Social Media and Social Movements

 Guest post from my kid, Rowan:

Social media has a significant impact on social movements. Nowadays social media is a main source of information on things that are happening around the world everyday. Everyone spreads their opinions on social movements by using social media as their main outlet. Since there is a large amount of people on social media, many people can use social media to positively and negatively influence social movements.

Due to the amount of people who can voice their opinions and spread awareness on social issues, social media can lead to a positive impact on social movements. For instance, “iPhones and the internet offer new ways to spotlight injustice. With nearly everyone having their own publishing platforms in the palms of their hands, no longer are major news outlets the main filter of public dialogue. Social media provides a voice for anyone with an internet connection.” (Ruf 1). This shows that social media, an online platform, gives people a place to voice their opinions and connect to other people with the same issues all around the world.  Furthermore, “Part of what social media does is allow us to see a reality that has been entirely visible to some people and invisible to others. As those injustices become visible, meaningful change follows.” (Ovide 1). This proves that as social media becomes more popular everyone  is able to see the true problems in the world. Social media shows many people what is really happening and makes people want to help make a change. In the same light,  “Using social media to rapidly and efficiently spread information has been instrumental in organizing large-scale protests.” (Azar 1). Azar explains how with social media at everyone’s fingertips, protests can be spread and created easily without too much hassle. The information on protests and how to help can be spread so rapidly that it doesn’t even take long to get social movements to progress.  Again, social media is giving people a way to reach out and share their opinions and information on social movements. 

With social media giving an outlet for people to participate in social movements, it allows them to become lazy with their participation and spread negative opinions. Initially, “Roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults (77%) say the statement “social media distract people from issues that are truly important” describes these platforms well, with 35% saying it describes them very well. And 71% believe that social media make people think they are making a difference when they really aren’t, with 28% saying this describes social media very well.” (Anderson et al 5). This shows that social media is seen and used negatively when it comes to social movements. Social media allows people to believe they are helping when in reality they are doing the bare minimum and not doing much to help the movement at all. In the same way, “The core group are the users on the street, actively protesting and spreading their message, and the periphery are low-commitment participants, echoing and sharing that message through various social media.” (Granillo 2). While social media can spread awareness quickly, it also leads to people choosing to be lazy in their participation in social movements. Even when people are seeing that others are actually going out to protests, there are still many who just sit there and think posting and sharing is going to be the biggest help in a movement. On top of that,  “Wasow, a professor at Princeton University and co-founder of the pioneering social network BlackPlanet.com, said social media was helping publicize police brutality and galvanizing public support for protesters’ goals — a role that his research found conventional media played a half century ago. And he said he believed that the internet was making it easier to organize social movements today, for good and for ill.” (Ovide 1). This proves that social media does have an impact on social movements, but impact does not only mean positive impact. Social media gives an outlet for people to spread their negative opinions on social issues, leading people to only believe the negative side therefore hurting the movement. In summary, social media allows people to put in the smallest amount of work into a movement as well as allowing users to share their negative opinions on the social movements.

Social media does give a huge outlet for people to express their opinions about social movements, whether they are negative or positive. Social media can be a place for people to spread positive information on social movements. People can also voice themselves and share their experiences on social media. While social media can be good for social movements it can cause a negative impact on them as well. The amount of people who have different opinions on these social movements is large, therefore there are people who will use social media negatively as well as just using social media as a quick, less active way to participate in social movements. Social media should be used in social movements, but it is good to be careful on what to believe and share. Social media also should not be used as an easy way to participate in social movements, yes it is helpful but there are other things to do than just post and share. Going out and protesting actively can be much better than only using social media, so just limit the amount of social media being used and put effort into these movements.