Social bias and Technology

In the article written by Elizabeth Dowskin she mentions "In the type of image-tagging programs used by Google and others, software learns to distinguish people in photos by finding common patterns in millions of images of people." 

Given that the computer's capabilities are limited to what it is being told to do through its coding and language, how can we expect our facial detection to be completely unbiased? Since there's diversity in humans and similarity amongst certain races, it only makes sense to be objectified to a certain pattern when image detection comes in place. In fact, I have been objectified to look similar to one of my friends on Facebook through its image detection feature. Every time I would post a photo of myself, Facebook automatically thinks its my friend. So, would that be considered as a bias in coding in Facebook's image detection software or just a similarity amongst facial features/coincidence? 

Lastly, If social bias can occur in between your job search results, its only apparent it'll show in your online buying behavior. If you think about it, when we're on Facebook we see advertisements about various products from different shops which naturally influences us to look at their products in depth and see their ratings and most of the times those ratings are 5/5. How can we be so sure that the ratings aren't thrown in by marketers or hired professionals for you to buy the product more? That within itself is a bias that we unconsciously forget about as we're completely struck by the beauty of the product. 

Self perception causes self awareness

"Scientists have long debated Facebook’s impact on users’ in-the-moment mood as well as their deeper satisfaction with life."

The quote mentioned above is from Bohannon's article "Will Facebook Make Us Sad? Depends on how you use it" and it made me realize that we naturally tend to gravitate towards things that make us see what we're missing in our own life which sometimes negates our self-perception almost unintentionally.

If we think about it, by following various social media influencers we tend to look for inspiration. So why exactly do we look up to people on social media and get inspired? Is it because we want to be like them or do we see something in their personality that reminds us of somebody or something? To answer that, I'd refer to the quote mentioned above. The impact depends on our "in the moment mood" as well as our "deeper satisfaction with our own life". We may just be scrolling through Facebook out of fun but, something might pop up such as an ex with his girlfriend leading us to think that "How much more single can I get?" furthermore making us look into our own life and thoughts critically. So, our Facebook usability just depends on how we want it to be. You can choose to either pause at a post that makes you ponder upon memories or you can choose to move past that and look at more positive posts which may slightly change your self- perception and inspire you to change your own life. Lastly, we become self-aware of our own feelings through this process making us un-easy in some way or another.

Spiral of Silence

In the reading "Spiral of Science" Neumann mentions the definition of Spiral of Science as "The increasing pressure people feel to conceal their views when they think they are in the minority".

Being a minority myself, I can relate to the definition above in various ways. The world today is feeling immense political pressure to undermine the Muslim community due to mistakes made by a few people claiming their religion to be Islam. I, being a Muslim myself feel the need to keep silent when political views regarding the recent elections or the topic of 9/11 come up because I feel like I will not be heard no matter what I do or say and even if I do say something it will not be taken seriously. If we think about it, it's human nature to stereotype an entire community by a mistake a member of the community made but, what fuels the minds of the majority and silences the minorities? It's the views being passed around by various individuals on mass media.

If our Halloween costumes can be inspired by characters from a Television show, who says our views can't be fueled or inspired through public speakers using Television to influence opinions? This just proves how dangerous the power of majority can be for minorities and for people who support or understand the issues the minorities face. On a personal level,  due to this issue, I have found myself feeling guilty or ashamed when certain topics come up regarding Muslim representation on the media through powerful figures because somehow I feel people have their eyes on me because, I am a person of color let alone, a Muslim. Later on in the chapter, Neumann mentioned about the "Time to speak and a time to keep silent" which made me think of my own personal experiences.  Being in the minority sometimes in regards to certain topics makes it easier for me to keep silent about passing opinions that can hurt emotions and cause some sort of a reaction because maybe if I speak louder and show opinion I may be attacked with counter arguments and opinions that might hurt my emotions or hurt the emotions of others. However, I do believe there is a time to speak and that is when your opinion seems politically correct and is influential rather than hurtful and degrading.

Media Manipulation

9/27

While reading through the "Research in India suggests Google search results can influence an election" reading, I went ahead and tested the Google search results to see if any form of manipulation or favor was being done in regards to the recent presidential candidates. Surprisingly, my search results were exactly the same for both the candidates. In fact, I noticed a pattern in my search results. The search results came out to be very biased as both the candidates had a mixture of negative and positive information. When I typed in "Hillary Clinton “on one window and "Donald Trump" on the other, I went ahead on to the news tab of Google and saw that there were two similar articles about the health of the candidates which was very amusing to see.
(Here’s the link to the articles: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/us/politics/donald-trump-health.html?_r=0  and  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/us/politics/hillary-clinton-health.html)

In the reading, it is mentioned about a psychologist Robert Epstein who discovered that search engines have a high potential in influencing our votes towards a specific candidate without us noticing. In fact, he calls this the “Search Engine Manipulation Effect” or SEME. So how exactly would the articles about the candidate’s health influence my voting and does this manipulate my mind? Yes, it definitely does. In fact, naturally it makes me question their political standpoints and if they are capable enough to endorse them and basically live a healthy life to be able to be the leader of the USA and I believe that with every kind of research we do, we’re more likely to find results that will have our minds thinking in a different way.

This reading opened my mind up into looking deeply into what I’m being exposed to and how it effects my thought process which was very interesting to know because, normally I would just scroll through results and find something that seemed more relevant to my beliefs but, never have I ever thought about how those results are manipulating my thought process towards the subject being mentioned in a very indirect way.