Media Activism In Social Media

People continue to use this hashtag to convey their message. Social media has helped a lot of people be aware of this movement. As more people know about this movement, the use of this hashtag will continue to increase.

Nowadays, social media is practically a staple in everyone’s lives. While some use it solely to stay in touch with friends or family, others wouldn’t even know the latest of current events if they didn’t have their phone notifying them that their friends are talking about it. The Internet and social media have bred a new generation of socially-aware people which has given them a platform to learn and share on. Because this generation’s growth is largely-based online and through technology, it has formed a new brand of social activism. While some feel social media has made it too easy to claim a movement or position, others believe that it is what we need to spread a message

One of the main arguments in Malcolm Gladwell's "Small Change" is that social media has a huge impact on activism positively and negatively.In the 1960's it took 10s of thousands of people to come to make a change like the sit-ins but now with twitter and facebook, people just have to group together and contact the network they want, to make changes.It's a lot safer to get a point across on social media then taking the risks people took back then to get a point across. Social media has no real sense of authority so they don't make as much of a movement as the N.A.A.C.P did. With social media comes no organization or structure which causes false information to be passed around. In the end, both types of activism have their positive and negative

    First, Social media can be very informative with what is going on with the news. I know personally when I wake up the first thing I do is check my Instagram. One morning when I logged on, I saw all the celebrities I was following saying prayers for Las Vegas. There was a shooting in Las Vegas that left 59 victims dead and many others injured. I check apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to get my news for the day and stay up to date on what is going on around me. This is a great of example of why I think social media can be used in a positive way also. By celebrities posting pictures saying prayers for Las Vegas this makes people curious of what happen, which then makes them want to google the incident. Since these celebrities use

In the article “The Case for Social Media and Hashtag Activism” Sabina Khan-Ibarra makes the statement “As an activist, I saw social media as an opportunity to spread the word about various causes at a faster rate, and to a bigger number of people, than through traditional methods.” This is the main reason I believe that social media is extremely useful for activism, in mere seconds, your message can be reached by millions upon millions of people.

During the 2011 Egypt uprising protesters gained support through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to help end poverty and unemployment in which they were experiencing at the time. This major flow of support from across the world helped strengthen the protesters cause and led to an eventual victory in Egypt (Brym 2014).

It is an obvious fact that society is continually progressing with technology. Social media is a huge part of our world, people use networks such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. to reach out to one another, and it is incredibly easy to do so. In Malcolm Gladwell’s article, “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” he focuses on the impact of social media on social actions. Gladwell believes that even though social media is effective in passing on the word, it strictly passes information rather than showing true passion within an activist. Gladwell brings up a few good points, but I don’t agree with his argument that social media does not positively impact social change.

The New Yorker had a piece called, “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” by Malcolm Gladwell in the magazine on October 4, 2010. Overall the piece discussed social activism that occurred in the 1960’s to the era when social media took a more prominent role in everyday life. He explains the role of social media and social activism through examples of past protests and how it was said that social media was a tool that has reinvented social activism. He also explains the differences between both social media and hierarchies. Others can argue over both topics but the evidence used to back up Gladwell’s claims, made it clear for myself to agree that social media hasn’t made as big of an impact as other might think.

The view of social media is all in how you perceive it and your perspective. Malcolm Gladwell argues in "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted", that social media has weakened the nature of social revolutions and I have to say that I agree but disagree. Social media plays a huge part in our lives now and there is so much you can find out by a click of a button; it is a very revolutionary invention but it also has a negative impact on our lives.

I would have to say that I disagree with Gladwell’s analysis of the usage of social media for social justice. I think that social media helps social activism by creating another platform for people to use. Two important causes for me were and still are the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline and against the police brutality against minorities, especially Black people. For both, I was mainly an observer. The sharing of videos, news stories, updates, and more was how I and mainly people around me spread awareness. I am a member of AISES on campus and we, along with NASAC, raised money to donate during the Penny War for NoDAPL. Gladwell mentions that social media allows for weak tie activism, but I would argue that people who have share identities with the cause would be more motivated as well and not just those who know people personally. No one that I knew personally has ever been shot by the police or killed and I do not know anyone from Standing Rock, but I am Native as well as Black. Besides caring about social justice in general, I feel like I need to be involved in some way.

The almost omnipresent Internet transforms our lives, connecting us to family, friends, and the world in ways inconceivable only a few years ago. Through social media, we actively participate in creating, editing, and consuming a never-ending stream of data. Private corporations and protagonists of political or social change all vie to reach and engage highly targeted

Since we are given these incredible tools to communicate, we need to use them. An example of a time that social media was used for good was last year when the Stop Kony campaign was trending on twitter. At it’s most popular time, #StopKony was tweeted more 1200 times a minute. The Stop Kony marketing team created a video as an experiment, having no idea that they would change the

No matter how much potential social media has for political or societal change it is important to criticize its negative aspects. An article written by Andrea Moncada, begins her argument with the question has social media had the same impact on advocacy. Similar to Gladwell’s points of view, Moncada states, “social media can help get the word around, but participants must be united by a core message and traditional methods…” This source of uncertainty is the basis for its support and is understandable.

From the time that social media was first introduced, whether we talk about Facebook in 2004 or the “ancient” times of GTalk and MSN, the virtual world was seen as a new haven for discussion, free speech, and breeding ground for new ideas. Twitter introduced the hashtag circa 2007, which allowed categorizing a similar set of materials together. For instance, if a user wishes to look at pictures of animals, they can simply type in “#animals” in the search bar. Within seconds the user will be presented with millions if not billions of pictures from all over the world. Hashtags are primarily seen as an element that groups people together, rather than dividing people. The world has seen the effective use of hashtag plenty of times ranging from

As technology develops rapidly in the modern society, the broad social influence it brings is also widely discussed, especially about its effects on social change. In the past, social movements were raised without the help of technology, specifically without social media, whereas social media has recently played a non-ignorable role. The connection between social media and social activisms concerned, here come some different voices. Few people maintain that social media now has no practical influence on social change, while others hold the opposite view, thinking social media is already a crucial factor in it. Personally speaking, I agree with the second kind of view: it is true that social media is not able to create social movements by itself in today’s world, but it plays an important and essential part in making real social change.