Influence and Culture in Virtual Spaces: Population health campaigns and the role of social media on beliefs, bias and stigma during the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Montgomery, Lawrence
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Montgomery, Lawrence. 2023. Influence and Culture in Virtual Spaces: Population health campaigns and the role of social media on beliefs, bias and stigma during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Master's thesis, Harvard University Division of Continuing Education.Abstract
The “digital revolution” is both an overused term and at the same time perhaps the only way to approach a description of the times we find ourselves in. Instances of digital human interaction, interface, and use of computers to communicate with each other have exponentially accelerated since the advent of the smartphone. In 2020, we found ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic and not able to communicate face-to-face for fear of spreading communicable disease. Our use of digital accelerated to what was once unimaginable levels. We currently have whole generations of kids that are likely more comfortable speaking through a device than they are when standing in front of someone.We accelerated into this digitally dominated communication era with little fore thought or research on the potential impacts it will have on culture and on human experience. Social interaction via digital communication changes so much about how we live our lives and yet we haven’t even begun to really understand it. This research aims to delve deeply into pandemic communications and understand how our culture is evolving around it.
Culture was once shared with the people in our most immediate circles–now it can be live streamed on TikTok. For population health professionals who wish to influence human behavior to save lives, what do we think we know and how is that changing? This work aims to answer this question as it takes a snapshot of COVID-era digital communications and culture. The document is also an archive to the moment in time that was a global pandemic.
When at all possible, I chose to record the social media posts along with its associated comments and responses as they were at the moment of viewing. I chose this partly for historical purposes so that decades or centuries from now, anthropologists and others could view the burgeoning social media phenomena and related cultural cues as close to their original posting format as possible. It made for a painstaking process in the short term but hopefully it will be appreciated more, the further we get away from the original posting dates and long after the related links no longer function. I observed them and shared them as I found them.
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