In this week’s reading, the topic was the community. In the intro of chapter 12 Applying Social Psychology to the Community, stories were told of several individuals who committed suicide. As a result, community programs were created to help the youth cope. This is crucial if we want to come together and heal as a community. Regrettably, these individuals fell victim to being bullied and prejudice behavior. Not only does racism and discrimination need to be reduced in the community, but it must also be reduced in the online community.
Unfortunately, prejudice and racism are extremely popular topics both in the media and the internet. People use social media, websites, blogs etc. to support their racial and gender stereotypes and promote discrimination. There is a high level of anonymity that prevails online. This is one of the most distinctive and significant features of communication on the internet. Anonymity allows for the promotion of expressed bias.
When individuals are secluded and anonymous, group-based social effects including stereotyping, discriminatory actions, and group conformity are more likely to occur because their identity is hidden from the salient group. Once users develop and foster common identity groups, adherence to group influence is enhanced. These margins are strengthened rather than dispelled.
However, we should consider that the internet also affords opportunities to reduce intergroup bias, through the active promotion of tolerance exploiting on the ability to reach a broad audience and the facilitation of intergroup contact. One way to reduce prejudice on the internet is by the promotion of tolerance. I think tracking prejudice and discrimination is extremely vital and reducing their visibility on the internet is key. The internet-based companies and search engines should develop software that restricts and filter out racist, bigoted websites. This will help reduce some of the hatred and prejudice information available on the web. This is not to infringe on any civil rights or freedom of speech, this is to reduce the hate rhetoric that is dangerous and potentially harmful to society.
I think it is equally important to facilitate positive intergroup contact on the internet. While it is nearly impossible to get different members from different groups to interact in person, the internet can tailor requirements to achieve optimal results. On sites or online communities where groups are segregated or where online communication tensions rise, there should be a carefully strategized ad or contact that can serve as a buffer in this setting. This type of contact is one way to promote intergroup harmony. Another solution would be to strategically place interactive sites on these forums that address stereotypes of the outgroup. This would serve to improve the attitude towards the outgroup which would make for a positive interaction when faced with someone from the outgroup.
While we have a long way to go in terms of reducing prejudice and discrimination on the internet, these are just a couple thoughts that I believe could aid in the process.
https://blogsimages.adobe.com/preran/files/2017/11/online_learning_communities.jpg
References
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2015). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE
I agree with you that intolerance is grooving in the internet!
The virtual world is a concept that has arisen relatively recently, a special world created through computer technology. It doesn’t really exist, but it affects the psycho-emotional state of a person, creating the illusion of existence in this virtual world. The degree of anonymity in cyber space is always initially governed by the conditions of a particular social network. For example, many social networks, forums oblige the user to create their account, i.e. account, a page containing some personal data, including biographical information. If in real space absolute, total freedom of speech is impossible, since significant filters of morality, morality and culture limit a person in his statements, and hostile, aggressive behavior interferes with successful social adaptation in society, then completely different rules prevail in the virtual world. Anonymity as one of the features of cyber communication erases the permissible boundaries of the ethics of interaction; sometimes rudeness, bitterness, insults, caustic expressions become the norm on some Internet pages. The variety of forms of cyber aggression, their degree of danger to virtual society is determined by the goals pursued by Internet aggressors, their motives and attitudes, as well as factors such as anonymity and a sense of impunity. I am convinced that the roots of cyber aggression in the virtual community are interconnected with deviance in real life.
Hello!
I do agree that with the internet, comes an anonymity cloak that people love to hide under. It’s so much easier to spew hateful words and rhetoric when you know that you can hide behind a computer. It’s also easy to type hateful things out than to actually say them out loud. I do agree that within this new age of social media, there should be limits to how people can express hatred or lies that could induce mass hatred. For example, Twitter recently and finally permanently banned conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from using their websites as platforms for his beliefs. Twitter isn’t the only platform to have been challenged for this – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Spotify and Apple Podcasts all allowed Jones to use their platforms to build his following until this summer, when a reporter from CNN, Oliver Darcy, publicly asked Facebook to explain how it could claim to combat hate speech and misinformation (Wong, 2018). Most platforms then banned Jones from their sites, while Twitter was the last to follow.
Many people could argue that this is an infringement on freedom of speech, but I believe that the internet has such a powerful effect on our minds that things need to be monitored or else this misinformation can result in things as extreme as the loss of lives. I agree that active promotion of tolerance is extremely necessary and beneficial to limit the hatred and bigotry that is rampant on the internet.
References:
Wong, J. C. (2018, September 06). Twitter permanently bans conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/06/twitter-permanently-bans-conspiracy-theorist-alex-jones