My COVID-19 Move Journal #2: How Hotels are Handling the Pandemic

Wonder what it’s like to stay at a hotel during the COVID-19 pandemic? Well, my partner (now fiancée) and I have had to stay at a few during our move from Wisconsin to Texas. Over the past few days, we’ve stayed at several Hilton chains (mainly Home2 Suites and Tru by Hilton). Responses to COVID-19 has varied by hotel, although there are some norms that have become consistent. The most obvious is the mask requirement: all guests (and employees) must wear masks in public spaces, such as lobbies and hallways.

All the lobbies we visited now had a glass or plastic pane separating the front desk from the customers. However, we didn’t interact with the front desk that much—instead, I checked in using the Hilton Honors app to use the digital key. In most hotels, this was a fairly easy process. However, we stayed at a hotel in St. Louis where we had to use the digital key to get into the hotel and to use the elevator, and these systems occasionally (read: often) did not properly read the digital key.

Only one digital key was available per room. If you are in a room with more than one person, each who wanted their own key, you would need to get a physical key (this was not a particular problem for me and my fiancée, though he occasionally had to take my phone to get something out of the car).

Like many other public locations, social distancing stickers dotted the floors of the lobbies. We also noticed employees cleaning the public areas more frequently than normal, particularly elevator areas and chairs.

Though not everyone adhered to the mask policy in hallways, folks appeared to adhere in lobbies. There were a handful of people who did not wear masks or who expressed extreme displeasure at the limited services (especially as related to breakfast or happy hour-type events), but this was not the norm.

Most hotels had a sign by the lobby elevator encouraging no more than two people into each elevator. We were in a few elevators with three or four people, but people also waited to take another elevator if there was more than two couples in the elevator already. Anecdotally, we found that most people did not wear face masks in the elevator. In one instance, a similar notice was placed in the elevator itself.

Noticeable Room Changes

One change that Hilton announced in April was the use of stickers to indicate when a room had been cleaned. Here is the example provided by Hilton (as seen in this Business Insider article):

Alt-Text: A hand is holding a smartphone up to an electronic lock on a door. On the phone’s screen is a green display of a digital key, marked “unlocked.” Above the key is a sticker on the door and doorway that says “Hilton Clean Stay” on the left and “Cleaned and sealed for your protection” on the right. When the door opens, the sticker-seal would break in half.
Source: Hilton, in Business Insider Article

The stickers are not always placed firmly on the door, and I was able to peel off the sticker from the door of one of my hotels (the other side of the sticker was not stuck to the doorway). Not all hotels used these stickers (including the one we are staying in now). Here’s what the sticker looked like:

Alt-Text: A blue door sticker from a Hilton hotel. Each side says “Hilton CleanStay with Lysol protection” and includes a QR code, followed by the text “Scan here to learn more about how your room is cleaned or visit hilton.com/cleanstay). The dotted line in between is a perforation that should break when you enter the door.

The hotels that did use this sticker also had a sticker around remote controls to indicate that it had been cleaned prior to our arrival. In general, I don’t know if these stickers made me feel any more secure—I would expect my room to be thoroughly cleaned prior to my arrival.

For hotels that typically provide complimentary breakfast, a to-go breakfast was made available. At the Home2 Suite hotels, this was typically a muffin, granola or Nutri-Grain bar, and a bottle of water. At the Tru by Hilton hotel, we request our breakfast by checking off a menu.

All the hotels we stayed at were quick to inform us that they were no longer providing daily cleaning or stayover services (several had “light cleaning” services, and all will provide housekeeping services upon request, like providing fresh hotels or changing the garbage can).

In general, I felt pretty safe staying at the hotels. The staff, from front desk to housekeeping, was gracious under these stressful considerations—and especially given that some guests appeared to overtly scoff at the mask rule.

Is there anything I would have liked to have seen?

There are some things that would have made me feel safer at the hotels, though I suppose these are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things:

1. Assurance that the phone is being thoroughly cleaned. Compared to pre-COVID-19 travel, I found myself using the phone a lot more to call the front desk and confirm details about breakfast and cleaning services. Learning to use a hotel phone is (in my opinion) important for any traveler, but it appears to be an especially useful skillset while traveling during the pandemic.

2. Reminders about the mask policy on all floors. The place where I saw the most maskless people was while waiting for the elevator. As most floors have a foyer table of some sort by the elevator, it seems like it would be pretty easy to add a mask reminder so that people would remember to put it on before getting into an elevator.

3. A designated place for delivery. One hotel we stayed at had a designated place for socially distanced delivery in the lobby. In these spaces, food deliverers were able to set food down (and pick up money, if necessary). We found that we felt more secure picking up food in these spaces, rather than having to walk outside (where maskless folks were often loitering) or wandering around the lobby in search of the deliverers. These spaces also helped drivers figure out where to wait for customers.

4. Information about delivery options. This is not particularly important, but we found ourselves struggling a bit to figure out which restaurants or food chains were still open and available for delivery. In the non-COVID-19 times, my partner and I dined out more when we traveled. However, we wanted to stay in our rooms as much as possible, so we opted to order in. Some front desk information about delivery places would have been a nice touch.

5. Higher pay for essential service industry workers, including fast food workers and drivers! Service industry workers are putting their life on the line so the middle and upper-middle classes can quarantine in relative comfort.

Is there anything I should keep in mind if I have to travel right now?

1. If you can, carrying your own lysol (or other disinfecting wipes), soap, and perhaps a paper towel would be useful for your own sense of safety. Even with the stickers, I felt most comfortable after I had personally wiped down most of the tables, the thermostat, and the phone.

2. Ask about what amenities (particularly breakfast) have limited services, or if there is anything you as a guest should know about the state’s COVID-19 policies. Most places will tell you when you check in, but it is useful to ask about amenities that are especially important to you.

3. Wash your hands every time you leave and re-enter the room. This is where bringing in your own hand soap may be useful.

4. Be kind to fellow guests and hotel staff/employees. This is a stressful time for travelers and hotel employees alike. It’s important to extend kindness to other people in the area, making sure to maintain social distancing whenever possible.

5. Use ziplock bags to to pack masks. My partner and I were traveling for several days, and we wanted to make sure we had enough masks to use different ones every day of the week. To keep track of used masks that needed to be washed, we used ziplock bags (one with dirty masks and one with clean ones). We haven’t needed to hand wash masks yet, but we likely will before we check out and move into our new Texas apartment.

6. Look up COVID-19 policies in the state or country you are traveling to, especially since each state varies in its mask policies and stages of re-opening. It may also be useful to look up the hotel’s policies for preventing COVID-19 spread.

Personal Updates and Moving During COVID-19

Wow! I did not realize how long it had been since I have written in this blog (not since December of 2019). A lot has happened to the world (and to me) since that time, so it’s worth beginning with a few updates:

• Earlier this year, I accepted an Assistant Professorship (tenure-track) at the University of Texas, Austin’s Journalism & Media School. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to continue doing research on global mis-/dis-information and political language in an esteemed and inviting department.

• I’m very close to defending! I will be defending in early August (a little over a week from now). My dissertation focuses on perceptions of U.S.-China trade from 2008 to 2018, and the role of news media and economic context in explaining people’s understanding of their local economy and national politics.

• A co-authored paper with fellow Ph.D student Jordan Sallis (the lead author, and a rising second-year) was accepted to AEJMC 2020 (which is virtual this as, like ICA 2020, and all other conferences).

• My long-time partner and I got engaged a few days ago!

My transition from Ph.D candidate to Assistant Professor this summer is consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic. From the largely virtual goodbyes (though I did see some folks in my last week) to the stressful packing and traveling process, moving during COVID-19 has been a uniquely stressful and anxiety-inducing experience.

Given the unique historical time point of my move (from Madison, WI to Austin, TX), I thought it would be worth recording my experiences here.

My COVID-19 Move Journal #1: Packing and Leaving Wisconsin

Packing and leaving Wisconsin was one of the saddest and most frustrating experiences I have had in graduate school.

Though we scheduled to have movers arrive on July 30th at 3:00 p.m., they did not arrive for another 28 hours, on July 31 at 7:00 p.m. Throughout this time (and now still), my partner and I had very little knowledge about why the movers took so long, but the broker we were working with emphasized how COVID-19 slowed down all the moves being scheduled (though it does not explain why we were lied to—there were several times where the broker or driver told us they would arrive “in 20 minutes” or “in two hours,” only for us to be told it would be “six hours from now” less than an hour later).

In any case, the movers did eventually arrive. It took about three hours to fully load the truck. During that time, my partner and I wore masks. About an hour into our packing, two neighbors who we did not know walked out of their apartment and saw us. Noticing that we were wearing masks, the two men began harassing and heckling us for wearing masks while we were moving. Leaning against their car (about 15 feet away from us), they repeatedly made sheep sounds (“Baaa”) and described us as “sheeple” and “idiots.” When we didn’t respond, they proceeded to loudly say that I probably couldn’t understand them. On several occasions throughout the move, for two full hours, these two individuals took immense pleasure in staring at us, calling us “libtards,” and continually bleating at us.

To say it was frustrating would be an understatement. It made an already incredibly bad moving experience so much worse. I was perpetually anxious to leave the house because every time I was within their field of vision, they would make comments (they were less vocal when they saw my partner, a white man who was also wearing a mask).

But it also made me think a lot about the state of my local civil society. In New York, and when I lived downtown in Madison, I had good relationships with my neighbors. However, at the time of the move, we had been living in our apartment for only a month (due to a leasing issue that is a whole story of its own). We didn’t know our neighbors well this time. But, I didn’t anticipate such disdain from a neighbor I didn’t know. These two individuals decided it was worth their time to make our moving experience worse, without knowing us, without ever having interacted with us, and without any consideration, seemingly, of social decency. If they disagreed with the mask policy, they could have just as easily minded their own business instead of bothering us.

It is interesting to think of masks as a political statement rather than a function of a health epidemic. And it is frustrating that strangers can resent you so much for wearing a mask that they would go out of their way to make your life worse.

What it is not, however, is surprising. Since March of this year, conservative politicians and opinion leaders (and President Trump in particular) have frequently framed people taking COVID-19 seriously as “harmful” to American society.

An example tweet describing Democrats as un-American

It’s worth noting that liberals also call conservative un-American, but (anecdotally speaking) liberals doesn’t seem to evoke “un-Americanness” as a critique as frequently as verified conservative accounts decry un-Americanness.

These tweets, and my experience moving, reminded me a lot of sociologist Jeffrey Alexander’s social binaries. In The Civil Sphere, Alexander (2006) describes how people use binaries to identify which roles, relationships, and social structures are beneficial to civil society (logical, rational, independent, strong) and which are detrimental (illogical, irrational, dependent, weak). By applying these binaries, people make sense of which values or actions deserve to be celebrated (i.e., protected in the civil society) and which values or actions deserve to be ridiculed (i.e., rejected in the civil society). For these two men, me wearing a mask fell into the latter category, which warranted their harassment.

We expect these binaries in many aspects of politics. Certainly, political Twitter lives for this binary, as negative and controversial tweets tend to receive more attention on the social media platform, particularly among U.S. conservatives (Himelboim et al., 2014). However, I didn’t know how to make sense of when this binarization bleeds into our lifeworld; when two men are more interested in harassing you for a choice that has nothing to do with them than even minding their own business.

And sure, it’s easy to chalk it up to the two men being “stupid” or “idiotic,” but it doesn’t explain why and how they got to the point where they had no qualms harassing people they didn’t know.

In the days of COVID-19, we have reached a point where citizens (a more patriotic person might say, “fellow Americans”) treat mask-wearing (or not) as a visual symbol of “un-Americanness.” In the days of COVID-19, it is easier to harass someone you see as detrimental to society than engage in any constructive behavior. In the days of COVID-19, we rarely acknowledge that people live complicated and stressful lives (made all the more stressful with the pandemic), and are quick to cast the first stone.

My partner and I left our apartment quickly after the movers left. We didn’t want to be outside with people harassing us anymore. But the moment stayed with me, as a reminder of how quick we are to designate people we don’t truly know as “bad”—illogical, weak, and ignorant.

Frankly, I have no interest in continuing that cycle. People are too complicated to categorize them purely into “good” and “bad” binaries. If we are to survive this pandemic as a society (and it’s hard to say at this point whether that will happen), extending kindness during this stressful moment in history is essential.

To the two men, whoever you are: I hope you are safe and COVID-free. I know you can’t understand this, but I wore the mask for your protection, too, even if you hated me for it. And your harassment said a lot more about you than it did about me.

After the move, my partner and I went to a hotel to rest and recover before the start of our three-day drive down to Texas. In Dane County (and Hilton hotels) there is a mandatory mask requirement. At one point, we were in the elevator with an older couple who saw us and had an “oh s***, I need to put on my mask” moment. She apologies profusely while rummaging through her bag for her mask. I told her it was alright—mask-wearing is a new practice in our society, and we are all doing our best during these stressful times. The woman gave me a grateful look as she put her mask on. In that elevator, six feet away, she and I shared a moment of comfort and a mutual acknowledgment that, in the era of COVID, we are all simply trying to do our best.

Daily Tracking

Habit Tracking. It’s a really popular trend in bullet journaling, despite not being part of the original rapid logging system. And it’s that way for a reason: people like to see the progress they’ve made, or habits they’ve kept up with. Sometimes they’re functional or necessary, like taking medication or tracking the number of hours you sleep. Sometimes, they’re aspirational, like workout trackers or recording the number of pages you write every day. There are tons of activities you can track and many ways to track them, both physical and digital.

I use a few trackers to look at what I do every day. One of my favorite things to do is look at past habit tracker pages to see what I was doing at any given week (and with a discbound planner system, I can actually pull all the habit tracker pages out and look at them together)!

In the beginning of 2019, I tried maintaining monthly and weekly trackers. By March, however, I had completely switched over to weekly trackers—I just don’t have the patience to keep flipping back to update a monthly tracker!

Here’s a template of the weekly tracker page I use now. On the top of the sheet is my time log, on the bottom is a group of other trackers. (Disclaimer: this picture, and all the pictures in this blog post, are not real. While I do use this habit tracking template, I am not using real information to fill out the time log or habit trackers below).

An example of a weekly habit tracker page.

The Time Log

On the top half are time trackers (sometimes known as a time log, since 1 page has 7 time trackers). Each row has 24 boxes: one for each hour of the day. My days begin at 6 a.m. and end at 5:59 a.m. the next day, so the first box of the day is 6 a.m. to 7 a.m.

An example time log. In this example, I am midway through my Tuesday.

I use a combination of seven or eight colors to identify out what I’m doing at any given point. Sleeping (which is grey), “down time” (orange), and meetings (purple) are common things to track. I also track reading (pink), writing (red), programming (blue), hand coding (light blue), and “misc work” (green). These more detailed codes allow me to really see where my work time is spent on any given day.

Writing, in particular, involves a lot of different tasks. The three that are the most common for me are: outlining, new writing, and proofing. If I want to provide more detail about what I’m doing when I’m “writing”, I’ll mark a box with “O” for outline, “W” for new writing, and “P” for proofing.

Underneath each time tracker, I will write notes and details about that day, things that add context to the day’s data. This includes (but is not limited to): social functions I attend, exam days, major grading days, conference deadlines, travel days, and sick days.

Other Trackers

Below my time log are templates of a few other trackers. I don’t actually use all of these; I just wanted to present different ideas of trackers you may be interested in.

Some example trackers. In my day-to-day, I do use the work tracker and the skincare tracker.

Work Tracker

I do use a work tracker: it’s a 7x3 matrix, with each row representing a day, and each column representing a task (c = coding, r = reading, w = writing). While I already track these tasks in my time log, they’re important enough that I also want to record when I do all three daily; I like day when I code a little, read a little, and write a little.

To the right of this 7x3 matrix is a set of purple bars. Those are the number of pages I hope to write daily (my estimate). I draw a rectangle to represent the number of pages I write in a given writing session (my observed)—1 box for 1 page, 3 boxes for 3 pages. This allows me to see the days I’ve hit my writing goals… and the days I haven’t.

The combination of my time log and my writing page tracker allows me to see how much I’ve written per hour. Sometimes, the words flow out easily and I can write 1 or 2 pages in an hour. Sometimes, it’s really hard to produce good writing.

Other Trackers

I do track a variety of other, non-work tasks. These range from the mundane habits, like brushing my teeth or showering, to hobbies, like baking and doing calligraphy.

For most of these tasks, each box represents one task per day (similar to my work tracker, the columns are the tasks and the rows are the days). It’s easy to vary up these tasks based on my needs that week, or things that I want to improve on. For that reason, the list of habits that I track change week-by-week.

Sometimes, I want to keep track of a more complex habit (e.g., taking multiple types of medication or my skincare routine). For this, I’ll often use a frankenlog system.

The Frankenlog

The goal of the frankenlog system frankenlog system, generally, is to jam as much information into a single page of your bullet journal. This is a great, minimalist strategy that gives you a “bird’s eye view” without sacrificing the detail.

One of the awesome features of the frankenlog is the “four mark” daily habit box. Each habit is tracked with a single pen stroke, allowing for four habits to be tracked with one box.

I use this system to track my skincare routine. In the morning, I have four tasks: face washing, toner, vitamin c extract,  and sunblock. In the evening, I have seven or eight tasks: face washing, micellar water, toner, face mask (sometimes), eye cream, hyaluronic acid serum, retinol, and night cream.

An example of a frankenlog habit tracker. Each “box” can track up to four different tasks or habits. In this skincare example, I have 4 morning steps and 8 nighttime steps.

Weekly trackers give me a good sense of what I’ve been doing that week. This helps me make sure I’m living a (relatively) balanced life—time for work, for friends, and for myself. Plus, I love to see the bars fill up over the course of the week.

Example time lapse of a week’s worth of habit tracking information.

Preparing for 2020!

It’s December, which is when we tend to think about what we’ve done this year and what we hope to do for next year. For me, that reflection includes updating my personal organizing and scheduling system (e.g., planners, calendars, bullet journals, organizers).

Organizing has been essential to maintaining a consistent workflow throughout my academic career. It’s a living system—I continually revamp it to make sure I’m getting the most out of it. Right now, I’m using a “paper-dominant hybrid system”: my scheduler, to-do list, reading notes, and zettelkasten are in print, but I maintain a digital calendar, a citation system, and mind-mapper.

Organizing systems are as varied as academic scholars. This makes sense: your system should serve your needs. But regardless of whether it’s digital or physical, multi-platform or all in one place, it behooves scholars to have a system that isn’t a pile of scraps or things you write on your hand. Trust me when I say: there is too much to remember in grad school for you to “have it all in your head.” If you don’t write things down or record it, things will inevitably slip from your mind.

For that reason, I'm hoping to spend my next few blog posts talking about how I organize my academic life (from day-to-day scheduling to keeping notes that will last a decade). I’ll also talk about how I’m updating my 2019 system for the new year.

But before I proceed, here are a couple of disclaimers/considerations:

1. No organization system is perfect forever. In the planner community, the term “planner peace” refers to having a system you are completely satisfied with. While this sounds awesome, realistically, you won’t find a system that completely fits you for your whole life. Your planner system will change as you and your career changes—but this is how it should be, because what you need from your organizing system will change.

2. Maintenance is key. A good organizing system relies on regular maintenance. That might involve setting aside time weekly to update your citations, review your planner/calendar, or to clean your to-do list. As diverse as organization systems are, they all still require maintenance.

3. The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Few of the days I schedule and organize go exactly as I anticipated. Even if I write a daily to-do list, I rarely complete it. Don’t be hard on yourself when your plans go out the window for a day (or longer). Don’t feel bad if you have to forgo your organizing system for a bit when things get hectic.

4. Don’t mistake planning for doing. Planning out your day is not the same as actually doing what you planned. Don’t make planning busy-work to avoid the real work you have to do.

New Semester, New Writing Approach

Hello!

Long time no chat, readers!

The summer has been a whirlwind for me (writing, programming, reading, and moving has fully consumed my last few months, not including traveling for AEJMC and appearing on CNN).

For whatever reason, this summer has been “The Summer of Unfinished Drafts.” I’ve had more unfinished ideas and drafts than I’ve ever had before. The ideas keep popping up and landing on top of one another (an experience that is simultaneously exciting and anxiety-inducing). I’ve had a couple drafts on the docket, but for various reason, I haven’t been able to post them to my blog. Sometimes I start an outline, but never complete it. In other instances, I tell myself I need to proof it again (and again and again and again), resulting it me never publishing it.

At the same time, I think my publication aspirations (I recently had my first single-authored piece accepted to Political Communication) and academic writing trajectory has paralyzed some aspects of my writing. In an attempt to be so polished all. the. time., I have lost a bit of my "natural voice”—my signature informality.

This became all the more evident while reading Gretchen McCulloch’s* Because Internet (a book I highly recommend). In it, she talks about how spellcheck and grammarcheck operates as a “linguistic authority” (p. 45), reinforcing archaic rules. She (admirably so) is upfront about her stylistic choices: when to adopt accepted 21st century norms (e.g., “lol” vs “LOL”) and when to bend to the norms of standard American English writing.

This matters a lot for me and this blog, because I realize the desire to write “really clean blog posts” is hindering my willingness to share new ideas and thoughts on this blog. I want this to be a place for me to be more free-flowing, and not be hindered by where my ggplot2 title should be 10 pixels to the right (or whether I have one typo in my post).

For this reason, my subsequent posts this semester will have fairly minimal editing (if any at all). This choice reflects the kind of work I am posting here—fresh, fairly raw, but also liberated from the rigidity of many other writing genres/registers that I use (e.g., AP style news writing, academic writing). Should you want to read my more formal writing, I encourage you to check out my CJR piece, and upcoming publications.

I hope you’re excited to take this writing journey with me! For those starting semesters on campuses across the world: Happy Fall 2019! (And happy continuing quarters for those on the quarter-system.)

———

* In her book, Mulloch points out that her name is often marked as erroneous for the more common “McCullough.” Funnily enough, this happened while I was written her name for this blog post (see screenshot below).

The Hidden Conference Cost of doing Interdisciplinary Work

Hello blog!

Long time no chat. May was entirely lost in the black hole that is the end of the semester and the start of “academic conferencing.” In the past month, I attended the International Communication Association’s conference (ICA 2019; what I would consider the “main” conference of my primary field, Mass Communication) and a workshop at the the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics conference (NAACL NLP+CSS 2019). I have a nice break through the remainder of June and July, and then in August I have one more conference (Association in Education for Journalism and Mass Communication, AEJMC 2019).

Which brings me to my topic of the day: the cost of attending conferences to stay up to date on interdisciplinary scholarship.

Realistically, I work in three intersecting fields (four, if you include my computational stuff separately): Mass Communication, Political Science, and Linguistics. Removing a component of the trifecta is not possible; it would mean fundamentally misunderstanding my research agenda.

There are a lot of benefits and problems to doing interdisciplinary research, which many other scholars have spoken on. I love interdisciplinary work, personally, because that’s where all the enjoyable little questions are. And, as valuable as specialization can be, most research questions can be studied in many ways, depending on the department/discipline you end up in. A question about political language may produce different results if studied in Sociology, Psychology, and Political Science. So, to me, the rigorous thing would be to do interdisciplinary research—to be specific in your question, broad in where you look for theory, and concrete in your study’s operationalization and methodology.

But there are substantial professional costs to doing interdisciplinary work. A Google Scholar search of “interdisciplinary research difficulties” will yield more than enough articles to give you a sense of how much the academy has struggled to deal with interdisciplinary scholars (I choose the word “deal” carefully… rarely do I feel as if the academy “supports” interdisciplinary work).

One of those weirdly silent struggles is the cost of attending oh-so-many conferences. In an ideal world, I’d like to submit to conferences for all the fields I participate in (ICA/AEJMC for Mass Comm, LSA for Linguistics, APSA/MPSA for Political Science, NAACL/CoLing for Computational Linguistics). There conferences are important for many reasons. They help you connect with others to find jobs (a super important thing for any graduate student), they expose you to the latest studies and results in the field, and they help you connect with other people who are doing similar work to you.

But each conference can cost a substantial amount of money to attend. Below are the registration cost of the seven conferences I noted above, and a few others:

Conference	2019 Location	Regular Reg	Student Reg
AEJMC	Toronto	$ 215	$ 125
APSA	Washington D.C.	$ 160	$ 125
CoLing	Santa Fe	$ 715	$ 500
ICA	Washington D.C.	$ 300*	$ 165
IC2S2	Amsterdam	345 €	195 €
ICCSS	Amsterdam	450 €	350 €
LSA	NYC	$ 86	$ 90
NAACL	Minneapolis	$ 595	$ 295

(* ICA has tiered prices depending on where your institution is located. These are U.S. prices, Tier A.)

For each conference, you also need to account for hotel and airfare, at minimum. The best conferences are the ones that are proximity close (the location of NAACL, in Minneapolis, was a huge reason why I submitted a paper to begin with), but you are typically looking at between 300 and 500 dollars for a round-trip flight to somewhere-in-the-U.S. (aka: Chicago or DC). Conference hotels usually charge between 175 and 250 per night (graduate students bring down the cost substantially by staying with other graduate students). If you are a lucky young scholar like I am, you will have tt professors who will assist with food and drink for a good portion of the trip, but this is obviously not always the case.

All in all, you can be spending somewhere between 500 and 1000 dollars for each conference you attend. This cost increases considerably for non-(U.S. and European) scholars, who have to not only fly in from another country ($$$ international flights anyone?!) but also apply for visas, an increasingly daunting task (most of my conferences are in the U.S., which makes me double-privileged as a scholar in the States).

If you’re a scholar working in two disciplines, that’s twice the conferences you may need to pay for. Or, you’ll have to sacrifice attending certain conferences in one year to attend another. For a young scholar, particularly one doing interdisciplinary research, not attending a conference means missed opportunities to meet people, connect about research, and find future avenues of collaboration.

Given this, we need to start thinking about the conference model, and how that limits young scholars who cannot normally afford to attend so many conferences. Alternative ways to participate, cheaper locations (and cheaper hotels), and having more included in a registration can go a long way.

Yesterday, I was a footnote in history!

Yesterday, I received exciting news! A piece that I had written with Chris Wells for Columbia Journalism Review was cited in the Mueller Report, which was released a day ago.

I was 3 hours into my 8-hour prelim exam when I received this notification from @nausjcaa that my CJR piece with @cfwells was referenced in the Mueller Report (p. 27). 😱 In the article, we discuss how and why Russian trolls were quoted as American citizens in news stories. 1/4 https://t.co/lYFi4raEwb

— Josephine Lukito (@JosephineLukito) April 18, 2019

The piece that we wrote for CJR focused on news organizations that embedded tweets by Internet Research Agency (IRA) handles into their news stories. We’ve increased the number of outlets analyzed since the CJR piece (it was about 40 when we started, but over 100 now), and our finding still holds: a majority of news organizations cited an IRA account in at least one story.

Contrary to popular opinion, these IRA accounts were not sharing “fake news” (as in: false information). Instead, IRA tweets were often quoted for their salient, often hyper-partisan opinions. For example, one tweet advocated for a Heterosexual Pride Day as a way of inciting LGBTQ activists. Another called refugees, “rapefugees”. These accounts would often portray themselves as American people (e.g., @JennAbrams portrayed herself as a “typical” American girl, as shown by research done by my colleague Yiping Xia), or as groups (like @ten_gop, an IRA account pretending to be Tennessee GOP members, and @blacktivist, an IRA account pretending to be BlackLivesMatter organizers).

This has important implications, and speaks to Muller’s earlier indictment of the IRA, which noted that Russia’s campaign goal was “spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general” (p. 6). Ironically, the discovery of the IRA campaign in the summer/fall of 2017 probably fed into this distrust (especially since news organization were as likely to be “duped” as American citizens).

The (underacted) part where we are referenced focuses on this specific issue—journalists embedded these tweets thinking they reflected the opinions of U.S. citizens. This is incredibly problematic, and something that both academics and journalists want to find solutions for. Following our publication in early of 2018, several news organizations reached out to us regarding the specific articles i which they had unintentionally quoted IRA tweets. The research team was particularly excited by these exchanges because it shows that journalists care, and want to avoid doing this in the future.

Attending the R Forwards Women's Package Workshop (Hosted by R-Ladies Chicago)

This weekend, I had the pleasure of attending an R Forwards Women's Package Workshop. It was hosted and run by members of R-Ladies Chicago: Angela Li and Stephanie Kirmer.

Though I have attended and run many one or two hour workshops, this was my first long-day, single-topic workshop (9:30 to 4:00 pm) and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience! It’s definitely a format that would be useful to teach more complex topics, like software development and package building. There was a lot of info-in-brain-cramming, but I also felt like I learned a ton in a very short time span.

Attendees of the 2019 R Forward Package Workshop, taught by Angela and Stephanie of R Ladies Chicago!

The session was broken down into a couple broad topics: package development, git+r, unit testing, documentation, and package sharing (e.g., licences, indicating dependencies, CRAN). This made the material useful for both specific-use packages (e.g., building a data wrangling package for my specific research group) and for more public-facing packages (e.g., a package that one would want to upload to CRAN).

Top 5 Things I Learned:

1. The usethis package is so convenient and important for package development. For example, the function

   usethis::create_package("~/Desktop/mypackage")

   will create the skeleton of the package files for you, including folders for R-code, the “man” folder (“man” stands for manual), and description/namespace files. This makes package building so much earlier! You can learn more about it in Wickham’s R package book.

2. Using the “::” operator allows you to see the exported variables or functions in a package namespace. But if you really want to see under the hood “:::” allows you to see everything (there’s some more about it on StackOverflow), including the functions that are not publicly exported.

3. Semantic Versioning - How have I only learned about this now, despite attending several data carpentry workshops and classes?! I am such a stickler for version recording, even in my non-computational work (I have been subconsciously semantic versioning my human content analysis codebooks), and it’s so nice to finally have a specific phrase associated with this process.

4. A quote from my favorite slide of the day: “If the first line of your #rstats script is

   setwd("C:\Users\jenny\path\that\only\I\have")

   I will come into your lab and SET YOUR COMPUTER ON FIRE 🔥.”

   Confession time: I do this a lot! 🙈 ::embarrassed:: In terms of workflow, I am generally quite sloppy about separating projects and keeping relative paths. I first read about projects in R for Data Science, but I never took the lesson to heart until this weekend. I know… it’s bad given how much I code. So I guess I’ll be “konmari-ing” my R code this semester(i.e., create an Rproject space for each of my projects)!

5. A great tip from Stephanie’s top tweet (about Git): “when you screw up a git merge, you can use git reset --hard master@{"300 minutes ago"} with any time quantity you want in there to get back to where things were a period of time ago.“

.@data_stephanie shares her most popular tweet of all time and mind = blown 🤯 #RLadies #RForwardsChi pic.twitter.com/nCh97AE28j

— R-Ladies Chicago (@RLadiesChicago) February 23, 2019

Extra Bonus: Differencing vs. Logging Time Series Data

I happened to also sit next to economist Dweepobotee Brahma, which was a great coincidence since I’ve been binging time series models and papers for the past year. I happened to randomly gripe about how economic data is often processed (i.e., logged). She was kind enough to explain to me why economists did this, and why growth rates are so important to the research in economics and econometrics. Having been taught by a political scientist, whose questions are not as focused on exponential relationships, I didn’t know much about this alternative treatment/perspective on time series data, and it was really interesting!

I’m starting to wonder if this is especially important to modeling follower growth. Nearly all follower count time series I’ve analyzed have been fully integrated I(1), if not to I(2). Often I will first- or second- difference this as a way to make the series stationary. However, I’m realizing a logarithmic transformation is probably more appropriate for what we try to measure (implicitly, it’s a growth rate question).

Conclusion

Overall, I’m really, really glad that I was able to attend this workshop. It’s definitely up there on my “favorite R workshops ever” list. Organizationally, there were a lot of little things I wanted to take back to my workshop strategy (for example, this was the first workshop I attended where we used post it’s to indicate whether we needed help with specific tasks) and obviously it was great for advancing my R skills.

One of the most important “big picture” lessons I learned was that if I want to actually do software development in R (or any programming language), I have to be more organized about my code. I am organized when it comes to data management, but am definitely less-so with my scripts and functions. Workflow wise, I want to get on top of this by the end of the semester.

I’m also one step closer to completing a major R-new-year’s-resolution: Build an R package! I have a couple of functions that I rely on for data wrangling operationalized text data to time series data, so I’m eager to wrap them all up in a neat little package for future use.

And finally, attending the workshop was a great reminder about how amazing the R community is, both offline and online. That’s one of my favorite parts about being an R programmer—the community makes it easy to be excited about learning R.

I am so grateful to Angela and Stephanie for hosting this amazing workshop, and to R Forwards for sponsoring my attendance. If you are interested in checking out the materials from this weekend, they have made the workshop material available here.

Tweets about WI Gubernatorial Race Part II: Election Night

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted! The last few months has been absolutely crazy, with visiting family members, paper deadlines, and end-of-semester tasks. I did hit a major milestone: I have officially completed all my coursework for my Ph.D!

Today, I want to focus on my part-2 analysis of the WI election, which I am informally calling, “If you want to know who will win gubernatorial elections first, follow local journalists.”

The figure below is a plot of tweets about Scott Walker and Tony Evers on the night of the Gubernatorial Election (12 a.m. to 2 a.m.). [For more about the data collection, please see the post below].

The Big Picture

The first vertical line represents the first tweet in my dataset that called a win for Evers. This came from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Mary Spicuzza, who tweeted out at 12:53 a.m. CST (apologies; my timestamp is not adjusted for daylights saving).

While there was an increase in the number of tweets after Spicuzza’s, it didn’t reach full attention for another hour and a half, when it was officially reported by the Associated Press at 1:25 a.m. Attention, measured by counts of tweets with the word Walker or Evers, spikes not long after this tweet.

What happened in that window of time, the half hour between when it was officially reported by the Journal Sentinel, and when it was reported by the Associated Press?

A Twitter Conversation among Wisconsonites

Unsurprisingly, most of the tweets from this time appeared to come from Wisconsin residents, or people with ties to Wisconsin (as indicated by their geographic information, or by information in their profile, such as being an alum of a UW-System school. One tweet from a self-reporting Wisconsonite said, “Tony Evers (D) now up over Scott Walker (R) by just over 1,000 votes out of 2.5M votes cast. #WiGov”

There were also many references to local media outlets, as seen in the examples below (which were also retweeted by mostly Wisconsinites):

“Looks like @tmj4 just reported live from the courthouse that 38,000 votes just went to #tonyevers when @cityofmilwaukee votes we're tallied. I'm calling it. Tony Evers defeats Scott Walker as the next govenor.of #Wisconsin. Boom. https://t.co/0Y1cObTwy!” - RyanThompson

There were also many references to local Wisconsin issues, such as Walker’s rampant Union-busting, or his gutting of education funding (this was mentioned by both people in Wisconsin and those outside of Wisconsin, though the former had an obviously greater attachment):

”Fingers crossed that my great home state of Wisconsin has finally rid themselves of the Union-busting, education-destroying, Foxconn swindling corporate shill that is Scott Walker. But I won’t believe he’s gone until every vote is counted” - @sjtruog (1:17 AM)

“Wait did Scott Walker actually lose? Bc I hate him with such a particular acid for what he did to public education in that state that I want to know if I can dance a mad tarantella on that smug prick’s career grave” - @meganskittles

Cultural References

One of the things I really enjoyed about these tweets were their continual cultural references to Wisconsin. Because tweets during this time were predominantly written by Wisconsonites or those with ties to Wisconsin, there were many tweets referencing things like Menards, as noted above, Culvers, and the Packers).

“I've been this proud to be a Wisconsinite three times: when Favre won a Super Bowl, when Aaron won a Super Bowl, and when we voted melty-faced suffering-horny human khaki Scott Walker out of office.” - @meg_luvs_pandas (1:24 AM)

“If Tony Evers beats Scott Walker that would be the most Wisconsin shit that ever happened since Culver’s showed up.” - @Joe_Bowes (12:53 AM, Milwaukee, WI)

“Can someone tell me if Scott Walker is going to have to get a job at Menard's so I can go to bed.“ - @JustinLaughs (1:07 AM, from Greendale)

Another noticeable feature of this language was the use of the pronoun “we” to refer collectively to Wisconsinites.

“are… are we finally getting rid of scott walker [?] is it happening [?]” - @AlexZiebart (12:55 AM, Milwaukee, WI)

“I’m so nervous to see who won governor in wisconsin […] we need Scott walker out of office!!!” - @taypyt (12:55 AM)

“My final political tweet for the evening: if we have really finally done it, nothing has given me more pleasure than to vote against Scott Walker in five different elections. Bye Felicia” - @alephtwo (12:58 AM, Madison, WI)

The use of this “royal” we (“state-wide” we?) instills the idea of a collective identity that is directed towards the voting out of Walker from office. It evokes a sense of solidarity, or “survival” from Walker’s terms in office.

Outsiders looking in

A few outside of the WI gate were able to tap into this information, as indicated by this tweet from VA resident: This is one of the most unbelievable finishes I have ever seen. Came down to a bunch of uncounted absentee ballots. Looks like Scott Walker is done. https://t.co/D8VwrxGZOk.” - @junkiechurch, (12:57 AM)

Those in close proximity to the Wisconsin appeared to be more attentive as well:

“No more Scott Walker. Wisconsin, I tease you all the time, but you did a good job today.” - @KyleWarner3000 (1:16 AM, DeKalb, IL)

However, many (presumably) outside of Wisconsin expressed frustration about wanting to learn more:

“DAMNIT CNN SHOW ME THE SCOTT WALKER RACE“ - @Seattle_9 (1:12 AM, Seattle, WA)"

“Wait did Scott Walker actually lose? Bc I hate him with such a particular acid for what he did to public education in that state that I want to know if I can dance a mad tarantella on that smug prick’s career grave “ - @godhatesyeast (1:13 AM, USA [no state indicated])

It was about Walker losing, not Evers winning

As seen by the figure above, attention was squarely focused on Walker losing, rather than Ever winning. This suggests that Twitter communities perceived the election as a victory because Walker lost, not necessarily because Evers won. Many of the tweets were focused on insulting Walker.

”EAT MY ENTIRE SHIT COTT WALKER” - @ChiYoungMoon (12:59 AM)

“Good bye Scott Walker you trifling ham and cheese eatin' bitch https://t.co/ODW3kMWPhC“ - @jae_dubb (1:09, Chicago)

In situations where Evers was referenced, it was often because he (having been a teacher) made an ironic foil to Walker.

“Scott Walker loses thanks to a Milwaukee wave. What a night. Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. https://t.co/2KEDdpeNAe3” - @Save_the_Daves (1:15 AM, Milwaukee, WI)

In the above instances, Evers is celebrated but not explicitly mentioned. Walker, by contrast, is referenced in full name. In the first tweet, by @Bro_Pair, Evers is framed as a “kindly teacher”, the kind of person who was directly impacted by Walker’s economic policy. The expression of joy (“glad I stayed up late enough…”) reflects a sense of schadenfreude—taking pleasure in watching Scott Walker lose. This sense was expressed by many others…

“It looks like Scott Walker might lose to Tony Evers. Don’t go to bed or you might miss the best schadenfreude of the midterm elections.” - @RiskyLiberal (1:23 AM)

“Seeing Kris Kobach and Scott Walker lose is pretty sweet, but my schadenfreude dream team was Ted Cruz and Steve King “ - @antitractionist (1:23 AM)

… and sometimes in bizarrely sexual references.

The Recount Topic

Tweets about a recount appeared as early as announcements about the Milwaukee absentee ballots. Many tweets were written by conservative-identifying or MAGA-identifying accounts.

(R) Scott Walker, WI gov, is requesting a recount.” - @AKLLL49 (1:20, Profile: Love our @POTUS […] PHUCK #Grammernazis #Haters of #Guns and #Freespeech. #MAGA)

“Both sides expect protracted recount in Wisconsin governor's race between Scott Walker and Tony Evers https://t.co/ilCQHR8KUT” - @jackiebullivant (1:22, Profile: Conservative, business owner & political enthusiast. We need honest, authentic gov’t FOR and BY the people b/c people matter! Free speech. #MAGA #PPC2019)

“Governor Scott Walker's campaign has announced plans to call for a recount, should Evers come out on top. Either candidate can call for a recount if the results come in within 1%.” - @KFIZ1450 (1:03 AM, Fond du Lac, WI)

One was pretty sure Walker was going to win:

“Hey look on the bright side at least we still have Scott Walker and Ted Cruz.” - @johnforchione (12:57 AM)

Liberal Rebuttal

By 1:23, there were already (mostly liberal) rebuttals to a call for a recount, with many pointing out (ironically) that Walker had pushed for the bill that now prevented him from calling a recount.

“Tony Evers defeats Scott Walker by 1.1%! Outside of the margin for a recount that Scott Walker passed  into law for a recount. Karma is a bitch!” - @Fetzer2 (1:23 AM)

Conclusion

What can we learn from this analysis?

1) If you want to know who wins a state-wide election, follow local reporters. They have the greatest level of access to updated voting information, and are much more knowledgeable about their geographic region than national news outlets.

2) In a media environment that focuses on one event, or what researchers would call a media storm, “liberals” and “conservatives” respond to each other very quickly, within the span of a few minutes. Given the hybrid nature of the U.S. media system, it is likely that media storm dynamics will impact social media, particularly Twitter(as a platform for professional journalism). Capturing this dynamic in media storms, therefore, requires very granular levels of data.

3) To understand the politics, one needs to understand the culture of that society. Regional cultural references were an important feature of this discourse, which was unique compared to the post-AP tweet time span. In this latter time, tweets were still focused on Walker’s loss (rather than Ever’s win). However, following Associated Press’ reporting, the tweets were predominantly by those outside of Wisconsin. The story was reaching national attention, and the discourse had lost this specific local component.

Overall, this was an interesting project for me to examine how a state-wide political event goes national on Twitter in an hour and a half.

August: The Month of Travel!

It's been quite some time since I've done a lot of travel, but my August will be all about trips, trips, trips!

In the beginning of the month, I will be attending sixth AEJMC in Washington D.C. (Aug 6-9)  to present my work on news coverage with tweets written by Russian IRA accounts. I'm looking forward to presenting my work, and taking some time to visit the city!

Then, it's off to NYC for Restaurant Week and to celebrate a friend's birthday!

Back to Madison briefly, to get ready for a family trip to Europe with John! Our Europe trip includes stops in Keflevik, Iceland; Paris, France; and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After several years of travel-less-ness, my wanderlust is really itching.

Here's to a month of good adventures, new ideas, and an ever-expanding universe! - Jo