In my first blog, I will be responding to and analyzing the prediction
offered by experts in our in-class reading assignments through the frame works
of family models and personal experience of information and communications technology.
I will include a hyperlink for those who don’t have access to the reading so
that they may examine the material themselves.
The Predication offered by the experts that I will be examining for my first post is that political awareness and action will be facilitated and more peaceful change and public uprising like the Arab Spring will emerge ( Anderson, Rainie).
With the ever-improving capabilities of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), it has the potential to vastly impact cultures, societies, and governments at its very foundation. And it is beyond having the “potential” to change things otherwise seen as immovable objects, take for example the Arab spring or the BDS movement. ICT will facilitate, as we continue to progress, change at unprecedented speed on our own individual lives, Cultural values, societal norms and the bureaucracy of government.
Using Lanigan Sociotechnological framework we can understand ICT’s impact on ordinary family life and the extrafamilial influences on families such as political awareness and involvement that are enhanced and exacerbated, in some ways, by ICT. Lanigan’s framework examines the influences on the selection and use of technologies (Walker, ppt. 8).
A Question arises that needs to be addressed.
How have political awareness and actions affected black families through the use of ICT when dealing with and recognizing institutionalized racism, e.g. police discrimination and brutality towards blacks, using new platforms that ICT has provided?
We can use the “not so extreme” example of Philando Castile’s tragedy that grabbed national headlines of how an innocent man was gunned down in his car with his girlfriend and daughter in the backseat. We can also examine the recent understanding and sympathy towards black families having to sit-down with their children so that they have “The Second Talk” with them seeing as that they carry a black body in every room they walk into.
Although these things are not new, especially with police brutality being ever present in the black family and community, ICT has allowed movements such as BLM to foster and gain a larger audience by reaching those that are affected by it and those who’ve been oblivious and ignorant of it. ICT allows the family factors and processes in Lanigan conceptual framework of cohesion to develop not only within the family, but it also builds a sense of closeness to other families by connecting them through platforms such as Twitter and Snapchat to form groups and organize protests.
References:
Predictions Offered by Experts
Pew Report_Future_of_the_Internet_Predictions.pdf
In Class PowerPoint provided by Susan Walker
Jama Journals 