Abigail Connolly
I'm from the UK and worked for many years for international Non-Governmental Organisations including Oxfam. Now a Rotary Peace Fellow at International Christian University in Tokyo.
Location Tokyo
Activity
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I just really liked her positive attitude, it sounds like such a challenging job but she recognises that she learned a lot personally. It was interesting to hear her say that she doesn't always understand what is being said in meetings, but that she would go furhter with a follow up meeting. Also, she seems to have a good understanding of why stakeholders have...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
We had talked before about evidence-based policy, but we have to remember that power is a really important factor in policy-making and implementation. I need to think about how to combine evidence with navigating power dynamics.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Really important point about different world views. It is so easy to have misunderstandings especially with different languages and cultures. It has happened so many times to me! Saying sorry and explaining why usually helped.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
These are really interesting points and I can see myself using these methods. I am curious though - does this work for all cultures? For example, to bring a conflict out into the open? I am interested in other perspectives!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Consensus definitely works well, for example in Japan in the pandemic there was no law from the government or penalites for wearing masks, but everyone wears masks so there is a consensus that that is what everybody will do. In Japan it is very unusual to see anyone outside without a mask on. Yet in the UK where yesterday it became law again to wear masks in...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Employers, government, parents, voluntary groups ...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
So many inspirational people in the video. It seems the common thread is personal experience which drives their passion, but also that personal experience feeds into their understanding of the topic and the stakeholders. That gives me a better understanding of why I am passionate about gender equality - from my own lived experience.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I like how she recognises she has the knowledge, skill and passion.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I hadn't really considered before the career position of stakeholders, I think that is really interesting.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I am really interested in the 'policy window' - it seems that of course everything else needs to happen but you need to be ready if an oportunity arises.
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Prejudice and misinformation amongst the people in power was the biggest challenge. Lord Fowler however was in a position to influence even the Prime Minister and still push forward with the public health plan. I remember seeing those adverts as a child, and honestly they were terrifying. Fear does not always work for behaviour change though. In terms of...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Great summary
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It was all super interesting, the 'policy window' especially and we can think about the pandemic as a policy window. I also was interested in how he spoke about assessing the validity and reliability of evidence.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I am not sure I fully agree that ethics do not need to be conisdered for observation ... what if the observation is of children or vulnerable groups? Is privacy a consideration? What if the observation is in a digital environment? If people know they are being observed, does it really have no impact on their behaviour? I think there are a lot of considerations.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I would need quantitative and qualitative. There has been a historical lack of quantitative data disagregared by sex for example. Qualtitative data is very useful for identifying things that could be missed by quantitative data.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
It's important to remember the circumstances of policymaking - the New Deal was created and enacted during a time of crisis which created the opportunity for bold policies that people might not have accepted otherwise. The COVID-19 pandemic is another set of circumstances which allowed for policies to be put into place that wouldn't be otherwise.
The Cane...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I think Step 4 might be the most tricky - sometimes policies are not implemented or interpreted in the way we thought they would be. Evidence is really important all along the process so that it can be fed back. For example, if a company implements a policy where new parents can take paid leave from work, but there is a culture that fathers will not do that...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I feel that I have a good handle on how evidence backs up what I want to do. What I think is a big challenge though is understanding the people who are coming from different worldviews and may disagree with me, and how can I persuade them?
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Really good point about listening to feedback and using that to strengthen your proposal
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I think we need to be careful of any method claiming to be fully 'objective' or 'rational' - we all have our own biases and blind spots and I think even if the method is called 'scientific', we should not assume it is fully unbiased. For example, so much of medical science has historically ignored women's bodies, assuming the male body is the default human....
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Evidence is important so that we can know the policy we want to enact will have the desired impact. But, I have to concerns/questions about what was said here. First, qualitative evidence seems to be shown as just something that can move people emotionally, help create a 'narrative', or complement the 'hard facts' of quantitative evidence. I think it is a...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
The second point I think is really important: "Policy is the product of the work of many different people – there’s no formula that dictates you have to be in a particular job, position or level of seniority to make the changes" - especially as I am not in a job at the moment!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I really enjoyed hearing her talk, she is inspirational. I like how she covered intersectionality, climate change, nuclear war, gender equality and put them in historical and future context. Really a pleasure just to hear her talk.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
My passion is gender equality. I want to see family-friendly employment and childcare policies which take account of how invisible gender norms (especially the female-caregiver norm) will impact their implementation and interpretation. So far I have done my thesis research on this topic and am working on dissemination of my findings. I want to work for an...
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Abigail Connolly replied to Vimal Bedia
I really love your idea!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
They all have a vision of a better world and ways to work towards it.
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Abigail Connolly replied to Megan Hall
Yes I also noticed a focus on vulnerable groups
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Firstly, what an inspirational woman! Also I agree with all she said about inequality. Through my work I would like to pay more attention to allowing the voices of unheard groups and people (that would include youth as she said) to be taken into account.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Reading through the comments I don't see mentioned that in democracies the political parties and MPs are elected on the basis of manifestoes which contain all the policies which their party proposes. So everyone who votes is taking part in policymaking because they are giving a mandate to those politicians to put their policies into action. Civil servents are...
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Yes, I really agree with you!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I agreed most with the last one "Policy is a set of visions and outcomes, which allow stakeholders and decision makers to take and make actions that affect a group of people - or all people."
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I think a purpose is a bit like a mission, what you are aiming for and why you keep working. I think it's ok to have an ambitious vision of the kind of world you want to live in, even if it seems impossible. Elise Boulding was an inspirational peace educator who did some great work around helping people imagine the world they want to live in...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
As some others have said here, I have lots of passion but often find I don't have the right skills or experience to do what I want to do and have that purpose.
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I can think of some ways to make small impact, but struggling to see how I can be a part of something that will have a bigger impact.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Gender equality, and for a society which enables the right to a family life.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I am interested in getting some practical insights into policy - starting from the basics. I want to think about how what I learn will relate to gender equality.
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Hello, I'm Abi, I recently graduated with a MA in Peace Studies from International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan. Now I am back in London and hoping to make a career move from fundraising to policy and advocacy.
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@JamesNewns interesting, it's still people being competitive on those groups too. I left the Zero Waste group actually not because anyone ever said anything directly to me, but it was just so awful to read what people were writing to eachother. I joined a different Zero Waste group which was just local to my area and it's all lovely people being nice to...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Thank you!!!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
A really well put together course. The videos from the field sites in particular were fantastic, and the mix of videos from the educators and articles were very engaging. The discussions with the other participants have also been very enjoyable. Thank you to the educators and thank you to everyone!
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I think that part of being human is communicating with and making connections to other humans. I see social media as another 'place' where we can do this. Different places require different ways of communicating - I whisper in the library, I talk loud in a noisy pub, I hand-write a postcard to a relative, I handwrite in Japanese to my kids teachers, I zoom...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I think for sure social media makes us more aware of what is happening around the world and people's perspectives and experiences of it. Before we had to just rely on the mainstream news media, but now we can get so many more different perspectives. I am really interested in how social media has enabled people who are 'different' and may have felt isolated...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
1) I think most of my contacts are similar on and off-line. The people that are dressed up with make-up on in Facebook photos are usually like that when they go out and about anyway. I don't feel like I am seeing any pretention or aspirations above thier socio-economic situations. I think most of my contacts are around my age, so I wonder if younger people...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I am from the UK but have lived in Japan, Bolivia and Canada and travelled a lot. My Facebook feed is a big jumble of posts from people from a lot of different countries. This morning I looked through my Facebook feed. I notice that there are similarities in themes of what people will post between countries - and I guess I am seeing these kinds of posts...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Last year a big typhoon hit Tokyo head-on. I was checking some Facebook groups for mothers that I am a part of mainly looking for information. Then one of them posted a photo of their roof partially blown off, and they all had to move downstairs. Even though there were lots of images on the news, it was actually very alarming to see someone that I had a...
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Yeah I usually live in London and have had people, including family members, that live far away from London be super negative about it right to my face (expensive, dangerous, polluted etc). When I lived in a very rural part of Japan, my colleagues would say the same about Tokyo whenever I visited there (expensive, dangerous ...).
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I feel like in real life I have definitely made fun of pretensions or actual high status, but I am pretty sure I haven't done this on social media. If I have it would have been on a private WhatsApp chat probably. One place I don't see this is on LinkedIN where everyone is trying to be professional!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I don't know if this is relevant ... but I was part of a Zero Waste Facebook group which I actually had to leave because there were so many people being mean on it! It was serious competitive zero-wasting ... like someone would post something they had done to move towards zero waste e.g. bought a bamboo toothbrush for example. Then something like an angry...
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Oh I am so curious, I need to add Prince William on Facebook haha
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What country? I am not seeing Yoga pants on my Facebook feed!
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The first thing I thought of was how people put a special photo frame on their profile picture on Facebook. There were a bunch of corona-related ones in Japan which said things along the line of stay at home. I think it's the equivilent of wearing a badge to say you support a particular cause or organisation, but especially as we are not going out and about...
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Yes I think I am exactly the same. All my social media connections are similar to me. The one thing that is different is I am a member of various Facebook Groups for specific reasons - like one about Zero Waste, one about Washable Nappies, some ex-pat groups in Japan. I am not Facebook friends with most of the members in the groups but I do interact with...
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Abigail Connolly replied to Georgina Owen
Agree, and I have travelled in that part of Chile so was making me feel so nostalgic!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I was interested to hear the manicurist say that she mainly received porn videos on WhatsApp. The sharing of pornographic content through social media is widespread but I don't think many people would be so open about it. I wonder how as an anthropologist, you can get people to be open to sharing information that is taboo? And what are the ethics around that...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Excited to learn more about the role of normativity in this topic.
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Abigail Connolly replied to Abigail Connolly
@JemimaGibbons very interesting article - you can see the power dynamics at play in that community.
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@SallyBlaxland I just ignore the invitations I don't want to accept and nobody has ever asked me about it, sometimes Facebook comes up with suggestions of people you might know and so it's easy to click and invite more people to connect (LinkedIN does it too), it doesn't necessarily mean the person who wants to connect has actively sought you out. My Facebook...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
1. Mainly links to newspaper articles, many about world issues so I would say that is definitely educational. A few links to corona-related information too. There are also posts from parents recommending educational stuff for kids or sharing ideas of educational activities to do with kids while schools are closed.
2. Hard to tell whether people are...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Thank you, super interesting to get these insights into Chinese social media.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Yes I have shared some passwords with people for practical reasons, and sometimes changed them after that reason passed. Interesting comments from some people here about having nominated someone to deal with their social media accounts after they die. Now that is making me think I should think about that too.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I am guessing that the people in the UK site won't be sharing their passwords, just because we are told all the time to keep them private and secure. There is also the issue of getting hacked and all your contacts getting spammed from your account. I don't know about other countries.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Social media is absolutely useful for business. Yes, I get targeted advertising and it is annoying but I just try to ignore it. Sometimes I've bought something online, then I see adverts for similar appearing in my Facebook feed - but I've already bought the thing haha!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I think business has always been social - "it's not what you know it's who you know"! I remember being an assistant to a number of CEOs in pre-social media days and they had files and files of business cards and would go to lots of conferences to network. Now it is much easier to make connections with people without meeting them in person because of...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I think the pandemic is changing a lot of things. However, doing things online hasn't caught on in Japan yet! During the state of emergency, we were given a huge amount of print outs from my son's elementary school, then each Monday we had to look on the website for a PDF of instructions. He just had to bring all the home homework in at once when the school...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I think there were the same debates around TV and video games being harmful as a distraction from education. But then there is Sesame Street and other really fantastic educational TV programmes. I think social media is the same ... it can facilitate education and learning, and it can be a distraction too.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I had never thought about it in relation to modernity before ... but video calls definitely feel like the future to me!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Since moving to Japan I have used social media way more to find information. Because of the language barrier, and because so many things are different here about childcare, schooling, medical system etc not to mention way more extreme weather than the UK ... I need a lot of information and the easiest way for me to find it in my language is through social...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
It's definitely used to share photos from big life events like birth of a child and weddings, also as a way to remember people who have passed away and share memories. When my grandmother died, one of my cousins made a Facebook page in her name and added us all to it, so we get a reminder when it would have been her birthday! It's quite strange really...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Definitely applicable in other contexts - but it is not new to social media. Pre-social media if someone broke up with their boyfriend and wanted their ex to know they were suffering, they would make sure his friends knew, they would tell their friends and made sure it reached them through their social networks. It was less immediate than social media, but I...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Nobody has judged me for what social media I use. I have only had a smart phone for the last year though and before that people thought I was crazy for not having a smart phone.
Yes polymedia does seem useful, and within the idea of polymedia I also see that we have choices about how we use the platforms we have chosen. For example, LINE does a lot of...
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Abigail Connolly replied to Xinyi Luo
Same for me, I joined Facebook in order to keep in touch with people I met travelling, because they were all on there and it was easier than email addresses which people seem to change more frequently. I joined LinkedIN for work, I started using Skype for work. I joined WhatsApp and LINE because people I needed to communicate with were on those platforms. ...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
It's really interesting to see the social media platforms. I think I noticed on the video people with QR codes on their smartphones - with LINE if you want to add someone as a contact you can bring up your own QR code and your new contact can scan it with their phone. I wonder if it's similar in WeChat? QQ does seem to have so many features, and it...
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I think it's important to think about what type of inequality (although they are all connected) - income, education, access to healthcare etc? The biggest divide shown in the statistics is between urban and rural - but I imagine that is because many rural areas just don't have reliable internet connectivity? Even with censorship, access to information and to...
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@MikeLonergan I am living in Japan now and there are mascots for everything, including one called Quaran (the mascot of quarantine!) https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/news/meet-quaran-the-official-quarantine-mascot-of-japan-031920
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I live in Japan at the moment and everyone uses LINE instead of WhatsApp. Apparently social media and LINE became much more popular after the big earthquake and tsunami in 2011 because it was the most reliable way for people to contact eachother. LINE is similar to WhatsApp but has way more emojis and pictures, when you are typing the relevant ones come up,...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Gender (all from Facebook - same people as I looked at for politics)
Person 1 and Person 2 - I guess I am looking for posts that seem 'feminine' or 'masculine' ... I don't think I am seeing that at all. Person 2 had one political post about trans rights.Person 3 - would identify as a feminist from their posts about women's rights. Also posts about...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Politics (all from Facebook)
Person 1 - mainly re-shared posts about animals, but I did find two posts I would say are political. They were shared from somewhere else on Facebook without comment. The posts are slightly humorous but express quite strong opinions. Neither of the posts had any likes or comments. I find it hard to know why they posted them - did... -
Facebook has become a great place to find communities of people who are like you. There are many closed groups for sufferers of specific illnesses, or for carers of people with specific illnesses. Without social media it would be much harder to find these people. Some people join these types of groups and find support by just reading other posts and never...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I am really struggling with this question! I wish we could move away from the categories of feminine and masculine altogether, they seem to do more harm than good. But yes, I agree with what was said in the video about women in the UK posting about wine .... I see it now even more so in lockdown!
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Yes, worrying that her husband was jealous of her Facebook page and made her shut it down. Social media had given her spaces to be outside of the home but are also a site for potential control.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I really recommend this paper by Sarah Sobieraj about how women are treated in digital spaces and the impact that can have on democracy. She finds three patterns to 'digital sexism' that agressors use intimidation, shaming and discrediting around feminity, femaleness and women's phsyicality. She concludes that digital sexism limits women's participation in...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
The spaces I occupy on social media (Facebook, LinkedIN, whatsApp) don't feel conservative. I feel like I could say whatever I want, but then to what end? Personally I loved debating about political issues with people, but I much prefer it in person or chatting one on one on messenger or WhatsApp. I don't like the idea of having an audience! Twitter seems to...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Interesting that the video talks about people not wanting to talk about local politics online so as not to offend people. Speaking for myself, I don't post things about local politics on Facebook because most of my friends are not local to me geographically so I feel like it's probably not going to be interesting or relevant for them and wouldn't bother...
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If I look at posts from people I know from the UK, there are only a handful who post on Facebook specifically about party political matters (because they are actively involved in a political party). I would say the vast majority of political posts that I see from people in the UK are issue-based e.g. climate change, BLM, gender issues. Brexit was also a big...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I don't know what the answer is, but I know what I want the answer to be - I want it to be the micro politics of power in every day life. Social media does allow individuals with shared experiences to connect in ways they would not be able to before. Just recently in the UK a report was published (The Cumberlege Review) about three medical treatments which...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
It's interesting to remember that social media has permeated politics for many years, I don't think I was as aware of it back in 2015. Trump's tweets obviously get a lot of attention, but I don't think I will ever forget watching Jacinda Ardern on Facebook live at the begining of the Covid-19 lockdown. An acquaintence of mine from New Zealand had it on her...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Very curious about the lady who says Facebook has made her famous - I want to know more about her story!
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Yes, I was really interested in that man because he says he gets annoyed by people not using social media for what it 'should' be used for.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
The first guy sold it to me, I want to visit Mardin! Curious about the kid saying that kids there swear a lot? What is he comparing it to? Why did he decide to mention that first? I read a bit of the book by Dr Costa, was interested in how young women were using Facebook to communicate with their secret boyfriends but that they were able to do it on smart...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Interesting that both fieldsites have expanded in population in recent years.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Looking forward to seeing how anthropology intersects with other academic disciplines like politics and gender studies.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Person 1: Most of the recent visuals are from sharing news articles (which have an image by default) and memes. Posts they have created themselves recently have been only text. Seems like they are not deliberately trying to share visuals. No selfies or photos.
Person 2: Visuals are mainly videos, that they have shared from other sources. Mainly humorous....
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
Very interesting learning content and discussions, thanks!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I think it's interesting how text is often combined with visuals - like videos posted on social media will often have subtitles because many people watch them with the sound off. Most memes are a combination of image and text. There's also that thing on Facebook where you can write text but give it a background colour and make it big so it becomes a kind of...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I'm looking on my feed on Facebook and not able to identify aspirational posts I don't think. But I am on this group which gives family lockdown ideas and people post things on there like DIY projects they have done in lockdown, bread they have baked, projects they have done with their kids. I guess they are proud of what they have done and want to show it...
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
There is something about the moral memes /life quote type memes which reminds me of Hallmark greetings cards which have long, sentimental messages. People don't send as many physical cards as they used to, I wonder if these type of memes have taken over a bit as a way to express what you feel without actually writing the words yourself?
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Abigail Connolly replied to Margaret Merry
I totally agree with you!
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
I wrote a bit about memes, I started off writing about schedules that mums had shared during corona lockdown. Then I realised that there is a lot of sharing of schedule memes amongst mothers. My interpretation is that the feeling of anxiety/guilt/stress about not doing enough for your kids in lockdown is eased at least in a small way by these schedule memes....
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Abigail Connolly replied to Javier Pianta
Yeah I get a lot of memes sent on WhatsApp - I think most of them are from older family members too.
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Abigail Connolly made a comment
It seems that in this example, people are taking their social norms onto social media, so social media is just an extension of more of the same. It makes sense that people who care about what they look like in the street, would care about what they look like online too.
