Nothing Hidden or Ignored with Social Media
http://wishtv.com/2014/09/10/social-media-trends-turning-domestic-violence-awareness-viral/
In the article, the author discusses the benefits of social media in bringing social issues to light. When certain events or ideas start “trending”, they can quickly gain a huge amount of attention without ever explicitly being talked about in the news or other media sources. The example this article primarily refers to is the Ray Rice incident and how it sparked outrage while raising awareness to problems with domestic violence in our country. The issue is usually a “hush-hush” topic as describes by Daniel Herdon in the article, so it does a lot of good to have a venue (social media) to talk about these issues that people tend to shy away from in face-to-face interactions.
This article is a great example of the power of the giant component concept of Networks. As most of the world is connected through social media, we are all apart of a giant social network containing 95% of all human beings. This is why campaigns such as the ALS ice bucket challenge (also mentioned in this article) can work so well. One nomination could spark a spree of challenges across a dozen states, or even countries. This is how one message or video to Twitter can ignite a social media storm around an issue, like it has around domestic violence. Taking advantage of the giant component of social media can be the difference between having an idea take off or fall flat.