The advent of the internet as a communication tool brought with it promises of equality and fairness as far as racial, religious and ethnic boundaries are concerned. Many considered it as a platform that will guarantee equality by enabling strangers and people of diverse cultural, religious and racial backgrounds to interact together in a rather harmonious manner. However, the recent developments, as portrayed by some social sites, have indicated otherwise.
It is increasingly being observed that individuals belonging to the same race are clustering on certain social media websites. A case in point is the racial distribution of the micro blogging website Twitter. Although this social website seems to encompass users from all races, a closer look shows that the Hispanic and the African American audiences form the majority of the users.
These groups are also equally on the rise with regards to their commitment to the site. Another social site, the Pinterest.com, boasts of more than ninety per cent of white users from the United States. On the other hand, the Tumbir.com has witnessed a steady rise of the Asian Americans in the recent times. Even though the social media has become a crucial communication tool, it is highly divided on racial grounds.
All these said and done, there is an interesting twist to this. The claim that the social media is divided by race could be farfetched and also lacks the truth in it. This is owed to the fact that very few individuals commit themselves to creating these divisions. Up to now, there is yet to be a social media site that is created by the sole intention of representing a particular division within the society.
The truth of the matter is that the divisions that exist within humans are as a result of their own creations but they rarely pin down to the color of the skin. Some of these social media sites that have been victims to condemnations of racial divisions are actually serving other purposes.
For instance, the Pinterest.com is composed of mostly females and mothers who benefit from the online site as a platform of putting up images of the things that they consider most favorite. It is worthwhile to note that it is normal to find busy mothers attracted to Pinterest.com because of its easier pin as compared to Tumblog or blog. This worked in favor of the Pinterest.com, which grew through invitations. Mothers therefore found out new members on whose mindset they shared.
The dominance of the membership of the Pinterest.com by the white race could only be attributed to the consequence of the place of birth and growth of the social media site. A more credible argument concerning the Pinterest.com should be the sexuality of the dominant gender of the users and not the race.
Apparently, more than seventy per cent of the users are females. The contents of this blogging site are feminist in nature and the audiences being centered on are females. Based on these scenarios, it is therefore apt to argue that the social media site, Pinterest.com, is more divided along the gender lines with sexist themes than the alleged racial boundaries.
The growth of Twitter among the African Americans and the US Hispanics is also not a deliberate thing. It can be attributed to several factors and it should first be noted that most smart phones and cell phones that are possessed by residents of these areas contain Twitter as one of the applications. This makes their handsets reliable for tweeting at any given time. It is also important to note that Twitter does not disclose the race of the user.
This makes the claim that the blacks and the Hispanics to be the dominant race on twitter invalid. Nobody chooses to join a social media site because other members of his or her race belong to it. Therefore, social media sites are not platforms of racial divisiveness. Similarly, the social media site, Tumblor, which is synonymous with the Asians is only so because they use it to discuss pertinent issues, which affects them like culture.
This therefore makes it a cultural issue, not a racial one. The social media has contributed in positioning some races in certain strategic prejudicial locations in the global society. During the 1950s and 1960s, black people were astoundingly positioned as the social problems, because of the development of some documentaries during those times. The problem was orchestrated by the need to offer the black immigrants to Britain housing, jobs and the social ills that came with their arrival such as crime, prostitution and congestions.
On the contrary, the social media sites have helped suppress some social barriers. Thanks to these sites, there have been more frequent interactions across various races. Unlike in the past, where only a cliché of the elite were allowed to own and use the digital media devices, today the devices are relatively cheaper and accessible.
Moreover, frequent mobilizations and empowerment have ensured that even the minority and marginalized groups of people access the devices. The impact of this is that information has been able to travel into all corners of the world within split of seconds thereby increasing the interactions.
The media has also come with a new mode of representation that is exhibited by people of different ethnicities. The adoption of communication technology by different ethnic groups in the world has a number of variations. These variations cause differences that emanate from a number of factors. To begin with, it is important to understand ethnicity to include such diversifications as cultural practices, racial orientations, the national originality and the socioeconomic variables.
It is also worthwhile to note that the adoption of technology has very little to do with formal education because of the dynamics that therein. Conversely, the possession of income plays an important role in the adoption of technology. This is attributed to the empowerment to purchase such technological equipments as computers, satellite dishes, VCRs and the cable televisions (Dupagne and Salwen 25).
The representation of news and ideas in the social media has helped portray the social lives of groups of people across the globe. Their mindsets and opinions are formed and shaped by what they receive from the social media. This catapults the importance of the ethnical or racial representation of the news and ideas from the social media since it has the potential of affecting the manner in which certain ethical groupings distinguish things or are perceived.
Different ethnic groups represent themselves in different ways in the media. On the other hand, different media firms have unique and predetermined ways of representing various ethnic groups especially those ethnicities from the minority cultures. Normally, these representations are characterized by cultural dominance undermining. In addition, the kinds of the representations exhibited by the media lack equality and knowledge of their identities (Mainsah 183).
When left on their own, different ethnicities would use the social media to not only represent themselves but also to articulate their ideologies with regard to the perceptions within their context. These ideologies, in most cases, are the natural motivations within which a given ethnic group finds a common sense of purpose that pertains to the political and social leanings. Their representations within these contexts enable them to be classified into appropriate categories of race and culture.
By the very fact that the media has the ability of controlling and shaping the beliefs and attitudes of a population, some ethnic groups are notorious in intimidating other ethnic groups through the use of the media. A case in point is the use of televisions to represent some ethnic minorities such as the non whites in America.
For instance, the conservative cultures that inhabit the Amazon forests have always been represented by the media as being backward and primitive. In essence the attitudes and beliefs of the whites towards these minority group of people have been mostly so. They too believe that indeed these are primitive ethnic groups as opposed to them, who are civilized. By this, the media has contributed to the formation of the attitude of looking down upon an ethnic civilization by a selected mass through ideological motivation (Arora 87).
Some ethnic groups have also adopted some rare but chilling forms of representation in the media. For instance, the black people, who are Afro-Caribbean, often portray themselves as gangsters and criminals. These acts of violence and crimes are hugely demonstrated in the videos and songs that are composed and sang by this culture. This has impacted on the stereotyping against them by the whites who consider them as reckless, irresponsible and violent.
Apparently, the media has the power to determine and dictate the kind of representation a particular ethnic group wants to disseminate to the public. While it can be true that some black neighborhoods are full of criminal and violent activities, it is also true that most black people are in pursuit of moral uprightness and are committed to the transformation of the society into a more prosperous destination. It is needless to say that the president of the United States of America is black.
However, the media will rarely report any progressive news about this minority ethnic group because of the stereotype that has always described the group. It is important to note that more of these stereotyping is orchestrated by the ethnic group themselves. For reason best known to them, this ethnic group has found it wise to identify themselves with negative attributes.
Actually, all these attributes are depicted in the media for all to see and judge. Stereotyping has contributed to the subordination of certain ethnic groups in accordance with the white ideological hegemony. In yet another focus, the black people have always identified themselves or rather their underdeveloped nature to be closeness with nature. In retro respect, the whites were associated with civilization through the media.
This further promotes the kind of stereotypical representation, which characterizes boils down to racial discourses. The television media is also known to have adopted and perpetuated some seemingly cultural way of life of the blacks from the earlier films which portrayed them as contented slaves, entertainers and the noble savage.
Through the actions of the television media, the white viewers have been fed to the preconceptions of the way of life expected of the blacks. This kind of subjugation is what makes the media an important tool in the perpetuation of stereotypical actions (Ryan 201).
Another important minority group consists of the disabled people. Apparently, these individuals have had to undergo untold forms of discrimination and sufferings due to their physical state. In order to reverse this trend, some of the people who belong to this minority group have made efforts to come together and use the media to articulate their issues and concerns in a bid to communicate to the public their issues. One such media destination is the internet.
The internet has provided a platform for the disabled people to participate in online discussions with themselves and the non disabled internet users. In such media, they do realize that their physical constraints are made more flexible in addition to establishing their own identities. In addition, the internet also boosts their chances of accessing the most useful information concerning the appropriate care that is required of them.
This is a shot in the arm to this minority group since they are mostly limited and restricted to move in search of such pieces of information from physical locations. The internet also allows the disabled people to connect online and this necessitates the flourishing of their culture online because they are able to connect with one another no matter where the other comes from and the level of impairment and mobility that characterizes them. However, not all this is a bed or roses.
The internet, on the other hand, has exposed some disabled people to more abuse and harassment from either fellow or non disabled internet users. Worse still, a good number of digital technology systems tend to legitimize the oppression of the disabled people by offering discriminatory services to the non disabled users only.
Further the media being highly commercialized tend to apt for the mainstream voices who boasts of more cash compared to the disabled minorities. In the same breath, most of the websites meant for disabled are normally characterized by the pleas for charity.
This in a way makes them less attractive as compared to the mainstream internet websites. One other shortcoming of the internet lies in its diversification into relaying messages and information in the form of graphics, animation, text, video and audio. This has the potential of leaving out the disabled people who have the hearing, visual and mobility impairments (Mcgonagle 287).
The Asian people as an ethnic group have also used the media to perpetuate portions of their values and norms. Apparently, some of these values and norms defy the normal ways of family interactions. Subsequently they have subjected themselves to immense prejudices from the mainstream media.
The media, in essence, have always conveyed the Asian families as being so insensitive and overbearing thereby forcing their daughters to participate in predetermined marriages deprived of love. They are also portrayed as wealthy billionaires whose occupancy of the western world is because of their wealth and nothing else, not brains.
This is indeed a subjugation of an ethnic group by the media. Still, in Asia, some terrorist groups have used the media and the internet to offer threats or claim responsibilities from the terrorist activities that have been conducted in a given part of the world. The impact of this is that the rest of the
World has always associated terrorist activities with the Muslim world. This, in turn, does a lot of reputational damages to the non terrorist Asian citizens.
Other regions of the world where reports of biased representation of the minority groups have immensely been witnessed include France, Finland, Netherland and Germany. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, is said to be awash with enough policies to help curb this vice. Speculations are, however, rife that this is just in paper. In France, for instance, the citizens who hail from North America are required to submit their representation with the French audiovisual media that belongs to the French majority.
This is a gesture aimed at alleviating the prevailing discrimination that arises from the media industry. Such efforts include encouraging the minorities to seek efforts within the media industry in a bid to enhance fairness and representation equitably (Mcgonagle 290).
Online discussion board participation and identity and multiculturalism have also been exhibited in the media in various forms. Online discussion, normally, consists of various rubrics upon which conversations are held as the fresh discussion topics or new threads are added. A user must first register to become a member after which he or she can post reactions to threads or even initiate new threads.
The online discussion boards serve an important purpose of integrating different cultures amongst the participants in addition to preserving their identities. They provide an opportunity to the participants to share and discuss things that could otherwise be difficult to talk about on face to face value. Besides, they are avenues of showcasing the identity of the users which they explicitly portray with regards to the discussion of an important context (Stokes and Reading 219).
The participation in the online discussion board brings forth the cross cultural exchanges amongst the participants in various aspects. When they take part in such discussions, they get to combine their religions with ethnicity in an expression of differentiation. By posting their photos in such forums the participants are able to tell their identities and that of their countries. For instance, a participating Muslim female student might want to post a photo of her wearing a headscarf. This is in itself an indication that the participant is from an Islamic background of which she is proud of. This could be helpful in informing fellow participants at a glance, some of whom might be interested in learning some Islamic teachings or sharing the same with her.
The online discussion forums are also instrumental in the exploration of divergent personal trajectories by the participants. Users have the opportunity to infuse what they learn outside the internet and share it with the online friends. People of diverse backgrounds such as race, class and gender can participate in a flat discussion and interaction through sharing of ideas. Offline power relations are normally propelled online. This has also helped some users to locate and find life partners in marriages.
It also helps participants to work together on projects and in essence maximizes learning process. In addition, it ensures that the participants assume responsibility and participate in active learning in conformity with the expectation of the regular learning in the online discussion. For students, it ensures that all of them participate by not only interacting with their lecturers but also engaging their peers in content exchange and negotiations (Reitz, Breton and Dion 23).
The cultural identities were reproduced or contested in the process of self-presentation in various ways through civilizations. The reproduction of cultural identities can be attributed to a variety of events ranging from the historical background of a community to the community’s way of life. Some cultural identities were reproduced through the activities of the colonialists such the colonial expansion and the economic imperatives on their subjects of colony.
Yet, some other cultural identities were imposed by use of force by other established cultures that considered themselves civilized. In essence, they suppressed the local cultures and values together with the norms of life. The cultural identity of any society can further be understood through the examination of the political economy and the institutions.
The conceptualization of culture in anthropological ways provides the means through which the cultural practices offer meanings. Apparently culture is by description an act of giving meaning to life and its ways. These meanings are not theoretical but rather practically demonstrated by people. Hence, the cultural practices of a given group of people. This meaning makes culture to be a thing, not of possession but something that is practiced.
Another important cultural identity practice is nationalism; the national and cultural identity is a sure means of uniting the citizens of a given nation and culture within the boundaries of a given territory. However, this political status quo that is hence formed can in turn be challenged by cultural institutions.
When dissident voices such as the civil society, marginalized women and other minority groups within a given cultural and national territory participate in challenging the national status quo, they are contributing to the development of the culture of the given nation. Apparently, these opposing groups will always oppose the culture adopted by the nation, which they feel does not serve the common good of the country (Stuart 108).
The digital media can be used as a vehicle for identity formation in some unique ways. The use of the digital media has been on the increase over the past few decades. This could be attributed to reasons such as efficiency, reliability and in some cases easier portability. According to the Deloitte & Touché, thirty eight per cent of the population of the United States watches the television shows online while thirty six percent use the mobile handsets as devices for entertainment.
Another forty five per cent are reported to be using their digital devices to create online contents such as videos, blogs and websites. All these uses involve the sharing of information across a diversified composition of the audiences. The audiences and the disseminators of the information must therefore strive to preserve their identities (Steinberg 305).
The identity formation by the digital media can be achieved through participating in online discussions, writing web content in the internet, commenting on various topics on news blogs such as BBC and CNN, writing online magazines and posting various updates on both Twitter and Facebook. By so doing, the user is likely to set his or her authority by stating a firm view point which in most cases is influenced by his or her social setting or historical background.
Digital media devices such as Smartphone, iPod Touch, e-readers and tablets have some unique applications that enable users to easily interact through chats and updates, photo upload and many others. A user can use this opportunity to convey particular information or upload a photo that portrays his or her cultural identity. By doing this he is developing and forming an identity. The kind of identity could be the type of attire the user prefers and the language of use (Spencer 129).
Ethnic Minority and Visibility and Digital Media
Many ethnic minorities have been victims of invisibility by media companies registered in their host countries. A case in point is the way the France media covers issues that pertains to its extra citizens. Not only are they given very rare airtime but very few of the television journalist are from the blacks, Arabs and Asian origins.
A more sober take to this scenario is that persons from all races must be accorded equal representation so that they too can feel and enjoy a sense of belonging similar to their fellow citizens of color. Apparently, the television media holds an important position in life since it exhibits the cultural, social and domestic environment.
It is therefore unnecessary for the television stations to purport that the models conveyed create identification problems to the minority citizens. The very fact that the minority ethnic groups do not see the models in their television sets that resemble them is tantamount to killing their self esteem (Burd, Drucker and Gumpert 283).
Furthermore, the digital media should be tasked with playing a cohesive role in a society. Therefore, when they poorly or negatively represent a minority ethnic group in their television, they are only contributing to dividing that nation. This will lead to resentments towards that media station besides fueling incitements towards the minority ethnic groups by the mainstream citizens.
The only way this situation can be reversed is through adopting equal and fair representation of all races regardless of the positions and the numbers they constitute within the population. Inclusion of the minority tribes in employment by the media industries is also a good way of addressing this.
Considering the fact that most media stations are for commercial purposes, it is important to note that even people from the minority tribes are consumers of the advertised goods and services within the media stations. For instance, a television station that does not give fair representation to the Asians in Europe assumes that all the people from that continent should not purchase the products being advertised.
This has a negative consequence to the business community and the social interactions of the nation. The visibility or lack of the minority ethnic groups within the digital media must be addressed by bringing everybody on board. Everybody here include both the perpetrators and the victims.
It must never be assumed that all the minority groups lack visibility or experience invisibility due to deliberate oppressions from the mainstream groups. Some minority groups actually love to take part is some activities that portray in negative light. For instance, some of the African Americans living in Europe mostly like to Americanize themselves by associating in weird behaviors and activities.
To the other minority ethnic groups like school children who might be experiencing problems with enough visibility of the digital media, empowerment and demonstrations may be the only way to go. School going students are the favorites because through the media, their behavior and creativity can be developed. The visual representation in this digital age should be done in such a way that it encompasses and takes care of the needs of the almost forgotten minority groups.
For the communities that are yet to receive the full access of some advanced and yet technical digital media devices, simple improvise can be made to bridge the gap. As a motivational factor and to fulfill the hunger for digital technology, schools that are located in remote areas can be involved in such projects as digital imaging. Participants will feel the impacts and assume the ownership of the project (Abbott and Shaikh 458).
In order to successfully achieve this, there are a number of measures that should be put in place to ensure that the goals are met. The students should be encouraged to integrate creativity into learning within their curriculum through the use of digital technology. This provides utmost motivation and inspiration. The improvised technological devices made by students not only enhance creativity but also help in decision making and responsibility assumption by the students.
Moreover the success of such projects further motivates the partisans. Needless to say, most technological devices have the rooms for corrections since one can always delete unwanted applications. This is also a stronger motivational drive to the students. In addition, it strengthens the student (De-Leeuw and Rydin 452).
Conclusion
As much as the social media has improved and revolutionized the communication industry, there are some concerns on the racial divisions within this area. For example, the number of African-Americans and Hispanics using Twitter is so high in spite of the fact that they were for a long time absent in the television scene and other conventional media platforms.
Although there are many positive things about social media, racial segregation is a great problem that should be addressed given that it could spark huge problems in the future. However, the problems linked to the social media revolution cannot overshadow the gains that it has brought to the world as a whole.
Works Cited
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