President of the U.S., Topic of the World

What better person to reach out to a large audience about immigration than Donald Trump? Donald Trump has become well known for expressing his opinions on issues via Twitter. He has made his opinion regarding immigration clear through his tweets where he discusses the future border and the benefits from separating immigrants from the U.S.. This link shows several tweets from Donald Trump on the issue of immigration.

The tweet to the left, where Trump states “we must build a wall” and tags a photo of a Mexican man holding signs showing Mexican support for Trump, raised a lot of individuals’ emotions. People replied asking the year the photo was taken and how much they paid the man holding the sign, while also projecting other angry remarks. However, there were also some replies in favor of Trump which mostly stayed around the idea of protecting American citizens in whatever way needed; they believe Americans are superior to people from other countries.

These tweets have created great tension between other countries and the United States. Since Donald Trump has been voted into presidency, his tweets, such as the one above, have a more powerful meaning. His position comes with great power where every action and word affects the rest of the country. Instead of the U.S. and Mexico being civil and seeing each other as equals, people are using social media sites like Twitter to virtually attack each other, creating conflict between countries.

In another instance, Trump has created an extreme influence on citizens’ perspective on racism. As a result of his beliefs, supporters have displayed acts of racism not only directly, but publicly as well. I have found a list of specific tweets that display the tension growing between different races. For example, Muslims state that they fear their safety by wearing their hijab, a symbol of their beliefs and religion. This is battling the idea that the United States is a country for opportunity and equality, because supporters of Donald Trump promote white power and the exclusion of minorities.

Immigrants continue having an unfair advantage due to their different backgrounds, and Trump’s policies and influences have not helped this issue. We are constantly flooded with comments of discrimination through social media sites that are noticed worldwide. Although President Donald Trump is a leader of the United States, he has made a significant impact on relationships between different cultures and backgrounds.

 

-Kaya & Aleena

Do you like “exotic beauty”?

Social media has always been a dictator for how young adults view themselves or view others. However, lately it seems to be dictating the younger and older generations. Social media has changed not only generations, but cultures as well. All the “do’s” and “don’ts” are given to these people through social media as well as control on who to accept and who should be “outcasts.” Based on how much people weigh, how tall they are, the color of theirs skin, creases in their face are all factors into how society views them, and sadly, how they it is congruent to how they view themselves. As mentioned in the Illusionist video, “we are trying to embody ‘exotic beauty,’ the westernized image, because that is where power comes from.” It is explained in this video that white supremacy has influenced many parts of the world through social media, commercial and ads.

Top is a poster of native Chinese brand. Bottom left is the magazine cover of fashionable life showing a white female, and topic about how to choose brightening skin product. Bottom right is a commercial billboard showing two white males on street of China.

Especially in Asians, people are obsessed with “exotic beauty”. In China, girls with typical westernized characteristics are the paradigm in mainstream media. Oftentimes, media producers even make white models as the cover of a magazine, on a billboard, or on the posters of native cloth brand. The media influence is so profound that even my mom always scold at me because of my sunspot, which is a big blemish on my face. In Korea, the situation is even severe. A lot of girls and even some guys put on makeups that make them look more “white”. According to this article, a lot of male Korean superstars also wear makeups. Korean guys want to look like them either because their girlfriends like the superstar or themselves want to be like them. In addition, probably due to the long history of most Asian countries, Asians incline to place everyone in a social hierarchy. The “exotic beauty”, such as “White skin” with tall nose bridge, and big eyes emblematize upper class with good education, lots of money, and higher status. Therefore, everyone wants to squeeze into the procession of being more surpassed, even if the person is ostensibly more superior.

Korean superstars with makeups.

 

Social media standards portray what an ideal image is for people of all ages, race and gender. People aim to reach these standards. In doing so, they might engage in behavior such as unhealthy dieting, skin bleaching or undergo dangerous surgeries. It is signaling to them that anything less than is not acceptable. According to CNN, being different or looking different is one of the common reasons why kids get bullied.

It is really an issue because as students, we are aware that social media consumption is increasing among all people. Therefore, it should not provoke insecurities about our bodies that could negatively impact our physical or mental health. It is important to involve people in conversations about consuming social media because we need to be reminded that we can fight back unrealistic standards.

 

By Wen Yung Keh, Sovisal Sen, Bailin Zhang

Looking Through the Lens of Cultural Differences: How social media in different cultures shape ideal woman body

We all know that how profound the contents on social media could affect our thoughts and further form or sway our existed ideology towards various types of things; the ideal woman body for instance, has always been depicted and transformed into different versions that respectively meets the social expectation of each culture. Social media play an important role in the shaping of the perfect and expected woman body images that implant into people’s minds, making female pursue those body shapes that would help them meet the social expectation as well as build up self-esteem. Let’s take a closer look at how ideal woman body images are being presented on social media among United States and China and how people’s thoughts and behaviors are affected by them.

Among all kinds of social media, Instagram has the strongest photo-orientation; we are more emotional and somehow “inevitable” to contents presented as the form of photography over words. Oftentimes I hear people joking around saying that “United States is all about booty!”, since it doesn’t completely reflect the entire society, it’s still somewhat a true phenomenon on Instagram. The fact is that in United States, girls tend to post photos that emphasize some parts of their bodies (especially butt if they do squat a lot!) that generates an overwhelming social syndrome in which people’s aesthetics toward woman body becomes superficial: a well shaped butt is a must. This interesting article points out how America’s “ideal” butt has changed over times. Perhaps we should really consider if the way we judge a beauty based on partials of her body is a mature way of showing our respect.

The industry of social media celebrity is thriving recently, especially in Asia in these 2 or 3 years or so. We could see increasingly larger number of female and male following social media celebrities to keep up with the mainstream in the public. Among them, there are many celebrities who have done plastic surgeries to beautify themselves. Therefore, those “fashion” followers would take in the ideology and imitate the behaviors, whether consciously or unconsciously. Like this video from BBC portrayed, many girls secretly go to plastic surgery without telling parents to make themselves more “perfect” even though they are actually already pretty enough. Asian generally don’t have the big and abstruse eyes as people from western countries do, but they all want stereo faces and eyes like that. Now in Asia, not to mention Korea where the plastic surgery industry is already well developed, facial plastic surgery (especially for the double eyelid operation) is quite prevalently common as well in China. As mentioned in the article “Why double eyelid surgery is on the rise in Asia: rising incomes and acceptance, and star power of Fan Bingbing, Angelababy”, the famous stars and popular celebrities have great impact on people’s ideology about beauty. “They no longer think plastic surgery is a big deal.” said Cao Jiwu, the president from an aesthetic and plastic hospital.

– by Lixuanpin Liu and Kevin Chou

Worldwide Addiction: Tech Companies engineering their apps to keep us hooked

By Miguel Laureano and Tyler Miller

How many times did you check your phone today? Two, ten times? And how many of those times did you have a notification? All the time, half the time? Regardless of the number of times we check our phone and have notification, the point is that we all check our phones. However, we may think it is because we are deciding to do so, but in reality the apps were designed to make us do so.

According to the segment on 60 Minutes “What is ‘Brain Hacking’? Tech Insiders on Why You Should Care” by Anderson Cooper, app developers and tech companies do not sell their product to us, we get to use them free of charge and in exchange they sell our eyes/attention to advertisers who actually pay companies like Snapchat and Facebook. Because the more time a person spends on an app the more advertising money the tech company makes, the goal becomes “getting attention at all costs.”  

Tristan Harris, an ex Google employee gave the example of our phones being slot machines, in that “every time I check my phone, I’m playing the slot machine to see, ‘What did I get?’…What you do is you make it so when someone pulls a lever, sometimes they get a reward, an exciting reward.” The thought of having notifications, likes, retweets, or snapping back to not lose streaks keep people constantly engaging with applications. The fight for attention by tech companies is a “race to the bottom of the brainstem” where the “most primitive emotions we have…fear, anxiety, loneliness” target anyone, anywhere in the world, who uses these apps.

Here in the United States, it’s no surprise that social media plays an enormous role in all our lives.  Apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, etc. dominate in popularity in America, but this is not always the case around the world. In the US, social media is mainly used for entertainment, connecting with friends. In other countries, social media platforms do not have as big of a presence and are not always used for the same reasons.  

This article interviews various people from various countries about the presence of social media in their world and what they mainly use it for.  Facebook and Twitter are, for the most part, the most popular media platforms in all countries, but many countries have differences in the popular apps used following these two.  In the UK, Pinterest is a rapidly growing platform.  In Peru, Instagram is not very popular.  In Spain, some use social media all the time and some never use it at all.  

Most countries aren’t as dependent on social media as we seem to be in the US. Just by simply crossing a border, there is a whole different environment when it comes to social media usage.  

The world is complex and constantly changing, culture is a key puzzle in gaining people’s attention but there is no doubt tech companies will make all attempts to steal the attention of those that haven’t yet used their services.