Reflexivity

It was a tiny pop quiz in the midst of a comprehensive examination.

During last November’s nationwide test of FEMA’s public warning system, an action research study (#DEMX) was conducted to assess the communication potential of social media. The goal was to find a way to bridge the longstanding divide between “people of the eye” who use American Sign Language and emergency responders who rely on their ears. From the Deaf point-of-view, these “hearing people” are dependent on sound.

A dedicated group of social media pioneers keeps pushing the envelope of public communication within the field of emergency management. Meanwhile, the American Deaf community remains essentially neglected despite generations of struggle and decades-old accessibility rights legislation.

in all of the years of researching and taking courses / training in crisis communications – one group has not been mentioned as much as others.  This audience group is the deaf community. ~ Karen Freberg

Tweeting against Historical Trends

One popular social media tool for emergency warnings is Twitter. It is unclear how many Deaf people know about this timely and current source of information about emergencies of all kinds. Meteorologists are using Twitter to warn populations in their local media markets about serious weather events, and some emergency responders are using Twitter as part of crisis communication and disaster response. Figures 1 &  2 show a key result from the #DEMX experiment run during the November 2011 national “Emergency Alert System” test. Overall, although information about the Twitter-based #DEMX test spread, there was very little crossover between the two groups: Deaf citizens shared information within the Deaf community, and emergency management planners and responders shared the information within their community. This leads to a conclusion regarding how hard it is to stimulate conversation between communities who have an (apparently entrenched) history of ineffective communication.

However, in the course of a short campaign, the #DEMX Tweetstream garnered 163 unique users, and the Prezi explaining the idea (in English and ASL) got 1,500 hits! The information spread, but it was decontextualized from the relationships that need to be built among First Responders and members of the signing Deaf community.

Strategy (Action Research Methodology)

Few Deaf Tweeters "cross over" to the First Responder tweetstream

An already existing Twitter community using the hashtag, #SMEM (for social media emergency management), was introduced to a new hashtag, #DEMX (for deaf emergency management of variable “x”). The #DEMX hashtag was invented for this experiment, so it had no pre-existing user base. A late-deafened blogger and tweeter, Joyce Edmiston, spearheaded spreading the #DEMX hashtag among her followers. Using a text analysis software tool, we were able to track the spread of news about this social media experiment in both communities and break down the results.

Findings: A small but dedicated leading edge

In the nine days of monitoring (from November 2-11, 2011, with the test day on November 9), the 163 users in the #DEMX tweetstream gathered 765 tweets, while the #SMEM tweetstream garnered 5,759 tweets, generated by  1,135 unique users. We were interested in the tweets that included both hashtags. Barely 1/2 of 1% of #DEMX tweets included the #SMEM hashtag; and only .01% of #SMEM tweets included the #DEMX hashtag. Research team member Joe Delfino of DiscoverText writes, “Unfortunately, the mass crossover of Tweets that we had envisioned did not occur.” By “drilling down” into the data, however, we were able to generate some findings that, combined with knowledge of the historical basis of the overall challenge, confirms hypotheses worth testing in another round of Twitter-based action research.

4:1 Ratio Hearing to Deaf

In the #DEMX tweetstream, there were 26 unique users who included the #SMEM hashtag. After eliminating tweets from members of the research team there were a total of 28 tweets from 23 unique users. Of these 23 unique users, 20 are not deaf – they are hearing people associated in one way or another with emergency management.  Only three deaf tweeters “crossed over” to the emergency management community tweetstream. Some reasons for this terribly low percentage are explored below.

In the #SMEM tweetstream, there were 17 unique users who included the #DEMX hashtag, again, after eliminating tweets by research team members,  tweets including both hashtags were sent by 13 unique users: 9 hearing and 4 deaf, repeating the pattern in which more hearing people reached out toward the Deaf community than Deaf people reached back to the “Hearing” world of emergency management.

Concerning? Yes. Disheartening? No!

Obviously these sample sizes are too small for statistical significance. However, they do suggest some generalizations that could be formulated into concrete hypotheses and studied on a more robust scale. One issue involves whether the Deaf American linguistic minority of American Deaf Culture can be convinced that the dominant culture actually cares. In promoting this action research project, I created an online presentation, Deaf Eye on Emergency!, which describes the context of the national emergency alert system test using visual imagery, written English and several videoclips of commentary using American Sign Language. The presentation garnered over 1500 views during the nine-day research window and 1,846 as of this posting. English translations of the ASL clips are available now so that non-signers can know and respond to the explanations and ideas expressed in the video clips.

Creating New Relationships

Although good efforts and success stories do circulate, there is no commonly-recognized and widely-used medium of communication (yet) that satisfactorily mediates the sight-sound perceptual distinction between “People of the Eye” and “Hearing” people.  Written English and spreading more information are perceived as “the answer.” While both of these strategies are necessary, without an interaction strategy to cultivate and redefine the inherited perception of neglect, systemic improvements in Deaf preparedness and contribution to emergency response efforts cannot occur.

An Interaction Strategy for Emergency Preparedness

Individual Deaf people often experience being told to wait while someone tries to figure out how to communicate with them, and then (usually) delivered sub-par and minimal information rather than being fully engaged as intelligent and competent human beings who can help resolve aspects of the situation, whatever it is. Historically, the legacies of discrimination and prejudice have convinced many members of Deaf culture that Hearing people really do not care about them. Serious effort needs to be strategically planned and exercised in order to overcome this unfortunate dynamic. It can be done, and if done well, crucial skills, knowledge, and benefits of resilience will flow from the Deaf community into the larger fabric of American society.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I am listening to Andrea Fella on death and impermanence.

“It’s not a depressing thing, actually.”

Most of my lessons the past year have involved living with uncertainty. How can a person root when reality requires constant adaptation?

Fella describes the lesson of physics that tells us everything is always changing, everything is made of atoms – and they aren’t even atoms – they are particles in constant flux. “It’s hard to be in touch with this kind of change,” she says. Generally, Fella continues, people tend to stay at the surface – dealing with change only when it rocks assumed solidities – the World Trade Center is attacked, earthquakes and hurricanes happen . . . however, if we notice the subtleties occurring all around us: “Things are ending all the time.”

Quoting* The 8th Duino Elegy from Rainer Maria Rilke (who inspired me, most deeply, many years ago), Fella wants to spin grief on its head:

Who formed us thus:
that always, despite
our aspirations, we wave
as though departing?
Like one lingering to look,
from a high final hill,
out over the valley he
intends to leave forever,
we spend our lives saying
goodbye.

Too often (dwelling in insecurity), my sentiment has been one of “always saying goodbye” – which is ironically so much the opposite of the attitude I prefer:  ”I don’t care if I am possible . . . We must learn to trust thin air” (Ursula LeGuin, ”Newton Did Not Sleep Here“).

One of Fella’s antidotes is to adopt the stance of Don Juan (at 18:22):

Laps are for crossing over...

… The thing to do when you’re impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you. Death is … a wise adviser that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. (You) have to ask death’s advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them.

“A Strange Consuming Happiness”

Fella says joy comes from contemplating death, from living as if each act in the world — no matter what it is — might be one’s last. This attitude increases care and ethical action. I suppose one might call it mindfulness, or perhaps grace.

Working with “Broken Bits of Information”

Broken bits of perception are “the base level of our experience,” Fella explains, describing how our mind uses vision to perceive and make sense of light. Referring to a particular experiment she adds, “if you’re moving your eyes at the right speed.” Always, then (I extrapolate), there is coordination (or lack thereof), whether it is the eye-mind or some other sensory perception with consciousness, or two people having a conversation. Coordination is the essence of communication. “When we cling to what we construct in our minds through this perceptual process,” Fella warns, “we suffer.”  Off I go again – “understanding,” “meaning,” the abstract subtle and relational ‘things’ we believe we have communicated or comprehended – these too pass into impermanence.

Farewell, 2011.

[The animal] is not exempt from an unclear
memory-which subdues us as well:
the notion that what we seek was once
closer and truer by far than now…
and infinitely tender.

No clinging to reflections in the mirror; all things change – are always, forever, changing. Fella completes her talk with a quote from “A Walk in the Woods” by Phra Khantipalo:

Everything and everybody — that includes you and me — deteriorates, ages, decays, breaks up, and passes away. And we, living in the forest of desires, are entirely composed of the impermanent. Yet our desire impels us not to see this, though impermanence stares us in the face from every single thing around. And it confronts us when we look within — mind and body, arising and passing away.

So don’t turn on the TV, go to the pictures, read a book, seize some food, or a hundred other distractions just to avoid seeing this. This is the one thing really worth seeing, for one who fully sees it in himself is Free.

______________
* Andrea Fella reads the last two stanzas of Rilke’s 8th Duino Elegy (at 13:24) from a different translation than the one I found online. The comparisons are interesting – I prefer certain phrases from each version. My curiosity about synchrony is piqued by the fact that the poem, overall, compares the animal and human gaze upon death and things (”objects”). Mei Mei remains among the living as I type, an acupuncture treatment granting yet another temporary reprieve.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Play along?

When the time comes, I will recycle Steph.
She will become a lovely basket
for African violets.
(Fall Equinox, 2010)

Background

I sucker guests who come to a Solstice or Equinox dinner into pledging to do something for climate recovery: “What I will do for the planet this season.”

Their ideas range from the mundane (and highly practical) to the outrageous (contributing to the maintenance of fellowship over time).

My pledge this year is to support the Luna Ring.

Selected Other Pledges

Here’s a sampling of what some people have pledged:

“My aim is to respect food and waste less of it in the next 3 months.” (Spring Equinox, 2010)

“I’m gonna take the bus more often and use my car only when it’s needed.” (Fall Equinox, 2010)

“This 2011AD, I will live 5 minutes from an organic market (and I think organic farm as well), and I will 1) volunteer, 2) organize to improve the recycling system in the neighborhood (the next neighborhood over is seen as a ‘problem’ area & receives less city support).” (Winter Solstice, 2010)

“Environmental goal: recycle Steph and re-create her into [deleted]’s star student. Lacking that, I will save [cat] poop and mix it up with gluten-free dough. And then give it to that star student.” (Spring Equinox, 2011)

Popularity: 2% [?]