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This is so patronising. ‘We can all learn from’ - we did not make the mistake. YOUR group made many, and are continuing to make them. Even when a lot of us have very calmly and politely listed them, all we’ve had was deflection and a vague ‘we were all hurt by this’ statement. https://twitter.com/bangtanscholars/status/1385738631990624256
This is not something you can lump yourselves in with us as ARMYs when your network of academics gave that research the legitimacy to be used by the WSJ. This is something done BY you TO us. And I’m not seeing anyone take responsibility for that.
Let’s break it down. You let a bad piece of research be presented at your conference. Nobody pointed out it’s obvious flaws. Somehow it got to the press. How did that happen? Did you have a press release? Did you have guidance for speakers being approached by the press?
You then defended the criticism from ARMYs, with no mention of your association with the conference, and no mention it was academically flawed in the first place. When we asked to see it, we got a series of second hand statements from the researcher.
We were told they didn’t want to speak to us for fear of being attacked, furthering a negative stereotype of us as a fandom. When she did speak to us, it appeared to be on a burner account. She says she would answer questions which she didn’t really.
She only made vague statements about learning from it and then tried to protect the rest of you. None of you engaged in the academic criticisms. None of you acknowledged hurt caused BY you, TO us, only saying you were hurt too.
As if you didn’t hold power and influence in this situation, as if it just happened to you. Today, when I tried to point out how damaging this chaotic response was to our trust, I had yet ANOTHER associated account deflecting responsibility in my mentions.
All this has been done to the group of people the research was about. It was done to the group of people who were slandered by that WSJ article as if we are idiots exploited by BH, and the slandered again when our legitimate concerns were framed as attacks.
That is ethically horrendous. I also want to point out that many of us were here working hard and building this community long before some of these academics had even heard of BTS.
You have come in and used our labour as basis to further your own academic careers, then treated us as not worthy of academic engagement or basic transparency and clarity.
Read this thread @BangtanScholars. Tell me what I should learn from this situation other than none of you are worthy of ARMY’s trust.
I really feel like I’m being gas lighted. All these educated people defending something that would be rightfully torn apart in any other environment and had direct negative effects on the researched community who, I should add, couldn’t even consent.
And somehow WE need to learn because what...we were uncomfortable with that being done to us? Because we pointed out the very obvious flaws? Because we wanted a decent response from you? What is going on here????
I’m still an undergraduate and I can clearly see so many things that were done badly. At this point I can only assume this is either academic elitism completely detaching you all from reality, or egos rather than integrity are in the driving seat.
I’d love to be proved wrong but none of you are even engaging with us on this. You just keep deflecting responsibility.
Maybe I should make a ‘ARMYs are really fcking mad’ moment that you can all learn from instead.
