In the last few months, people seeking social change have taken to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr in great numbers, using these platforms to discuss national issues like race relations, sexism and police brutality. Hashtags like #blacklivesmatter, #icantbreathe and #leelahalcorn have raised awareness of various injustices, such as the fact that neither the shooting death of Mike Brown nor the choking death of Eric Garner resulted in an indictment of the police officers in question, or that transgender Americans experience a higher rate of suicide on average.
Through social media, Americans — young Americans in particular — are becoming increasingly more informed and vocal about these problems. As social media make the world feel smaller, national problems feel personal. Social media have become perfect tools for social change because they have the incredible capacity to quickly spread news to large numbers of people. When our Facebook feeds are filled not only with party pictures, but posts about police brutality and the protests it has incited, it makes it that much harder for us to live in blithe ignorance. Social media can force people to see, at least in some small way, the injustices around them, often in contrast to the blindness their own privilege provides.
Social media can also serve as valid sources of information for stories mainstream media cannot or will not publicize, by disseminating news by private citizens for private citizens. During the protests in Ferguson, police limited official media presence and attempted to suppress information. Instead of commerical news outlets, Americans by and large turned to personal Twitter accounts for photographs and descriptions of what was happening without the official media’s various biases. Though this phenomenon raises concerns — private citizens are not pressured to follow the same ethical and journalistic codes as journalists — social media give us an unprecedented and intimate glimpse at the heart of where these injustices take place. We can see innocent people arrested for exercising their constitutional right of peaceful assembly. In many ways, instantly-published social media are incredible forms of free press and free speech.
Social media are both immediate — tweets and posts can be published instantly, unlike the longer periods it takes for commercial news sources to process, edit and publish stories – and unconcerned about sticking to the typical news cycle. Months after the story was quietly broken and then buried under subsequent news, Twitter and Tumblr brought national attention to Eric Garner, an innocent New York resident who was choked to death by a police officer. The video that showed Garner’s death featured his last spoken words, “I can’t breathe.” People created a hashtag on Twitter in response, which led to a series of marches against police brutality across America where protestors held signs saying, “I can’t breathe #thisstopstoday.”
Social media also have an incredible capacity to bring people together and spread hope, from protestors standing physically alongside one another to Twitter users offering a glimpse at a better future. The recent suicide of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teen, led to an outpouring of support expressed on social media — on Tumblr in particular, where Alcorn herself published a suicide note that illuminated the systemic and personal obstacles she faced because of her identity. Her parents did not let her go to school or use her social media accounts. She wrote in her suicide note, “the life I would’ve lived isn’t worth living in ... because I’m transgender.” The social media uproar following her passing sought to educate people on what it means to be transgender, and how to help transgender men and women facing struggles similar to those of Alcorn. In a way traditional news outlets have not yet done, social media brought hope to struggling individuals with the hashtag #reallifetransadult. The hashtag created a space for transgender adults to share stories in which they overcame obstacles to live full and happy lives, in a similar strategy to the “It Gets Better” campaign.
However, social media as conduits for social justice have their downfalls — most dangerously, the fact that the core message of a movement can be easily lost or altered. For example, people seeking to bring attention to police brutality towards black men created the tag #blacklivesmatter, but Twitter users changed this tag to #alllivesmatter within days. This new form of the hashtag, while true, failed to deliver a crucial aspect of the message — there exists a trend where the public tends to overlook or excuse the killing of innocent black Americans.
Despite its drawbacks, the use of social media in discussing social justice and reporting the news encourages, even forces, average Americans to open their eyes to injustice. It demands that each citizen educate themselves and others in the hopes that, eventually, positive change will happen.
