Activism and Protest and Social Media
Social Media is an effective method for spreading the idea of an activism movement, but it is not effective in evoking change in our current democratic political system.
I summarized my entire blog for you, but if you wanna hear my thoughts on it, keep reading.
Social media as a tool to spread Activism
There is no denying the fact that social media platforms have taken over the world, and we have let it happened. In this majorly democratic world, where freedom of speech is emphasized, what is more dangerous than a place where everyone is able to share their thoughts and connect with other users from the comfort of their house.
Back in 2020 alone, over 3.6 billion people in the world are on one or more social media platforms. With around 7.7 billion in the world, that is roughly half of the entire world's population being connected through the internet having daily conversation, discussions and sharing thoughts and pictures.
The first use of a major hashtag for an activism movement can be traced back to Trayvon Martin, who was an African-American teenager that was shot by a hispanic male. This raised a lot of controversy from the media and the hashtag of #BlackLivesMatter took Twitter and other platforms by storm.
This was the start to social media being a beginning of modern protests and in turn, linking it to political engagements. The government was not spared from this as America was one of the countries that legalized the possession of a firearm, which in turn led to the death of Trayvon Martin.
#BlackLivesMatter is often paired with #MeToo or #MakeAmericaGreatAgain or MAGA. This allows other users who only care about making political changes to also jump onto the trend and bring up underlying issues that finally gain traction due to the spike in #BlackLivesMatter.
How effective was the #BlackLivesMatter at getting people to engage and share it?
Very much so, along with other activism movements that relate all the way back to political engagement as well (funny coincidence).
How effective was movement in enacting change?
Not at all.
Why is there still no change?
Sure, a lot of people are talking about it, but why is there still no change?
Political view
Let's step in the shoes of the people in charge and see how we would handle this situation. People argue that police treat darker skin toned individuals more harshly or are racist towards them, leading to a higher number of arrests and more violence being used against them. Take a look at the picture below:
The black people are not being mistreated, it's just the underlying thought of racism from all the way back in the days of the Civil Right's Movement.
If special privileges were implemented to protect the black people from the law then it would no unfair for the others as well. The polices arrests are justified but the inhumane treatment is just poor training, which is separate kind of issue.
Law changes
Why don't the police just carry less lethal weapons, like tasers?
Well, long story short, civilians in America are allowed to carry guns, therefore the law enforcers, are required to carry guns as their own means of self defense.
Why don't we just ban the gun law altogether?
Now, this is a harder question to answer. America prides itself as a free country, and banning the right to own a gun for protection is going against their own morals and their ego as one of the most powerful nations in the world would not allow that. In addition to beliefs and ego, the backlash they would receive from the citizens would be far exceeding the current BlackLivesMatter movement, along with the confiscation preexisting firearms already in possessions of the citizens, changing the law willy-nilly is not the right way to go out combating this issue.
Where does that leave us?
Social media isn't gonna make changes. It's just going to get people to talk about making changes. In this day an age of the democratic ideology, we all want to fit in and don't want to stand out. We agree to what everyone else thinks is right to get them to vote or to fit in.
Our leaders might espouse manifestos that appeal to the majority, but when they see the amount of work needed, it's often done half ass-ed or forgotten completely. ( Not just talking about Malaysian politics here, the mexican wall was pretty underwhelming ngl). Which is sort of poetic, in a way. Why?
This is exactly what social media is like. If you refer back to the first image of this post, you can see that when there is nothing to talk about, there are barely any hashtags caring for the black individuals, they only talk about it when its trending or it's hot. So in a way, it's not that social media can't make change, us as a community aren't interested in change in the first place, maybe some people, but majority of us just want to have something to talk about.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. References:
~ Anon 2021, Activism in the Social Media Age, viewed 11 October, 2021, <https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/07/11/activism-in-the-social-media-age/>.
~ Anon 2021, Number of social media users 2025 | Statista, viewed 11 October, 2021, <https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20over%203.6%20billion,almost%204.41%20billion%20in%202025.>.
