Portfolio #9
The readings, video, and lecture on the topic of mediated sentiment and social change altered what I previously thought of empathy as an approach for social change. On the surface, empathy seemed to me like a powerful and positive tool in general, but there are also negative aspects to it. In ‘Is Our Culture of Empathy Perpetuating Inequality?’ by Carolyn Pedwell, she talks about how the use of empathy can result in violence or reinforce social and political hierarchies. Additionally, companies use empathy to make consumers feel like they are lacking or they need something, as a way to gain power and profits. We see the use of empathy creating the opposite effect of what was intended in Nat Kendall-Taylor’s TED Talk. The findings in his study showed how the empathy frame for trying to get people to support policies about addiction made people want to support the policies less.
Danyel Ferrari’s lecture on mediated sentiment and social change in the age of social media drew ideas from ‘Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Publics’ by Zizi Papacharissi affect and networked publics. Papacharissi talks about how conventional wisdom makes us feel like we need to separate emotion from reason, where the two are opposites. However, new media prompt us to make meaning out of situations by reacting through feeling and take away the division between public and private spheres. Ferrari’s examples of different works of art showed how art is used to evoke feeling. It is interesting how Daily Mail used the emotion from Pekka Jylhä’s sculpture to incorporate in their argument for more policing and closure of the borders. This example further shows the ways in which empathy can be twisted and used for other intentions.
Daniel J. Solove’s ‘Why Privacy Matters Even If You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’’ examines the ‘nothing to hide’ argument that people use in response to the subject of privacy and discusses the consequences of having our privacy invaded. A popular response to the gathering of personal information is for people to say that they have not been doing anything wrong, so they have nothing to hide. I used to think like this too, but Solove talks about how there is more to privacy than just hiding bad things. It also has to do with not knowing how our information is being used or who else has access to our information, the possibility of being controlled, and distortion. In The Guardian’s documentary, ‘The Power of Privacy,’ it was alarming to see how much information the personal data consultant was able to find of Aleks Krotoski from what she willingly put online. As they went through the information, it made me more aware of how everything we put online can contribute pieces of information about us for others to see, like how leaving a review reveals a location we have been to.
The example of Dana Schutz’s apology for her Emmett Till painting showed the use of empathy as reasoning for her appropriation and inconsideration of his image. Instances of cultural appropriation for fashion are no stranger to Coachella, where festival-goers often make bold fashion choices and experiment with new looks. Especially with influencer culture, where everyone is trying to come up with the most creative outfits to post online, people have attended wearing Native American headdresses, bindis, dashikis, and “war paint” as fashion accessories. In 2017, as discussed in Teen Vogue, Adrienne Keene from Native Appropriations tweeted her disappointment over pictures of Coachella attendees who wore Native American headdresses to Coachella. One of the women pictured in her tweet later apologized, saying, “If you follow me or simply go through my IG you will quickly notice I am all about love, peace, and understanding. I’m human and I admit there are many things I’m still unaware of […]” (2017). The attendee also used empathy when discussing her actions by saying that she is human. Some readers might empathize with her and how as humans, we all have more to learn and we all make mistakes.
