Dear all, Upon inheriting the Looking Glass from our predecessors, we identified a number of key issues. Firstly, there were simply not enough articles being published, due both to a lack of submissions from the school community and limited responsiveness from the previous Academic Team. Secondly, the Looking Glass had not been advertised or explained effectively enough to the wider school community. As a result, we plan to implement a more consistent and engaging stream of articles on the Looking Glass. As part of this initiative, we are looking to recruit a select group of keen writers from across the lower school who would be willing to produce one high-quality piece of writing, discussion, or media each month for publication on the Looking Glass. We believe this will be hugely beneficial both to the school community, which will gain access to a wider range of opinions and viewpoints, and to prospective writers, who will be able to reference their experience contributing to the Look...
JAMIE BARRETT
The online world can be a harsh place. Wars rage through packets and bits over matters from politics to puppy names. Everywhere you turn there seems to be someone with conflicting views. It may be easy to think that humankind harbours an integral aggression that leads such rows - or maybe no matter how kind we are, this is to be expected, and perhaps there is a way our kindness can still show through.
Contentious threads on Twitter are a far cry from face-to-face conversations. Such passionate, continued arguments are rarely seen outside of those who are naturally argumentative and environments built specifically for intense debate. But threads on Twitter always begin with a single tweet, which could itself be the cause.
Politics itself always leads to annual dinner-table arguments, and it is true that many heated discussions on and outside social media stem from political opinions. However, even innocent-sounding starting points - the colour of a dress, say - can fuel such conversations.
Moreover, if these arguments are only intended to sway a person towards a different side, they are rarely effective. Researchers at Columbia University found that exposure to opposing views may in fact entrench someone’s opinions. If all these Twitter uses are trying to do is convince someone that they are wrong, they would have learned better by now.
The case of the dress, whether you fall into the gold-and-white or the black-and-blue camp, is worth examining in more detail. Unlike political discussions, there must be a clear right answer here, and that is indeed what both sides are looking for. Each claims that their colour vision is normal, but healthy eyesight doesn’t change the fact that the brain takes into account context in different degrees from person to person when determining colour. Neither party can change the perception of colour, so the arguments instead revolve around a divided search for truth.
The nature of social media platforms themselves could be the source of the argumentative nature of our online interactions. Removed from cues like body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice, we rely on words alone (and only a limited number of them at a time, in the case of Twitter) to communicate. The missing vocal and visual clues seem to be key.
At the University of California and the University of Chicago, scientists found that hearing an argument is more likely than reading to change someone’s mind. Hearing a person’s voice or seeing them speak also reduces the chance of the listener regarding the speaker as “having a diminished capacity to either think or feel”. Juliana Schroeder from the University of California points out that “Many people receive the majority of their news from social media now. This can be dehumanising, and may increase polarisation.” This could explain why it is rare for a video call to end in a row.
Ultimately, the source of online arguments is misunderstanding. Without the ability to gauge someone’s feelings or intentions from their face and voice, we are left to guess at why someone brings forward their points. This leads to mistakes as we unintentionally insert bias and cause people to seem more hostile than they really are. Although the dress seemed to divide, it also united people in a search for truth.
You can do more than you would think to make the online world a friendlier place. Don’t assume that people are trying to change your mind, as they may merely want to know where your opinions are coming from. Conversely, keep in mind that your own points could be interpreted in a different way to your intent. As science communicator Tim Blais of acapellascience recommends, “Take an hour. Presume each other are trying their best and come back later to see which [arguments still matter].”
Bibliography
The Guardian (2015). Why do we care about the colour of the dress? Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/27/colour-dress-optical-illusion-social-media (Accessed: 18 May 2020)
PNAS (2018). Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization. Available at: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/37/9216 (Accessed: 18 May 2020)
Independent (2017). Study may offer explanation for why people get into such furious rows on Twitter. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/twitter-facebook-argument-politics-social-media-berkeley-university-of-california-chicago-a8101821.html (Accessed: 18 May 2020)
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