CMCI

The Prime Effect

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 06:00:00 +0000

The Prime Effect Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/10/2023 - 00:00

Kasim Kabbara

The “Prime Effect” has arrived in Boulder … but what, exactly, is it?

Is it the fact that the Colorado Buffaloes — a football team that won one game last year — became the only team in the nation to have their spring game aired live on ESPN this year?

Is it the 600% increase in followers to CU football’s social media accounts since Deion Sanders, known as Coach Prime, was hired in December?

Is it the way Coach Prime merchandise initially sold out after each restock in CU gear shops around Colorado?

Perhaps it’s all of that and more — it’s even bigger than sales and stats. The Prime Effect is also about Coach Prime’s “Midas Touch” — the way he seems to enhance situations and environments once he enters the picture.

Deion Sanders spent three seasons at Jackson State University (JSU), where he put an ultra-positive jolt in the backs of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). He generated the equivalent of $185 million in advertising and exposure revenue for the JSU athletic department in less than a year on staff, according to an April 2021 article in USA Today. JSU’s football team went 27–6 — a complete turnaround from the continuous under .500 team records in the years before Coach Prime’s arrival — and on College GameDay 2022, ESPN entered Jackson, Mississippi, for the first time in history.

The Prime Effect transformed Jackson State, and Buffs are ready to see what effect it will have on Boulder.

The Prime Effect Is Unapologetically Black

“Coach Sanders’ impact as a father figure for students on campus and his players is amazing.”

2020 census data shows that Colorado has experienced growth in racial and ethnic diversity in the past 10 years, but ��ƷSM��ӰƬ remains predominantly white.

CU’s total enrollment is over 36,000 students. Roughly 66% of those students are white, 12% are Hispanic, 9% Asian American, 7% international, 1% Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 1% American Indian/Alaska Native, 1% unknown and almost 3% are Black, or approximately 800 undergraduate students and 150 graduate students.

Already, Coach Prime is making an effort to support Black community members at CU, and in turn, they’re rooting hard for Coach Prime and the team to succeed.

Reiland Rabaka, founder and director of the Center for African & African American Studies (CAAAS) and a professor in the ethnic studies department, is already impressed by the man CU hired to lead its football team.

“Coach Sanders’ impact as a father figure for students on campus and his players is amazing,” Rabaka said. “The man truly cares about his community.”

On Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month, the CAAAS hosted its grand opening — and Deion Sanders was there. Feb. 1 was also National Signing Day, a pivotal day for high school senior athletes. It’s the day many athletes sign a national letter of intent, declaring where they intend to play Division 1 football. Coach Prime spent part of his day with future Buffs headed to the football team, and he also celebrated with Black Buffs on campus, creating and continuing a legacy of African Americans in Boulder.

“He’s almost a sensei; that brother is a blessing for this university,” Rabaka said. “Most coaches don’t realize it’s not always about what you do on the field, but off the field, and Sanders showing up for us on this day of all days shows me the type of man he’s developing in that locker room.”

The Prime Effect “Ain’t Hard to Find”

The 2023 CU spring game sold out with more than 47,000 in attendance (tickets cost $10). That’s more people for a single scrimmage than the past nine spring games combined, all of which were free — and completely shatters the record of 17,000 attendees in 2008.

The spring game, which was broadcast on ESPN, hosted 260 members of the media. The school record for most media credentials at one game is 601, a record set in 1989 when Colorado beat Nebraska to head to the Orange Bowl. The university made around $200,000 net profit from the game, including $123,000 in merchandise revenue, and about $143,000 in concessions.

The buzz around this team is simply hard to ignore, and everyone even remotely involved is benefiting. It’s been 27 years since CU has sold out season tickets, and it’s the first time they sold out before August.

“The thing that I think I’ve noticed more than anything on campus is the excitement level,” said Patrick Ferrucci, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ associate professor of journalism. “Being here eight years, I think there was maybe one year where people kind of even really cared about the football team. I was at a university meeting where they were joking about how they used to give away tickets, and they were like, ‘Just know that that’s not going to be the case this year.’”

His first night in Boulder, Coach Prime said, “I’m coming,” which has remained a catchphrase. A few days later he quipped, “I’m not hard to find,” referencing his social media presence. Surrounded by his son, Deion Sanders Jr., and a team of content creators, he’s constantly posting footage from practice, his office and even local hangouts.

This always-on, insider approach to ��ƷSM��ӰƬ football has catapulted his accounts to a whole new level: As of June 2023 he had 3.3 million followers on Instagram and 291,000 YouTube subscribers.

Sanders has posted reels of team practices, reviews of Boulder restaurants and CU facility tours with Colorado legends like former NBA Final MVP Chauncey Billups (Soc ex’99) and Kordell Stewart (Comm ex’95; BA’16), high-profile fans like rapper Lil Wayne and even his mother.

“Sanders and his team, with the way that they use social media, do a great job, especially emotionally,” Ferrucci said. “In our program, we teach social media storytelling, and I think there’s a lot that our students could learn from the way that they use [it] to get their stories across in a way that resonates with a lot of students and alumni.”

Bigger Than Football

“Sanders and his team, with the way that they use social media, do a great job, especially emotionally.”

Teaching associate professor Jamie Skerski taught the “Communication, Culture & Sport” course at CU, a campus favorite where students discuss the intersection of athletics, sexism, racism, culture and politics. Since 2020, when CU students joined nationwide racial inequity protests and Black Lives Matter demonstrations, she’s noticed a shift in students, she said. With Coach Prime’s arrival, classroom conversations are becoming increasingly nuanced, too.

“I feel a shift in the level of conversations about and around privilege in my classroom,” Skerski said. “That’s not to say that there are not structural problems at CU or in Boulder, because there certainly are, but students can recognize and talk about them with more sophistication. The arrival of Coach Prime comes at a time when many students can appreciate that the moment is here, and is bigger than football.”

Skerski believes white students at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ are starting to check themselves and their classmates when conversations about racial inequalities arise, especially relating to Coach Prime’s position on campus and the world.

“In terms of understanding larger cultures and racial inequities coinciding at the same time, I know at least my students are much more aware of their white privilege and have a stake in the way these conversations are happening inside and outside of the classroom,” she said. “They for sure see this Deion Sanders moment as an intersection of all of the things we teach in our course.”

And Coach Prime, who is unapologetically himself, is making an impact on the Boulder community in unexpected ways.

When he visited Village Coffee Shop as part of his food review tour, he gave them an “A-.” They could have had a higher grade, he said, but Coach Prime appeared jokingly appalled that the cafe, like many others in Boulder, did not serve grits, an African-American staple food dating back to the transatlantic slave trade.

Since Coach Prime posted the video, there has been a surge in Boulder diners serving grits and other traditionally African-American fare. Two local restaurants even named items on the menu after Coach Prime.

A simple gesture like a restaurant serving grits can help build a sense of community and belonging — creating unity among fans and the coaching staff.

Coach Prime’s presence in Boulder and on social media is igniting conversations about important social issues. He may be here to coach football, but his impact is far greater.

Once in a Lifetime

Regardless of the Buffaloes’ success on the field, wins are — hopefully — guaranteed. Everyone will find out when the Buffs kickoff against Texas Christian University on FOX’s Big Noon telecast. But the community and player development are worth more than any Pac-12 championship trophy.

This year, the Buffs are transforming their outlook and building a program that fits Sanders’ vision of a winning team — both on and off the field. And that is the Prime Effect.

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Illustrations by Timba Smits

Surging social accounts, sold-out tickets and ESPN are just the start.

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Summer 2023

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LOOK: 100 Years of Journalism

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 07:00:00 +0000

LOOK: 100 Years of Journalism Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/07/2022 - 00:00

Malinda Miller

On April 21, 1922, the CU Board of Regents voted to form the Department of Journalism, and that fall, the university launched its flagship journalism degree program. As the journalism department marks its centennial anniversary, celebration goes to the thousands of alumni currently working in the media industry, many of whom are on the frontlines of news — reporting from the field for NPR, from the Celtics’ sidelines and from inside the White House for Fox News. Read more in the CMCI Now magazine.

Abby Chin (Jour’03), Celtics sideline reporter at NBC Sports Boston

Baker Machado (MJour’11), anchor at Cheddar News

Alanna Rizzo (MJour’03), sports TV host and reporter on MLB Network

John Branch (MJour’96), reporter for The New York Times

Kevin Corke (Jour’88; MA’02), White House correspondent

Kirk Siegler (Jour’00), NPR correspondent, National Desk

Michael Gelman (Jour’83), executive producer, Live with Kelly and Ryan

Linda Villarosa (Jour’81), contributor to The New York Times Magazine, journalist-in-residence at City University of New York

Savannah Sellers (Jour’13), anchor and correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC

Tom Costello (Jour’87), NBC News Washington correspondent

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Photos: Courtesy of CMCI (Kevin Corke and Michael Gelman); Jon SooHoo (Alanna Rizzo); Courtesy of Tom Costello; Allison Shelley/NPR (Kirk Siegler); Courtesy of Baker Machado; Courtesy Savannah Sellers; Courtesy of NBC Sports Group (Abby Chin); Courtesy of John Branch; Nic Villarosa (Linda Villarosa)

On April 21, 1922, the CU Board of Regents voted to form the Department of Journalism and that fall, the university launched its flagship journalism degree program.

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Fall 2022

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Alum Savannah Sellers Celebrates Five Years with NBC's "Stay Tuned"

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 19:02:02 +0000

Alum Savannah Sellers Celebrates Five Years with NBC's "Stay Tuned" Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/18/2022 - 13:02

In 2017, Savannah Sellers (Jour’13) helped launch NBC News’ “Stay Tuned,” a daily news show aired on social media platforms. The show was among the first of its kind to reach younger audiences with the news and remains popular today. Savannah co-hosts the show with NBC News correspondents Gadi Schwartz and Maya Eaglin and hopes to expand the show's offerings as they celebrate its five-year anniversary.

As you celebrate this milestone in your career, what's your best piece of advice for Buffs looking to pursue their dreams?

Work your tail off! You can’t control if you’re the smartest person in the room, but you can certainly be the hardest working. The way that I got to where I am was by working in the industry and for the company where I could see my dream job. I always made sure to do my best possible work in the job I was hired to do at that time… and then I spent my mornings, evenings and weekends taking steps toward my dream job. It’s a lot of work but it’s paid off.

What aspects of CU's journalism program have most impacted your success?

I call on the skills I used at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ every single day. I can still hear Professor Paul Daugherty explaining what a TRT or a VOSOT are when we’re putting my show together. CU’s journalism program is so special because it’s so tailored to learning the specific skillset of whichever aspect of journalism you want to get into. NewsTeam Boulder was a crash course in my day job now. I am so grateful I had that experience and was able to jump into the professional world with such a strong foundation under me. I can’t recommend that course enough.

Now that you're almost a decade out from your time in Boulder, how has your mindset shifted from being a new grad to a more seasoned professional?

Oh boy. Has it been almost 10 years?! Thanks for the reminder that I am old. To be honest, in my head I still feel more like a new grad than a real adult. I said as much when I gave the CU Commencement address in 2019. I think any type of transition into a “more seasoned professional” has happened without it being a purposeful mindset shift. For example, when it comes to anchoring… it’s nice to be in a place where I don’t get nervous before we’re live and I’m comfortable handling breaking news. But I think the best way to approach life is to stay curious and approach everything like you could always learn more. I’m in total amazement every day when I arrive at 30 Rock that I have my own office in this historic building working for NBC. Seriously, I geek out over it! Not sure how much of a seasoned professional that makes me!

What are some of your favorite memories from CU?

How much time do you have?! Everything from NewsTeam Boulder to sorority recruitment (go Chi O!) to studying abroad to dinners at The Med (RIP). But more than anything, the greatest gift CU gave me was the people. The professors who taught me so much and who I love to check in with whenever I’m back on campus. And, of course, the very best friends. Friends who are still like sisters and who are all coming to Italy with me this fall to celebrate my wedding!

Any tips for new ��ƷSM��ӰƬ students starting this fall?

Use your years at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ to soak up as much as you can. If you know what you want to do, CU has incredible course offerings that can help you get a head start in your field. If you don’t know what you want to do, enjoy taking all kinds of different courses. One of my favorites was a course I took all about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. That has nothing to do with what I do now, but I loved it. If I could do it over, I would take more classes like that. For me, joining Greek life and studying abroad were two of the best decisions I made in college. Those specific things aren’t for everyone but find what makes you happy and helps you feel that you belong!

Photos courtesy Savannah Sellers

In 2017, CMCI grad Savannah Sellers helped launch NBC News’ “Stay Tuned,” a daily news show aired on social media platforms. The show was among the first of its kind to reach younger audiences with the news, and remains popular today.

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Student Turns Her Apartment Into Pandemic-Themed Art

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Student Turns Her Apartment Into Pandemic-Themed Art Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/05/2021 - 00:00

When COVID hit, Taylor Passios (MediaPro’21) watched the world fall into the same pattern she lives in as a hypochondriac: Feel something, Google it, panic — repeat. She couldn’t find an academic name for this cycle, so she coined it “The ICA Loop.”

“The ICA Loop is a theoretical concept linking information overload, cyberchondria and the attention economy together using relational evidence between the information seekers and COVID-related media,” Passios told CMCI Now.

To physically demonstrate this idea of cyclical online patterns while adhering to COVID restrictions, she turned her apartment into a three-room, interactive art installation, complete with fog, heat and lighting. The public installation, part of her senior honors thesis, included walls plastered with news articles, graffiti, broken televisions and “a Wheel of Fate.”

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Photo courtesy Taylor Passios

When COVID hit, Taylor Passios (MediaPro’21) watched the world fall into the same pattern she lives in as a hypochondriac: Feel something, Google it, panic — repeat.

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Fall 2021

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The Truth about Fake News

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 18:03:00 +0000

The Truth about Fake News Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/01/2020 - 12:03

Lisa Marshall

“Pope Francis shocks world, endorses Donald Trump for president!”

“WikiLeaks confirms Hillary sold weapons to ISIS!”

“Ireland now officially accepting Trump refugees from America!”

In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, such patently false headlines spread like wildfire across social media, ignited by fake news sites or hyper-partisan blogs.

A few decades ago, such stories would have been shrugged off as satire or dismissed by discriminating journalists. But with the gatekeeping apparatus of mainstream media crumbling, trust in government on the decline and social media platforms providing a vehicle for anything to go viral, research shows such stories not only got distributed, they sometimes receive more clicks than stories in The New York Times.

“We exist in an unprecedented moment of deviant information.”

“In 2016, you started to see the weaponization of social media platforms in ways that I would characterize as dangerous to democracy,” recalled CU’s Toby Hopp, assistant professor of advertising, public relations and media design, who has made a career out of studying what he calls “countermedia” (fake news). “There seemed to be no boundaries anymore in terms of the information being communicated and the responsibility to the truth. It was really concerning.”

Fast-forward to 2020, and the “fake news” phenomenon has become more glaring. Distant “troll factories” — businesses where paid writers churn out fake social media posts intentionally designed to sow discontent among U.S. voters — are thriving in Russia, Macedonia and elsewhere. Conspiracy theories like QAnon — which posits, among other things, that the U. S. government is filled with Satan-worshiping pedophiles — circulate widely, and potentially dangerous misinformation about COVID-19 abounds.

“We exist in an unprecedented moment of deviant information,” said Pat Ferrucci, associate professor of journalism.

To get at the roots of that trend, Ferrucci, Hopp and Chris Vargo, assistant professor of advertising, have spent several years trying to unravel who shares fake news, what makes people click on it and what we can do about it.

“We have found that certain types of people are disproportionately responsible for sharing false, misleading and hyper-partisan information on social media,” said Hopp. “If we can identify those types of users, maybe we can get a grasp on why people do this and design interventions to stem the tide.”

Few Users, Big Reach

The good news: “The reality is, most people do not share fake news,” said Hopp.

In a recent study published in the journal Human Communication Research, the team analyzed posts from 783 regular Facebook and Twitter users between Aug. 1, 2015 and June 6, 2017.

Seventy-one percent of Facebook users and 95% of Twitter users did not share fake news or posts from sites identified by watchdog groups as countermedia.

The bad news: 1,152 pieces of fake news were shared via Facebook, with a single user responsible for 171. On Twitter, users shared 128 pieces of fake news.

Toby Hopp, CMCI assistant professor of advertising, public relations and media design

Patrick Ferrucci, CMCI associate professor of journalism

Chris Vargo, CMCI assistant professor of advertising

“We found that Facebook is the central conduit for the transfer of fake news,” said Hopp.

In the Facebook sample, those who had self-identified as extremely conservative accounted for more than a quarter of all fake news shared. About a third of fake news shared on Twitter was by ultra-conservatives.

Those who self-identified as extremely liberal also played a big role in the spread, accounting for 17.5% of shares on Facebook and 16.4% on Twitter.

“It’s not just Republicans or just Democrats, but rather, people who are — left or right — more ideologically extreme,” said Hopp.

Previous studies have shown that Facebook users 65 and older post seven times as many articles from fake news sites as those under 29 years old, and contrary to popular belief, those who are fairly media literate also spread fake news.

Interestingly, the CU team found those with high levels of trust in their fellow humans are significantly less likely to spread fake news.

“People with high levels of social trust are more likely to compile online social networks comprised of diverse individuals,” said Hopp, noting that the spread of fake news can be slowed when users question a post’s accuracy.

Fear and Anger Drive Clicks

In the study they published in March, Hopp and Vargo examined 2,500 posts crafted and paid for by the infamous Internet Research Agency (IRA), a troll farm in St. Petersburg, Russia, which flooded Facebook with fake content in the run-up to the 2016 election.

According to U.S. government documents, the IRA had been creating fake U.S. personas on social media, setting up fake pages and posts and using targeted advertising to “sow discord” among U.S. residents.

Users flipping through their feeds that fall faced a minefield of incendiary ads, pitting Blacks against police, Southern whites against immigrants, gun owners against Obama supporters and the LGBTQ community against the conservative right — all coming from the same source thousands of miles away.

“This wasn’t necessarily about electing one candidate or another,” said Vargo. “It was essentially a make-Americans-hate-each-other campaign.”

In terms of return on investment, the campaign was remarkably effective.

The IRA spent about $75,000 to garner 41 million impressions reaching 4 million users and generating a 9.2% clickthrough rate — a rate exponentially higher than a typical digital ad.

Ads using inflammatory words (such as “sissy,” “idiot,” “psychopath” and “terrorist”) or that were designed to frighten or anger people did the best.

“The takeaway here was that fear and anger appeals work really well in getting people to engage with content on social media,” said Vargo.

When Everything Is True, Nothing Is

Fake ads and patent falsities aside, Ferrucci stresses that the term “fake news” itself can be misleading.

“When people think of fake news, they think of news that is completely made up from whole cloth. But that is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

Countermedia encapsulates a broader array of content, he said: “We believe that the most potentially negative information is that which has a kernel of truth in it but is slanted in a way that is completely deceiving.”

In decades past, he argued, conspiracy theories and deviant information certainly existed in the public sphere, but journalists generally ignored it. On the other end of the spectrum some things were unequivocally agreed upon as true — and free from debate. This left what Ferrucci calls “the sphere of legitimate debate.”

“There is nothing true anymore and everything is subject to debate. That’s the problem.”

The battle against fake news will require a united front, including government, industry, journalists and social media users.

Here We Go Again

On the eve of another election, with a global pandemic raging, the misinformation machine appears to be ratcheting up again.

Public health agencies have warned of a “massive infodemic” amid circulating rumors suggesting that injecting disinfectant or consuming a dietary supplement called colloidal silver can cure COVID-19, or that wearing a mask can somehow boost susceptibility to it.

According to news reports, troll farms in Russia, Macedonia and elsewhere have refined their tactics and are again using social media to try to influence U.S. elections.

Some platforms have taken notice.

This summer, Twitter began adding fact-checking labels to tweets, including some originating from President Donald Trump. It also suspended thousands of accounts associated with QAnon.

Facebook now removes coronavirus news deemed inaccurate and sends a warning to those who have liked or shared it.

Such steps are helpful, Hopp said.

In the end, the battle against fake news will require a united front, including government, industry, journalists and, of course, social media users, the researchers say.

Ferrucci believes reporters should stop giving precious column inches or airtime to conspiracy theories like QAnon and instead focus on the sphere of legitimate debate.

Vargo suggests users become leery of ads and posts scrolling across their feed and look into where they came from — especially those that make your blood boil.

If you see something on social media that you know is false, the researchers agree, don’t be afraid to say so.

“We can disagree here and there about things,” said Hopp, “but when we as a society have fundamentally different views about what is true and what is not, democracy becomes very hard to maintain.”

Illustration by Doug Chayka

Those on the ideological fringes spread most of it, but in the end it hurts us all.

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Fanfiction Rising

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 07:00:00 +0000

Fanfiction Rising Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/01/2020 - 00:00

Lisa Marshall

How the once-obscure literary genre is giving voice to the voiceless and inspiring a new, more diverse generation of computer scientists.

Casey Fiesler was a precocious 14-year-old with, as she recalls, “not much of a social life,” when she switched on her parents’ boxy IBM PC, logged onto AOL for the first time and slipped into the comforting rabbit hole that is fanfiction.

The year was 1996, and she’d already been unknowingly writing “fanfic” for years — dreaming up new adventures for her favorite characters from The Baby-Sitters Club books and quietly scrawling them in her spiral notebook. But with her discovery of new online message boards in which fans share and review remixed versions of their favorite literature, her solitary pastime took an exhilarating turn.

“I realized that there were other people out there doing this too, and they were sharing their stories with each other,” recalls Fiesler, who went on to devour Star Trek fanfiction during undergrad, remained a prolific Harry Potter fanfic writer through law school and credits the experience for inspiring her to become a social computing researcher. “I felt like something clicked into place for me. Through sharing my stories, I found my community.”

Today, the once-obscure fanfiction subculture has evolved into a literary genre in its own right, with the fast-growing fanfic website Archive of Our Own (AO3) now boasting more than 5 million stories posted by 2 million registered users and drawing 200 million views per month.

In August, AO3 won a prestigious Hugo Award for science fiction, a milestone some view as validation that fanfiction — long looked down upon by literary critics — has finally arrived.

Casey Fiesler

Now a ��ƷSM��ӰƬ assistant professor of information science, Fiesler has shifted her focus from writing it to studying it, exploring what she sees as a powerful role the unique genre can play in helping isolated teens, LGBTQ youth, people with disabilities and other marginalized communities find their voice.

“Fanfiction is fundamentally about writing outside the lines of traditional media, so it often becomes a place to increase representation of people we often don’t see in stories,” she said, pointing to fanfiction in which Kirk and Spock are lovers or in which all the characters at Harry Potter’s Hogwarts have physical disabilities. “It’s about speculating over how things could be different and pushing back against harmful stereotypes.”

And despite its reputation as a den of scandalous adult content (yes, there is some of that too) it’s one of the least-toxic corners of the internet, Fiesler contends.

“It’s a hugely positive community compared to many of our more negative online spaces,” she said. “There’s a lot we can learn from fanfiction.”

From Sherlock Holmes to Fifty Shades of Grey

As far back as the 1880s, frustrated Sherlock Holmes devotees, anxiously awaiting the next installment, would often write their own.

But many trace the true birth of fanfiction to the 1960s, when Star Trek fans — mostly women who felt left out or misrepresented in the series — would create self-published hand-stapled “fanzines” and distribute them at fan conventions.

The internet fueled further growth, providing would-be authors a way to easily test their writing chops outside the cutthroat publishing world. Because they were portraying characters that people already cared about, they often found a large, ready-made audience awaiting their work.

Fanfiction is one of the least-toxic corners of the internet.

“I would write something, and within an hour have 100 people telling me I am brilliant. It was very validating,” recalls Fiesler.

According to the new book Writers in the Secret Garden: Fanfiction, Youth, and New Forms of Mentoring (for which Fiesler wrote the foreword), fanfiction writers were contributing 80,000 new narratives per month to the site fanfiction.net by 2013. By comparison, 3,600 traditional books were published per month that year.

Today, the flourishing community is more diverse than ever. According to recent survey data from Fiesler’s research group, the vast majority are women, only 25 percent identify as heterosexual, and the way they practice their craft is equally eclectic.

Some pluck characters from popular works like The Hunger Games, Marvel comics or Breaking Bad and place them in an alternate universe (a modern-day coffee shop; a distant planet). Others fill in scenes that never happened or develop characters that had only minor roles in the original. In the case of E.L. James’ blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey, which originated as fanfiction, the author took Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and gave it an erotic twist.

“It’s about spending more time in the worlds you love and exploring characters beyond the page,” said Fiesler.

Giving Voice to the Geeks

Brianna Dym

Fiesler believes fanfiction is beginning to emerge from the shadows in part due to what she calls “the mainstreaming of geek culture.” Even she would have been reluctant to discuss her love of fandom a decade ago; today, comic book conventions are cool, superhero movies are dominating the big screen and fantasy TV shows like Game of Thrones are the subject of water-cooler conversations.

But she and her students are most interested in what the genre does to support groups that, even today, don’t see themselves in mainstream literature.

“You can make everyone have a disability, or everyone be queer or everyone be a person of color — just something different than the stencil we so often see,” said Brianna Dym (PhDInfoSci’22), a PhD student in Fiesler’s lab who’s leading research about how marginalized communities utilize fanfiction, funded by a $250,000 National Science Foundation grant. “That can be a very empowering act.”

Growing up queer in remote Alaska, Dym herself found her way to fanfiction as a way to connect with other LGBTQ teens. Through 56 interviews for her research so far, she has found that for many, fanfiction sites serve as a safe, anonymous space — away from critical eyes — where they can explore their LGBTQ identity.

“You can make everyone have a disability, or everyone be queer or everyone be a person of color.”

“They might find stories about Captain Kirk marrying Spock after he retires or Hermione Granger realizing she’s in love with Fleur Delacour, and they might recognize something about their own identity within those characters,” she said. “The stories become a community resource, and their authors mentors to help guide readers through the coming out process.”

Fanfiction has also become a rich resource for youth with autism, with numerous Harry Potter fanfics featuring autistic wizards describing what it feels like to be diagnosed, experience sensory overload or know that they’re different.

“People will often reach out to the writer and say ‘Hey, this is really amazing. It reminded me of what I’m going through,’” said Dym, who believes fanfiction can serve as a valuable tool for therapists.

A New Generation of Coders

Fiesler said there’s another often-overlooked reason to celebrate fanfiction.

At a time when only one in five computer scientists are female, and even fewer work in open-source development, it’s inspiring a new generation of women to get interested in the field.

In order to create Archive of Our Own, its all-female team of founders had to learn to code and plan, build and design the platform from scratch, creating a welcoming online space where users could find what they were looking for (or avoid what they don’t want to see) amid an ever-changing collection of stories derived from more than 30,000 original works.

“AO3 is successful as a platform in part because the people who use it are the ones who built it,” said Fiesler.

She uses that example often with her students, stressing that if they feel excluded or offended by existing online offerings, they can learn the tools to build their own.

In doing so, as in writing fanfiction, they’ll be able to write their own story.

“There have been times when, as a woman, I’ve felt out of place in science fiction communities, gaming communities or computer science communities,” said Fiesler. “Fanfiction is a place where everyone can come as they are.”

Illustration by Hanna Barczyk

How the once-obscure literary genre is giving voice to the voiceless and inspiring a new, more diverse generation of computer scientists.

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Searching for Bigfoot

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:19:32 +0000

Searching for Bigfoot Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2019 - 11:19

Sarah Kuta

Former ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Journalism Fellow Laura Krantz explores all things Bigfoot in Wild Thing, which the Atlantic named one of 2018's Best Podcasts.

Maybe Bigfoot exists in nature, maybe not. What’s for sure is that the mysterious hairy guy (or gal) has firm footing in American culture.

Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch, and his cousin the yeti, are everywhere — on Great Divide Brewing’s “I believe” stickers, which bear the elusive creature’s silhouette, in shops selling kitschy “Bigfoot crossing” signs, in movies and on TV.

But who, or what, is Bigfoot? And why are we so fascinated by him?

Laura Krantz, a 2014-15 Scripps Fellow in ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Center for Environmental Journalism, wanted to find out. She spent more than a year digging into the scientific, psychological, historical and social aspects of the legendary bipedal primate who, if real, most likely lives in the woods of the Pacific Northwest.

The resulting podcast, Wild Thing, became a hit, with more than 1.5 million downloads since its October 2018 debut. The Atlantic called it one of the best podcasts of 2018 and Vox described it as “delightful.” Listeners loved it, too, writing in reviews that it’s “beautifully scripted” and “the definitive podcast on Sasquatch.”

It’s a huge success story for Colorado podcasts.

In nine 30-minute episodes (and several bonus interviews), Krantz weaves together pieces of the Bigfoot puzzle, touching on biology, popular culture and the psychology of belief.

“We’ve always had monsters in our history,” said Krantz, a former NPR editor and producer. “‘Beowulf,’ the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh,’ this thing that’s beyond the campfire or just outside the city wall. We’ve evolved with these kinds of stories for centuries, and maybe we need them more than we think.”

Through it all, Krantz reminds us why she went down this rabbit hole in the first place, referring often to Grover Krantz, an anthropologist at Washington State University and leading Bigfoot expert who happens to be her distant cousin.

Sharing a last name with one of the world’s preeminent Sasquatch researchers helped her gain trust among Bigfoot seekers, many of whom are simply interested in the world around them — not quacks, as Krantz initially assumed.

“If you look at it from the angle that Bigfoot is a creature that has eluded capture or hasn’t left any concrete evidence behind, then you just have a group of people who are curious about the environment and want to know more about it, which isn’t that far off from what naturalists have done for centuries,” she said.

The seed for Wild Thing began germinating when Krantz stumbled upon a Washington Post story about Grover Krantz in 2006. Afterward, she learned of their family relation.

For years, she considered how best to tell the story. When the true crime podcast Serial launched in late 2014, it captivated millions of listeners around the world. Krantz, a radio veteran, was among them. She decided the medium was ideal for Wild Thing.

Many hit podcasts are backed by well-funded companies. Krantz and husband Scott Carney, a journalist and former Scripps Fellow, created Wild Thing independently. And while they haven’t made all their money back yet, Krantz said they’re close to breaking even and considering options for a slate of podcasts under their Foxtopus Ink masthead.

“It’s a huge success story for Colorado podcasts,” said Paul Karolyi of Denver podcast incubator House of Pod.

Success doesn’t mean Krantz found Bigfoot; she didn’t. And she’s at peace with that.

“I’m not sure I want to find Sasquatch,” she says in the show’s last episode. “I’d prefer the mystery remain intact, for people to go out into the woods and look for something, to feel a sense of possibility and discovery.”

In our print edition, this story appears under the title "Bigfoot, Big Hit." Comment on this story? Email editor@colorado.edu.

Illustration by Paul Blow.

Former ��ƷSM��ӰƬ journalism fellow Laura Krantz explores all things Bigfoot in Wild Thing, named one of 2018's Best Podcasts by the Atlantic.

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Life After Death on the Internet

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 17:00:00 +0000

Life After Death on the Internet Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/01/2018 - 10:00

Lisa Marshall

As our lives go digital, Jed Brubaker is studying what happens to all that data after we die.

If Jed Brubaker were to die tomorrow, his husband, Steven, would become the steward of his Facebook page.

His profile picture would remain as it is today, a neat headshot of the 36-year-old assistant professor sporting a goatee, pale blue glasses and a slightly mischievous smile. His cover image might be switched to the lake in Utah where he’d like to have his ashes spread. Above that picture would be a single word, “Remembering,” carefully chosen to alert visitors that he was gone but, in this sacred online space, not forgotten.

Brubaker has painstakingly thought through this scenario, not because he is obsessed with death or Facebook, but because it’s his job to think about it.

As one of the few scholars in the nation to study what happens to our data — including our social media presence — after we die, he’s been instrumental in developing Facebook’s Legacy Contact, the feature that enables users to determine the postmortem fate of their profile. Now, as a founding faculty member in ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s new information science department, he’s working to further improve the ways people experience death online, via new algorithms, apps and features designed to sensitively acknowledge a fact tech companies have tended to ignore: People die.

“In social computing, companies think about designing for all kinds of different aspects of our lives — wedding anniversaries, birthdays, you name it,” said Brubaker. “But they have overlooked perhaps the most profound one of all, which is when those lives come to an end.”

That’s where he comes in.

“I’m that guy,” he said. “I’m the death guy.”

Pathways

Brubaker’s circuitous career path wound through the arts, psychology and tech before leading to a nascent field that manages to incorporate all of the above.

Growing up in Utah, where he was an avid dancer, he dreamed of a career in theater. But his empathetic nature drew him toward psychology. He earned that degree at University of Utah while doing web design on the side, a gig that detoured him into the tech startup world for five years.

Once that life ceased to fulfill him, he pursued a master’s in communication, culture and technology at Georgetown University. When his adviser suggested he get a PhD in information science, he shot him a blank look: “I said, ‘What is information science?’”

The field, which explores the messy intersection of social science and computer science, seemed a perfect fit.

“I tend to gravitate toward the stuff that doesn’t make sense yet, where the fundamental research question is WTF?” he said.

In 2009, while working toward his PhD at the University of California Irvine, he was scrolling through the Facebook page of an acquaintance when he sensed something odd.

Posts on her “wall,” or digital message board, seemed to come mostly on birthdays and carried a somber tone. A few more minutes of scrolling confirmed his sinking feeling.

She was dead, but Facebook had continued to send out birthday reminders and advance her age in her profile. Online, she was 23. In the flesh, she never made it to 20.

“It was eerie,” he recalls.

Jed Brubaker

Not long after that, Facebook launched a well-meaning algorithm called “Reconnect” which sent a message to users encouraging them to “share the latest news” with Facebook friends who hadn’t logged on for a while. The launch, shortly before Halloween, was a PR disaster, as many users got messages nudging them to post on the walls of people who hadn’t logged on for good reason. They’d died.

“It was a technical screw up with very deep social consequences, but how could Facebook have done any differently?” Brubaker recalls. “If people are dead, they can’t remove their own accounts, and if Facebook doesn’t know they are dead, how can they exclude them from these algorithms? It was a bigger problem than anyone realized at the time.”

As Brubaker watched heartbroken family members express their frustration on social media — one woman was asked to contact a friend who had recently been murdered; another was encouraged to post on the wall of her deceased son — he arrived at his next research project.

He would spend the next five years interviewing hundreds of social media users about their encounters with postmortem accounts.

“He saw this issue emerging and took it upon himself to completely redefine a new research area,” said Gillian Hayes, a professor of informatics at UC Irvine and Brubaker’s adviser at the time.

Digital Tombstone

Almost overwhelmingly, people he interviewed about their interaction with the pages of dead loved ones said they liked having a sort of “digital tombstone” where they could post messages, share stories and grieve.

But privacy settings often had sad unintended consequences.

At the time, Facebook managed member deaths — if it learned of them at all — by “memorializing” or freezing their account. The profile still existed for people to post on, but no one had access to control it or manage it.

In some cases, adolescent users died suddenly, leaving behind a profile photo their parents found objectionable (a party pic, a snarky cartoon). When loved ones asked to have the photo changed, Facebook — lacking any idea what the deceased person would have wanted — would decline. In one case, a grieving father who was not friends with his son on Facebook asked if he could be added as a friend so he could participate in the remembrances. He couldn’t be.

I’m that guy— The death guy”

Once the company got wind of Brubaker’s research, it enlisted his help, not only to provide insight into the problem, but to help solve it.

In February 2015, when Brubaker was still a student, Facebook launched Legacy Contact, allowing users to designate a steward of their account who could write a final post, change or update profile or cover photos, add friends and even download photos to share with loved ones not on Facebook.

The carefully chosen word “Remembering” would gently indicate the person had passed, while inviting visitors to interact.

“It can often be so hard for young researchers to get the outside world to care about their research,” said Hayes. “To have Facebook launch this product based on his research while he was still writing his dissertation was just amazing.”

A Kinder, Gentler Wake

Brubaker continues to work with Facebook to study and refine Legacy Contact, and his research has inspired other social media companies to explore how they deal with user deaths.

At his Identity Lab on the CU campus, Brubaker also has begun exploring other challenges related to online discourse about life, identity and death.

Because social media enables us to rediscover acquaintances we haven’t spoken with for decades, for instance, we are now subjected to more individual deaths than any generation that has come before us. That raises sticky questions.

“How are you supposed to grieve the death of someone you would have otherwise forgotten?” he said, noting that when people grieve too openly online, they’re often accused of “rubbernecking” or “grief tourism.”

In one recent study co-authored with Katie Gach, a doctoral student at CU’s ATLAS Institute, the duo analyzed thousands of online comments responding to the deaths of Prince, David Bowie and actor Alan Rickman. They found that commenters routinely mocked others. Some even dissed the dead.

“These people were fighting in what was essentially an online wake. This would never happen in a normal, prenewsfeed world,” said Brubaker, who believes subtle changes could be made to algorithms so the most toxic online comments (which tend to get the most clicks) don’t necessarily rise to the top.

I hope death is a little bit kinder to people”

He and his students are also mulling outside-the-box ideas that could someday extend the way we interact with the dead via their data.

Want to go to grandma’s favorite restaurant and order her favorite dish on her birthday? Maybe you could tap into her Yelp data to find out what it was.

Missing an old friend? Maybe you could summon a data-driven, holographic representation of her.

Brubaker knows this sounds creepy. But there was a time when photographs or videos of the dead seemed creepy to the living. As technology changes, we change too.

“Whether it will be acceptable or not all depends on how it is designed,” he said.

How would he like to see his own memory live on?

“I just hope that as a result of my work, death is a little bit kinder to people.”

Illustration by Josh Cochran/ Photo courtesy Jed Brubaker

As our lives go digital, Jed Brubaker is studying what happens to all that data after we die.

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Inquiry: CMCI Dean Lori Bergen

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 07:38:00 +0000

Inquiry: CMCI Dean Lori Bergen Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/01/2016 - 01:38

Eric Gershon

Pushing Boundaries

Lori Bergen joined CU-Boulder last July as founding dean of the College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI), the campus’ first new college in 50 years. Here the former Kansan talks about pushing boundaries, cultivating fearless self-learners, seeing Colorado by train and a memorable fiddle rendition of “Orange Blossom Special.”

New colleges don’t grow on trees. What do you see as the fundamental opportunity before you?

To build something that’s never been done. We have a tremendous ensemble of leaders, scholars and artists who get up every day to ensure that students develop a wide variety of skills — and the intellectual insight — to thrive in the new world of media, communication and technology. We’re intentionally pushing boundaries to be innovative, collaborative, inclusive and nimble, and we define ourselves with what we want our students to do: Think. Innovate. Create.

What’s an unusual fact about you that our alumni will surely remember?

I’m a former Miss Kansas and semi-finalist in the Miss America Pageant who won a preliminary talent award for that classic fiddle tune, “Orange Blossom Special.” Thanks, Mr. Curt Engwicht, for 11 years of violin lessons!

Technological innovation is transforming all media industries dramatically, rapidly and continually. How does a school prepare students for that?

By transforming the way they’re taught. It’s no accident that CMCI has seven different departments and programs — it’s essential for today’s students to be knowledgeable in many disciplines. All of our freshmen take a year-long course that provides instruction in every CMCI subject area. We are also creating internships, mentorships and industry partnerships that build on the classroom experience.

Is there something all CMCI students will study that their predecessors in the various communications majors probably didn’t?

Probably… yet it’s the approach to learning that really differentiates the CMCI student experience — hands on, dynamic, unstructured and interdisciplinary. Students tell me they love that they’re engaged in creating new knowledge — as producers, makers, self-learners — and the freedom, flexibility and confidence it generates. We want our students to be fearless and ready for careers that build on what they learn here.

We live in an age of information saturation — it comes at us incessantly and in hyper speed. Do we have too much information?

No, actually we don’t have enough information about a lot of things, like our environment, or Ebola, or combatting terrorism. The challenge is in dealing with information — sorting, prioritizing, curating, ignoring — when the volume increases exponentially. We want our students to develop strategies to manage it — filter, focus and disconnect — or the stress will overtake you.

You’re a fifth-generation Kansan. What was your impression of Colorado growing up?

During the summer before kindergarten, we boarded one of the last passenger trains from Salina to Colorado Springs and went to Santa’s Workshop at Pike’s Peak. I was sure it was the real deal because we had to drive up a winding road through clouds to get to the North Pole. Then I learned in a history class that from 1854 to 1861 most of Colorado was actually Kansas Territory. I always wondered why someone took the beautiful mountains of Kansas and gave them away!

Photo by Casey A. Cass

Lori Bergen joined CU-Boulder last July as founding dean of the College of Media, Communication and Information (CMCI), the campus’ first new college in 50 years.

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Campus News Briefs – Summer 2016

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 07:37:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs – Summer 2016 Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/01/2016 - 01:37

Digits

Butterflies

Life stages for a butterfly

4/9

Date year-long butterfly
exhibition opened at CU
Museum of Natural History

300

Butterfly species in
Colorado (approx.)

1996

Year Colorado hairstreak
butterfly became state
insect

197

Species recorded in
Boulder County

20,000

Species in the world

3,000+

Miles some monarch
butterflies travel from the
U.S. to Mexico for winter

Making Tuition More Predictable

Planning for the cost of a CU-Boulder education will be easier for Colorado residents following the recent adoption of a new tuition and mandatory fees guarantee. Starting in fall 2016, tuition and fees for incoming freshmen who are Colorado residents will rise modestly, then remain fixed through the four-year period. Subsequent incoming classes will also see an initial increase, then no change through four years. University leaders say the new arrangement better allows students to plan for costs and CU to forecast revenues. The Board of Regents approved the plan in the spring. A four-year tuition guarantee was already in place for nonresident undergraduates. Graduate student tuition still will be reviewed each year. Additional details are available here.

Heard Around Campus

"Our goal has definitely been to create a very complex picture of Boulder..." — Graduate student Rebecca Zinner (MFA’18) in the Daily Camera, speaking of a digital time capsule about CU-Boulder created by students in the College of Media, Communication and Information.

Betting Big on the Saxophone

CU-Boulder music professor Carter Pann was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in music for his work “The Mechanics: Six from the Shop Floor.” The Pulitzer jury described the six-part saxophone composition as “a suite that imagines its four saxophonists as mechanics engaged in a rhythmic interplay of precision and messiness that is by turns bubbly, pulsing, dreamy and nostalgic.” The prize ultimately went to composer Henry Threadgill, but Pann is riding high anyway. “This is a real vote of confidence,” he said. Read the full story here.

Fixed tuition, butterflies and a Pulitzer finalist

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Summer 2016

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Inquiry: CMCI Dean Lori Bergen

Pushing Boundaries

New colleges don’t grow on trees. What do you see as the fundamental opportunity before you?

What’s an unusual fact about you that our alumni will surely remember?

Technological innovation is transforming all media industries dramatically, rapidly and continually. How does a school prepare students for that?

Is there something all CMCI students will study that their predecessors in the various communications majors probably didn’t?

We live in an age of information saturation — it comes at us incessantly and in hyper speed. Do we have too much information?

You’re a fifth-generation Kansan. What was your impression of Colorado growing up?

Off

Campus News Briefs – Summer 2016

Digits

Butterflies

Making Tuition More Predictable

Heard Around Campus

Betting Big on the Saxophone

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