This year especially, Black Lives Matter has dominated our media world. BLM demonstrates a message of human rights for all no matter your color of skin. Black Lives Matter is trying to create a world where black people can live free of a system that favors whites. Black Lives Matter has attracted attention from all over the world and from all different ages, however, without media and the public sphere, the movement would not have been as successful as it was. Through the public sphere, the BLM movement was able to achieve not only attention, but participation nation and world-wide. The public sphere has given the movement likes, trending hashtags, and retweets. One of the most prominent advances the movement took was implementing #BlackoutTuesday. On this day, Instagram was overwhelmed with posts of a black screen with the caption #BlackoutTuesday. This allowed for unity behind the movement without having to physical protest or leave the comfort of your own home. Thanks to media and the public sphere, the BLM movement was a huge success.
In Hong Kong, cell phones haves become the voice of the people. However, Hong Kong authority believes people should not have a voice.
It has been reported that Hong Kong police have “seized” more than 3,700 phones of protestors due to months of protests. It has been said that Hong Kong police have the authority to “seize and examine various objects of suspected offenders” for the purpose of preventing and detecting crime, end goal being protect its citizens’ lives.
But does this protect the citizens’ of Hong Kong’s lives? It is known that after the seizure of the protestors cell phones, “3,721 mobile phones belonging to arrested persons or suspects were involved, and the relevant cases were all processed with search warrants issued by the court”. For all these arrests and seizing’s, you would think the protests would involve a country, life-style changing origin, however, the protests are about a proposed extradition bill. That being said, innocent citizens are being thrown in jail for something US citizens do every day, only to which a larger scale.
Hong Kong is nit representing a democracy. The cell phone is a technology working to express and spread democracy through sharing opinions, spreading information through social media handles, or even to the smallest extent, texting friends over issues you care about. And the beauty of a cell phone is that it’s yours and its private, in a democracy. However, in Hong Kong, democracy was stripped from its people by seizing, invading, and persecuting their citizens for sharing their own opinions among friends and family.
References:
https://www.businessinsider.com/hong-kong-police-seize-cell-phones-protesters-sparking-privacy-concerns-2020-1
In the meme pictured above, you tend to feel a certain way about our president and our countries current state. Angry? Funny? Sad? These are all feelings this meme is trying to evoke to different viewers. This meme represents satire. The meme allows itself to be viewed as “playful”, laughable, or a joke, but it also casts judgement when doing so. The satire used in this meme creates judgment towards our president and his response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This meme is possibly calling attention to the “drink bleach” incident or possibly the fact that the president said Covid-19 was “a joke” and “fake”. This meme allows politically inattentive audiences to increase their attention to political stories. This is called the gateway effect. By using this effect, political humor is exposed to those who may not watch the news or pay attention to the Covid-19 briefings held in the White House. By seeing this meme, the audience e=receives a funny bu7t negative image of the president which may lead them to search for more information and become politically involved.
The Public Sphere is a space or realm of public life where public opinion emerges. When you think of the public sphere, you imagine two elements, the life world and the system world. The life world refers to the world of the individual social actor. For instance, the life world would take place at a coffee shop, salon, or the press. The system, on the other hand, tries to manage the public sphere. The system tries to act as a “gatekeeper” of sorts. For an ideal public sphere, it must have the following elements: close to universal access, the citizens must be free of coercion, all people must participate on equal footing, there must be subordination of the state, and we must make a commitment to logic.
The ideal public sphere does not exist in our world. The main ides of the public sphere is universal, whether it comes from the extent of access to the rejection of hierarchy. This is something America cannot achieve. For example, say you are invited to a meeting to discuss climate change. Across the table from you is the president and next to him is Mark Zuckerberg. According to the public sphere, you are on equal footing as the two people sitting across the table from you. You in this case, are expected to reject the hierarchy and eliminate their power to the same amount of power as you. For me, in this case, I could not speak up or voice my opinion knowing the power and fame the two people across from me hold. I could not live by the public sphere because of my “fan girl” ways, which i think most Americans have whether it be Mark Zuckerberg or Beyoncé.
This goes to show that the media impacts the effectiveness of the public sphere. For instance, without media, many might not know who Beyoncé is, and would certainly not know Mark Zuckerberg. Media creates fame and popularity for individuals, turning regualr people into superstars, For example, Charli Damelio, the famous tiktoker. Charli went form being a normal high school girl from Connecticut to a viral tiktoker and now has her own drink named after her at Dunkin Donuts. Thank to media, the public sphere cannot function appropriately because in our society, we “fan girl” and view famous people as heroes rather than equal footing as a regular person.
We, as a society, are often talking about the selective exposure seen on Google or Facebook. However, I have never come across an article or news story evaluating the very popular Instagram. Instagram, in the past, has been a source to post photos of family, friends and experiences. However, with so much political heat and “drama”, Instagram, through their stories feature, has now become a way to voice your opinions on politics and social justice, becoming much like Facebook. With this “Facebook-like” change to Instagram, comes Facebook qualities, such as the selective exposure.
Selective Exposure is a theory often used in media that refers to individuals’ tendency to favor information which supports their pre-existing views while avoiding contradictory information. Not only does selective exposure apply to political views, but selective exposure also effects the ads your get on your apps.
I noticed this one day while on Instagram. I had just finished talking to my mom about getting a new Long Champ backpack. After our conversation, on my Instagram feed, was an ad of a woman holding a Long Champ bag. This is when selective exposure caught my attention.
In a study done by John H. Parmelee and Nataliya Roman, a survey of “politically active Instagram users measured how often users expose themselves to opinion-reinforcing political leaders and the extent to which users avoid opinion-challenging leaders”. In their findings, the data indicated that there is a high level of selective avoidance behavior on Instagram, especially by users who are conservative, Republican, very ideological, and female. Selective avoidance and selective exposure go hand and hand in this study. Selective avoidance is to avoid contradictory information. This avoidance also increases resistance to persuasion. Therefore, the study found that when most Instagram users who are conservative, Republican, very ideological, and female, tend to “tune out” these ads, whether it be politically driven or a simple purse ad. Which then poses a question of are these people who practice selective avoidance the reason why Instagram does not receive more criticism about their selective exposure practices?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736585320300915
https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/10/instagram-adds-qa-feature-to-stories/
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/26/18759518/instagram-explore-page-ads
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