Snapchat’s live stories usually present the world in a way that emphasises diversity, tolerance and respect for different races, religions and sexualities. But sometimes they fail miserably – like in the Live Story about yesterday’s Australia Day, which is now available globally.
Australia Day is celebrated on January 26, the day the first fleet arrived in Australia from Britain, and there is a strong movement to #changethedate so that it celebrates Australia, and not the European invasion of indigenous Australian land. That movement is actually so strong that yesterday 50,000 people marched in Melbourne, and thousands more around in other cities all over Australia. Here is a photo of the rally in Melbourne yesterday:
Or take a look at The Guardian’s live blog to see a more diverse view of the day, including the formal celebrations and more.
Now look at how Snapchat presents it in its Live Story. I’ve taken one screenshot of each snap, but they’re all videos so imagine panning and sound. The story is still on Snapchat as of Jan 27, 09:53 am Central European Time.
The first seven snaps are all of young, white people partying or at the pool. The last three are of fireworks.
It’s a short Live Story – the Live Story from the Women’s March last weekend had 71 snaps, so was obviously of a different scope altogether. But what an unbelievably skewed version of Australia Day this shows. What a skewed and stereotypical version of the Australian population it shows. Especially seen in contrast to the coverage of the inauguration and the Women’s March last weekend, this is pretty astounding.
I’ve previously noted that the Norwegian national day as seen on Snapchat appears to be nothing but young people partying in national costumes, which is not how the day looks to me. No doubt most of Snapchat’s portrayals of national, “exotic” festivals (at least exotic to young Americans) leave out a lot, or present things in a skewed manner. But at least Norway doesn’t have 50,000 people protesting the day that Snapchat somehow forgets to include in their story.
It looks as though Triple J may have sponsored this Live Story, based on the emphasis on their Hottest 100 in the first snaps. Triple J has been the radio channel for youth and music for decades, but their emphasis on a music countdown on what more and more people are calling Invasion Day rather than Australia Day may be ripe for change.
Another way in which Snapchat spreads very partial information about the politics of Australia Day is with their selfie filters and geofilters. I couldn’t access them in Norway, but the Live Story seems to have a couple of non-branded Australia Day geofilters, and some sponsored by Triple J. I imagine that Triple J actually sponsored the Live Story, or at least had significant influence on it, based on the number of geofilters they seem to have for the day, and their emphasis on the Hottest 100 on Australia Day. If that’s so, perhaps Snapchat’s US team, which seems to be pretty savvy about diversity in their own country, simply didn’t pay much attention. That would also explain why the narrative arc of the Live Story is pretty flat compared to many of the US Live Stories, which are more skilfully put together.
On Twitter, Elle Hunt shows us how politically biased the selfie filters are, too. This is what happens when advertisers control our means of production:
Here are the full images of her snaps:
But hey. Most people on Twitter like it. They love stories about young, white people getting lit.
But if Snapchat aims to be a news channel, and to spread public information about the public sphere, we need to know where they stand and especially, who is paying for it. In their Terms of Service, they write that
Live, Local, and any other crowd-sourced Services are inherently public and chronicle matters of public interest (..)
If so, their financing and bias should be transparent to the viewers.
