Task One: Develop a clearer central claim to organize your information.

 

1. “But if the need for activism in another area isn’t as great, where the people are protesting for their own benefit and/or beliefs and not something that plays a major role in their lives, how much of a role does social media play in their movement? Does it help them reach their goal, or does it distract them for their goal through the illusion of “helping”?
   1. But if the need for activism in another area isn’t as great, where the people are protesting for their own benefit and/or beliefs and not something that plays a major role in their lives, how much of a role does social media play in their movement? Does it help them reach their goal, or does it distract them for their goal through the illusion of “helping?” I believe that social media plays an effective role in the aiding early phases of activism, i.e. organizing a protest or spreading the word about an upcoming movement, however, this is mostly the extent of its support. While social media may work magically to bring widespread attention to a movement, protest, etc., attention is only temporary, and once the attention dies down, as it inevitably will as all things do, the support social media has to offer to a movement/protest dies down as well. This is seen across several examples of activism, spanning from Egypt, to Chile, to the USA.
   2. How I addressed the issue: Instead of leaving the final piece of my introduction as a question, I brought forth an answer to these questions, that also doubled as my central claim. I introduced the main ideas I’ll be discussing later in my essay and the conclusions I ultimately draw from them. I then introduced the examples I use to justify my claims later on.

 

 

Task 2: Make clear what point you have about the efficacy of these movements in relation to social media.

 

1. “But if the need for activism in another area isn’t as great, where the people are protesting for their own benefit and/or beliefs and not something that plays a major role in their lives, how much of a role does social media play in their movement? Does it help them reach their goal, or does it distract them for their goal through the illusion of “helping”?
2. But if the need for activism in another area isn’t as great, where the people are protesting for their own benefit and/or beliefs and not something that plays a major role in their lives, how much of a role does social media play in their movement? Does it help them reach their goal, or does it distract them for their goal through the illusion of “helping?” I believe that social media plays an effective role in the aiding early phases of activism, i.e. organizing a protest or spreading the word about an upcoming movement, however, this is mostly the extent of its support. While social media may work magically to bring widespread attention to a movement, protest, etc., attention is only temporary, and once the attention dies down, as it inevitably will as all things do, the support social media has to offer to a movement/protest dies down as well.
3. How I addressed the issue: I understand this is the same bit from the last task, but it’s relevant for this task as well. I stated up-front the gist of the extent social media has to offer in relation to the activist movement as a whole. I also leave full of extent of social media open-ended by only saying it supports “dies down” and not “expires altogether”. This is to suggest that these claims I’m making are only my subjective opinion and observations.

 

2. “What this data shows us is while social media wasn’t the primary source of information where people initially heard of the protests, it was the main method used to spread information about the protests while they took place. It played a major role in documenting the protests and bringing awareness of the events taking place at the time.”
   1. This data gives an idea of the type of support social media offered in the case of this protest. The data shows that social media was the most dominant tool used to spread information about the protest, suggesting social media is effective in bringing in attention. Additionally, social media played a major role in the documentation of the protests while they took place. This suggests social media supports movements by acting as a sort of scribe, recording what’s happening at each protest every day. Documenting events like this is essential to keeping them in memory and history. Lastly, this data informs us that social media wasn’t the primary source of information where people heard about the protests. This shows how social media still isn’t the source of information for everybody, or at least not yet.
   2. How I addressed the issue: Previously I just plainly stated the data presented the efficiency of social media. I altered this so now I address each conclusion I drew from the data and what those conclusions suggested. I did this for the 3 conclusions I drew from the data; stating what they are and what they suggest.

 

3. “The effect of social media in these two examples of activism share many similarities. In both situations, social media was predominantly used as a tool for spreading information about their respective movements. Protestors were able to share how the protest is going in real-time and show to the world what’s happening, how people are feeling, and record any use of violence from their opposition. This is very important to keep a movement alive.”
   1. “The effect of social media in these two examples of activism share many similarities. In both situations, social media was predominantly used as a tool for spreading information about their respective movements. Protestors were able to share how the protest is going in real-time and show to the world what’s happening, how people are feeling, and record any use of violence from their opposition. Social media’s efficiency at spreading information and gaining attention to in both movements proves it’s potential to support activist movements and protest in their early stages.
   2. How I addressed the issue: I changed how I stated the overall extent of the effect and support of social media. I did much more clearly and explicitly stated where I think the extent of social media’s great support ends; at the end of the early stages. This relates to the claims I made in my (revised) extended introduction.

 

4. “Additionally, the main goal of the movement, to stop Kony and his militia, was never met as Kony is still at large to this day. Even despite its immense popularity on social media and mainstream media, the Kony2012 movement was still ultimately a failure.”
   1. Additionally, the main goal of the movement, to stop Kony and his militia, was never met as Kony is still at large to this day. Even despite its immense popularity on social media and mainstream media, the Kony2012 movement was still ultimately a failure. This further proves my point that social media has it’s a most effective support in the early stages of movements and protests; in this case, the whole movement was brought to national and worldwide attention solely because it was trending on Twitter and YouTube. The movement rode with the massive levels of support, however, this support ultimately died down as time went on and so did people. In the end, the movement failed to maintain the support it had and needed in order to reach any of the goals it set forth.
   2. How I addressed the issue: After addressing how the Kony movement ultimately ended up, I drew conclusions based on the movement to reinforce my claim that social media support only goes so far. I stated where social media helped the movement exceed and where it failed to be of any support.

 

Final Notes:

In my revisions, I confronted the issue that I had no centralized research questions associated with claims; in the third paragraph, (what I’ve called the end of the introductions), I connected the questions I already had presented earlier with claims that I make in response to these questions. I then give an overview of the example I use later in the paper in this same paragraph. Therefore, I think I should get the .5 of a Quality of Writing point for this. Thank You.