Rachel Patmore’s Updates

Assignment 19

My digital exploration of race was through instagram. I am not a gamer, and didn’t even know where to start, so i look at a platform that I use relatively regularly, and examined the way that race functions in it. I am a white female, and the demographic that I follow are mostly white as well, though I don’t know personally a lot of the people that I follow, because they are interior designers, fashion and design bloggers, and photographers. (I do follow some international and U.S. people who are not white as well.) I searched around for some African American Fashion bloggers, and looked through their friends, the vast majority were also African American. I also looked at some famous actors and actresses, the majority of their followers were black as well. I searched through some of the non-famous followers of celebrities and observed that these individuals were also african american. From my brief and unscientific research, It seems as though instagram is segregated, and it also seems to be more so with African Americans than with white, middle eastern, and Asian bloggers. 

I also looked at an instagram account that posts objectifying images of women. The vast majority of women were white, some were asian, and I did find one black girl. I did not notice a difference in the comments on the photos. The account takes down comments if they are really bad. Most of the comments were objectifying and sexist. I was saddened to see that so many women would try to have their pictures reposted on this account just to be scrutinized by a bunch of objectifying men. 

While discussing racism online in this course, it is an obvious symptom of some of the major pitfalls of our society. We need social change the combat racism, and discrimination. I do not think that the internet should go back to being an anonymous place for users, but I do think that the problems need to fixed. This also makes me think of trolling. It seems like etiquette has not made its way to the web.