Social Media Activism
From the Ice Bucket Challenge to trending hashtags such as #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter, it is no doubt that social media has become an integral part of social activism today. Social media has certainly proved to be a powerful method of making a cause reach a wide audience. I personally have seen it in action when I participated in the Wisconsin Protests of 2011 to recall Governor Scott Walker. A small event made by a high school student eventually turned into 30,000 people marching in front of the state capitol.
Of many argued advantages social media brings to activism causes, one of the most brought up is that “Social media has the potential to bring to people fair and balanced news coverage with little or no bias of mainstream corporate media or propaganda, thereby becoming the de facto news” (Khan-Ibarra). Upon first look, this certainly seems to be true, because the daily users of social media are our everyday peers and not the corporate media. However, after learning about information cascade in Networks, I am a bit more skeptical about the argument that social media is un-biased.
A perfect example is the role of Hashtag Activism. We see trending hashtags on Twitter and even Facebook everyday. Hastags show up on the front page of these social media powerhouses when enough users choose to include the same hashtag in their tweets or status updates. Since most of these tweets and statuses are public and made to be seen by a wide audience, this is the perfect basis for information cascade. I have noticed that when a hashtag is trending, it is hard to immediately find the opposing view point of the debate. Hashtags make it seem like everyone is preferring option A, while those who prefer option B are underrepresented and could be convinced to switch over simply due to the rules of information cascade. If this is the case, is social media activism really the voice of people or just an example of information cascades in action?
Sources:
Khan-Ibarra, Sabina. “The Case for Social Media and Hashtag Activism.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sabina-khanibarra/the-case-for-social-media_b_6149974.html
Twitter. “FAQ about Trends on Twitter.” https://support.twitter.com/articles/101125-faqs-about-trends-on-twitter