Author: aallen9

The final debate of this presidential election cycle did not disappoint. Both major party candidates performed as expected: Sec. Clinton was composed and coherent while Mr. Trump was “entertaining,” to say the least. Known for his one-liners, the Donald added to his already extensive repertoire of quotable quips.

Immigration is one of the hottest button issues in this election. Donald Trump has famously proposed a wall and mass deportation and in Wednesday’s debate, that vigor has been reinforced.

During his speech on immigration, he stated the wall at the Mexican border will be built, drug lords will be removed, and free neckties for all land owning white males. The last goal is a joke with probably more likelihood of happening than the actual points made during the debate. However, Mr. Trump’s attempt at Spanish was laughable at best. “Bad hombres” spread like wildfire.

Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and mainstream news lit up with posts; 215,810 to be exact. Reactions to the moment ranged from confused to amused and everything in between. Even Weird Al Yankovik, iconic parody songwriter,  got in on the bad hombre madness.

The joke didn’t stop there. Users began to compare the gaff in pronunciation to the color effect and dying (pun unintended) hair trend, ombre.

The overwhelming majority of the sentiment around this topic is negative. A whopping 97% of posts about the matter are negative. Even the nearly 3% coded as positive are merely an example of misunderstood sarcasm.

Despite the inherently funny nature of the issue and nearly irresistible humor opportunities, some users took “Bad Hombres” and Nasty Women as a chance to encourage one another and get out the vote. I guess not all the hombres out there aren’t so bad after all.

Nasty Women were also a hot button take away from Wednesday’s debate. Read more about it here.

#RepealThe19th : The Latest Groan-Inducing Development of Election 2016

In case you don’t know, its an election year. The nation is coming together behind the candidate they feel is best fit for the commander-in-chief position. Overall it seems like a pretty good system: you register to vote, you support a candidate, you vote, someone wins. What happens when the only thing between your candidate and the Oval Office is something pesky like women’s suffrage?

The past few weeks have been wrought with conjecture and polls about who is well on their way in the race for 270. One in particular stood out from the rest. FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s political opinion and polls blog, posted an article about how the vote would be very different if only women voted and if only men voted in November’s presidential election. It is an interesting concept that went very wrong.

These two maps tweeted by Silver show Hillary Clinton winning in a monumental landslide if only women voted and Donald Trump overcoming the current odds against him if only men voted.

Enterprising and devoted Trump supporters came up with the perfect solution: #RepealThe19th. “The 19th” refers to the 19th amendment of the United States Constitution granting suffrage to white women. It was ratified in August 1920 but its run its course, according to a small segment of the internet. Bustle, NY Daily News, Buzzfeed, MSNBC, Chicago Tribune, and many others had a field day analyzing if this was only a joke or something more serious. They decided its a little bit of both.

Over 167,000 posts were shared on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and mainstream news outlets about #RepealThe19th. Seventy-one percent of the sentiment around this troll-like hashtag is negative. Users cite the incident as the most recent display of societal misogyny.

The 28% of postings coded as positive around this hashtag are wrought with sarcasm.

#RepealThe19th is the latest gender-related scandal facing Mr. Trump in the past week. The Trump Tapes were released with damning recording of the presidential candidate speaking about women in very crass and shockingly inappropriate terms. Shortly after women competing in Trump-sponsored pageants have also come forward about his brutish behavior. Will he ever catch a break? Maybe once women’s voting rights are cast over that wall along with immigrants and hot mics.

The Clinton Debate: Some Issues

On September 29th, roughly 80 million people “watched” the first presidential debate. By “watched,” we mean they tweeted, blogged, posted, and all other forms of technology-mediated communication (probably no telegraphs or actual phone calls though) about the first debate.

We here at the News in New Media center have been closely following this election. We have conducted research on select issue areas for each candidate. An analysis of conversation about Donald Trump’s Monday night performance can be found here.

Nearly 380,000 posts were made last week about Secretary Hillary Clinton. We identified five of the foremost public discourse topics surrounding this year’s election. Defense, economy, immigration, social issues, and health care are among both what voters care about and the most pressing issues America is facing.

The data show defense was the number one concern area for the viewing and soon-to-be voting public. Issue topics such as military spending, Syria, and ISIS are included in this category. Over 160,000 of Sec. Clinton’s media hits are from this one subject area.

Let’s take a look at a deep dive analysis of the sentiment of the 8,235 posts in the defense discussion.

The light green area shows that most of the conversation was overwhelmingly negative; over 75% negative compared to the 20% of positive sentiment. Social media users expressed deep concern and outrage about the U.S. lifting U.N. sanctions against Iranian Banks.

Other negative posts cite what they deem to be other general misconduct and corruption during Sec. Clinton’s career. Many posts also express disdain for the handling of Syria issues.

There are clearly some very strong opinions about Sec. Clinton in the area of defense. Even posts coded positively are examples of sarcasm.

Economy, the topic area with the highest hits for Donald Trump, is a close second to defense in Hillary Clinton’s analysis. Similarly to defense, a vast majority of the media hits are negative; they account for 77% of the 7,570 posts over the past week.

The posts range in subject matter from Hillary Clinton wanting to export jobs to Asia, proposals to raise taxes, and to suspicions of controversy around the Clinton Foundation.

Though most of the social media chatter about this election is negative, it shows that there is at least a rich dialogue about the political climate of this country. America may be hate-watching and only one short month from hate-voting, but they are loving their right to exercise their constitutional freedom of speech.

Atlanta Public Schools 4th grade paraprofessional Patrice Brown has been the topic of much discussion for her work outfits. Brown, an Alabama State University graduate, has been given the title “#TeacherBae” because of her curvaceous figure and what some consider “too revealing” outfits.

In now deleted Instagram posts, Brown showed off some of her work week #OOTD. The internet responded with its usual polarized fervor. Over 19,000 posts have been shared about the topic. The central question is whether or not she dresses too provocatively for the classroom. The three images circulating the internet show her in outfits that had social media users in a tizzy.

There has been much and rather divided discourse on Brown’s fashion. Commenters are either criticizing her choices or defending her right to wear what she wants to work.

Critics of #TeacherBae feel her choices are better fit for brunch with friends or after-five outings, not multiplication tables and recess. They feel she is more of a distraction than resource for students in her form fitting clothing.

In response to the outrage over her fashion choices, counter-critics feel Brown is the internet’s latest target of misogyny-noir, sexism targeted specifically at Black women.

These social media users cited historical and current examples of African American women’s over-sexualization and subsequent indictments of their characters because of shapely bodies. One user even shared a photo of a dress that is allegedly the same as Brown’s in one of the now viral photos suggesting a White woman would not be under the same media fire for the same dress. Posts in support of Brown seem to outnumber the negative ones considerably.

Atlanta Public Schools has issued a statement about Ms. Brown’s wardrobe and her professional standing in the school. So far it seems they have reprimanded her for her social media presence rather than her clothing choices.

Overall users have been supportive of Patrice Brown. Some have even gone so far as to create a Twitter account dedicated to positive messages about her work and sense of style.

Also in true internet fashion, the whole uproar has been turned into a meme referencing popular culture.

At any rate, the blogosphere was a-twitter because of the curvy teacher. This past week of repost/sharing frenzy has made another entry in the novel of women, work, and the internet.