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Recognizing default responses

Growing up, I've always felt grateful because I was blessed with very open-minded parents who taught me to be respectful of others' opinions. But after reading through my On The Media posts, I recognized that I too have my own default responses that I lean toward. I think some of those responses come from the community I grew up in and the people I surround myself with.
For example, I've realized that during this semester, especially with the presidential election, I've had a prejudice toward Donald Trump and his supporters that I allowed myself to not hear any information or point-of-view from his side of things. Now that he's our President-elect, I'm realizing how dangerous that was for me to have that default response. Now I find myself going back and trying to make myself listen to those who support him to learn exactly why they support him. No matter how much my parents taught me to be open-minded in my thinking, I have learned my own set of rules and default responses for how I think. I've noticed that what I wrote about in my On the Media posts mostly leaned toward my more liberal views. I didn't really address the other side of issues, which I find to be important. But when you have your own bias on issues, you don't really notice when it's written down.

On the Media- "Checking In" on Standing Rock

I was quite surprised when I logged onto my Facebook about a week ago and saw my friends posting check in statuses as Standing Rock. And then I caught onto the trend that took the nation by surprise. This segment from On the Media discusses how these statuses brought more attention to what the indigenous people are going through.

It's been reported that police were using Facebook as a tool to track down protesters at Standing Rock. So to overwhelm and confuse police, over 1.5 million Facebook users began checking in to Standing Rock. Looking at it when it was happening, I thought this was an awesome way to I guess be a "rebel" in some way. But now I think it's smart because Standing Rock was finally getting the media recognition it deserves.

If you think about psychological context, all of these Facebook users impacted Standing Rock in someway because they contributed to bringing awareness to this issue. With social context, I'm sure not every Facebook user who checked in at Standing Rock was aware of all of the issues surrounding it, but they felt the need to engage in it because their fellow Facebook users were doing the same. It's fascinating how quick social media can become a tool to bring awareness to an issue that's otherwise been overlooked.