Grants:Project/Rapid/Promoting dissemination of cross-cultural mental health resources using Squid Game
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Promoting dissemination of cross-cultural mental health resources using Squid Game
editThe Squid Game project originated with the goal of linking a socially prevalent, widely-viewed Netflix show to the goal of Helping Give Away Psychological Science (HGAPS), making mental health education and resources accessible for free. A second goal was to expose a larger public to Wiki platforms, showing them ways that these could be used to share credible resources and information, potentially shifting lingering suspicions and biases against Wiki.
The project process and format, derived from the HGAPS project based on 13 Reasons Why, included the organization of mental health and other various resources in episodic order. Each section, which represents an individual episode, contains sub-categories, which reflect the various trigger warnings found within that episode.
Squid Game quickly became notorious for graphic depictions of violence as well as surprisingly poignant representation of mental health struggles such as suicidality. Concerned with the impact that such content may have on viewers, especially considering the lack of true age restriction Netflix imposes, our team hoped to provide links to and descriptions of resources specifically tailored to the content of each episode. Our hope was that should a viewer find themselves upset or triggered by the content of a particular episode, they could easily find applicable resources to support them.
The concept for the rapid grant originated with students and alumni at the oldest and largest affiliated student service club affiliated with HGAPS, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill club. All of the core team are fluent in English, with a large subset having significant connections or interest in Korean and Korean culture. However, none of the project originators grew up in Korea, nor do they read Hangul or speak Korean fluently. Due to the cultural and linguistic makeup of our team, the project was constrained to a focus primarily on the English-speaking, United States audience with its primary products. As such, our earliest work was based on trigger warnings from the show that are culturally relevant to such a population, and the resources compiled are predominantly U.S.-based and in English (such as U.S. government sites). However, once our initial efforts gained traction, we also made efforts to expand the project to support the Korean-speaking, South Korean audience. While our core team was unable to contribute due to cultural awareness and linguistic barriers, we soon sought out Korean team members who could contribute research in order to expand the project and add a Korean iteration of the Squid Game resources Wikiversity page. This would include an emphasis on triggers that are most culturally relevant to the South Korean audience, as well as resources that are both in the Korean language and that are from Korean organizations.
The Squid Game team’s long-term goal was to provide fully realized resource pages for both American and South Korean viewers, as well as to continue adding onto the page(s) once further seasons are released. While the HGAPS team was unable to do extensive work on the Korean page, an edit-a-thon was held in South Korea with Korea University students to develop the page. HGAPS held its first edit-a-thon in Korea, led by UNC’s Dr. Eric Youngstrom and engaging 14 participants, which included 11 new editors. This team consisted of students studying abroad at Korea University, Korean psychologists, and interns at an NGO based in Seoul called PSCORE. Participants in this edit-a-thon came from many different places, including the United States of America, South Korea, and Hungary.
The participants gathered more resources and began assembling the Wikipedia page. A few Korean-speaking students collaborated with the Korean psychologists to add information to the Squid Game page in Korean (Hangul); other participants edited the English site while others uploaded media. Since the majority of participants had not edited Wiki pages before, skills the attendees learned during the edit-a-thon include:
- Editing a Wikipedia page
- Formatting tables on the site
- Uploading media to Wiki Commons
Our workplace for the day was a classroom furnished with stadium-style seating, a computer, LCD projector, whiteboards, chalkboards, and strong WiFi. Despite starting the permissions process several days earlier, we did not have guest access for the WiFi for our volunteers who did not already have a Korea University affiliation, so we improvised by using a hotspot and organizing small groups so that those who had WiFi access could implement the edits.
Once we had the resources organized on Wikiversity, we also used a variety of means to share them with others. These include tools like creating a QR Code that brings users to the Wikiversity resource. The QR code and screenshots of the Wiki page also got included in Powerpoint and Google Slides decks to share the work with students in classrooms or attendees at professional society meetings and workshops where HGAPS and dissemination work were discussed.
Goals
editDid you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?
We did meet our goals and are very happy with how the project went. Specifically:
Our goals for this project can be summarized as follows:
- Recruitment of new editors: We successfully recruited new editors, including 23 members on our Slack channel in Spring 2022 and 15 attendees at the UNC Edit-A-Thon, some of whom were indirectly editing.
- International new editors: We created 14 new editing accounts in Korea, with 11 new editors. Existing editors increased their skills through various activities, such as:
Edit-a-thon at Korea University in Seoul working on Squid Game themed resources - Completing the WikiAdventure and WikiEdu Training Modules.
- Working with pictures and uploading to Commons.
- Learning how to use tables, categories, and templates effectively.
- Using the Dashboard.
- Add or improve content:
- Linked to mental health resources (see extensive set of .org and .gov links on Wikiversity resouce page
- Created a grant prototype for others to engage with Wiki (e.g., in addition to the Wiki version itself, also a suite of related examples of on-Wiki and off-Wiki examples and protocols).
- Added a "making of" section with more pictures and reflections on the project process.
- Engage audiences not familiar with the "inner workings" of Wiki: Students at UNC, students at Korea University, and interns at an NGO in Seoul.
- Reduce skepticism and bias against Wiki through exposure and continued engagement:
- Provided an overview of the project.
- Explained the importance of Wikipedia as a tool for information dissemination and introduced new editors to the platform.
- Editors completed WikiAdventure.
- Educated viewers about credible sources (e.g., .org, .gov).
Outcome
editPlease report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.
| Target outcome | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
| Number of events - 1 edit-a-thon with HGAPS team members and editors, 1 edit-a-thon with Korean clinicians & researchers. | Hosted 2 edit-a-thons. | Both edit-a-thons were successful. We had a US-based hybrid editathon and a Korea-based in-person edithaton (at Korea University) . We had individuals attend the edit-a-thons who are not part of HGAPS. |
| Number of participants - 20+ individual contributors and attendees per edit-a-thon | At least 12 contributors per edit-a-thon. | Although we were not able to get 20+ attendees at our edit-a-thons, we were able to get 12+ at both events. We had many more individuals sign up for the edit-a-thons than the number that actually attended. |
| Number of new editors - 10 new editors | 10 new editors | We exceeded our target with 10 new editors who had not edited Wiki before. |
| Number of of articles created or improved - 2 articles created. | 2 articles created. | Successfully achieved this target by creating 2 new pages (Helpful resources for themes in Squid Game and Making of these pages). |
| Views: at least 5000 views of the Squid Game Wikiversity resource within 6 months of launch. | 3,321 views of the resource. | We didn’t get the amount of views we expected. However, we reached 3,321 page views between the two pages that we created by June of 2024 and anticipate this number continuing to grow. The spike in activity is visible in the MassViews here. Additionally, we expect to increase our number of page views as we continue to disseminate these pages via our social media platforms. |
| Number of repeat participants (for projects that include a series of events) - 5 repeat participants attending events at least 3 events. | 2 Repeat participants between both edit-a-thons. | While there were only 2 repeat participants between both edit-a-thons, 7 edit-a-thon participants continued to help edit on a near-weekly basis (participating in smaller scale editing meet-ups) prior to the completion of the two edit-a-thons. The lack of repeat participants is likely the result of the first editing event being held in Korea and the second editing event being held in the United States. |
| Altmetrics: at least 5000 retweets and mentions across social media. | 374 Views on X (previously known as Twitter) | Demonstrated proof of concept but fell short of the target metric. We expect that we would have been able to reach a wider audience had we made more posts promoting these resources across multiple social media platforms, and plan to promote the pages again via Instagram in the future. |
| Shareable materials (e.g., in any of blog/video/infographics, etc.) to capture the process, milestones, and outcome of HGAP's strategic planning learning journey. | 14 Pictures uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. | We used pictures to document the Edit-a-thon held at KU. |
Learning
editProjects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:
- What worked well?
The very structure of HGAPS is such that it engages volunteers and participation by people from a wide variety of backgrounds and stages of educational or professional development. Using a combination of face-to-face, videoconferencing, and asynchronous collaboration tools, they are able to contribute a myriad of unique skills, knowledge, and perspectives to each project. In the case of Squid Game especially, having a diverse team of individuals from varying backgrounds, working either in-person or virtually lent itself well to this project. This makeup allowed for different perspectives and multiple, differing approaches to ensure that the project was thoroughly completed and the content was as widely applicable as possible. Similarly, having team members both in the U.S. as well as abroad strengthened the project and allowed the team the opportunity to reach a wider audience. As our team included members hailing from different academic backgrounds and skill sets, each member was able to play to their strengths. Some individuals were skilled at resource research, others at resource description crafting, and some at Wikiversity page formatting. Our meetings, frequently held in a hybrid format, allowed us to come together to discuss our perspectives on the project’s progress and future in a centralized manner and to then collaborate by working separately, contributing content based on our personal strengths.
Networking; leveraging study abroad and prior relationships; learning about “wiki-native” networks. Having local on-site connections to secure access to a classroom with computers, LCD projector, whiteboard, chalkboards, and (almost!) guest WiFi access, as well as advertising the event. There were a surprising number of details that needed local wisdom to navigate. Offering gift certificates as an edit-a-thon prize proved to be an interesting case in point. The methods that have been effective in the USA (Amazon gift cards, or Zelle payments of the award amount to a cell phone number or email linked to a checking account) proved unworkable in Korea. Identifying gift cards that were both popular and familiar for the local community, yet usable by international students, proved quite challenging and consumed several hours of researching options. Future events might want to have a short menu of options available for participants to choose from. The awards tied to sustained editing or dissemination would be very amenable to the “menu” approach, as they are more asynchronous in nature.
Engaging with the Korean Wikimedia User Group and talking to shape mutually agreeable, feasible goals given the constraints of the summer campus.
- What did not work so well?
Overall, the project went smoothly during the performance period, and, especially thanks to the Wikiversity Grant-funded edit-a-thon, a great deal was accomplished. Perhaps a slight hurdle faced in the project’s execution was the reality that most if not all of the team members were/are university students, and as such faced time constraints and additional commitments that limited consistent availability. While the team met weekly, not all team members were able to attend the meetings consistently, which slowed the project’s progress. Furthermore, the end of the school year meant lower involvement numbers. Luckily, the summer edit-a-thon resulted in a surge in involvement and new content contribution. The pages were reviewed and considered complete over the fall of 2022.
- What would you do differently next time?
1. For future projects, we plan on hosting more hybrid edit-a-thons to increase the number of participants that are able to attend multiple editing events. We had fewer repeat participants between the two editing events than we planned, largely because the first editing event was in-person at Korea University and the second editing event was based at UNC and planned around Eastern Standard Time. Planning more editing events, hosting these events online, and offering future edit-a-thons at a variety of times will likely increase engagement and encourage participants to attend multiple edit-a-thons.
2. We also have considered putting more time into disseminating completed products on our social media platforms. This approach would attract more page views and increase the number of people that are utilizing this resource.
3. Given the aforementioned challenges, we anticipate that recruiting a bigger and more stable team with at least one full-time point person will ensure that future projects will not have to be paused when major life events occur. Given our organization’s increased resources compared to when this project was initially conceptualized, we anticipate that it will be feasible to recruit a larger and more permanent team for future endeavors.
4. Overall, our team has learned a lot from this project. We aim to apply what we have learned to design and scale up future Wiki projects, focusing on recruiting new editors to the Wiki platform and disseminating evidence-based science in an accessible format. In future projects we will aim to engage a broader audience beyond Korea University and UNC, recruiting Wiki editors from around the globe and encouraging sustained Wiki editing.
Finances
editGrant funds spent
editPlease describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.
| Amount | Expense and comments |
| 1000 | Fiscal sponsor administrative fees (including access to Google Suites for Nonprofits platform and analytics) |
| 990 | Gift cards to virtually "buy lunch" for edit-a-thon participants: ($15 for 20 participants x 2 events) = “props” (squid game mask, bowl, Korean-style pizza, soda, utensils, and other incentives) |
| 700 | Incentives for sustained editing and most effective social media boosting (1st prize = $100, 2nd = $50, 3rd = $25 at 1 and 3 month followups after last edit-a-thon = $175 x 4 "contests" = $700) – “coupons” at Lotte store (after post office debacle) |
| 255 | Social media advertising (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit) |
| 560 | Strategic Planning - two events (attendees include HGAPS board members, Wiki project leaders, heavy representation from UNC Chapter but also two people who attended from Seoul events) |
| 1495 | Additional editing events: Hybrid at UNC Chapel Hill (physical location) with international Zoom participation (extending outside of initial performance period, as reflected in page editing histories) |
| 5000 | Total expended |
Remaining funds
editDo you have any remaining grant funds?
No, after the 2022 editing sessions, we fully expensed the remaining funds.
Anything else
editAnything else you want to share about your project?
Despite the challenges, which required multiple changes to the core team, this was a remarkably successful and fulfilling project for all involved. Thank you for the opportunity and for people's patience and continued support to make it work!
