This week, we talked about how social media can be both extremely effective in spreading awareness in social movements as well as how it can leave us without some of the well seasoned tactics of in-person or protest-like activism. While watching Zeynep Tufekci’s Ted Talk about online activism was both enlightening and thought provoking. I agreed with a lot of what she had to say and I also feel like there’s more to be said.

Tufekci details the way that Twitter can bring light to events that are censored and the way that it excludes actual interactions and friendships that can come from meeting those who share views in person. This made me think about how truly effective and ineffective that social media can really be. So many hashtags and posts have rose awareness for different events and social movements. Just the simple use of a hashtag can raise certain news over another over a matter of hours, minutes, or even seconds. However, I also see that things get pushed aside or that we have become numb to different situations and movements because we have all this noise constantly being thrown into our faces (or more precisely, our phone screens). We are desensitized to a lot of the injustices of the world because a lot of us are more comfortable behind our barriers. Activism has by no means become weaker; we have been able to spread ideas that were much more easily weakened by the media. However, I feel like we don’t get that same level of consensus that is seen through protests, speeches, and gatherings.

You can see this idea when we look at the events going on currently. We see the Black Lives Matter movement being the biggest movement in the media at this time. However, other issues such as the issue we saw in Sexting Panic, a book about the criminalization of youth expression and sexuality, are being quieted due to their lack of social media presence and lack of activist risings. At the same time, there’s not always room in the world for everyone’s opinion and movement to be heard. I think this is where social media fails and where active protests become the difference.

At the end of all of this, we are left with a simple yet unanswerable question. What is the best way to get a movement to stick in the media and in people’s heads? Right now, I think there’s no good answer. We are so overloaded with information about pandemics, politics, unemployment rates, wealth gaps, racial equality, wild fires, hurricanes, taxes, technology, social media, online learning, the economy, possible recessions, a vaccine, Trump, Biden…

Should I keep going? I could probably think of more.

Here’s my question for you all:

How do we cut through the noise and get to information that will help us further our society?

The Weekly News

13 people were charged in plan to abduct Gretchen Whitmer in an attempt to overthrow Michigan government. What else could go wrong?