Prejudice in America is a continuing problem and those who do not fall into the stereotypical backgrounds have been experiencing more racism. Even non-Muslim Middle Easterners have

received backlash. This, in recent years, has come from social media, podcasts, and other media via the internet. Social media has become a continuous source of spreading hateful messages to a large population. These messages are portrayed as “cool” and when these messages get a lot of views it tends to validate them to the viewers. Our idea is to use social media to our advantage by garnering an abundance of views for positive messages about race and racial injustice.

A 2022 study done by the University of Texas showed that people tend to echo the racist posts they see. They took a survey of 3.6 million active users of the far-right website Parlor. What they found was that “ it wasn’t until after a series of interactions with other racist posts that most users began echoing those opinions in their own posts.” Another new phenomenon is the rise of hate speech, on social media website Twitter, after Elon Musk took over and removed the ban on such messages. Apps like TikTok, which is very popular for teenagers, have the possibility of making once-unheard voices go viral due to its algorithm. Here is an example. If User A makes a racist video, the algorithm will spread the video to people it knows have liked similar posts as User A. When it gets to User B and he likes it, the video will be spread to User C who may like similar posts as User B and so on. User C may not hold these Racist views but he will end up seeing the video and may begin to echo it.

Our goal is to illustrate how prejudice is spread and to teach people to recognize potentially harmful online content. Very often these messages are spread widely by teenagers who may not be mature enough to make the distinction.

The ideal audience for this endeavor are teenagers who are active on major social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. They are at risk of seeing something harmful, not considering the nature of the content, and spreading it to classmates.

There are two ways this can be accomplished. The most direct way is appealing to popular social media users and asking them to talk to their subscribers and followers about harmful content. The other way this can be done is by holding social media companies to higher standards. Although corporate social responsibility cannot be legislated, governmental oversight and policy, via the FCC, can be used to ensure companies are monitoring their users, and thus the content, more closely.

A good way to do this would be to contact popular social media influencers and have them create relatable social media posts that would not be perceived as lame to a teenage audience. This can range from musical artists making edgy songs about prejudice and stereotypes to comedians lightly making fun of people who use hurtful messages to look cool. The key here would be to not come off as preachy or like a teacher’s pet. Having popular influencers accomplish this makes it so that these positive messages will likely reach a broad audience.

The social media influencers need to have the following qualifications:

● They need to be young enough to be relatable to a teenage audience yet old enough to hold some authority. This means that they should be roughly between the ages of 23 and 29 years old.

● They need to have at least 100,000 followers. This may seem like a lot, but it truly isn’t, at least for social media standards. This, too, will give them authority.

● They cannot have previously posted anything racist or controversial because if they have it will cause our message to lose validity.

● They must have a way of spreading the message that will be entertaining, funny, and non-preachy.

These influencers will be paid $0.05 per view. This means that if their video gets 100,000 views, they will receive $5,000. This will incentivise them to garner as many views as they can. They will be capped at $20,000 and we will only hire four influencers. One fashion influencer, one musical influencer, one comedy influencer, and fitness/cooking influencer. This means that the message will be as broad as we can make it.

The total cost is $80,000. This will be paid to influencers via $0.05 per view. This does not include people who see their videos and spread it further. That would be a free benefit to us. We plan on getting this money from anti-bullying organizations such as StopBullying.gov, STOMP Out Bullying, and National Association of People Against Bullying. We also plan on requesting money from anti-racism organizations such as NAACP, Center for Racial Justice, and others.

Influencer by Category

● Fashion $0.05 per click @ 400,000 clicks maximum = $20,000

● Music $0.05 per click @ 400,000 clicks maximum = $20,000

● Comedy $0.05 per click @ 400,000 clicks maximum = $20,000

● Fitness/Cooking $0.05 per click @ 400,000 clicks maximum = $20,000

● Discretionary Funds = $25,000

Total Funds Required $105,000