Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw
Sociology based view of a youtube video
John Oliver: Scientific studies
All human interaction has a sociological viewpoint to it. And when that interaction is between a person and many viewers, it makes more impact on the sociological fabric. Videos on the internet, which we mostly access through Youtube have an impact on how we think about society and how we feel about our place in it.
For discussion, I have chosen a TV show video from John Oliver’s show- Last week tonite. The video is titled ‘Scientific Studies’. The host of the show-John Oliver tries to research a topic of public importance in detail and then discusses what are his findings. In this episode, he is trying to find out whether the “scientific studies” that media mentions as sources for a lot of interesting stories, are credible or not. As expected, there is a lot of misquoting and chinese whispers mechanism in place. At the end of the show, there is a spoof based on TED talks, called the TODD talks. Here there are various people pretending to be scientists and are explaining their research to a live audience. Among all the pretend researchers and scientists, there is one scientists who is authentic and has actually carried out the research and is explaining in great detail, the process of his research. This genuine scientists is played by an asian man. This enforces a stereotype that asians are more intelligent and typical ‘good at math’ type of people. It is a positive racial stereotype and this video takes an affirmative action. But the racial profiling in the casting is evident. Nevertheless it is a fact that this type of affirmative action is better than negative stereotypes (like asians cannot drive properly), but it is still a type of discrimination. The asian scientists is shown in the video as a thorough and good scientists, but he not much of a showman as is clearly evident from the audience reaction to his boring speech. From a sociological perspective, this seemingly affirmative action may actually promote cultural pride and confidence among the respective community and bring about a positive change as asians actually try to live up to positive stereotypes.
In conclusion, it can be said that perception can be a window of opportunity or a curtain of ignorance based on whether it is positive or negative. Even if there is bias and discrimination on racial grounds, just the positive stereotypes can go only so far to help the problem. The racial bias needed to be weeded out from the root.
