The recent terrorist attacks in Paris, Gov. Hogan's efusal to let refugees resettle in Maryland causes protests and debate on UMD campus

Amid the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Governor Larry Hogan's letter requesting the federal government keep Syrian refugees from resettling in Maryland, the University of Maryland campus has become a hotbed for student protests and debates revolving around the refugee crisis.

Eighty University of Maryland students protested against Governor Larry Hogan's position to keep Syrian refugees out of the state.

Astrid Diaz said that her Latino activist group at Maryland stands in solidarity with Maryland:

As governor of Maryland, the safety and security of Marylanders remains my first priority. Following the terrorist...
Posted by Larry Hogan on Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Maryland's protest centered around the migrant crisis in the Middle East and used the newly erected  statue of Frederick Douglass as rallying point.

Professor El-Amine explained how refusing refugees admittance into the U.S. is bolstering the ISIS agenda and interests in the Middle East:

Professor El-Amine emphasized that the refugee protest at UMD will help combat the conflict with ISIS.

Explains how acceptance is a way of combatting ISIS organizations.

Despite the overwhelming amount of emigration from the Middle East in the last year, UMD's number of international students who are refugees or asylum seekers did not fluctuate in 2014 to 2015.

UMD student activist organizations collaborated to create a week of workshops and activities on social injustices, including discussions on the refugee crisis.

El-Amine emphasized that the statue of Frederick Douglass is a "lightning rod for activism" in the UMD community, especially the refugee movement.

**Another possible subhead is going to be something on the security updates since the Paris terrorist attacks, but I'm waiting to hear back from the campus police spokesperson.

Research Websites/Articles: https://globalmaryland.umd.edu/sites/default/files/ies/Fall2014Stats.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/md-gov-larry-hogan-rejects-growing-pressure-to-welcome-syrian-refugees/2015/11/23/f4dd1184-920a-11e5-a2d6-f57908580b1f_story.html

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/umd-students-rally-for-syrian-refugees-at-frederick-douglass-statue/article_948a67f2-8eed-11e5-bd56-9b49039d72f5.html

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/umd-student-groups-put-on-first-unity-week/article_f592348e-9240-11e5-a4d5-a787e6b6adfa.html

Confirmed Interviews:

1) Professor Zien El-Amine, Arabic Studies (expert)

2) Astrid Diaz, who designed the flyers for one of the refugee protests

Waiting for responses:
1) Sarah Ferrell, co-President of Community Roots at UMD
2) Andrew Mulinge, co-President of Community Roots at UMD

3)  Erica Martinez Puentes of PLUMAS

Discussion panel localizes European migrant crisis for University of Maryland students

Four members of the
migrant crisis panel.

Europe is facing its largest influx of migrants since the end of World War II with hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring into the European Union.  Students and professors brought the European crisis into the University of Maryland’s backyard with a discussion panel held on the topic on Oct. 27.

The wave of refugees is causing overpopulation and housing problems in Europe, but the source of the problem stems from conflict in Middle Eastern countries such as Syria, according to one professor on the panel.

Professor Jeffrey Anderson, who was the first speaker of the event, set the context of the European migrant crisis for the small audience of students in Francis Scott Key Hall at the University of Maryland, College Park.

The Georgetown University professor, who specializes in European politics, said while the repercussions from the crisis are inside of Europe the source is from several different political and social conflicts in the Middle East and northern Africa.

Eurostat estimated 769, 550 migrants applied to enter the European Union as refugees between January and September.   As seen in the graphic below the number of refugee applicants steadily increased throughout 2015 so far.

With such an alarming increase of migrants seeking asylum, European countries are faced with the continuing problem of housing, feeding and educating refugees.

Anderson emphasized the immediate problem is at an international level.  But he said the issues would eventually trickle down to the local government level.

Students in European and Arabic studies programs at the University of Maryland gained insight from the panel discussion beyond what European media coverage provided.

Chelsea Deebel, a junior majoring in Arabic Studies and Government and Politics at UMD, said she appreciated hearing the speakers talk about the migrant crisis from the refugee perspective.

Deebel said European media outlets could be one-sided in their coverage, excluding the refugees’ viewpoint altogether.  But the academic setting of the panel provided students with an even-keeled discussion between European and refugee perspectives.

Professor Randa Serhan echoed Deebel’s sentiment.

“We are able to delve deeper and we are able to go beyond the framing of the media,” Serhan said.  “Our students deserve to understand history and politics beyond what just the media tells us."

As a sociology professor and the director of Arab Studies at American University, Serhan presented the European crisis from the perspective of Syrian refugees in Europe.

She said language used in the media could lump the refugees into one political group when instead they came to Europe from various backgrounds and for a multitude of reasons.

An October BBC article cited Eurostat statistics that showed the widespread distribution of migrants applying for asylum in Europe by country.

The highest number of migrants applying for asylum was nearly 120,000 people from war-stricken Syria.  However, Kosovo and Afghanistan also produced approximately 60,000 refugees each.

These numbers debunk the misconception many people have that all the refugees fleeing to Europe are coming from Syria.

University of Maryland senior Steven Irving plans to use the research presented by the panel to advance his nonprofit for Syrian refugees.

Irving, an Arabic Studies major, attributed the new ideas he had for his nonprofit to the uniqueness of the perspectives on the panel.

With the two-hour panel being made up of presentations from a human rights lawyer, sociologist and political scientist, Irving had a multitude of perspectives to aid in the creation of his nonprofit.

But he said the most significant point he took away from the discussion was how Middle Eastern conflicts are heavily influencing the way European governments are operating.

Irving’s nonprofit is an example of the external assistance Anderson hit on toward the end of the panel discussion.

Anderson lectures
during the panel.

He said entities outside of Europe and the Middle East need to step in to alleviate some of the pressure the European states are under as they scramble to peacefully integrate thousands of refugees into their societies.

Secretary of State John Kerry announced in September that the United States would increase its refugee quota over the next two years.

Despite emphasizing that the American government has remained relatively neutral in the migrant crisis, Anderson said Europe could learn from how America has historically integrated immigrants into its workforce.

“I think if there are lessons it’s that we should continue to keep our labor markets as open as possible,” Anderson said.  “…That’s how this country was built, and I think it can work in Europe too.”

University of Maryland journalism students use technology in and out of the classroom

Maryland senior has high hopes for highly touted Terrapins men's basketball season

Social media users post their experiences for personal satisfaction and public recognition, study says

Photo courtesy of
Steve Garfield on Flickr.

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are peppered with posts ranging from pictures of life events, such as a college graduation, to more trivial events, such as how long a friend's run was. With such a broad spectrum of posts on social media, one study found that personal satisfaction and public recognition were some of the top motives for users to share their achievements and experiences in online public spaces.

Online badge systems help social media sites better engage users, the study said.

According to the study "Tweeting Badges: User Motivations for Displaying Achievement in Publicly Networked Environments," a social media site's success relies on its level of "social engagement," which is "the extent to which users interact with one another in creating, sharing, and promoting content."

The study - which is by Dr. K. Hazel Kwon, an assistant professor in the school of social and behavioral sciences at Arizona State University, Dr. Alexander Halavais, an assistant professor of sociology at Arizona State University, and Shannon Havener, a market research consultant - analyzes how the integration of game-like qualities in a social media site encourages and motivates users to share their experiences on that platform.

A senior art history major at the University of Maryland gave her take on how social media engages users. She said people use social media to advertise themselves.

The study analyzed online badge systems - a "digital representation" of a user's achievement or experience on the site.

The researchers used Twitter as a platform to survey a sample audience of 142 participants within two days of tweeting an online badge.  The goal was to understand what motivates users to share these badges.

Graphic courtesy of Dan Russo.

The survey was limited, however, because it only took a sample of users who tweeted badges and thus are a more active online audience. A survey of 77 University of Maryland students suggests more active users represent a small portion of those on social media.

The survey asked the students how often they posted on social media in a typical week. Eight percent of students said they post on social media daily while 21 percent said they post only a few times per week. The majority of students - 61 percent - said they rarely, if ever posted on social media.

Despite the audience limitation, the study found that "self-efficacy" and "social incentives" motivated users to post the largest variety of types of badges.

Screen shot by Dan Russo.

The study defined users motivated by "self-efficacy" as those concerned with "personal identity expression, a sense of achievement, and social identity promotion."

Meanwhile, the research defined users motivated by "social incentives" as those focused on "social networking" and "building up reputation and recognition" on online public platforms.

For instance, the social media app SnapChat uses a score system to entice its users to send more photos to their friends and grow their social network.

The study found Twitter users motivated by a sense of goal achievement most often posted badges about fitness and education.

The survey in the study found that users who tweeted badges from fitness apps, such as NikeRun+ - which allows users to track their distance on runs and share it via Facebook or Twitter - did so for a sense of achievement.

Stan, a doctorate candidate for history at the University of Maryland, uses the NikeRun+ app to track the distances of his runs and disagreed with the findings.

The study also found Twitter users motivated to expand their social network or build their reputation posted badges about leisure.

The study categorized Yelp, the site where users rate businesses and can look at other participants ratings, as using leisure badges.  For example, if a Yelp user reviews a lot of gyms they receive a "Gym Junkie" badge which they then may share on social media.

University of Maryland senior physics major Andrew Stefany agreed with the study.  He said people post on social media in order to communicate with their social network.

Stefany echoed the research, which said when users share leisure badges they are trying to build their recognition on an online public platform.

Web developers can implement users' motivations in the design of sites to better engage their targeted audience.

The study suggests its findings can give web developers a better understanding of their users' motivations.  That understanding would guide their design to better engage users through gamification - the integration of game-like qualities to sites.

Robert Cobb, a software engineer at Fin Exploration Co., discussed some of the limitations of gamification and online badge systems that the study did not address.

He said while research drives the design choices the company makes, gamification and online badges are not always the most successful blueprints.

"Badges sometimes help, sometimes don't ... if [badges] come off as an irrelevant add-on, they're pretty bad," Cobb wrote in a Facebook message.

While this study has its limitations, it does still provide useful advice and data for future web developers researching how to best engage their users.

"Unless you don't plan to have users," Cobb wrote in a Facebook message, "all the work you do is centered on thinking about [users'] needs and motivations."

Journalists can learn from Facebook's design and content to better capture their mobile audience

By Dan Russo

Journalists and news organizations need to rethink how they engage their audiences with mobile content, a mobile revenue researcher said. 

Frederic Filloux of the Monday Note – a blog that discusses the latest in mobile revenue models and research – said journalists should use the technology in their phones to make their content more unique and to reach out to audiences more effectively.

In a presentation Filloux said the biggest obstacles news organizations face in generating more mobile revenue are competition with news distributors that control social traffic such as Facebook.

He added that crowd sourced news such as YouTube and Snapchat and aggregators that compile popular stories from multiple media outlets into one app are also huge competitors for news organizations.

“The dominating [players] are morphing into distributors [and] news providers themselves,” Filloux said in a recording of his presentation.  “There is a flurry of aggregators and the question is, ‘How do we respond to that?’ ”

Known for connecting users with colleagues and employers in the professional world, LinkedIn  broke into the news sector and bought the up-and-coming aggregator Pulse to gain readership.

With that addition LinkedIn Today now provides news content relating to the business sector, so users can see the top stories according to their connections and interests.

LinkedIn software engineering intern and senior computer science major at the University of Maryland Nick Aversano agreed with Filloux to an extent.  

“Yes, Facebook controls what posts [news organizations] show and don’t show,” Aversano said.  “They use algorithms to figure out what posts to show to what users.   I don’t think it hinders articles from spreading … if anything Facebook helps the viral growth of posts.”

Filloux said journalists need to keep their content unique to increase their mobile users.  In his presentation Filloux stressed making the length of content proportional to how much time the reader has to consume it, especially for audiences on the go.

Additionally he said to use videos and pictures to take advantage of increasing screen sizes.

Creating unique content is only half the battle according to the researcher.  He said to generate more revenue media outlets need to take a new approach to mobile advertisements.

He suggested using native ads, which are advertisements that look like the content produced on the page, to draw in and better engage viewers. 

“I like [native advertising] because of the experience,” Aversano said.  “Because they’re not obtrusive and they’re not in your face.  I guess you can’t have free content so it’s your best alternative.”

However, some mobile users find the native advertising on popular sites like Buzz Feed to be deceptive.

“In terms of effectiveness [native] ads are very good at least for the average person,” Charles Tam, senior economics major at the University of Maryland said.  “However I do find them quite unethical in the way that they are very misleading.”

As a former journalist Filloux sympathizes with these ethical concerns but he said newsrooms need to find a way to separate the news from ad content while still embedding advertisements in the mobile site to be aesthetically pleasing to readers.

“I’m a strong advocate of a Chinese wall between the two,” Fillox said in the recording of his presentation.  “The site would blur the line too much not doing well revenue wise.”