Social Media Controversy

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The modern world faces a lot of issues of discrimination against people of a particular race or religion. Lately, topics that have been all over the news focus on all the hate crime – specifically against Muslims and African-Americans. This controversy has caused Islamophobia and racism to be a sensitive topic for several people. There are people who choose to ignore these tensions while others are strong advocates. In order to find solutions for overcoming this discrimination, we must see how extreme the situation really is. Media plays an essential role in society because they are what gives the people their information (Baron, 2006). The media shows a distortion of the information that is given to them, then, they produce a story and portray …show more content…

The present study aims to identify if stereotyping – and possibly discrimination – is prevalent amongst college students. Since young adults are constantly in contact with technology, they receive information daily from social media. Most college students first hear about news stories through social media, some through face-to-face information from friends, and even less from the television or radio (Rosengard, Tucker-McLaughlin, & Brown, 2014). Young adults are constantly exposed to a biased media, which can cause certain groups of people disproportionately influenced because of the availability heuristic bias, which is “the ease with which instances or associations come to mind" (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973; Rothbart, Fulero, Jensen, Howard, & Birrell, 1978). The availability heuristic bias tends to go hand-in-hand with confirmation bias, which is the way someone processes new information in ways that confirm existing beliefs or expectations (Nickerson, 1998). Murray (1996) examined confirmation bias based on stereotypes and reached the conclusion that people do view Black children lower than White

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