Digital Design

Think Piece

Exploring Artificial Intelligence and Queer Narratives: A Digital Zine

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This project will examine emerging artificial intelligence technologies and how they use queer narratives to raise questions about the nature of identity and personhood itself. We plan to tackle this question through the lense of a digital influencer and self-identifying queer robot called Lil Miquela, who emerged as a digital presence in 2016 and whose narrative is controlled by a California startup. It’s important that we approach our research of this topic from two angles: the journalistic think-pieces that provide context and commentary surrounding Lil Miquela, and academic sources such as the cyborg manifesto, which provide a larger history and context to the study of artificial personhood. 

We want to present our conclusions about artificial personhood and queerness in a zine format. Zines are already associated with queer media, and digitalizing this format aligns with our project’s theme of digitalizing queerness itself. We want to present scholarly information such as Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto in an interactive and accessible way. Scholarly sources should be in direct, side-by-side conversation with journalistic sources on Lil Miquela and AI startups using queer narratives. By using a zine format, we also hope to open this discussion to people outside of the world of GSS and academia.

In order to convey our message, we could include: 

  • Examples of Lil Miquela’s tweets, vlog entries, and Instagram posts that demonstrate her borrowing of queer narratives.
  • A place for viewers to enter the discussion via live chat, where they can comment on our input as well as the sources. 
  • Artistic breakdown of background information from both journalistic and scholarly sources, animation of key quotes to introduce the viewer to the world of queer AI. 

We are researching the implications of artificial personhood on queer identities because we want to know what the future of this technology means for LGBTQ+ people. We want our audience to question the ways in which companies use queer stories and bodies for profit, how an artificial identity is created through coding and storytelling, and how these ideas could evolve in the future. 

Some questions we plan to explore are: 

  • How does artificial intelligence challenge our assumptions about identity and personhood? 
  • Why does someone like Lil Miquela, who claims multiple marginalized identities despite being a robot, attract profit for ad companies? 
  • How do robots and artificial beings bring out a fear of the “other” in society and how might this be compared to fear of actual queer people? 
  • What does it mean that Lil Miquela’s content is written by a team of creators rather than by coding? How does this make her different than a fictional character?

Project Think Piece

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For our project, Nicolette, Chloe and I are researching intergenerational relationships because we want to learn more about their impact on mental health so that our readers and users of our project will have an opportunity to form these relationships and improve their mental health. This project evolving into something that will include scholarly work as well as an interactive community activity, likely a one-time event but with published guidelines for how to structure it so that it has the potential to reoccur. We are looking at the effects on mental health in intergenerational structures, and how we can synthesize the positive effects that we find into our project. This will likely be in the form of a scholarly essay, but I also would like it to manifest in more interactive aspects on our sight, like personal narratives, a photo gallery, and an interactive map of the different communities in Davidson based on age, if that’s possible (i.e. different schools, The Pines…) as well as mapping out certain areas in the Davidson community that lend themselves to interactive meeting spaces, like the public library, Davidson’s cross country trails, the Town of Davidson Greenway, and Summit Coffee.  I’d like to make this project as narrative-based as possible while still including and integrating scholarly work. I think that it will be interesting to have those both on one platform. Some questions that I have for this project that will potentially help us move forward are: will we be involving specifically the Davidson College community and The Pines community or will we try to broaden our reach and age range? What will our scholarly research include? How will we include people in the Davidson College community and beyond in our project? Will we be able to partner with businesses in town, like Summit Coffee and Main Street Books, for events? It would be nice to use the Summit Coffee space for an event where possibly people from The Pines and people in the Davidson community to meet and form relationships.

Queer Coding: thoughts on Lil Miquela

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Caroline and I were both interested in exploring “Queer TV” further after last semester’s seminar with Dr. Fackler. “Queer media” is far more complex than simple representations of queer characters and Caroline and I, originally, were interested in focusing our project on reception of shows by queer audiences. When first brainstorming, Caroline and I were specifically interested in looking at the show Euphoria on HBO. However, I recently came across the phenomenon of Lil Miquela- a queer, popstar robot, and Caroline and I might be interested in changing our project to look at this complex figure. 

Ultimately, I am interested in looking at Lil Miquela because I want to research how she is being coded to be “queer” and how audiences are reacting to “queer AI.” The research of our project would be heavily grounded in queer and feminist theory, specifically Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto and related texts. To this end, I really love the idea of an online zine like the “Thresholds” project. I think this would be a perfect form to make dense theory more accessible and I love the idea of a zine as not a particularly high tech (or even online) format to interrogate the height of tech right now- artificial intelligence and robots. In terms of tools, I think a community discussion board, or a robust commenting system, would be a given as we are so interested in audience reception. I would also love to learn how to use a text analysis tool for Lil Miquela’s instagram posts to see if there are any significant patterns in how she is performing queerness.

Questions: 

  • How to “make an argument” within a website? Or is that as important? I understand anything is going to be slanted but how do we move away from just a compilation of research  
  • I am SUPER interested in doing a large analysis of her posting and seeing if we can glean anything of significance from that but not sure how to do that with individual posts 
  • There is a lot of theory I would at least like to look over before going ahead and not sure how to do that with our class? Definitely feeling a little uncomforted because I am so used to be able to do my research and then decide the organization of my paper and it feels a lot different having to think of the design and such at this stage

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

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For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

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For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

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For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

Refugee Storytelling Think Piece

·

For our project, we are researching refugee lives somewhat after they have fled their homes because we want to learn about their victories and struggles in what has hopefully become their new home so our refugee readers will know that there are others with similar stories who understand their struggles and can potentially network with them. To accomplish our goals, we will create a website as our storytelling platform. One idea which I think is particularly interesting is the incorporation of an interactive map with hotspots into our website, and each hotspot is clickable, prompting a zoom effect and allowing the reader to hear refugee stories from that specific region. Once the zoom is complete, we could potentially have a panel of photos of each person with their first name centered on their photo that link to individual stories; however, the issue of ethical information sharing and anonymity is very important to us, and we want to do everything in our power to ensure that the storytellers are comfortable with the project, so the amount of detail they reveal will obviously be entirely up to them. If they are uncomfortable with the use of their names and faces, we can make a panel of impactful quotes from each story that open a single full story when clicked. From there, I think it would be interesting to have the audio from each interview along with a transcription of the interview to add to the impact of the stories and communicate the emotion each storyteller feels, as well as humanize the stories further by connecting them with a voice.

I have many questions about our project. For example, how wide will the scope of our project be? Will we solely attempt to contact refugees in and around the Charlotte area? Or will we expand our search for stories across the US—or even farther—through technology? How will we balance providing impactful details and clearly connecting a human to each story with ethically sharing information and potentially maintaining anonymity? How will we realize our ideal website? Will we need to review or learn tools like HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap? Or will the relatively simple, broad WordPress editing suffice? How will we attract readers to our project? And once we have readers, how can we help refugees network with other refugees while still maintaining ethical levels of anonymity? At the moment, many of these questions feel overwhelming; however, I think discussing them with my group, as well as simply beginning to work on the project, will help me answer some of them and give me a strong start towards answering the others.

Pledged: SJB

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