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KANSAN.COM | MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2016
Text your #FFA submissions to 785-289-UDK1 (8351)
Woke up to Monica Lewinsky's Ted Talk on my computer. Not the weirdest thing I've watched drunk
Just had a professor joke about if we were going to graduate or not. Not a funny joke, not at all
resisting the urge to punch that one person in the class that's an undergrad in history but acts like they have 3 PhDs
What if the chancellor and Senator Sanders teamed up for the next election? Bernie/Bernie 2020!
I thought couples season was over. Why is everyone on campus holding hands today?
Just had a 20 minute conversation about whether Obi Wan Kenobi would break his Jedi vows to have children
Didn't find Bernie downtown. At least my look-for-Bernie adventure ended up in good coffee and foods
"Honey, if those kids are journalists, they're going to have to learn to write drunk," Gilmore Girls
Some days you just need a sign that says "Leave me alone."
Cried because I just found out my roommates are getting rid of our koi fish
College is openly eating crunchy chicken cheddar wraps in class and the professor not caring
I'm so tired that the bags under my eyes have bags under their eyes.
In the wise words of Dory: Just keep swimming.
When Bill Self cries we all cry.
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Nasseri: Facebook reactions should be loved, not feared
A after years of will they-won't-they tension and rumors
► BROOK NASSERI
@enasseri32
After years of withey-won't-they tension and rumors surrounding the addition of a dislike button, on Feb. 24 Facebook instead added "an extension of the like button," which they call reactions. Similar to the primitive "like", this feature allows users to respond to a post with one click, expressing the novel sentiments "Love", "Wow", "Haha", "Sad", and "Angry."
Facebook's new component has been a long time coming, and compared to other recent updates, it came with very little controversy. This is in part because rather than breaking new ground, "reactions" falls in line with something people are well accustomed to by now: electronically conveying emotions and ideas with virtual icons. Ever since emoji became ubiquitous thanks to Apple's iOS 5 in 2011, the image-based keyboard has prompted a whirlwind evolution of digital communication.
Some, such as author Michelle Garren Flye, see the prevalence of emoji as a symptom of the rapid decline of the English language; Gillian Branstetter argues that the symbols serve as a poor substitution for complex thought. However, many view emoji and Facebook reactions as an exciting new direction for human communication. The truly thrilling thing about these reaction graphics stems from the fact that they are incredibly prone to rapid change, initiated by their users. After protests
over lack of emoji diversity, the developer, Unicode Consortium, responded by adding a range of skin tones, gender combinations, and cultural representations. The corporation continues to add approximately 60 emoji characters every year. Facebook reactions were created because of those who were dissatisfied with being limited to "like," such as the 139,523 users who like a page called "I wish there was a dislike button."
In addition to driving the evolution of standard digital icons, individual users also demonstrate immense power in interpreting these images. The flirting possibilities using emoji alone are endless. In April, Snapchat incorporated emoji as an initially perplexing but logical way to indicate complex relationships with contacts. From a Kickstarter-funded emoji translation of "Moby Dick" to the appearance of emoji in The
New Yorker's social media accounts, there seems to be no brand that cannot use the tiny pictures, no place the little icons can't go, no limit to the creative possibilities.
As for interpreting the fledgling Facebook reactions, a quick skim of my News Feed reveals that people chose to respond "Wow" to articles about the death of a well-known reporter, a video of an astronaut returning home and a new report about the Zika virus. I'm still not sure what this means. But I do know that Facebook reactions, much like emoji, allow people to communicate and express themselves online in a creative and rapidly-evolving way, transcending location, language, and culture. And there's definitely something "Wow" about that.
Brook Nasseri is sophomore from Topeka studying microbiology and English.
Gonzales: Treatment of Erin Andrews was wrong
RACHEL GONZALES
@KansanNews
In 2008, while covering a football game in Nashville ESPN sideline reporter Erin Andrews fell victim to a peeping-tom at the Mariott hotel she was staying in. Andrews' stalker, Michael David Barrett, was permitted to stay in the hotel room next to Andrews', where he created a peephole to videotape the journalist naked. Barret posted the videos online, where they have been viewed nearly 17 million times since they were posted in 2009.
Barrett pled guilty to interstate stalking and will serve two and a half years in prison, but what may be more concerning is the way that Andrews was treated by ESPN after the videos went viral. In court, Andrews
testified that her bosses at ESPN wouldn't let her go back to her job covering college football until she agreed to do an interview first. She said that a primary reason for this was that they didn't believe her when she said she wasn't behind the release of the footage. ESPN did nothing to support Andrews as a victim, as an employee, or as a woman.
Essentially, ESPN forced a crime victim to talk about it publicly against her will because the shame she faced was less important than ratings. Additionally, Andrews has frequently been told by media that the scandal was good for her career. The way that Andrews was treated after the videos went viral is a sad display of how too often women are shamed and objectified.
Photo Illustration bu Jake Kaufmann/KANSAN
ESPN and the media's failure to support Andrews is a disappointing slap to the face for female journalists. They displayed a gross invasion of a victim's privacy by forcing Andrews to talk about the crime before returning to her career. They went against the standards of victim anonymity and forced a woman to choose
As if forcing an interview about the crime wasn't objectifying enough, according to a Washington Post article, male ESPN commentators discussed her sex appeal on air.
her job. The fact that she was sexually victimized in no way affected her ability to report sideline coverage of football games, so it is hard to understand ESPN's justification for victimizing Andrews a second time.
between public humiliation and
The scandal, and the way
that ESPN handled it promoted the outdated idea that women's only value comes from their looks and sexuality. "I was not only worrying about the questions I was asking, but then I had men on these blogs critiquing what I was wearing," she said in 2013. "It wasn't about my reporting, it was, 'What is she wearing, who is she dating?'"
ESPN, a proud champion of Title 9, displayed hypocrisy and a disregard for the welfare of female journalists
in their handling of sports reporter Erin Andrews's sex crime case. Unfortunately, the disrespect shown towards Andrews may deter young women from pursuing a career in sports journalism. No woman wants to work in a culture where it is okay to exploit her sexuality for network promotion.
Rachel Gonzales is a junior from Fort Collins, Colorado, studying journalism and sociology
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