public affairs – ELENA BLOGS, YOU READ

FAIR PHONE, HONEST MOBILE

I was researching this a few weeks ago preparing to write this blog, wondering what is the carbon footprint of my phone usage and of my mobile brand(Huawei) and found an article from Honest Mobile, which said that even ‘’sending a text message (SMS) produces 0.014g of CO2 and using 1GB of data uses 0.3kg of CO2’’ because all those restaurant food, face, outfit of the day selfies add up considerably over the course of a year. Honest Mobile is the first carbon neutral mobile network who plants trees for its customers who help them offset their own carbon footprint. How come they aren’t more popular? *considering how many people want to lead more sustainable lifestyles and all that. Maybe if they had just a bit of PR, you know? A few press mentions? I’m sure they’d appreciate being written about in at least one student blog(—>).

So what is a Fairphone? Fairphone is a B Corp company (just like Honest Mobile), who produce repairable, low impact android phones, so I’m taking a guess they don’t slow down the phone operating system to ‘’make you’’ buy a new phone if you have a three year-old iPhone(Tech Radar 2021). The cool aspect here is that you can return your old phone to them, in an effort to reduce e-waste. If you replace a phone, you can’t just throw it in the bin, it’s an environmental sin we’re all guilty of committing at least once. I honestly do not remember how I disposed of my old phone, but committing to being more careful now that I know about phone recycling.

How food selfies will look on a fairphone concept – Photo by Blue Bird for @Pexels

The sad part about smartphones is that there is modern slavery mined raw materials for them to be built, If we knew how many slaves worked for us(Ethical), we’d be pretty shocked(38 slaves worked to make goods for me according to quiz). Tungsten, cobalt, as well as ‘’Coltan is an effective capacitor found in electronics. A U.S. State Department official was interviewed about Coltan mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He pointed to the reporter’s smartphone and said, “The likelihood that one of these was not touched by a slave is pretty low”(Slavery Footprint).

The cool thing about Fairphones is that they sell spare parts, and these phones seem to have a removable battery, which new phones on the market moved away from(at least my Honor 8s). Apart from Honest Mobile, they should also partner up with Pela Case, for custom Fairphone cases. Honestly these should have a wider coverage, as I want these available in Romania, where I live, I want access to these! I think an Honest Mobile sim would go pretty handsomely with a Fairphone. If you are based in the UK and want to make a difference, give this a go! Do I have to move to the UK now? In a world full of iPhones and Android mobiles, I’d like to be a Fairphone, and I’m open to relocate.

PROTECT YOUR KIDS FROM THE DANGERS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

I see a lot of parents even famous ones create social media accounts for their children, but do they take the dangers of social media into account? Several years ago I came across a video posted by Bark, a tech company, who decided to show parents what can happen to kids as young as 12 on social media. These kids are easy meat to pedophiles, who will work hard to coerce, abuse, collect photos and videos of these kids and use that to get more.

Once this 37 year old mom transformed into a 11 year old girl, they immediately received inappropriate questions. In the video, they mentioned a lot of these lurkers go unreported, which I think contributes to this problem’s perpetuation, but also due to lack of understanding and awareness. The authorities cannot build a relationship with your children for you, you have to build trust, honesty, and teach them about the dark side of using social media, considering that a statistic collected by Guard Child states that 67% of teens said they know how to hide their online activities from their parents.

According to Statista, 35% of Romanian women experienced sexual harassment since 15 years old, compared to 55% of British women with 29% of sexual crime relationships were initiated on a social media platform. Even if you are millennial, a YouGov 2017 survey discovered that 29% of women received unwanted body pictures(I’m being classy for the sake of this post) from strangers.

It’s not just Instagram and Snapchat which were mentioned by Bark’s video, but also Twitter, where porn also doesn’t get removed, despite reports from users, even if you report photo manipulations (celebrity faces pasted on porn pics for example – I tried it). Your minor boys aren’t safe either. ‘’Influencer’’ James Charles flirted many times with minor boys on TikTok, and defended himself saying he will ask for ID next time he will have a conversation with a guy, among other things, and had no charges pressed because he’s rich.

Back in February 2022, Pink News reported on a man who created a fake account on a dating app posing as a lesbian and was caught by the Cumbria Constabulary, who worked undercover. The groomer denied accusations, but they had too much evidence, like the times the man asked for explicit photos and s*x acts, all of which led to his 27 month sentencing, but now looking at what he did, clearly is not enough, even if he has to sign sex offenders register and abide by sexual harm prevention order for 10 years.

Virtual kidnappings are also an increasing trend and the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI)’s special agent Siobhan Johnson issued a warning to the public about it in March 2022. The definition of virtual kidnapping is ‘’An extortion scheme wherein people receive phone calls telling them their loved one has been kidnapped and will be killed or harmed if they do not immediately go to the bank and wire money’’. One of the ways to identify a virtual kidnapping is asking how the victim looks like, which they were seen to struggle answering. The special agent gives parents tips to prevent the scam, like having a password if one of your kids is indeed in trouble, and to never share travel details(location, dates) online, because scammers search for victims that way.

This is why I think the internet needs to be policed more, for safety reasons. I wonder what Elon Musk will do now, after he made an offer to buy Twitter for $41.39 billion and got blocked. After news that he became the platform’s biggest shareholder, Vanguard upped their stake in the platform, so clearly someone was upset not being number 1. That put aside, this post is just a reminder to have fun with social media responsibly.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER SHOOTING IN THE US

Sacramento, California had a rough Sunday last week. Then Dallas, Texas saw a shooting a few days later. So how many more shooting should happen before gun ownership is restricted? Apart from the mass shootings we see happening in the US, according to data provided by gunviolencearchive.org, in 2019 there have been 23,941 suicides by gun alone, for 2020 that data is pending. A graph shown by The Trace revealed that gun deaths have risen, from 16,000 in 2019, to over 20,000 in 2021, using data from Gun Violence Archive.

In the Sacramento shooting case arrests have already been made, where one of the suspects had an early prison release, convicted on domestic violence and assault. The Dallas case is looking for suspects. My immediate thought was how come they can get a gun so quickly out of prison? Surely, psychological testing needs to be made mandatory when a citizen applies for gun ownership as well, and to frequently pass these tests, to prove they are mentally stable. Access to guns shouldn’t be so easy either. The American Psychological Association(APA) thought the same and developed a framework for practitioners when conducting firearm psychological evaluations. My question is whether this framework is actually used?

People who are mentally unsound still own a gun in the US despite the federal law prohibiting it, and around the world, some are political leaders, playing with weaponry like toy. The problem with the USA is it is comprised of 50 states and each state has its own laws like you can see here. It is probably a headache to get all state governors to agree on one law for all states, because they are mostly men ‘’in charge’’, AP reported as of 2021, only 9 women served as governors. We can only dream of a world led by women, it would look and feel amazing.

My second discovery happened to be from Statista, the ‘’Number of people shot to death by the police in the United States from 2017 to 2022, by race’’ – that graph has an unknown race section that I’m more intrigued by, particularly the 2021 spike indicating 608 deaths people in charge and researchers should know more of, but it doesn’t disclose whether we are looking at police gun violence or accidental shooting. I don’t think we as a collective forgot about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

I mentioned psychological evaluations for citizens when they apply for gun ownership, which should extend to police officers, as it makes sense to have tests every 6 months, not just when they start their careers. If they already do, why did George Floyd and Breonna Taylor happen, and continues to? I take a guess that nothing will change until it turns into a personal crisis for politicians. Until then, American children(but not of the rich) go through active shooter drills in school to prepare them for ”in case when”.

What your favorite part of this post? Let me know by dropping a comment!

Photo link: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-yellow-and-white-labeled-paper-3926747/

PESTERING WOMEN TO BECOME CRIMINAL OFFENCE

I can’t remember anything else to shake and shock the internet quite like Sarah Everard’s murder, last year. She was a 33-year old woman, a marketing executive, who walked home from her friend’s house, the same evening a police officer decided to kidnap, rape her, kill her and dispose of her. Nobody is ever safe, no matter the time of day and location, especially if you are a woman walking alone.

Good news is that new laws are going to be introduced to tackle violence and sexual harassment against women, question is – when? I found that penalties for non-compliance with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 will be introduced ’’when Parliamentary time allows’’(2021 UK Annual Report on Modern Slavery, p.9) so God knows what physical laws governs Parliamentary time, especially when it comes to protecting women, we all know Justice is blind.

Victory does come true sometimes, like in Gina Martin’s case, who made upskirting illegal in the UK and it is a criminal offence. She really told women ‘’Don’t accept assault as ‘part of life’ as a woman.’’ which inspired my choice of the photo. Because too often women choose to stay silent, because we’re gonna think nobody takes us seriously, or that we won’t be believed, but that because we talk to the wrong crowd!

Pestering women is set to become criminal offence too, and it would be perfect if Parliamentary time would accelerate for the new laws to be passed, as ‘’a public sexual harassment offence which doesn’t currently exist’’(Ladbible) and it’s about time it did exist. Women should be able to walk alone in the evening and not worry about their safety, but when?

WALKING OUT ON DISNEY

I am passionate about public relations, specifically interested in public affairs. I chose to write my dissertation from the perspective of public affairs professionals, and how they can help lobby and pressurize governmental bodies to improve and toughen laws to eradicate modern slavery(the research question) so all of this made my ears perk up, interested to see how companies handle a crisis and how they communicate.

Disney surprised internauts and their own LGBTQIA+ employees with news that the company made ‘’donations to the Republican legislators behind Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill’’(Vulture). It led their employees to organize walkouts to protest Disney’s involvement in the bill. I wrote my Ethics essay on them and they made the impression to be a company who works hard on being progressive, future-forward, yet this donation is contradictive, like Disney’s many other past actions.

Image credit @pamcakiee https://twitter.com/pamcakiee/status/1506314754218131457

Disney’s own LGBTQIA+ staff must be feeling disappointed by this bill and CEO Bob Chapek, who apologized to them after a whole week of protesting, but what do apologies mean? Especially when Disney as a whole was supposed to condemn the bill not support it, knowing they have LGBTQIA+ staff. In response to Los Angeles Times, I think Bob would love to be considered/remembered as Disney’s ‘’full blown Mouse Messiah’’(I found that super hilarious) but love to see that it was Chapek’s predecessor Bob Iger who tweeted about the bill.

But Disney and its Board of Directors have bigger fish to fry because four Disney employees were arrested by Florida police as part of an undercover mission to expose a human trafficking ring, a retired judge was arrested and over 100 arrests were made(by the many articles it is mentioned in) I can say it was a success.

It wasn’t disclosed who did what in the human trafficking ring(understandable) just that four individuals were child predators and one was acted a human trafficker. The four Disney employees allegedly were placed on unpaid leave(Deseret News) which is unreal. In light of the P&O sackings in the UK, I reckon Disney’s HR would like to see the evidence provided by the Police of their involvement before firing them.

What do you think of Disney’s employees protesting “Don’t Say Gay” bill? You can visit the Twitter account dedicated to the employee walkout here.