‘Vagina Obscura’ shows how little is known about female biology

A new book chronicles how scientists are finally giving proper attention to female health and anatomy

Vagina Obscura reviews the biology of female organs, including the vagina, uterus and ovaries, and how scientists are filling in the gaps in knowledge.
JASENKA ARBANAS/MOMENT/GETTY IMAGES


By Erin Garcia de Jesús
MARCH 29, 2022 


Vagina Obscura
Rachel E. Gross
W.W. Norton & Co., $30

More than 2,000 years ago, Hippocrates, the Greek physician often considered the father of modern medicine, identified what came to be known as the clitoris, a “little pillar” of erectile tissue near the vagina’s entrance. Aristotle then noticed that the seemingly small structure was related to sexual pleasure.

Yet it wasn’t until 2005 that urologist Helen O’Connell uncovered that the “little pillar” was just the tip of the iceberg. The internal parts of the organ reach around the vagina and go into the pelvis, extending a network of nerves deeper than anatomists ever knew.

It took millennia to uncover the clitoris’s true extent because sexism has long stymied the study of female biology, science journalist Rachel E. Gross argues in her new book, Vagina Obscura. Esteemed men of science, from Charles Darwin to Sigmund Freud, viewed men as superior to women. To be male was to be the ideal standard. To be female was to be a stunted version of a human. The vagina, the ancient Greeks concluded, was merely a penis turned inside out, the ovaries simply interior testicles.

Because men mostly considered women’s bodies for their reproductive capabilities and interactions with penises, only recently have researchers begun to truly understand the full scope of female organs and tissues, Gross shows. That includes the basic biology of what “healthy” looks like in these parts of the body and their effects on the body as a whole.

Vagina Obscura itself was born out of Gross’ frustration at not understanding her own body in the wake of a vaginal infection. After antibiotics and antifungal treatments failed due to a misdiagnosis, her gynecologist prescribed another treatment. As Gross paraphrases, the doctor told her to “shove rat poison up my vagina.” The infection, it turned out, was bacterial vaginosis, a hard-to-treat, sometimes itchy and painful condition caused by an overgrowth of bacteria that normally reside in the vagina. (The rat poison was boric acid, which is also an antiseptic. “It’s basically rat poison,” the doctor said. “You’re going to see that on the internet, so I might as well tell you now.”)

The book’s xploration of female anatomy begins from the outside in, first traversing the clitoris’s nerve-filled external nub to the vagina, ovaries and uterus. The last chapter focuses on gender affirmation surgery, detailing how physicians have transformed the field for transgender people. (Gross is up-front that words such as women and men create an artificial binary, with seemingly more objective terms like “male” and “female” not performing much better in encompassing humankind’s diversity, including intersex and transgender people.)

Throughout this tour, Gross doesn’t shy away from confronting the sexism and prejudices behind controversial ideas about female biology, such as vaginal orgasms (versus coming from the clitoris) and the existence of the G-spot (SN: 4/25/12). Both “near-mystical” concepts stem from the male perspective that sexual pleasure should be straightforward for women, if only men could hit the right spot. Nor are the more appalling offenses swept under the rug, including racism, eugenics and female genital cutting. Footnotes throughout the book detail Gross’ efforts to navigate controversial views and stigmatizing or culturally charged terminology.

To lift readers’ spirits, she finds the right spots to deliver a dose of wry humor or a pun. She also shares stories of often forgotten researchers, such as lab technician Miriam Menkin, who showed in 1944 that in vitro fertilization is possible (SN: 8/12/44). Yet Menkin’s role in describing the first instance of a human egg being fertilized in a lab dish has largely been erased from IVF’s history (SN: 6/9/21). There’s also plenty of opportunity to marvel at the power of the female body. Despite the long-held notion that a person is born with all the eggs they’ll ever have, for example, researchers are now discovering the ovary’s regenerative properties.

Studying female bodies more closely could ultimately improve quality of life. Chasing cells capable of producing more eggs might bring about discoveries that could restore the menstrual cycle in cancer patients rendered infertile by chemotherapy or make menopause less miserable. Patients with endometriosis, a painful disorder in which uterine tissue grows outside the uterus, are often dismissed and their symptoms downplayed. Some doctors even recommend getting pregnant to avoid the pain. But people shouldn’t have to suffer just because they aren’t pregnant. Researchers just haven’t asked the right questions yet about the uterus or endometriosis, Gross argues.

Vagina Obscura reinforces that female bodies are more than “walking wombs” or “baby machines.” Understanding these organs and tissues is important for keeping the people who have them healthy. It will take a lot of vagina studies to overcome centuries of neglect, Gross writes. But the book provides a glimpse into what is possible when researchers (finally) pay attention.

sciencenews.org

About Erin Garcia de Jesús
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Erin I. Garcia de Jesus is a staff writer at Science News. She holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Washington and a master’s in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

MEN ARE SNOWFLAKES BC MUST BE 100% SAFE

New Male Birth Control Pill Effectively Prevents Pregnancy – Without Side Effects

By AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY MARCH 25, 2022

Women have many choices for birth control, ranging from pills to patches to intrauterine devices, and partly as a result, they bear most of the burden of preventing pregnancy. But men’s birth control options — and, therefore, responsibilities — could soon be expanding. Today, scientists report a non-hormonal male contraceptive that effectively prevents pregnancy in mice, without obvious side effects.

The researchers presented their results this week at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2022 is a hybrid meeting that was held virtually and in-person March 20-24, with on-demand access available March 21-April 8. The meeting features more than 12,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

Currently, men have only two effective options for birth control: male condoms and vasectomy. However, condoms are single-use only and prone to failure. In contrast, vasectomy — a surgical procedure — is considered a permanent form of male sterilization. Although vasectomies can sometimes be reversed, the reversal surgery is expensive and not always successful. Therefore, men need an effective, long-lasting but reversible contraceptive, similar to the birth control pill for women.

A non-hormonal male contraceptive (known as YCT529; structure shown here) prevents pregnancy in mice by blocking a vitamin A receptor, with no obvious side effects. Credit: Md Abdullah Al Noman

“Scientists have been trying for decades to develop an effective male oral contraceptive, but there are still no approved pills on the market,” says Md Abdullah Al Noman, who is presenting the work at the meeting. Most compounds currently undergoing clinical trials target the male sex hormone testosterone, which could lead to side effects such as weight gain, depression and increased low-density lipoprotein (known as LDL) cholesterol levels. “We wanted to develop a non-hormonal male contraceptive to avoid these side effects,” says Noman, a graduate student in the lab of Gunda Georg, Ph.D., at the University of Minnesota.

To develop their non-hormonal male contraceptive, the researchers targeted a protein called the retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR-a). This protein is one of a family of three nuclear receptors that bind retinoic acid, a form of vitamin A that plays important roles in cell growth, differentiation (including sperm formation) and embryonic development. Knocking out the RAR-a gene in male mice makes them sterile, without any obvious side effects. Other scientists have developed an oral compound that inhibits all three members of the RAR family (RAR-a, -ß and -?) and causes reversible sterility in male mice, but Georg’s team and their reproductive biology collaborators wanted to find a drug that was specific for RAR-a and therefore less likely to cause side effects.

So the researchers closely examined crystal structures of RAR-a, -ß and -? bound to retinoic acid, identifying structural differences in the ways the three receptors bind to their common ligand. With this information, they designed and synthesized approximately 100 compounds and evaluated their ability to selectively inhibit RAR-a in cells. They identified a compound, which was named YCT529, that inhibited RAR-a almost 500 times more potently than it did RAR-ß and -?. When given orally to male mice for 4 weeks, YCT529 dramatically reduced sperm counts and was 99% effective in preventing pregnancy, without any observable side effects. The mice could father pups again 4-6 weeks after they stopped receiving the compound.

According to Georg, YCT529 will begin testing in human clinical trials in the third or fourth quarter of 2022. “Because it can be difficult to predict if a compound that looks good in animal studies will also pan out in human trials, we’re currently exploring other compounds, as well,” she says. To identify these next-generation compounds, the researchers are both modifying the existing compound and testing new structural scaffolds. They hope that their efforts will finally bring the elusive oral male contraceptive to fruition.

The researchers acknowledge support and funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Male Contraceptive Initiative. Georg is a consultant with YourChoice Therapeutics.

Title

Development of selective RARa antagonists as male contraceptive agents

Abstract

The quest for an effective male contraceptive agent has begun decades ago with no approved pills to date. Compounds undergoing clinical trials are all targeted on male sex hormone testosterone which could lead to hormonal side effects such as weight gain, depression, increased low-density lipoproteins, etc. Our effort focused on developing a non-hormonal male contraceptive to avoid the hormonal side effects. Vitamin A has long been known to be essential for male fertility and vitamin-A-deficient diet causes mammalian male sterility. One particular receptor of vitamin A metabolite retinoic acid (RARa) is validated as the target for male contraception by gene knockout studies. Also, oral administration pan-RAR antagonist BMS-189453 which inhibits the activity of RAR a, ß, and ? lead to reversible sterility in male mice. Knocking out RAR alpha and treatment with a pan-RAR antagonist did not present any significant side effects in mice. We pursued to develop a selective RARa antagonist as a safe, effective, and reversible male contraceptive agent with no off-target effects on RARß and RAR?. Based on the published crystal structures of RARa-ligand complex as well as structures elucidated by us, we envisioned to exploit the structural differences between RARa, ß, and ? ligand-binding domain to achieve RARa selectivity. Also, the structural differences between RARa bound to the agonist and the antagonist facilitated the design of full antagonists. Aided by all the structural information, we designed and synthesized about 100 compounds and evaluated RARa antagonist activity and selectivity using a luciferase-reporter cell assay. We obtained several antagonists with single-digit nanomolar IC₅₀ values for RARa with excellent selectivity over RARß and RAR?. One RARa-selective antagonist showed good oral bioavailability and desired pharmacokinetic properties in mice, and upon oral administration, it showed complete inhibition of embryo formation in mating studies. Modification of active compounds is ongoing to obtain additional potent and selective inhibitors with good pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic properties.

Most face masks don't expose wearers to harmful levels of PFAS, study says

by American Chemical Society

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Face masks are important for slowing the spread of COVID-19 and protecting against smoke. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are added to many products to repel fluids, but their presence in face masks hasn't been thoroughly studied. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology Letters found that most face masks tested contain low or negligible levels of PFAS, except for one marketed to firefighters, which could pose health risks in certain situations.

Manufacturers design face masks to not only prevent inhalation of particles and pathogens but also to repel fluids, so some companies could be adding PFAS coatings to their products. During the current pandemic, people have been wearing face masks for long periods, which could expose them to PFAS through inhalation, skin exposure or accidental ingestion. In addition, used masks end up in landfills, where the compounds might leach out into the environment. Ivan Titaley at Oregon State University and colleagues wanted to measure PFAS in different types of face masks and analyze the implications for human exposure and the environment.

The researchers used mass spectrometry to measure nonvolatile and volatile PFAS in nine types of face masks: one surgical, one N95, six reusable cloth and a heat-resistant fabric mask advertised to firefighters. Surgical and N95 masks had the lowest levels, whereas the firefighting mask had the highest amount. Next, the team estimated the dose of PFAS that could cause health problems from chronic exposure, based on prior animal studies. According to the calculations, regular wear of the surgical, N95 and cloth masks would not pose a risk. However, the higher PFAS levels in the firefighter mask exceeded the dose considered safe, but only when worn for a full day (10 hours) at a high activity level, such as exercising or working in ways that boost the wearer's respiration. Next, the researchers analyzed the environmental impact of PFAS from surgical and N95 masks (which comprise over 99% of masks discarded in landfills). They estimated that even if everyone in the U.S. over age 5 threw away one mask per day (90 billion masks per year), masks would be only a minor source of PFAS in landfill leachates and domestic water.

According to the researchers, this study should encourage the public to continue wearing face masks, especially during a pandemic. It could also help people make informed decisions about what type of masks to wear and encourage manufacturers to consider the chemicals used in masks, they explain.Research shows superior COVID protection from better face masks

More information: Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Facemasks: Potential Source of Human Exposure to PFAS with Implications for Disposal to Landfills, Environmental Science & Technology Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.2c00019

Journal information: Environmental Science & Technology Letters 

Provided by American Chemical Society 

Oxytocin treatment can take lions from ferocious to friendly

by Cell Press

Lionesses playing with their toy pumpkin after oxytocin treatment. Credit: Jessica Burkhart

Lions typically aren't keen on making new friends. The giant cats guard their territory fiercely and can mortally wound a foe with a single swipe. While aggression is an advantage for apex predators in the wild, it poses real challenges for lions on reserves or in captivity, a number that is growing due to habitat loss. Researchers working on a wildlife reserve in Dinokeng, South Africa found that an intranasal application of the "love hormone" oxytocin could make lion meet-cutes less life-threatening. Their work appears March 30 in the journal iScience.

In the summers of 2018 and 2019, a team led by animal biologist Craig Packer and neuroscientist Sarah Heilbronner from the University of Minnesota spent their days using hunks of raw meat to lure lions up to a fence so they could spray oxytocin up their noses with a tool that looks like an antique perfume bottle.

"By spraying the oxytocin directly up the nose, we know it can travel up the trigeminal nerve and the olfactory nerve straight up into the brain." says first author Jessica Burkhart. "Otherwise the blood-brain barrier could filter it out."

After these treatments, Burkhart and her colleagues observed that the 23 lions who were given oxytocin were more tolerant of other lions in their space and displayed less vigilance towards intruders. "You can see their features soften immediately, they go from wrinkled and aggressive to this totally calm demeanor," says Burkhart. "They totally chill out. It's amazing."

Researchers measure social tolerance by seeing how close a lion who has possession of a desired object, in this case a toy, will let others approach it. "After the lions were treated with oxytocin, and we gave them their favorite pumpkin toy to play with, we saw the average distance between them drop from about 7 meters with no treatment to about 3.5 meters after oxytocin was administered."

This video shows biologist Jessica Burkhart administering oxytocin intranasally to a lion named Lumbumbashi. Credit: Jessica Burkhart

In a scenario where food was present, however, the big cats did not show an increased tolerance to each other, even after the hormone was given. Importantly for future introductions, the hormone-treated lions significantly decreased their vigilance toward potential intruders, never roaring in response to recorded roars of unfamiliar lions, whereas untreated lions always roared in response.

Lionesses playing with their toy pumpkin after oxytocin treatment. Credit: Jessica Burkhart

This kind of treatment may become particularly helpful as cities in Africa sprawl and encroach upon lions' territory. In order to keep them safe and away from humans, many have been transported to private fenced reserves, which often results in lions from different prides being mixed in with one another. "Currently we're working on introductions of animals who have been rescued from circuses or overseas or war zones that now live in sanctuaries," says Burkhart. "The hope is that this will translate to animals being relocated in the wild, helping them to become more inclined to their new social environment so they're more curious and less fearful, leading to more successful bonding."Yawn contagion in lions found to also play a role in social behavior

More information: Jessica C. Burkhart, Oxytocin promotes social proximity and decreases vigilance in groups of African lions, iScience (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104049. www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext … 2589-0042(22)00319-4

Journal information: iScience 

Provided by Cell Press 

Caribou herd rebounds as Indigenous stewards lead conservation efforts

UBCO researcher says collaborative recovery moves Klinse-Za caribou from brink of extinction

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA OKANAGAN CAMPUS

 

IMAGE: IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MANY ORGANIZATIONS AND GOVERNMENTS, A NEW INDIGENOUS-LED CONSERVATION INITIATIVE HAS HELPED IMPROVE A KLINSE-ZA CARIBOU POPULATION. view more 

CREDIT: UBC OKANAGAN

Despite recovery efforts from federal and provincial governments, caribou populations across Canada continue to decline, largely due to human activity.

But as a new UBC Okanagan study finds, in central British Columbia there is one herd of mountain caribou, the Klinse-Za, whose numbers are going in the opposite direction—all thanks to a collaborative recovery effort led by West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations.

In partnership with many organizations and governments, the Indigenous-led conservation initiative paired short-term recovery actions such as predator reduction and caribou guardians at maternal pens, with ongoing work to secure landscape-level protection in an effort to create a self-sustaining caribou population.

Their efforts paid off.

Dr. Clayton Lamb, a Liber Ero Fellow, along with Carmen Richter, a biology master’s student, and Dr. Adam T. Ford, Canada Research Chair in Wildlife Restoration Ecology, conduct research in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science. Their latest study shows Klinse-Za caribou numbers have nearly tripled in under a decade.

“We have an Indigenous-led conservation effort to thank for averting the looming extinction of this herd,” says Dr. Lamb. “The population was declining rapidly—a West Moberly Elder once described the herd as a ‘sea of caribou,’ but by 2013 it had declined to only 38 animals.”

Today, the herd count is more than 110 and numbers continue to rise.

“This work provides an innovative, community-led, paradigm shift to conservation in Canada,” Dr. Lamb says. “While Indigenous Peoples have been actively stewarding landscapes for a long time, this approach is new in the level of collaboration among western scientists and Indigenous Peoples to create positive outcomes on the land and put an endangered species on the path to recovery.”

Richter, who is a Saulteau First Nations member, says Indigenous communities have really come together for the good of the caribou.

“We are working hard to recover these caribou. Each year, community members pick bags and bags of lichen to feed the mother caribou in the pen while other members live up at the top of the mountain with the animals. One day, we hope to return the herds to a sustainable size,” she says.

Though the partnership has yielded great success, Dr. Ford is the first to acknowledge that more time and effort will be needed to fully recover the Klinse-Za.

“This work is also an important part of decolonizing the mindset of conservation, which has historically worked to exclude the views of Indigenous Peoples,” he adds.

With caribou declines exceeding 40 per cent in recent decades across Canada, many populations have already been lost. But Dr. Ford insists there is a brighter path forward, and this study proves it.

“This is truly an unprecedented success and signals the critical role that Indigenous Peoples can play in conservation,” he says. “I hope this success opens doors to collaborative stewardship among other communities and agencies. We can accomplish so much more when working together.”

This study was co-produced by western scientists and members of West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations. The work was recently published in Ecological Applications and is supported by a companion manuscript in Ecological Applications exploring the expeditious population growth.

---

JOURNAL

Ecological Applications

DOI

10.1002/eap.2581 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Indigenous-led conservation: Pathways to recovery for the nearly extirpated Klinse-Za mountain caribou

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Mar-2022

USA
Nurses: Guilty verdict for dosing mistake could cost lives
By TRAVIS LOLLER

1 of 5

RaDonda Vaught, a former Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurse charged with in the death of a patient, listens to the opening statements during her trial at Justice A.A. Birch Building in Nashville, Tenn., Tuesday, March 22, 2022. Vaught was charged with reckless homicide for accidentally administering the paralyzing drug vecuronium to 75-year-old Charlene Murphey instead of the sedative Versed in December on Dec. 26, 2017. Vaught admitted the error as soon as she realized it, and the state medical board initially took no action against her. Prosecutors say Vaught made multiple errors that day and “recklessly ignored” her training. 

(Stephanie Amador/The Tennessean via AP, Pool)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The moment nurse RaDonda Vaught realized she had given a patient the wrong medication, she rushed to the doctors working to revive 75-year-old Charlene Murphey and told them what she had done. Within hours, she made a full report of her mistake to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Murphey died the next day, on Dec. 27, 2017. On Friday, a jury found Vaught guilty of criminally negligent homicide and gross neglect.

That verdict — and the fact that Vaught was charged at all — worries patient safety and nursing groups that have worked for years to move hospital culture away from cover-ups, blame and punishment, and toward the honest reporting of mistakes.

The move to a “Just Culture” seeks to improve safety by analyzing human errors and making systemic changes to prevent their recurrence. And that can’t happen if providers think they could go to prison, they say.

“The criminalization of medical errors is unnerving, and this verdict sets into motion a dangerous precedent,” the American Nurses Association said. “Health care delivery is highly complex. It is inevitable that mistakes will happen. ... It is completely unrealistic to think otherwise.”

HEALTH

UK maternity scandal review finds 200 avoidable baby deaths

Just Culture has been widely adopted in hospitals since a 1999 report by the National Academy of Medicine estimated at least 98,000 people may die each year due to medical errors.

But such bad outcomes remain stubbornly common, with too many hospital staffers convinced that owning up to mistakes will expose them to punishment, according to a 2018 study published in the American Journal of Medical Quality.

More than 46,000 death certificates listed complications of medical and surgical care — a category that includes medical errors — among the causes of death in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

“Best estimates are 7,000-10,000 fatal medication errors a year. Are we going to lock them up? Who is going to replace them?” said Bruce Lambert, patient safety expert and director of the Center for Communication and Health at Northwestern University.

“If you think RaDonda Vaught is criminally negligent, you just don’t know how health care works,” Lambert said.

Murphey was admitted to the neurological intensive care unit on Dec. 24, 2017, after suffering from a brain bleed. Two days later, doctors ordered a PET scan. Murphey was claustrophobic and was prescribed Versed for her anxiety, according to testimony. When Vaught could not find Versed in an automatic drug dispensing cabinet, she used an override and accidentally grabbed the paralyzing drug vecuronium instead.

Such mistakes often end up in malpractice lawsuits, but criminal prosecutions are rare. After Vaught was charged in 2019, the Institute for Safe Medical Practices issued a statement saying it had “worrisome implications for safety.”

“In an era when we need more transparency, cover-ups will reign due to fear,” the statement read. “Even if errors are reported, effective event investigation and learning cannot occur in a culture of fear or blame.”

Many nurses are “already at their breaking point ... after a physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting two years caring for patients with COVID,” said Liz Stokes, director of the American Nurses Association’s Center for Ethics and Human Rights. Vaught’s prosecution gives them one more reason to quit, she said.

“This could be me. I’m an RN as well,” she said. “This could be any of us.”

Vaught was steeped in the idea of Just Culture and says she has “zero regrets” about telling the truth, but her candor was used against her at trial. Assistant District Attorney Brittani Flatt quoted from her interview with a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent in closing arguments: “I definitely should have paid more attention. I should have called the pharmacy. I shouldn’t have overridden, because it wasn’t an emergency.”

It is easy to judge Vaught’s actions in retrospect, Lambert said, but overrides and workarounds are an extremely common part of healthcare, he said: “This is typical, not aberrant or bizarre, behavior.”

Meanwhile, Vaught’s honesty about her mistake has already brought about safety improvements, and not just at Vanderbilt. Because vecuronium should only be used on patients who have a breathing tube inserted, some hospitals have moved it and other paralytic drugs out of automatic dispensing cabinets.

“At my hospital, they’ve changed their policy and put paralytics into a rapid intubation kit because of this,” said Janie Harvey Garner, who founded the nurse advocacy organization Show Me Your Stethoscope. She said that because Vaught owned up to the mistake, Murphey’s death “has probably saved lives.”

While Murphey’s death may serve as a cautionary tale for other nurses, Vaught, now awaiting a sentence of up to eight years, told The Associated Press in an interview that she thinks about her patient every day.

Vaught, 37, discovered that she and Murphey lived in the same small community of Bethpage, about an hour northeast of Nashville, and that she and members of Murphey’s family have mutual friends. It would only be a matter of time before she met one of them in person.

“I’ve imagined so many times how I would feel if this were my grandma, my family member, my husband,” she said.

Recently, while buying farm supplies, she was talking with the young man behind the counter when he recognized her, and told her he was Murphey’s grandson. Instead of reproaching her, he ended up comforting her and patting her on the shoulder, she said.

“He was so kind. He was so incredibly kind,” Vaught said. “I took his grandma away, and he just kept telling me to take care of myself. There are good people in this world.”

SWORD OF DAMOCLES AND THE GORDIAN KNOT

Social media crackdowns during the war in Ukraine make the internet less global

The power of TikTok, Telegram and other tech companies is challenging the power of the state

A woman checks her phone in Kyiv, Ukraine on March 18, after shelling by Russian forces. Social media can provide citizens real-time, accurate information to make decisions such as whether to search for food or flee from fighting.
MAXYM MARUSENKO/NURPHOTO VIA AP


By Erika Engelhaupt
MARCH 23, 2022 

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, people around the world have watched the war play out in jarring detail — at least, in countries with open access to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and the messaging app Telegram.

“The way that social media has brought the war into the living rooms of people is quite astounding,” says Joan Donovan, the research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Fighting and explosions play out nearly in real time, and video messages from embattled Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy have stirred support across the West.

But that’s not all. Social media is actually changing the way wars are fought today, says political scientist Thomas Zeitzoff of American University in Washington, D.C., who is an expert on political violence.

The platforms have become important places to recruit fighters, organize action, spread news and propaganda and — for social scientists — to gather data on conflicts as they unfold.

As social platforms have become more powerful, governments and politicians have stepped up efforts to use them — or ban them, as in Russia’s recent blocking of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And in a first, the White House held a special briefing on the Ukraine war with TikTok stars such as 18-year-old Ellie Zeiler, who has more than 10 million followers. The administration hopes to shape the messages of young influencers who are already important sources of news and information for their audiences.

The Ukraine war is shining a spotlight on social media’s role as a political tool, says Donovan, whose Technology and Social Change Project team has been following the spread of disinformation in the conflict. “This is a huge moment in internet history where we’re starting to see the power of these tech companies play out against the power of the state.” And that, she says, “is actually going to change the internet forever.”

Science News interviewed Donovan and Zeitzoff about social media’s influence on the conflict and vice versa. The following conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

SN: When did social media start to play a role in conflicts?

Zeitzoff: Some people would say the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, way back in the 1990s, because the Zapatistas used the internet [to spread their political message]. But I think the failed Green Revolution in Iran in 2007 and 2008 was one of the first, and especially the Arab Spring in the early 2010s. There was this idea that social media would be a “liberation technology” that allows people to hold truth to power.

But as the Arab Spring gave way to the Arab Winter [and its resurgence of authoritarianism], people started challenging that notion. Yes, it makes it easy to get a bunch of people out on the street [to protest], but it also makes it easier for governments to track these folks.

SN: How do you see social media being used in the Ukrainian conflict, and what’s different now?
Russia expert Joshua Tucker of New York University tweets about a map tracking violence in Ukraine in real time, created by University of Michigan political scientist Yuri Zhukov. Social scientists are using open-source data to analyze the conflict as it unfolds and using social media to share information.

Donovan: Some of the platforms that are more well-known, like Facebook and Twitter, are not as consequential as newer platforms like Telegram and TikTok. For instance, Ukrainian groups on Facebook started to build other channels for communication right before the Russian invasion because they felt that Facebook might get compromised. So Telegram has been a very important space for getting information and sharing news.

Telegram has also become a hot zone for propaganda and misinformation, where newer tactics are emerging such as fake debunked videos. These are videos that look like they’re news debunks showing that Ukraine is participating in media manipulation efforts, but they’re actually manufactured by Russia to make Ukraine look bad.

Zeitzoff: I think social media has probably afforded the Ukrainians an easier ability to communicate to their diaspora communities, whether in Canada, the United States or across Europe. It’s also increasingly affording unprecedented battlefield views.

But I think the bigger thing is to think about what these new suites of technology allow, like Volodymyr Zelenskyy holding live videos that basically allow him to show proof of life, and also put pressure on European leaders.

SN: Despite Russia’s big investments in disinformation, is Ukraine winning the social media war?

Zeitzoff: Up to the beginning of the conflict, many Ukrainians were skeptical of Zelenskyy’s ability to lead. But you look back at his presidential campaign, and he was doing Facebook videos where he would talk into the camera, in a very sort of intimate style of campaigning. So he knew how to use social media beforehand. And I think that has allowed Ukraine to communicate to Western audiences, basically, ‘give me money, give me weapons,’ and that has helped. There is an alternative scenario where perhaps if Russia’s military were slightly better organized and had a better social media campaign, it would become very difficult for Ukraine to hold.

And I would say that Russia’s propaganda has been sloppier. It’s not as good of a story. Ukraine already has the underdog sympathy, and they’ve been very good at capitalizing on it. They show their battlefield successes and highlight atrocities committed by Russians.

And the other thing is that social media has helped to organize foreign fighters and folks who have volunteered to go to Ukraine.

SN: Social media is also an enormous source of misinformation and disinformation. How is that playing out?

Donovan: We’re seeing recontextualized media [on TikTok and elsewhere], which is the reuse of content in a new context. And it usually also misrepresents the time and place of the content.

For instance, we’ve seen repurposed video game footage as if it was the war in Ukraine. While we [in the United States] don’t need real-time information to understand what’s happening in Ukraine, we do need access to the truth. Recontextualized media gets in the way of our right to truth.

And we want to make sure the information getting to people in Ukraine is as true and correct and vetted as possible, because they’re going to make a life-or-death decision that day about going out in search of food or trying to flee a certain area. So those people do need real-time accurate information.

There’s one other story about the way in which hope and morale can be decimated by disinformation. Among Ukrainians, there’s a lot of talk about when or if the United States or NATO will send planes. And there were these videos going around suggesting that the United States had already sent planes, and showing paratroopers jumping out. People were sharing these until they got to a reputable news source and heard the news that NATO was still not sending planes. So it can be something as innocent as a video that provides a massive amount of hope to people who share it, and then it’s all snatched away.

SN: What aren’t we seeing on social media?

Donovan: There’s a missing piece, which is that many social media algorithms are set to remove things that are torturous or gory. And so the very violent and vicious aftermath of war is something that the platforms are suppressing, just by virtue of their design.

So in order to get a complete picture of what has happened in Ukraine, people are going to have to see those videos [from other news sources] and be a global witness to the atrocity.

SN: Where is this all heading?

Zeitzoff: I think the biggest thing that’s changing is this decoupling of social media networks across great powers. So you have the Great Firewall [that censors the internet] in China, and I think Russia will be doing something very similar. And how does that influence the free flow of information?

Donovan: We try to understand how information warfare plays out as kind of a chess match between different actors. And what’s been incredible about the situation in Russia is you have this immense titan, the tech industry, pushing back on Russia by removing state media from their platforms. And then Russia counters by removing Facebook and Instagram in Russia.

This is the first time that we’ve seen these companies take action based on the request of other governments. In particular, Nick Clegg [the president of global affairs at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and the messaging service WhatsApp] said that they were complying with Ukrainian asks. That means that they are taking some responsibility for the content that is being aired on their platforms. Whatever outcome happens over the next month, I don’t think the internet is going to be as global as it once was.

Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org

CITATIONS

T. Zeitzoff. How social media is changing conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 61, October 2017, p. 1970. doi: 10.1177/0022002717721392.

About 

Erika Engelhaupt is a freelance science writer and editor based in Knoxville, Tenn.

AMERICAN PROPAGANDA 
How China’s TikTok, Facebook influencers push propaganda

By AMANDA SEITZ, ERIC TUCKER and MIKE CATALINI

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Clint Watts, president of Miburo, a research firm that tracks foreign disinformation operations, works at his desktop at company headquarters, on March 15, 2022, in New York. Some of China's state media reporters are identifying as travel bloggers and lifestyle influencers on U.S.-owned social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, racking up millions of followers from around the globe. The Associated Press has identified dozens of these accounts, which are part of a network of profiles that allow China to easily peddle propaganda to unsuspecting social media users.

 (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)


WASHINGTON (AP) — To her 1.4 million followers across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, Vica Li says she is a “life blogger” and “food lover” who wants to teach her fans about China so they can travel the country with ease.

“Through my lens, I will take you around China, take you into Vica’s life!” she says in a video posted in January to her YouTube and Facebook accounts, where she also teaches Chinese classes over Zoom.

But that lens may be controlled by CGTN, the Chinese-state run TV network where she has regularly appeared in broadcasts and is listed as a digital reporter on the company’s website. And while Vica Li tells her followers that she “created all of these channels on her own,” her Facebook account shows that at least nine people manage her page.

That portfolio of accounts is just one tentacle of China’s rapidly growing influence on U.S.-owned social media platforms, an Associated Press examination has found.

As China continues to assert its economic might, it is using the global social media ecosystem to expand its already formidable influence. The country has quietly built a network of social media personalities who parrot the government’s perspective in posts seen by hundreds of thousands of people, operating in virtual lockstep as they promote China’s virtues, deflect international criticism of its human rights abuses and advance Beijing’s talking points on world affairs like Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Some of China’s state-affiliated reporters have posited themselves as trendy Instagram influencers or bloggers. The country has also hired firms to recruit influencers to deliver carefully crafted messages that boost its image to social media users.

And it is benefitting from a cadre of Westerners who have devoted YouTube channels and Twitter feeds to echoing pro-China narratives on everything from Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims to Olympian Eileen Gu, an American who competed for China in the most recent Winter Games.


The influencer network allows Beijing to easily proffer propaganda to unsuspecting Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube users around the globe. At least 200 influencers with connections to the Chinese government or its state media are operating in 38 different languages, according to research from Miburo, a firm that tracks foreign disinformation operations.

“You can see how they’re trying to infiltrate every one of these countries,” said Miburo President Clint Watts, a former FBI agent. “It is just about volume, ultimately. If you just bombard an audience for long enough with the same narratives people will tend to believe them over time.”

____

While Russia’s war on Ukraine was being broadly condemned as a brazen assault on democracy, self-described “traveler,” “story-teller” and “journalist” Li Jingjing took to YouTube to offer a different narrative.

She posted a video to her account called “Ukraine crisis: The West ignores wars & destructions it brings to Middle East,” in which she mocked U.S. journalists covering the war. She’s also dedicated other videos to amplifying Russian propaganda about the conflict, including claims of Ukrainian genocide or that the U.S. and NATO provoked Russia’s invasion.

Li Jingjing says in her YouTube profile that she is eager to show her roughly 21,000 subscribers “the world through my lens.” But what she does not say in her segments on Ukraine, which have tens of thousands of views, is that she is a reporter for CGTN, articulating views that are not just her own but also familiar Chinese government talking points.

Most of China’s influencers use pitches similar to Li Jingjing’s in hopes of attracting audiences around the world, including the U.S., Egypt and Kenya. The personalities, many of them women, call themselves “travelers,” sharing photos and videos that promote China as an idyllic destination.

“They clearly have identified the ‘Chinese lady influencer’ is the way to go,” Watts said of China.

The AP identified dozens of these accounts, which collectively have amassed more than 10 million followers and subscribers. Many of the profiles belong to Chinese state media reporters who have in recent months transformed their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts — platforms that are largely blocked in China — and begun identifying as “bloggers,” “influencers” or non-descript “journalists.” Nearly all of them were running Facebook ads, targeted to users outside of China, that encourage people to follow their pages.

The personalities do not proactively disclose their ties to China’s government and have largely phased out references in their posts to their employers, which include CGTN, China Radio International and Xinhua News Agency.

Foreign governments have long tried to exploit social media, as well as its ad system, to influence users. During the 2016 U.S. election, for example, a Russian internet agency paid in rubles to run more than 3,000 divisive political ads targeting Americans.

In response, tech companies like Facebook and Twitter promised to better alert American users to foreign propaganda by labeling state-backed media accounts.

But the AP found in its review that most of the Chinese influencer social media accounts are inconsistently labeled as state-funded media. The accounts — like those belonging to Li Jingjing and Vica Li — are often labeled on Facebook or Instagram, but are not flagged on YouTube or TikTok. Vica Li’s account is not labeled on Twitter. Last month, Twitter began identifying Li Jingjing’s account as Chinese state-media.

Vica Li said in a YouTube video that she is disputing the labels on her Facebook and Instagram accounts. She did not respond to a detailed list of questions from the AP.

Often, followers who are lured in by accounts featuring scenic images of China’s landscape might not be aware that they’ll also encounter state-endorsed propaganda.

Jessica Zang’s picturesque Instagram photos show her smiling beneath a beaming sun, kicking fresh powdered snow atop a ski resort on the Altai Mountains in China’s Xinjiang region during the Beijing Olympics. She describes herself as a video creator and blogger who hopes to present her followers with “beautiful pics and videos about life in China.”

Zang, a video blogger for CGTN, rarely mentions her employer to her 1.3 million followers on Facebook. Facebook and Instagram identify her account as “state-controlled media” but she is not labeled as such on TikTok, YouTube or on Twitter, where Zang lists herself as a “social media influencer.”

“I think it’s likely by choice that she doesn’t put any state affiliations, because you put that label on your account, people start asking certain types of questions,” Rui Zhong, who researches technology and the China-U.S. relationship for the Washington-based Wilson Center, said of Zang.

Peppered between tourism photos are posts with more obvious propaganda. One video titled “What foreigners in BEIJING think of the CPC and their life in China?” features Zang interviewing foreigners in China who gush about the Chinese Communist Party and insist they’re not surveilled by the government the way outsiders might think.

“We really want to let more people ... know what China is really like,” Zang tells viewers.

That’s an important goal in China, which has launched coordinated efforts to shape its image abroad and whose president, Xi Jinping, has spoken openly of his desire to have China perceived favorably on the global stage.

Ultimately, accounts like Zang’s are intended to obscure global criticisms of China, said Jessica Brandt, a Brookings Institution expert on foreign interference and disinformation.

“They want to promote a positive vision of China to drown out their human rights records,” Brandt said.

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TO COUNTER AMERICAN IMPERIALIST PROPAGANDA

Li Jingjing and Zang did not return messages from the AP seeking comment. CGTN did not respond to repeated interview requests. CGTN America, which is registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department and has disclosed having commercial arrangements with several international news organizations, including the AP, CNN and Reuters, did not return messages. A lawyer who has represented CGTN America did not respond either.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said in a statement, “Chinese media and journalists carry out normal activities independently, and should not be assumed to be led or interfered by the Chinese government.”

China’s interest in the influencer realm became more evident in December after it was revealed that the Chinese Consulate in New York had paid $300,000 for New Jersey firm Vippi Media to recruit influencers to post messages to Instagram and TikTok followers during the Beijing Olympics, including content that would highlight China’s work on climate change.

It’s unclear what the public saw from that campaign, and if the social media posts were properly labeled as paid advertisements by the Chinese Consulate, as Instagram and TikTok require. Vippi Media has not provided the Justice Department, which regulates foreign influence campaigns through a 1938 statute known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a copy of the posts it paid influencers to disseminate, even though federal law requires the company to do so.

Vipp Jaswal, Vippi Media’s CEO, declined to share details about the posts with the AP.

In other cases, the money and motives behind these Facebook posts, YouTube videos and podcasts are so murky that even those who create them say they weren’t aware the Chinese government was financing the project.

Chicago radio host John St. Augustine told the AP that a friend who owns New World Radio in Falls Church, Virginia, invited him to host a podcast called “The Bridge” with a team in Beijing. The hosts discussed daily life and music in the U.S. and China, inviting music industry workers as guests.

He says he didn’t know CGTN had paid New World Radio $389,000 to produce the podcast. The station was also paid millions of dollars to broadcast CGTN content 12 hours daily, according to documents filed with the Justice Department on behalf of the radio company.

“How they did all that, I had no clue,” St. Augustine said. “I was paid by a company here in the United States.”

The station’s relationship with CGTN ended in December, said New World Radio co-owner Patricia Lane.

The Justice Department recently requested public input on how it should update the FARA statute to account for the ephemeral world of social media and its transparency challenges.

“It’s not leaflets and hard copy newspapers anymore,” FARA unit chief Jennifer Kennedy Gellie said of messaging. It’s “tweets and Facebook posts and Instagram images.”

___

A growing chorus of English-speaking influencers has also cultivated an online niche by promoting pro-Chinese messaging in YouTube videos or tweets.

Last April, as CGTN sought to expand its network of influencers, it invited English speakers to join a months-long competition that would end with jobs working as social media influencers in London, Nairobi, Kenya or Washington. Thousands applied, CGTN said in September, describing the event as a “window for young people around the world to understand China.”

British video blogger Jason Lightfoot raved about the opportunity in a video on YouTube advertising the event.

“So many crazy experiences that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life, and that’s all thanks to CGTN,” Lightfoot said in a video he said was filmed from China tech company Huawei’s campus.

Lightfoot, who did not respond to requests for comment, does not disclose this relationship with CGTN on his YouTube profile, where he has accrued millions of views with headlines like “The Olympics Backfired on USA — Disastrous Regret” and “Western Media Lies about China.”

The video topics are often in sync with those of other pro-China bloggers such as Cyrus Janssen, a U.S. citizen living in Canada. During the Olympics, Janssen and Lightfoot both shared videos celebrating Gu’s three-medal win, using identical images of the Olympian, though Lightfoot also poked fun at President Joe Biden.

“USA’s boycott failure ... Eileen Gu Wins Gold!” Lightfoot posted on Feb. 10. That same day, Janssen uploaded a video titled “Is Eileen Gu a Traitor to America? American Expat Shares the Truth.”

In emails to the AP, Janssen said his videos are intended to educate people about China and said he’s never accepted money from the Chinese government. But when pressed for details about some of his partnerships, which include Chinese tech firms, Janssen responded only with questions about an AP’s reporter salary. The AP also found videos that show him appearing on CGTN broadcasts.

The Western influencers routinely decry what they see as distorted American media coverage of Beijing and life there. Some posts, for instance, have ridiculed Western concerns over the safety of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, who disappeared from view after leveling sexual assault allegations against a former high-ranking member of China’s ruling Communist Party. She resurfaced around the Olympics in a controlled interview in which she vigorously denied wrongdoing by Chinese officials and said her initial allegations had created an “enormous misunderstanding.”

Her abrupt about-face prompted skeptical reactions in the West, which YouTuber Andy Boreham mocked in a video in which he invoked language reminiscent of the MeToo movement. “I wonder what happened to #BelieveAllWomen,” he said.

Boreham is a New Zealander and columnist for Shanghai Daily. Twitter recently labeled his account as Chinese-state affiliated media. His YouTube account remains unlabeled. In a statement, YouTube said it only applies state-affiliated media labels to organizations, not individuals who work for or with state-funded media.

In a YouTube post last year, Lightfoot, who has more than 200,000 subscribers, marveled at video footage of what he said were “clean, modern, peaceful, pleasant” streets of China. The post then cut to video of gritty, trash-strewn streets he said were in Philadelphia.

“When I first saw this video,” he says by way of narration, “I actually thought it was from a movie. I thought it was from a zombie movie or some kind of end-of-the-world movie. But it’s not. This is real. This is America.”

YouTubers Matthew Tye, an American, and Winston Sterzel, who is from South Africa, believe that, in many cases, China’s paying for videos to be created.

Their evidence?

The pair was included last year on an email pitch to numerous YouTube influencers from a company that identified itself as Hong Kong Pear Technology. The email asked the influencers to share a promotional video for China’s Hainan province, a tourist beach destination, on their channels.

Tye and Sterzel, who spent years living in China and became vocal critics of its government, assume they were probably included on the pitch by mistake.

But, intrigued, they engaged in a back-and-forth with the company while feigning interest in the offer. The company representative soon followed up with a new request — that they post a propaganda video that claimed COVID-19 did not originate in China, where the first case was detected, but rather from North American white-tailed deer.

“We could offer $2000 (totally negotiable considering the nature of this type of content) lemme know if u are interested,” an employee named Joey wrote, according to emails shared with the AP.

After Tye and Sterzel asked for articles that would back up the false claim, the emails stopped.

In an email to the AP, a Pear Technology employee confirmed he had contacted Tye and Sterzel, but said he did not know much about the client, adding “it might be from the government??”

Tye and Sterzel say the exchange pulls back the curtain on how China pushes propaganda through influencers who profit from it.

“There’s a very easy formula to become successful,” Sterzel said in an interview. “It’s simply to praise the Chinese government, to praise China and talk about how great China is and how bad the West is.”

___

Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey.

Oscar wins for ‘CODA’ bring tears, elation to Deaf community

DEAF VICTORY SLAPPED DOWN IN MEDIA BY NEWS ABOUT MR. SMITH

1 of 5

 Eugenio Derbez, from left, Sian Heder, Marlee Matlin, Troy Kotsur, Emilia Jones, Daniel Durant and Amy Forsyth, winners of the award for best picture for "CODA," pose in the press room while signing "I love you" at the Oscars on March 27, 2022, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The three Oscar wins for the film “CODA” has provided an unprecedented feeling of affirmation to people in the Deaf community. 

(Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)


When “CODA” won the Oscar for best picture in Los Angeles, movie stars from Samuel L. Jackson to Nicole Kidman waved their hands instead of clapping — recognition of a culture and community that proudly calls itself Deaf. At home in suburban New York, Laurie Ann Barish cried, overcome by what she said was a long overdue feeling of acceptance.

Like the film’s acronymic title, Barish was raised by a deaf parent, her mother, now 85. She said she saw her own life in the story about a Massachusetts family “that wants to be heard” and to be seen as no different from anyone else.

“The deaf world is finally unmuted,” said Barish, a 61-year-old personal assistant who lives in Long Beach, New York. “I wish this happened when I was younger, for my mom. It was a wonderful gift. It was for the world to see that we’re all the same. We’re all the same.”
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“CODA” is a tender, coming-of-age tale about the only hearing member in a deaf family that became a crowd-pleaser and earned widespread critical acclaim to become the first film with a largely deaf cast to win best picture. It stars a trio of actors who are deaf, while offering an authentic depiction of Deaf life. For many in that community, the Oscar win provides an unprecedented feeling of affirmation, while offering a measure of Hollywood’s recent progress.

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“CODA” was the first film that “allowed Deaf people to be normal, hard-working individuals trying to raise a family, and navigate the world,” said William Millios, who is deaf and works in freelance videography and web development in Montpelier, Vermont.

“It showed their very real frustrations, without making them into pitiable objects that needed to be saved,” the 56-year-old added.

The film won two other Oscars. Troy Kotsur won best supporting actor to become the first male deaf actor to win an Oscar, and only the second deaf actor to do so, joining his “CODA” co-star Marlee Matlin. The film also won for best adapted screenplay.

Howard A. Rosenblum, CEO of the National Association of the Deaf, said the Oscars show that “excellence lies in taking on a different persona to convincingly and powerfully convey a story rather than acting disabled.”

“For too long, the industry has rewarded actors and directors who have exploited the trope of faking sympathetic disabilities to win awards for themselves without bringing in Deaf people or people with disabilities to ensure authenticity,” Rosenblum said.
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Three of the movie’s actors, including Kotsur, have ties to Gallaudet University, which serves students who are deaf and hard of hearing. There was a palpable sense of elation at its campus in Washington on Monday, said Robert B. Weinstock, the university’s spokesman.

Weinstock said it finally feels like people in the Deaf community are being recognized by the film industry. And he hopes there will be more employment opportunities in the performing arts and elsewhere.

“One thing that we do not have yet is a strength in numbers,” he said of Hollywood. “Not that many deaf people are involved in the industry at this time. There are not that many deaf roles in front of and behind the camera. ... So hopefully that will change.”

In the meantime, people who grew up in the Deaf community say the movie offers a window into the intricacies of their lives, which are unknown to many in the hearing world. For instance, the film shows how much the parents who are deaf can depend on children who can hear.

Matt Zatko, 49, an attorney who lives in western Pennsylvania, remembers spending a lot of time as a kid helping his dad, who was deaf and worked as a painter and a wallpaper hanger.

“I remember answering the phone from people who wanted him to do jobs and me talking with them and signing to my dad at the same time,” Zatko said. “It was our lives. It’s what we did. But to see someone make a movie of it ... I laughed. I cried.”

The movie also showed the challenges that parents who are deaf face when visiting their kids at school, said Tony VonDolteren, who is Zatko’s cousin, and grew up with deaf parents.

VonDolteren, who lives in St. Augustine, Florida, remembers his dad cheering for him at a baseball game.

“It was louder than most and off tone,” said VonDolteren, 46, now the national youth director for Perfect Game, a scouting service for youth travel baseball. “It would startle you. And people are like, ‘Man, what’s wrong with that guy,’ until they find out my dad’s deaf.”

John D’Onofrio, 80, who is deaf and lives in Boynton Beach, Florida, said he’s in awe of the Oscar win for “CODA” and is grateful that more people are learning what life is like for people in the Deaf community. His stepdaughter is Barish, the personal assistant who lives in New York.

D’Onofrio said he wanted to be an architect as well as a carpenter when he grew up but was told he couldn’t do either. Instead, he worked for 35 years as a printer in a newspaper press room, a noisy place where many people who are deaf had earned a living.

“It’s such a big win,” he said of the film’s Oscars. “For the Deaf community. For deaf people. For everyone.”