Project 2 Script

Hello, welcome to my podcast! My name is Cheyenne Lowther and I am currently enrolled in the College of Coastal Georgia. Today I will be discussing “Racial Discrimination on Social Media”. This topic is related to society today and changes the way that social media is presented. Discrmination on social media can potentially affect getting a job later in life and possibly affect your reputation when you try to make friends, or apply to colleges. Over time, racial discrimination on social media has increased. I will be specifically focusing on how racial discrimination has affected society and how it has increased overtime. I will also provide you with statistics of discrimination on social media.

To begin with, I will be providing information on how racial discrimination on social media has affected adolescents. In one of the articles that I have read, , By: Brendesha M. Tynes “Online Racial Discrimination: A Growing Problem For Adolescents” Tynes states that racial discrimination is a common stressor in the lives of adolescents of color in the U.S. Given the facts that 95% of youth have access to the internet and that adolescents of color spend 4 ½ more hours per day on average than their white counterparts using various forms of media, including mobile devices. (Tynes, 1). In this article Tynes includes a chart from an online survey of 340 African-Americans, Latinos, Asian, and biracial adolescents, with percentage statistics based on the years 2010 through 2013. Based on the chart included, you can gather that 42 percent of minority youth indicated that they had experienced at least one direct discriminatory incident in the first year, 55 percent in the second year and 58 percent in the third year reporting such an incident in the third year. (Tynes, 5). To conclude, this article given the increasing amount of time that adolescents and young adults spend online, experiences of racial discrimination via the internet have implications for their mental health and other developmental outcomes. (Tynes et al., 2008).

Based on research I have found on this topic, racial discrimination has an affect on mental health, and it can also be associated with depression, anxiety and increased problem behavior. Another article that I have found that shares how racial discrimination affects society as a whole is, “What Has Economics to Say About Racial Discrimination?” written by: Kenneth J. Arrow. Kenneth voices that racial discrimination prevades every aspect of a society in which it is found. Similarly to Tyne’s research that I shared earlier, authors, El-Amin, and Lincoln-Abdullah Hasan state that their study on how racial discrimination on social media affects mental health, and how it examines the impact that social media usage has on the relationship between self-reported racial discrimination and psychological distress. According to Amin and Hasan’s research, they have found that their results indicate that African Americans reporting higher levels of racial discrimination are more likely to meet the criteria for psychological distress than those who report lower levels of discrimination. (Amin, Hansan, 1).

While the information given so far has related to society, I have also read an article that describes the relationship between discrimination on social media and hate crimes across 100 U.S cities. In the article “Race, Ethnicity and National Origin-Based Discrimination in Social Media and Hate Crimes across 100 U.S. Cities” written by: Kunal Relia, Zhengyi Li, Stephanie H. Cook, Rumi Chunara, these authors compare how racial discrimination on social media motivates hate crimes across U.S cities. (Relia, Li, Cook, Chunara,417).

On the other hand, Amelia Johns; Anthony McCosker shared an article about social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Johns and McCosker state that social media platforms are also frequently admonished for supporting the flow of unchecked racism. (Johns, McCosker, 45). Whilst all of these articles can be compared and similarized, all of the authors share different facts and evidence on how racial discrimination on social media affects personal lives and society as a whole.

Lastly, in the article, College Students’ Experiences With Anonymous Social Media: Implications for Campus Racial Climate; written by: Amanda Armstrong, Jaymi Thomas, and Madeline Smith, the authors explain that anonymous social media platforms, such as Whisper and Yik Yak, have elicited controversy within the field of education over the past few years. Through the use of such platforms, students can anonymously participate in cyberbullying. (Patchin & Hinduja, 2012; Whittaker & Kowalski, 2015).

In conclusion to all of the articles that I have researched this study has given me a better take away and understanding of how racial discrimination on social media has labored the mental health of so many people and how racism affects society. I hope that you have enjoyed listening to my podcast and I hope that the information that I have included will better help you understand the turmoil that racism on the internet causes. Feel free to reach out to me! Thanks for listening!