they said What???
News is supposed to supply the public with information on important events and what is going on within the world. But what happens when that news is bias? What happens when that news is intentionally or unintentionally describing and event, group of people or individual in harsh harmful vocabulary. Are we all receiving unbiased news if the majority of people giving us news are white males? Does this mean that everyone is being represented equally? No. Is that a surprise? Probably not because since the inception of news people have been receiving prejudice reports. The issue is that not everyone can detect when they are reading or watching news reports that are inherently bias. The way the media portrays people of color ultimately adds to the intolerable treatment of people of color in society as well as serves as a matter of justification for this treatment.
We want to see a more balanced representation of people of color in news media specifically, because that informs people’s personal prejudices as we see in their comments on social media. People know that racism and prejudice exists but do they know how they are adding to the issue? Do they know when they are involved in a microaggression or an act of prejudice? Are people aware when they post racist or intolerant comments on their social media website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube? Unfortunately the answer is no. We want to bring this issue to light. We want to be able to illustrate to the largest community we can possibly reach just how biased the media is whether it is obvious or not. We want someone to look at an article that they might not realize is prejudice and then dissect the article and realize EXACTLY what the article is trying to say and feed them. We want people to realize how these articles are influencing negative comments flowing around the web and we want these negative comments to STOP. We hope that by sharing articles and highlighting the overtly or underhandedly negative comments through our interactive site that people who are not aware of this bias WILL be and people who are aware will continue to fight against this bias in the media and help change the diction in which the media shares information the public.
Be aware that prejudice exists not only explicitly on racist comments online, but implicitly in media. Think when you read or when you listen. Do not just consume. Do not be a passive consumer in a world that is trying to convert you to their ways of thinking. We are all people. We all breathe and think. We MUST be treated as such. We are not objects because of the color of our skin. We are not less than because of the color of our skin. We are not better because of the color of our skin. We are P E O P L E. Let us be treated and talked about as such. Right now we cannot lie and say we are all treated equal. There is more evidence showing that we are NOT treated equal than indicating that we are treated equal. Let us change this. Let us bring light to these organizations and individuals who continue to promote prejudice. We are drawing attention to the issue that race relations are still very much an issue that needs to be talked about.
We do not live in a post racial society as some people would like to think.
They Said What??? is a visibility campaign. We aren’t directly calling individuals to action and we aren’t directly advocating for a group. We are calling attention to an issue that people may not be aware of or are blinded and do not see it as an issue.
How are we going to bring attention to this issue you ask? We are creating an interactive website comprised of two parts. One section will concentrate on racist news media, both overt and discreet. The other section will focus on social media. Both will have the feature of being able to scroll over the text and have certain information bolded, the idea being to call specific attention to the problematic things that are often said insidiously. The site will have a clean and minimalist aesthetic in order to highlight the issues rather than having the audience be largely overwhelmed.
It will take the form of a website.
We are delivering content through images and video as well as text exclusively on our site. It is a public site where all individuals fighting for the cause can follow and share it with those who may be unaware of the bias that surrounds our mass and social media mediums.
Our goal is to reach EVERYONE. But we are not too idealistic and know that is not always possible. Thus we mainly hope to reach the youth who are active on blogs or social activism sites because they are the future. However, in terms of ideal audience, the best person to see the site would be the individual who is on the fence about the state of race relations in America. Seeing all of the blatantly racist quotes and information that we supply on our site that will be gathered all over the internet we hope might be enough to convince a person questioning racial equality, that in fact, we have a long way to go.
It is time to take action.
Do not just sit idly by.
Do not be passive.
Be apart of the change our world begs for.
Our audience is the general public. We want to be able to reach every age group, every gender, every ethnicity, every race and every religion. Our goal is to not discriminate and to share information with everyone we possibly can. We are going to reach our audience by sharing our blog with 5C students via student talk that way anyone who is interested in our cause can follow our website. We also plan on sharing our blog with friends, families, classmates, teachers and hopefully through this our website will get enough traction to spread beyond the 5C community and our friends and families.
We hope that by viewing the biased and racist social media comments and news clips, our viewers will be reminded how large this issue is. People tend to look past many incidents of racism and bias, we hope that by making a website with concrete examples it will be impossible to keep ignoring. All of this information can be accessed through a link to our website. We will be posting this link on our social media and student talk, as well as encouraging others to spread the link.
We believe that our idea is innovative because no examples we have looked at in class or have found on the internet focus solely on the connections between social media comments and bias in the news (along with many examples of each). It may seem unnecessary to have a blog full of screen shots of racist social media comments because racist comments are so easy to find, but we are hoping that by putting so many examples in one place it will create a larger impact and show people the sheer magnitude of these comments. We feel the same about showing bias and racism in the news. Many websites and blogs have posted videos or stories about when the news has been racist or biased, but none have put this much focus on it.
We want to see a more balanced representation of people of color in news media specifically, because that informs people’s personal prejudices as we see in their comments on social media. People know that racism and prejudice exists but do they know how they are adding to the issue? Do they know when they are involved in a microaggression or an act of prejudice? Are people aware when they post racist or intolerant comments on their social media website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube? Unfortunately the answer is no. We want to bring this issue to light. We want to be able to illustrate to the largest community we can possibly reach just how biased the media is whether it is obvious or not. We want someone to look at an article that they might not realize is prejudice and then dissect the article and realize EXACTLY what the article is trying to say and feed them. We want people to realize how these articles are influencing negative comments flowing around the web and we want these negative comments to STOP. We hope that by sharing articles and highlighting the overtly or underhandedly negative comments through our interactive site that people who are not aware of this bias WILL be and people who are aware will continue to fight against this bias in the media and help change the diction in which the media shares information the public.
Be aware that prejudice exists not only explicitly on racist comments online, but implicitly in media. Think when you read or when you listen. Do not just consume. Do not be a passive consumer in a world that is trying to convert you to their ways of thinking. We are all people. We all breathe and think. We MUST be treated as such. We are not objects because of the color of our skin. We are not less than because of the color of our skin. We are not better because of the color of our skin. We are P E O P L E. Let us be treated and talked about as such. Right now we cannot lie and say we are all treated equal. There is more evidence showing that we are NOT treated equal than indicating that we are treated equal. Let us change this. Let us bring light to these organizations and individuals who continue to promote prejudice. We are drawing attention to the issue that race relations are still very much an issue that needs to be talked about.
We do not live in a post racial society as some people would like to think.
They Said What??? is a visibility campaign. We aren’t directly calling individuals to action and we aren’t directly advocating for a group. We are calling attention to an issue that people may not be aware of or are blinded and do not see it as an issue.
How are we going to bring attention to this issue you ask? We are creating an interactive website comprised of two parts. One section will concentrate on racist news media, both overt and discreet. The other section will focus on social media. Both will have the feature of being able to scroll over the text and have certain information bolded, the idea being to call specific attention to the problematic things that are often said insidiously. The site will have a clean and minimalist aesthetic in order to highlight the issues rather than having the audience be largely overwhelmed.
It will take the form of a website.
We are delivering content through images and video as well as text exclusively on our site. It is a public site where all individuals fighting for the cause can follow and share it with those who may be unaware of the bias that surrounds our mass and social media mediums.
Our goal is to reach EVERYONE. But we are not too idealistic and know that is not always possible. Thus we mainly hope to reach the youth who are active on blogs or social activism sites because they are the future. However, in terms of ideal audience, the best person to see the site would be the individual who is on the fence about the state of race relations in America. Seeing all of the blatantly racist quotes and information that we supply on our site that will be gathered all over the internet we hope might be enough to convince a person questioning racial equality, that in fact, we have a long way to go.
It is time to take action.
Do not just sit idly by.
Do not be passive.
Be apart of the change our world begs for.
Our audience is the general public. We want to be able to reach every age group, every gender, every ethnicity, every race and every religion. Our goal is to not discriminate and to share information with everyone we possibly can. We are going to reach our audience by sharing our blog with 5C students via student talk that way anyone who is interested in our cause can follow our website. We also plan on sharing our blog with friends, families, classmates, teachers and hopefully through this our website will get enough traction to spread beyond the 5C community and our friends and families.
We hope that by viewing the biased and racist social media comments and news clips, our viewers will be reminded how large this issue is. People tend to look past many incidents of racism and bias, we hope that by making a website with concrete examples it will be impossible to keep ignoring. All of this information can be accessed through a link to our website. We will be posting this link on our social media and student talk, as well as encouraging others to spread the link.
We believe that our idea is innovative because no examples we have looked at in class or have found on the internet focus solely on the connections between social media comments and bias in the news (along with many examples of each). It may seem unnecessary to have a blog full of screen shots of racist social media comments because racist comments are so easy to find, but we are hoping that by putting so many examples in one place it will create a larger impact and show people the sheer magnitude of these comments. We feel the same about showing bias and racism in the news. Many websites and blogs have posted videos or stories about when the news has been racist or biased, but none have put this much focus on it.