Symposium

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

I'm going to be talking in public! About Post It Politics! In front of people! And I hope you can join in! I will be taking part in Humans 2.0: the Sixth Annual Honors Humanities Keystone Symposium. You can come see me at Tawes Hall at the University of Maryland at 10:30 AM. I will be speaking about conclusions from my project, and will probably be doing some real deep analysis about my favorite memes. It should be buckets of fun. Hoping to see lots of support for all of the Honors Humanities folks and all of the hard work they've done preparing for this event. 

In the meantime though, why don't I give the run down of some images that have been circulating since the last time I've updated this blog. 

1). First up is the red Human Rights Campaign logo. It hit the web on March 25, after the Supreme Court began hearing cases regarding Same Sex marriage. 

Circulated by HRC to spread their message of marriage and love, millions of pro-gay marriage people changed their profile picture too this for the days following March 25. And of course, as with any viral image, plenty of people (and organizations and celebrities and business) decided to get creative with it. 

(Note: This collage was taken from viralpoliticsblog.wordpress.com, a great new blog by Dr. Joel Penney that gives "an academic take on the political uses of memes, viral videos, and all things social media." I highly suggest you check it out, especially considering Dr. Penney will probably be a little more reliable when it comes to new posts...)

However, this image has also created some interesting dialogue around the effectiveness of this viral campaign. Do Facebook profile pics actually influence anyone politically? Or are they simply a showing of solidarity? Can this solidarity be enough to create influence? How is someone who changes their profile different than someone who attends a rally? Do supreme court justices even have Facebooks?

2. Another striking moment for imagery surrounded the death of Margaret Thatcher on April 8th. The moment that the death of the former PM was announced, the internet seemed to not know how to handle the situation. As some gave sad goodbyes due to the passing of a legendary woman, others gave shouts of joy to the death of a tyrant. Meanwhile, plenty of people simply asked, "Who is Margaret Thatcher, anyway?" All of this was very well chronicled by the Guardian, not to mention accurately predicted by designer/journalist Martin Belam months and months ago. 

I believe the most striking image was this. A good-riddance farewell to the Iron Lady. A vitriolic take on mortality.

And for anyone looking for some answers surrounding Thatcher's death, or at least a different (Londonized) perspective on it, may I suggest this surprisingly deep column written by Russell Brand. "I always felt sorry for her children," he says.

3. And lastly, there was the Boston Marathon bombings. As this story unfolds, I have been unable to tell quite what these images mean. Or what they will mean. So, for the purpose of this blog, I would like to just present some of them, a montage, with hopes that a glimpse of meaning will surface through the emotions.

Dead                              Captured

Lots of feelings. Lots of questions.

Hope to see you at the symposium. Thank you for joining me in this project everyone. 

--Post It Politics out--

Conclusions, Electioneering, and Moving On

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Feel free to play this song as you read. I believe it sets the mood 

We're done! The election is now a thing of the past. As the internet image community (and myself) predicted, Obama has been reelected to another term, carrying 25 states plus DC for 303 electoral votes (give or take Florida. Oh, Florida, you so rascally), carrying 50.4% of the popular vote. Meanwhile, Romney has come away with 24 states, 206 electoral votes, and 48.0% of the popular vote.

Ok, let's get it out of our system. Bring on the memes.

First, this picture of Obama phone banking to turn out the vote has been circulating since late October, but has really taken off since Obama's win. It shows the implication that a facial expression, a snap shot, can have when someone is being photographed 24/7. A fleeting moment becomes a symbol of smug victory

Next you have the ever popular Obama/Rapper association memes. Not only do these this emphasize the hip-hop ideal of success, but it also shows how online imagery associated with Obama identifies him with the African-American population in America (probably for better or for worse, depending on which political analyst you are talking to).

And finally, you have this meme. Brilliantly done, mad props for whoever had the creativity to think of this and put it together. An awesome metaphor for the campaign. Romney's early achievements. His stumble and struggle in the polls. Obama's steady gains leading into the finish. All of the images and trends that we have tracked over the last two months on this blog, turned into a bike race.

I also suggest that you check out the Tumblr whitepeoplemourningromney.tumblr.com. It's a collection of pictures of, you guessed it, white Republicans devastated by Romney's lost/four more years of Obama. It's interesting to note the effect that gathering these images has on their meaning. When one image alone might elicit certain feelings or reactions, putting these images together gives them context, adding a new political significance to them. They become a critique on the implications of race in politics, and even social class. 

In the study of imagery, this effect is called montage. If you want to read a great text explaining it, I would suggest checking out The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the World by journalism and communications scholar Mitchell Stephens. 

"That's all great Kyle," you might by thinking, "but did anything happen here at the University of Maryland on election day regarding your project?" (Or you might not be thinking that at all, but that's all good. We don't judge too hard here at Post It Politics.) Why yes something did! Let me tell you about it!

On election day, a hoard of signs sprung up in front of Stamp Student Union, the polling location for students who live on campus here at Maryland. Take a gander.

So, of course, I went on a posting spree. Random posts, about to be seen by real voters.

Check it out! The first Obama stuff I've seen on campus all year. I've been shocked by that.

This is just a fraction of the things I posted and of the causes I posted on. It felt like there were almost too many to count.

Something interesting did happen as I tried to post on a "Vote for 6" sign, Vote for 6 being the movement by Marylanders for Marriage Equality, to get voters to support Question 6 on the ballot to legalize gay marriage here in Maryland (which did end up passing). As I went to post on the sign (an up post, by the way), I was stopped by a Vote for 6 electioneer.

What is an electioneer? An electioneer is someone who stands outside a polling place, talking to voters as they go in to vote, thereby getting one last chance to influence their decision or change their mind. Certain laws from state to state apply to what there people can and cannot do. On November 6th, they were out in droves here at Maryland.

This older gentleman, talking to students of the behalf of friend of Post It Politics Dan Bongino, is an example of an electioneer. I think he's freaking adorable.

I asked this Vote for 6 guy why I couldn't post on his sign, and he explained that it's private property, and (apparently even if I like the sign) tampering with it is against the law. As he was not really that keen on carrying on a lengthy sign tampering discussion, he told me that if I didn't believe him, I should go talk with the election judge inside. Now, I did have some questions. I want to know how these people, many on whom may not even be students here at Maryland, be able to make the claim to private property when they are putting their sign up on a space that they do not own. Shouldn't I, as a tuition-paying student, be able to put my say in? Are there special laws for signs outside polling locations?
*Side Note: In retrospect, I feel that I also should have made it more clear to the guy that he was more than welcome to take down my Post-it. But again, I don't think he had much patience for me regardless.

So, I did try to ask. However, by this time the line to vote had gotten ridiculous.  I like that though. As reported by the student newspaper here on campus, the Diamondback, more than 2,200 students voted in this years election, way more than the 1,566 that voted in 2008. (I assume they are only counting students that voted on campus. We got a lot of students here at Maryland).

The election judge was therefore quite busy. And when I asked an aide if she could find out for me whether or not the election signs outside were private property or not, she did her best, but in the end was unable to find out one way or the other. This intrigues me. Hopefully in the future I can talk to someone who has been an election judge and they can let me know.

So, did the posts I put up get much reaction? Maybe. Most of the posts that I put up, especially those opposed to liberal signs, were gone when I checked back. Was this from the wind that day, due to the electioneers, or a result of liberal college students? I don't know. There was no resulting activity on twitter (though I did get a retweet by the Stamp's Twitter page when I tweeted at them about the signs outside. Minor victory there.)

However, I do know for a fact that these signs grabbed the attention of some of the student body. How do I know this? From this sign, paid for by MDPetitions.com, that urged people to vote against the three most Democrat issues on the ballot, the Dream Act, new redistricting, and gay marriage. As you can see, someone, armed with a pen, made their opinion to the contrary.

Though we may roll our eyes at lawn signs, and call them a waste of time and money or what have you, people see them. And they do motivate people to political action. Just sometimes not in the way the person who put it up might have wanted.

Thanks for reading everybody. I will have another blog up on Monday. I'm interested in seeing the way things go imagery wise on and off-line as we move past Election Day, and start looking ahead to the Inauguration.

@Post_It_2012

The Three Bs of 2012

Thursday, October 25, 2012

And with the last presidential debate of 2012 comes the last debate related meme. It's kind of bitter sweet. I'm going to miss building up my week waiting for the next big thing the internet is going to draw from the fray.

Honestly, I was rather surprised that a political meme came out of the foreign policy debate as easily as it did. Though on the surface Obama and Romney might claim to have major differences in their plans for America as far as foreign policy is concerned, I don't believe they are that different, or at least not in terms of how they want to appeal to the public. Both want to come across as very strong, very able to deal with threats to America when/if they arise. They both aim to appeal to voters by being wary of Iran and China, concerned about Libya and Syria, and by showing unwavering support for Israel. So as far as their approach to dealing with any foreign issues is concerned, though they both may squabble over what's working and who has said what in the past and so forth, I don't believe either would do anything too differently. They're wary to use the military, but military force is not off the table. They want to negotiate for peace. They don't want jobs to go overseas. Yada yada yada.

And perhaps that is why the nature of the meme that has come out of third debate is so different, for while most of the memes so far in this debate have been drawn from gaffes, this one came from one of the candidates completely meaning what they said, and probably knowing that the audience would respond well. Here's a clip showing that moment in the debate.

*Zing* 

Correct me if you think I'm overstating this, but you have to hand it to the president here for being quite the tactician. He took what had seemed to be a strong point by Romney, turned it on its head, and stuck it right back at Romney in a blistering, ad hominem fashion. Romney never got a chance to defend himself or respond, and even if he did, he probably would have had to do so by at least partially retracting his previous statement, which would have come off across as weak. Regardless, Romney took a blow. Now, all of a sudden, the internet believes confusing foreign policy with a game of battleship is part of the Romney agenda...

and that he actually wants more more horses and bayonets in the military. It was also unfortunate for the Romney campaign that this picture of Romney riding a horse was already available, just begging to be photoshopped.

Now, because this meme came directly from what one of the candidates said, as opposed to taking something they said or did and reinterpreting that against them, I feel that it does deviate from Post It Politics's main theme of guerrilla strategies in political imagery (or how of applying alternative meaning to already existing images redirects political dialogue). However, one must consider how smears like this one by Obama, no matter how deftly they're done, are guerrilla-ish. I mean, I don't want to get all metaphysical on you or something, but in this last debate, at that moment, Obama took Romney's overall image, removed all of its good qualities, and reduced it to nothing more than a bayonet. And, as this Gallup poll shows, the public responded. Despite having no clear differences between them, Obama came out of this debate with  56% approval from independents, while Romney only had 27%.

And thus concludes the 2012 debates, which I believe should forever go down in history as when three (or five if you count the VP debate) images seemingly replaced the significance of every issue discussed. And lo and behold, it seems that even the meme creators agree with me.

I do appreciate this next one. Simplifying this elections key points into a children's book format is a nice touch.

And this next gif is a worthwhile commentary on what these have (seemingly) reduced much of the electorate to.

Now, all we can do is wait and see what the next 12 days have in store. More memes perhaps? We'll see ;)

Ok, so reporting in on the actual running of Post It Politics. I can now report the results from my mass campus wide posting that I previewed on Tuesday. I went to nearly every academic building on campus looking for bulletin boards with material for either the Dream Act Rally (that happened earlier today) or that remained from the Marriage Equality Rally that happened two weeks ago. While doing this, I also happened upon some materials urging us to rethink drug policies here in the US that were posted by both the Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the Students for Liberty here in College Park.

All in all, I ended up posting on 36 fliers around campus, not too shabby in my opinion. My main purpose was to just get my image out there, put it on some people's radars. I'll have to see whether or not that actually works by monitoring my Twitter account, and also keeping an eye out for other signs of familiarity (people posting on their own, talking about it, asking about it, etc.). But of course, I also wanted to see how people responded.
In the end, based completely on how my coin flipped, I posted up 13 times, and down 23 times (maybe my coin had a really negative temperament, I don't know). When I went back to check up on my handiwork, 9 of my up thumbs remained, and only 8 of my down thumbs. The rest had been removed or changed. Here let's break down the data.
*Also, I must admit, the gathering of this data has been rough. Many of the posts that I made/much of the data collection was done quickly and has sometimes proved hard to track down. And some thumbs may have been changed, then removed, further complicating things. Therefore, some of these numbers are close estimates. But hey, IRB told me that I'm not technically doing research, so I'll let myself get away with it.
**I would also like to note that many if not most of these posts were done in the Biology-Psychology Building. I swear, there are more bulletin boards in there than bare wall space. Probably because of how often they are looking for test subjects...

Now, too be fair, the number of thumbs removed may be exaggerated. Many of the thumbs posted on fliers for the Marriage Equality Rally were taken down along with the flier itself because of how old they are. Of the 15 down thumbs that were missing, I'd say about 8 where taken down with the flier itself. This probably also accounts for two of the missing up thumbs.

Here are some general observations about these images

• Not once was there an image that had been flipped like the one on the display case from last Tuesday. I imagine this may be because of the reasons I discussed in that blog (display case, Obama, etc.)
• Thumbs posted in buildings where lots of social science/humanities classes are held featured more activity. Only 1 thumb posted in a science heavy building was taken down (though, to be fair, this could be because of a small sample size. It's really hard to find political stuff to post on in math and science buildings)
• Thumbs of any kind near faculty office bulletin boards were taken down. Maybe they just don't like clutter.
• 4 thumbs had been altered, but none of them had been posted back on to material. Sometimes, people would even remove the flier, but take the Post-it and stick it back on the bulletin board. However, they'd put it back with disregard for how the thumb was originally posted.
• One really unique instance was when I posted down on two fliers side by side, one post against marriage equality, one against the Dream Act. When I checked back, the post against marriage equality was gone with the flier still up, but the one against the Dream Act remained. It could be that the first one just fell off, but if not, this could say something about the posting community. (Or not. It's really hard to qualify stuff like this when you can't quantify it first...)

So, I shall post on. I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for the less than 40% survival rate for thumbs down. Keep an eye out for my postings/things to post on.

Lastly, a member of YAF finally did get back to me regarding No More Che Day. I will report back to you next week regarding any info I receive.

For now, enjoy the election home stretch! 

@Post_It_2012

Romney Binders

Thursday, Oct 18, 2012

Ok, so today I'll start with the actual running of Post It Politics. Then I'll move on to what I believe to be one of the most surprising and random moments of a 2012 campaign that has already featured talking to chairs, Etch A Sketches, and firing Big Bird.

For anyone following along on the YAF/No More Che Day front, I can let you know that I've reached out in various ways to those who were involved in that project. So far I haven't heard anything from them. Looks like I might need to find some new ways to get in contact.

However, I was able to do some on campus posting! As some of you might know, there was a marriage equality rally on campus last week where some high profile people spoke, including Senator Ben Cardin. This had me very excited, because I thought this would lead to lots of advertisements about the event that I could post on.

This never really occurred. On the parts of campus that I frequented, I saw nothing. No chalking. No flyers. The only place I really saw anything about it was on Facebook.

However, last Tuesday while walking through a part of campus that I usually don't make it to, I found a flyer taped to the ground! And because the Marriage Equality Amendment remains a political issue, even though the event has passed, I went ahead, flipped a coin to determine up or down, and posted on it.

Ok, now full disclosure. I, personally, am in favor of marriage equality, and plan on voting in favor of Question 6 on November 6th. And therefore, making this post made me feel slightly uncomfortable. Now, I've posted thumbs down in the past for candidates that I actually support, and approved of candidates that I have no plan on voting for, but I always felt kind of ok about it. People might support or disapprove of a candidate for a variety reasons, coming from the left or the right, regardless of party. So I always felt that my fake approval/disapproval could be at least interpreted in different ways. However, when it comes to showing disapproval for Question 6, I felt like that could only be interpreted one way, a way that many very close friends of mine would probably not forgive me for.

However, I also know that maybe posting down in the end could prove beneficial for my project. On a campus that largely supports LGBT rights, showing disapproval for the rally could show the biggest reaction. Plus, in a way, I could understand someone who plans on voting yes for Question 6 still not being totally behind the rally that occurred. After all, the rally was hosted by the UMD Student Government Association, a group that has been given the authority to represent all students on campus. And while all students might be for lower textbook costs and the like, not everyone is for marriage equality. In a way, it seems that the SGA doesn't care about these students. I tweeted the above picture to the SGA (as well as the Human Rights Campaign and Marylander's for Marriage Equality) and let them know as much.

I went back to check on this post earlier today. The Post-it was gone. Whether it had been taken off, or simply walked over I don't know. There's been no activity on Twitter or anything else to use as an indicator. For good measure, I posted again, and will check back. Also, as fate might have it, walking back to my dorm, I took a new route, and once again found another rally flyer. Once again, I flipped a coin, and this time it came up heads, putting my conscience at ease.

So, as you probably know, there was a moment from Tuesday's town-hall style debate that everybody is talking about. But if you don't follow politics at all, and somehow have avoided the internet for the last three days, let me show you what I am referring to. I'll let you know that Romney was answering a question from a young woman in the crowd (in his usual round-a-bout let-me-rephrase-what-we're-talking-about kind of way) about women in the workforce not being paid the same as men for the same work. 

Now what do you think about this clip? I mean, while I was watching the debate and heard Romney say this, I didn't think it was the most eloquently stated thing in the world, but since when has Romney putting something not-so-eloquently been a surprise? Perhaps I just didn't see its significance at first because I'm not aware of the nuances of comments that can fire up American feminists.

But let me tell you. This did. 

Drawing from practically every existing meme on the internet, people stuck it to Romney for his bungled narrative. Creativity ran rampant, taking jabs at Romney from everything from his apparent awkwardness,

to his Mormon faith

to the fact that many women just weren't too impressed with his response to the original question at all.

My favorite images from this moment may not really be considered memes at all, but more of an internet trend, in which people started going on to amazon.com and leaving product reviews for binders. Here are two particularly witty (and politicized) ones.

Now I'm starting to understand why the botched binder example was so ripe for political imagery. Even though Romney was trying to make a point about what he has done to improve the working status of women in America, the very concept of him having an easy fix by being able to draw from a conglomerated stack of resumes doesn't have the appeal that Romney might have thought. And though Romney has been closing the gap in some polls of women voters, those who do oppose him have been pretty vehement. Even though the Romney campaign has lately been trying to portray the former governor as moderate on women's rights, I feel that many are still caught on the conservative Romney we saw when he was still having to establish himself amongst conservatives during the primaries. Plus, the word "binder" and all that goes with it was just a bad choice. If he had said folders full of women, would it be a different story? Perhaps not, but it might have been toned down a little.

Regardless, as the campaign edges closer to Election Day, with the last debate taking place on Monday, now Romney has yet another internet fiasco to deal with. In a way, it seems the Obama campaign is just costing through 2012, or at least in regards to social media, accepting the fact that meme culture seems to have it in for Romney. However, after reading this article from the Christian Science Monitor, I question whether or not this is necessarily a good thing for the campaign as a whole. In the article, Liz Marlantes compares Obama vs. Romney to Bush vs. Kerry, in which the sitting president just focused in on certain parts of the electorate and watched as his opponent grappled with the rest. The result: distraction from real issues. The way this election is going may work against the president in the long run. If reelected, he may have to deal with a constituency who is only willing to tolerate him, instead of the enthusiastic population that he represented coming out of 2008.

Whoa, s**t just got real. Political imagery real-world consequences for the win!

@Post_It_2012