This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Critical Theory in a Digital Age, CCU, ENGL 483 2017 Main Menu Theory, English 483, CCU, 2017 Alisha Petrizzo, Reproducing a Classic Taking a look at how film can enhance or distort the authenticity of its original literature format Jocie Scherkenbach, Real Identity in a Virtual World: How Social Media Affects Identity Using the idea of cyborgs, as defined by Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" the comparison is made between these cyborgs and social media users and how the public and private space converge and diverge within these spaces in order to form new and differing identities than the real-world identity. Kaitlin Schell, Electracy in #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo Mainstream hashtags that represent a movement in the physical world are explored in terms of Gregory Ulmer's theory of electracy and connotations. Kayla Jessop, The Uncanny Valley: Observations on Cyborgs within the Film Industry A scholarly observation on how film industries use Freud's idea of the uncanny and the uncanny valley within cyborgs and computer generated animation. Bilingualism Through An Electronic Hypertext and The Baroque Simulacrum it Creates By: Lindsey Morgan By: Lindsey Morgan Marcus Kinley, The Uncanny in Flatliners (1990) Tiffany Hancock, The Panopticon of Commodities Yaicha Ocampo - Marx's Favorite Latte The relationship between the simulacrum and the fetish commodity Leila Hassak-Digital Labor Through The Dystopian Film Hunger Games Elizabeth Tabor, From 'Token Girl' To 'Leading Lady' How The Rise In Female Fans Affects Modern Popular Culture Kyle Malanowski, The Uncanny Within Victor Cocco , The Wonderfully Mysterious World of the Uncanny Introduction Ariel Ellerson : The Public Sphere's Effect on Social Media and Church Tiffany Whisenant, Cyborg Prosthesis Looking at how technology is used to augment ourselves and how technology becomes extensions of our body and soul.

kait BLM GIF

26020

This page is referenced by:

Hashtag: The Virtual and Physical Worlds Collide Hashtags are used on social media platforms and are formatted as "#(insert word)" and surfaced in the early 2010s on Twitter, Instagram, and later Facebook. Some hashtags are used for fun or advertising while others are used as a form of social activism in a virtual space. Hashtags serve as a connector of the virtual and physical realms as they create a group-friendly environment for people who have the same interests or concerns. To understand the hashtag is to understand the importance of electracy; we live in a screen-friendly world and hashtags bring current events to life in the virtual world by drawing attention to it and broadening the audience base so that people can stand together on a topic from all over the country and even all over the world.
#BlackLivesMatter began as a way for the African American community to fight back against racial violence that they felt they were receiving as a whole from law enforcement. Similarly, #MeToo was created as a way for women who have suffered from sexual abuse or harassment to band together and show the gravity of the issue of sexual abuse.

Hashtags create a very unique interaction on social media. Hashtags began with the use of Twitter, but quickly spread to other platforms as well. They are used on Facebook, Instagram, and even Snapchat, but more importantly, they create a group atmosphere that intertwines each platform. Hashtags can be used in social media posts such as Facebook posts, Tweets, or on Instagram captions. Users can then search the hashtag to find posts that contain it which allows them to read other posts about the hashtag they are using. Trending hashtags can also be indicative of current events, as is the case with #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo, specifically with #MeToo which promoted victims of sexual abuse or misconduct to call their abusers out and shed light on the issue at large. This creates a platform in which victims can band together and no longer suffer in silence. It creates a community in which they can find people who have suffered from similar issues and work through them together. Users of specific hashtags all have one common belief or goal, and for #BlackLivesMatter, the goal is to make their audience aware that even in 2017, we are fighting a race war, but we don’t have to be.
Hashtags can be used to define a group and can take a highly controversial issue that is of interest in real life and applies it to the realm of social media: they are using social media as a way to make a difference in the real world, or to create a community of support. Bijan Stephen states that, “in the 1960s, if you were a civil rights worker stationed in the Deep South and needed to get some urgent news out to the rest of the world…you would likely reach straight for a telephone” but the hashtag is 2017’s telephone; the hashtag can reach an even broader audience much faster than the telephone (Stephen). The hashtag proving to be the “new telephone” reiterates the transition to the epoch of electracy, as we have moved from orality and literacy to a means of communicating and living our lives in aid of technology, such as our smartphones which enable us to communicate via apps such as Twitter and Facebook.