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These images represent what the media is capable of doing in today’s time. From making you famous to showing you some footage of someone being murdered. These images are just examples of how the media has made change but there are also examples of what still needs to be modified. Some things should not be easily accessed by children online and other things are not as important nor deserve the whole world’s attention such as a child yodeling or a young girl disrespecting her mother.

   Daniel Bregoli photo: https://medium.com/applied-intersectionality/mainstream-society-cooks-cultural-appropriation-best-cash-me-ousside-how-bow-dah-16f0448917be

Walmart Yodeling kid: http://people.com/music/yodeling-kid-coachella-performance/

Black Lives Matter: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Black_Lives_Matter_protest.jpg

Eric Garner : http://www.silive.com/northshore/index.ssf/2014/09/post_104.html

Trayvon Martin: https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/05/us/trayvon-martin-shooting-fast-facts/index.html

Michael Brown: https://kickshow.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/no-indictment/

[julizagracesqui-blog]

Juliza Gracesqui

March 22nd 2018

MCS 244

Digital Essay

 The Impact of Social Media

             Social Media has impacted our world with so much change throughout these last couple of years. Without it, we would probably not have all the change that we’ve made already. Social media plays a big role in today’s time with any news, movement, argument, gossip, sales, etc. People throughout all over the world are using this platform to express their opinions and beliefs, causing a frenzy all throughout the different social media websites. This essay will analyze the film Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement and how social media and the media (news broadcast) played a big role in the black lives matter organization. I will also be analyzing how the 5 C’s discussed in the text book Converging Media: A new introduction to mass communication play a role too in the Black Lives Matter movement and today’s society.

           The film Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement is a film that inform its viewers of the Black Lives Matter movement. The film shows us rallies, police brutality, black people (including children) being killed but the person behind the gun acquitted of his or her charges, and we also see a lot of brutal racism that still goes on in our country. Social media is one of the main platforms where the Black lives matter movement is spoken about. If you search the hashtag #Blacklivesmatter on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, snapchat, you’ll find thousands of police brutality videos, people giving their opinion on the black lives matter topic, videos of victims being killed, people sharing their stories, and it goes on. An article I found on wired.com states “Any large social movement is shaped by the technology available to it and tailors its goals, tactics, and rhetoric to the media of its time.” Any movement in today’s time revolves around social media. It’s just how things work now.

I personally learned about the movement online by watching the fatal videos of the deaths of Sandra Bland who was shot in her car, Eric Garner who was chocked to death, Freddie Gray who died while in police custody, Michael Brown who was shot in the middle of the street, Treyvon Martin who was shot because he “looked suspicious”, the list goes on and these deaths were viewed throughout social media. These videos all went viral while thousands of people saw and expressed their opinion. That’s where the Black Lives Matter movement started. One person expressed her opinion and started the hashtag #Blacklivesmatter that lead people to start fighting for change. In the film, we see some of the rallies that happened in Charlotte, Ferguson and other parts of the nation while we also learn of the importance of this movement.

           The 5 C’s that are mentioned in the text Converging Media: A new introduction to mass communication (pages 197–199) are Choice, Conversation, Curation, Creation, and Collaboration. Quoting the definitions from the text: “The public has far more media Choices than in the past and far more options of media styles and genres than ever before. (page 197, Choice paragraph)”, “From the earliest days of the internet, conversation was important, and it continues to be a defining characteristic of social media. (page 197, Conversation paragraph) “Classifying content happens through an activity such as tagging or creating folksonomies of definitions. (page 198, Curation paragraph”, “The digital-media tools that facilitate the creation of content have played a major role in the rise of user-generated media content. (page 199, Creation Paragraph) and lastly “The willingness to collaborate on a common good for no personal monetary gain is perhaps one of the biggest surprises one encounters when examining social media. (page 199, Collaboration paragraph). The 5 C’s all play a role in the Black Lives Matter movement because you make the choice to express your opinion online, you converse with other about what you agree a or disagree with, curating the information of this movement and passing it on with a like or tag, creating a war and lesson that will impact the world, and finally collaborating with thousands of people that feel the same way as you do. Making a change.

           In conclusion, these are just some of the examples that prove how social media has helped developed the Black Lives Matter movement. Not only are the 5 C’s playing a role but social platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook are voicing opinions, and making change.

           Work Cited :

·      Stephen, B. (2017, May 01). How Black Lives Matter Uses Social Media to Fight the Power. Retrieved March 22, 2018, from https://www.wired.com/2015/10/how-black-lives-matter-uses-social-media-to-fight-the-power/

·      V. (2017, April 08). Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement documentary (2016). Retrieved March 22, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIoYtKOqxeU

·      Yan, H. (2017, May 04). 'Black Lives Matter' cases: When controversial killings lead to change. Retrieved March 22, 2018, from https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/04/us/black-lives-matter-updates-may-2017/index.html

·      Pavlik, J. V., & MacIntosh, S. (2018). Converging media: A new introduction to mass communication. New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  #BLACKLIVESMATTER