5. What is Extremism? What is Racism? How does the internet affect both?
I simply just want everyone to be treated equally and fairly. Nobody should be worried about facing worse consequences or being treated differently because of their skin color. This type of education in acceptance and kindness needs to be instilled into people at a young age, while most are still eager to learn and have their views shaped.
The overarching metaphor that authors Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner use in the introduction to their book You Are Here: A Field Guide For Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and our Polluted Media Landscape is comparing the media polarization to a storm. Phillips sets the tone of this metaphor with his story at the beginning, where he describes the contrast of how the "ocean was a terraced, soupy, mustard-looming stormfront, and towards the mountains, a perfectly placid everyday scene of ridges silhouetted against a calm blue sky" (2). The authors describe this polarization as having "emerge[d] from the world around us", which also connects to the metaphor of the environment around us. In my experience, I see this type of polarization a lot on social media where misinformation is easily spread and people have extreme confirmation bias. People lash out and react on impulse to disagreements, not taking the time to pause and investigate into the other side to understand context. The invitation that the authors make is a call to seek information from the other side that we don't agree with, and to not wallow in ignorance and simply point fingers and make accusations without the full picture. I think I already do put this advice into practice, but as a digital user it's still my responsibility to continue doing this.
The article I selected, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies: Racism as a Form of Persistent Malinformation, written by Nicole Cooke, professor at University of South Carolina, talks about the issue of racist malinformation, which she defines as "forms of false information that mislead, deceive, and facilitate the racist hierarchies that are crippling humanity" (Cooke). She focuses on the idea of critical cultural literacy (CCL), a necessary tool to battle against malinformation because it addresses power dynamic and structures and the greater political, historical, and social contexts. I think this piece is more than relevant today--Cooke even includes many more recent events that sparked a lot of racial outrage such as the murder of George Floyd and AAPI hate since COVID hit. Racial malinformation is deeply integrated into our society to the frequency where it becomes "everyday racism", Cooke says. I see a lot of this "everyday racism" on a lot of social media platforms, especially on Twitter, where a foul-mouthed tweet takes only seconds to write out and send. The easy accessibility of the retweet button means it spreads extremely fast, gaining traction and attention of hundreds of thousands of other users who may all band together through the spread of hatred and misinformation. It is really sad that these types of things are so frequent that the platform itself cannot monitor and flag all racist tweets or users.
Replies:
Hi []! I like the future wish that you have--staying connected in a diverse world is really important so we can hear everyone's voice. That's definitely something that will create a more warm and welcoming community. I also think your connection about spreading misinformation and polluting the environment is a great visualization. I definitely didn't think about it that way, we really should work on cleaning up our online ecosystem :)
Hey []! Reading about your summary for point 3 wow I'm really surprised that discrimination can make its way into our DNA! I also agree with what you say about algorithms, especially with Tiktok which I've heard from a lot of users is discriminatory towards creators of color or with disabilities and conventionally "unattractive" people. There definitely needs to be a change in the algorithm and what gets shown to users has to be content that can create a more inclusive environment.
The overarching metaphor that authors Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner use in the introduction to their book You Are Here: A Field Guide For Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and our Polluted Media Landscape is comparing the media polarization to a storm. Phillips sets the tone of this metaphor with his story at the beginning, where he describes the contrast of how the "ocean was a terraced, soupy, mustard-looming stormfront, and towards the mountains, a perfectly placid everyday scene of ridges silhouetted against a calm blue sky" (2). The authors describe this polarization as having "emerge[d] from the world around us", which also connects to the metaphor of the environment around us. In my experience, I see this type of polarization a lot on social media where misinformation is easily spread and people have extreme confirmation bias. People lash out and react on impulse to disagreements, not taking the time to pause and investigate into the other side to understand context. The invitation that the authors make is a call to seek information from the other side that we don't agree with, and to not wallow in ignorance and simply point fingers and make accusations without the full picture. I think I already do put this advice into practice, but as a digital user it's still my responsibility to continue doing this.
The article I selected, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies: Racism as a Form of Persistent Malinformation, written by Nicole Cooke, professor at University of South Carolina, talks about the issue of racist malinformation, which she defines as "forms of false information that mislead, deceive, and facilitate the racist hierarchies that are crippling humanity" (Cooke). She focuses on the idea of critical cultural literacy (CCL), a necessary tool to battle against malinformation because it addresses power dynamic and structures and the greater political, historical, and social contexts. I think this piece is more than relevant today--Cooke even includes many more recent events that sparked a lot of racial outrage such as the murder of George Floyd and AAPI hate since COVID hit. Racial malinformation is deeply integrated into our society to the frequency where it becomes "everyday racism", Cooke says. I see a lot of this "everyday racism" on a lot of social media platforms, especially on Twitter, where a foul-mouthed tweet takes only seconds to write out and send. The easy accessibility of the retweet button means it spreads extremely fast, gaining traction and attention of hundreds of thousands of other users who may all band together through the spread of hatred and misinformation. It is really sad that these types of things are so frequent that the platform itself cannot monitor and flag all racist tweets or users.
Replies:
Hi []! I like the future wish that you have--staying connected in a diverse world is really important so we can hear everyone's voice. That's definitely something that will create a more warm and welcoming community. I also think your connection about spreading misinformation and polluting the environment is a great visualization. I definitely didn't think about it that way, we really should work on cleaning up our online ecosystem :)
Hey []! Reading about your summary for point 3 wow I'm really surprised that discrimination can make its way into our DNA! I also agree with what you say about algorithms, especially with Tiktok which I've heard from a lot of users is discriminatory towards creators of color or with disabilities and conventionally "unattractive" people. There definitely needs to be a change in the algorithm and what gets shown to users has to be content that can create a more inclusive environment.