Social Justice & Black Twitter
- 1. #BLACKTWITTER & SOCIAL MINING By: Ayodele Odubela
- 3. Social Media as a Social Justice Tool Social media has taken on a bigger role in todays political climate. As Millennials, Social Media, and Social Justice mentioned, due to social media, todays leading social organizations have no central location, finite guidelines, or leaders. The Goal is to research Twitter for social media data that might give us more insight into the mind of millennials while respecting their privacy excluded from social media privacy laws.
- 4. The rise of #BlackTwitter and Millennial Activism One of the most popular social justice movements since the advent of social networking is the Black Lives Matter movement. Formed after the killing of 17 year old Trayvon Martin, the movement is focused on fostering systemic equality for black people in policing and public policy. Black Twitter as (often represented as #BlackTwitter) has been a major resource for critical thinking and engagement in activism on Twitter. Black twitter refers to a group of mostly like-minded individuals on twitter who collectively comment, educate, and make memes based on popular culture. While black twitter is know for its clever jokes and clapbacks there are times where many truly took an educational approach. Its our job to draw insights that might help better police community relations, race relations as a country, implement better polices and reform the criminal justice system.
- 5. Ethical Issues Many ethical issues arise when mining social media data for analysis: Should police monitor social media data to flag potential offenders? Can a users public opinion legally affect their employment or legal standing? When we disagree on issues of importance, can we do so nonconfrontationally?
- 6. Privacy Issues Many outspoken millennials worry that authorities watch their social media pages, thus stiffening their current stance against social data mining. The privacy issues that come up when mining social media data are: Did the user consent to sharing their information for research purposes? How will social media data be verified (posted by a real person) and anonymized (to protect a users privacy)? Informed consent, in my opinion, goes further than someone posting on social media. Assuming that users know that what they post can be mined and analyzed freely with no rules, regulations, or reasons why, is insufficient consent. A major reason why users believe in social media privacy is due to convoluted wording from Social Networking sites, a false sense of privacy created by private messaging and anonymous marketing. A 2009 Study showed that 62% of respondents falsely believed that because a website has a website policy it means they cant share their data with other companies.
- 7. Profiling Issues One of the large issues that come with mining social media data is profiling users based on public profiles. Should ones internet persona impact their real life (in cases where they arent threatening violence against another person)? Should a social media presence translate
- 9. Conclusion When mining for social media data its best to make all research transparent. This means informing users of what their data could be used for, and transparency in how social research is conducted. Many millennials use social media for a variety of reasons, and in many cases it includes staying up to date with social issues and politics. For some, it also leads to an activism seen at rates that were previously unprecedented. Millennials specifically continue to use social media to participate in social discourse, the legality of mining these data for research are still unresoved. For now it remains completely legal, but as weve seen with the UK creating more forward thinking data collection laws, it would be reasonable to believe this may change in the next few years.
- 10. References University of Chicago: https://socialsciences.uchicago.edu/news/black-youth-project-survey-first- ever-%E2%80%98black-millennials-america%E2%80%99-report-released On fairness: user perspectives on social media data mining: https://www.academia.edu/11972918/On_fairness_user_perspectives_on_social_media_data_minin g Millennials, Social Media, and Social Justice: http://www.wupr.org/2016/06/09/millenials-social- media-and-social-justice/