Changing the World One Click at a Time

Social media plays both a positive and negative role in contemporary social movements and activism. What social media does that was not able to happen in the past is that it gives different movements a platform to voice their opinions. The views that may not be popular or covered in everyday mainstream media, television, news shows, etc. are given a place where they can be heard and made public to people all throughout the world, so in a sense no voice can be silenced. Social media allows more people to get on board and contributes to a large number of participates included in the activism with connective examples such as hashtags or re-sharing the information. The downfall of the contemporary form of social media activism as I stated in class is that while yes it builds numbers but it does not build commitment to such social movements. What I mean by this is social media activity is very non-progressive. People may just like a post or share the post with other or even join different online groups but this commitment does not translate to the real world. An example of this would be the past presidential election and its outcome. There were many movements and groups of people who were against Trump and his campaign tactics as a result a lot of online protest and movements against him being elected came into fruition. In the end these online tactics did not translate to the real world outcome and he was not only the republican presidential nominee but became elected president as well. So although I believe social media plays an important role in activism today, movements can not base themselves with a social and more is needed in order for these activist to create a real change in an everyday environment.

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