Social media can make it easy for users to be racist
Year 12, Lawrence Area School
NOTHING bad happens on social media, right?
Wrong! Sadly, racism is a big part of social media in New Zealand.
Social media comes in many different forms and options.
Some of the most popular are Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter.
Unfortunately these are the worst social media sites for being targeted with racist comments on posts.
One of the most popular social media sites, especially with younger people, is Instagram.
Research shows 53% of online adults aged between 18 and 29 use Instagram, compared with 25% of those aged 3049, 11% aged 5064 and 6% aged 65 and older.
Instagram is a photo sharing application where photos can be shared with friends and followers, who can then like or comment on them.
These comments vary and are not always pleasant, depending on the photo.
For example, one incident that was classed as racism involved KiwiAsian businesswoman who was targeted because she was featured on a New Zealand advertisement for Visa Paywave on Instagram.
Comments included: ‘‘Asians on a New Zealand ad (sic), god help us’’.
This comment was posted for no other reason than to be racist towards the businesswoman.
A solution for racist comments on social media is needed because these comments keep reappearing and stereotypes are being reinforced in society, making members feel discriminated against and ashamed.
One of the nastiest examples of social mediabased racist harassment is the use of a face changing application.
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Some people have white or coloured skin and some races have prominent facial features.
In my opinion, racial distinguishing features should not be imitated, ever — especially not for fun.
Snapchat is one of the most popular photo sharing applications.
It has been under fire since a couple of racist filters were released for use on the application.
One of the filters was a tribute to Bob Marley which was released on April 20, 2017.
This lens/filter applied dreadlocks, a crochet slouch cap, changed the shape of the eyes and nose and darkened the skin.
Twitter was flooded with accusations of racism because Snapchat had created a ‘‘blackface’’ filter.
The second filter, which was later removed from Snapchat, featured Asian caricatures which immediately prompted accusations the filter/lens was an example of ‘‘yellowface’’, which refers to the portrayal of the east Asians in Hollywood.
This lens allowed the user to turn themselves into an Asian caricature with squinty eyes and oversized teeth.
People on Twitter then used these filters to show their frustration that the filters were racist.
These posts of frustration appeared in the hope that Twitter followers would realise the racism behind it.
Throughout New Zealand, thousands of people are active on Snapchat, using it to communicate with friends and family.
Users are from different ethnicities and many will be offended by the racist filters.
In their defence, Snapchat claimed the filters were only intended to be playful, not to offend. But in this situation, they racially offended certain people and this is not acceptable.
Some people recognise a solution is needed to stop racism on social media.
An experiment was conducted in 2015 by Twitter chief executive Dick Costelo in an attempt to fight racism on their site.
Four different accounts controlled by Mr Costelo were used to send messages which were designed to remind people who publicly posted comments that were racial what their victims went through and to suggest they should reconsider the norm of their online behaviour.
Even though this doesn’t seem like a big impact on social media, this actually seemed to improve the situation on Twitter by 0.3% each day.
If this happened every week, month and year, social media’s reputation would improve greatly and all users would benefit.
So as you can see, racism on social media can come in many forms: group discrimination, derogatory images of certain races and racist comments.
Racism on social media should not happen in the first place for any reason.
So it is time to put a stop to racism on social media.
Come on New Zealand, what do you think?