R8: Social Media Activism

Social media is a great source when it comes to spreading a news story or creating a movement as the possibilities to have it reach a high level scale are possible depending on the topic, story, and cause. In the essay by Malcolm Gladwell “Small Change” he talks about the different styles of activism before these technologies, and the life we live in now. Gladwell talks about the civil rights movements in the 1960’s and “some seventy thousand students eventually took part. Thousands were arrested and untold thousands more radicalized. These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter.” (Gladwell 2010) This all occurred by telephone calls and word of mouth as a way to create this revolution, whereas now in today’s society many of these types of groups form through social media.

The difference between the Civil Rights Movement and a today’s generation movement such as Black Lives Matter is that the platform on how they generate attention is different due to the technologies that have been developed. Black Lives Matter was able to generate nation-wide attention as every avenue on social media was contributing some kind of news towards it whether it is a news anchors, celebrities, professional athletes, and popular companies everyone had an opinion that was shared through their platform of choice. However the way the protests were carried out were not necessarily on the same level as the Civil Rights Movements because these were people risking to be arrested in order to stand up for what they believe in.

Social media activism campaigns are able to generate a lot of participation as the risks that come with it are very low. This allows for people to support a cause without really doing anything other than clicking a button on the given social media platform. A recent form of activism that I was able to follow was the Standing Rock Dakota Access Pipeline protest as it affects many Native Americans, playing lacrosse and it being the Native Americans sport many of the social media accounts I follow contributed to the content involved with this movement. It was amazing to see how many people were able to join the cause and contribute to supporting this movement.

I believe that social media is indeed a valuable tool to helping these movements get kicked started and hopefully reach their ultimate goal as in order for movements and revolutions to get started you need a support system. Through social media it is easier to make this all happen as it can almost take one tweet, Instagram post, or a Facebook post to gain traction and push it to the next level. In the interview with Deray McKesson, Kwame Opam asks how people are using these accounts to cause change. McKesson states that “I think about Twitter as the friend that’s always awake. It’s why I tweet so much. I’m interested to see which of the platforms will be the first one that allows people to build skills. Right now, mostly, it’s about information sharing.” (Opam, McKesson 2016) By sharing the information it is able to get attention and depending on the amount of likes and retweets overnight something may become viral.

Work Cited

Gladwell, Malcolm, “Small Change,” The New Yorker, 10/4/10, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-3 (viewed 5/4/17)

Opam, Kwame, “Building Tools for Digital Activism” 11/29/16, The Verge, http://www.theverge.com/a/verge-2021/deray-mckesson-interview-black-lives-matterdigital-activism (viewed 5/4/17)