Introduction
The purpose of this report is to explain what exactly is, what its purpose is and how exactly it can be used to address some specific social problems in Leicester.
But because there are so many problems that happen in the UK and new ones or old ones re/occur every day it’s best to focus on the social issues that were focused on for the Café completed… Because I’ve already done the research for them and it would take too long to bring up everything that’s going wrong.
The social problems in question are firstly how to help people identify and cope with dementia, because it is a sadly ignored by both people who don’t have anyone who suffers from it, and the government.
And secondly social isolation in the elderly. By which is meant preventing the elderly from being isolated socially, not isolating the elderly socially. Perhaps an unnecessary distinction, but one that should be made, because one promotes the socialising of the elderly, which is good. Whilst the other… does the opposite, which would be bad.
Can Social Media Cafés address specific social media problems in Leicester
It would be best to start with explaining what a Social Media Café is. The idea is fairly new, only being created within the last ten years. The idea is a simple one where someone arranges a meeting at a local café, usually a quieter time, perhaps early in the morning or later in the evening so as to have an easier conversation. The meeting could be about a mutual interest, to learn of something of which they do not already know, or even just to meet some new people and get out of the house.
The café also serves a person in teaching people who might not know how to already, use various social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc.) to spread their own ideas across the internet and find an audience to listen to them or people to talk to about their shared experiences with the mutual interest.
The Community media café by the current year students doing the TECH2503 course individual thought of their own topics to discuss throughput the café.
• Joshua Watkins
o Discussing the issues of dementia and social isolation in the elderly, and how using comics and media from their past could help.
• Samson Ajayi
o Using music and creativity to bring a community together, as well as bringing aspiring artists an initial audience.
• Riaz Adam
o Health awareness for the youths and elderly of the community, with a focus on sports/physical activities.
• Bex Hardy
o Teaching the community about recycling, upcycling and other eco-friendly ideas.
• Atanas Doykov
o Discussing the issue of water scarcity, using social media platforms to give people ideas on how to reduce their water consumption.
• Ayanna Nembhard-Brown
o Informing people who might not know about the advantages of using online shopping, as well as warning about possible dangers
• Laury Jasper & Aiden Reynolds
o Creating a podcast, with the purpose of showing people how easy it is to give a voice to a community.
• Kellie Warren
o Raising awareness for mental health and what facilities and services are available in Leicester to help coping with it.
• Fabio Mendes
o Informing the elderly on how to stay safe online, protecting personal information, detecting fraud, useful apps and how to change settings on personal devices etc.
• Arsalaan Khan
o Educating street performers about how they can use social media to find a market for their work.
As clearly seen there were many ideas put in place for the Community Media Café, but since only one was actually done by the writer that is going to be focussed on.
So, the topic mentioned was Dementia and Social Isolation in the elderly, it would probably be a good idea to explain exactly what those things are and why they are problems worth dealing with.
Dementia
Dementia is a syndrome that is associated with the degradation of the brain that causes it to malfunction. Leading to problems such as:
• Forgetfulness
• Slower thinking speed
• Difficulty with language
• Problems with understanding things
• Poor judgement
• Temperamental moods
• Issues with movement
• Apathy or disinterest to usual activities
• Generally having a difficult time with daily activities
However, it is quite difficult to identify whether or not a person is suffering from dementia, and since there is no current cure, it is vital to identify it in its earlier stages, when it can be treated and slowed down, which allows the victim to keep their faculties for longer.
The reason it’s necessary to care about this is due to how easily it could affect you or a loved one. After the age of 65, 1 in 14 people will start to suffer, and the number increase to 1 in 6 once people reach the age of 80.
(NHS, 2017)
Social Isolation
Social isolation is a thing which affects everyone, but there was a theme set up with the previous topic which is going to be stuck, so this will specifically deal with social isolation in the elderly.
The premise of the concept is that is a state where a person has little to no human contact, they will start to lead to a lack of self-esteem, fear of others and strangely enough loneliness. It also causes a rather tragic repetition, as when the victim stops contacting their friends and family, and slowly loses their social skills. Their friend/family member will try and get in contact with them, but due to the lack of social skill the victim will appear abrasive, causing the friend/family member to be insulted and leave, which causes the victim to be alone again and their social skills to degrade even more.
To find out whether someone is suffering from social isolation is difficult to spot. The difficulty being that the casual observer cannot see someone who is isolated, due to be isolating person being out of sight and therefore, unable to be seen. However, this does provide a loophole since the isolated person’s absence is notable in itself and worth arousing suspicion.
It is also of worth mentioning that all the articles fail to take into account, that it is currently the 21st Century and the internet has been around long enough that a generation has grown up with it always having exist, thus the experts fail to consider that people can interact with other people online. And these experts might bring up the fact that, that type of interaction doesn’t count, because its only text based. Which is true, when the internet was new, since then there has been audio/visual improvements allowing for even better communication between people. And that’s not even taking into account the most recent development of Virtual Reality helmets, which whilst not as perfect as it could be, adds more context to a discussion, because now there is movement to a discussion. Which any conversation with an Italian, is vital, because gesticulations add another level to dialogue.
Although it could affect anyone, in any age bracket, for sake of the argument and the title of the report its best to focus on the elderly who are afflicted. Possibly because they don’t use any internet forums to talk, for whatever reason. Though if you were to follow Douglas Adams’ reasoning for people’s reaction to developing technology.
“1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
(Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, Pg. 111)
Though that shouldn’t dampen the serious of social isolation of the elderly, as at their age, the depression brought upon from being alone could/will have dire repercussions upon their health, eventually leading to death. As opposed to aging until their body stops working, like the elderly who aren’t socially isolated.
Their isolation can be caused in the usually manner, in the previous paragraphs, but the main cause is once again due to their age and outliving everyone they know, once their spouse or friends die, the victim will close themselves off against the world and spiral into loneliness and despair. Being placed into nursing homes and left alone by their families to rot. A touch melodramatic, but it is the unfortunate fate facing some of the elderly in some countries. Especially those which refuse to allow euthanasia.
What can be done in the Café?
So, considering these two, terrible conditions what can be done to help the victims… The answer will not shock you since it’s what the entire module is centred around, and that is Community Media Cafés.
Although the NHS could deal with this if they were given and better budget, and maybe perhaps a bingo night, or screenings of films and television from their childhood.
But since this 3000-word report has to be about Community Media Cafés, the focus should be on that as a concept, because they can be used to help. How this differs to a coffee-morning is… in the sense that the café doesn’t have to be entirely focussed on a single topic… except when they are.
This requires thought on what can be done during the hour the group has in the café, apart from the obvious matter that you’ve gathered a group of people who are dealing with a similar problem, they are automatically going to feel a sense of kinship and open up to each other. Which deals with the problem of social isolation, but then again if they are already out of the house, then that’s the first part of the problem solved.
This leaves the problem of what can be done about dementia, which for those not already afflicted by it; lingers like an unpleasant, unwritten essay in the future. So, what can be done? An unorthodox answer, at least to the writer; would be to get a doctor in one morning to explain, exactly what dementia is, what can be done about and most importantly how it can be identified.
The identifying part couldn’t actually be done in the café though as it requires first going to a GP, then if they are suspicious that you have dementia, with refer you to a dementia specialist who can fully determine whether or not you have dementia or not.
And that’s the simplified version, in certain cases it feels like an RPG quest, where the GP will either send you to a
• Psychiatrist – Who specialises in treating patients with dementia, (amusingly/condescendingly called an Old age psychiatrist).
• Gentrician – A fancy name for a physician who focuses on elderly care.
• Neurologist – The expert who really seems to be the most related to the subject as a neurologist deals with conditions which affect the brain and nervous system.
And even after that, the specialist might want to use some of the equipment they have and take an MRI or CT scan which would be difficult to bring into a café, not to mention dangerous. Since the MRI machine uses very power Electro-Magnetic waves, and since cutlery is traditionally made from metal. It would be massively entertaining to see that, but also very hazardous. Or perhaps even worse, if the person being tested had metal tooth-fillings.
After all that it would be in the best interest of the group to learn about what can be done once they find out if they do or do not have dementia.
One of the other activities that can be done, which might be enjoyable for the age bracket, since it relies heavily on nostalgia, is the creation of a Memory Box.
Memory Boxes
Memory Boxes are quite a simple concept. It being a box in which a person places an item or items with which they have an emotional connection.
Though traditionally, these are boxes meant for the deceased, as they are supposed to have the emotional connection to the items as they remind them of the person they have just lost. But seeing as this is for people who have or are going to have memory issues, the principle should work for them as well.
Have the person fill the box with items from their past, perhaps with the help of a loved one and then reminisce on the full life they have lived up to that point, and if they can’t remember anything about the item they’re looking at, at that moment in time then they could either look to whoever put that item in there in the first place, or spend the next several hours making a mind map to find out precisely why they have the thing in the box in the first place.
For those who are socially isolated, it could be something akin to a show and tell, where they bring in a box of stuff which has some significance to them and then talk about it, afterwards talking to each other and bonding over a possible shared interest.
Personally, I would have the audience create memory boxes of media from their childhoods, mainly because it would be interesting to see the divide of what type of things are consumed by the different generations but mostly because what ever peaked my interest from what has been shown to me means that I would have something new to consume and experience, which is usually good.
From personal experience at the community media café that was run as part of this module, which forced me to talk to people about this subject matter, I found out that there was one British comic that connected two random people. Weirdly enough that comic was Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future, from the comic The Eagle. Although nothing came out of it, it does prove that forms of media from people’s childhood can be used to connect them, and if they were to be together at the same time, it would give them something to bond over.
Conclusion
In conclusion, do I think that Social Media Cafés address specific social media problems in Leicester? Seeing as I have been forced to sit through six weeks of doing them, I am forced to say yes.
But personally, I see them as being no different to any other form of get-together, it’s just giving a name to something that already exists in different formats and conglomerating them into one. It’s an ugly mish-mash of concepts smashed together that somehow works even though it doesn’t have a clear idea of what it wants to be other than, “A place where the community gathers, to feel more like a community”.
Of course, the only people who to go to this would be people who are interested in feeling more a part of the community, such as all the retired elderly people who can go to a café at 10 in the morning. Which obviously creates a fallacy in the sense that this doesn’t really fulfil the definition of a community, more just a group of likeminded people coming together.
They could be used to solve social issues, but to do that lots of people who live in the same area would need to attend, and by that point. Whoever is organising the café needs to find a time which suits everyone, make sure that the place is accessible to everyone and if the place serves food & drink, serves nothing that could potentially kill anyone.
All of which requires somebody totally devoted to bringing people together.
Which brings it around again to be a matter of personal opinion… I don’t like Community Media Cafés because I was forced to sit and talk to a room full of strangers, which quoting John-Paul Satre,
“Hell is other people”.
(No Exit, 1944)
Locked in a room where people judge me in an hour based on only what I bring to the session that week. I can think of worse fates, but this is up there. Adding to that the fact that I innately distrust people who form large groups with the purpose of unification, makes me even more unnerved.
Then there is the aspect that the café is set up with the intention of unifying people who live (in this case) Leicester. Well that means that you’re just trying to make people feel proud about the city they live in, which ignores the fact that some people (And by this, I mean me), see this city and being no different than any other city, it’s just a place. To them there is nothing special about, it’s just a place where they live and work, they have lived elsewhere and will probably go to live somewhere else.
These are all of course personal feeling from a people who is borderline autistic. But the main reason why I don’t like them as a Concept, goes back to the start of the conclusion. How are they any different from a Coffee morning for cancer support, or a late-night teaching class, or an independent cinema which has showings of films from specific eras every week.
They don’t.
A Community Media Café is just one of those things, without a conclusive personality. People like things with a purpose, when someone comes along with something, saying that it could be anything, they won’t be interested because they’d only go along for the thing that they’re interested in and ignore the others, because that’s how most people act.
But this is coming from someone who hates being forced to do group activities, so it should probably be taken with several truckloads of salt.
References
Jennifer Jones (13/11/2013) What is a Community Media Cafe? – How to get involved, Available at: http://digitalcommonwealth.co.uk/2013/11/13/what-is-a-community-media-cafe-how-to-get-involved/ (Accessed: 5th May 2018).
NHS (15/06/2017) About dementia, Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/dementia/about/ (Accessed: 04th May 2018).
Douglas Adams (2002) The Salmon of Doubt, 1st edn., NYC: Random House LLC.
Wikipedia (23/04/2018) Social Isolation, Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_isolation (Accessed: 6th May 2018).
Frank T. McAndrew (12/11/2016) The Perils of Social Isolation, Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-ooze/201611/the-perils-social-isolation (Accessed: 7th May 2018).
NHS (19/06/2017) How to get a dementia diagnosis, Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dementia/diagnosis/ (Accessed: 7th May 2018).
MacMillan Cancer Support (2018) Making a memory box, Available at: https://www.macmillan.org.uk/information-and-support/coping/advanced-cancer/relationships/making-a-memory-box.html (Accessed: 7th May 2018).
John-Paul Satre (2010) No Exit, NYC: Samuel French, Inc..