Interview with UMBC Activist
The interviewee is not a student on campus, but rather a professor. I thought it would be interesting to interview different ages on campus to see if there are any differences with their involvement. This professor is in his forties just to give you an idea of where his answers are coming from. He asked that his identity stay anonymous so out of respect I have given him a new name.
— Do you consider yourself an activist?
Professor Williams: I would say yes, that I do consider myself an activist.
— How so? Are there any events that you participated in?
Prof W: Yeah, uh, a couple of the marches. I tried to uh, make sure I supported them, that have happened recently. And you know, when I see things that I feel are unjust, I definitely try to lend my support whether its financially or donating my time. Whatever it happens to be.
— With that being said, are you active on social media as well?
Prof W: No, uh and I think the biggest reason is the frustration I have when I am on social media, uh with all of the false narratives there are out there. Uh, if you go onto social media I feel like there are just a lot of lies and its tough for anyone to know what is true and what isn’t when you go on there…and I felt like for awhile — I did spend some time on there — but I felt like for awhile I was constantly, you know, getting into battles with people because, you know, they’re reading stuff that they feel is the truth..uh when I know it isn’t or its been proven that it isn’t. But, you know, if people just keep throwing the lies out there, inevitably the majority start to believe it. And to me that’s just a sad, sad reality right now when it comes to social media and so I’ve tended to stay off of it.
— What is a fact to you? Do you fact check? How do you figure out if something is true?
Prof W: Uh, if its something that I deem worthy of my time, so if its something that I feel like I do want to know more about, um, whether its women’s right or gay and lesbian rights, uh minority rights.. I do tend to fact check. And, you know, sometimes you have to look at multiple new sources to really get the facts.
— What do you consider to be news?
Prof W: As opposed to what?
— What do you think should be put on the news?
Prof W: The way so many of the news networks go now, they kind of push their own agendas and I really wish that the news was more of a impartial stater of facts and too often it isn’t and makes it, just like social media, makes it very difficult to watch a lot of the news networks and its because you never know what their agenda is.
— Back to social media… do you find that people are louder behind a screen than they are in person and what do you think is the problem with that if so?
Prof W: Without a doubt, uh, what do they call them? Keyboard warriors. They’re out there, they’re all over the place. There’s fake Facebook identities and social identities and a lot of it is just out there to stir up things.
— So do you find it to have any sort of effect or is there little effect?
Prof W: Uhhhh, no I think there are still…there’s still some good to it. Even if you only reach one person, you’re doing something. So, I certainly wouldn’t tell those people — because you can reach a lot more people that way than many other ways — perhaps even the ways that I try and do things, but for me I don’t know that I have the time to commit to it, um, when I think about the frustration that I have sometimes dealing with it. Maybe if I was a little younger…
In response to this interview, I found it very interesting to interview a professor instead of a student. His answers should be quite different than responses from students. I expect that when interviewing student activists I will run into people who are much more involved with social media. It is interesting to hear why Professor Williams, who considers himself an activist, does not use his voice online — especially when you can reach more people that way (as he mentioned in the interview). It is apparent that this is the main reason Professor Williams is not socially active on social media — because he does not want to deal with conflict. However, Professor Williams does note the positives of being an advocate on social media, so he does not discourage it (he merely does not have time for the frustration). It is understandable to run into frustration on social media due to arguments or maybe reading posts that are not factual. When interviewing others who do protest and advocate on social media, I will ask them how they deal with the frustration and the arguments online. When addressing what a fact actually is to Professor Williams he says he has to check multiple news outlets in order to figure out what is truth. Just from talking to my friends I noticed that almost none of them fact check. I wonder if Professor Williams’ age has anything to do with the effort he puts in to find out if something is true. My friends are also not activists so it makes sense that they do not fact check. Still, they believe whatever they just so happen to read on social media. Nevertheless, we can assume that Professor Williams does not think news outlets provide very much worthy news. He finds that he has to weave through different outlets in order to find some actual news — which he defines as all things that matter to him (minority, gay & lesbian, women’s rights).
