{"id":427,"date":"2018-01-23T12:57:29","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T20:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/d1moffatt\/?p=427"},"modified":"2018-01-26T11:13:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T19:13:37","slug":"where-is-the-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webspace.royalroads.ca\/d1moffatt\/where-is-the-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Where is the love?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Antidote for an anxious world. Photo cred: DLM<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A few weeks before Christmas, Black Eyed Peas’ original\u00a0“Where is the Love?”<\/a>\u00a0 came on the radio in a moment of serendipity, as I was reflecting on the state of our world. With the news so full of hateful rhetoric, brutality, greed and protectionism, yes, where is<\/em> the love?<\/p>\n

Perhaps one answer can be found in the digital world. Easy access to social media networks via smartphones offers affordances that have changed our communications, as the challenges of time, place and space have been completely redefined.\u00a0 In 2009, Panayiota Tsatsou articulated the critical role of digital media in “challenging historically significant concepts of time and space<\/a>, changing how people shape their identities and extending the scope of physical and psychological mobility in today’s globalised world.”\u00a0 Current digital technologies are a much-used conduit for<\/span>\u00a0conversations between like-minded individuals who can now easily find each other, through\u00a0<\/span>geofilters<\/a>\u00a0or simply searching a hashtag,<\/span>\u00a0anytime and anywhere, resulting in a social game-changer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seeking out affinity groups and the sense of belonging they offer, supports identity-development and self-acceptance, whether the affinity is within, or outside of,\u00a0<\/span>dominant cultural norms (publics and counterpublics respectively).\u00a0<\/span>Nia Cantey and Cara Robinson backed this up in\u00a0<\/span>Hashtag Publics’\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/span>“#BlackTwitter: Making Waves as a Social Media Subculture<\/a>”\u00a0 <\/span>where they stated “A large diverse society…contains many groups needing to compete and contest for power in a negotiated space….Access to a space, or sphere, for the creation of identity is crucial.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>#BlackTwitter,<\/a>\u00a0#MeToo<\/a>, and the recent 2018 Women’s March<\/a> are just a few examples of counterpublics living up to their twofold potential for empowerment and critique.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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2018 Women’s March NYC. By Rhododendrites (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>Digital spaces are also where like-minded individuals such as self-professed nerds (#nerdlife<\/a>), writers (#writersofinstagram<\/a>), or Justin Bieber fans (#beliebers<\/a>), connect to feel supported, accepted, and yes,\u00a0loved<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But, in our attention-deficit, information-overloaded lives, it’s not surprising that our seemingly human desire to label, categorize and generalize kicks in.\u00a0 The difficulty is that these strategies all too often result in a “single story” stereotype, as shared by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her powerful TedTalk.<\/p>\n