Some of Our Sources
- BoingBoing
- TutsPlus - Code
- Team Treehouse
- Spoon Graphics
- Creative Curio
- Inspiredology
- Fudge Graphics
- Reencoded
- Freelance Switch
- Design Modo
Help Webnuz
Referal links:
May 10, 2019 03:30 am
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/nLGSrUg2V3k/the-rise-of-fear-based-social-media-like-nextdoor-citizen-and-now-amazons-neighbors
The Rise of Fear-Based Social Media Like Nextdoor, Citizen, and Now Amazon's Neighbors
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vox: Violent crime in the U.S. is at its lowest rate in decades. But you wouldn't know that from a crop of increasingly popular social media apps that are forming around crime. Apps like Nextdoor, Citizen, and Amazon Ring's Neighbors -- all of which allow users to view local crime in real time and discuss it with people nearby -- are some of the most downloaded social and news apps in the U.S., according to rankings from the App Store and Google Play. Nextdoor was the ninth most-downloaded lifestyle app in the U.S. on iPhones at the end of April, according to App Annie, a mobile data and analytics provider; that's up from No. 27 a year ago in the social networking category. (Nextdoor changed its app category from social to lifestyle on April 30; on April 29 it was ranked 14th in social, according to App Annie.) Amazon Ring's Neighbors is the 36th most-downloaded social app. When it launched last year, it was 115th. Citizen, which considers itself a news app, was the seventh most-downloaded news app on iOS at the end of April, up from ninth last year and 29th in 2017. These apps have become popular because of -- and have aggravated -- the false sense that danger is on the rise. Americans seem to think crime is getting worse, according to data from both Gallup and Pew Research Center. In fact, crime has fallen steeply in the last 25 years according to both the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. David Ewoldsen, professor of media and information at Michigan State University, says these apps foment fear around crime, which feeds into existing biases and racism and largely reinforces stereotypes around skin color. As Steven Renderos, senior campaigns director at the Center for Media Justice, put it, "These apps are not the definitive guides to crime in a neighborhood -- it is merely a reflection of people's own bias, which criminalizes people of color, the unhoused, and other marginalized communities." A recent Motherboard article found that the majority of people posted as "suspicious" on Neighbors in a gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood were people of color.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/nLGSrUg2V3k/the-rise-of-fear-based-social-media-like-nextdoor-citizen-and-now-amazons-neighbors
Share this article:
Tweet
View Full Article
Slashdot
Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..More About this Source Visit Slashdot