When reading “Welcome or Not: Comparing #Refugee Posts on Instagram and Pinterest,” I was quite shocked to learn that xenophobic content circulates on Pinterest. I know hateful media goes around on Facebook and Twitter, for instance, but I had always thought of Pinterest as an “apolitical” place where middle-aged female users reconvene to talk about decorations, almost as if it were detached from society as a whole. I now realize there is no such thing as “apolitical” spaces, even on social media — there are always going to be dynamics of reproducing or challenging pre-established power relations in the spaces we frequent. It’s energizing to visualize these power dynamics and even more to notice the different frames we employ to define different spaces. I wonder if the dynamics of spreading hateful content on Pinterest differ from those on Twitter, for instance, because the latter seems to induce more back-and-forth communication/interaction between users, whereas Pinterest appears to be more centered around images and not so much conversation.
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Surely, the smaller likelihood of conversation on Pinterest does have some effect–but which one? This is a question the authors of the article aren’t sure about either. Does lack of conversation mean lack of engagement, or does it mean that harmful content is just allowed to stand?
And then the context really matters. If you’re discussing decoration and political content enters, it will have a very different impact than if you were in a political exchange…