This article is focused on the following UN sustainable development goals:
*Themes of sexual assault are mentioned
This article is written in response to the SDG of peace, justice, and strong institutions, which is defined as: “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”("The 17 goals"); and in tandem with the SDG of quality education, which is defined as: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”("The 17 goals"). It is important to advocate for social justice and to hold our institutions to the values they espouse, but we also need to consider the importance of these conversations in and around education both inside and outside of institutions. It is also important to consider how social media’s design and incentive systems negatively impact our ability to have nuanced and educated conversations. Our goal is to support the education of others.
The goal of social media
Awareness on social media
Social media is an unprecedented technological development that has made the circulation of information orders faster and more efficient than ever before. What would have taken days or months to circulate can now be shared instantly across vast stretches of the world. Social media has a number of uses, the most significant ones being entertainment and awareness. As such, users take to platforms to spread awareness and to inform others through important discussions about issues such as racial injustice, gender inequality, income inequality, and climate change. Users can now challenge ideas and institutions on social media platforms and spread the discussion. However one may question how these discussions are conducted on social media, and whether these discussions should be had on social media.
Most social media platforms were designed for the short-term circulation of information. In this sense, having discussions on these platforms may be disingenuous as the technology itself is designed to relay simple messages. That is not to say that platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter are not useful to spread awareness; rather they may contribute to not fulfilling the goal of having complex discussions around complex issues. The problem is not that specific organizations are advocating for change, it is that these groups often become exclusively focused on advocating through social media platforms that invite oversimplification and negatively affect discussions. “Social media has become a powerful tool for political and social organization, but it has simultaneously debased both” (Savage). Although online communities engage with each other, they can be stratified as users often refine their audience through platforms that allow the specification of audiences through the recommendation and curation of content and audience.
Social media posts i.e. infographics do not aid our ability to have educated conversations as they try to convey complex topics in a format that does not allow for these discussions. The result is advocacy groups online such as ‘BLM’, or ‘Feminist’ having a very specific audience but advocating in abroad and non-nuanced manner. “We are much more likely to assert our moral perspectives as a given, without feeling the need to substantiate or find them upon anything beyond our own presumed rectitude ”(Savage).
Posts focus on the message rather than the substantiation of these messages, it would be helpful to know how and why certain narratives are framed and told in specific ways.
We cannot use posts to substantiate arguments adequately because they are designed for short-term consumption, although platforms like Instagram have added various features that allow for long-formatted content such as videos and Instagram lives.
While the phenomenon of audience specification and the relaying of short format messages also happens in the real world and is not exclusive to social media, social sites are hyper-efficient when it comes to this.
Effects on nuance and social justice
An example and context
One of social media’s most useful contributions would be its ability to spread awareness about injustices around the world. Social media and the fight for social justice are undoubtedly linked, and one may find many examples that highlight this relationship, for instance, the #metoo movement and black lives matter and subsequent social media campaigns. These are often subject to lengths of time where their messages are frequently heard, for example, ‘blackout Tuesday’. Which was “an effort to raise awareness about police brutality and systemic racism, which started in the music industry” (Heilweil).
Blackout Tuesday was started by Jamila Thomas, a senior marketing director at Atlantic records, and Brianna Agyemang, senior artist campaign manager at the Apple-owned music platform Platoon.
The issue with this specific campaign was that users on Instagram, and other such platforms, used the #blacklivesmatter on blackout Tuesday posts thus drowning out posts with resources that users could find in order to access information on the movement.
Although the campaign somewhat worked - companies announced they would pause their workdays in solidarity - it ended up being counterproductive to potential facets of the discussion through the access of resources.
Twitter is an interesting platform as it is known for its nasty treatment of these issues (For reference, Twitter changed their allowed characters post to be 280 after 2017.)
“People want to tackle complex and nuanced issues with 140 characters…writing about incarceration, police reform, predatory behavior”("How context" 00:00:00-:00:01:20).
This subsequently forces people to relay messages in the format of the technology, and this influences their treatment of the topic.
“People are reading in 140 characters, and are now thinking in 140 characters” ("How context" 00:00:00-:00:01:20).
We need to establish the context in our discussion and the short form message does not allow for that. What time, place, issue, historical space, and cultural context do these issues take form in?.
‘You kill nuance and context; one, everyone wants to be the first one to get the scoop. Two, they have to fit it in 140 characters” ("How context" 00:00:00-:00:01:20).
Personal experience
I have had numerous discussions with others about the perceived issue and its impact on education. I recently had a discussion with a classmate regarding this topic. In the discussion an issue was raised, which is that we are not having these discussions in school. While, yes there are activities where these issues are engaged with, but there is not enough emphasis on having complex discussions around modern and pressing issues in educational institutions. And, if we want to bring justice to these discussions, they need to be taken apart in an educational context (which was the conclusion of the conversation). Reflecting on my own background, discussions around issues like women's rights, gaslighting, race relations, and climate change (to name a popular few) were never given an educational emphasis unless they were directly related to content e.g. geography and climate change.
My social media experience and the development of this idea are linked to these discussions. For instance, an Instagram account I was following reposted an image on its story. The image came from an account called ‘@justice_for_raped_girl’ and said (and I quote) “ Repost if you are against rape. I see who views this. If you don’t repost I will lose all respect for you.”
I think this highlights the issue, the post makes a massive statement by imposing a moral judgment on the user in order to spread the post. In no way is sharing this post inherently linked with opposing rape. This subsequently reduces the discussion around rape to the sharing on the post and does nothing for the actual discussion.
(Justice_for_raped_girl).
A possible solution- changing incentives
“As long as social media’s financial incentives favor engagement (or “enragement”) over quality, its filtering algorithms will be designed to be favorable to messages of hate and fear”(Reisman). The truth is that algorithms favour engagement, and need to favour and filter for nuanced discussion (Reisman). How can we change incentives? Richard Reisman, head of the orange county business journal, suggests the following:
What we need is a subscription model that makes the user the customer. (Reisman). “users (and their data) are the product, and the true customers are the advertisers”(Reisman). This is because companies run ads through these platforms and therefore benefit off of engagement. The platforms will be motivated to find subscription models that are affordable to consumers (Reisman). This is important as investors worry that subscription fees would result in far fewer users and much lower revenue. But demand stimulates competitive incentives to make these subscriptions affordable. “Once the platforms are motivated to filter the content they distribute for quality, they will do better at it”(Reisman).
It is important to indicate that the solutions above are speculative, and actually have not been proven.
Creating spaces where discussions about complex and nuanced topics are discussed in their full contextual understanding.
Support or advocate for the integration of these discussions in academic institutions such as schools and universities.
Engage with social media (if you want), but consider the impact that trying to have these discussions on these platforms has on the actual discussion.
Remember, change starts with you.
Works Cited
Heilweil, Rebecca. "Why people are posting black squares on Instagram." Recode, Vox, 2 June 2020, www.vox.com/recode/2020/6/2/21278051/instagram-blackout-tuesday-black-lives-matter. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.
"How context has been destroyed." Youtube, uploaded by Aba & preach, 2 Feb. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJhOVVxEbWw. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.
Justice_for_raped_girl. Instagram. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.
Reisman, Richard. "Don't Swim Against the Tide of 'Nuance Destruction.'" Techonomy, Techonony, 11 Aug. 2020, techonomy.com/dont-swim-against-the-tide-of-nuance-destruction/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.
Savage, Luke Watson. "Social media and the end of nuance." WordPress, 13 May 2015, lukesavage.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/social-media-and-the-end-of-nuance/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.
"The 17 goals." United Nations -Department of Economic and Social Affairs ,Sustainable Development, United nations, 1 Jan. 2020, sdgs.un.org/goals. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.
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