Month: November 2019

This reading by Howard and Jane Giles discusses intergroup communication perspective. The division between ingroups and outgroups was a main point of this reading. Ingroups is a social category that you identify with, while an outgroup is a social category that you do not identify with. While this seems like a simple concept, life is not always so black and white. In certain environments, you could be a part of both an group and an out group. The example the reading provided was about how Korean Americans feel like outsiders when they go to the place that they identify with most in the United States.

I realized that since coming to college, there are certain things I identify with when I’m at home that I don’t really identify with here. For example, the music I listen to with my family and friends at home is different than the music I listen to with my friends at Richmond.

This article also mentioned intersectionality, which we talked about in class earlier in the semester. In short, intersectionality is the connection of certain identities – like race, gender, or ability – and how they overlap to create an individual identity.

 

 

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Last night I attended the Jepson Leadership Forum presentation called “The Internet as a Weapon.” The speaker, Yasha Levine, is an investigative journalist whose family came to the United States as political refugees from the Soviet Union when he was nine. He started his presentation by talking about how the internet was used to interfere in the 2016 election. For many people, this represented a turning point in the role of the internet in society because it was the first time that the internet was used to influence a political outcome. However, Levine said that in reality there has never been a time that the internet was not used as a “weapon” of influence. I found this really surprising because I always thought of the 2016 election as an example of the internet’s increased capabilities, but according to Levine the internet has always been able to have such significant influence. He talked about technology being used to influence military operations as early as the 1960s, which was crazy to me.

Something else that stood out to me was that Levine talked about how in his community of immigrants growing up, the United States and its technological developments represented a new world of possibilities for the future. However, we have not lived up to these ideals. To demonstrate this, he showed an image of a new Apple facility being built and a homeless man sitting in front of it. He showed this picture several times throughout the presentation. I thought that this picture was very powerful because it shows that even though technology has created so many opportunities, these opportunities haven’t been available to everyone.

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An ingroup is a social category or a group that you strongly identify with. An outgroup is basically the opposite, it is a group that you don’t identify with. There are a lot of differences between these outgroups and ingroups, these may be the language and speech styles they create or use, their different dress codes, and the different pageants and festivals that are in their traditions and rituals.

When I read about ingroups and outgroups it made me relate the concept to different religions and made me think that religions can be considered to a certain degree an ingroup and outgroup. I can think how ingroups and outgroups can relate to someone’s everyday life and how the groups that they identify with work with the groups that they don’t identify with. Another thing that I found which is interesting was the infrahumanization effect where people express human qualities to members of their ingroup and to their outgroup they tend to show less human like characteristics and more animal like qualities to outgroups.

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An in group is a group that you strongly identify with while an outgroup on the other hand, is a group in which you do not. I found it interesting how specific the dichotomy is between groups that creates the “us and them” as stated on page 142. Small cultural differences like the way they dress, what they eat, or even hobbies can create different ingroups. Is it possible for an individual to be a part of multiple ingroups if their characteristics fit into the basis of those ingroups?

It is interesting how intergroup boundaries are also specific. For example, the way cultures view each others eating habits and how they use utensils creates an intergroup boundary. Another boundary I found interesting is for example, when Americans who know Japanese try to converse with Japanese in their language to make them feel more comfortable when in reality, it is intolerable. Overall, I think that this article dives into many examples of ingroups and classifications within ingroups that were interesting but also contains a lot of information that makes it difficult to digest.

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The reading, “Ingroups and Outgroups,” analyzes the different categories that place us in an ingroup or outgroup scenario. I found the emphasis on language as the most interesting defining category. I find it really easy to forget how much language influences our daily lives. Language is such a bonding force that groups hold onto. Speaking a language that is the primary language where you live places you at an advantage above people who do not speak that language, or who do not speak it as their first language.

In my psych class in high school, I learned about how for people who are multilingual, their personalities change based on what language they are speaking. In Spanish, they might be more outgoing while in French, they might be more shy. I wonder how those personality changes impacts someone’s ingroup/outgroup status.

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For his talk Yasha Levine started out by showing a video that was “A Kid’s Guide to the Internet.” He used this video to start off his talk on a positive, funny note because he knew that this topic was not lighthearted. People once viewed the internet as having a lot of promise to create a new world. Overtime, however, people have become more and more fearful of the internet and concerned about its power. Levine pointed out that the world has a lot more problems now than it did at the start of the tech era and the internet, so clearly hopes for the internet were not reality. Still, it was not until more recently that many people became more concerned about the internet. The 2016 election can be considered a turning point in fear of the internet. Levine, however, argues that this fear is based on the false perception that the 2016 election was the first time the internet had been used to sway an election or do something similar. Levine argues that there was never a moment when the internet was not a weapon.

The internet is by no means an innocent technology. Many people are not starting to realize that is has been weaponized in a way so powerful that it was even able to throw an election. Some people go so far as to call hijacking the internet a weapon of war. Levine even mentioned that one of his congressmen refers to hijacking the internet as equivalent to Pearl Harbor. The internet has always been and remains, though more powerful than people originally thought it would be, an information weapon. This is not a new phenomenon, as the internet has been used as a method of spreading propaganda and surveilling people since at least the 1990s. It even had implications before then. Levine mentioned technology and the internet’s connection to the Vietnam War, which was particularly relevant given what we discussed in class. Technology is a new kind of war that we will need to find a new way to fight against.

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The play was about a slave named Simon who was hired out to a horse owner. Simon then becomes a well-known, almost famous, jockey and wins a ton of races, all the while having his heart set on freedom and buying himself and his future wife, Caroline, from their owners, the Colonel and his wife. Once he bought Caroline’s freedom, he bought his own horse, and races both the Colonel’s horse and his own until he sustains an injury during one. Eventually the Civil War happens and Simon becomes a free man, but is no longer a jockey because of the injury, working in a hotel with very racialized rules as a bellhop. Colonel finds him again and they become friends and go back to the Colonel’s farm together to live.

This play was very controversial but representative of the times it was showing. It used the n-word, with a hard r, a lot and the maltreatment of African-Americans was very obvious in the language and tone utilized. It made me uncomfortable a lot because of these aspects of the play but I think it was also very eye-opening because the audience sees how degrading slave life was and how even though the Colonel and his wife treated Simon and Caroline well, both of the slaves still kind of despised them for owning them. I liked how it focused on a well-to-do, talented African-American because even though Simon was praised continuously throughout the play, you can still see how slavery and its entrapment of his entire life brought him and made him do things that seem unimaginable, like hitting his wife after buying her freedom because “she was his property”. It made the audience think that even though he suffered his whole life as property, the second he has his own, he abused it and demonstrated everything he hated about slavery.

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Ingroups are defined as groups with which people identify with strongly. I liked how this article referenced the concept of intersectionality on page 143 because it emphasizes that a large number of factors determine the ingroup, that aspects of a person’s identity contribute to one another versus overpowering one another. I also thought that that the link between language and ingroup vs. outgroup was very interesting because we talk more about race, religion, gender, sexuality and don’t tend to consider language a large factor. However, looking at examples from our class, it makes more sense. MLK was praised for his ability to “code switch,” and communicate in a way that reached both white and black people. While not every single white person listened to his message, his ability to permeate the ingroup even slightly is unique and made his more well known.

In my own personal experiences, I did not realize that I use language to hang onto my Midwestern identity. At home, I did not think about how I spoke because everyone spoke in the same way. In fact, I didn’t think about it at all until I came home fall break of freshman year and my mom told me sadly that my accent was faded. This is an example of what Giles says on page 145: “the importance of language as a component of a person’s social identity can change over the lifespan.” Now at a school where the Midwestern population is low and the majority of my friends have never actually been there, I find that I value my Midwestern accent more and even lean into it at times. I use my language as a tie to home and my home ingroup.

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In this chapter an ingroup is defined as a group that someone identifies strongly with. An outgroup is the opposite, and is a group or social category that you don’t identify with. From this reading it seems that ingroups and outgroups are determined by things like where you were born and raised, race, religion, language, and many other things rather than from individual choice. Related to this, one part of the reading that was interesting is when it touched on “intergroup boundaries”. It talked about how these group boundaries can even be found in food and how someone uses utensils. Americans don’t put their knives down while eating and that is identified by Brits just by seeing it.

One thing I was thinking while reading is how unfair the idea of ingroups and outgroups seems. Maybe I don’t completely understand the concept but it almost seems like a stereotype. There is not much room for choice and personal preference in ingroups and outgroups. Rather then getting to choose what group you identify with, you are placed there by how society sees you. Some things such as where you come from or what language you speak are automatically grouped in ingroups and outgroups, but there are some things I think should be more of a choice.

 

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Giles and Giles define an ingroup as being “a social category or group with which you identify strongly” while on the other hand, an outgroup is “a social category or group with which you do not identify.” (142). The idea of ingroups and outgroups perpetuates the idea of the outsider and systematically forms oppression, especially in the United States. These social categories can be divided by race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Each group has its own distinct language, customs, and holidays that differentiate them from one another. In my SOC 101 class we learned how this can be identified as their culture – a collection of ideas, values, practices, and material objects that hold significance to the society it pertains to. One specific example used in the reading was the quote by Osama Bin Laden, “The world has been divided into two camps. One under the banner of the cross and another under the banner of Islam.” (143). I related this back to one of our previous sections, groupthink, where one of the symptoms involved includes stereotyping the opposition as being evil, immoral, or wrong.

One example from the reading about having multiple cultural identities was about a person who values their Korean ethnic heritage and is also a proud American citizen. In some situations, this is possible, however in other situations it is not. The reading describes how Korean Americans are often surprised when visiting Korea when locals only see them as being American. This is not solely the case for Korean Americans but for everyone who has multiple cultural identities. This reminded me of a quote from the movie ‘Selena’. “Being Mexican-American is hard. We gotta prove to the Mexicans how Mexican we are and we gotta prove to the Americans how American we are. We gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans at the same time.” One of the ways in which someone is able to identify who is an authentic member or who is an imposter is language and their ability to speak it fluently, with/without an accent. Many times, people unfairly discriminate against immigrants telling them to speak English because we are in America. This can lead to many children of immigrants losing their ability to speak their native languages because they are not taught as young children.

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The Gileses simply explain an ingroup to be a social group with which one identifies strongly, yet explain an outgroup to be a social group with which one does not identify with strongly. At the surface, this dichotomy can be illustrated via distinct languages, speech styles/dialects, fashion codes, cultural events, traditions, and more. One of the Giles made an interesting point of how people can have dual or even multiple identities. I definitely concur with the idea that a person can switch or be “triggered” to align with a certain identity at certain moments. For instance, a black or African American person may be able to identify with both the more closely knit African American culture and with the American culture at large. Yet, certain cultural aspects, traditions, and codes may come to the forefront of that person’s identity depending on where they are and who they are with. This kind of code-switching can be supported by the social identity theory, which suggests that when an ingroup identity becomes noticeable, then members of that identity are likely to emphasize the most treasured characteristics of it. A native Korean whose first and predominant language may be Korean could find solace in speaking with other native Korean-speakers when surrounded by Americans who solely speak English. Although the person could be able to communicate in English, speaking in Korean with another person would open up a new gateway of possibilities to talk about cultures, traditions, and sentiments that they could both identify with.

Giles’ notes the significant concept of language suicide, which follows that communication codes and language can gradually disappear over time if members of an ingroup are pressured to assimilate into the majority outgroup. Those who identify with “low vitality groups” are pressured to succumb to the dominant groups’ social control. Without a doubt, this phenomenon can be seen on university campuses across the U.S., including here at the University of Richmond. The ways in which white Americans practice, order, and identify with American culture is perpetuated as the mainstream “norm” for any and everyone to follow. This sort of control is especially induced onto smaller ingroup cultures and their members who might only make up a small percentage of the university’s quota. Dominating groups at universities, career and workspaces, etc seek to maintain social privileges in this way and have the audacity to glorify a 7% diversity rate. Someone, please, make it make sense.

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I found it interesting how the article talked about the communication being a big part in the identities of the various groups and it makes sense because there are groups of people who may believe similar things but just express it differently or have a common theme but varying goals within the theme, like the example of religion or cultures between the same country.

I originally thought the article was going to talk about groups based on beliefs and parts of the social aspect that we get to choose to be apart of, but the more I read the more it talked about in-outgroups/intergroups from instances without choice, like where you were born or how you grew up. I think the fact that the “out” group is a group that you do not identify with as much was an interesting choice of names because maybe it isn’t that you want to be out of the group or excluded but maybe part of it is just societal and people become placed into these groups without even realizing it.

The grouping system in general seems very unpersonal because it is placing you into an ingroup or outgroup for whatever topic is at hand and one section of the article talked about how any site of engaging with outgroup behavior was frowned upon but I feel like people should get to have more choice in some parts of grouping. Obviously you can’t change where you were born or anything but for the things that you are supposed to be allowed to decide on your own, I don’t think there should necessarily be anything wrong with switching or creating a new ingroup for what you want. I don’t really know though. I do think it is interesting to think about though because I never thought of “my identities” as these in or out groups really I just kind of knew that they were part of me.

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The idea of ingroups and outgroups in a very interesting topic to discuss within the compounds of being a student in college. It is an idea that I have explored deeply based on how ingroups and outgroups are also intersectional. Yes, I am a black woman and share this ingroup with a certain population on campus. However, being from the south there is another ingroup created. When talking about the communicative pros and cons there are many that differ depending on which ingroup is being highlighted at the moment. I did not understand exactly how much black woman could disagree on formerly perceived commonly agreed upon ideas, until living with a group of black women from different places and differing backgrounds.

To me, the biggest takeaway from this experience is the fact that people can create their own bridges to outgroups by building in groups whenever it is necessary. The reading talked about socialization and confronting stereotypes by conversing with outgroups. However, I challenge this mindset. Instead of viewing it as educating yourself on an outgroup, view it as acknowledging ingroups. Every student at this university has a commonality. Decisions made by the university big or small affect us all (for the most part). There are people who within this ingroup, also share majors, concentrations and even professors. All of these traits contribute to intersectional ingroups that can connect people more than we allow despite potential differences in race, ethnicity and socio-economic background. The most commonly addressed ingroup versus outgroup topics is about race. Race outside of ethnicity, culture and systematic oppression means absolutely nothing. There are no genetic differences that separate people based on the color of our skin but we create outgroups based on arbitrary lines that have been generational, which also contribute to systems of disparity.

The true way to bridge gaps and foster real equity is to acknowledge ingroups aside from the scary outgroup classifications. Without doing this there is the threat that any intergroup relationships will be one-sided and disingenuine. We are all people, we have goals, we may share them or even share values. Finding commonalities will allow us to forge something real and then see people for who they are along with their outgroup characteristics instead of seeing them as a representative of their outgroup.

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After reading the chapter “Ingroups and Outgroups” by Howard and Jane Giles I thought that it was really interesting how there is so much that goes into defining a group and what goes into effectively communicating with other groups. One of the most interesting things I found about characterizing yourself into a group was the fact that there are ways to make it known that you are not part of a group. I had never really conceptualized the fact that some people in Europe don’t like to be called Europeans. I also thought that the majority of the things that the chapter talked about as being ‘valuable’ to know when communicating with other people in different groups to be common sense. I think that it is customary not to say slurs to people, or to question their eating habits. However, I know that throughout the rest of the world that might not be the case.

I think that this article has great intent because they are trying to teach us about how to better and more effectively communicate with people who are not in our ingroups. I think that the accommodation theory is more used today as more people are trying to erase the old ways of only talking to people who are in our ingroups. I find the whole concept of ingroups and outgroups to be fascinating, because it really is just human nature at the end of the day. I think that through consciously making sure to be inclusive and understanding to other people’s ingroups that you are not a part of can make intergroup interactions go a lot better.

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I find the idea of in groups and out groups very interesting. I think people often think about the groups they identify with a lot, but don’t think as much about the groups they don’t identify with and why. I also think it was interesting how the in groups identifies them selves and their means of doing so. It’s important to look at the common things a group has and what forms each group. Also why the groups form.

I think that this can be applied to large scale and small scale groups. Whether it be a certain friend group to a whole racial group. I think it’s important we understand the types of groups we are in as well as other people to try and understand our own and others identities.

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Digital Dystopian Event 

Susan Nevin 

The speaker for this event was Yasha Levine, who was born in the Soviet Union, and escaped to the United States as political refugees, and came to live in San Francisco. He then became an investigative reporter, and has been researching the internet as a weapon. Levine claims that the Internet started as something new and magical. However, the sheen is wearing off and people are becoming afraid and paranoid of the internet. People are convinced that the internet has been hijacked and is now used as a weapon of meddling, and is not what it was before. Additionally, some people think that the internet is what caused Trump’s election. 

Levine also argued that never before in the history of mankind had the internet been used to convince people of things in the way it did in 2016. The internet is not an innocent technology. The Internet has been used for surveillance and propaganda for years. Fear after the 2016 election was based on the idea that the internet was never used for a weapon. People are now seeing how the internet is giving dominance to monopolies and people are making money selling things to us. Altogether, we just saw the internet in the wrong light, and Levine is shining a spotlight on it.

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This past Sunday I attended the Global Sounds concert in Modlin. The name is pretty broad so I did not know what to expect at all. During the concert there were students that played all sorts of different drums. A long with them were some adults who seemed to know what they were doing a little more. In some of the songs they did chants that reminded me of a cult and there was some audience participation such as clapping. It was definitely not what I expected because I did not think that it would be students and did not know that drums would be involved.

Overall, I did not really like the concert. I do not enjoy live music concerts too much anyways, and especially not really loud drums. While I know that they were students and did not practice a lot, they were not great at drumming. However, I do respect their bravery to go up in front of a crowd and do something that is not their craft. There were a good amount of people in the crowd and I am pretty sure that the students got some sort of extra credit in their class if they had a few friends come. This was an interesting experience but definitely not something I’m in a rush to go back to.

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I attended the talk sponsored by Jepson “The Internet as a Weapon” by Yasha Levine. The overall premise of this talk was very interesting, and I was excited for it. Levine started with a video from the 1990’s that was used to show kids that their families needed to get access to the internet due to the endless possibilities. I thought that this was a great reminder as to how magical and amazing everyone thought the internet was about thirty years ago, and now we take it for granted so much. He then talked about how recently the government has been convinced that the internet has been hijacked and become weaponized. Some are even saying that what occurred with the 2016 elections should be considered an act of war.

One of the most important things that Levine said was the fact that our understanding and belief of the internet is based off of the false premise that the internet is some amazing wondrous thing that is only supposed to help us. He reminded the audience that the internet was created as a weapon for the government. Then he went into how the internet was made by a Pentagon program as a way to gain information about people to see who was more likely to be a resistant force. I thought that he was not the best at grasping the audience’s attention as he went through the history of the internet, and I felt that some of his points were lost because people were zoning out. But overall, I thought that this talk put a lot into perspective for me. Everyone recently has been up in arms about what the internet has become, but it has always been like this and we are just becoming more aware of it as the computers get smarter.

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In Howard and Jane Giles’ “Ingroups and Outgroups” chapter, I found the concepts highly applicable to studying leader/follower dynamics on small and large scales. I appreciated that the authors acknowledged that people might have multiple facets to their identities (i.e. being Korean American) that are central to a person’s identity depending on the circumstance. Furthermore, I was particularly interested by the idea of “intergroup boundaries” presented by the authors; specifically, the example of the differences in table manners among Brits and Americans. While the two nations share the “ingroup” quality of speaking the same language (despite dialectical differences), there is an intergroup boundary of food and drink. When traveling to any country, it is important to familiarize oneself with the cultural knowledge of a habit such as eating practices. A “bilingual eater” would speak both eating “languages” of Britain and the United States, and these differences are important to understanding group dynamics of a particular culture. Furthermore, when traveling to another nation, it is important to think about how you might be labeled due to your national origin, as a categorization threat could occur.

Reading “Ingroups and Outgroups” for a second time (I did so before in Leadership and the Social Sciences” gave me a reminder of the importance of calling out stereotypes and being conscientious of them on a global level. After learning about leadership concepts specifically correlated to the humanities, I had a different reaction to the article; learning how literature/art, oratory, and history impact leadership, the concept of ingroups/outgroups are largely applicable to several contexts.

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The Civil Rights movement and the Anti-War movement were more related than I initially realized.  Who was sent over to fight for the United States was problematic. This is because the draft was inherently racist, in addition to discriminating against poorer Americans.  At one point in the video a narrator said that, “If you’re white, middle-class, and a dean’s list kind of guy, then relax”. The narrator was essentially saying that a college educated white man would not be drafted, which brings up the unequal aspects of the draft itself.  There was strong opposition to the Vietnam war, but the United States established laws that were aimed to prevent drafted men from refusing to go overseas to fight. If a person would refuse to go and fight in the war, then they could be convicted of draft resistant. Muhammad Ali, who was a strong opponent of the draft and the war, refused to fight and as a result lost his heavyweight belt.  The draft resistant laws forced many people, who were ‘randomly selected’, to go fight in a war that they did not believe in or support. 

 

The video about the Anti-War movement is especially interesting to me because I live about thirty minutes away from where the Kent State shooting occurred.  I have learned about the incident over and over again as a student in Ohio, but its impact in the Anti-war movement is still surprising to me to this day. The video mentioned how the Kent State shooting acted as a catalyst of sorts for people, who otherwise would have stayed silent, to speak up against the war This is impactful for me because I always think of Kent State as just a random college in my backyard, but for an incident to occur there and change the course of American history is mindblowing for an Ohioan like me.

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