Reflection After Making a Contribution to the Campus Sexual Assault Wikipedia Article
My journey during the Wikipedia project was, truthfully, one I never anticipated; It took a very long time for me to solidify my topic, though I ended up making a contribution to the Campus Sexual Assault Wikipedia article. I choose this topic, specifically, as I am passionate about spreading knowledge and opening up the conversation about sexual assault, especially across college campuses. I have always used my personal social media to push the conversation forward on my own. However, I never thought to do research regarding how media activism has an impact on or is used by others across college campuses. This article, in particular, did not have a media angle. As such, I decided to add a sub-section titled Media and Activism to incorporate this material to expand my knowledge and raise awareness for others. It is important that those who are unaware of how the media plays a role/has an impact can have a resource or page such as this one to learn about this topic. With resources such as this one, one may be able to implement a media-centered lens in their everyday lives to think of the issues from a new/informed perspective, push the conversation of sexual assault forward, and help others in our community.
I decided to title the section I added media methods and activism because the three scholarly articles I researched regarding this topic highlighted how media is utilized to push the conversation further and suggest ways to employ activist measures across college campuses. I choose to create it as a subsection within the prevention efforts section as I feel that media activism falls under prevention efforts. The reason that I included it at the end is because I thought it flowed nicely following the subsection “college programs,” as college programs discuss social media efforts used in college programs to create awareness, although there was nothing about what this actually means. Intersecting the two allows for this conversation to be started and a better understanding of what sexual assault is, what prevention efforts may look like, and what support may be offered. Essentially, expanding even more so on the media’s role both in sexual assault prevention measures across college campuses and in creating a conversation about campus sexual assault.
Over the course of this assignment, I explored a few different topics, although as far as the one I went with, Media and Activism, I explored ideas that I’ve looked at before but never thought or considered how I would portray this knowledge to others around me. This caused me to view this topic through a different lens and honestly helped me grasp an even better understanding of the ideas surrounding media activism on college campuses. I have been a part of sexual assault prevention and bystander organizations on campuses over the past four years, but I have never once thought about the role of activism before social media’s existence. I always knew that social media played a significant role when it came to opening up the conversation and spreading awareness, but I never considered what that actually meant for marginalized people. Before my research, I considered traditional activism to be inclusive, as I would see protests all the time regarding minority groups, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, etc. Although what I never considered was how mainstream media portrays and have been historically ignoring these types of protests. Making social media platforms have a greater importance and significance for marginalized groups and allowing people who were once not seen or heard before be able to be seen on a higher level. This also pushes the conversation further and helps to push it to people that would never have heard or seen these issues if it wasn’t for social media. I think what is most interesting for me is that I have been in the same position as some of the student activists in the studies I looked at and have never been asked to look at the role of social media platforms in the light of ‘using it as an activism tool.’ For me, it’s always just been more of an everyday tool I use in my life to connect with people, not even having an afterthought of how I am actually engaging in activism every day. It is honestly a privilege that we have this type of technology and that I have had it implemented for most of my life here on this earth. Without cyber activism, so many human rights movements and narratives would not have even been considered, and so many conversations would have never even been started, especially in the realm of sexual assault. Media is a tool that helps survivors gain a community, and it was fascinating to learn how communities and validation can be built for survivors through even something just as simple as a person standing up for victim-blaming comments in the comment section on Facebook. Seeing a comment like this may be validating enough for someone struggling with sexual assault to get through their day. I have taught and spread awareness regarding this topic to the public on campus for years, talking about rape myths and how the media portrays different cultures through stereotypes, primarily relaying the information to help others break the stereotypes and biases they have in their head. Still, I never realized how effective it was through a media lens, what was actually going on in the background, and how much little things like this can help and even be considered activism. Going forward, I would like to do research on the effects that cyber activism actually has regarding implicit bias around the topic of sexual assault.
As mentioned, I explored many different topics before deciding on Media and Activism on a college campus. When first starting this assignment, I struggled with what topic I should do, considering the possibilities were endless. This was by far my biggest struggle throughout this whole process and my biggest learning curve. I learned that I overthink way too much when it comes to certain topics and that I also think very theoretically, making it hard for me to just fully pull out the facts of a topic. I would be writing information as an essay rather than a source of information for someone to retain knowledge from. The first topic I tried to explore was how Dramitsim, Kenneth Burke’s theory, plays a role in crime literacy. Although I quickly found that the sources I found were all dated way too far back, I started to write this in an essay format, bringing in opinions rather than facts. I then tried to look into desensitization in the media using an article in class about the POV Livestream from the 2019 new Zealand Christchurch terrorist attack and violent video games. I immediately thought about how to incorporate this into the Wikipedia assignment as, during my undergrad, I had TAed Gender and Women Study classes as well as a bystander and sexual assault class associated with a program called i-stand. In these classes, we discussed a ton about how the media shapes our perspectives and minds without realizing it.
I started to explore this topic and was unsure if it was even worth it because it did not relate to crime directly. That’s when I had a conversation with Dr. Hobbs, who suggested I look at sexual assault as a broad topic at first. Instantly I had light bulbs go off in my head and also felt quite dumb and silly for not thinking this before. This made me realize I was looking at crime only in the sense of cops, death, attacks, and terrorist rather than all of the other crimes we have throughout the world that we deal with on a daily bases. When I started exploring this topic, I chose to look into how video games depicted gender roles and how they shape minds in the sense of how we view crime. However, as I was doing this, I realized I was starting to again write an essay rather than a Wikipedia article. I realized there was no way I was going to be able to make a Wikipedia page about this topic. I was exploring in-depth research and analysis and found it hard to just have straight background facts about this topic and not be opinionated. Frustrated, I talked to Dr. Hobbs again about my struggles. She had me talk things out with her, and as I was talking, I brought up an Organization called Its On Us. After I told her about it, she suggested I focus on that and create a page for them and or edit the one they have. After looking at their preexisting Wikipedia page, I realized it had a ton of knowledge gaps. I decided to redo the It’s On Us page completely.
As I was just about done, I realized it was going to be hard to incorporate scholarly articles into the Wikipedia article. I was trying to take the approach of showing how media campaigns help push the message forward but realized this does not fit the criteria of the assignment either. I then emailed Hobbs again to ask for her advice, and she validated my thoughts on my topic not meeting the requirements. I instantly felt extremely defeated because I had to again trash my work. This was when Hobbs suggested I look at the Campus Sexual Assaults Wikipedia page, as she pointed out there was no media angle. I already had a ton of information on this topic regarding the background I collected from Its On Us, thus putting me on a new journey of adding a media angle to the already preexisting Campus Sexual Assult Wikipedia Article. I felt confident from here on out about the research and contributions I was about to make. As frustrating as the journey was, it just reminded me that I need to slow down, be less stubborn, and just take things for what they are. I am extremely proud of myself for getting through this because I truthfully wanted to give up many times.
As I looked at the preexisting information on the Wikipedia page Campus Sexual Assault, it was fascinating to see the different types of information collected on this topic and the route each person took to present it. If I were to create this page entirely on my own, I think I would have presented it in a very different light. Although it is important to have a platform where multiple people can contribute, fact-check, and constantly add because this allows for a better expansion of knowledge and constantly keeps the topic progressing forward and updated. If it was always only one person editing the same topic, I fully believe that the knowledge on the topics would be extremely skewed and have many knowledge gaps and or biases. Although having a multiple set of eyes, it allows scholars to build and group their work together, bringing in different perspectives to grow a greater understanding of topics as well as providing different works and citations that may have never been added or thought to be looked at if it was just one or two people adding to the database thus breaking down the knowledge barrier. It is important for us to accept and be open-minded to the way that others process, collect, and put out information, as we can learn a lot from like-minded individuals. We can also learn a lot from un-like-minded individuals.
Volunteer editing also allows those passionate about topics to build up data and information, meaning the people who do add information are doing it because they want people to be able to understand certain topics and have access to knowledge and information. Although, volunteer editing can also be flawed as people who do not agree with certain topics or information can go in and change it to create a falsified version of a certain topic. Although that imposes the other benefit of volunteer editing, there are more likely going to be more people who are passionate about the topic and want the correct information than the skewed information meaning someone can and will go in to fix the false information and input the correct facts. After being someone who contributed to a Wikipedia article, I have more respect for the people who choose to edit Wikipedia on their own time.
