Siawaa Antwi
Authors Safiya Noble and Mary Chayko provided powerful insights on what it means to be socially connected in today’s digital era. Chayko’s “Techno-social Life:The Internet, Digital Technology and Social Connectedness” (2014) explored the many benefits of our increased internet, mobile communication, and social media use while Noble’s “Searching for People and Communities” (2018) explored more of the darker aspects, analyzing the role it played in the mass murder committed by Dylann Roof in 2015. Claiming the lives of nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, Noble examines how our social technology may have contributed to one of the most horrific racial and religious hate crimes to date. Let’s explore their insights together to gain a better understanding of how to responsibly utilize our digital social worlds.
One of Chayko’s key arguments was that our current social technology has made it easier than ever before to fulfill one of our deepest human desires– finding a sense of community. Regardless of our physical distance, Chayko’s work highlighted how we are able to connect with those near, far and likeminded with us within a matter of seconds. With one Google, or hashtag search, we have almost continuous access to just about anyone or anything we want to know. However, this takes a problematic turn when individuals like Roof are able to connect with other racist communities and their content, resulting in harm both on and offline. Roof later created an entire website to detail how his online experience shaped his racist beliefs, and therefore justified his horrible plan.
Information about Roof’s website emerged only after his attack. Upon going viral, Noble gained access to his writings and began analyzing the role our technology played in his decision. In light of the controversy surrounding Trayvon Martin’s murder, Roof began with trying to figure out what the big deal was. After googling what happened, Roof felt it was “obvious that Zimmerman was in the right” and this inspired him to later Google “black on White crime”. From this search, Roof claims to have found “pages upon pages of brutal black on White murders” and how these murders were also happening in western European countries. This shocked Roof, leaving him to feel that his community was under attack by black people and that he had the responsibility to take matters into his own hands.
Roof’s Google searches were influenced by his racial bias and search engines like Google tend to show us exactly what we ask for, first. This explains how he quickly came across the webpage of the “Council of Conservative Citizens” (CCC), a white supremacist hate group, further solidifying his racial motivation to kill.
In her analysis of Roof’s online activity, Noble repeated his Google searches for herself. She too came across those same conservative websites, but also discovered a link further down to the official FBI website. Here, statistics revealed that most white murders are committed by other white individuals, and she immediately wondered if Roof saw this too but ignored it. Upon reading this, it reminded me of the psychological tendency of Confirmation Bias where one only seeks and accepts information that aligns with their existing beliefs, rejecting all else.
Noble explains that as a profit-driven platform, Google will always prioritize the highest bidder, regardless of right or wrong and this is simply the unfortunate consequence of Capitalism mixing with unrestricted online access. She later ends with emphasizing the need to rethink how racial and social justice are approached within the digital realm, acknowledging the profound influence online information may have on our real-world behaviors and beliefs. And Chayko’s insight about how our on and offline lives often informs one another strongly aligns with Noble’s analysis of Roof’s racially motivated attack. Roof’s strong allegiance to his white community prompted his strategic choice of the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church as he wrote “…I chose Charleston because it is the most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to whites in the country” (CNN, 2016).
Chayko concluded her analysis by acknowledging the unforeseen consequences of our social technology, and cases like Roof are prime examples of this. I appreciated having both perspectives of Chayko & Noble, as their work mutually highlights the flaws of our new systems of knowing and connecting. It’s become incredibly easy to take what we encounter the most on our social media feeds or first in our Google searches as the absolute truth, but their writings caution strongly against such habits.
Anyone interested in exploring how our social technology may have impacted themselves and their ways of knowing should look further into this literature. As responsible members and contributors to this digital space, our quest for community, especially as it pertains to racial relations, should always be grounded in truth through embracing diverse perspectives from multiple sources.
As our algorithms may fail to provide counter perspectives, we are tasked with seeking them ourselves and luckily, we can.