The Accessibility Of Digital Politics
As a disabled person, I often find myself questioning the accessibility of various topics I engage with. Whether these spaces are inclusionary, offer support for those involved, make necessary accommodations and so on. It is with these categories that I aim to analyse quite how accessible digital politics is, however, as a die-hard commie it should be noted that naturally my beliefs and ideas will be skewed to the left so this post should be interpreted with a pinch of salt. After all, isn’t politics just opinions anyway? I digress.
From my own personal experiences, digital politics- especially social media, tends to be either a heavily inclusionary space filled with activism and advocacy, or a space filled with elitist exclusion. While spaces may be filled with do-gooders wanting to spread awareness regarding certain topics or current affairs, equally these spaces can purposely exclude typically marginalised groups in multiple ways. These marginalised people may be silenced on digital political discourse-often finding themselves at the mercy of a team of mass reporters, or excluded from positions within digital politics, see the lack of availability of work for trans people. I think this stark contrast shows for this criterion there is no definitive answer.
Digital political spaces are often full to the brim of resources on various topics, on a wide range of issues as I’m sure you can imagine, from providing hotlines all the way to funding. However, in spreading this awareness, the triggering aspect of being bombarded with intense and often painful topics that seem to have no end cannot be ignored. It hurts me to see posts about how eugenics are still at play within today’s society so while I’m glad that other people are becoming aware of this issue, people who are affected by this issue shouldn’t have to unexpectedly deal with trauma for others to gain awareness and obviously this goes for the plethora of other long-standing issues. Again, this criterion gives no definitive answer.
Finally, while necessary accommodations may be made such as text descriptions or a warning for upsetting content, there are deeper issues affecting the world of digital politics. Anyone with any sort of social media account could tell you about the rise in hate masked behind the screen of a phone but compared to this drastic growth in hate speech very few safeguarding measures have been put in place. People deserve to be safeguarded from hate and harassment, yet most social media platforms barely manage to regulate the content that floods their own service. How is it that Instagram can flag up any content about vaccines but is unable to stop the flourishing amount of hate and discrimination occurring on the very same platform? Yet again, the answer to this criterion is unclear.
Now dear reader you may be thinking that I’ve just presented you with a lot of ideas but with no clear stance on the accessibility of digital politics, and you’d be right. This is for you to make up your own mind on, after all I did say that politics was just opinions anyway.
