Something that really struck me when reading the article about refugees is how on social media, you really can’t escape political or controversial posts. I was really surprised to find out that Pinterest circulates political posts because I think of Pinterest as more of a site for getting diy, design or cooking ideas. I think that a lot of people view Pinterest as apolitical, so the fact that it is political is surprising. When I read about how political Pinterest posts can be, it made me think about how potentially harmful those posts can be, especially since the majority of them are so negative and spread false information. I think that the majority of people go onto Pinterest for lighthearted reasons, and not political reasons. However, if someone who is not informed about politics and who does not participate in political discourse on other media platforms comes across xenophobic posts on Pinterest, they might actually come to believe the xenophobic content and the misleading political statements. They might not have the exposure to political issues anywhere else except for Pinterest. This might cause them to develop misinformed and harmful thoughts about international issues.
One Reply to “11/2/2020 Blog Post”
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You raise the important question of context: the same content can have highly different effects based on what context it appears in.