As we come closer to the fifth of December and the discussion about ‘Black Piet’ is coming up, I thought it might be nice to do some research about the ‘Black Piet’ discussion and the influence of social media.
According to the article of youngstartup, research has shown that, the ‘Black Piet’ discussion is the most discussed topic in 2013 on Facebook and Twitter. For the people who do not know what the discussion is about: There has been some disagreement about the black paint of the Pieten. Some people think that it is racism and it should not be allowed to paint people black.
Facebook and Twitter are being used as platforms to show the opinions of people. But it can go really far. Heavy arguments are being brought up and some people threaten others, who do not agree with their statements.
In 2013 there was a Facebook page started, with a petition in favour of preserving ‘Black Piet’. The petition page hit more than one million likes in a couple days. With that the Facebook page is one of the fasted growing Facebook pages ever in The Netherlands. The people who dissagreed with ‘Black Piet’ also started a page, but they only got 7100 likes in those couple of days. It even came to a point, where the United Nations interfered in the discussion, because it got really out of hand.
As you can see, the discussion became really big, just because people started to use social media to discuss the topic. Social media made it possible to connect people to talk about the topic and everybody started to interfere. What do you think, is it right to argue over social media about ‘Black Piet’ or should there be another way to talk about the topic?
References:
- https://youngstartup.nl/blog/post/zwarte-piet-meest-besproken-op-social-media/
- http://www.noordhollandsdagblad.nl/extra/klikhier/article25262593.ece
I think it’s okay to argue about the Black Piet discussion. I think it’s okay in general to argue about any topic that is currently on the news (refugees for example). But people need to do it in a diplomatic manner with good arguments. You don’t have to agree with something if you truly disagree with it. But at least explain why you disagree(or agree) with the statement in a diplomatic way. What you unfortunately see on Facebook nowadays is that people put comments like ”NO FUCK THEM” or YES THEY SHOULD STAY” (taking the refugees example), but don’t give any good reasons or arguments.
I agree with ronnyjramos, I think it is good that people can discuss topics like this on social media. I often look at Facebook and see articles about these controversial topics being posted. In the comment section there are heavy arguments most of the time. But I get easily annoyed by the low level of discussion there actually is. A lot of swearing and people stating their opinion, but no arguments, or they give arguments they heard somewhere or read on another Facebook post. I rarely see a good Facebook discussion with arguments that make sense and have actual sources with them. This is why I stopped looking at these discussions for the most part. I still think people should be able to have a discussion on Facebook, it just doesn’t have any real value to me.