Analytical Response 2
Matthew Salvatore
Analytical Response 2
The impact that social media has had on protesting is vast and spreads from those which are less serious to those that affect the very fibers of society. From the issue of #gamergate to the Arab Spring, and numerous incidents in between the two, social media played a pivotal role in making a change for what the people stood by. Also a more recent protest that has taken on all new levels because of social media is the Ferguson Protest, which is related to the death of one Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. People had already been protesting, but when pictures of the violence broke out through social media such as twitter and Instagram, the protest rose to all new heights. The protests were a main driving force behind getting the issue enough credibility to become a national issue. At the very least hundreds of similar incidents go unnoticed every day, but because of social media’s ability to spread the news of Michael Brown, and the violence of the protest which turned to riots, the whole nation if not the world took notice. President Obama has even made statements regarding the situation and the case was brought up to a grand jury. My personal experience related to the Ferguson Trial on social media stems from twitter. I was on twitter the day after the riots initially broke, after waking up for an early morning class I hadn’t watched the news but when I scrolled through my twitter feed I found myself viewing dozens of pictures of the Ferguson incident. Through social media I was notified of both the shooting itself, and the protests that were generated by it, and while I may not have joined the movement I know many people that I follow did join after seeing pictures on social media. Nancy Scola’s Washington Post article gives the viewpoint of Prosecutor Robert McCulloch who claims social media gave off the wrong idea and complicated the case. The more I explore into the protesting through social media the more I realize that a lot of these changes don’t come without some kind of outside action, for example sit-ins or whatever type of live protest the group uses, but the greatness of using social media is that those who are heading the group can amass a large group of protestors before they air their concerns, this gives the protest the power of numbers and makes it hard for people to ignore the point that is trying to be made. All this combined made for a serious complication in Ferguson which even still carries on despite the case being closed by the grand jury. Similarly, the Arab Spring all started from a facebook page entitled “We are all Khaled Said,” which allowed the people of Egypt to realize the amount of people who shared the same distrust and disgust of the regime that ruled over them. When the “stupid regime” pulled the citizens’ internet access for facebook the protest was pushed onto the streets with much larger numbers than had it never been put together on social media. Bratich’s paper fully dives into the power facebook gave the protestors. When the great numbers of Egyptian people were forced to finally hit the streets the regime could not handle what the protestors could throw at them, and it would not have been possible without the help provided by social media. While I do not have any personal story about someone I know joining the movement in Egypt or anything like that, I do remember people sharing photos that the protestors’ page posted and stating that they supported the revolution. The public opinion was pushed in a certain direction because of the content spread on social media by the protestors. On a lesser note, the #gamergate protests which are solely online have not yet been entirely successful. #gamergate is a movement that was initially about ethics in the business of video games but than snowballed into being about how women are represented in video games and that they deserved to have the same opportunity as men do in the gaming world. Eklund explains that in games such as World of Warcraft women may have all different options, but they are sexualized and they tend to still fall into the gender stereotypes. While the idea has gained a great deal of notoriety and many have heard of the protest, and know the meaning behind it, without any outside actions such as picketing outside the executive offices of Rockstar Video Games for example, the idea is simply an idea and no type of physical action has taken place to make a change. I know plenty of both female and male gamers who support the #gamergate movement but the problem is they love their games so much they would never do anything like boycotting. What it all wraps up to is that social media does play a huge role in protests in today’s society but there still needs to be physical action to get any real change.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/11/25/ferguson-prosecutor-blames-social-media-for-complicating-investigation/
file:///C:/Users/Matthew/Downloads/Eklund+-+2011+-+Doing+gender+in+cyberspace+The+performance+of+gender+by+female+World+of+Warcraft+players.pdf
file:///C:/Users/Matthew/Downloads/Bratich+-+2011+-+Kyber-Revolts+Egypt%252C+State-friended+Media%252C+and+Secret+Sovereign+Networks.pdf
