en">Media Studies</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/193" hreflang="en">media and public engagement</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/149" hreflang="en">strategic communication</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-row-subrow row"> <div class="ucb-article-text col-lg d-flex align-items-center" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p><span>CMCI students from all departments develop their portfolios through classes, competitions, internships and more.</span></p><p><span>Here we have collected a variety of student work that highlights their personal and professional passions explored during their academic careers at Ҵýƽ.</span></p><p class="lead text-align-center"><a class="ucb-link-button ucb-link-button-blue ucb-link-button-default ucb-link-button-large" href="/cmci/studentworkgallery#2024" rel="nofollow"> <span class="ucb-link-button-contents"> <i class="fa-solid fa-up-right-from-square">&nbsp;</i> View the work </span> </a> </p><div>&nbsp;</div></div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content-media ucb-article-content-media-right col-lg"> <div> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--media paragraph--view-mode--default"> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>Students across CMCI find ways to bring together their personal interests and academic pursuits. Since the college’s founding, we have showcased this diverse collection of student work.</div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Traditional</div> <div>0</div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Tue, 27 Feb 2024 21:26:40 +0000 Anonymous 1047 at /cmcinow ‘And that’s on human rights’: Bringing large-scale challenges to TikTok /cmcinow/2024/02/02/and-thats-human-rights-bringing-large-scale-challenges-tiktok <span>‘And that’s on human rights’: Bringing large-scale challenges to TikTok</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2024-02-02T14:58:24-07:00" title="Friday, February 2, 2024 - 14:58">Fri, 02/02/2024 - 14:58</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/screenshot_2024-02-02_at_2.59.21_pm.png?h=c1e594cf&amp;itok=qt13zhRc" width="1200" height="800" alt="Pollution in Denver"> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/4"> Beyond the Classroom </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/54" hreflang="en">Media Studies</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="small-text"><span><strong>By Joe Arney</strong></span></p><p><span>Dances for hit songs. The antics of cute animals and babies. Easy dinner recipes.</span></p><p><span>A campaign to raise awareness about air and water pollution in the Denver metro area?</span></p><p><span>If you think TikTok videos are all fun and games, think again. A new generation of social-savvy activists is learning how the format can be used to draw attention to major societal challenges in hopes of creating solutions.</span></p><p><span>It’s why Bianca Perez </span><a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@coloradansagainstsuncor/video/7310764781240159534?is_from_webapp=1&amp;sender_device=pc&amp;web_id=7239358430607459882" rel="nofollow"><span>stars in a short video</span></a><span> where her attempts to de-stress by doing meditative practices are interrupted by the reality of air and water pollution.</span></p><p><span>“Breathe in the sweet Rocky Mountain air,” a narrator says as Perez attempts to deep-breathe. “Look around you, you’re in a safe space, you’re protected.”</span></p><p><span>“But not from PFAS,” the voice breaks in harshly, startling her out of her meditative routine.</span></p><p><span>“We study plenty of social media, and so a lot of students are aware that these movements happen online,” said Perez, a senior pursuing a degree in media studies. “But I don’t think many students try to create movements of their own on TikTok, and we really got to see how hard it can be to create impact on social media.”</span></p><p><span>As part of the Visual Culture and Human Rights course taught by </span><a href="/cmci/people/media-studies/sandra-ristovska" rel="nofollow">Sandra Ristovska</a>, Perez and her classmates worked in teams to understand a local human rights crisis, then develop a campaign with clear metrics for success and a video for TikTok. Perez’s team focused on climate and pollution, specifically the role of a Commerce City Suncor refinery in leaching “forever chemicals” through its discharge water. Other teams looked at the opioid crisis and veteran homelessness in and around Denver.</p><p><span>“Typically, when we talk about human rights, we’re used to thinking about places abroad affected by war,” said Ristovska, an assistant professor of </span><a href="/cmci/academics/media-studies" rel="nofollow"><span>media studies</span></a><span> at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information. “We tend not to think about a place like Boulder. The beauty was in seeing how the students thought about the topics they’re passionate about and get them out of their typical frame of mind.”</span></p><p><span>Groups of students proposed topics in class, then received coaching from Ristovska about how to build a media campaign that resonates and how to consider audience needs and motivators. The campaign included both print materials and the TikTok videos.</span></p><p><span>In working on her most recent book, </span><a href="https://experts.colorado.edu/display/pubid_316320" rel="nofollow"><em>Seeing Human Rights</em></a>, Ristovska spoke with campaign officers at major human rights groups, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and “many of them were saying younger generations are not engaged with human rights issues the way prior generations have,” she said. “What this class taught me is that, actually, they're really passionate and want to be involved, but we need to meet them where they are—so if they're on TikTok, then we need to be on TikTok.”</p><h3>Understanding media influence</h3><p><span>Katie Considine, who is pursuing a media studies minor from CMCI to pair with her major in international affairs, said she was excited to take the course because it was “the perfect cross section of my two academic interests.”</span></p><p><span>“When I graduate, I’d like to be in a role where I can look at how the media influences neofascist movements—the far right, violence, things like that,” Considine said. “The course gave me a really interesting perspective on how different human rights organizations or NGOs run campaigns, but also how media ends up impacting the ways people see human rights issues, and vice versa.”</span></p><p><span>The opportunity to address local issues in the course also left an impression for the students; Considine said it addressed a weakness in her international affairs courses “that sometimes are a little too broad, when there are fundamental human rights issues taking place right here that deserve our attention.”</span></p><p><span>Perez said her experience in the course has helped her think more critically about the human rights violations she sees in the media.</span></p><p><span>“I think I’m more aware of the way atrocity is portrayed in the media, and some concepts behind how it’s shown, like power and identity,” she said.</span></p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="lead"><i class="fa-solid fa-quote-left fa-2x fa-pull-left ucb-icon-color-gold">&nbsp;</i><span>A lot of students are aware that these movements happen online … (but) we really got to see how hard it can be to create impact on social media.”</span></p><p><span>Bianca Perez</span></p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><h3><span>Learning from peers as well as professor</span></h3><p><span>The course also involved opportunities for students to learn from one another. During their presentations, the students were encouraged to provide substantial feedback to help hone messages and rethink strategies.</span></p><p><span>“We knew it was going to be criticized by our peers, so going into it we were able to talk through what holes we had or where things could go wrong,” Considine said. “It helped us make the project better before we even presented.”</span></p><p><span>Additionally, as digital natives, the students were able to coach one another on the right aesthetics that resonate with audiences, Ristovska said.</span></p><p><span>“My involvement was more along the lines of—is the messaging right? Is the audience there? What do you want people to do, and how do you ensure that people do it?” she said.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Both Perez and Considine plan to continue on to graduate school, where each hopes more courses like this one await.</span></p><p><span>“I feel media literacy is at an all-time low, and courses like this need to be more accessible to people,” Considine said.</span></p><p><span>For her part, Ristovska said the course offered a real example of when teaching helps shape research, especially since students brought new perspectives in local human rights challenges that don’t always rise to the top in scholarship.</span></p><p><span>“Being able to go in the classroom and see what things are unclear, what we as faculty take for granted that we shouldn’t, really allows us to ask better questions about human rights, no matter where they're happening, no matter what the context is,” she said. “And so that's why I’m so grateful to my students.”</span></p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>Contrary to what you’ve heard, Generation Z isn’t afraid to engage human rights challenges. But, a CMCI expert says, we need to meet them where they live—and that’s TikTok.</div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Zebra Striped</div> <div>7</div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Fri, 02 Feb 2024 21:58:24 +0000 Anonymous 1043 at /cmcinow #TechEthics /cmcinow/2024/02/02/techethics <span>#TechEthics</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2024-02-02T12:44:07-07:00" title="Friday, February 2, 2024 - 12:44">Fri, 02/02/2024 - 12:44</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/kyle-hinkson-my-3g0r3iyg-unsplash.jpg?h=8831ed43&amp;itok=zhwu0MXt" width="1200" height="800" alt="Person taking a picture of a performer."> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/46"> Trending </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/44" hreflang="en">Information Science</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/189" hreflang="en">faculty</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="small-text"><strong>By Joe Arney</strong></p><p><span>Not many computer scientists have signs reading “Rage Against the Machine Learning” in their offices.</span></p><p><span>But in </span><a href="/cmci/people/information-science/evan-peck" rel="nofollow">Evan Peck</a>’s case, it’s a perfect symbol of why he was so excited to join the <a href="/cmci/people/information-science" rel="nofollow">information science department</a> of the College of Media, Communication and Information this fall.&nbsp;</p><div class="ucb-box ucb-box-title-hidden ucb-box-alignment-right ucb-box-style-fill ucb-box-theme-lightgray"><div class="ucb-box-inner"><div class="ucb-box-title">&nbsp;</div><div class="ucb-box-content"><p class="lead"><span>“I love being here because CMCI draws students who want to use technology in service of something they already care deeply about, and not for its own sake.</span><i class="fa-solid fa-quote-right fa-3x fa-pull-right ucb-icon-color-gold">&nbsp;</i></p><p><span><strong>Evan Peck</strong></span><br><em><span>Associate professor, information science</span></em></p></div></div></div><p><span>“I started to believe that some of the most pressing problems our society is wrestling with don’t require deeper technical solutions, but a reimagining of the ways we’re using technology,” he said. “I was looking for deeper connections to social sciences and community-focused work—and I think that’s what information science excels at, shifting the lens of the technical in service to the community and society.”</span></p><p><span>Peck joined the University of Colorado Boulder this fall from Bucknell University, meaning he’s gone from being a Bison to a Buffalo. More than that, it gave him a chance to join a college and department that is more closely aligned with his evolving research interests, which center on information visualization—especially the way data is communicated to the public.</span></p><h3>Establishing trust around data</h3><p><span>He already appreciates being surrounded by faculty and students who are experts in fields like media studies and communication.</span></p><p><span>“I’m fascinated by how we encourage people to trust data, understand it and respond to it,” Peck said. “While we can advance science enough to offer compelling solutions to societal problems, we continue to share those insights to the public without an understanding of people’s cultures, beliefs and background. That’s a recipe for failure.”</span></p><p><span>If you think about some of the public health messaging you saw during the pandemic, you’ll probably remember the frustration of getting information that wasn’t helpful or didn’t reflect reality. Peck, for instance, lived in central Pennsylvania during the lockdowns. In the summer of 2020, his rural county hadn’t seen a day in which more than two people tested positive, but because most COVID maps reported risk at the state level, high caseloads in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh made all of Pennsylvania look more infectious than it was.</span></p><p><span>That degrades trust in experts, he said, “and when cases spiked in my county about a month later, I believe it had eroded trust and willingness to react to that data.”</span></p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p><span>He has taken his interest in this area to some interesting new arenas, including extensive interviews with rural Pennsylvanians at construction sites and farmers markets, to better understand how they interpreted charts and what information was important to them. The resulting research received a best paper award at the premier Human-Computer Interaction conference, has been cited by the Urban Institute and others, and helped cement his interest in information science.</span></p><p><span>“I had a moment of realization,” Peck said. “I could spend my whole career as a visualization researcher and still have zero impact on my community. So how do we engage in research that has a positive impact on the people and community around the university?”</span></p><p><span>It’s not the only area he’s looking to create impact. Peck describes himself as an advocate for undergraduate research opportunities, especially for students searching for a sense of place within their degree programs.</span></p><p><span>“It’s a mechanism for helping students explore areas that aren’t strongly represented in their core academic programs,” Peck said. “I saw this as an advisor in computer science for nearly a decade—I advised students who wanted to think deeply about how their designs impacted people, but in a curriculum in which people were a side story to their technical depth.”</span></p><h3>An eye to ethics</h3><p><span>He also created an initiative around ethics and computing curricula at Bucknell that’s been adopted by computer science programs everywhere. If a question was presented in an ethics context, students came up with thoughtful answers—but that reasoning did not extend into other assignments or their careers. It’s a story that’s familiar for anyone thinking about the addictiveness of social media platforms or the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence</span></p><p><span>Some computer science programs offered a single ethics course, “but it was so isolated from the rest of their technical content that students wouldn’t put them together,” Peck said.</span></p><p><span>In response, he added more ethical and critical thinking components to the core technical curriculum, and developed a set of programming assignments in which students wrestle with a societal design question in order to accomplish their programming goals.&nbsp;He currently has a grant through Mozilla’s Responsible Computing Challenge to continue that work at Ҵýƽ.</span></p><p><span>“It’s about connecting the dots and building habits. Students need to understand that the system I’m programming is going to have implications beyond Silicon Valley,” he said. “How can we get you to think about the human tradeoffs beyond the aggregated rules you’re creating?”</span></p><p><span>It’s the kind of question he feels renewed vigor about pursuing in the Department of Information Science.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“I love being here because CMCI draws students who want to use technology in service of something they already care deeply about, and not for its own sake,” Peck said.</span></p><p><span>“Computer science knows how to build marvelous systems, but not always how to make them work fairly or responsibly for diverse people and communities,” he added. “I think our department goes beyond the idea of ‘how do we build it,’ to think critically about who we’re designing for, who technology empowers, who it privileges, who it disadvantages.”</span></p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>“Rage Against the Machine Learning” isn’t just a sign in Evan Peck’s office. It’s an emblem of his career pivot.</div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Zebra Striped</div> <div>7</div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Fri, 02 Feb 2024 19:44:07 +0000 Anonymous 1042 at /cmcinow #ShakeItOff /cmcinow/2024/01/29/shake-it-off <span>#ShakeItOff</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2024-01-29T15:16:11-07:00" title="Monday, January 29, 2024 - 15:16">Mon, 01/29/2024 - 15:16</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/swift_cchiefs2.jpg?h=17c63ed1&amp;itok=fKL1fWNf" width="1200" height="800" alt="Taylor Swift at a Chiefs game"> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/46"> Trending </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/16" hreflang="en">Communication</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/189" hreflang="en">faculty</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="small-text"><strong>By Joe Arney</strong></p><p>Even by her standards, Taylor Swift has had a busy couple of months.</p><p>When she wasn’t winning Grammys and dropping hints about her next album, Swift was making headlines for her appearances during NFL games, her supposed role as an elections-interference psyop and lyrics that, when decoded, suggested she is queer.</p><p>What is it about Swift that has so many people, even her fans, seeing red?</p><p>“This is something that is continually churning with me because I hadn’t taken Swift seriously as an artist—reproducing the historical practice of dismissing or devaluing women’s work,” said <a href="/cmci/people/communication/jamie-skerski" rel="nofollow">Jamie Skerski</a>, who studies how narratives are shaped and mediated by institutions, audiences, and cultural norms. “I was part of the problem.”</p><div class="ucb-box ucb-box-title-hidden ucb-box-alignment-right ucb-box-style-fill ucb-box-theme-lightgray"><div class="ucb-box-inner"><div class="ucb-box-title">&nbsp;</div><div class="ucb-box-content"><p class="lead"><i class="fa-solid fa-quote-right fa-5x fa-pull-right ucb-icon-color-gold">&nbsp;</i>&nbsp;<span>“What is so threatening about even the speculation that Taylor might not be Miss Americana? Answer: Everything as we know it.</span></p><p><span><strong>Jamie Skerski</strong></span><br><em><span>Associate chair, undergraduate studies</span></em></p></div></div></div><p>“But it’s something very visceral, and I think Taylor taps into this sense of female empowerment, of anger, of frustration, of recognition, of systems that continue to try to take women’s rights away,” said Skerski, associate chair for undergraduate studies at the College of Media, Communication and Information at the University of Colorado Boulder.</p><p>Perhaps nowhere is the phenomenon more apparent than “Traylor”—the Travis Kelce-Swift romance that’s dominated pop culture throughout the football season. When Swift attends Chiefs games, she is typically shown on screen for less than a minute of a three-plus-hour telecast, but male football fans have furiously labeled her a distraction from the action. Skerski pointed out that other distractions, like military flyovers and cheerleaders, don’t attract nearly the same amount of outrage.</p><p>The Traylor relationship, she said, offers an opportunity to explore questions about the entertainment industry, gender and fandom—especially around the “fantasies of straight white men” whose loves of sports betting and fantasy football are validated through societal norms.</p><p>“It’s culturally acceptable when white-collar men seek escapism, entertainment and social capital in the commodification and dehumanization of mostly Black bodies for personal pleasure,” since that reflects dominant racial power relationships, Skerski said.</p><p>“But when Swift fans engage in a version of fan fiction—daring to imagine Taylor as playing for the other team—it is condemned, belittled and dismissed. This is a moment to ask, whose fantasies are allowed to exist, and why?”</p><p>The idea of Swift playing for the other team isn’t new—the so-called Gaylor community on Reddit and TikTok has been collectively analyzing her lyrics for years—but it entered the mainstream in January when a <em>New York Times</em> guest essay waded into the fray with a 5,000-word read of Swift’s life and lyrics, imploring readers to consider that her songwriting offers “a feast laid specifically for the close listener.”</p><p>The bigger question, it argues, is not whether Swift is gay, but the obstacles to coming out in our celebrity culture and what queer people owe one another.</p><p>“How might her industry, our culture and we, ourselves, change if we made space for Ms. Swift to burn that dollhouse to the ground?” Anna Marks, an opinion editor for the Times, wrote in the column.</p><p>The point hit home for Skerski. “If a celebrity needs to navigate cultural norms of acceptance, that’s the bigger question,” she said. The idea that Swift’s work can have multiple meanings and influence different audiences “would break everything,” she said, as it would challenge the way our culture characterizes and reinforces identity norms.</p><p>Still, a lot of angry Swifties took to online comments to vent their frustration on the singer’s behalf, lashing out at the Gray Lady for becoming a gossip girl as well as the author, who wrote a similar piece about Harry Styles in 2022. Not allowing Swift access to her own identity is at best a misguided attempt at allyship, Skerski said—and at worst, “the fan outrage reinforces a culture of protective paternalism that is invoked to control women’s bodies.”<br>&nbsp;<br>“What is so threatening about even the speculation that Taylor might not be Miss Americana?” she said. “Answer: Everything as we know it.”</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>What is it about Taylor Swift that has so many people—even her fans—seeing red? A communication scholar says it's a theme she knows all too well.</div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Zebra Striped</div> <div>7</div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Mon, 29 Jan 2024 22:16:11 +0000 Anonymous 1037 at /cmcinow Primed for change /cmcinow/primed-change <span>Primed for change</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2023-10-29T21:09:46-06:00" title="Sunday, October 29, 2023 - 21:09">Sun, 10/29/2023 - 21:09</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/2-dean_bergen_and_coach_prime_kimberly_coffin_spring_2023-6.jpg?h=69f46df5&amp;itok=b4wQrHsb" width="1200" height="800" alt="Dean Bergen and Coach Prime"> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/169"> Dean's Letter </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/8" hreflang="en">Advertising Public Relations and Media Design</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/50" hreflang="en">Critical Media Practices</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/44" hreflang="en">Information Science</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/22" hreflang="en">Journalism</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/54" hreflang="en">Media Studies</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-content-media ucb-article-content-media-above"> <div> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--media paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle large_image_style"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/large_image_style/public/2024-12/Screen%20Shot%202024-12-28%20at%2012.36.10%20PM.png?itok=5mORC1tF" width="1500" height="558" alt="Lori and Coach Prime"> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-text d-flex align-items-center" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p>&nbsp;</p><p>CMCI was founded amid change—an answer to how we could best organize the various communication- and information-related disciplines at Ҵýƽ in ways that enabled faculty collaboration and student success. We’re no stranger to disruption, so as generative A.I. tools like ChatGPT captured the public imagination early this year, I started wondering what the next chapter for communication—and education—might look like.</p><p>The dominant theme in the headlines has been one of concern, but as usual, I’ve found the best perspectives come from our alumni, students and faculty, who are on the front lines of change in these fast-moving times. In this issue, we asked members of our community for their reflections on change, and they shared insights on everything from A.I. and algorithms, to work and water.</p><p>If you find yourself overwhelmed by the enormity of the changes you’re facing, I hope you’ll find insight in this issue, which showcases how our community is researching <a href="/cmcinow/node/1015" rel="nofollow">the ways algorithms shape our worldview</a>&nbsp;and the <a href="/cmcinow/node/1011" rel="nofollow">technology transforming how creative projects get done</a>. It also offers a chance for you to reconnect with how our college is changing, including our new <a href="/cmcinow/node/1008" rel="nofollow">Washington, D.C., program</a>.</p><p>Reading these stories helped me feel re-energized about the direction of our college and the ways our community is poised to lead through change. I may not have a crystal ball, but I’m confident that CMCI will continue to be a place where new ideas and tools are celebrated, not feared, and where possibility is embraced. I’m excited to be part of this community and to see where we go from here. And change is exciting—just look at the energy and attention Coach Prime has brought to the Buffs!</p><p>What about you? I’d love to hear your thoughts on CMCI and its future. Drop me a line or come say hello next time you’re in the Boulder area.</p><p><strong>Lori Bergen, PhD</strong><br>Founding Dean<br>College of Media, Communication and Information</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>CMCI was founded amid change—an answer to how we could best organize the various communication- and information-related disciplines at Ҵýƽ in ways that enabled faculty collaboration and student success.</div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Zebra Striped</div> <div>7</div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Mon, 30 Oct 2023 03:09:46 +0000 Anonymous 1028 at /cmcinow Questions about A.I.? Let’s Chat /cmcinow/questions-about-ai-lets-chat <span>Questions about A.I.? Let’s Chat</span> <span><span>Anonymous (not verified)</span></span> <span><time datetime="2023-10-29T18:16:06-06:00" title="Sunday, October 29, 2023 - 18:16">Sun, 10/29/2023 - 18:16</time> </span> <div> <div class="imageMediaStyle focal_image_wide"> <img loading="lazy" src="/cmcinow/sites/default/files/styles/focal_image_wide/public/article-thumbnail/181_questions_about_a.i._.png?h=ebd667f9&amp;itok=-ZkAOpSq" width="1200" height="800" alt="Illustration of watering flowers on a datastream"> </div> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-categories" itemprop="about"> <span class="visually-hidden">Categories:</span> <div class="ucb-article-category-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-folder-open"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/84"> In Conversation </a> </div> <div role="contentinfo" class="container ucb-article-tags" itemprop="keywords"> <span class="visually-hidden">Tags:</span> <div class="ucb-article-tag-icon" aria-hidden="true"> <i class="fa-solid fa-tags"></i> </div> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/44" hreflang="en">Information Science</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/54" hreflang="en">Media Studies</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/28" hreflang="en">Research</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/280" hreflang="en">artificial intelligence</a> <a href="/cmcinow/taxonomy/term/189" hreflang="en">faculty</a> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default 3"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="small-text"><strong>By Joe Arney</strong></p><p>When tools like ChatGPT entered the mainstream last winter, it was a moment of reckoning for professionals in every industry. Suddenly, the artificial intelligence revolution was a lot more real than most had imagined. Were we at the dawn of an era where professional communicators were about to become extinct?</p><p>Almost a year after ChatGPT’s debut, we’re still here—but still curious about how to be effective communicators, creators and storytellers in this brave new world. To examine what role CMCI plays in ensuring students graduate prepared to lead in a world where these tools are perhaps more widely used than understood, we invited Kai Larsen, associate professor of information systems at CU’s Leeds School of Business and a courtesy faculty member in CMCI, to moderate a discussion with associate professors Casey Fiesler, of information science, and Rick Stevens, of media studies, about the ethical and practical uses of A.I. and the value of new—and old—skills in a fast-changing workplace.</p><p><em>This conversation was edited for length and clarity.</em></p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="text-align-center lead">"A.I. can seem like magic, and if it seems like magic, you don’t understand what it can do or not do.”&nbsp;<br>­—Casey Fiesler</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><h2 class="text-align-center">Faculty in conversation</h2><div class="row ucb-column-container"><div class="col ucb-column"><div><div><div><p class="small-text"><strong>Kai R. Larsen</strong> is an associate professor of information systems at the Leeds School of Business. He is an expert in machine learning and natural language processing whose thought leadership has been featured in the most influential academic journals.&nbsp;</p></div></div></div></div><div class="col ucb-column"><div><div><div><p class="small-text"><strong>Casey Fiesler</strong> is associate chair for graduate studies in information science. She shares her insights in technology ethics, internet law and policy, and online communities both in scholarly journals and in the public, especially through social media. She is a courtesy faculty member in the Department of Computer Science.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="col ucb-column"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><p class="small-text"><strong>Rick Stevens</strong> is associate dean of undergraduate education at CMCI. His work explores ideological formation and media dissemination, including how technology infrastructure affects the delivery of messages, communication technology policy, and how media and technology platforms are changing public discourse.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><strong>Larsen:</strong> It’s exciting to be here with both of you to talk a bit about A.I. Maybe to get us started, I can ask you to tell us a little about how you see the landscape today.</p><p><strong>Fiesler:</strong> I think A.I. has become a term that is so broadly used that it barely has any meaning anymore. A lot of the conversation right now is around generative A.I., particularly large language models like ChatGPT. But I do see a need for some precision here, because there are other uses of A.I. that we see everywhere. It’s a recommender system deciding what you see next on Facebook, it’s a machine learning algorithm, it’s doing all kinds of decision-making in your life.</p><p><strong>Stevens: </strong>I think it’s important to talk about which tools we’re discussing in an individual moment. In our program, we see a lot of students using software like ChatGPT to write research papers. We allow some of that for very specific reasons, but we also are trying to get students to think about what this software is good at and not good at, because usually their literacy about it is not very good.</p><p><strong>Larsen: </strong>Let’s talk about that some more, especially with a focus on generative A.I., whether large language models or image creation-type A.I. What should we be teaching, and how should we be teaching it, to prepare our students for work environments where A.I. proficiency will be required?</p><p><strong>Stevens:</strong> What we’re trying to do when we use A.I. is to have students understand what those tools are doing, because they already have the literacy to write, to research and analyze content themselves. They’re just expanding their capacity or their efficiency in doing certain tasks, not replacing their command of text or research.</p><p><strong>Fiesler:</strong> There’s also that understanding of the limitations of these tools. A.I. can seem like magic, and if it seems like magic, you don’t understand what it can do or not do. This is an intense simplification, but ChatGPT is closer to being a fancy autocomplete than it is a search engine. It’s just a statistical probability of what word comes next. And if you know that, then you don’t necessarily expect it to always be correct or always be better at a task than a human.</p><p><strong>Stevens: </strong>Say a student is writing a research paper and is engaged in a particular set of research literature—is the A.I. drawing from the most recent publications, or the most cited? How does peer review fit into a model of chat generation? These are the kinds of questions that really tell us these tools aren’t as good as what students sometimes think.</p><p><strong>Larsen: </strong>We’re talking a lot about technology literacy here, but are there any other aspects of literacy you think are especially pertinent when it comes to A.I. models?</p><p><strong>Fiesler: </strong>There’s also information literacy, which is incredibly important when you are getting information you cannot source. If you search for something on Google, you have a source for that information that you can evaluate, whereas if I ask a question in ChatGPT, I have to fact-check that answer independently.</p><p><strong>Stevens: </strong>I’m glad you said that, because in class, if a student has a research project, they can declare they’ll use A.I. to assist them, but they get a different rubric for grading purposes. If they use assistance to more quickly build their argument, they must have enough command of the literature to know when that tool generates a mistake.</p><p><strong>Fiesler: </strong>And educators have to have an understanding of how these tools work, as well. Would you stop your students from using spell check? Of course not—unless they’re taking a spelling test. The challenge is that sometimes it’s&nbsp;a spelling test, and sometimes it’s not. It’s up to educators to figure out when something is a spelling test, and clearly articulate that to the students—as well as the value of what they’re learning, and why I’m teaching you to spell before letting you use spell check.</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><h2 class="text-align-center">Expanded Remarks</h2><div class="row ucb-column-container"><div class="col ucb-column"> <div class="field_media_oembed_video"><iframe src="/cmcinow/media/oembed?url=https%3A//youtu.be/7dfAeYPqIFA&amp;max_width=516&amp;max_height=350&amp;hash=Q8mKss4UX9t57-NH3wSCnDls3VNNh5Wrd-WjZZ6f38s" frameborder="0" allowtransparency width="516" height="350" class="media-oembed-content" loading="eager" title="Casey Fiesler on A.I.: We're learning how humans react"></iframe> </div> </div><div class="col ucb-column"> <div class="field_media_oembed_video"><iframe src="/cmcinow/media/oembed?url=https%3A//youtu.be/azWsvkfxvNE&amp;max_width=516&amp;max_height=350&amp;hash=lxDwmOvvJURmL9_XT61PkALn30XNTDdNlOdE2bZCn7o" frameborder="0" allowtransparency width="516" height="350" class="media-oembed-content" loading="eager" title="Rick Stevens on A.I.: It tends to reproduce the mainstream"></iframe> </div> </div></div></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><div><h3><em>Star Wars:</em> The Frog Awakens</h3><p><strong>Larsen: </strong>That’s an interesting thought. What about specific skills like critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity? How will we change the way we teach those concepts as a result of A.I.?</p><p><strong>Fiesler: </strong>I think critique and collaboration become even more important. ChatGPT is very good at emulating creativity. If you ask it to write a fan fiction where Kermit the Frog is in <em>Star Wars</em>, it will do that. And the fact that it can do that is pretty cool, but it’s not good, it tends to be pretty boring. Charlie Brooker said he had ChaptGPT write an episode of <em>Black Mirror</em>, and of course it was bad—it’s just a jumble of tropes. The more we play with these systems, the more you come to realize how important human creativity is.</p><p><strong>Stevens: </strong>You know, machine learning hasn’t historically been pointed at creativity—the idea is to have a predictable and consistent set of responses. But we’re trying to teach our students to develop their own voice and their own individuality, and that is never going to be something this version of tools will be good at emulating. Watching students fail because they think technology offers a shortcut can be a literacy opportunity. It lets you ask the student, are you just trying to get software to get you through this class—or are you learning how to write so that you can express yourself and be heard from among all the people being captured in the algorithm?</p><p><strong>Larsen: </strong>It’s interesting listening to you both talk about creativity in the age of A.I. Can you elaborate? I’m especially interested in this historical view that creativity is one of the things that A.I. would never get right, which might be a little less true today than it was a year ago.</p><p><strong>Fiesler: </strong>Well, I think it depends on your definition of creativity. I think A.I. is certainly excellent at emulating creativity, at least, like Kermit and <em>Star Wars</em>, and the things A.I. art generators can do. One of the things art generators do very well is giving me an image in the style of this artist. The output is amazing. Is that creative? Not really, in my opinion. But there are ways you could use it where it would be good at generating output that, if created by a human, people would see as creative.</p><p><strong>Stevens: </strong>We have courses in which students work on a <a href="/cmcinow/heres-pitch" rel="nofollow">new media franchise pitch</a>, which includes writing, comic book imagery, animation, art—they’re pitching a transmedia output, so it’s going to have multiple modes. You could waste two semesters teaching a strong writer how to draw—which may never happen—or, we can say, let’s use software to generate the image you think matches the text you’re pitching. That’s something we want students to think about—when do they need to be creative, and when do they need to say, I’ve got four hours to produce something, and if this helps my group understand our project, I don’t have to spend those four hours drawing.</p></div></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><p class="text-align-center lead"><span>"It’s not that A.I. brings new problems to the table, but it can absolutely exacerbate existing problems to new heights.”</span><br>—Rick Stevens</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><h3>Risky Business</h3><p><strong>Larsen: </strong>What about media and journalism? Do we risk damaging our reputation or credibility when we bring these tools into the news?</p><p><strong>Stevens: </strong>Absolutely. The first time a major publication puts out a story that gets fact checked incorrectly because someone did not check the A.I. output, that is going to damage not just that publication, but the whole industry. But we’re already seeing that damage coming from other technological innovations—this is just one among many.</p><p><strong>Fiesler: </strong>I think misinformation and disinformation are the most obvious kinds of problems here. We’ve already had examples of deepfakes that journalists have covered as real, and so journalists need to be exceptionally careful about the sources of images and information they report on.</p><p><strong>Stevens: </strong>It’s not that A.I. brings new problems to the table, but it can absolutely exacerbate existing problems to new heights if we’re not careful on what the checks and balances are.</p><p><strong>Larsen:</strong> How about beyond the news? What are some significant trends communicators and media professionals should be keeping an eye out for?</p><p><strong>Stevens:</strong> We need to train people to be more critical at looking not just where content comes from, but how it’s generated along certain biases. We can get a chatbot to emulate a conversation, but that doesn’t mean it can identify racist tropes that we’re trying to push out of our media system. A lot of what we do, critically, is to push back against the mainstream, to try to change our culture for the better. I’m not sure that algorithms drawing from the culture that we’re trying to change are going to have the same values in them to change anything.</p></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><h2 class="text-align-center">Expanded Remarks</h2><div class="row ucb-column-container"><div class="col ucb-column"> <div class="field_media_oembed_video"><iframe src="/cmcinow/media/oembed?url=https%3A//youtu.be/xp9Rr_8IT0k&amp;max_width=516&amp;max_height=350&amp;hash=lstqW_RwJgst0o7BEO7Q-FsAtT9mIfUeo3W0u4tRQ7A" frameborder="0" allowtransparency width="516" height="350" class="media-oembed-content" loading="eager" title="Casey Fiesler on A.I.: It's appropriate to be critical of it"></iframe> </div> </div><div class="col ucb-column"> <div class="field_media_oembed_video"><iframe src="/cmcinow/media/oembed?url=https%3A//youtu.be/36i3h1bMX60&amp;max_width=516&amp;max_height=350&amp;hash=2pD5xXiy1ExbA5yTbSnbPMeaC7jJvFJFc56XHSVcKCM" frameborder="0" allowtransparency width="516" height="350" class="media-oembed-content" loading="eager" title="Casey Fiesler on A.I.: You have to fact check"></iframe> </div> </div></div></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="ucb-article-content ucb-striped-content"> <div class="container"> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--article-content paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div class="ucb-article-text" itemprop="articleBody"> <div><div><h3>Capitalism and computational power</h3><p><strong>Larsen:</strong> What’s a big question we’re not asking about A.I. and our work?</p><p><strong>Stevens:</strong> I think the biggest question is, what does A.I. free us up to do that we haven’t been able to do before?</p><p><strong>Fiesler: </strong>Agreed. Let’s say A.I. and automation really could replace a lot of jobs. So because of ChatGPT, you now need two copywriters to do the job of four copywriters. You could fire two copywriters, but another option is, your four copywriters work 20 hours a week instead of 40 and still get paid the same. Because it’s not like you’re making less money, or you put resources into building your own A.I. If this technology can replace some things we’re doing, that shouldn’t mean we don’t have jobs, it should just mean we have to work less.</p><p><strong>Stevens: </strong>It’s actually in cultural producers’ interest for something like this to happen. There’s this assumption that, oh, we can do the work of four people with two people now, so let’s fire two of them. Well, better rested, more thoughtful workers can produce better, more thoughtful content. The content we create forms our social identity, so the more thoughtful we are, the better a society we’re going to have, because we’ve inspired people to think about their world differently.</p><p><strong>Larsen: </strong>I have to tell you both, I’m very impressed with your level of optimism when it comes to A.I. Why don’t we end on an optimistic note, as well? What’s something you feel communicators should be excited about from the dawn of this new age of work?</p><p><strong>Stevens: </strong>One thing communicators should be excited about is that these tools exist because the process of communication is valuable. Our ability to produce more culture is not a bad thing, we just want it to have a higher fidelity and have the values we want to have, and I think those are questions that thoughtful communicators can bring to the table and help shape.</p><p><strong>Fiesler: </strong>I agree with that, as well. Young people in college are some of the most well positioned to make an impact on how this technology is going to influence our future, with the way decisions are made around how it’s actually going to change our lives and industries. There are ways in which some things that are happening are scary, but it’s an interesting time to be on the ground floor.</p></div></div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div>For A.I. to be useful, it needs to grow alongside communicators—not replace them. CMCI experts share their vision for a workplace with ChatGPT and other tools.</div> <h2> <div class="paragraph paragraph--type--ucb-related-articles-block paragraph--view-mode--default"> <div>Off</div> </div> </h2> <div>Zebra Striped</div> <div>7</div> <div>On</div> <div>White</div> Mon, 30 Oct 2023 00:16:06 +0000 Anonymous 1020 at /cmcinow