How Did it all begin?

From the collection of data relevant toward my research topic, I found a collective amount of data to identify where the different sides of disagreement came from on the discourse of twitter. In the video footage from the match of the competitors, Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, there were several outbursts from the former World Champion, Serena, towards the Umpire Carlos Ramos. Carlos Ramos penalized Serena for throwing her racket in the second set of the match which sparked the initial response from her. This response includes her asking for the umpire to address the crowd and tell them that she wasn’t cheating. She also requested an apology from the umpire. What drew support for Serena from the twitter discord was after she told the umpire “I never got coaching. I explained to you that and for you to attack my character then something is wrong.” People on the twitter community sympathized with Serena Williams and voiced their support towards her. What I found to be interesting was that the number of people who impacted by the outburst was a large amount, and you can see that by the number of tweets from the community. The supportive side toward Serena felt that she deserved better than how she was being treated and that it was beginning to get out of hand.

The number of likes and the fact that it was identified as a “Hot” showed that it was relevant to the supportive stance that sided with Serena. What you can identify from the tweet is that grammar isn’t a big priority by the way the user doesn’t start off their sentences with capital letters but what is shown that an effort is being made by the use of punctuation. Alongside that were responses of those who drew a lot of critiques from the non-supportive who felt that Serena actions and outburst were not justifiable and where immature.

This is from a fellow twitter user who didn’t feel as supportive towards Serena Williams. What was similar from the two tweets was basically a consistent trend on the discord community A lack of grammar was present and seem to happen much of the time on this twitter discourse. Overall, what I seemed to find was that the cause for the “commotion” was from the match with Serena Williams and the outburst from in match.

Racism! The who, why’s, and how’s

Looking into the discourse community of twitter there seems to racism that arrives from the real-life situation I chose to investigate and do research on. To identify how racism was involved, I had to investigate the definition of the word and not use generalizations of what I thought the word meant. What I found racism to be from the Merriam Webster Dictionary was that racism in fact was “A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” Going back to the situation, Serena Williams is one of the greatest tennis players of all times and with that she is also African-American. Racism has been a prominent issue in America for years, in the way it is with Serena in her sport field it’s a completely different issue. It’s basically Serena Williams against every other race since there isn’t to many other African Americans. I found racism to a form of ignorance and hate that was usually passed from people within the same socio-economic community. In other words, from friends and family you grew up with communicated on the normal with. Though racism isn’t as open as I would say around 50-60 years it is still present no, but more in a closed fashion in which the people conceal it in order to go along with the social norms of society today. With Serena being disputably the greatest tennis athlete of all time and being black racism is present. With twitter you don’t have to let people know who you are, and you can freely say what you want without your identity being given out. From twitter I chose a small sample of tweets to illustrate the racism on the discourse of twitter that goes towards Serena Williams.

From these tweets you could identify that the primary providers of the racism are males. Through an extensive overview of the information I identified that woman generally didn’t have anything racist to say. I also noticed that some of the accounts that were posting racist sayings were those with fake profiles or default pictures that didn’t reveal. This shows that since twitter allows anonymity people are more open to showing a side that they aren’t usually comfortable showing to the public. The use of monkey seems to be common in the racism towards Serena Williams with those comments and what the drawing in my Review of Literature.

Sexism, Chauvinism, Bigotry they’re all the same

When I was analyzing through the twitter discourse of tweets relevant towards the Serena Williams US Open incident, I noticed sexism or what I believed it to be. To be sure, I did what I did with the word racism and looked it up. I found in the Meriam Dictionary that sexism was to be “behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of socials roles based on sex.” Looking thoroughly into my sources I was able to find evidence of Serena Williams pointing out her argument of sexism and using her platform to bring it to the attention of the people out there watching. In the source we can identify that she was docked a penalty for calling the umpire a thief to were as she made the claim that males aren’t penalized when they make such remarks. Through more research I investigated some examples and found some interest cases and statistics. Renowned tennis athlete Andy Roddick was fined five hundred dollars for smashing one of his racket. That’s a small price for an athlete who makes over millions a year playing the sport. Throughout the twitter discourse, I was able to find tennis athletes that where male who said they had done worse and got away with it. What I found statistically was surprising to me nonetheless.

Statistically it seemed that males seemed to be called for more calls than women, so that put Serena Williams claim that the umpire wouldn’t make same call for a male into question. What I found sexism to be identifiably present was within the twitter community amongst males. One male tweeted “Womens Right lol” to joke or laugh down at what Serena was ultimately trying to attain out of this for the most part. What I seem to notice was that since you’re over the internet and no one can identify your location without effort is that people on this discourse just say what that have to say because they can avoid personal confrontations. Even though it is 2018 we still live in a society in which discrimination is present.

Politics: A bug we can’t control

Politics is always a critical topic of discussion that manages to come up so way somehow in any argument of life. Meriam Dictionary lets us know that politics are “the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing government policy” and that’s important to know because it opens a hole to many subjects. With the discourse community of twitter being so popular nowadays, it has become a place in which many arguments on politics can be held. The reason behind that being is that your can interact with virtually anyone anywhere and people generally want to express their view points or read about what others have to say. Somehow through the argument between both sides in support and opposition of Serena Williams, I managed to identify some points that were from the sexist and racist side that brought out politics. Serena Williams is an athlete who is black and is signed by the label Nike and has openly expressed her support for the democrat party and Colin Kaepernick.

This tweet was the day of when Colin Kaepernick sign a long-term deal with Nike and caused a huge uproar on the twitter community. He has drawn a lot of acclamation and hate from his protest and even dissatisfaction from the current US President on the twitter. A lot of political uproar grew from this because some sides believe that Serena is in support of someone “who hates their country’’ and others believe that it is in support of a bigger cause such as the injustices of African Americans throughout the years and how it is still present now. Politian’s even want athletes to not voice their opinions and stick to the sports. What has been more in use recently has been athletes using their platform to speak on political issues they believe is wrong. What I found Serena to be doing is a major sacrifice to her fan base and possibly indorsements, but what I found to come out of it was that more people can be informed of gain information off someone they respect.

Aftercussion

What I ultimately found to limiting throughout the research and analyzing process was that there were so many sources on the twitter discourse that I couldn’t implement all of them in to my paper. Another limitation involved was that as much as I tried to withhold bias in my paper, I cannot be completely certain that there was not any parts of such. I have learned that in the twitter discourse anonymity is something that people find very convenient in ways that allow them to express their views that they wouldn’t particularly say out in the everyday world to people. Further research could possibly be carried out doing a survey poll on twitter, but I not sure of how successful that would be with the viewership of my account and people who see my tweets. Overall what is ultimately is revealed from the discourse community is that confidence and freedom of speech is amplified through it and projected to others.