Racial relations have been a point of discussion all across the United States for the past year. Events relating to the problem of racial relations have led to protests, riots, and killings. Citizens of the U.S question whether Barack Obama coming into office had any effect to rising of racial relations. In the Washington Post article “The uptick in racial tensions has far less to do with Obama and far more to do with your smartphone” the author, Philip Bump, utilizes allusions to effectively argue that social media has had to do with racial tensions than Obama coming into office. Philip Bump alludes to Obama being elected president having nothing to do with racial relations. Using allusions helps give the reader a sense of realism of racial …show more content…
Social media has on many occasions increased the racial tensions in the U.S. As Bump argues, “Since January 20, 2009, the day Barack Obama became president, the world of media and information sharing has changed dramatically, even if longstanding racial tensions have not. We’re regularly seeing videos (often black) people being shot or struggling with (often white) officers.” Bump is implying that because of social media the United States has been exposed to needless tension of racial issues. Bump goes on to say that Obama has been the first social media president as well as the first iPhone president. Bump then alludes “[t]hat, far more than Obama’s politics and racial identity, has been why his second term has been heavy with unrest.” Social media have blown up stories that shouldn't have been a big deal in the first place, an example would be a white officer is doing a routine traffic stop and the driver happens to be African American. Social media in this situation would only exist to make the situation worse. Bump ends his article by stating that while Obama’s America isn’t post-racial it is post-social and what he means by that is social media is becoming the center part in how the U.S responds to racial …show more content…
This lead writer, Philip Bump of the Washington Post to write “The uptick in racial tensions has far less to do with Obama and far more to do with your smartphone”. The article addresses the issue people are discussing, has Obama coming into office have anything to do with the rising of racial tensions. Bump utilizes allusions to argue that social media has a greater impact on the problem of racial tensions because it needlessly creates pressure where it isn’t needed. Bump also uses allusion to give the reader sense of practicality of racial tensions. Bump displays his article so that people can understand that social media has a greater role than people might
He states facts saying how African Americans and Latinos are just as active, if not more active, on mobile devices than Americans and Asian Americans. Two questions are asked in the middle section of the essay: the first being whether there is evidence supporting the claim that digital media is helping close the achievement gap between African American and Latino students and White and Asian American students and the second being what role digital media plays in America’s learning
Particularly, in Chapter Two “Race and/as Technology or How to Do Things to Race,” new media studies scholar Wendy Hui Kyong Chun provides a vital intervention within digital racial studies and racial theory by her formation: “race and/as technology.” While race and technology has been widely theorized in across disciplines, Chun’s “race and/as technology” provokes crucial questions on race and/or “how to do things to race.” Chun argues the “and/as” shifts
In an era of addressing social issues and inequality, many African Americans were segregated and divided; they fought for justice but racial tensions still formed. The Progressive Era: a time of major movements of the American population. During the decades between the 1890s and 1920, Americans were faced with many challenges and in turn, they entered a modern era of change. The states and cities were experiencing a newly diverse and urban society. There were new technological advances and industrial economics were growing rapidly since the Civil War. Although, not all innovations made during this time were beneficial. With the large innovations in society and the progressive mindsets, the lives of African Americans dramatically changed. The
The article was published on a website called “Medium”, which is a community of readers and writers who can share their ideas online for others to see. Being a form of social media is just one of the indications that the piece is aimed towards the younger generation, along with other mentions pointing towards American teens. The story proves that there are always 3 perspectives in an argument, yours, theirs, and the truth. Another reason why this article was written for
In many ways technology makes access to academic work, research and employment easier and faster. However, I am concerned that technology is too often chosen over humanity. Historically,representations of African Americans in technological media tend to value "white" bodies at the expense of Black bodies (Stam and Spence, 1983). Further, recent studies show (Zickmund 2000), in fact, the ways in which some World Wide Web sites make it easier for hate groups to spread their misinformation, contributing to the devaluation of black bodies in technological media. Together, these media representations can be understood in terms of a digital devide between technological "haves" and "have-nots". Film and new media play integral roles in misrepresenting race. The film,The Matrix, reflects these problematic representations of race. Yet it provides critical metaphors for African Americans who contend that we are controlled by beings other than ourselves, and that our bodies must first be filtered through white bodies to be considered valuable.
In this paper, I consider the growing role of social media in presidential politics during the current era. The research questions the extent of the political impact of social media on the president and his communication with the public. It is necessary thus to examine the properties that make social media an attractive tool to use, the different ways the president interacts with social media, and both benefits and limitations of using social media as a platform for communication. As a result, it is essential to make conclusions regarding the nature of the relationship between social media and the presidential politics.
Gladwell’s essay discusses the developments of the social media and how it has changed social activism.”The platform of social media is based on weak ties”(Gladwell, page 174). He discusses how the Civil Rights Movement was based on strong ties among people who knew each other.People would rise up and join the revolution if they saw their friends, peers or neighbors in the news or newspapers. There is not much of a risk
Today, the world is connected digitally through the internet. Here, we can see many cases of anger and or racism daily. The Internet helps us see the severity of the issue with anger and “symbolic racism”, for it is widely understood that it does not matter what race or gender you are to experience or express the emotion anger in a racist way towards others. (Redlawsk. et al. pg. 681). Many racist acts are displayed daily on social media, yet no solid understanding is presented as to why it happens in its totality. It is more common to see these types of acts nowadays, even though we are more educated on the matter. It may be that “people use the internet as an artificial platform to express their emotions” including anger and racism. In an article published in the UK, Shakuntala Banaji claims Social Media is a “potentially therapeutic resource, for those needing the validation of their racist or anti-racist views”. (Shakuntala n.p.) Based on Shakuntala’s observation, technology is playing an instigative role in this phenomenon. Some use the internet to release, and more times than less fuel their anger. Even so, social media isn’t necessarily just a negative factor on the issue of anger and racism, for it also exposes other factors that may help understand the subject in a broader spectrum. The internet allows us to view these acts of anger being portrayed by
“The media serve as a tool that people use to define, measure, and understand American society” (Deo et al., 149). Thinking of the media as a tool for the American people also extends into the realm of race and ethnicity. The United States has had a long and difficult history pertaining to the racial and ethnic identities of the many different people that reside within and outside of it’s borders. That history is still being created and this country still struggles with many of the same problems that have plagued this area since before the founding of the U.S. As stated above, the popular media has a large impact on the way that race and ethnicity are understood by people, especially when considering the prevalence of segregation in the U.S.
Although the book focuses primarily on one communication technology, the principles and examples are applicable to a much broader range of media. The author spends considerable time describing the social mores of the American people and the resulting cultural metamorphosis that appears to have occurred because of the technological changes. He begins with a quote issued by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), “The telephone is essentially democratic; it carries the voice of the child and the grown-up with equal speed and directness…It is not only the implement of the individual, but it fulfills the needs of all the people (Fischer, 1992).” If we substitute the word posting for telephone, you can see how this concept applies to a much broader technological and temporal field. Similarly, published in 1881, just 35 years earlier, in an article about the telegraph, the journal Scientific American, stated, “(it) promoted a kinship of humanity (Fischer, 1992).” Again, by applying that same concept to the general act of posting reveals the relationship between early iconography and modern social media posts and it becomes clear that the “specific devices” are less important than the need for recognition and subsequent act of communication in and of
The dictionary defines social media as websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. To society, we recognize social media as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Social media is a global phenomenon that can be recognized all around the world by people of different ages. We have gotten to the point where individuals as young as five years old are able to recognize what social media is before they can even read. The power bestowed by social media gives people the ability to find out what is happening in the lives of other people and give people insight into what is happening in our own life. However, has our society taken the social media trend overboard? Social media has placed the idea that posting every event that occurs in a person’s life is acceptable, whether it be what a person had for breakfast or what a person did that day. Privacy has become non existent. It has made individuals consumed in what other people are doing, rather than focusing on bettering their own life. A majority of the population bases what they post on these websites
Since its creation, social media has caused considerable changes in society. It allows people to connect, create, and learn. Since social media allows people from all over the world to connect, it allows people to share different ideas and promote important causes; social media has become a platform for activism. By sharing, liking, and tweeting all people have become activist for all sorts of causes. In recent years, scholars compared activism of this type to the activism that has occurred during the Civil Rights Movement. Recent debate has quite different views regarding activism through social media as an influential factor in publicizing causes. According to Malcolm Gladwell, social media may aid people in becoming aware of certain issues, but activism through social media does not solve any of the problems they try to fix. He also argues that social media create weak ties between people. I am of two minds regarding Gladwell’s claim regarding social media activism and the ties it creates. On the one hand, activism
Orenstein, Peggy. “I Tweet, Therefore I Am.” What Matters In America. Third Edition.Gary Goshgarian and Kathryn Goodfellow. New Jersey: Pearson, 2012. 40-43. Print.
Back in the 1960s, the media’s role from an institutionalist perspective was that media created the construction of truth, where although media obscure the news, it still created a new reality and leaders. Today, that has changed due to new social media outlets, such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube that allows individuals to release real news such as the The Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) with the #blm hashtag. This hashtag started as a conversation between three sisters on Facebook when a guy by the name of George Zimmerman, who shot African-American teen Trayvon Martin was released. Therefore, #blm became a bigger movement and utilize whenever there were occurrences of racism. With the hashtag, it shows empowerment and creates dialogue
... Evolving Discourse: Communication in the Age of Social Media." The American Conservative. N.p., 26 Nov. 2013. Web. 06 May 2014. .