Social Media Affecting People's Perception Of Ethnic Groups

As the most globally known form of communication, social media outlets has continuously contributed to the dehumanization of African American males for decades starting with propaganda stereotyping the black men as the “black buck” to justify their domination and labor exploitation under chattel slavery in the mid-19th century(Herd 2014). To a hyper sexual rapist possessed by the over desire for white women during the era of wide spread lynching’s, helping to fuel the disenfranchisement and ideological support for extreme anti-black terrorism (Herd 2014). Ultimately providing the public with the idea that the black man is to be feared. From this historical backing of anti-black ideology by the system with laws such as black codes and segregation

I was watching the news, when the footage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster came on. The news reporters were showing a black man walking in flooded waters near a market with a bag full of food and labeled him a “thief”. Social media in the United States has portrayed people of different racial backgrounds differently and unequally in recent years. In the essays “Theories and Constructs of Race” and “Loot or Find: Fact or Frame?” the authors discuss in both essays about issues with racial equality in our world today. Authors Linda Holtzman and Leon Sharpe discuss in the first essay racial schemes are created through prejudices and the telling and retelling of stories. While, authors Cheryl I. Harris and Devon W. Carbado discuss in their essay about the issue of “colorblindness” in social media. Holtzman is a professor of communications and journalism at Webster University, while Sharpe is a professor at Webster as well. Similarly, Harris and Carbado are professors at UCLA’s School of Law and have addressed widely on race, gender, civil rights and constitutional issues. Both essays do a good job at explaining their ideas and supporting them with evidence of racial discrimination in our world today. The authors from both essays organize their ideas and summarize them, which helps understand the main idea of racism, discrimination and racial inequalities in today’s society.

Because of public humiliation, Raza lived every day in shame and fear. Furthermore, Facebook is online social media which we can share our pictures, or news with our friends. On the other side, Facebook is considered as a device to attract people. For instance, someone made a fake new to blame a student at Lewis and Clark University in Portland, Ore for being sexual offense. Due to the protection of privacy, they don’t use his real name; however, all over Facebook called him “rapist”. Further, we are all human races, if we don’t like to get hurt, why we hurt other with our words. In case we hadn’t posted the video of a South Korean student online who was named “Dog poop girl”, she wouldn’t have dropped out of college. Because of our joke,we can cause irrevocable harm to someone else’s life Likewise, Bennett also noticed, “ For people who use blogs and social-networking sites like diaries, putting their personal imformation out there for the world to see, this presents a serious risk.” (92). Most people agree with her argument because social media is virtual world, and we can’t identify good or bad people. In some case, identity thief steals our personal information and used for different

In this age, the traditional method of news delivery is dead. Gone are the days when newspapers and television news anchors were the primary source of information. In today fast paced society, no person has the time to read a newspaper or watch a news segment. Most individuals receive their news from social media. Social media provides a stage on which any one person could inform others on what occurs around them that they might be blind to. According to Ethan Zuckerman, author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, “Social media’s significance is that it is recognising different incidents that might have gone unnoticed and sewing them together as a coherent whole”(qtd, in Day). A single trending topic on Twitter can convey the ideas of a movement and create a global conversation about the topic within a matter of minutes. Such conversation would have not occurred without the help of social media. Ideas flow freely through countries and now reach more and more people. Social media has been able to aide movements such as the Black Lives Matter to broadcast the injustices being committed to a global audience. The Black Lives Matter movement has been able to show to the world the inhumane and unjust treatments of African-Americans in present day America by posting videos of unarmed African-American men being killed by police officers. Due to its overwhelming online

Social media is described, by the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2015), as “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)”. As few as 10 years ago the term social media was yet to be coined, but within that decade the use of these blogs, websites and sharing platforms has increased exponentially with no plateau in sight. From creating Instagram accounts for household pets, to sharing Halloween themed baking ideas over Pinterest, people today have access to social media outlets for almost everything. Today about 74% of people ages 18-65 use some form of a social networking site (Pew, 2014). Facebook takes the lead in social media usage with about 71% of those adults. LinkedIn and Pinterest are tied for second at 28% of users, 26% use Instagram, and Twitter falls last in the top 5 most used social medias with 23% of users (Pew, 2014). In September of 2013 the Pew Research Center measured that 90% of adults ages 18-29 used these social media outlets on a daily basis, which is an astonishing increase from the 9% that was measured in February 2005 (Pew, 2014). Due to the fact that young adults are increasingly involving themselves in these online platforms, it is very important to understand the long term and psychological effects (such as depression, social anxiety,

Much of the incentive to become an activist is to be a part of a movement; an integral cog in the changing of history. One indisputable benefit of social media is its ability to effectively inform millions of people at once; this is infinitely powerful. The interactive format of social networking invites individuals to educate themselves on an issue and then to contribute to it, all in under ten minutes. Despite its efficiency, the detriment of this system is that it perpetuates the idea that the signing of a change.org petition is all it takes to make a difference. Grassroots activism and petitioning, while absolutely fundamental parts of the pursuit of social justice are often only the inciting steps in the lengthy and usually complicated process of creating lasting change. In 2014, in the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, to name just a few, an international movement protesting police brutality began with the hashtag #blacklivesmatter. The issue of racially induced police brutality became a relevant topic of debate in the presidential election that followed, and protests took place worldwide. This movement is winning a major battle in the war against racism and much of this success was owed to its sensational presence on social media. The Black Lives Matter movement is an example of social networking being an invaluable tool in spreading

My thesis builds upon previous studies on the media’s role in stereotyping African Americans and enhancing Whites’ negative emotional responses to African Americans. Today is the age of social media where the public can consume news from a plethora of options: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or really any site on the Internet. While the way Americans’ have consumed media over the years has changed, its significance has not. Regardless if it’s today or the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s or 90’s, the media is important to measure because its representative of the relative culture and remains influential to the public’s opinion. The media is particularly imperative to African American perception

People use social media to connect and keep in touch with family and friends, interact with people they do not regularly see, chat with old acquaintances, and meet new friends. (Whiting, Williams 2013) Social media provides information quickly and efficiently. As of August 2017, two-thirds (67%) of Americans report that they get at least some of their news on social media – with two-in-ten doing so often, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center.

Collective Aviation Review wrote an article in 2011 about social media where they stated “Social media was relied upon by 774 million people worldwide in 2010 – including children, teens, and adults.” Children use social media to play games and enjoy their free time. Parents can allow their children to play on social media so that they are able to get work done while the child is busy playing games. Teens use media outlets to see what their friends are up to and to talk to them. They use outlets like Snapchat to send pictures of what they are doing and who they are with to friends. Adults use social media sites such as Facebook to share news with their friends and family around the world. Adults can also use social media to keep an eye on their

Primarily, user-generated content and social media fostered a participatory culture that expanded the boundaries of the distribution of information. The social networks that were created to manage the influx of information being published subsequently fostered virtual environments that allowed for growth in communities that were grouped by shared interests. It is exactly this type of virtual environment in which Black Twitter was created. Due to Black Twitter primarily focusing on issues that affect the African American population, I move on to discuss the perceptions and realities of American techno culture and race relations in the 21st century. On the surface as a byproduct, primary online activity within America has distributed Western ideals onto those that they perceive to be less fortunate. The less fortunate are those that are perceived to deviate from the cultural norms of the United States. However research and evidence has surfaced to substantiate that the virtual world, in particular social media has higher usage and engagement amongst ethnic minorities, in particular Black people. This is partially due to the ease of access that development of mobile technology has provided. Through twitter, Black Users have built a substantial and political network of influence through cultural signifiers, language and creatively exploiting the tools and features

Black people and white people join the discussion on the topic of races in social networks differently. The first such content gets more and more blacks actively writing about the interracial relationships. By making such statements, Demby appeals primarily to the recent study “Social Media Conversations About Race” made by the American Pew Research Center. Social networking sites are often used to discuss social and cultural issues, including the relationship between the representatives of different races. Regardless of race, people encounter content on the topic of race relations. However, as evidenced by the results of the study, the number of such messages varies widely among racial and ethnic groups. It turned out, that the black people

Social media users are most ordinarily young adults, aged 18 to 31. Three-quarters of adult Internet users under age 25 have a profile on a social media site (Lenhart, 2009). Facebook is recorded to be the most well-known social networking website with over one billion users (Sophy, 2013).

Social media contains social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and maybe even Myspace, if people still use it. Social media can change or affect a person’s everyday life, like driving, working, cooking, etc. Those affected by the change of social media are mostly teenagers. When a teenager or someone older joins a site like Facebook, Instagram, Myspace, or Twitter, they first create a personal profile. These profiles display information such as one 's name, relationship status, occupation, photos, videos, religion, ethnicity, personal interests and even a convenient way to locate and reconnect with old friends and relationships.

Social media plays a gigantic role in the population of the 21st century. People of all ages use apps or websites such as Twitter,

Individuals can easily access so much information with a flip of a switch and by turning to social media. The media exists to benefit our world; to study the facts, to connect and/or to entertain its audience.  Our culture in the United States is encouraged to believe and view headlines as truth and fact; it is for this reason I believe that news and social media has a manner of manipulating and influencing their audience’s attention. My own view is that media educates people with or without credible knowledge, especially in the topic of racial inequality. Racism is defined as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior” (Oxford). In the different ways that media chooses to portray knowledge to their audience is how media manipulates what their viewers see. The media falls short of telling the whole story; in addition, many times they display African Americans in a negative way.