Bernadette “bird” Bowen, PhD | Miami University (original) (raw)

Drafts of Works in Progress by Bernadette “bird” Bowen, PhD

Years before COVID-19, we heard that the United States was experiencing a "sex apocalypse". For t... more Years before COVID-19, we heard that the United States was experiencing a "sex apocalypse". For this reason, in my dissertation I explored sociosexually violent and increasingly algorithmic "syncing issues" of this era's U.S. landscape. In doing so, I found that, for decades, researchers like Field (2014) innervated the health harm(s) of touch hunger. Left untreated, touch starvation went endemic. Now, as people pretend COVID-19 is over, these two issues, in tandem, are especially concerning for immunocompromised folks. In said piece, I illuminated AFAB millennial and Gen Z folks heart-breaks and self-realizations taking place in algorithmic spaces. Herein, I continue documenting a contagious shift: increasing sociosexual expectations for cishet men. Additionally, I found that these groups are experiencing a post-Roe v Wade COVID-19 silver-lining: late-in-life realized queernesses and neurodiversity. To tingle new nerves, I update these temporally distanced dissertation discussions, provocatively unmasking and putting them into close conversation with another distanced intimacy: ASMR. After taking the body politic's temperature, I now amplify that these audio intimacies are filling intimacy gaps in the ongoing-COVID-19 envirusment because of colonial-founded capitalist-funded inequities.

Journal Articles by Bernadette “bird” Bowen, PhD

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2023

"As a purposefully enacted form of praxis, this article represents a feminist meth- odological a... more "As a purposefully enacted form of praxis, this article represents a feminist meth- odological approach guided by the author’s personal introduction into choice works of feminist scholarship. By employing feminist epistemologies, this arti- cle demonstrates that each of our realities of understanding is made possible by our own differing subjective situations and our resonance towards difference. Throughout the piece, multiple parallel philosophical and ontological orientations are suggested in efforts to theoretically connect a broad array of feminist theories and praxis with canonic tenants of media ecology (such as language play, crea- tion of counter-environments and breakdowns as breakthroughs). Written prior to the ‘Gender and Media Ecology’ invited Special Issue of EME, Dr. bird provides their own survey of ‘Gender and Media Ecology’, suggesting foundational means of future critical pursuits. The ultimate aim of this work is to invite future, even more expansive critical media ecological scholarship to continue similar efforts, which would provide even more holistically intersectional and invaluable means of challenging taken-for-granted institutional and societal norms inside the field of
media ecology and beyond."

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 2023

In this micro-chapbook of feminist poetry, Requirement Politics, the author has chosen poems writ... more In this micro-chapbook of feminist poetry, Requirement Politics, the author has chosen poems written both prior to and post- her recollection and resulting therapeutic struggle of working through her lifelong experiences of sexual harassment and assault. Historically situated within the neoliberally co-opted #MeToo campaign, Betsy Devos’s 2020 Title IX cross-examination mandate, and post-Trumpian present-COVID United States landscape, this work performs an ethnographic autopsy on the body politic: displaying the fleshy lived consequences of an unjust U.S. legal system. By continuing Faulkner’s work on poetic inquiry as feminist methodology, this piece contributes to an ongoing emergence of poetic praxis as a means of clapping back to structures of oppression. At its core, Requirement Politics repeats experiences and internalized words spoken by institutional figures reluctant to fulfill mandatory reporting requirements. By playing off of Higginbotham’s (1993) term respectability politics, this piece blurs lines of academic and poetic writing to deliberately collapse a fabricated line between public and private lived experiences.

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2023

The U.S. White Flight left historically and intentionally targeted marginalized groups in citysca... more The U.S. White Flight left historically and intentionally targeted marginalized groups in cityscapes in the impoverished dust of public transport. These racialized phenomena restructured urban environments and deadened surrounding landscapes, engendering deliberately baron space too far to traverse by no-and low-income feet. Now, in the present-COVID-19 envirusment, Midwest landscapes are an eyesore, which perpetually disable and dehumanize, further denying working folks from safe social distancing and PPE in areas already plagued with sociohistorical and economic disenfranchisements. Meanwhile, redlined and/or gentrified affluent spaces remain comprised of mostly Whites of a certain status. This project explores present-COVID-19 human implications of cars in a nation founded upon ecological devastations.

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2020

Since 2016, a culture of participatory leftism has emerged on Facebook that has yet to be substan... more Since 2016, a culture of participatory leftism has emerged on Facebook that has yet to be substantially documented. Scholars have established ideographic criticism of memes as a critical/cultural tool for analysis. However, there is little to no work on broader, systems-based analyses of alternative social media platforms, and the role they play in the creation and maintenance of political identities. These socially mediated communities, alternatively known as Leftbook (or Left Facebook), advertise themselves as places to learn about Marx, socialism, and philosophies centered on labor, revolution, and worker freedom. Research from traditional online group pages suggest there is a distinct split between neutral observers and harsh critics of Leftbook. According to Karlsson (2017)

A growing complaint in the Leftbook space that almost every group…like to joke about throwing people in labor camps. There was a period of 6-7 months where you couldn’t avoid seeing at least one ‘lol you go to gulag’, joke. (para. 7).

These online spaces often result in odd, hilarious, and peculiar behaviors that the untrained eye is quick to brush off as meaningless Internet drivel. However, humor and satire have long been used tactfully by counterculture organizations/movements to communicate the absurdity of the status quo. For instance, Waisanen (2009) argued that unlikely sources of comedic rhetorical criticism creatively influences and critically reframes political discourse; guiding audiences toward new possibilities of insight and democratic civil discourse.

Using Johnson's (2007) explanations of memetics as a guiding theory, I discuss Burke’s various work on human paradox, identification, Dramatism, and the comic frame to provide insight on notions of: identity performance, “slacktivism”, and burgeoning political resonance within this digital environment. I code preliminary themes of the post content of one Leftbook page, Sassy Socialist Memes, over the course of a month. My guiding research questions are, “As platforms such as Leftbook become environmental, how do they contribute to a mode of socio-political identity construction for members of the Left?” and “As extensions of political identity, how does the Sassy Social Memes page impact experiences of political organizing and engagement?”

Given the above questions, media ecology provides important conceptual resources for analysis given its focus on the broader systemic changes introduced by media as they become environmental. Thus, this paper blends insights from both rhetorical criticism, in its study of ideology and identity, with media ecological perspectives concerning media-as-environments. This paper will establish both content and medium characterization of Leftbook, and will make an argument for the importance of studying Leftbook digital spaces to gain further insight into alternative modes of sociopolitical identity construction. This analysis contributes to our understanding of Sassy Socialist Memes, and begins an argument that this digital environment has potential to function as a space of socio-political identity construction for members of the Left. The implications of these findings lean toward a burgeoning resonance of anti-capitalist solidarity, class struggle, and resentment of the late capitalist American two-party system.

Internet Research

PurposeTo provide human judgment input for computer algorithm development, this study examines th... more PurposeTo provide human judgment input for computer algorithm development, this study examines the relative importance of source, content, and style cues in predicting the truthfulness ratings of two common types of online health information: news stories and institutional news releases.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a multi-method approach using (1) a manual content analysis of 400 randomly selected online health news stories and news releases from HealthNewsReview.org and (2) an online experiment comparing truthfulness ratings between news stories and news releases.FindingsUsing content analysis, the authors found significant differences in the importance of source, content, and style cues in predicting truthfulness ratings of news stories and news releases: source and style cues predicted truthfulness ratings better than content cues. In the experiment, source credibility was the most important predictor of truthfulness ratings, controlling for individual differen...

The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society, 2021

Historically situated within the impending structural COVID-19 shut down of the United State Post... more Historically situated within the impending structural COVID-19 shut down of the United State Postal Service, this piece serves as a preliminary exploration into the philosophical, phenomenological, and media ecological understanding of the digital love note product’s—the Lovebox—appeal in the Western world. People throughout history have subscribed to various culturally specific sociopsychological and material concepts of expressing love. Whether through exchanged locks of hair; rings; hand-written, printed, shared, and mailed letters; or even binding legal agreements, various rituals have long-been socially accepted as symbolic proof of lovers’ fondness for each other. Alongside this, love’s visceral ability to travel along our corporeal beings has led some to believe that it can be physically contained. The impetus for this piece was the advertisement, “The Lovebox: Where Technology Meets Love,” sparking the guiding questions: Where did the idea of owning proof of one’s love come from, and can love be held in the digital age? Beyond exploring these questions, this article seeks to trace out the sociohistorical landscapes that have grounded an incentive for this product to exist in the age of smartphones and their digital-ilk.

Dissertation by Bernadette “bird” Bowen, PhD

OhioLink, 2022

This project examined traditional gendered discourses surrounding the ends and means of sexuality... more This project examined traditional gendered discourses surrounding the ends and means of sexuality, the emerging role of digital sexual technologies in purported sexual empowerment, and the socio-material aspects which revolve around these technologies, sexual medias, and sexual discourses. Combining critical feminist insights with media ecology, this project explored happenings within the sociosexually violent pre- and present-COVID-19 United States ecology, documenting novel and rigorous contributions in our increasingly algorithmic world. This study of the U.S. context critiques foundational constructs created by Enlightenment decisionmakers who rationalized colonial rhetorics and logics built into each preceding iteration of capitalisms from industrialism into neoliberalism since national origin. As such, it extends critiques of mechanistic models of the human body and sexual communications and situates them within the vastly uncriminalized sexual violences, as well as insufficient sexual education standards. Theoretically, I argue that a mechanization of humans has occurred, been pushed to its extreme, and is flipping into a humanization of objects. To demonstrate this, I critical feminist rhetorically analyzed 75 biomimetic sextech advertisements from the brand Lora DiCarlo, contextualizing them in salient discourses within 428 present-COVID-19 TikTok videos, investigating: “What rhetorical themes occur within advertisements for biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers in the late-stage present-COVID-19 neoliberal U.S. landscape?” “How have biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers effected how their sexual experiences are created and maintained in the sociosexual U.S. landscape?” and “How are biomimetic sextech changing vulva-havers sexual sense-making, experiences, and relations within the sexually violent late-stage capitalist present-COVID-19 U.S. landscape?” Using a feminist eye, this brings to media ecology a contextualization of biomimetic sextech devices marketed to vulva-havers, situating their socio-political and cultural nuances in conversation with otherwise taken for granted biological components of cisnormative and heteronormative life, among other relevant characteristics. Ergo, this project debuts a brand new liberatory embodied research paradigm.

Published Poetry by Bernadette “bird” Bowen, PhD

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2019

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2020

At the time of this publication, Bernadette was a second year Phd student in Bowling Green State ... more At the time of this publication, Bernadette was a second year Phd student in Bowling Green State University’s Media & Communication program with an emphasis in Global Development and Social Change. Her research interests intersect the broad fields of critical and feminist theories, with an eye towards the ideological struggle between institutions, gender, and media ecology. In 2019 she was awarded the BGSU School of Media & Communication Harold & Elaine Fisher Award, first place in the Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies Graduate Essay Contest for her chapbook of poems From Boys to Men, and the 2019 Media Ecology Association Top Convention Paper. Her publications include #WhatNext: Political Implications of the #MeToo Campaign Aftermath in Maria Marron’s Misogyny Across Global Media volume to be published May 2020, and The Role of Sassy Socialist Memes in Leftbook in volume 19 of the journal Explorations in Media Ecology (EME).

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2021

These pieces of COVID-19 poetry in their pixelated form follow McLuhan's playful use and misuse o... more These pieces of COVID-19 poetry in their pixelated form follow McLuhan's playful use and misuse of the phonetic English language. They contribute to media ecology a continued poetic exploration into how our blurry presences in physical and digital spaces engender our landscapes at varying degrees and levels of experience. Through poetic exploration of this envirusment, I invoke the inherently insufficient and terminally playful qualities of language; both enabling and disabling our dualistic experiential accounts of proximity, relations, and visceral corporeality in present-COVID. Depending on which dimension readers interpretatively focus on while reading, their own unique personal frame will guide their own unique translation.

Book Chapter by Bernadette “bird” Bowen, PhD

Maria Marron's Misogyny Across Global Media Volume, 2020

Although the 2017 revival of the #MeToo campaign has received mass media praise, it’s direct cont... more Although the 2017 revival of the #MeToo campaign has received mass media praise, it’s direct contribution to the current social shift fighting for social and political justice has yet to be empirically documented. Did this campaign provide temporary catharsis further inhibiting enactment within the social and political spheres? Understandings of social media campaigns’ role in social action is still limited in the literature. Using Bowers, Ochs, & Jensen (1971) explanations of rhetoric of agitation and control, I analyze news and social media accounts of the #MeToo campaign activity and the possible unfolding of social actions or inactions, including planned and forthcoming public events or campaigns over the next few months. This paper will place #MeToo within the context of feminism rhetoric and socio-political change. This analysis contributes to our understanding of social media’s role in political action and the position of feminist discourse within the public rhetoric to end sexual abuse, assault, and exploitation.

Workshop Facilitations by Bernadette “bird” Bowen, PhD

Critical Media Ecological Pedagogy Bernadette Bowen, Bowling Green State University Teaching Read... more Critical Media Ecological Pedagogy Bernadette Bowen, Bowling Green State University Teaching Reading Comprehension Effectively Using an Online Quiz Tool Brian Coffey, Eastern Michigan Universit

Papers by Bernadette “bird” Bowen, PhD

Explorations in Media Ecology

The US White flight left historically and intentionally targeted marginalized groups in cityscape... more The US White flight left historically and intentionally targeted marginalized groups in cityscapes in the impoverished dust of public transport. These racialized phenomena restructured urban environments and deadened surrounding landscapes, engendering deliberately barren space too far to traverse by no- and low-income feet. Now, in the present-COVID-19 envirusment, Midwest landscapes are an eyesore, which perpetually disable and dehumanize, further denying working folks from safe social distancing and PPE in areas already plagued with socio-historical and economic disenfranchisements. Meanwhile, redlined and/or gentrified affluent spaces remain composed of mostly Whites of a certain status. This project explored present-COVID-19 human implications of cars in a nation founded upon ecological devastations.

Years before COVID-19, we heard that the United States was experiencing a "sex apocalypse". For t... more Years before COVID-19, we heard that the United States was experiencing a "sex apocalypse". For this reason, in my dissertation I explored sociosexually violent and increasingly algorithmic "syncing issues" of this era's U.S. landscape. In doing so, I found that, for decades, researchers like Field (2014) innervated the health harm(s) of touch hunger. Left untreated, touch starvation went endemic. Now, as people pretend COVID-19 is over, these two issues, in tandem, are especially concerning for immunocompromised folks. In said piece, I illuminated AFAB millennial and Gen Z folks heart-breaks and self-realizations taking place in algorithmic spaces. Herein, I continue documenting a contagious shift: increasing sociosexual expectations for cishet men. Additionally, I found that these groups are experiencing a post-Roe v Wade COVID-19 silver-lining: late-in-life realized queernesses and neurodiversity. To tingle new nerves, I update these temporally distanced dissertation discussions, provocatively unmasking and putting them into close conversation with another distanced intimacy: ASMR. After taking the body politic's temperature, I now amplify that these audio intimacies are filling intimacy gaps in the ongoing-COVID-19 envirusment because of colonial-founded capitalist-funded inequities.

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2023

"As a purposefully enacted form of praxis, this article represents a feminist meth- odological a... more "As a purposefully enacted form of praxis, this article represents a feminist meth- odological approach guided by the author’s personal introduction into choice works of feminist scholarship. By employing feminist epistemologies, this arti- cle demonstrates that each of our realities of understanding is made possible by our own differing subjective situations and our resonance towards difference. Throughout the piece, multiple parallel philosophical and ontological orientations are suggested in efforts to theoretically connect a broad array of feminist theories and praxis with canonic tenants of media ecology (such as language play, crea- tion of counter-environments and breakdowns as breakthroughs). Written prior to the ‘Gender and Media Ecology’ invited Special Issue of EME, Dr. bird provides their own survey of ‘Gender and Media Ecology’, suggesting foundational means of future critical pursuits. The ultimate aim of this work is to invite future, even more expansive critical media ecological scholarship to continue similar efforts, which would provide even more holistically intersectional and invaluable means of challenging taken-for-granted institutional and societal norms inside the field of
media ecology and beyond."

Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 2023

In this micro-chapbook of feminist poetry, Requirement Politics, the author has chosen poems writ... more In this micro-chapbook of feminist poetry, Requirement Politics, the author has chosen poems written both prior to and post- her recollection and resulting therapeutic struggle of working through her lifelong experiences of sexual harassment and assault. Historically situated within the neoliberally co-opted #MeToo campaign, Betsy Devos’s 2020 Title IX cross-examination mandate, and post-Trumpian present-COVID United States landscape, this work performs an ethnographic autopsy on the body politic: displaying the fleshy lived consequences of an unjust U.S. legal system. By continuing Faulkner’s work on poetic inquiry as feminist methodology, this piece contributes to an ongoing emergence of poetic praxis as a means of clapping back to structures of oppression. At its core, Requirement Politics repeats experiences and internalized words spoken by institutional figures reluctant to fulfill mandatory reporting requirements. By playing off of Higginbotham’s (1993) term respectability politics, this piece blurs lines of academic and poetic writing to deliberately collapse a fabricated line between public and private lived experiences.

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2023

The U.S. White Flight left historically and intentionally targeted marginalized groups in citysca... more The U.S. White Flight left historically and intentionally targeted marginalized groups in cityscapes in the impoverished dust of public transport. These racialized phenomena restructured urban environments and deadened surrounding landscapes, engendering deliberately baron space too far to traverse by no-and low-income feet. Now, in the present-COVID-19 envirusment, Midwest landscapes are an eyesore, which perpetually disable and dehumanize, further denying working folks from safe social distancing and PPE in areas already plagued with sociohistorical and economic disenfranchisements. Meanwhile, redlined and/or gentrified affluent spaces remain comprised of mostly Whites of a certain status. This project explores present-COVID-19 human implications of cars in a nation founded upon ecological devastations.

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2020

Since 2016, a culture of participatory leftism has emerged on Facebook that has yet to be substan... more Since 2016, a culture of participatory leftism has emerged on Facebook that has yet to be substantially documented. Scholars have established ideographic criticism of memes as a critical/cultural tool for analysis. However, there is little to no work on broader, systems-based analyses of alternative social media platforms, and the role they play in the creation and maintenance of political identities. These socially mediated communities, alternatively known as Leftbook (or Left Facebook), advertise themselves as places to learn about Marx, socialism, and philosophies centered on labor, revolution, and worker freedom. Research from traditional online group pages suggest there is a distinct split between neutral observers and harsh critics of Leftbook. According to Karlsson (2017)

A growing complaint in the Leftbook space that almost every group…like to joke about throwing people in labor camps. There was a period of 6-7 months where you couldn’t avoid seeing at least one ‘lol you go to gulag’, joke. (para. 7).

These online spaces often result in odd, hilarious, and peculiar behaviors that the untrained eye is quick to brush off as meaningless Internet drivel. However, humor and satire have long been used tactfully by counterculture organizations/movements to communicate the absurdity of the status quo. For instance, Waisanen (2009) argued that unlikely sources of comedic rhetorical criticism creatively influences and critically reframes political discourse; guiding audiences toward new possibilities of insight and democratic civil discourse.

Using Johnson's (2007) explanations of memetics as a guiding theory, I discuss Burke’s various work on human paradox, identification, Dramatism, and the comic frame to provide insight on notions of: identity performance, “slacktivism”, and burgeoning political resonance within this digital environment. I code preliminary themes of the post content of one Leftbook page, Sassy Socialist Memes, over the course of a month. My guiding research questions are, “As platforms such as Leftbook become environmental, how do they contribute to a mode of socio-political identity construction for members of the Left?” and “As extensions of political identity, how does the Sassy Social Memes page impact experiences of political organizing and engagement?”

Given the above questions, media ecology provides important conceptual resources for analysis given its focus on the broader systemic changes introduced by media as they become environmental. Thus, this paper blends insights from both rhetorical criticism, in its study of ideology and identity, with media ecological perspectives concerning media-as-environments. This paper will establish both content and medium characterization of Leftbook, and will make an argument for the importance of studying Leftbook digital spaces to gain further insight into alternative modes of sociopolitical identity construction. This analysis contributes to our understanding of Sassy Socialist Memes, and begins an argument that this digital environment has potential to function as a space of socio-political identity construction for members of the Left. The implications of these findings lean toward a burgeoning resonance of anti-capitalist solidarity, class struggle, and resentment of the late capitalist American two-party system.

Internet Research

PurposeTo provide human judgment input for computer algorithm development, this study examines th... more PurposeTo provide human judgment input for computer algorithm development, this study examines the relative importance of source, content, and style cues in predicting the truthfulness ratings of two common types of online health information: news stories and institutional news releases.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a multi-method approach using (1) a manual content analysis of 400 randomly selected online health news stories and news releases from HealthNewsReview.org and (2) an online experiment comparing truthfulness ratings between news stories and news releases.FindingsUsing content analysis, the authors found significant differences in the importance of source, content, and style cues in predicting truthfulness ratings of news stories and news releases: source and style cues predicted truthfulness ratings better than content cues. In the experiment, source credibility was the most important predictor of truthfulness ratings, controlling for individual differen...

The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society, 2021

Historically situated within the impending structural COVID-19 shut down of the United State Post... more Historically situated within the impending structural COVID-19 shut down of the United State Postal Service, this piece serves as a preliminary exploration into the philosophical, phenomenological, and media ecological understanding of the digital love note product’s—the Lovebox—appeal in the Western world. People throughout history have subscribed to various culturally specific sociopsychological and material concepts of expressing love. Whether through exchanged locks of hair; rings; hand-written, printed, shared, and mailed letters; or even binding legal agreements, various rituals have long-been socially accepted as symbolic proof of lovers’ fondness for each other. Alongside this, love’s visceral ability to travel along our corporeal beings has led some to believe that it can be physically contained. The impetus for this piece was the advertisement, “The Lovebox: Where Technology Meets Love,” sparking the guiding questions: Where did the idea of owning proof of one’s love come from, and can love be held in the digital age? Beyond exploring these questions, this article seeks to trace out the sociohistorical landscapes that have grounded an incentive for this product to exist in the age of smartphones and their digital-ilk.

OhioLink, 2022

This project examined traditional gendered discourses surrounding the ends and means of sexuality... more This project examined traditional gendered discourses surrounding the ends and means of sexuality, the emerging role of digital sexual technologies in purported sexual empowerment, and the socio-material aspects which revolve around these technologies, sexual medias, and sexual discourses. Combining critical feminist insights with media ecology, this project explored happenings within the sociosexually violent pre- and present-COVID-19 United States ecology, documenting novel and rigorous contributions in our increasingly algorithmic world. This study of the U.S. context critiques foundational constructs created by Enlightenment decisionmakers who rationalized colonial rhetorics and logics built into each preceding iteration of capitalisms from industrialism into neoliberalism since national origin. As such, it extends critiques of mechanistic models of the human body and sexual communications and situates them within the vastly uncriminalized sexual violences, as well as insufficient sexual education standards. Theoretically, I argue that a mechanization of humans has occurred, been pushed to its extreme, and is flipping into a humanization of objects. To demonstrate this, I critical feminist rhetorically analyzed 75 biomimetic sextech advertisements from the brand Lora DiCarlo, contextualizing them in salient discourses within 428 present-COVID-19 TikTok videos, investigating: “What rhetorical themes occur within advertisements for biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers in the late-stage present-COVID-19 neoliberal U.S. landscape?” “How have biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers effected how their sexual experiences are created and maintained in the sociosexual U.S. landscape?” and “How are biomimetic sextech changing vulva-havers sexual sense-making, experiences, and relations within the sexually violent late-stage capitalist present-COVID-19 U.S. landscape?” Using a feminist eye, this brings to media ecology a contextualization of biomimetic sextech devices marketed to vulva-havers, situating their socio-political and cultural nuances in conversation with otherwise taken for granted biological components of cisnormative and heteronormative life, among other relevant characteristics. Ergo, this project debuts a brand new liberatory embodied research paradigm.

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2019

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2020

At the time of this publication, Bernadette was a second year Phd student in Bowling Green State ... more At the time of this publication, Bernadette was a second year Phd student in Bowling Green State University’s Media & Communication program with an emphasis in Global Development and Social Change. Her research interests intersect the broad fields of critical and feminist theories, with an eye towards the ideological struggle between institutions, gender, and media ecology. In 2019 she was awarded the BGSU School of Media & Communication Harold & Elaine Fisher Award, first place in the Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies Graduate Essay Contest for her chapbook of poems From Boys to Men, and the 2019 Media Ecology Association Top Convention Paper. Her publications include #WhatNext: Political Implications of the #MeToo Campaign Aftermath in Maria Marron’s Misogyny Across Global Media volume to be published May 2020, and The Role of Sassy Socialist Memes in Leftbook in volume 19 of the journal Explorations in Media Ecology (EME).

Explorations in Media Ecology, 2021

These pieces of COVID-19 poetry in their pixelated form follow McLuhan's playful use and misuse o... more These pieces of COVID-19 poetry in their pixelated form follow McLuhan's playful use and misuse of the phonetic English language. They contribute to media ecology a continued poetic exploration into how our blurry presences in physical and digital spaces engender our landscapes at varying degrees and levels of experience. Through poetic exploration of this envirusment, I invoke the inherently insufficient and terminally playful qualities of language; both enabling and disabling our dualistic experiential accounts of proximity, relations, and visceral corporeality in present-COVID. Depending on which dimension readers interpretatively focus on while reading, their own unique personal frame will guide their own unique translation.

Maria Marron's Misogyny Across Global Media Volume, 2020

Although the 2017 revival of the #MeToo campaign has received mass media praise, it’s direct cont... more Although the 2017 revival of the #MeToo campaign has received mass media praise, it’s direct contribution to the current social shift fighting for social and political justice has yet to be empirically documented. Did this campaign provide temporary catharsis further inhibiting enactment within the social and political spheres? Understandings of social media campaigns’ role in social action is still limited in the literature. Using Bowers, Ochs, & Jensen (1971) explanations of rhetoric of agitation and control, I analyze news and social media accounts of the #MeToo campaign activity and the possible unfolding of social actions or inactions, including planned and forthcoming public events or campaigns over the next few months. This paper will place #MeToo within the context of feminism rhetoric and socio-political change. This analysis contributes to our understanding of social media’s role in political action and the position of feminist discourse within the public rhetoric to end sexual abuse, assault, and exploitation.

Critical Media Ecological Pedagogy Bernadette Bowen, Bowling Green State University Teaching Read... more Critical Media Ecological Pedagogy Bernadette Bowen, Bowling Green State University Teaching Reading Comprehension Effectively Using an Online Quiz Tool Brian Coffey, Eastern Michigan Universit

Explorations in Media Ecology

The US White flight left historically and intentionally targeted marginalized groups in cityscape... more The US White flight left historically and intentionally targeted marginalized groups in cityscapes in the impoverished dust of public transport. These racialized phenomena restructured urban environments and deadened surrounding landscapes, engendering deliberately barren space too far to traverse by no- and low-income feet. Now, in the present-COVID-19 envirusment, Midwest landscapes are an eyesore, which perpetually disable and dehumanize, further denying working folks from safe social distancing and PPE in areas already plagued with socio-historical and economic disenfranchisements. Meanwhile, redlined and/or gentrified affluent spaces remain composed of mostly Whites of a certain status. This project explored present-COVID-19 human implications of cars in a nation founded upon ecological devastations.