Social media is the breading ground for stereotypes. As we all know racism has a lot to do with the spread and belief of stereotypes that supposedly portrays characteristics of a group of people based on their race. Before the birth of social media, racism was obviously still around but in my opinion it was a dying notion; however with the birth of social media emerged a new outlet for people to spread stereotypes and lies. Personally social media is where I became largely aware of the many stereotypes relating to racism.
Obviously there are many other factors such as cinema, music and cable news stations. Although on each of these mediums the person who is the credible source for the information is known; social media however is a different story. Unreliable or non credible sources are constantly trending and shared which are many times largely inaccurate and as a result, end up confusing the average American about what's really going on. For example, certain situations where police were forced to use their guns on dangerous civilians have gone viral. Although they don't ever show what the civilian did to force the policeman to pull his gun, they only show his murder. If that civilian just so happened to be an African-American, after the clip goes viral, all cops are rumored to be racist and out to murder the blacks any chance they get. Social media is a great way to gather quick information much like a encyclopedia, however to get more in-depth and accurate information we need to do our research on credible sources to learn the whole story not just the six second meme.
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