How Digital Media Can Dismantle Stereotypes about American Scientists

Credit: Krzysztof and Marcin Janiec, Getty Images

Personal branding is how individuals and companies want to be seen by their target audiences. Unlike reputation, personal branding focuses on more than just establishing credibility. Individuals and companies are also engaging in personal branding to become more visible and convey their core values in public spaces. Digital media is a cutting-edge resource that individuals and companies are harnessing to build their personal brands.

The use of digital media resources such as social networking sites for brand personalization is becoming prominent in STEM fields. Specifically, American scientists are deliberately leveraging social networking sites like Instagram and TikTok to dismantle negative stereotypes about individuals who work in STEM and redefine what it means to be part of this innovative culture. Consequently, more people are changing their negative perceptions of American scientists.

Before closely examining how American scientists are using social networking sites to decrease negative stereotypes among individuals within STEM fields, it is essential to understand how these distorted perceptions came into existence and why they must be dismantled. Since its inception, traditional U.S. media has immensely contributed to the perpetuation of negative stereotypes about individuals from majority and minority ethnic groups. Traditional U.S. media stereotype the personality traits, behaviors and job occupations of people from these groups.

Print newspaper articles, prime-time television shows, best-selling novels and Hollywood blockbusters often portray scientists as an elite group of white, cisgender straight males who are socially inept and eccentric, cold and capable of immoral conduct. For instance, the hit U.S. TV sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” focuses on Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper, two white male physicists and best friends from California who are socially awkward. Hofstadter and Cooper’s lack of interest in anything other than physics and social awkwardness cause them to struggle with connecting to people outside the world of science.

When people consistently engage in U.S. traditional media’s negatively stereotyped content like “The Big Bang Theory,” it shapes or confirms the perceptions they have about American scientists. These perceptions exclude women and people of color from STEM fields. U.S. traditional media’s erasure of women and people of color in STEM fields is one of the main reasons scientists with these identities experience invisibility in the workplace and public sphere or become racially siloed during the hiring process.

The emergence of digital communication technologies such as social networking sites, however, is challenging the portrayals that U.S. traditional media curate about American scientists. On social networking sites, users can control narratives about their identities or amplify the voices of marginalized groups. This is because users, such as American scientists, have the option of creating and disseminating personable content that can reach a mass audience on these digital media platforms. Digital methods research shows that the content of users can influence public perception on and offline which shifts sociocultural structures.

For example, scientists are taking selfies, making videos and doing live streams via Instagram or TikTok to share their relatable lives, intriguing work and thought-provoking opinions about societal events with the public. As a result, American scientists are humanizing themselves by building authentically, self-made personal brands that portray STEM workers as individuals from dominant and marginalized groups who are competent, warm and sociable.

American scientists who are engaging in brand personalization through social networking sites are among the change leaders working to progress society in the United States. Thus, it is crucial that negative stereotypes about American scientists decrease. This decrease can result in more people trusting American scientists whose occupations allow them to impact important sectors of public U.S. life, including politics, health and education.