Problem:
During this module, you were to do an experiment using your own social media (Module 03 Activity). Looking back at your social media experiment from the week, how did your responses go? Did you notice any differences among groups or countries? What stereotypes did people comment on?
Write at least 3 pages answering these questions using your social media experiment, being sure to demonstrate with examples. Include a theory from last week if you see evidence of one. Also include your response to the experiment - were you surprised or did you find what you thought you would? Did that expectation affect what you found? How can you tell?
My Experiment
Reflecting on my social media experiment, I was shocked to find out that I am more passive on social media than active. On TikTok, I just scroll through videos, and on Facebook, I like family members' and friends' posts or react to them. I guess I never thought about how this relates to society until I started paying attention. However, after trying this assignment, I became more aware of how everyday patterns and stereotypes show up all over the media.
TikTok videos promote stereotypes constantly, which become normal after watching the same ideas repeatedly. For instance, gender stereotypes about how girls and boys should look, act, wear, etc. I never paid much attention to these videos before, but after seeing them so frequently, I understand how the mind can start to believe things over time. Facebook showed me that I have the same idea patterns because I follow similar-minded people. There was not a variety of diverse thoughts shared in my newsfeed, so things just ran on repeat with no contradictions.
I noticed that I never speak up about what I see. There have been times when I have noticed something stereotypical or a hidden message, and I never said anything about it. Social media allows us to scroll through feed after feed of articles or posts without speaking up, but everyone is freely liking them. Realizing this made me think about how we are training people to accept information by simply pushing a button to agree with them. Liking a post could be promoting something you haven't even thought about.
Social media has opened my eyes to see how our culture is constantly being taught to us through others' posts. I had no idea that even scrolling could cause you to accept things as social culture. In the future, I will think more before I see something rather than just scrolling past it. Need Assignment Help?