Social Media Order 1816

Running head: Role Social Media Play in Social and Political Activism 1

Social Media and Activism

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Social Media and Activism 2

Introduction

The social media provides different roles to help the society be updated with various

activities globally. Different required information can be communicated to various people or

groups through social media. The society performs various activities to different people at

different places. Researchers believe that social media makes communication effective and more

so, enhances activities such as businesses and politics. The people depend on social media

platforms to acquire information and also to be able to communicate freely with other people and

express their grievances.

Social Media and Activism

A social movement displays different activities for collective of actors inform of their

interest, voice grievances, and critiques so as to be able to detect problems and come up with

solutions by engaging in a variety of collection actions. The emergence of the social media has

enabled effective communication to the society either economically, politically and socially.

People believe we are in a new age where there is effective communication, improved network

or acquaintance to the society at large. The mobile communication and internet are one of the

improved technologies which support the social media platforms. The social movement requires

social media to display their grievances and issues to the public, the effectiveness of

communication is it can reach various people through different social platforms and ICT

technology such as messaging (Gerbaudo,2018).

Roles and Functions of Social Media in Social and Political Activism

An activist does various communication activities in the social media in order to achieve

different goals and maybe the targeted people so that various information may be fulfilled. The

social media platform allows the ability of various social movements to link up other groups

Social Media and Activism 3

across the borders or the world to allow a strong movement leading to movement 8spill-over.

The right of media to address various information to the world enables various people to express

various grievances fully and this allows effective communication. Most social media platforms

are known to provide live communication to various activities so as to enable time

consciousness.

Social media enable different protest movements in the world to distribute movement

goals easily to the intended people. These goals can reach different type people through texts and

visual discourses. Social media enables people to always find information faster and therefore

this shows control of social media over the market as it can be able to bypass state and markets

to construct collective identities. The social media allows interview for different social

movements which enables people to gather various information on how to run their programs.

Facilitation of internal debate among activists can be organized by social media to allow

the people to listen to various grievances and allow arguments so as to come with solutions.

Online forums and mailing are used for people to provide what they feel when the discussion

goes on. This allows the media to take statistics of what the people are feeling or are need of.

These forums have allowed the social media to be able to make decisions out of the online

platforms and can easily predict the information out there. This allows the strengthening of the

public sphere. The social activist has now realized how information spreads faster through social

platforms and they now use the social media platform as a tool to attack their ideological

enemies.

The social media keeps a record of every scene they produce to the world for future

access. The archive enables a traditional memory the society has faced. The memory is symbols

that strengthen different people maybe protestants. The audio and the texts can also be used as an

Social Media and Activism 4

evidence when a case arises and there is the evidence needed so as to allow judgment. Social

media indeed helps to provide accurate information as to how they happened. This reduces a lot

of workload in finding specific data. Social platforms also provide a memory of the things that

happened in the past, the political history, and even the independence of political bodies on

various issues.

The social media act as in important role in the directing of different actions offline. This

can be observed the use of text messages. This leads to effective mobilization as information can

move from one person to the other even when someone is offline. This also lowers cost of use

because some individuals are unable to access the online chats like streaming so as to get the

needed information. The government uses the social media iso as to reach people with the

necessary information needed. All the people are able to know the activities that are happening in

the world at any given time especially if it is a state emergency and needs the knowledge of the

people to allow effective communication (Trottier, 2014).

Knowledge can spread from one country to another, the social media platforms do help to

reach specific groups with necessary information globally. For example, the movement spillover

that did happen in Tunisia and slowly it was found in Arab countries. This shows the fastness of

communication through social media. Then it did spread in countries like Spain and United

Kingdom. Social media platforms can generate different movements from social movements to

other movements in other countries by providing the knowledge used in the previous to be used

somewhere else (Anduiza,2014).

The social media enhances security, when there are security problems in a country, for

example, post-election violence, tourists, and other people are able to avoid certain affected areas

so as to enhance the security of some important people. Also, when such a scenario happens it is

Social Media and Activism 5

for other countries to help with the security problem to strengthen the political stability of

different countries. Through social media is where countries can receive different information as

they happen. The power of social media has been appreciated by many political leaders as they

can be heard all over the country giving out their promises to the people, especially during

campaigns.

Problems Social Media face Politically and Socially

Spread of information in the society and the tools of communication used have been

regulated by the government and different authorities have come with regulation policies that

regulate means of communication that threatens the status quo. There has been rise to social

movements because of the bad use of social media by the state due to political interest. There has

been the restriction to even important information to the public which can enhance the security

of the people due to various conflicts. The new social movements have mainly focused on the

improvements in the rights of social media and defending an open internet and digital rights.

The freedom of information legislation and the rights of sites to expose the state, as well

as the corporate secrets, are emerging political struggles being debated on. This shows there is no

democracy of handling of things between the citizens and the government itself. Allowing the

social media to give the honest required information makes people prepared for happens or know

what goes on in the society. The media platforms should be a free entry to every citizen because

they entitled with the right to information. During fieldwork, the social media stuff has faced

more problems to provide information to the people especially when there is a social movement

against the government. In this case, the media is always frustrated by the police to provide the

right information to the people or even to provide the happening story at the scene. This has

Social Media and Activism 6

made more social platforms not to provide accurate information to the citizens and this affects

the belief in the belief of the social media platforms not provide the right information needed

(Velasquez, 2015).

Social media also faces the risk of ignorance from the public when they tend to lie on the

opposite side from the social movements in the public. The people may avoid using the links and

services of a certain media group because they did not give good information to the public or

what the public was expecting. The social media face these problems because of the political

status in a country which does decide the opinion of people in a second. These are issues that

make the social platforms to be accurate when giving information and to try and not engage in

the political side or the political side but only provide accurate information to the public.

Conclusion

The role of social media has been experienced through its effectiveness to provide fast

information through various media platforms. The social movements give trust to the social

media so their grievances can be addressed or heard. The social media can divide people or bring

peace to the public and that’s why the government comes up with various ways to limit the way

the social media provides to the public. The policies though should not limit the right

information from reaching the public so as to allow the citizens to know the truth. Social media

creates a means to acquire knowledge to be able to know how different things happen and more

so the role of social media to social and political activism is important to enable effective

communication and the opinion of people to be heard.

Social Media and Activism 7

References

Gerbaudo, P. (2018). Tweets and the streets: Social media and contemporary activism. Pluto

Press.

Bonilla, Y., & Rosa, J. (2015). # Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial

politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist, 42(1), 4-17.

Trottier, D., & Fuchs, C. (Eds.). (2014). Social media, politics and the state: Protests,

revolutions, riots, crime and policing in the age of facebook, twitter and youtube (Vol.

16). Routledge.

Ratto, M., & Boler, M. (Eds.). (2014). DIY citizenship: Critical making and social media. MIT

Press.

Velasquez, A., & LaRose, R. (2015). Youth collective activism through social media: The role of

collective efficacy. New Media & Society, 17(6), 899-918.

Fuchs, C. (2017). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.

Sandoval-Almazan, R., & Gil-Garcia, J. R. (2014). Towards cyberactivism 2.0? Understanding

the use of social media and other information technologies for political activism and

social movements. Government Information Quarterly, 31(3), 365-378.

Loader, B. D., Vromen, A., & Xenos, M. A. (2014). The networked young citizen: Social media,

political participation and civic engagement.

Anduiza, E., Cristancho, C., & Sabucedo, J. M. (2014). Mobilization through online social

networks: the political protest of the indignados in Spain. Information, Communication &

Society, 17(6), 750-764.

Curran, J., Fenton, N., & Freedman, D. (2016). Misunderstanding the internet. Routledge.

Social Media and Activism 8

Kavada, A. (2015). Creating the collective: social media, the Occupy Movement and its

constitution as a collective actor. Information, Communication & Society, 18(8), 872-886.

Brym, R., Godbout, M., Hoffbauer, A., Menard, G., & Zhang, T. H. (2014). Social media in the

2011 Egyptian uprising. The British Journal of Sociology, 65(2), 266-292.

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