Just For Laughs or Hurting Our Community?

This story is part of our year-long series on Social Media Misinformation. Black Girl in the CLE is has partnered with Eye On Ohio,  the Ohio Center for Investigative Journalism, and First Draft, a global nonprofit tackling information disorder for this series.

Propaganda, Fake News and Misinformation

Most of us are familiar with the term and examples of propaganda. Some of us think the term “Fake News” is a word used by members of a political belief to discredit facts. But what is misinformation?

In this article we’re going to look and how misinformation, primarily memes, can be seemingly harmless but impact our communities in ways we could imagine.

So What Is Misinformation?

According to our friends at First Draft, misinformation can be as simple as minor mistakes in copy, inaccurate headlines, photos that don’t match stories and more.

When it comes to identifying misinformation, understanding the intent and potential effect of sharing or amplifying, or giving voice, to misinformation is key.

Sometimes the misinformation post on social media are not meant to harm but sharing the post and allowing the misinformation to grow can cause confusion or trick someone into believing something to be real.

Other times misinformation is used to confuse or gaslight people. Examples of this were seen in 2016 with fake Black Lives Matter post and then fake Blue Lives Matter post circulating on social media. Many times each of these fake accounts or post originated form outside of the US.

Both sides had strong emotional reactions to the issues. After heightened exposure to post that affirmed a person’s beliefs then we would see a call to action like a call for a march or people would begin to see post from the other viewpoint or people mobilizing on the other side heighten fears and angry. In some places event would spread around Facebook to put opposing marches or rallies at the same location hoping to spark unrest, all while the creator of such content is halfway across the world.

Misinformation can come in many forms. As mentioned it can be as subtle as Facebook events, or cloned/parodied news sites with mostly accurate headlines and graphics or memes.

Memes are also a form of misinformation

While memes are often shared jokingly they can have a detrimental impact to our community. Take for example the memes that said Black people are immune to Coronavirus. A few weeks ago those post were going viral across Facebook accounts and Black Twitter. I even laughed and shared a few too, but then I noticed a couple things.

First I realized that I was starting to her people repeat some of those memes, then I began hearing it called a white people disease. Secondly I personally has stopped taking the disease seriously. At that point I stopped sharing and took a second to watch.

As the memes died down, then another type of post strated making it way around Facebook.

While it’s true that we laugh ourselves through bad times the constant liking and sharing can end up on other people’s walls who don’t know is being shared as a joke.

A recent article from Citylab.com adds, “While some may argue that the jokes, at least, are harmless, U.S. history evinces how unsubstantiated claims about race-based resilience to disease have led to devastating outcomes, particularly for African Americans. The impacts of such beliefs still affect how people of color are medically treated — or not — today.”

While I continued to watch the course of the memes on Facebook, I missed what was happening on Twitter and didn’t seem to cross platforms. Post after post, memes and articles saying to stop saying Black people can’t get Cornavirus, then articles about why we should stop sharing that and finally the stories of African American all across the country testing positive for COVID-19.

Read the full Citylab.com article here: Why You Should Stop Joking That Black People Are Immune to Coronavirus

Is this the memes fault? Maybe, but who really knows where the memes came from and the intentions of the creators. Is it our fault, could be as we did spread misinformation. While the point is not to point fingers the point is to not hurt our communities and cut ourselves away from resources which can easily happen with a simple share.

Memes, Politics and the Census

In my last story I shared talked about the Russians using social media to disengage Black Voters. While there has been no formal connection on the impact the attempts had on the election outcome, many of us are aware that a lot of Black folks didn’t vote.

Some of us said it was because they were lazy, some said they didn’t vote to because their candidate wasn’t the Democratic nominee, some were speaking of feelings of being alienated from this county and some worried that it might be unsafe with all the violence we were SEEING towards unarmed Black people doing daily activities. But was what were were seeing really true and also, by sharing the information were we inviting the analytics to show us more awful images?

As 2020 began, the census was on a lot of people’s minds. Some of our Hispanic neighbors were concerned about answering questions that might bring ICE agents to take away loved ones. However, not being counted will hurt all of our communities as we stand to lose money, political seats both locally and nationally and most importantly resources for GREATER Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and surrounding areas.

So are you saying no more jokes?

Not exactly, we just can’t be that friend that plays too much. Look I’m not saying I won’t continue to share memes but I will be more cautious about sharing memes that have a political or economic slant to them.

Look,before you uninvited me to the cookout or ask for my Black card know that I’m still down for the laughs. I’m still down for laughing at our family dynamics around the holidays, I will still be offended people putting unnecessary ingredients in potato salad and I will still laugh at those things that make us unique and bring us together.

What do you think? How do we continue to laugh through the hard times without putting our families and community at risk? Comment below

Are you seeing misinformation post about the voting or the census or elections. Take a screenshot and share it with us