Social media tends to capture people’s attention when dealing with certain topics. Many people use social media to gossip, meet new people, express their feelings, etc. Nonetheless, social media has positive and negative effects. The issue is more in depth than just the general phrase, cultural appropriation. To fully understand cultural appropriation with any culture, it is important to understand racism and stereotyping. These components of the issue were researched on social media accounts to see the opinions of other people.
The first hashtag that was researched was racism. Most of the tweets and posts were about #BlackLivesMatter, mostly because that has been the main issue occurring with society lately. However, the more research that was conducted, the more posts and retweets about #culturalappropriation and #racism were found. One post linked to a blog that discussed the negative effects of cultural appropriation and how many people do not intend to “institutional racism.” |
#Nativeamericans! This was a great hashtag to research because all of the post were inspirational and facts were stated to prove stupid stereotypes wrong. However, there were no posts that benefited this issue. Many also discussed #DumpTrump and #Trump2016, which was a surprise because a lot of Native people were for Trump.
Lastly, #culturalappropriation was researched. Because Cinco de Mayo just occurred, most of the post were about the appropriation of the Mexican culture, which is basically no different than Native American cultural appropriation. However, a post did fit this issue, which acknowledged racism and cultural appropriation. |