Cook, Quiroz, Savage 1

Kayla Cook, Sammy Quiroz, Caroline Savage

Mr. Greening

AP Human Geography

1 June 2016

Map of Stereotypes

A survey was conducted about regions of the world. All interviewees were asked a
number of demographical questions, and then were asked the following question: If you had to
describe the region of *blank* in one hashtag, what would it be? Interestingly, people answered
in very similar answers, even though they had the creativity to respond however they wanted to.
Most of the hashtags for Europe were about travel and European hostility towards Americans.
Many hashtags for Canada were about the saying eh,and friendliness. Most of Latin Americas
hashtags related to music or Spanish. The Caribbean answers were about beauty, pirates, and
hey mon. SE Asian responses related to food, rigid laws, and overpopulation. The hashtags for
Asia related to technology and intelligence. Australian responses referred to the outback and
exotic animals. Russias hashtags related to the cold and communism. Hashtags for North,
Sub-Saharan, and South Africa were all about the heat, wildlife, and poverty. Many answers
reflected cultural stereotypes that are placed on regions of the world. Stereotypes are widely held
but fixed and oversimplified images or ideas of a particular type of person or thing, as defined by
Oxford Dictionaries. Several of the hashtags created expressed a similar perception of place. The
problem is that often times nodes of popular culture, such as television or social media, place a
false authenticity that can cause people to put broad generalizations and perceptions onto a place
that they have never visited before. While sometimes stereotypes can be partially true, often
times it leads to blind misconceptions and even discrimination towards a place and the people
within it, that one may not have ever visited or met before. We chose to express the (sometimes)
negative influence of popular culture on stereotypes by producing a map of stereotypes, using
hashtags. Hashtags and the use of social media often spread false misconceptions of a people or a
place and can lead to people to believe things that are entirely untrue. Because of social media
 Cook, Quiroz, Savage 2

and popular culture, negative ideas of certain people are spread, which can have detrimental
effects on the way that group is treated within our society.
 Cook, Quiroz, Savage 3

Citation

"Definition of Stereotype in English." Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press, 2016. Web.

1 June 2016.

<http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/stereotype>.