Social Media And Activism

Social Media and Activism

Activism has been going on for a long time. There are many forms of activism and all of them were used to create/make a change in society and in the government. Social media took it to a whole new level. People watch other people on their phones, laptops, basically any electronic device to make a stand for something they believe in. These people see them fight for what they believe in and their rights and want to support them. Social media has provided these people with a bigger platform and it makes us think, how was activism before social media, did social media have a significant impact on it and what are some ways that it did?

There were many ways activism have changed throughout the years. Back in the day, people would go on strikes to demand better pay over the hard and gruesome working conditions. One of the most famous strikes was the Pullman Strike of 1884. “This strike over declining wages involved a mass worker walkout, nearly crippling the nation’s rail industry. However, the strike ended when President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops in to help local security forces root out the protesters.” (Sliwinski, 2016) They went on strike for a good cause but was dismissed by President Cleveland. The Seneca Falls Convention was the beginning of society's outlook on women being able to vote. “While the seminal Seneca Falls Convention was held the century before, women still found themselves unable to vote at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, after trying a variety of tactics of varying effectiveness, highlighted most publicly by protests at the White House gates during WWI as well as women’s service during the war, the government eventually granted women the right to vote in 1920.” (Sliwinski, 2016) This was an example of activism that had a successful outcome. In these times, it was hard to get people on your side. The only way word would spread around about these protests and strikes is by newspaper.

Social media is a way for people to share and create content and ideas with the whole world. We use social media every day and has become apart of our daily lives. Most people can't live without social media. We like to post selfies of ourselves, see what other people are doing and read about the latest news. When something happens in the community or around the world, we like to use social media to tell the world what's happening. If there's something happening that is unjust, we use social media to our advantage because there might be people who share similar thoughts. Protestors use social media to show people the reasons why they need to protest and hope that you would support their cause. If everyone is talking about it then, they can make something happen. Usually someone higher up would see and might help them make a change whether it's in society or in the government. “.

Social media have a role in helping develop and maintain a sense of community in large activist organizations and can be a motivator for participating in these platforms (Brzozowski et al., 2009). In studies of enterprise social media use, tweet-like microblogging was thought to lead to “more team cohesion and lead to faster problem solving” (Brzozowski et al., 2009).Specifically, social media are often thought to make activist movements more transparent. However, social media can and often do foster their own hierarchies and privilege certain voices. Social media may “empower” individuals to have a voice (Murthy, 2016), but this could also lead to high levels of noise, which inhibit “decision-making, innovation, and productivity” (Hemp, 2009), and this could have consequences in terms of the clarity of a movement’s message.” (Murthy, 2018)

All these points come into play when social media has a major part in activism whether it’s good or bad. Social media provides many ways to help people spread their cause. “Events like a pool party in McKinney, Texas in June where a white police officer threw a 14-year-old black girl to the ground, pinning her down for several minutes, before pulling a gun on two teenage boys. A bystander filmed the fracas posted it on YouTube where it was viewed almost 500,000 times before being picked up by all the major news channels. The officer was suspended and later resigned.” (Day, 2015) By them sharing their video, they were able to get justice in a sense. “The three women started by setting up Tumblr and Twitter accounts and encouraging users to share stories of why #blacklivesmatter. Garza made protest signs with block capital letters and put them in the window of a local shoe shop. Cullors led a march down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills with a banner emblazoned with the same hashtag. The slogan started gaining traction.” (Day 2015) This is how Black Lives Matter started to gain the attention of people on the internet. Without social media, the slogan Black Lives Matter wouldn’t be as big as it is right now.

Activism has many different shapes and forms but social media created a way to broadcast what these people are doing all around the world. This can help create change or get people thinking and talking about what's really going on. It only takes one person to start something but it's about whether or not we are able to sympathize with their cause in order to be on their side and fight together with them. Social media provided these people with a bigger platform and it made us think about activism now vs back in the day, did social media play a huge role in it today and what were some examples of that.

Works Cited:

Sliwinski, Michael. “The Evolution of Activism: From the Streets to Social Media.” Law Street, Law Street, 21 Nov. 2016, lawstreetmedia.com/issues/politics/evolution-activism-streets-social-media/.

Day, Elizabeth. “#BlackLivesMatter: the Birth of a New Civil Rights Movement.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 19 July 2015, www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/19/blacklivesmatter-birth-civil-rights-movement.

Murthy, Dhiraj. “Introduction to Social Media, Activism, and Organizations.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 1 Mar. 2018, journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305117750716.