Hacktivism Intent-LucasA
Problem: Lack of Interest/Involvement of Youth in Social/Political Issues
My project concept involves implementing Kiosks in high density areas of Universities that display current issues and events to spark interest in a passerby. In the most recent election ~130 million people voted. Approximately ~24 million voters were millennials (ages 18-29) and for reference in 2014 postsecondary education enrollment was ~20 million (15% of the most recent election). This is a huge percentage, certainly enough to sway opinions or current events of major sources.
These Kiosks don’t display entire articles but more just headlines, or basic information about large scale events to try and spark the interest of students and encourage them to further pursue or take actions on them. There is no such thing as “un-biased” news, these Kiosks would use some implementation to find political/social norms for various departed locations to be more interesting to the majority population of a location.
My biggest issue with being involved with current events is awareness, it isn’t simple to find the information and even harder to pursue it with everything happening in day to day student life. Hopefully through this implementation the news is further delivered directly to the user possibly through (in the universities case) a university ID.
These kiosks are just random from a search for “kiosks” but it solidifies the imagery I have for the concept with multiple variations and different features for variable usage.
5 thoughts on “Hacktivism Intent-LucasA”
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The platform is good, it creates an easy way for people to access information without going too far out of their way. I also like that it is accessible to everyone, even if they don’t have a smartphone. I agree that it is important to get information about politics to millennials, and these kiosks can do that to an extent. In the end though, this information is a one to many strategy. I would like to see a many to many strategy implemented into this. Maybe this technology can be a platform for students to post and their opinions on certain topics.
This is an idea I would love to see actually happen. Personally I know very little about politics, but I know it’s very important to keep up with since it effects me. This is an issue with many other people and I agree that having easier accessible information could be a very good first step.
I really like the concept. This is a great way for people to become more informed on issues that are happening in the world. A question that I had would be where is this information coming from? and can different sources place different information at different kiosks? A good idea might be to base the information presented on the location of that specific kiosk. Would these kiosks be able to broadcast certain important events or breaking news that might be going on at that very moment? Also how are these kiosks being made and how much does it cost to make them? All in all this is very creative and something I would like to see at the university.
I guess one thing that i am concerned with with this intent is that kiosks are an outdated technology. Cellphones are in nearly every single persons hands today, especially in the younger teens. The information is there the problem is that its clouded by lots of negative fake information, which makes it harder and harder each day to get the right information. Therefore I think that while the idea is good, there needs to be something that would actually be used on a day-to-day basis, as this is how often politics change, even minute by minute, and I think that is what most social networks are for. One that I use day to day for political posts is twitter, something you have have instantly update and also something that removes the barrier that is between the viewer and the subject as many politicians use it to tweet personally.
I think something you would be interested in is similar to Ethan’s post, Overall I think you have the right intentions I just believe that you should think about the technologies that we have today and how they are used.
I really enjoyed your project in making a way for people to look at the headlines for that current day to see what is going on with the news and making them more engaged. I thought in your project it was clear what you wanted to do and how you were doing to go about doing this. One thing I had trouble with understanding is how you going to get people from just being interested in the news to actually getting out and voting. I think its good to get people engaged with current events. I could also see people using this Kiosks to get current day news. I also like the university ID card idea where you can get that article sent to you. This would be a great 1-many option for people getting more involved. I think this would get us engaged and solve part of the problem but to get people in the polls would take something more I feel.