Deafness: The Hidden Disability

 

Hundreds, maybe thousands of sounds go through our ears every day that we take for granted but can you imagine what it would be like to have none of that?

For people who are profoundly deaf like Christina, these every day sounds from the birds chirping to your own husbands voice can be hard to decipher even with the help of hearing aids. She explains that they merely amplify the noise, but with her lack of clarity and inability to hear sharp sounds, she finds it difficult to make out the emotions in peoples voices.

Deafness is referred to as the hidden disability because initially it isn’t something that is as strikingly obvious as some disabilities. The struggles of people like Christina who are profoundly deaf but try their hardest to keep up in what they refer to as ‘the hearing world’ are something that are very common for the deaf community. Lip reading along with her hearing aids and a desire to preserver has gotten her this far, “I bluffed people into thinking I was hearing for years” Christina explains.

Deafness is a disability that can have an effect on lots of every day life tasks that we take for granted.  Christina tells us of some of the hurdles she overcame such as her education, which took extra effort and some help from The Deaf Society, who still help deaf students today. Her career was also something that was effected by her deafness as things like the inability to talk on the phone or interact well in large crowds meant that she was limited to certain jobs, “I’ve done a career which I can do as a deaf person without too much hassle.”

After a lot of consideration and a desire to be able to improve her family and social life, Christina underwent surgery to get a Cochlear Implant. Hearing her own voice at the switch on was one of the biggest shocks of her life. This step for her was a life changing event and her husband, Ian, described the switch on as one of the most emotional events of his life.

It has improved her life in so many ways, especially socially as Ian explains “confidence is the greatest improvement that I have noticed.” In this video we explore Christina’s experiences as a deaf person, her reasoning for getting the cochlear implants and her bright future.

The Modern Shapeshifter

Claudia Blanche dressed in cosplay for 2014 Comicgong

A not so secret second life and identity is what Claudia Blanche manages to create as she transformed herself from a quiet university student to a confident and charismatic fantasy character.

It’s called cosplay and it has become a world wide phenomena. Blanche knew from a young age that she was a bit different to the people around her. Her interests were worlds away in a land of fantasy fuelled by manga and anime. She soon found it was no longer enough for her to simply observe it, she had to become it.

Spending her younger days googling characters in admiration, she stumbled upon something completely foreign and intriguing to her. They were photos of people dressed up as these characters with, what she described as, “incredibly accurate and detailed costumes.” She tells me “it was from then on I knew that cosplay was something that I just had to become involved in.”

Cosplaying has managed to create a whole new persona for Blanche, as she goes from her shy self to oozing with confidence in costume as I go to take her portrait. In costume she comes out of her shell, stating she feels “way more outgoing and confident than I do out of costume!” As I walk around the Comicgong convention with her, people ask for photos and shower her in compliments. When she tells me “It’s like being famous when you’re dressed up,” I can only agree in awe.

She no longer worries about her differences to others as her transformation into somebody else creates charisma and new friendships with people of similar interests. “I find it a lot easier to talk to strangers because there’s already familiarity established between you and them,” Blanche states.

The transformation into a character is a detailed process as she explains the need to not only look like them but to take on their personality traits as well to create the ultimate impersonation. It is an expressive art form for Blanche as well as a form of respect and admiration for characters, stating “it’s also really fun to become someone you look up to and idolise.”

A perfectionist and work-a-holic at heart, Blanche loves to enter cosplay competitions and has won a few such as at Animania Festival where she was awarded ‘Master Novice Cosplayer’. She describes the hard work she puts into her cosplays and it is evident in the pristine costume she presents herself in as we meet (see picture above). These competitions for her create “affirmation from both the judges and the crowd that my portrayal of my character was the best it could possibly be.”

Her latest cosplay sensation is Cardcaptor Sakura, as seen in the above photograph, which she describes as her best work yet due to all her effort. “I’m really proud of this costume because I made it myself from scratch, and I’ve even had people tell me that I look ‘real’ as though the character has actually come to life,” she states. All her hard work pays off in the enjoyment and confidence that cosplay brings her.

“I don’t hold back when I tell people that I cosplay. It’s such an important part of who I am.”

Sensationalism: Who’s to Blame?

Image Source

A sprinkle of sensationalism and a dusting of fact, a formula some journalists like to use when their story just doesn’t hold enough wow factor, creating what we call yellow journalism.

Of course this is no new phenomena, yellow journalism and sensationalism has been a part of the journalism world since the printing presses. However it’s continuing and heightened use in todays news is cause for concern.

While the aim of a journalist is to seek out and report the truth to the public, John Daly tell us that “the more exotic journalists can make the story, the better it is for readership and ratings,” with the example of the hundreds of conspiracy theories in the media surrounding the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

The competition between media sources, for example newspapers, is a defining factor in sensationalism. Along with the decline in print media the competition to sell the most and to raise profits is as high as ever. Lulu Brenda Harris tell us that to raise these profits newspapers often create sensationalised headlines that can stray from the stores contents in order to entice the reader. “Very few people can afford to buy more than one newspaper, thats why newspapers create these screaming headlines to entice a reader to but their copy foregoing the rest,” said Innocent Kurwa, a former editor of The Daily News.

This sensationalism and blurring of the truth may be a problem but where does the problem lie? What do we find more interesting, a man saved from drowning, a cancer patient surviving or the workings of a serial killer? While the thought that our news outlets using sensationalism and hype outrages us, we as consumers should consider what we find interesting enough to consume and to pay for.

“Sensation sells, and more people are more interested in the latest crime than they are in the development of a new form of energy,” says George Taber, past business editor at Time magazine.

The Death of Print Media

The rising consumption of newspapers and news online.

Print is slowly but surely declining while online media sites, blogs and even social media thrive with producing the latest news right to your fingertips.

As people in the digital age, we want our information fast, convenient and if possible free, as student Jasmin Macey states “undoubtedly I find it [the internet] is a more convenient platform for people nowadays to access stories.” The rise of the internet has then had a great impact on the way we gather our information and the way journalism works with print outlets now taking all kinds of measures to save money such as cutting jobs, slimming down the number of pages or becoming less frequent, for example New York Magazines decision to become a bi-weekly magazine “due in part to how the Internet has changed the way readers consume content.”

Image Source: Newspaper Association of America

Amy Starling, who is interested in both online and print journalism, is however optimistic about the future of print journalism. Print media can still be a relevant force as it is “the original and the best way to disseminate information … the online world is super ephemeral: you can be reading an update on the Ukrainian crisis one minute and looking down Miley Cyrus’s open gob the next. Print media has a sense of permanence and quality,” she states. With the use of editorial staff and qualified journalists print media is often an outlet for more articulate and crafted journalism stories than what we might find online.

While, as all of my interview subjects addressed, jobs are being lost through this decline in print media, many more jobs and opportunities are being opened up. Student Jasmin Macey is enthused about the prospects of online journalism as “the publication of stories online can encourage active audience participation as readers can promptly provide feedback on a piece and share it with friends or colleagues on social media or email if they desire.”

The rise of online journalism allows for this audience participation and in turn allows for citizen journalism. Anybody in todays digital age can start a blog, write a story or submit to the opinions section of online publications. It brings into question the reliability of the source and also the relevance of qualified journalists. Student Zoe Simmons is not too concerned with citizen journalism taking over journalism jobs, she states that “we as trained journalists have actual skills and can then aggregate and curate their stories, essentially writing them better” than your average citizen.

While there are many concerns around this online citizen journalism to do with it’s creditability and also its effect on the industry, online outlets can be beneficial in ways print can not. They can allow for an opinion that is not controlled by a large media company as student Dean Blake tells us “citizens don’t care about PR spin, or about whether what they say will hurt a brand, so if they see something happen they will tell it like it is.”

Print media will not die out for a while yet, but there is no denial that there has been a rise in online journalism and that this new form of journalism has bought about some struggles but also some innovative forms of journalism. The future of journalism, is however, continuously up in the air.

“Its a slow burn, but one day they [newspapers] will be obsolete” says Dean Blake.