Social media is a more effective tool to end the ...



Social media is a more effective tool to end the toleration of systemic racism than mainstream media outlets.ProSocial media is a good platform Social media can be used to organize protests. These conversations drive real-life turnout to protests. A 2016 article from the National Center for Biotechnic Information that analyzed Twitter data and Black Lives Matter protests found that “participation in future protests was associated with a spike in the intensity of social media conversations.” Black Lives Matter isn’t the only example of this happening – according to the same NCBI article, “from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Movement, social media has been instrumental in driving and supporting socio-political movements throughout the world.”Organizing protests is important because it disrupts the normal flow of daily life, and forces those who would otherwise tolerate systemic racism to acknowledge its impact. This pressures policymakers to implement real-world change. Social media allows ideas to spread According to a CNN article in 2015: ‘"Because of social media we reach people in the smallest corners of America. We are plucking at a cord that has not been plucked forever," Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter says. "There is a network and a hashtag to gather around. It is powerful to be in alignment with our own people."’This is important for two reasons: First, it can show white people who normally don’t have to confront racism the point of view of people of color. This can help them learn to recognize systemic racism, as well as learning why it’s important not to tolerate it. Second, it allows people of color to connect with each other and share their experiences. This can help them realize they are not alone, and develop community groups and organizations to combat systemic racism and help others who are oppressed. Public trust in the media is low Many people distrust the media According to a Gallup poll in 2019, “Currently, 13% have a great deal of trust [in mass media], 28% a fair amount, 30% not very much and 28% none at all.”Republicans are especially likely to distrust the media According to the same Gallup poll, “Republicans' trust is still at a very low level and a wide gap in views of the media among partisans persists as 69% of Democrats say they have trust and confidence in it, while 15% of Republicans” agree.Republicans are unlikely to acknowledge the effects of systemic racism, according to the Pew Research Center: “Most Republicans reject the idea that discrimination is the main reason why blacks can’t get ahead. Three-quarters (75%) say that blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition; just 14% say racial discrimination is the main reason why many blacks can’t get ahead.” The study goes on to say that not only do Republicans tend to ignore the effects of racism, they think that people pointing out racism is a bigger problem: “Among Republicans and Republican leaners, 63% say the bigger problem in the country is people seeing discrimination where there actually is none.”Distrust in media harms its effectiveness as a tool to end the tolerance of systemic racism If those who are most likely to tolerate systemic racism won’t believe the media, then nothing published there will change their minds. It is likely to be dismissed as “fake news” and will fail to convince those who need to be reached the most. Black Americans are underrepresented in journalism The owners of mainstream media are primarily white According to research published by MIT scholars in 2011, “the overall U.S. population was about 13% Black, 13% Latino, 4% Asian and Pacific Islander, 1% American Indian, and 69% non-Hispanic white. However, non-Hispanic whites owned 90% of businesses in nearly every category, including the ‘information industries:’ Radio Stations, TV Stations, and Newspaper Publishing.”Journalists are less likely to be black: According to Pew Research Center, “While 7% of newsroom employees are black, 11% of U.S. workers overall are black.” Additionally, only “6% of news directors – who constitute the leadership of such newsrooms – are black.”Impact: The MIT scholars continue to explain the importance of their findings: “Although the lack of diversity in media ownership reflects a wider pattern across all business sectors, the information industries are … more important, because of the central role they play in our democracy. The media are the soil in which civic discourse takes root, but the media also perpetuate inequality via a lack of representation - or a skewed and inaccurate representation - of the public.”White journalists and newspaper owners are less likely to be able to see and understand racism when it happens, and more likely to tolerate it because it does not affect them personally. Because of this, mainstream media outlets are not likely to be effective at ending the tolerance of systemic racism. Most news media is owned by the extremely wealthy One example is Bloomberg News: Bloomberg News is owned by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. His net worth is around $50 billion, according to Business Insider in March 2020.When Bloomberg was running for president, he used this to his advantage. A Guardian article in 2019 explains: “the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News sent a memo to the company’s 2,700 journalists telling them they were not to do any investigative stories on Bloomberg’s campaign. While Bloomberg outlets will cover the day-to-day of the presidential contest, they will not be conducting in-depth investigations into their boss.”Another example is the Washington Post: According to CNN in 2019, “Amazon chief Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013.” Jeff Bezos is currently the richest person in the world, and has substantially changed the way that the Washington Post is run since he bought it, according to the CNN article. Impact: According to a 2020 Business Insider article, “Only six of the United States' 615 billionaires are African American.” This is less than 1%. The article goes on to say that “By 2016, the median white family was $152,000 wealthier than its Black counterpart.” Not only are the owners of newspapers more likely to be white because of their economic class, they are also more likely to be out of touch with the concerns with average people, especially people of color, for whom discrimination and historical oppression have made it hard to accumulate wealth. This makes it hard for these newspapers to combat the tolerance of racism, because their owners will often influence what is published. Media is consolidating into large companies Fewer companies own more news outlets Local TV news stations are increasingly owned by national mega-corporations. According to Pew Research in 2017, “five companies owned an estimated 37% of all full-power local TV stations in the country.”Newspapers are consolidating as well: according to Brookings Institute in 2019, “shareholders at Gannett and GateHouse, the nation’s two largest newspaper chains, voted to approve the merger of the two companies. … When combined, the new company will own one out of every six newspapers in the United States.”Impact:This is important because, according to Stanford in 2019, “the trend toward conglomerate ownership is causing local stations to focus more on national politics at the expense of local politics.” In addition, they found that “a corporate takeover also made stations slant more to the right politically” The Stanford study continues to give an example: Sinclair Broadcast group “owns 191 stations that reach almost 40% of the U.S. population. … In 2017, it hired a former Trump White House official as its chief political analyst and made his commentaries must-run on all stations. Last year, all of its anchors were ordered to read an identical script that echoed Trump’s rhetoric about ‘fake news.’” In America, news stations that lean to the right and support Donald Trump are unlikely to even see systemic racism as something that exists, let alone as a problem that they must actively combat. Because of this, the consolidation of news media makes it an ineffective tool for ending the toleration of systemic racism. Con Black newspapers are effective There is a long history of Black newspapers According to the Virginia Center for Digital History, “African-American newspapers came into existence before the Civil War as a medium of expression of abolitionist sentiment. In 1827, Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwarm started the first African-American periodical, called Freedom's Journal. Freedom's Journal initiated the trend of African-American papers throughout the United States to fight for liberation and rights, demonstrate racial pride, and inform readers of events affecting the African-American community.”Dr. Clint C. Wilson, a professor of journalism at Howard University, expands: “During the 180 years since the appearance of Freedom’s Journal, the Black Press has chronicled and commented upon events as they have occurred and impacted upon African Americans. Throughout that time the Black Press has given voice to the struggles of African Americans as they have sought to overcome the effects of enslavement and discrimination to attain social equality — it has continued to “plead the cause.””Newspapers are an especially effective tool to end the tolerance of systemic racism Newspapers allow for departments to fund on-the-ground investigative reporting, including into local issues. Rather than sharing the same information over and over, they are capable of producing new information and uncovering important elements of structural racism. Black newspapers allow Black journalists to speak for themselves. This is better than social media, where white celebrities share watered-down, vacuous phrases to make themselves look better. Newspapers are a longer form of content, allowing them to give more nuanced explanations, expand on the background of different policies, and educate readers more thoroughly than is possible in 140 characters. Social media promotes hate speech White supremacists use the internet to organize and spread their views Anonymous message boards have little moderation, and white supremacists use it to spread racist, sexist, and transphobic content. The New Zealand shooter used it to post a press kit to spread his ideas before live-streaming his violence on facebook, according to the Atlantic.The internet is used to normalize hateful views, where people feel safe posting them, and allows them to spread into real-world politics. Users of the website 4chan were an early base of support for Donald Trump, and he echoed their (formerly) fringe ideas of building a wall and banning Muslims as campaign promises, according to Time Magazine.One in four Black Americans have faced harassment online because of their race, according to a 2017 Pew Research survey.Allowing white supremacists to organize is bad By allowing minority groups scattered across the country to talk and organize, the internet gives fringe political groups like white supremacists more power. When this spills over into mainstream politics, it can have negative impacts on nonwhite people in real life, who are hurt by racist policies. Social media protests fail to produce lasting change Protests formed through social media build quickly, but also fade quickly According to an Atlantic article in 2019, “mass protests such as Occupy Wall Street formed rapidly but then, lacking that underlying resilience created over time, often lost focus, direction, and, most important, their potential to effect change. The Gezi Park protests in Turkey grew from nothing into a massive movement within days” but also failed to produce lasting change. The Atlantic article goes on to explain the reason for this failure is that they don’t threaten those in power: “with this speed comes weakness… The ease with which current social movements form often fails to signal an organizing capacity powerful enough to threaten those in authority.”The short lifespan of this activism means it is ineffective Systemic racism is deeply built into the political and economic system, and requires fundamental change to be overcome. Short spurts of energy will not be able to achieve this fundamental restructuring of society. Because of the short-term nature of these movements, they are easily defused by symbolic concessions like painting “Black Lives Matter” on a road, while cities fail to remove racist police officers or resolve economic inequality. Social media reduces the quality of discussionsThe shortened format of social media posts oversimplifies complicated ideas Brian Wheat, public policy researcher for the Scottish Parliament, explains: “For the sake of mass appeal, political ideas are now best disseminated through memes and tweets. The bite-sized nature of social media acts as a filter for complexity. Its ubiquity conditions us to expect information to be instantly accessible… Its effects include the dumbing-down of political ideas to the superficial.” The sheer volume of social media posts makes it a difficult tool for complex argumentsAs Collette Snowden, a Senior Lecturer of Communication, International Studies and Languages for the University of South Australia describes: “Now, within minutes of any event, announcement or media appearance, we are able to get those perspectives thousands of times instantly via social media. There are constant reactions and debates, often repeating the same arguments and information.… While meaningful exchanges between individuals are possible on social media, there’s so much noise that it’s difficult to make complex arguments or check the validity of information.”Social media spreads misinformation Social media organizes content based on engagement, not credibility According to a 2018 article published by two computer science professors in Scientific American, social media is “designed to select only the most engaging and relevant content for each individual user. But in doing so, it may end up reinforcing the cognitive and social biases of users, thus making them even more vulnerable to manipulation. For instance, the detailed advertising tools built into many social media platforms let disinformation campaigners exploit confirmation bias by tailoring messages to people who are already inclined to believe them. Also, if a user often clicks on Facebook links from a particular news source, Facebook will tend to show that person more of that site’s content. This so-called “filter bubble” effect may isolate people from diverse perspectives, strengthening confirmation bias. Our own research shows that social media platforms expose users to a less diverse set of sources than do non-social media sites like Wikipedia.”According to a 2019 Atlantic article, “The News Feed’s algorithmic ordering of content flattened the hierarchy of credibility. Any post by any producer could stick to the top of our feeds as long as it generated engagement. “Fake news” would later flourish in this environment, as a personal blog post was given the same look and feel as a story from The New York Times.”This is important because those most vulnerable to fake news are isolated from fact-checkers and sources of outside information The Scientific American article continues to say, “Our analysis of the data collected by Hoaxy during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections shows that Twitter accounts that shared misinformation were almost completely cut off from the corrections made by the fact-checkers.” ................
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