One of the major themes in this course this semester was the positive and negative effects of online communication and the role social media plays in this theme. The podcast I found for this assignment discusses this major theme along with content moderation and politician mobilization. I found a podcast called The Media Show on the podcast website player.FM is a podcast run by the BBC radio. In the shows about section, it states “ that it is a program all about a media revolution” (The Media Show, https://player.fm/series/the-media-show-1301223) that discusses topics about breaking news, faking news, social media, and anti-social media topics. The episode I listened to and will attach in this post was called “ Why can’t social media companies stop online abuse?”. In the first half of the episode the host interviews two people in the British sports scene and how social media affects some of the biggest UK football players and the recent acts of racial abuse African American football players are experiencing in the U.K online. BBC reporter Andrea Catherwood wanted to know why would these football players have social media profiles at all if treated in a negative way, did the positives out way the negatives?
When interviewing Henry Winter, Joey D'Urso, and Mayowa Quadri three football reporters in the U.K. they explained the rise of hate comments being left on African American Instagram pages including racial slurs, hate speech, and even racist emojis. They all agreed that this was the dark side of sports stars in England sharing themselves on social media but followed these comments stating that these players shouldn’t even be burdened with such bigotry. Raising the question, of how should these types of slanders and hate crimes online be handled even if they seem as harmless as a rude Instagram comment? With the consensus among the interviewer and the three guests being more content moderation on these sites. To quote Winter and D’Urso “ Someone needs to moderate these hate comments and social media companies should be held responsible” even bringing up the possibility of charging commenters.
On the flipside, Mayowa stated that sites like Instagram allowing these players to share more of themselves was a good thing. It allows fans to get to know the players better, share their side of the story of being African Americans in British sports, helps create a better narrative of their experiences, and allows them to share causes they care about and get civilians engaged which does outweigh the negatives.
In the second half of this interview, political mobilization is discussed by the New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang who wrote the book the ugly truth (Caterwood,2021). Although last week we discussed the many ways social media has benefited mobilization this same power to raise awareness for positive social changes is also used for the negative. Sheera and Cecilia discussed how the power of Facebook political mobilization is what led to the storming of the capital on Jan 6th of this year. Sheera discussed how the day after the election Facebook groups called “Stop the Steal” started to emerge on the platform with these groups planning to storm the capital claiming the election was stolen. She also shared her own personal experience reaching out to Facebook executives before the riots occurred. Sheera emailed Facebook’s headquarters asking them if they were going to do anything about these groups. She said, “ These groups are sharing images of assault rifles, and talking about storming the capital, is anyone going to take these groups down?”(Caterwood,2021) I think “Stop the steal” groups are also a good example of the agenda-setting theory.
Facebooks algorithm shows us what we know we want to see. Whether it’s plants or intense right-wing ideologies it caters to our personal agendas. Facebook is one of the biggest mediated communication networks in the world and has the ability to alter our views based on what we look up and what the site thinks we would like. By doing this Facebook is setting our personal agendas by filtering and catering to the media’s overall agenda by personalizing content to specific groups of people and that is why the “stop the steal groups” were able to gain the momentum that they did. But when is this agenda-setting too much? When it is catering to a large portion of hateful individuals. To sum up, this podcast tied to many of the subjects in this course from the positives and negatives of social media, political mobilization, online moderation, and even agenda setting.
