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- All Subjects: Social Media
- Creators: Department of Psychology
My project is designed to provide art education to incarcerated youth in Arizona. This project will address two current issues in Arizona; the underfunding of art programs and high rates of incarceration. As of 2021, there are no state-funded art programs in Arizona. Arizona is tied with Texas for the eighth highest rate of incarceration in the country. In Arizona, 750 out of every 100,000 people are incarcerated. This project is an art course for incarcerated youth. The project includes a packet detailing the course content and assignment details, a class syllabus, a course flyer, and a certificate of completion. The course is intended to be taught at the Adobe Mountain School facility. The course is designed so that it can be implemented in other facilities in the future. The class will be taught by volunteers with a background in studio art, design, or art education. Each student will receive a course packet that they can use to keep track of information and assignments. Instructors will use the course packet to teach the class. The course focuses on drawing with charcoal and oil pastel, which will build a foundation in drawing skills. The course covers a twelve-week semester. The course content packet includes a week-by-week breakdown of the teaching material and project descriptions. The course consists of two main projects and preparatory work. The preparatory work includes vocabulary terms, art concepts, drawing guides, brainstorming activities, and drawing activities. The two main prompts are designed for students to explore the materials and to encourage self-reflection. The class is curated so that students can create art in a low-risk, non-judgemental environment. The course will also focus on establishing problem-solving and critical thinking skills through engaging activities.
Since the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, Black people have struggled for individual freedoms and equality in the United States. The notion that this long-lasting fight for equal rights ended after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s is a fallacy. The battle for equality is by no means finished but an ongoing struggle for a large percentage of our American population. In its broadest sense, Black Lives Matter is a grassroots social movement of activists called to action in the face of repeated instances of Black men and women being murdered in notoriously controversial and unjust circumstances. With the conception of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, a significant contingent of society has pushed to bring forward the voices of underrepresented and unequally treated members of our communities (Lee, 2020). <br/>When formulating a research study, I wanted to combat some common misconceptions about online activism. Living in an online media-dominated age, with the backdrop of a global pandemic and an increasingly polarized political climate, my overarching goal was to observe how social media has contributed to this modern-day civil rights movement. Indeed, this research was conducted during a period of political and cultural divisiveness not experienced in the United States since perhaps the Civil War. Following the 2020 U.S. election where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected over Donald Trump and Mike Pence, political polarization has reached a boiling point. As the foremost social movement in the United States during the era of social media, it is of utmost importance we gain a better understanding of how ordinary people, connected by a common cause, built Black Lives Matter.
To conduct research, we developed a survey that was distributed and taken by students at Arizona State University. The goal of surveying college students was to understand how young people who regularly use social media are persuaded by micro-influencers. To gain more insight, we interviewed three local micro-influencers that we discovered through Instagram and research. The goal of these interviews was to discover tactics that micro-influencers use when posting to market sponsored products. Additionally, we hoped to uncover a pattern that micro-influencers use when building their social media following. Ultimately, we developed a six-step guide from our research that aspiring micro-influencers can follow to strategize their rise as a social media micro-influencer. We also discuss the social media app TikTok, which we believe will be heavily used by influencers and micro-influencers in the future.