Essay Sample on Social Media: A Reflection of Group Memberships

Introduction

Through the power of social media, people across the globe can create, exchange, and redistribute opinions and information freely. In expressing their views, people reveal their real-life identities, beliefs and attitudes and according to numerous researches, social media activities and contents can be used as a true reflection of peoples’ perspectives and feelings towards some perceived group membership (McFarland, 1989). Also, being interactive platforms, the content shared in the various social media have an impact of either increasing or reducing these perceptions in form of negative prejudice or stereotyping through sharing beliefs and views. In this regard, this paper analyzes social media websites to find posts that reflect prejudice attitudes or negative stereotyping through its content and takes on some controversial topics; sexual discrimination and racism.

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Question One

The key words I searched were ‘society take on homosexuals’, ‘how LGBT, lesbians, gays, bi-sexual, and trans-genders are treated in different cultural settings’, and ‘treatment of blacks by the whites’. Though there are several posts that negatively stereotype, finding them is not easy. This could be the case due to increased scrutiny on the nature of posts shared on websites and other social media platforms, or better still, the cautious action taken by website owners to avoid discriminatory or biased contents. Also, appropriate search and use of key words is crucial to finding prejudiced posts as in most instances, they are addressed to specific group and tend to use search engine optimization techniques such as single-word keywords thereby limiting the display of its pages in first or second pages of search engine results. Due to this, obtaining them require proper mastery of keywords, going beyond the first page of search results as well as the understanding of possible prejudiced groups.

Question Two

Numerous cues can be used to determine peoples’ attitude and beliefs through their content. Though at a time it may not be personal traits but more of opinion or perception, the emphasize laid on the topic, biasness towards a certain side of the story, repeated expressed attitudes, and personal opinions depict individual poster views and beliefs West & Hewstone, 2017). Applying these factors and also based on the directness of the posting, determining the posters beliefs and view was easy. For instance, the individual posting in appendix A clearly shows his opinion and position on homosexuality. He argues that, as a Muslim, they should maintain the religious take on the vice. He further states his opinion that legalizing same gender sex is crime to the society. He says, “The consequences of legalizing such grave sin are destructive to the society as a whole”.

Other than the posters opinion, he tends to be biased towards homosexuals. He only takes the religious view on the topic and basis his opinion primarily on religious advice. The poster in Appendix B on his part views homosexuality as shameful and sinful. He urges Muslims to treat it with the negative connotation as depicted in the religious literature. This way, personal opinions though guides from a certain source of reference are biased towards the homosexuals. This can eventually lead to prejudice and negative stereotyping towards the homosexuals.

Just like appendix A and B, C also takes a biased position that favor blacks over other races. He titles his post “Black people can`t be racist” and shares his personal experience. Though he explains his position, such posts contain prejudiced attitudes towards non-blacks.

Question Four

What someone says may be influenced by his audience, personal objectives, among other factors. Therefore, the individual posters in the websites may be comfortable to say the same things face to face to an audience that share same views and beliefs and otherwise if his listeners are homosexuals for appendix A and B, and non-blacks for the poster in appendix C. However, if their objective is to fight the issue at hand, the posters would be comfortable discussing the issue with any audience face to face.

Question Five

The photo, handle, or pseudonym used forms the basis of impression in social media and the overall virtual world. Unlike in physical communications or interactions where nonverbal indicators such as body language, tone variations, facial expressions, and eye contact act as aid to the commination process, the picture and the profile at large act as the basis for the first impression. According to Paluck (2017), the handle, photo, name, or pseudonym provide both an open and hidden hints on your content, with the open meaning implying the visible deductions drawn from the profile while the hidden hints are based on individual interpretation or understanding. The role of profile content is also clearly depicted in a publication in published in psychological science. The publication also observes that profile content not only identifies social media accounts or websites, but also plays a vital role in understanding and drawing conclusions from the account or website. According to it, a minor alteration to the profile can result to drastic change on its impression, as different images, captions, symbols, and signs are associated to specific meaning and implication. This way, the profile forms the first impression to a post and in most cases; it acts as a hint or way of interpreting site content.

Question Five

Though understanding a message may be informed by numerous factors such as personal opinions and knowledge on the topic, posters of specific content always aim to drive home a certain point. The individuals posting in appendix A and B what to pass a prejudiced message towards discriminating on homosexuals while C wants blacks to feel stereotyped by non-blacks. Appendix A and B draws their beliefs on religious literature readers to disconnect from homosexuals and view them as sinners as per the religious prescriptions while C blacks to view themselves as non- racist by expressing his beliefs, view and position that influenced by his experience with both blacks and non-blacks.

Question Six

Social media like any other interactive platform can influence people views and beliefs. For instance, through website post, the poster can convince you to take a position that you did not hold before and at a times, the position is biased and discriminatory. Though biased, the website posts are well-written with convincing facts, statistics, and other evidences therefore increasing the possibility of taking side with their message. This being the case, my future take on social media has been affected; for instance, on reliance on its content on making specific decisions or taking a particular position. Instead of accepting views as shared through the social media, I must from now do additional research before upholding posters position.

In addition to decision making, this task has awaked me to scrutinize websites and their contents to avoid biased views and claims. To ensure I do not fall for biasness and discriminatory nature of such sites, I will have to ascertain the emphasize and interests its writers put on the topic, writers` personal opinions, and sources of the evidences used and by this, make informed judgment of the reliability of such texts. This way, the possibility of trusting untrustworthy websites and its content will be minimized.

References

McFarland, S. G. (1989). Religious orientations and the targets of discrimination. Journal for the scientific study of religion, 324-336. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1386743

Paluck, E. L. (2009). Reducing intergroup prejudice and conflict using the media: a field experiment in Rwanda. Journal of personality and social psychology, 96(3), 574. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2009-02415-005

West, K., & Hewstone, M. (2012). Relatively socially acceptable prejudice within and between societies. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 22(3), 269-282. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/casp.1112