R8: Social Media Activism

        I agree with Gladwell’s assertion that social media activism is centered around weaker ties to the cause at hand, whereas activism used to draw people with strong ties to the issue.  In the civil rights movement during the 1960’s, the people involved in the sit ins and marches across the country faced serious potential brutality every day.  Those involved in the sit-ins during the Greensboro, N.C sit-ins described their fear in this way, “I suppose if anyone had come up behind me and yelled ‘Boo,’ I think I would have fallen off my seat” (Gladwell, 2010).  During that time people were actually risking their lives to stand up for change that they believe in.  Now with social media, people, for the most part, are not risking bodily harm.  People jump on board with movements to be a part of something.  Sure, many of these people have strong ties to their movements, but I know many people that will support a movement online and not act the part in real life because their image online is what matters more than actually doing something about the issue. 

        Now, this doesn’t imply that social movements today are not strong in their own right.  Social media is tool that effectively spreads the movement and gives many voices in support of a movement, or dissent of the problem at the root of the movement.  In the 1960’s, word of mouth spread the civil rights movement like wildfire, and now social media has exponentially increased the speed and reach of a movement.  And even though many of the people that hashtag and tweet about a movement may not be actively trying to solve the problem, awareness is the first step, especially in movements that are so young like the BlackLivesMatter movement.  In Building Tools for Digital Activism, Opam describes social media’s role in spreading the movement, “… how Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and other social platforms can be used to effectively shine light on injustice, and spark change” (Opam, 2016).  In terms of this BLM movement, the social media activism has started to spread awareness, and from this we have seen, and will continue to see, people start taking action to try and solve the problem one step at a time.  So, even though social media activism is mostly centered around weak ties to the problem, the awareness that it brings to social issues can reach more people that want to spark change.  The mass scale of communication has a pivotal role in society today and proves that there truly is strength in numbers. 

Works 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)

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)

R8: Social Media and Activism

                               


Social media has become such an important aspect in our daily lives, that people use it to express there opinions and concerns regarding a topic they are passionate about. Using social media in this way can provide much needed awareness to a cause. Yet, it can also lead to a shallow understanding of the topic, followed by inaction as it fades out of "popularity".With this being said, I understand why people turn to social media when issues arise. Social media has created a space where frustrated minorities can finally have their voices heard. However,  social media activism as it is now, leaves people with the impression that if they simply change their profile picture, participate in a challenge, or march in a protest, their actions will lead to real life change. This is not true. There is so much more that goes into changing society and rules than just saying, "I support..." There are polices and laws that will need to be revised and rewritten. Before that can even happen, one needs to provide an example of a specific and ongoing injustice, in addition to providing realistic ways to solve it.
Malcom Gladwell, author of the article, "Small Change: Why Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted" explained, "Social media are not about this kind of hierarchical organization. Facebook and the like are tools for building networks, which are the opposite, in structure and character, of hierarchies. Unlike hierarchies, with their rules and procedures, networks aren't controlled by a single central authority. Decisions are made through consensus, and ties the bind people to the group are loose:" (The New Yorker).

                       

 With social movements such as Black Lives Matter, I see so many people retweeting and hashtagging Black Lives Matter to every post and/or comment that negatively targets people of color. As much as I love the idea of this movement, I feel as though there is no collective agreement about what exactly it is that we are fighting against. I have spoken to people who have told me that Black Lives Matter is a fight against racism. To me, racism is such a broad term, and trying to stop all racist actions at once seems like an overwhelming amount of responsibility. Especially, when Black Lives Matter fails to explain the injustices that black people face on a daily basis to those who have never experienced it, e.g. white people. Thus, it can lead to confusion and misinterpretation from white people as they try to make sense of this movement. It can also lead to increased amount of white guilt, causing some people to overly advocate for a cause that, they too, have little understanding of. Though their actions are appreciated, white guilt can come off as insincere or over the top. I believe that if you want to fight for a cause, you have to do more than just make it into a hashtag.

                                                   Sources:

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

R8: Social Media Activism and the Weak Tie Phenomenon

In “Small Change,” Malcolm Gladwell asserts that social media is detrimental to an effective social justice movement. He likens true activism to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, where efforts were meticulously planned out and members organized into a hierarchy. After training and experiencing often violent protests, only the most committed activists would stay to carry the movement. This continued attachment to the cause is considered a strong tie. Gladwell notes that social media is a weak tie because it only simulates real change. When people like, share, or retweet social justice rhetoric, they feel as though they helped enough, disincentivizing taking action though things like organized protest.

However, I think that Gladwell has a skewed view of the role of social media in activism. He writes, “The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.” The average person who talks about the movements they care about via social media do not liken themselves to Martin Luther King Jr. himself, but rather another messenger to amplify the reach of the cause. In addition, our social justices issues aren't nearly at the same magnitude of the 1960s. Protesting segregation has an obvious formula for defiance - attend the places one is segregated from. Fighting disproportionate rates of incarceration based on race does not have a straightforward path because it involves changing police sentiment.

The job of social media is not to be the protest, but to be a means of organizing one. Facebook and Twitter operate in the ideological realm, influencing people to care about a movement in the first place. Deray McKesson, Black Lives Matter activist, suggests that “for so many people, what woke them up was a tweet or a Facebook post, an Instagram post, a picture.” BLM rose to popularity primarily through the #BlackLivesMatter handle and videos of abusive police officers. Social media was and still is full of footage of police mistreating black citizens outside the bounds of the law. As these videos circulated, an increasing share of people grew to see the issues BLM professed about the unequal treatment of citizens based on race. These “weak ties” can inspire people to vote differently.

While Gladwell misunderstood the motivations of social media activism, he was correct about the disorganization of the central message that social media encourages. People hijack social movements all the time for their own agenda, like using the BLM banner to spout anti-white rhetoric. BLM Toronto co-founder Yusra Khogali tweeted that whites are subhuman and are a genetic defect of blackness. Leaders like this give people the impression that BLM is racist when it was originally created to confront inequality in an inclusive way. Social media allowing anyone to participate in a cause rapidly decentralizes the message. Despite the lack of unity new digital platforms create, they remain ultimately critical in bringing attention to social issues and getting the public to care. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media foster the public sphere that people then use to organize physical social movements.

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

Opam, Kwame, “Building Tools for Digital Activism” 11/29/16, The Verge,
http://www.theverge.com/a/verge-2021/deray-mckesson-interview-black-lives-matter-digital-activism

Images:

http://5pillarsuk.com/2016/12/25/hamza-yusuf-stokes-controversy-with-comments-about-black-lives-matter-and-political-islam/

http://independence.barcelonas.com/2017/02/16/black-lives-matter-yusra-khogali-white-people-are-sub-human-and-justin-trudeaus-a-white-supremacist/

R8: Social Media Activist

Using social media for activism can be both a blessing and a hindrance to one’s cause. On the one hand, it can spread word of an issue that might not be covered by the news; however, the casual and performative nature of social media users can have a negative impact on the issue.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s essay “Small Change” he describes the difference of activism today on social media compared to what it used to be. He writes that, “High-risk activism, McAdam concluded, is a “strong-tie” phenomenon [...] The platforms of social media are built around weak ties” (Gladwell). This type of activism separates itself from the past because whereas before people who attended protests were passionate enough about an issue that they were willing to risk arrest, whereas today you can participate in a protest without even leaving your house. Gladwell continues by describing how social media activism campaigns attract so many people by say writing “But how did the campaign get so many people to sign up? By not asking too much of them. That’s the only way you can get someone you don’t really know to do something on your behalf” (Gladwell). By using social media people can demonstrate their support for an issue that “fits their schedule” and does not necessarily impact their life. On the contrary for example, after the attacks in Paris a majority of people were changing their profile pictures with the colored filter for awareness and remembrance.

This was interesting because since so many people were doing it, you felt more pressure to also join in perhaps in the fear people would have a negative opinion of you for not showing your support. By making the ability to “spread awareness” or participate in activism so easy, social media almost seems to take away from the problem by belittling it into an act for people to show off to their network.

Another example of this was the Standing Rock Dakota Access Pipeline protest which utilized social media to garner worldwide attention. The protest gained attention by having people worldwide “Check in” to the protest on Facebook along with a hashtag #NoDAPL.

Even though they were able to spread awareness to a global audience through social media, many people did not understand it fully and made a joke of the situation. For example, there were reports during the protest that “people have turned up to the Standing Rock demonstration to soak up the “cultural experience”, and are treating the camp like it is “Burning Man” festival or “The Rainbow Gathering” (Sisley). Having heard through social media, many people thought it was “cool” to join in on this protest yet were completely uneducated and even treated it like a music festival or a vacation with friends. Below is one Tweet from a protester trying to address this issue:

Works Cited

Gladwell, Malcolm. "Small Change." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 12 May 2015. Web. 04

May 2017.

<http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell>.

Sisley, Dominique. "People Are Treating the DAPL Protest 'like Burning Man'." Dazed. N.p., 25 Nov. 2016. Web. 04 May 2017. <http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/33832/1/people-are-treating-the-dapl-protest-like-burning-man>.

Javier, Carla. "A Timeline of the Year of Resistance at Standing Rock." Fusion. Fusion.kinja.com, 14 Dec. 2016. Web. 04 May 2017. <http://fusion.kinja.com/a-timeline-of-the-year-of-resistance-at-standing-rock-1794269727>.

R:8 Social Media Activist

Social Media Activism 

 In Gladwell’s essay, “Small Change” he argues that social media is inefficient in regards to society. He also believes that in order to direct the participants of big social movements it is essential that the organization has an obvious leader. All through the article, Gladwell constantly goes back to conversing the civil rights movement and what allowed for its success. He talks about the hierarchical power structure and how it was able to manage people in such a way that it brought about great movement.  I agree with Gladwell because I believe without a leader, it would be very difficult to create a strong platform for movements.

When it comes to talking about social media, I agree with Gladwells argument, social media doesn’t make a huge difference in society. With social media, you are sitting behind a screen. By having the luxury of sitting behind the screen, you are not really involved. At the end of the day, texts and images on a screen wont bring a huge change. In contrast, social media certainly helps with movements. Using social media definitely brings AWARENESS. Moreover, social media brings people together, and they feel a sense of comfort knowing they have similar people supporting the same cause. For example the shooting that took place in Orlando. Tons of Facebook users used their profile picture and incorporated a rainbow filter to bring awareness to the situation. When you think about it, at the end of the day their profile picture wont bring a change to what happened with the situation. However it will spread a message that people are supportive with the LBGT community.

I really appreciate how social media has helped our society. Thanks to social media we can give people a platform to bring awareness on important situations. Social media gives us a place where we can unite. However, I ultimately believe joining face to face, and taking physical action is more proactive and will make a better impact on society and help social movements.

Sources:

Gladwell, Malcolm. "Small Change." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 12 May 2015. Web. 04 May 2017.

R8: Social Media Activism

Social media has undoubtedly become an vital part of activism around the world and has been a key component in the development of many ongoing social movements. Malcolm Gladwell writes in his article for The New Yorker, that “the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns.” (Gladwell, 2010) This statement is true and does highlight how social media can be important in social activism, however, Gladwell does not believe social media is as important to activism as many find it to be. Gladwell believes social media revolves around “weak ties” which leads to the lack of structure and hierarchy that he finds necessary for any social movement. I agree that those are some fundamental issues found in today’s activism, but do I believe that truly disqualifies social media from being a valuable tool in helping social movements meet their goals?, absolutely not.   

The importance and value of social media as it relates to activism lies in it’s ability to be a catalyst, sparking conversation and raising awareness, which I find to be extremely invaluable. As Deray Mckesson states in his interview, “we aren’t born woke, something wakes us up, and for so many people, what woke them up was a tweet or a Facebook post, an Instagram post, a picture.” (Opam, 2016) Most people today find out about social issues on the internet. For example, The Black Lives Matter movement gained traction through social media platforms after people found out about the ongoing injustices, primarily police brutality, affecting people of color across America. This awareness led to a nationwide discussion on how to resolve race relations in our country, which I believe would not have happened without social media "waking people up". Social media activism is not the end all be all in social movements, but it is an important first step in a movement eventually reaching their goals. Once a person is aware of situations going on in their society through activism online, they have a choice to continue fighting for the cause in other ways such as, actively working in communities, contacting government officials in their state about their concerns and how to they can help solve them, or even potentially running for official positions in their communities.

Works Cited

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Small Change.” The New Yorker. October 4, 2010. Accessed May 4, 2017. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

Opam, Kwame.”Building Tools For Digital Activism.” The Verge. November 29, 2016. Accessed May 4, 2017. https://www.theverge.com/a/verge-2021/deray-mckesson-interview-black-lives-matter-digital-activism