This week in class we got to listen to a group of students’ presentation about sexting and what could happen. After the presentation their presentation we looked at a ted talk which talked about “digital activism” which talk about how social media has changed the way of current day protests.

I thought the group did a great job on presenting their book Sexting Panic, Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy, and Consent, I was intrigued and did learn some new things. I thought that the questions at the end of the presentation were very deep and you had to really think about them. The questions definitely left me thinking about what we can do or how we can change this society of sexting. It also showed me how the younger generation doesn’t really think about the consequences that could come of such behavior no matter how many times we warn or try to teach them. Even knowing fully what can happen, we need to find a better way to educate teens about what can happen. There have been laws and policies made by government to try to protect the youth, but there needs to be more monitoring of this behavior as well as sexual predators that can just be posing as someone younger with very awful intentions.

In the Ted Talk, we learn on how social media movements can possibly be weakening the message behind some of these movements. The presenter would go on to tell us on how in Turkey they would censor many things from the public so they would not know what is going on. The Turkish government would show stories about animals, instead of other more pressing issues like protesting. Thankfully, it did result in someone posting things on Twitter and making it viral, which gave people the awareness of what is actually going on. By using the internet the people could show and learn what is really happening, which allows more people to become involved. The presenter goes on to say how Twitter enables people to share and receive information about the world. This I think could be very helpful to a lot of people under restriction, but also dangerous at the same time because of how much fake news there can be on social media these days. For a person who isn’t seeing news, they can believe it is true and it can start an uproar over something that never happened in the first place, so we must be careful about what we see and always think twice. Later in the Ted Talk, she talks on how many people are on social media, but some of these movements haven’t really succeeded, even though it is easier to communicate with others and unite together. Just because there is an easier way to communicate does not mean that people are taking action to make change in the world, because any can say anything online on social media, but we have to do something if we do really want things to change. For social media protesting to work, we need to have a plan for a goal in mind that all want to achieve and with that we can get things done.

News article: Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History

This article talks about the recent Black Lives Matter campaign and on how many people supported it, due to police brutality against African-Americans. I find this extremely relevant to this week’s subject and also to all of our lives right now, we need to continue to protest and promote this movement so there will be change in the US.