Final Project: Case Study of Reddit and the Aurora, Colorado Shooting

On the first day of my high school newspaper class, I learned that quality journalism must be three things: timely, relevant and local. While that continues to hold true for print media, in our increasingly technologically connected age, timeliness has taken on an unprecedented level of importance.

Whereas newspapers used to be able to update once a day, now major news sources are expected to be updated in minutes or even seconds, with no loss of accuracy in reporting ability. A famous and early example documenting this tension between speed and accuracy is the photo showing the Chicago Daily Tribune's erroneous headline of the 1948 presidential election:

http://steampunkchicago.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/dewey-defeats-truman.jpg

But of course, technology is constantly in evolution, so "...the history of visual journalism suggests that what we mean by frequently will itself change, as shifts in content become more and more rapid." (Perlmutter) In other words, new technology enabling journalistic reporting with faster updates is nothing new. In World War II, that medium was radio. It was an immediate, up-to-date news source, where it could communicate from where it was - on the ground where the action was happening. "Radio was instantaneous. Furthermore, print could never match the immediacy of Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London as German bombs ripped through the city." Listeners could hear the bombing in the background; it was live, immediate and the reporting was in "real time," a term that would come into being much later. Though Murrow was a part of the mainstream news company, CBS, he also had a reputation as a new kind of journalist: a man of the people, someone who had honesty and integrity and who spoke his mind.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40753000/jpg/_40753014_murrow_203.jpg

But in this era, news is no longer local, but global. There is a demand to know what is happening in places all over the world, and to know it at this very instant. Now, anyone with a smartphone or Internet connection can blog or upload a video showing a newsworthy event, and it will be seen. It is for this reason that theorist David D. Perlmutter in "Image Ethics in the Digital Age" has written about how the immediacy of updates has led to the death of "big images":  "The World Wide Web has not yet itself produced an icon.... But the Internet affords a redefinition of the meaning of instantaneous toward that which is instantly impermanent, or fleeting.... Finally, it is interesting to speculate about what will happen when all news on the Internet is updated frequently." (4-5) Because people need updates quickly and in a variety of places, technology and demand have let anyone post news. And because anyone can post it, and do so quickly, there are innumerable sources of news sources. This multitude and speed has undermined the institutional power of big, mainstream news sources. "Iconic" photographs are becoming less and less frequent because there are less viewers to make it iconic and there is faster news turnover, giving photos less resonance with viewers.

One of the most recent (and last?) iconic photographs, "Situation Room" by Pete Souza, depicting the capture of Osama bin Laden on May 1, 2011:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Obama_and_Biden_await_updates_on_bin_Laden.jpg

This happened again, but with another medium and in another war: television during Vietnam. Television had become the most up-to-date visual news source by new type of journalist, a type that drew on their own experiences to reach a higher level of "truth" in reporting. Broadcasting "...had changed by the 1960s into aggressive, full-color reporting with extensive interpretation and analysis by members of a new and nontraditional school of journalism. The latter felt and still feel that their responsibility is to discover truth, not merely facts. Reporters, denying their very name, are encouraged to give their own subjective analyses of events.... The Tet Offensive during the Vietnam war put on television for all to see. The Tet offensive newsreel footage was 24 hours old by the time it had been processed for home consumption." While the audiovisual imagery put on television was still 24 hours old, at the time it was the most rapid type of visual update available coming from a location as far away as Vietnam.

Because anyone can post what is happening online, journalism is becoming increasingly democratic. No longer do major news networks and newspapers alone decide what is important or who/what should be covered. Since anyone with a camera can provide proof of what is happening, the range of stories, perspectives and locations making the news has been augmented. Now, it is not uncommon to be surfing the Internet and see posts along the lines of, "This is what the news isn't showing you..." or "Here are photos of ______. Why isn't this being covered?" Theorist Knut Lundby considers this democratized response to technology a good thing, believing it healthy that more people are participating in the public sphere: "Digital storytelling is perhaps particularly important as a practice because it operates outside the boundaries of mainstream media institutions although it can also work on the margins of such institutions.... In that sense digital storytelling contributes to a democratisation of media resources and widening the conditions of democracy itself. Digital storytelling vastly extends the number of people who at least in principle can be registered as contributing to the public sphere...."

On July 20, 2012, reddit users worldwide saw the events of the Aurora, Colorado theatre shooting unfold live on their smartphones and computer screens. It began when reddit user int3ger posted a series of 4 posts to the site.

Shooting at the AMC Century Cinema: map, local police scanner. Bomb wasmay have been confirmed. It certainly sounded like it. Apparently a bomb may have blown up a part of a theater at the Dark Knight Rises premiere.Although the news isn’t corroborating this right now, it definitely sounded like it on the scanner. Actually, it was probably the tear gas canisters.

But he was not the only user present for the Dark Knight Rises midnight screening at the theatre. User quepasacontigo lived across the street from where shooter James Holmes was staying and that a friend who lived in the same building “hit me up as soon as the cops got there and started to evac everyone.” 

He also posted photos:

http://imgur.com/ob7mZ

 Another update from him unfolded: 

The number of bomb vans has doubled. They wouldn’t send this many cops to the area unless there were actually explosives in there. They are currently taking boxes of mystery items out of the complex. A dude in a full blown bomb suit just entered the building.

Another user, themurderator, posted images of his wounds and a bloody t-shirt (warning: GRAPHIC) to the site, with the words "I am one of the 50 wounded in the aurora theatre shooting. Here are a few photos of my very lucky but nonethless terrifying brush with death. My thoughts go out to those less fortunate than me."

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17tes0592r99ejpg/ku-xlarge.jpg

Yet another user posted live footage taken from a cell phone:

The story gained widespread attention on the site when user Peener13 posted with the title "Someone came into our theater at the midnight release of Dark Knight Rises and began opening fire. Who here on Reddit can help me calm my nerves?" In the body of the post, she gave her account of events:

The shooting began during a gunfight scene in the movie, and at first, we thought it was special effects when smoke rose up. When shots happened again and people began to run, we thought something was up. A guy ran in and shouted there was a gunman in the building, and the alarms to emergency evacuate started to go off.

As the night went on, user int3ger, whose real name is Morgan Jones and is an 18-year-old from the area, continued to update his posts by listening to police scanners, until they morphed into their own thread into a comprehensive timeline of what was happening:

http://www.dvice.com/sites/dvice/files/styles/blog_post_media/public/images/Aurora-news-on-Reddit.jpg?itok=dKq0s7zr

http://www.techlicious.com/images/computers/reddit-aurora-8-600px.jpg

http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/pictures/denvershooting_616.jpg

The comprehensive timeline continued to be updated every few minutes with coverage of what was happening and links to proof, as well as users:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/4155466-16x9-940x529.jpg

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/terminal05/2012/7/20/12/enhanced-buzz-5178-1342802225-0.jpg

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7grk4TB381qedj2ho1_500.png

The timeline post continued to grow and grow, even overflowing into a second thread. Reddit user int3ger (Morgan Jones) stayed up all night collecting and posting information, becoming the trusted source for what was going on, collaborating with and collecting information from other users. But reddit,  a site that is already unique because it does not shy away from longer posts and has a distinct sense of community, has another feature that mainstream news sources don't have: voting.

On reddit, users can "upvote" or "downvote" a post. The benefit of this in a time of emergency, and thus confusion, is that information that is better will rise to the top: more eyes are looking at it and moderating it. And if the information is questionable or incorrect, more attention is brought to it and users can update it as necessary. Reddit is inherently a democratic forum in that everyone has a vote and everyone can speak and potentially be an accurate and immediate source of news, via a collection of first-hand accounts. This differs greatly from mainstream news reports, where newscasters must wait until all the facts are gathered and (presumably) check them before presenting them on air. This institutional type style of news delivery is clunky and contrary to the basic tenets of democracy that we hold dear, as well as too slow and ineffective. In addition, users on sites can see for themselves what is happening - people are providing proof of what is going on, and in a variety of modes: text, photos, and video. This differs from tradition, where the news is delivered verbally by a person reading off of a teleprompter, and may include a scrawl at the bottom.

Major mainstream news networks simply cannot be everywhere at once, and it takes time to get to where an event is unfolding. User-submitted information via sites like Reddit, Twitter and YouTube is the future of journalism; the case study of Reddit and Aurora showed that citizen journalism done by everyday users has circumvented that of "established" news sources - it went straight over their heads and reached the people directly. The internet is proving that the people themselves can be more timely, relevant and local than traditional media sources can ever hope to be, not to mention more accurate, as a result of being more democratic. The case of the Aurora shooting coverage by Reddit is yet another an example of how a new type of journalist is arising with technology that allows for more immediacy and accuracy in far-off places, especially during times of crisis: the citizen journalist.

Bibliography:
Baldwin, N. B. "Strategy and the Social Dimension in the 1980s." Air University Review (1982).
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1982/jan-feb/baldwin.html

Couldry, Nick. "Digital Storytelling, Media Research and Democracy." Digital Storytelling, Mediatized Stories: Self-Representations in New Media. By Knut Lundby. New York: P. Lang, 2009. 54. Print.

Folkerts, Jean, and Stephen Lacy. "The media in your life." (2004). http://www.ablongman.com/samplechapter/0205387012.pdf

Perlmutter, David D. "The Internet: Big Pictures and Interactors." Image Ethics in the Digital Age. Comp. Larry P. Gross, John Stuart. Katz, and Jay Ruby. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2003. 4-5. Print.

Thoughts on Ch. 15 of Image Ethics in the Digital Age

"Those who make and those who critique family films in the digital age must be particularly sensitive to the filmmakers' duties toward the subjects of their films and to the potential for wide dissemination of seemingly intimate family portraits." p. 340

In this digital era, the place for "wide dissemination of intimate family portraits" is YouTube. An example of this is the famous home video “Charlie Bit My Finger,” which has been viewed millions of times. The majority of YouTube content is not taken from other sources - an estimated 88% is “new and original content” (Wesch). Among these are the home video. Besides Charlie Bit My Finger, there are countless videos featuring pets and babies as their subject. Every pet video on YouTube, which has a whole genre unto itself, is a home video. 

Before YouTube, the arena for home videos to be widely viewed was the tv show "America's Funniest Home Videos." With this show, it was clear if consent was given. No doubt permission and consent forms had to be sign before the videos aired. But this is not the case with the Internet, where a video file can easily be taken and uploaded with no thought to the owner or subject. On YouTube there is no regulation of such things, and a much larger potential for reaching a mass audience.

In addition, on YouTube there is always the possibility of a family home video being edited, misconstrued or remixed into something misrepresentative of the filmer/subject's intentions. This is an intrinsic part of YouTube, where the prevalence of this intermingling of ideas on YouTube is so high that it is estimated that approximately 15% of all video content is derived from remixes or remakes (Wesch). "Charlie Bit My Finger" has been remixed and redone over 4,000 times (Wesch).

Professor Wesch's study of YouTube:

Final Paper Proposal

Topic(s):

Digital Storytelling, Online Narratives, Citizen Journalism, YouTube, User-Submitted, on-the-ground

Format:

Paper

Thesis question(s): How has user-generated/user-submitted Internet news content changed the conventional media landscape? Are these changes for better or for worse? What potential effects could this have on the conglomerated media ownership structure? How does the tension between accuracy and immediacy manifest itself?

Two sources on history and how they relate:

1. An immediate, up-to-date news source that was on the ground where the action was happening - "Radio was instantaneous. Furthermore, print could never match the immediacy of Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London as German bombs ripped through the city."
http://www.ablongman.com/samplechapter/0205387012.pdf

Folkerts, Jean, and Stephen Lacy. "The media in your life." (2004).

2.Television as the most up-to-date visual news source by new type of journalist - "...had changed by the 1960s into aggressive, full-color reporting with extensive interpretation and analysis by members of a new and nontraditional school of journalism. The latter felt and still feel that their responsibility is "to discover truth, not merely facts. Reporters, denying their very name, are encouraged to give their own subjective analyses of events.... The Tet Offensive during the Vietnam war put on television for all to see:  The Tet offensive newsreel footage was 24 hours old by the time it had been processed for home consumption. If Tet occurred today, the news would be transmitted instantaneously."
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1982/jan-feb/baldwin.html

Baldwin, N. B. "Strategy and the Social Dimension in the 1980s." Air University Review (1982).

Two sources on theory and how they relate:

1. Ch. 1 of Image Ethics in the Digital Age - with digital technology's immediacy, the news is constantly updating, so there are no longer "big images" that have the same widespread impact and recognizability like photos of the past did (newspapers),

2. User-generated sites are surpassing the capabilities, speed and accuracy of the government and conventional mainstream media, especially in times of crisis:

"A continuously updated board of victim status and their current hospital sits atop a rolling update of critical news, including pictures, video, and essential information about the situation, making it quite possibly the quickest way to get essential news for those needing information on potential victims (more informative than the government websites and local news channels). The incredible outpouring of eyewitness journalism and support has turned the humble news aggregator into an impressive source of information in the midst of a national crisis."
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/20/reddit-aurora-shooting/ 

"At the same time that the Iranian regime was closing the country off from the outside world, a group of disconnected digital activists who were watching with horror realized that they had the technical chops to try to get information out from under the regime’s lockdown. They began setting up proxy servers, receiving content and distributing videos and images to members of the international press, who were being denied access to the streets—or to the country."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/06/10/the-revolution-was-televised.html 

"Within hours, sometimes minutes of a demonstration, a clash or an atrocity, viewers saw clips disseminated all over the Internet via YouTube and social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook and Iranian Diaspora sites such as Iranian.com Tehran Bureau, Gooya, and the Persian blogger's site Balatarin.com."
p. 120

Kamalipour, Yahya R. Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age: The 2009 Presidential Election Uprising in Iran. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010.

How you got there/Problems/Issues you see: (OPTIONAL)
Maybe find better examples of strictly citizen journalism? Letters, etc.

Week 8: Thoughts on Ch. 7 of "Image Ethics in the Digital Age"

"The information infrastructure makes private infringement of [intellectual property] rights vastly easier to carry out and correspondingly more difficult to detect and prevent. As a result, individual standards of moral and ethical conduct, and individual perceptions of right and wrong, become more important." p. 145

Individual perception of right and wrong become more important. That could not be more true. I was discussing this with my friends, about which of us felt it was okay to illegally download  certain kinds of material. Personally, I have no qualms about illegally downloading anything - music, movies, textbooks, yu name it. If it's free and it's there, I'll do it. And I know I won't get caught, so who cares? Some of my friends felt differently, and felt that it is wrong. But their conscience has a price, and they end up paying, sometimes  ridiculous, amounts of money for media that they could easily get free. iTunes, Netflix and textbooks would be one example. I feel that nowadays, especially in the digital age that we live in, information is not contained - it is fluid, liquid and everywhere. Copyright laws are antiquated and to some extent pointless because they are broken all the time. The music, the data, and the video is everywhere, and you can't control its spread. In fact, my copy of Image Ethics in the Digital Age that I am looking at as I type this is a PDF scan that a friend made and emailed to me in an attachment. I know I'm not the only one it was sent to, and I sent it to a couple friends myself. You can no longer contain media, it's everywhere. And I think that copyright laws will only be ignored more and more as people wise up to more inexpensive ways of getting the media that they want. Everything you want on the internet is there; you just have to be able to find it.

Dave Grohl (lead singer of the Foo Fighters) on copyright:



Thom Yorke (Radiohead) on piracy:



Anti-piracy circa 1992:

Week 7: Thoughts on Ch. 5 of "Image Ethics in the Digital Age"

"The public absorbed all of these dirty secrets without seeming to turn against the miscreants; all of the "exposed" members of Congress were reelected... and, of course, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton failed to remove him from office." p. 109

Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Anthony Weiner, David Petraeus. The list of US politicians caught up in a sex scandal is a long one, and these are just the ones in my lifetime that I can name off the top of my head! Internationally, the scandals and infidelity of politicians Silvio Berlusconi, Strauss-Kahn, and Nicolas Sarkozy, also caused a stir. But it seems that infidelity and sex scandals are much less of a big deal abroad than they are in the US - citizens of those countries continue to re-elect politicians, despite how much dirty laundry laundry is aired out, using the argument that their personal lives are of little consequence, especially if they are a good leader. It doesn't seem to be quite the same in the United States. Often, these scandals seem to happen to politicians running on a campaign that totes the importance of family values, making the said politician coming off as a liar and a hypocrite. It seems to me that the private and personal as the public and political is more intertwined in US politics, and thus potentially more damaging. Yet after each scandal, people begin to question whether or not who their congressman is sleeping with actually matters in terms of hard effects - does it really affect them?

Increasingly, people are starting to feel that it doesn't, and politicians are bouncing back stronger than ever from these scandals, as evidenced by the Anthony Weiner campaign for mayor and Mark Sanford's congressional reelection bid. (More on that here: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP7d2aaaad145e4f119b4b2c9353398395.html )

Week 6: Thoughts on Ch. 2 of "Image Ethics in the Digital Age"

"In order to demonstrate their abiding commitment to honesty, photojournalists, news editors, and news publishers have begun to institute a professional codes, standards governing the use of digital imaging technology." (p. 33)

Essentially, the chapter goes through the different debates as to what constitutes acceptable, ethical and allowable forms of image manipulation. Journalists debate over how much an image can be changed and still be called 100% accurate. Note here the use of "accurate" - one can't say truthful because truth is subjective, and "representational" doesn't work either because a photo can represent something, but it might not be the thing or event itself, merely a stand-in.

I took journalism in middle and high school, both for newspaper and yearbook. The rules that we adhered to were that we could only adjust the following afterwards on a computer:

• resolution (dpi, or dots per inch)
• color correction
• contrast and saturation
• greyscale

Strictly prohibited were:

• cropping (can change meaning, as well as make it difficult to upload into the spread
• horizontal flipping (at times tempting when subjects weren't facing the gutter)
• airbrushing (the staff was often tempted to do this to their own photos - pimply mug shots!)
• editing out of any kind

The one exception when people were edited out was for the annual senior photo when the whole class assembles. Invariably, there was always someone who wore a shirt with a swear word or flipped off the camera, or who was not a senior, who had to be deleted. And in that case, our yearbook advisor did the photoshopping. 

In high school, our #1 ranked nationally newspaper The Nexus had plenty of digital manipulation, but it was, as Chapter 2 says, very clear that the photo had been combined with digital art. We had a byline for the photograph, and one for what we termed "photo illustration." It was always very clear, usually combining visual art or a computer graphic of some kind with a photo. As far as manipulating images with the camera's own functions as you were taking the picture, everything was fair game for us. Motion blur, zoom, depth of field, tilt, black and white, strange angles or apertures, you name it. Our newspaper focused on photojournalism as stories and narratives, so I think we were allowed to be more adventurous and artistic when it came to taking interesting photos to tell a story. 

As far as policy, I think a most hands-off approach as possible is best. If the camera can do it in the moment (like the hula hoop motion blur example) I think it should be allowed. Minimal color correction or saturation or contrast can be tweaked to improve image quality. But I don't think that things like focus should be messed with. Even cropping should be used sparingly, as it can greatly change the meaning of a photo, merely by surrounding context and atmosphere. 

Here's a photo I've always liked, commonly captioned "What Media Tells Us." Relates to cropping:

And another one about cropping:

And a link to a fascinating but terrifying album of photos showing EXTREME but low-tech photo manipulation by the Soviets during the war: http://imgur.com/gallery/GmPdh 

Week 5: Thoughts on Lundby's "Digital Storytelling..." p. 145-301

"Profiles are digital bodies, public displays of identity where people can explore impression management. Because the digital world requires people to write themselves into being, profiles provide an opportunity to craft the intended expression through language, imagery and media."

"Creating a text like an SNS profile is necessarily a self-reflexive act to some degree since it involves the choice and assembly of self-related episodes and attributes..." (p. 286)

In one of my classes in high school, we had a discussion about our Facebook pages in relation to upcoming college applications. Around that time, it made the news that colleges, especially prestigious universities, that were going through applications and/or starting the interview processes would take a look at a potential student's Facebook profile. Our teacher asked us then how we felt about that, was it fair, do we agree with this practice, etc. The general consensus was yes, absolutely it was fair for an institution to make a judgement about you, based on information that you put out on the internet in a public privatized space. This then led into a discussion about representation - how accurate can a Facebook profile be, if we are controlling it. 

In this social media age, everyone is their own manager and publicist - online, we all must manage our own image. We are all manicuring and fashioning our profile to some extent in order to project a certain image or representation of ourselves, regardless of how well that virtual image lines up with the "real" us. We paint that picture with every single choice we make in our profile: name (real, silly, fake, middle name included?), education and work (to include or not to include?), politics and religion (potentially step on some toes? stay true to who you are? or stay non-controversial?), and statuses (funny, witty, political, newsy, quotidian, passive agressive, poetic, journal-like?). 

And of course, a picture says a thousand words. A Facebook profile picture is the first thing that anyone will see. A great amount of thought and judgment are put into a profile picture, but there is a tension straddling two sides - what you want and who you are, and what others will think when they see it. What do I like v. How do I want to be seen? I think this is what Lundby means by saying that it is a self-reflexive act - we look at not just our profile pictures, but our entire page through our own eyes, and then through (what we think are) the eyes of someone else. Then we edit according to these 2 judgements. The following is a popular guide to understanding what your profile picture says about you.

I think it is important to remember that a great deal of this self-image manipulation comes not only from the type of things you do post, but also in large part from the things you choose to keep off: filtering. Not only editing, but deleting and actively deciding not to post something speak volumes. This could be statuses, comments, relationship status and especially photos. Whereas it was once considered "authentic" or "genuine" to not fiddle with your page in a sort of laissez-faire, hands-off approach, it's now seen as downright stupid. This shift from image management from being seen as shady, paranoid or superficial to now seen as the prudent and responsible thing to do. The days of a 100% unmanaged profile are over. No longer does anyone let their page take on a life of their own. If necessary, people will untag photos and delete statuses or friends' wall posts to shape their identity, and opt for a private message or chat in lieu of a public wall post.

Of course, this is in response to a widening circle of friends. Whereas a LinkedIn profile is for the professional world and an online dating profile is for the personal world, Facebook is increasingly all-encompassing. For example, on Facebook I have added not only friends, but family, co-workers, teachers, and bosses. Accordingly, I have to watch what I say, what my friends say (something much harder to control), and what photos I am tagged in. "How to Suck at Facebook" is a web comic describing the "types" of friends we all have seen on Facebook; most detrimental to themselves are the Filterless, the Passive Aggressor and the Horrible Photo Tagger.

It's not at all unusual to go to a party and have some type of ban on photos: either none at all, none posted on Facebook, or none posted with tags. Or someone will simply say, "Hey, don't post that one okay, I have family and my boss added on Facebook." If I had a bad day at work, Facebook is not the place to complain, because I'm friends with my manager. And in this day, more and more people are. 

Some people are still learning how to filter themselves, and the results can be disastrous: 

Managing your own image is not only for the employed. As the recession hit and competition for a limited number of jobs increased, companies taking a look at an online profile before application review, interviewing or hiring became the norm. It was the natural, Darwinian response to the bad economy - weeding out the careless people who put out this information about themselves in the first place. Before, it seemed invasive and excessive - now it was fair game, and it has become an unofficial staple of the employment process. But recently, colleges, potential employers, government agencies and scholarship providers are taking more than just the cursory glance at a Facebook profile: "forced friending" to gain access to friends-only posts, and "shoulder surfing" or asking applicant to hand over their passwords. Reacting against this, states hurried to pass legislation banning employers from asking for SMS passwords. 

http://business.time.com/2012/03/06/background-check-for-the-digital-age-employers-colleges-ask-for-facebook-passwords/ 

http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/09/states-rush-to-ban-employers-from-asking-for-social-media-passwords/ 

http://business.time.com/2012/03/23/facebook-weighs-in-and-blasts-shoulder-surfing-by-employers/ 

http://business.time.com/2012/03/20/lawmakers-try-to-ban-facebook-shoulder-surfing-by-employers/