#<- they live in a bubble/echo chamber with friends who share their thoughts regarding matters and can never

[starlitshores]

This might end up being an unpopular opinion, but I’m actually okay with public figures - specifically white hockey players - showing up late to speak out against racism and in support of Black Lives Matter.

The statements that some players have made today sound more thoughtful and considered than I would have expected from them (the bar was low). That takes more work (and, we can hope, self-reflection) than smashing the share button on a corporate sponsor’s statement or an image that only lasts one day.

And yeah, we can choose to think positively and make the assumption that the younger guys who smashed that share button did so because their thoughts, feelings, and gut responses truly align with the messages that Black Lives Matter and bigotry is wrong and we need to do better.

But for some of these guys? Their statements sound like they had to actually take the time to open their eyes to the world outside of their privileged bubble and to actually listen. They had to take the time and sit with it and then figure out how to write a public response. And when they did, they were honest enough to admit that before this, they didn’t even notice. Not just that they have never experienced racism in any form themselves, duh, but that they were somehow walking through life willingly ignorant to reality.

And we can all sit here and go “You ASSHOLE. How did you NOT KNOW?” because I’m not trying to be funny how did you miss Michael Brown’s death and the Ferguson protests six years ago? How did your heart not break hearing about Tamir Rice over eight years ago? How have you not seen the long long lists of names of Black lives lost to police brutality? How did you not even hear about BLM holding up Pride parades IN YOUR SUMMER CITY to protest the presence and inclusion of cops? HOW?

However, everything we’ve all been sharing for the last week, we’ve been sharing in an echo chamber. We already care. So, fellow white people - and this may be obvious to many and is not intended to be repetive or condescending - we’re probably not really educating each other. But we do need to take the weight off our Black and other minority friends and educate other white people. That’s one of the big things we can and should do. And we need to accept that it’ll be uncomfortable and infuriating because the people who need educating are the ones who haven’t been paying attention, haven’t cared, and/or have actively been on the other side. (You know, the ones we don’t want to talk to at Thanksgiving or school or work. For REASONS.)

I’m biased as fuck about this because I teach racist white kids for a living. And I get one semester to shake those deeply ingrained prejudices loose enough that when I present new information or new opportunities to learn and expand their understanding of the world, something gets through. And whether it’s a 15 year old girl sobbing that she’s been a horrible person her whole life (we had a chat about white guilt and forgiving your child self in order to move forward as an ally) or a grown ass rich man finally not looking away and acknowledging his own privilege, I’ll take it. It’s a step.

What I took away from these statements, as lukewarm as some of them were, and as close-to-but-not-on-the-mark as others were, was a little ray of hope.

Based on NHL history - even though he’s answered questions about YCP and queer players and even used the word “paradigm” correctly in his response - I did not expect a player like Jonathan Toews to make any statement let alone one that I saw several white hockey fans in the comments respond to positively. And I definitely didn’t EVER think he’d also make a reference to the experience of North American First Nations in what I personally saw - ymmv - as a little dig at his team’s racist as fuck logo. (Please please please advocate for a change in the logo and branding, Jonny...)

Perhaps there are others who haven’t yet spoken up because they don’t feel ready. Either they’re not informed enough, or they don’t know how to say it, or they’re coming out of some murky dark hole of racist shit, or their white bubble just popped and the world is scarier than they realised. And there are for sure others who haven’t said anything because they’re quite happy in their white bubble and/or because they’re on the cops’ side and don’t want to bother with the PR. (Note: Eichel is an American captain, and Parise is from Minneapolis so their freedom and expectation to speak is, I’d argue, different.)

What I do know is that I’m okay with a late statement from someone who is doing the work and means it, and will happily hold them accountable for living up to it in future.

EDIT: I removed a section about Tyler Seguin. I’ve seen so much negativity about Tyler lately, especially regarding his stint in the Bahamas and that beer pong thing. And I think I allowed that and his past immature comments/behaviour to make me a bit more apologetic than I wanted to be regarding one of my favourite players. My literal gateway into hockey. I still want to acknowledge those past behaviours and my own worry when I saw that he posted because my bar for him IS higher than for other players based on what I’ve seen him do in his community and I was worried he might not meet it. He exceeded it. And since his original statement, he has STEPPED UP. He did a great interview with The Athletic, and the boy is now out there at a BLM protest in Dallas. That’s my baby and I’m proud. The end.

[briannajoneswilliamsblog]

Our own bubbles

Social media has taken over the daily lives of many people. It is rare to meet someone who does not have at least one of these platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram. Social media has decreased the communication gap for individuals but also left some with psychological problems.

Kleemans et al. (2016) studied how the manipulation of Instagram photos affects young Instagram users. As expected, they found that young users could not determine the photoshopped versions of the pictures. The researchers found that the girls had a higher tendency to compare themselves to people within their social network than celebrities. I think that this might be because it is expected of celebrities to have plastic surgery or touch-up their photos to look perfect, and it is not reasonable to compare yourselves to them. It is more understandable to compare yourself to someone that is within your inner circle because often they can be seen as your competition. The researchers recommend that if someone alters their photos, they should have to disclose it. Since this study was conducted a while ago, especially in terms of social media, I feel that if you repeated the experiment, you might find that Instagram users would be able to tell the difference. Now it is more common for most people to alter their photos, whether they are famous or not. Instagram has become a fantasy world.

(She became famous for catfishing a guy on Instagram, her name is Kayla Nicole Jones).

When determining how people interact with networking sites, it is easier to measure their political ideology regarding what they view and who are thier friends. It seems that a common thing that researchers investigate is how people typically interact with people that are like them.

I feel like this can almost be common sense. From young ages, people tend to form friend groups because they are similar, and if you are not, you will either pretend to like the same things or find another group. This idea does not change; it continues in the workforce, PTA meetings, and most social events. So why would it be any different for social media?

Media-audience homophily refers to how likely someone is to prefer a partisan website that attends people that think like them (Dvir-Gvirsman, 2017). People choose to follow specific sites not just for the information but also for social identity and self-definition. Party affiliation often is a part of someone’s identity. Individuals with stronger partisan views they prefer more partisan websites. People can also share the content that they find on these websites by tweeting, liking, and posting on other social media platforms. Others are tipped-off on what sites they might prefer when they see their friends share them. By doing this, these websites create echo-chambers where people only interact with people who think like them, confirming their biases. These echo-chambers can turn into filter bubbles when the people that are posting the political content and their friends (because they often think like them) are confirming their opinions. The support of populist candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump often form filter bubbles and echo-chambers because people that support these two usually are in connections with people that agree. Groshek & Koc-Michalska (2017) found that those active on social media are more likely to support Democratic populists than Republican populists. I thought this was interesting, especially after the 2016 election.

Social media is a big part of people’s lives so, politicians have started using it for their campaigns. Barack Obama was one of the first successful candidates to use social media since then politicians have been trying to use it to relay messages to their constituents. McGregor et al. (2016) looked at how female, and male candidates used social media. Female candidates were less likely to talk about their family lives on a national level and not feed into the ideal of “womanly traits.” I think this is interesting because women face more criticism than male candidates, whether it be on their appearance or policies that are typically related to “feminine policies” such as healthcare and education. Male candidates engage in more self-personalization on social media and usually receive better feedback from that. I think it’s interesting as a society we applaud male candidates for being more personal and showing us their own lives. But when it comes to female candidates, they were often criticized when they didn’t act what society viewed as feminine and criticized when they acted too feminine.

Flores-Saviaga and Savage (2019) studied “political trolls” on Reddit. I found this article to be very interesting for an abundance of reasons. One is why does this matter, especially since the majority of Reddit users are white. After discussing this study with my roommate, Martha, we also determined that we have never met a minority that uses Reddit. So even though the majority of the users on Reddit that are writing about immigration are Pro-Trump has, does this impact the lives of others.