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Nicolette Barclay November 29, 2017 Ms. Camp Presentation Self-Reflection: Alt-Right & Social Media

1. GENERAL: Reflect generally on the process and your performance in this project: What do you think you did well? What should you do differently next time? What area do you think you need to work on the most going forward?

I think what I did well was compiling sources. All of my sources were relevant to my issue and they helped me develop an argument. But, with this, two of my sources were rather similar. I think going forward, I would just work on slimming down the number of necessary sources. I have this subconscious belief that I’ll never obtain enough information so I kind of go overboard with it. For instance, last year we wrote research papers for Mrs. Gagliardi and I utilized thirteen sources in a four-page argument about industry and the environment. Though it scored high, sifting through all of the sources was quite strenuous. This issue was mildly prevalent for me in this project, but not to the degree it was last year. But, in terms of growth, I think that I’ve done a better job on compiling my slides and keeping it simple so the powerpoint presentation just acts as an aid to me. The first powerpoint we had in this class I think I still put too many words on the page and based everything I had to say off of it, where it should have just been an aid, as I’ve said. I also want and need to work on determining what is important within the sources I choose because it took me a little bit more time than I would’ve liked to settle upon which details to include. The articles/journals I came across were a bit lengthy, so that didn’t assist in cutting down what would help me in the end.

2. RESEARCH QUESTION: How did you settle on your initial research question? Did your group change your question over time? Do you think your question was well suited for the project? What, if any, changes would you make to the process of selecting your question in the next research project? Assess your individual skills on designing a research question. My group settled on the initial research question of “How does the alt-right utilize social media to portray their views?”. Our question soon metamorphosed into “Is the alt-right’s

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presence online dangerous to the American public?” as we realized that there wasn’t too much material to argue how they use social media as the answer is somewhat clear-cut. I think our newer question, though, is very well-suited for our project; we were able to find research that helped us prove our point that their presence is extremely dangerous. Next time, I’d definitely try to start out with a better question before going into researching instead of having to come back together and try to craft a new question. Though it all worked out in the end, having a definitive question from the beginning can help before starting to dive into everything. We all equally contributed to crafting the initial and final question - personally, I think that I need to work on improving my individual ability of creating a research question. I often know what I want to research and fight, but it becomes difficult to make a question of what I’m trying to contend to an audience. This project, though, helped me realize what a bad question is (our initial one) and work towards making a new one. With a concise question, the answer can be concise and easier to direct the process of research and focus towards.

3. LENS/PERSPECTIVE: How did you select your lens/perspective? Were you clear on what you needed to focus on to answer the research question from your lens? Why/why not? Consider the process your group used to divide into lenses/perspectives...what, if anything, would you change for the next group project?

I inevitably chose to look at the issue through a historical lens. We proposed the best four lenses for the topic of the alt-right and social media in class when we came up with our argument: futuristic, historical, political, and cultural. I simply said that I wanted to do the historical aspect of it because I am interested in looking at things from the past and making trends/recognizing growth. One example of this is how I looked at the growth of what percentage of America has at least one social media platform from 2008-2017. I was definitely clear on what I had to focus on when we arrived at our final question; when we had our initial question of “How does the alt-right use social media to promote themselves?” I wasn’t sure how I would find anything for that. I knew that I would have to look into the past to what the alt-right has already done in order to bring that component into our compiled search. The process we used was simply just picking which one we wanted for the most part. I

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grabbed historical, Jordan took social, Julia chose political, and Sophia was left with futuristic -which she wasn’t too pleased about (sorry girl! -- but she did great researching it). If we were to do this again, I would definitely let Sophia pick first! But, in actuality, I would want everyone to have an equal opportunity, even though I know that Sophia did great with researching the future and found some great sources. Everybody did great with the lens/perspective they were given (at least from what I’ve seen/heard from them), but equal opportunity is important. If we were to have another go at it, I think it’d be best for us to choose from a hat/bag once we choose 4/5/xamount of applicable lenses/perspectives to the argument at hand.

4. INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH & IRR: Reflect on your individual research, annotated bibliographies, and the individual research paper. Were you able to locate relevant peerreviewed sources? Could you find multiple perspectives within your lens/perspective? Did the process of constructing the annotations help you with the IRR? What was the most challenging part of the IRR for you? Assess your comfort with writing the IRR/literature review. What do you need more clarification on or practice with? Do you anticipate challenges with writing a longer version of this (1200 words) with more cited sources (10+)?

While researching, I was able to come across a minute selection peer-reviewed sources. The only one that really helped in my argument - and that I ended up using - was Nathaniel Persily’s contribution to the Journal of Democracy. From this, I went to his utilized sources and found some more options from there. If I had more time/online resources, I definitely would like to have looked through other databases to get access to more peer-reviewed sources. Within my lens/perspective, I’m not sure that I am able to find more perspectives since I did historical. History is history. But, it would be interesting to see what the alt-right thinks of their presence online and how it has progressed over time, but I’m not completely sure valid sources have information like that, and it would be completely opinion-based by eccentric extremists. It would be like when the Congo was invaded by Belgium and Belgium saw them as savages and that they were there to educate them, but people in the Congo knew what was going on and wanted no part in the white men trying to ‘set up shop’ on their soil. There surely are two sides to every story! When it came to the annotated bibliography and the IRR, the bibliography definitely helped when it came time for me to write my IRR. I only needed to glance at the four summaries

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I already had in front of me to find details that would help what I was writing for the IRR. With the construction of the IRR, the only true challenge I faced was trying to find differences in two of my sources (Kardas and Persily). They were very similar and I could have done without the Kardas source, but I wanted to include how an outsider of the United States saw the issue to strengthen my argument; yet, Kardas had little to draw upon that Persily didn’t already. That being said, it wasn’t really hard to write it (I treated myself to a gummy bear every time I wrote twenty cohesive words and I was done in no time!). I think I’m extremely comfortable with the IRR, I was the peer sample after all! Only kidding, but I am indeed comfortable with what we were asked to produce when it came to the IRR; it didn’t feel like anything foreign to me and I was simply summarizing the issue with source material, so I don’t know that I need more practice. The issue we researched was actually very interesting, so that probably helped when it came time to research and build the annotated bibliography and IRR. I don’t imagine that I’ll have trouble writing a longer version because I’ve already done something similar to that last year as mentioned (~1500 words, thirteen sources) -- I think a possible challenge might be cutting it down to 1200, though!

5. PRESENTATION PREPARATION: What was your role once you reconvened as a group to combine your research and design the problem-solution presentation? What were the biggest challenges? What were your biggest successes? Describe the process within your group of moving from individual information to a group presentation - how did you communicate information to each other about what should and should not be put into the presentation? How did you divide up responsibilities? Were you a leader in your group - why or why not? Do you think you need to take a more active role? What skills do you need to focus on for the next project when it comes to functioning well in a group? My role was that I contributed the historical aspect to the overall presentation. The historical content I had to offer lined up with the overall problem-solution relationship because history is history; by looking at what has happened in the past can help us come up with a solution. In the past, the alt-right has flourished with the creation of social media platforms; this is a crucial part of our argument in defending that their presence on social media is detrimental. The biggest challenge was trying to make everything run smoothly/find an order that made sense

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for the sake of our argument. We found this in the end, but it was a bit hard to finally arrive there. I think our biggest successes was how we were open with each other -- we’re all seniors and we understand each other. We didn’t have any stringent juniors who try to interrogate other groups during feedback time -- it was a calm working environment and nobody was scared to speak up. I liked this group because of how open we could be and how we helped each other -- it felt transparent, full of ‘glasnost’ if you will. Moving from our own information to putting it on the slides was a bit complex, but we did it in the end. I know that I struggled to find what I should include for a bit, but finally got there. Sophia had put waaaaay too many bullet points on one of her slides, so we all told her that she can’t do that because it’s truly too many words/information to take in. And that answers how we communicated what should and shouldn’t be in the presentation -- we told Sophia her slide sucked (in a respectful manner). Adding onto this, I told everyone that they needed to make sure their slides matched the font of the title slide as well as the format/general animations. Julia and I told Jordan in one instance that he had to make his words smaller as it was just too much for the eye and I told my group members when I was taking out a general slide that was redundant. We were very open, as I’ve said. If something didn’t work, someone spoke up. In terms of responsibilities and leadership, we were all equals. Nobody was Queen Bee and nobody was a non-contributing Nancy. It was basically communism. In a good way of course -- not like the Red Scare. I am no stranger to being the self-proclaimed group project leader, but this year I’m taking a step back from that uptight nature and trying to calm down. Before I further digress, we all put in the same amount of effort/work; we all first put in our own slides and then made them flow and then went back and made slides that transitioned everyone (ones at the beginning and the end for introduction/conclusion of our argument). I don’t think that I needed to take on a more active role since we all functioned in the same dynamic and got the job done. If it wasn’t like that and I was in a group with some juniors who know their weighted GPA to the ten-thousandth, then I probably would need to be more active. And, finally, I think I may need to be more ‘awake’ when it comes to working as a group. In this instance, we were all ‘chill’ because we’re seniors and don’t see the reason in stressing ourselves out even more, but it could be different next time. “When it comes to functioning well in a group” is throwing me for a loop in the question. just because we truly functioned well throughout this whole process. Our personalities allowed us to be open and honest with anything and everything

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in regards to this project. Aside from this, I’m proud of how I contributed to my project and our complete product. We prepared well together and the creation of our efforts is reflective of that and our openness/authenticity with each other.

6. PRESENTATION: Evaluate your group’s final product. Did it equally represent each member of your group in both content and time allocated per person to present? Evaluate your own line of reasoning - how clearly did you take your audience from an explanation of the problem to your proposed solution. Did you incorporate multiple perspectives and counterarguments? Did you make a strong case for your chosen solution? What changes would you make going forward to deliver a better group presentation? What presentation skills do you need to improve going forward (can be in design and/or delivery).

I truly think that our presentation went very well. Everyone was represented equally; I think I was a bit on the shorter side, but that’s because I didn’t want to stand up there and continue on saying things that my group members were going to cover - reiterating gets boring after awhile. Also, I didn’t want to drag on because the idea of how easily it is for the population of America to be manipulated is rather clear-cut in terms of what I found. With our line of reasoning, I believe that there was sufficient, flowing explanation of the issue before arriving at our solution. We did include the historical lense (with a focus in politics), further political information, the future, and how it truly affects America (socially/culturally) while working to include looks at the other side (counterargument). I believe that we made a strong case because it really is important to realize how vulnerable America is when it comes to the alt-right’s social media presence in the end and know what is believable/ingenuine. Going forward, I would try to depend on the board less -- I practiced the nights leading up to it, but I just truly feel that I need to bring my eyes/attention to the class and not the SmartBoard. With the whole presentation, I think cohesiveness is a huge part which we worked to do but it still seemed that there was a little bit of difference from one’s slides to the next.

7. ORAL DEFENSE: Were you prepared to answer any question about any component of

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your group’s presentation (regardless of who compiled the initial research)? How do you think you can best prepare for this component of the project? What changes would you make to your group dynamic going forward that would prepare group members for this component?

I do indeed think that I was prepared to answer any question that came my way -- I’m pretty good at thinking on my feet. My question was asking if we got rid of any sources that we had when we came back together -- I know that I left the Turkish source out of it because it was similar to Nathaniel Persily’s source which offered a bit more of information, and because it seemed rather sketchy; nobody else mentioned dumping any sources they had looked at before. I inevitably made the decision based on Ms. Camp’s commentary on my IRR as it did not seem to hold as much prominence as my other sources. I don’t really think there’s much preparing one can do for this part of the project; I took a quick glance at the questions on Schoology to see what the basis of them would be, but didn’t do much more than that. Lastly, I wouldn’t make any changes to my group dynamic because we worked well together and we knew everything there was to know about each other’s information/the collective presentation....