2013-06-20T07:48:05-04:00 Helen Crane http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=helen-crane Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Helen Crane Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1401124 2012-04-04T19:00:00-04:00 2012-06-04T05:12:02-04:00

Helen Crane http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-crane/ Girls Around Me becomes the natural extension of the ladies' night. By allowing users to view the number of girls who have checked in at locations within a certain radius, along with the social networking profiles of those girls, it becomes a manifestation of society's age-old dictum which states that 'having fun' must involve being surrounded at all times by attractive members of the opposite sex. I don't think I need to point out that, generally speaking, this is disproportionately true where the male of the species is concerned.

The front page of the app's website reads: "In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control! Reveal the hottest nightspots, who's in them, and how to reach them...", and this suggests that it is designed for use in the already-dangerous ground of a city or town's night-time venues. The knee-jerk reaction for many will be one of blind outrage against social networking, not to mention that an app like this combined with copious amounts of alcohol is a recipe for absolute disaster. But are we, like the proverbial bad workman, blaming the tools rather than the people who use them?

In my experience, the bar or nightclub acts as a carnivalesque realm where the rules of engagement, as it were, undergo a significant shift. It is as if, simply by entering the doors of a late-night establishment, a young woman signs away her rights to privacy, to freedom from harrassment; broadly, she forfeits her right to simply exist without fear of being hassled by men. It is rare to be approached on the street in broad daylight (although believe me when I say it does happen), but as soon the sun goes down, it seems that some men undego a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation; behaviour that would have been unthinkable a few hours earlier becomes a perfectly acceptbale mode of conduct.

Now, I don't want to sound like Samantha Brick; I am by no means irresistible to the opposite sex. This is a common problem; it is not just the girls who are the most beautiful, who dress to kill, or who court male attention who have this problem. And even those girls don't deserve to be hassled without their consent. One of the problems with Girls Around Me is that it doesn't discriminate - any girl who is unfortunate enough to be unaware of the importance of privacy settings could find herself and her personal information exposed to anyone within walking distance.

This is the crucial difference between Girls Around Me and the gay/bisexual (and predominantly male) equivalent, Grindr. Grindr works on an opt-in basis, where users must sign up and create a profile specifically for use on that site, allowing them to choose exactly what information they display. Of course people can lie, and this is a danger which Grindr users must take into account, but crucially, the men who use this app know that they are being watched. Girls Around Me seems to have no other function than to indulge some men's apparent desire to spy on women. I have no problem with consenting adults courting casual sex, but the focus in this case really must be on the word consenting.

For many people, male and female, engaging in some no-strings fun is an important part of a night out, and as long as everything is consensual they shouldn't be denied that right. But the fact that such personal information is displayed is what puts women at risk. This is something which, without modern technology, would be impossible, but I still don't think that social networking is entirely to blame. Sadly, women have always been subject to stalking and other forms of calculated harrassment from men.

It isn't really the technology that is at fault, though; it is the people that use it. This product would not have been launched if there wasn't a market for it; a group of men who see it as acceptable to go to a bar based purely on its quotient of eligible, attractive women. I would hope that a man who would never have stalked or deliberately hunted down a woman based purely on looks and second-hand information would suddenly decide to do so because his phone can download a function which allows this. I do have slightly more faith in men than that, and I hope I'm not proved wrong.

What's sad is that I'm fairly certain that, if there was a case where a woman had been stalked, harrassed or, in a worst-case scenario, attacked by someone using the app, she would be criticised for having an attractive Facebook profile picture, or for setting her relationship status to single, or for writing a status which revealed that she was drunk or otherwise out for a good time. As in cases of sexual harrassment, it is she who would take the blame for alledgedly 'enticing' men to single her out amongst a room full of potential victims.

I hope I'm not being too hard on men here; of course not every man who downloads this app is a monster. And in certain circumstances I can see the value of knowing before you pay your entry fee for a club that you aren't walking into an (apologies in advance) sausage-fest, although admittedly knowing the name and measurements of every female in the building is a Godzilla-sized step too far. Perhaps some download it out of curiosity, and I'm sure most would never dream of using the app as an aid for stalking or intimidation. But I really can't imagine how a man would justify the use of this tool as a legitimate and above-board way of meeting women. Can men no longer approach a lovely-looking member of the opposite sex in a bar and find out about them the normal way?

As blogger John Brownlee wrote, if anything good comes out of this it is that people have yet another reason to start caring about what they do and do not decide to share on social networking sites. Personally, I'm just glad the app was removed from sale before we got to see what the worst that could come out of it might have been.
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Helen Crane http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-crane/
I, for one, am going to miss it. Having been a belaguered BlackBerry user for over two years, I have grown to love the device and its little idiosyncracies. And yes, included in those idiosyncracies are the times when it just plain didn't work. But those ugly little rectangles, with their mass of impractially tiny keys and determination not to be touch screen when all others around them were being groped left, right and centre by greasy digits, have captured my heart. Say what you like about BlackBerrys, but you'll never hear someone whining about their cracked screen (a common cry of the common or garden variety iPhone user.)

I think it was the sheer practicality of the device that first attracted me to it. BlackBerrys are overtly unsexy, the antidote to the glossy functionality of the iPhone and just about every other smartphone that copied it. It calls, it texts, it sends emails. Devastatingly, it doesn't let you play Angry Birds.

With a BlackBerry there's no time-wasting (or, come to think of it, money wasting) with apps. I have two. The first is the inherently practical Tubemap, a handheld version of the London underground map which performs the vital function of making me look like a seasoned Londoner when really I have only lived here for six months. Never will I be the subject of pitying glances as I struggle to comprehend the various branches of the Northern line on a paper map; a subtle glance at my BlackBerry will sort me right out. The second is a cornea-searing flashlight, which I only downloaded when BlackBerry decided to give all of its users a selection of apps for free after a period of extended BlackBerry Messenger downtime in October 2011.

BBM has long been saving BlackBerry's bacon. For a period this free instant messaging service functioned as the MSN messenger of the teenie generation. It even had 'PING' as an updated version of the incessantly irritating 'nudge'. Such . For me, it was a way to engage in a constant stream of private gossip alongside my daily activities through a message thread with my two sole friends who were also proud Blackberry owners.

So here's to a beautiful and flawed piece of technology, and here's hoping I can get a graduate job with a company that will supply me with a BlackBerry. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1327084 2012-03-07T13:27:41-05:00 2012-05-07T05:12:02-04:00

Helen Crane http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-crane/
Assuming that you possess a social media account of some kind, I probably don't need to explain this to you. But in case you've given up facebook for lent, 'Kony 2012' is a viral Youtube video created by charity Invisible Children, which documents the atrocities committed by Ugandan militia group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), headed up by Joseph Kony.

It focuses particularly on the use of kidnapped children as soldiers and sex slaves, employing the Western filmmaker's young son as a contrast. It also encourages people to take part in a poster campaign across New York, with the aim of 'stopping' Joseph Kony.

It seems that social networking has encouraged a kind of armchair activism: people post links to this kind of material, often accompanied by statements of outrage and demands that their friends join them in said outrage. But the indignation stops there.

It cannot be denied that social media is fantastic for creating awareness of causes such as this. Every few weeks a new chain of links to viral videos and campaigning profile pictures comes along. In January it was SOPA and PIPA, and before that it was tuning your Twitter profile green in protest at the 2009 election in Iran. See also the campaign asking people to change their facebook profile picture to their favourite childhood cartoon character in support of the NSPCC, which turned out not to have anything to do with the NSPCC at all. Given, Kony and the LRA atrocities in Uganda are a more serious, humanitarian issue, but the point is the same - the value of a mass of mildly annoyed middle-class people on facebook to any cause is limited.

It seems that, for my generation at least, the approval of our peers on the internet is what it takes for a cause to get noticed. But far from unleashing the political activist within us all, campaigns like this are creating an aimless social media soup of directionless liberal indignation.

The video claims that the plight of these Ugandan children has been ignored due to a lack of mainstream media coverage, but outlets as mainstream as the BBC have been publishing on the subject since at least 2005, and humanitarian organisations such as Enough have also been raising awareness of the issue. [http://www.enoughproject.org/LRA].

The social media campaign has increased the amount of people who know about Kony, but the chances are the people who either have the power or who care enough to try and do something about it already knew. And what can be done? The Justice in Conflict blog points out that the 'Kony 2012' video is vague about how they propose Kony should be 'stopped'. By polarising Joseph Kony as the sole face of the LRA, it also ignores the fact that the organisation could well continue if he was captured or even killed.

'Kony 2012' aims to make the LRA leader famous, in order to "raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice." Whilst an increased awareness of the Ugandan situation is good, it seems to me that if you explained the situation to any right-thinking Westerner they would support his arrest. Problem is, that doesn't get us any closer to the arrest actually happening.

I don't think I'm being cynical when I say that grassroots activism will not be able to succeed where even the US government has failed. The problems documented in the video are complex and multi-dimensional, and public support, however widespread, is not the way to solve them.

If the last few years have proved anything, it is that when it comes to activism, strength is rarely in numbers. Take for example the protests in London over cuts to public funding: attended by thousands, they caused a considerable media stir and succeeded in bringing the city to a halt. And yet tuition fees were still raised, Education Maintenance allowance was still scrapped and benefits were still slashed.

There is something to be said for raising the profile of the atrocities in Uganda amongst the public; people should have an awareness of the world outside of their own experience, and things like this should not go unreported. But there are terrible things going on all over the world, and selecting your level of indignation based on how prominently they feature on your facebook timeline is not particularly helpful to any cause.

So by all means re-post the Kony video, tell all your friends and tweet it to your heart's content. Just don't expect it to do anything.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1227498 2012-01-26T19:00:00-05:00 2012-03-27T05:12:01-04:00

Helen Crane http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-crane/ increasing numbers of students are lodging official complaints to the universities watchdog over teaching quality after failing to get the degree class they expected.

Of course, some will argue that the students who have complained simply should have been working harder. The all-partying, no-studying undergraduate is a stereotype often utilised in debates about standards within higher education.

But would these students really have taken their complaints all the way to the top if deep down they knew that too many late nights and days wiled away in front of trash TV were to blame? The process requires the student to exhaust all internal appeal at their institution before an official investigation can be launched by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator.

This demand for quality signals the dawn of a new breed of student: the consumer. And it is no surprise that behaviour like this is rising in correlation with the fee increase. Higher education is becoming a numbers game, with students understandably determined to get the most they possibly can for their money.

In theory the percentage of students achieving each degree class should remain constant, but it will be interesting to see whether the price hike acts as an incentive for students to push harder for a first or a 2:1 in order to ensure that the debt they are undertaking is worth it.

This would increase pressure on academics to deliver; but the problem comes with the fact that the actual cost of delivering a degree is not increasing - merely the proportion of that cost which must be paid by the student. With no increase in their pay packet there will be little incentive for many lecturers to put in the extra hours. This could lead to a worrying situation where students are quite rightly demanding the highest quality of education for their substantial expenditure, but with no funding to meet these increased demands.

The problems within the higher education system are multiple, and these need to be considered if we are to expect students to willingly put themselves in three times more debt. The pool of 18-year-old with the financial support to go to university on a whim without a concern for its relative value will be vastly reduced.

Particularly in arts subjects, standards do seem to vary widely between different courses and institutions. Perhaps it is time that a system of UK-wide regulation on marking was introduced. The sharp divide in worth between the 2:1 and 2:2 degree classes is also one that needs to be addressed. And then there is the issue of contact hours.

I, along with many of my colleagues, was extremely frustrated with the four hours of contact time with tutors that I received in the final year of my English literature degree at a Redbrick institution. Obviously teaching quantity does not necessarily equate with quality, but it is highly unlikely that more teaching time would lower student satisfaction. One of the incentives for me to study on the MA course in journalism that I am currently enrolled on was value for money, with four full days of teaching a week as opposed to four hours. A theory-based arts postgraduate course, to me, was simply a waste of money in light of the amount of teaching I would recieve.

The universities that will survive the fee increase are the ones that can convince the new, pennywise student that they are committed to not only maintaining but improving their education, and find creative ways of offering an enhanced experience - or at least one which engages with the students needs - on the same limited budget. ]]>