Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 14
Posts 1 - 10

Facebook’s censorship of Aboriginal bodies raises troubling ideas of ‘decency’

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 23.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | censorship, diversity, Facebook, gender, law
Summary | Facebook does not mind showing Kim Kardashian’s cleavage, but it didn't allow images of topless Aboriginal women. Major social network platforms are led by capitalism, and although they claim they want to create global and equal platforms, not all stories are treated the same way. As a result, On Facebook, images of famous women naked are okay whereas images of other women around the world are deemed “inappropriate”.
Image Description | Photograph of four Aboriginal women
Image Tags | female(s)

Tech’s sexism doesn’t stay in Silicon Valley. It’s in the products you use.

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 8.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, diversity, gender, research/study
Summary | Slicon Valley has been entangled in scandals around sexism and racism recently. Many innovations incorporate artificial intelligence which means that the software learns from data reflecting our social reality but which are biased. This leads to issues like image recognition not recognizing black people as humans but as gorillas because the data the program learned from included predominantly white people. A similar case is a health app that tracked various physical paramenters but not the menstrual cycle thereby disregarding a large proportion of the female population.
Image Description | N/A

Emoji Feminism

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 13.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, gender
Summary | When the author of the article texted a friend to congratulate her, she wanted to include emojis in her text. She sent her friend a unicorn emoji, and then paused to wonder why she'd sent a unicorn. Where was the emoji for her friend who had just received tenure? On our keyboards, emojis portraying females are stereotypical. Where is the female professor emoji?
Image Description | N/A

Afro-Frisur einer Schülerin wird zum Politikum

(Afro hair of a student becomes a political issue)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 2.9.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | diversity, Facebook, gender, hashtags, politics, school, Twitter
Summary | A black girl at a high school in Pretoria in South Africa was chastised for wearing her hair naturally in an afro. This resulted in a lot of backlash against the school on social media under the hasthag #StopRacismAtPretoriaGirlsHigh. As many as 28'000 people signed an online petition to end racism at schools and major polititians condemned the chastising of wearing natural black hair.
Image Description | A black woman doing another black woman's hair in a salon.
Image Tags | female(s)

Emoji Gender Choices

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 24.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, gender
Summary | The Unicode Consortium wants to create more diverse female and male emojis, and has posted a call for feedback. The Unicode also welcomes new emoji proposals.
Image Description | N/A

Emojis Would Show Women Doing More Than Painting Their Nails

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 13.5.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, gender
Summary | Female emojis are princesses, brides, paint their nails, or get a haircut. Google decided to add new female emojis to represent women in professional roles (e.g. health care, factories, farms). However, more people such as Michelle Obama want to see more emojis representing girls (e.g. an emoji of a girl studying).
Image Description | N/A

Der Nächste, bitte!

(Next, please!)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 13.7.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | addiction, diversity, gender, online dating, threat
Summary | Online dating is tricky because the apprearance of an abundance of romantic prospects makes us reluctant to stick with one person. Many people get into a state of sexual restlessness that borders on sexual addiction with the help of online dating apps. Many such apps encourage casual sex which bears the risk of sex addiction. One app notorious for being mainly for casual sex is Grindr, a dating app for gay men which is designed. Women on dating apps have the problem that they are most attractive in their early 20s to men of all ages which means that they are less likely to find a partner the older they are.
Image Description | Images of men and women.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Arabische Frauen wehren sich gegen sexuelle Gewalt

(Arab women defend themselves against sexual violence)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 17.1.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | diversity, Facebook, gender, law, politics
Summary | Two women from Palestine have created a Facebook group called "Tuskuteesh" ("break the silence") where they want to give Arab women a space to tell their storiess of sexual violence. Much sexual violence goes unpunished in the Arab world because the perpetrators are often family members.
Image Description | Image of the Tuskuteesh Facebook logo and the cover of a book written by one of the group creators.
Image Tags | female(s)

Brauchen wir ein Emoji mit nicht-binärer Geschlechtsidentität?

(Do we need an emoji with a non-binary gender identity?)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 14.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, gender, research/study
Summary | A new package of emojis will be released soon. One of them represents a person who is neither entirely male nor female, i.e. of non-binary gender identity. It is questionable whether it is worthwhile to represent such a small minority, seeing that there is no redhead emoji either because only 2% of the global population are redheads. A linguist of the research project "What's Up, Germany?" however argues that having a gender inclusive emoji is sending a powerful sign and can affect society via language in the long-term.
Image Description | A Getty image of a woman vomiting a rainbow, a tweet about the gender inclusive emoji, and a few GIFs of celebrities.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), gifs, male(s)

Maschinen sind nicht die besseren Menschen

(Machines are the better people)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 14.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, diversity, gender, translation
Summary | One could think that artificial intelligence robots are not racist or sexist but because they learn from information circulating on the internet, they are subject to the biases as most poeple. This is why a beauty contest judged by an AI robot favored white people as more beautiful. Online job listings can also be biased based on gender so that women will not see higher-paying job listings or gender inclusive language gets lost in translation.
Image Description | N/A

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