Media Weaponization – Sabina Uddin

Ever since high school, I have always had an interest in humanitarian issues and social justice. From designing weekly campaigns for social advocacy at Do Something Club to posting daily about human crises across the globe and even writing pieces about them, this interest of mine has become a huge influence to my works. Although social media has been a platform for me and many others to spread awareness and help make a difference, from time to time social media has served as an obstacle. Often misleading information and filtration cultivates ignorance and bias. In this way the media becomes harmful in that it can blur the truth, it can allow things to be hidden, and it can push forward a subliminal bias on a larger scale. Just to name a few examples: misinformation about the vaccine, China’s censorship of Uighur muslims, biased articles on the war between Palestine and Israel that claim to be neutral, and filtration of Russian news. These are some examples that I plan to research and go further into detail about how the media is weaponized in these scenarios. Additionally to show the impact of social media weaponization, I plan to research social media usage in general and how important it is for humanitarian issues/organizations. More specifically, I want to know more about how much they rely on social media as a platform.  If I were to do an interview,  I would ask executives of organizations like Gofundme, HOPE, BETA etc about their experiences and their perspective on social media weaponization. I could also conduct interviews with people who regularly use social media. In this way I can take a look at both sides: one that is seeking to spread awareness and one that is trying to become aware. To make my piece more interesting, I could include excerpts from people who are facing these humanitarian issues and compare it to false information or filtration on social media. Additionally some sources I plan to use include large social media accounts like news outlets. These are some of my ideas for my feature.