Social Experiment in AUCA: Result

January 14, 2013

Dear students and faculty of AUCA,

Last  year in December you became witnesses of a social experiment that was conducted by one of the students of Journalism and Mass Communications department on readiness of AUCA students to condemn racist and sexist messages in the media within the university community. It was conducted as part of the course requirement on mass media research methods, where one of the methods could be an experiment.

Four different advertisement posters were spread around the campus with very explicit sexist and racist content - the major assumption was that AUCA students in their majority will explicitly condemn these messages. The hypothesis was that at least 80% of offensive content would be destroyed and proper AUCA authorities would be tipped-off about the offensive messages within two days since the start of the experiment by at least one person.

The results of the social experiment showed that 90% of posters were destroyed and AUCA authorities were repeatedly tipped off, which is a very positive outcome.

Although the research only further proved the social awareness of American University of Central Asia's students towards various issues of social stigma and discrimination, the experiment could have caused harm to some members of the University community. Realizing this we offer our sincere apologies and would like to reassure the university community that the advertisements were fake and such experiments will not be allowed in the future, so as to avoid any potential harm that could come with it.

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