Social Technologies

Social Media and Information Technologies for Human Interaction and Communication by @bacigalupe

January 17, 2012 • 7:51 am 0

Adding, Not the Same as Including: Making Family Research Relevant for All

Adding, Not the Same as Including: Making Family Research Relevant for All by Gonzalo Bacigalupe (2012) in The Family Psychologist, 28(1), 12-14

As a researcher that holds a strong allegiance to a non-dominant group, I have had the opportunity to become a member of the privileged. However, I am often reminded that I am truly not a part of the ruling class. Despite being a highly educated tenured faculty member, I can still be a subaltern—the other. Every now and then, a university adjunct professor will automatically assume that I am one of the cleaning staff and will address me as such if I speak Spanish with the Dominican janitor who picks up the trash every evening at my office. In the struggle with marginalization, as one of the few professors in my college who can claim a similar heritage to the janitor (although he cannot claim some of my privileges), I am often compelled to name reality, to deconstruct it, and to be attentive to what is silencing the vulnerable. Being a subaltern, therefore, makes me particularly aware of institutionalized “isms” and being able to see what is generally invisible to the privileged is nothing less than a privilege too. It teaches me to pay attention to how stereotypes define people and how institutionalized racism continues to play a role in educational and healthcare institutions.

CONTINUE READING (PDF).

Filed under: Community, Family, Psychology, Research, Transnational

December 21, 2011 • 11:56 am 3

Los 80: Fiction, Reality, Memory and Trauma in Chile.

Los 80: Fiction, Reality, Memory and Trauma in Chile.

Gonzalo Bacigalupe published in Spanish at Movimiento Generacion 80 Blog

Memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. … That’s why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory. (Isabel Allende in the House of the Spirits)

The fourth season of the Chilean television series Los 80 (dirigida por Boris Quercia) ended this week with record ratings in viewership. The reaction to the series by television viewers took over social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. Despite the dissatisfaction of many with the fictional plot based on historical facts, the memories that the series evoked and its success debunked the notion that Chileans wish to be amnesic about their past. For some of us, the Chilean diaspora abroad, watching the series through an Internet videostream, watching the series is even a more intense experience that is not softened with the interruption of shampoo and car commercial spots.

For my generation, the one that lived its adolescence during the worst repressive years of the military dictatorship and then played an active role in the opposition to Pinochet during the 1980s, the series brings back the emotional tone and the remembering of the crazy repressive circumstances in which we grew up from adolescence to adulthood.

Some of the facts may be distorted to make the series more palatable to the large majority of Chileans. However, the plot as a whole, not only reminds us of a military and police repressive regime via its thread of detention, torture, and death, but also the authoritarian tone that permeated every institution—family, school, and work. Reflecting about this was in itself a dangerous task even in families. Questioning your teacher could be costly academically or personally. And obviously, to stand pacifically protesting the detention and torture of a classmate or friend was considered a delinquent act.

Los 80 move us to struggle with the difficult task of identifying the torturer with an actual human being, a person who may in its daily life have similar feelings to the rest of us. The plural identity of those who held the authority during that time is hard to accept though. This is particularly difficult since those responsible and those that defended the government-institutionalized violence have not made amends, have not offered to restore some of what was lost to the family of those that were victimized, nor have fully acknowledged the pain that they inflicted on their compatriots.

The fictional plot intermingled with radio and television footage offers us the opportunity to learn about, quoting Allende again, “the deepest truths with the lies of fiction”.  Andres Wood, the producer of Los 80—the director of the most acclaimed Chilean film dealing with the aftermath of the dictatorship from the perspective of a child—Machuca—leads us into reclaiming a piece of history that is made even more painful today in lieu of the continuous and ferocious rejection of the traumatic truth by those who still defend the military dictatorship human rights violation legacy.

To still be a witness to the denial of historical facts and the traumatic consequences, in commentaries by television viewers is, however, excruciating. The denial is vast. There is little acknowledgement by many of my fellow compatriots of the suffering by the families of the disappeared, the existence of an immense group of exiles who are not accepted as part of today’s Chile, and the lives of so many that were forever changed because of a savage dictatorship. For those of us who survived, suffered through, and/or were witness of the tragedy around us, the denial and lack of accountability is tremendously painful. The denial of facts and its consequences is a reminder that reconstructing memory in itself does not necessarily still change the soul of a large segment of the Chilean population.

The series is not at fault. Its success is based on the ability to engage the various truths that have been constructed based on historical facts. The death of a journalist as form of vengeance on the part of the Chilean secret service is undeniable. However, for some the facts are still considered a fiction, are minimized, or justified in the name of patriotic unity, economic development, or any other utilitarian goal that sustains the atrocious human rights legacy of the military dictatorship.

Version en Espanol: Movimiento Generacion 80 Blog

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Community, Family, Psychology, Research, technology, Transnational, , , , , ,

February 8, 2011 • 3:19 pm 0

Collaboration is Personal Too: Speaking of Microblogging

Collaboration is Personal Too: Speaking of Microblogging (or how to explain uses of Twitter) February 3, 2011 by Gonzalo Bacigalupe at the #CFHA BLOG

Microblogging, writing and immediate publishing of brief entries (i.e., 140 characters in Twitter), has been personally a compelling draw for several years. With almost 12,000 entries in my @bacigalupe account and about 2,000 in an academic project (@healthglobal), it is legitimate to ask the question of why a busy researcher and clinician would want to spend time almost everyday in such a medium. One way for me to describe its power is in its ability to continuously experiment collaboration in what seems a purely virtual environment; one in which the conversations are happening as if it were in real time. For me though, these conversations are an experiment with the artificial dichotomy of the real and virtual dissolving.

The ongoing sharing with about 6,000 individuals and institutions has been for the most part friendly, fun, intelligent, and thought-provoking: A true learning experience. I have met individuals from all over the world, old and young, unilingual and multilingual, the majority sharing some similar interests although from very different points of view. This social technology has brought together many streams of interests, personal, professional, and scholarly and often with gems (those #ff one would want everyone to follow) that seem to integrate them all. For the most part, these are people I had never met before but in planned, and at times surprising ways, found them next to me at a conference, a restaurant, or other venue.

What has been so rich is also the network of conversations that started in the public arena and have continued via direct email. In some cases, those conversations became the source of shared projects, i.e., a panel at the American Psychological Association. One of the richest aspects is the interdisciplinary nature of those participating. Folks I would have taken a defensive to, or even rejected their stance, if I had been exchanging ideas face-to-face have now become a way of expanding my view; of making collaboration possible across divides.

This exercise at collaborating in conversation, in what amounts to hundreds of conversations, has included discussions about politics and public policy, healthcare (a lot) and public health, education, ethics in research, psychology, and much more. One of the most fascinating weekly dialogues in which the medium has mirrored part of the content (a weekly discussion about healthcare and social media or #hcsm) was the initial stimulus to writing a scholarly paper on the subject of the potential role of social media in collaborative health care (soon to be published in Family, Systems, and Health).

During times of disasters, for example, the earthquakes in Haiti and my native Chile, these conversations took a different turn, they became a way of supporting those in the middle of the crisis and sharing useful and reliable resources with those trying to help the survivors in the field. And two upcoming papers (one in Family Process) explore how social technologies transform the immigrant family experience as geographical and time distances are reduced with the fast adoption of cell phones and cheap web-conferencing calls.

What happens with microblogging, similar to conversations with friends or good colleagues, is that the activity is truly participant-driven. Twitter exchanges are not about the technology we are using but about who is participating. Like conversations with friends or colleagues, in Twitter the best of a listening and transparent stance occurs if those who are in conversation (as Followers or as Following) are honest, interesting, and respectful. What distinguishes this virtual conversation from those around a real table is the possibility of having a much more diverse group of participants sharing their thoughts; the walls are much more permeable and barriers to entry are minimally guarded.

Like solid friendships, it takes time to “get Twitter.” It takes time and energy to foster good relationships via the web, like it does face-to-face. What is different though is the potential for a rich and continuous selective form of absorbing the wealth of information that comes to us or we directly seek. Like friendships, it may be that the group of followers and the ones follow reflect a parochial reflection of my own interests, political leanings, and professional biases. That may be the case but despite these potential limitations, I am thankful for the ways in which microblogging has enriched my professional, scholarly, and personal life.

Filed under: Community, ehealth, technology, ,

February 27, 2010 • 11:55 pm 18

Precautionary Notes Before Sending Post-Disaster Experts to Work Abroad: My Chilean Earthquake by Gonzalo Bacigalupe

Precautionary Notes Before Sending Post-Disaster Experts to Work Abroad: My Chilean Earthquake Late on February 27, 2010 by @bacigalupe

The situation in Chile is not easy, it is really sad, and it seems to be getting worst almost 24 hours after the earthquake today. The CNN coverage was not very accurate (alarmist at the start, inaccurate towards the end). The New York Times has been reporting about Chile with its regional correspondents in Brazil! For the most part, the best coverage has been accessible via Chilean TV (TVN 24 via ustream or radios accessible via the internet like Radio BioBio) and in particular via social media venues like Twitter and Facebook

The center-south coastal areas are the most affected, with several towns affected by real Tsunami events. The government and the private organizations seem to have reacted well to one of the worst earthquakes in world history (with an intensity hundreds of times more powerful than Haiti).                    Imagenes de CHILE

Chile is resilient, united, but this is a serious, traumatic, and truly dramatic natural disaster. Personally my direct family is healthy, a lot of destruction at homes; inside my parents apartment there are a lot of stuff destroyed, something we should expect, saw it at least once in my childhood; no water, it will probably be back tomorrow; some electricity, will probably be back off and on in the next days; spotty phone connection, some internet but almost back tonight. A few hours ago, I was informed that a cousin’s mother in-law died during the earthquake after a wall collapsed while she was sleeping. I still don’t know about some relatives but they should be OK is just that phones are not available. Being an immigrant under these circumstances it is probably one of the most difficult times an immigrant goes through, we will survive though. Being a professional or highly educated immigrant living abroad raises another layer of reflections for me too.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Community, Psychology, Transnational

February 2, 2010 • 4:37 pm 0

144 Social Media Policies by Doug Cornelius

144 Social Media Policies by Doug Cornelius. You can also use the underlying data in the Google Docs Spreadsheet. The spreadsheet also has the date of the policy (if there is one).

Please let Doug Cornelius at ComplianceBuilding know of other policies that are not in the list.

Sample with some of the policies:
American Red Cross Non-profit Online Communications Guidelines http://docs.google.com/View?docid=df4n5v7k_98chfqrnch&hgd=1#_PERSONAL_COMMUNICATIONS 1/5/2010
American Red Cross Non-profit Social Media Handbook for Local Red Cross Units http://docs.google.com/View?docid=df4n5v7k_216g5jdd7c8&hgd=1 1/5/2010
Arlington, Virgina Government Social Media Policy and Guidelines https://924458323885259759-a-1802744773732722657-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/munigov20/good-reading-and-resources/Arlington%2CVAsocialmediapolicy073009.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cqAthHfu6XdQTJoCSBB6ZI6Ui1FRr3RwvPsL4lZTBNQ_ptUbz4CadEg2axjQ-rI24ELJ6Zt2RqB3g1iNLfYaz11Pku0QtNSVvuDygZGsct3EvwH8T_rvbp_WPErIBzBYONsEM1QRLpBEaKMHa11Z62hcaZEpFs2mWGnWkWFaQODBoMYif8rzdEpnX75qN6XvuglaDUKVLiBlm7z6aGXAbxLWt7-0PPuhb6PfJky10GiPKq2dHq8HojYiQKPXjF1m1WwPm3sO2Z_YKgPj2MfU9qrG1lGJA%3D%3D&attredirects=0 7/30/2009 1/29/2010
Associated Press Media Social networking Q&A http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/06/apsocialnetworkingpolicy.pdf 1/5/2010
Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) Media social media guidelines http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/05/2733929.htm 11/9/2009 1/5/2010
Australian Public Service Commission Government Protocols for Online Media Participation http://www.apsc.gov.au/circulars/circular096.htm 11/19/2009 1/5/2010
Baker & Daniels Law firm Social Media Policy http://www.bakerdstreamingvid.com/publications/Baker_Daniels_Social-Media-Policy.pdf 1/5/2010
Ball State University Education Social Media Policy http://www.bsudailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2140419!/Ball%20State%20social%20media%20policy.pdf 11/17/2009 1/22/2010
BBC Media Editorial Guidelines: Personal Use of Social Networking http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/advice/personalweb/index.shtml

Filed under: Community, Organization, technology

January 14, 2010 • 9:02 pm 0

Social media, satellite communications spring into action to help earthquake-devastated Haiti

Social media, satellite communications spring into action to help earthquake-devastated Haiti

The federal government is playing a major role in earthquake relief and recovery efforts in Haiti, aided by an array of technology tools, some of which were not been available in past disasters. Social media, satellite communications and other innovations could make a real difference as the battered island nation struggles to regain some degree of normalcy.

Social media tools, significantly Twitter and Facebook are playing a major role in communicating information about the effort. The State Department began sharing information on its official Facebook pages hours after the earthquake struck.

One post told people who want to donate money or provide assistance whom to contact. Persons responding to the post shared other ways to provide assistance.

State’s Web site points people wishing to donate or provide assistance to theCenter For International Disaster Information. The center operates under a grant from the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and support from IBM. Continue reading

Filed under: Community, Organization, technology, Transnational

January 13, 2010 • 11:10 pm 0

Real-Time Search, Social Networks Help Organizations Mobilize for Haiti Relief by AdMedia

Original Blog Entry at AdMedia

For the citizens of Haiti, real-time search may have arrived just in time. The 7.0 earthquake that shook the poverty-stricken nation hit just 5 hours ago, but you can easily find information about the disaster, and, most importantly organizations to donate to.

On each of the top four search engines, searching “Haiti relief” yielded extremely useful information. Google and Bing were the most comprehensive:

Screen shot 2010-01-12 at 10.31.11 PM.png

Continue reading

Filed under: Community, Organization, technology, Transnational

links in delicious

Twitter Stream

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.