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Activism & Protest

Imagine you have a 17 years old brother who was walking back home at night with his hoodie on and then suddenly the neighbourhood watch coordinator followed him from behind because he looked suspicious. Physical altercation happened between them and ended with your brother fatally shot. How would you feel knowing how his life was cut short by someone who claimed that it was just a self-defense? How would you reacted when the shooter has not been charged in the case? What is the outlet you need for you frustration?

The scenario that I stated above had tragically happened seven years ago. In Florida, the death of the 17 years old, Trayvon Martin had become a controversial issue that attracted a great deal of public attention. His death was the catalyst of the Black Lives Matter movement. I remember seeing #BlackLivesMatter all over my Twitter timeline. It was trending!

What is Black Lives Matter? 

Photo taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter

It is an international activist movement, originating among the African-Americans, campaigning against violence and racism. This movement is a perfect example of activism and protest in social media. Because of the nation’s outraged, justice was served – the shooter who had no charges against him was finally arrested. People started using the hashtag, sharing articles of the movements and even joined the protest. 

Let us take a look at some of the protest photos :

Photo taken from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/153403931041116090/?lp=true

Photo taken from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Lives_Matter_protest.jpg

According to Pew Research Center (2018), as of May 1, 2018, the hashtag has been used nearly 30 million times on Twitter, an average of around 17,000 times a day. With the hashtag fueling for change, issues of race and gun law, specifically in the United States came to the fore because of the activist, protests and influence of social media. I can also see the issue about police incompetence also on spotlight as many users in Twitter complained how the police always discriminate young black men. Since then, the Americans has paid attention to the flaws of their law and globally, people are more aware of racism.

FUN FACT ! A social justice organisation was established on the campus of Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens, Florida and its name is Trayvon Martin Foundation.

Do you think with social media, it will help grow your movement and change the world? 

With efforts and the right goal, I believe you can reach worldwide audience and make a better change to the world. For instance, besides the Black Lives Matter, the Ice Bucket Challenge was the movement that successfully received donations of more than $115 million for the ALS association. The challenge was to create awareness on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis disease and there were more than 17 million participations on the challenge. 

Here is a video of celebrities supporting the movement by doing the Ice Bucket Challenge :  

Can you see how powerful social media is to make people take action in the real world and help movements achieve their goal. Social media is the winning formula to support movements. 

I will end this post with a quote from Bijan Stephen in WIRED. 

 “In the 1960s, if you were a civil rights worker and you needed to get some urgent news out to the rest of the world, you would likely head straight for a telephone. If you’re a civil rights activist in 2015 and you need to get some news out, your first move is to choose a social media platform”

List of References:

CNN, 2012, From coast to coast, protesters demand justice in trayvon martin case, CNN, viewed on 13 October 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/26/justice/florida-teen-shooting-events/index.html. 

Trayvon Martin Foundation, 2012, About us, Trayvon Martin Foundation, viewed on 13 October 2019, https://www.trayvonmartinfoundation.org/aboutus.

Black Lives Matter, 2013, About, Black Lives Matter, viewed on 13 October 2019, https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/.

Morgan, D, 2018, Trayvon martin’s father: the problem of social injustice “needs to be rectified”, CBS News, viewed on 13 October 2019, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trayvon-martins-father-tracy-martin-rest-in-power-the-trayvon-martin-story-documentary-series/.

Simon, C 2018,  How social media has shaped black lives matter, five years later, USA Today, viewed on 13 October 2019,  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/12/black-lives-matter-movement-and-social-media-after-five-years/778779002/.

Trejos, A 2017, Ice bucket challenge: 5 things you should know, USA Today, viewed on 13 October 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/07/03/ice-bucket-challenge-5-things-you-should-know/448006001/.

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Political Engagement

Photo of Abraham Lincoln’s presidential campaign poster. Taken from: https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/06/04/presidential-campaign-posters/

Before the born of Internet, politicians use radios, televisions or newspapers to reach out to the citizens. Try to imagine living in that era. A Prime Minister candidate that you truly admire and you wanted to meet badly has an event happening in your town where he shares his views and goals for the country. Unfortunately, you cannot come for the event. What happens if you do not even have a radio at home? Or no money to buy television? How about newspapers? What if the writers misinterpret every words he said?

Good thing we have the Internet now. And social media! 

Of course, we still do have newspapers, radios and televisions but how many of the youths are still active using the three mediums I mentioned? Not sure about you but I personally don’t read newspapers. I only read online news like from TheBorneoPost. I also do not watch television anymore. I am serious and honest right now. Radios? I only listened to them when I am driving. But I do spend a lot of time scrolling through my Twitter timeline and discover latest news from there. The Reuter institute for the Study of Journalism conducted a study of 50,000 teens aged between 18 and 24 years old, where 28% use social media and 24% use television (Young people now use social media more than TV as a news source, 2016).

So how does politics engage with the wider audience, especially youths?

By using social media. Well duhh.

Lets use Barack Obama for an example. His social media strategy during the 2008 presidential election had revolutionized campaigning by altering the structure of political organizing. The video below is one of the most viral in the 2008 campaign.

Lets remember back to the year 2018, in Malaysia, the glorious moment for the Pakatan Harapan as they won the election. The current Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir along with the other members of Pakatan Harapan always shared about his campaign through Twitter every single day. They fight for victory. They gather more and more audience with the power of social media. To me, it was a great strategy as I can never come to their campaign event, I am always waiting to see new videos from them about the election. With the hashtag GE14, I was able to see a lot more user’s opinion about the political parties. Although I cannot vote, but looking at videos of what they have to say for the people of the country has made me more patriotic and wanted to be more knowledgeable about politics. 

Are there any problems with social media politicians?

There was also problems that cannot be avoided by politicians which is scandals. One single post can go viral within seconds and if it is a shameful one, politician must be ready to face the accusations, swear words coming out from the netizens and loss of some supporters. For example, the 1MDB corruption scandal involving the 6th Prime Minister, Najib Razak. Was it just a defamation or an ugly truth that was uncovered? Hehe..

Remember #Undi18 ?

Syed Saddiq, the Malaysia Youth and Sports Minister made the #Undi18 movement. The movement is about lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years old. The hashtags went viral. A lot of online articles was shared about the bill. Besides a one-on-one interview, Syed Saddiq used the social media to share his thoughts about the bill. A bill related to youths, shared on a platform used by many youths? GOAL! Many other shared their opinions on the amendment of the minimum voting age. Agrees and disagree, here and there. People replying to each other, talking about the pros and cons of it. It looks to me that the young politician grabbed their attention. With that, I end this post with a conclusion that using social media to share topics about politics are very useful and can help encourage the people, especially youths to participate.

List of References:

Renfree, M 2016, Campaign communications: a look at obama’s social media success, PRNews, viewed 13 October 2019, https://www.prnewsonline.com/obama-social-media.

BT, 2016,  Young people now use social media more than TV as a news source, BT, viewed 13 October 2019, http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/tech-news/young-people-now-use-social-media-more-than-tv-as-a-news-source-11364067999120.

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Tumblr: Blog or Social Networking Site?

What are my thoughts about Tumblr?

I never dive deeply into this platform, though it is recently needed to be use for my Digital Communities unit. Now, the question is, what is Tumblr? If you look at the About page in Tumblr, they define Tumblr as our canvas where we are allowed to post text, photos, GIFs, videos, live videos, audio and anything else.

I myself have followed some users with different contents that I like such as arts, photography and celebrities. As I scroll through the dashboard, I see tons of different content formats – memes, videos, short and long texts. It reminds me of Twitter. Besides posting contents, I am able to share or ‘reblog’ other user’s content, it will appear in my profile and letting my followers see it, just like Twitter where we can retweet and let others see what we have shared. But in Twitter, the characters we typed are only limited to 240 characters, unlike Tumblr as we can write one whole essay in one post – which reminds me of Facebook. Though, Facebook is used more like a private social site for me as the friends I have there are family members and the posts I upload there would be more of my private life. The way I see Tumblr is just like what their About page said. I can be myself by sharing creative contents like photos that I think can inspire others. What is even more awesome about this platform is that I can customize the appearance of my profile but most social media sites has limited design flexibility except for changing our profile picture and cover photo. The whole customising the profile thing now reminds me of the old traditional Blogspot.  So is it a blogging platform or a social networking site?

Is Tumblr a Blog?

My answer is yes. What is a blog? A blog can be an online journal of information website showing posts in the reverse chronological order with the latest post appears on top of the old ones (Skrba, 2019). It is a platform where views on a particular subject shared by the a single or group of writers.  Traditional blogging usually was just a lot of writing and some photos in it. Users can write in Tumblr but make it more highly visual and putting photos, GIFs, memes and videos in their post. With the attractive feature Tumblr offers, a creative teams who wants a strong emphasise on their brand (if they do have one) and make their ‘blog’ look presentable, they can create a specific designs and details on their profile, either by the pre-existing theme or custom built. Users who used Tumblr as their blog can also engage with their audience as the readers can comment on their posts. If I use as a blog, I will not worry about reaching more readers as Tumblr has the reblog feature and hashtags!

Is Tumblr a Social Networking Site?

My answer is also yes. Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration (Rouse 2010). With Tumblr, people can connect globally and the best way to find people with the same interest as yours is to use the hashtags or just simply search in Tumblr. Users can post random contents every day for no purpose at all but just to simply share it with their followers. For instance, one day you took a video of your cat and thought that it is funny. You post it. The next day, you went out eating a delicious burger then took photos of it and share it. Your followers can like, comment and even reblog it! And you can do the same thing on your friend’s post that you followed on Tumblr. 

In conclusion, Tumblr can be both a blogging platform and a social network. You choose. It really depends on what purpose you are using it for. 

List of References:

Tumblr, 2007, Tumblr is where your interests connect you with your people, Tumblr, viewed on 13 October 2019, https://www.tumblr.com/about>.

Rouse, M 2019, Social media, TechTarget, viewed on 13 October 2019, https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/social-media.