While Twitter and other social media platforms increase the awareness of issues and events in the United States, I am not convinced by their effectiveness.\u00a0 Gaining awareness is great, and Twitter allows you to keep updated, but I think it decreases the connection between people and the whatever the issue may be.\u00a0 With #Ferguson, many people took to Twitter to protest police brutality against African Americans.\u00a0 Using the hashtag, people could see other people\u2019s thoughts on the issue and any updates regarding the riots.\u00a0 One point that was brought up in class was that Twitter can also act as a wormhole.\u00a0 It is a useful and easy way to stay updated, but there is so much fake news out there and it is easy to get caught up in something that may not even be true.<\/p>\n
Social media has changed the way people protest, and it makes \u201cprotesting\u201d more accessible, but I don\u2019t believe it is more effective than a traditional grass-roots campaign.\u00a0 Social media can provide scale to a protest, but it does not ignite the same emotion and passion as being part of a grass-roots campaign.\u00a0 Social media movements lack the organization and structure that every protest needs to be effective.\u00a0 Communicating via social media will also never be a substitute for human interaction because the connection is so limited.\u00a0 My issue with social media protests is that they garner all this excitement, which eventually wears out as soon as the next big issue comes up, which people move on to.\u00a0 People will sit at their computer and phone and post something and then go on with their day.\u00a0 What is that actually doing to help the situation?\u00a0 If you want to see or be part of significant change in the world, hiding behind a phone will achieve nothing except back-and-forth arguing down a wormhole of posts.\u00a0 It is natural to want other people to hear out your opinion, but as clich\u00e9 as it is, actions will always speak louder than words on a screen.<\/p>\n
Despite my cynical view of #hashtag activism, there has been some success due to protests, like #Ferguson and #OscarsSoWhite, which have produced progress in the right directions.\u00a0 This past week, Michael Slager was sentenced to twenty years in prison for shooting Walter Scott, who was unarmed and running away.\u00a0 The millions of social media posts have played a part because everyone is aware of how bad it really is.\u00a0 While twenty years is an extremely light sentence for murder, it is far better than officers not even getting convicted.<\/p>\n
While Twitter and other social media platforms increase the awareness of issues and events in the United States, I am not convinced by their effectiveness.\u00a0 Gaining awareness is great, and Twitter allows you to keep updated, but I think it decreases the connection between people and the whatever the issue may be.\u00a0 With #Ferguson, many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cities-and-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}