Topic: Civil unrest
Research question: Does social media help or hurt people’s willingness to protest?
If you were to ask me or probably any of my peers, we’d say that social media has a ginormous influence on our lives; most of us likely use at least one social media platform every day. Based on this and what I see between myself and my peers, I think social media is the zeitgeist of our generation. And this led me to start thinking about the relationship between civil unrest, specifically protesting, and social media. I’ve heard about events like the revolution in Egypt in 2011 which was mostly organized through Facebook and other cases where social media played a huge role in the success of protests and even revolutions, so I can’t deny that social media can help people’s willingness to protest. Although, I query if social media also has the potential to hurt people’s willingness to protest. I wonder if an individual tweeting or posting about their dissent towards the government or an institution or what have you, makes an individual feel like they’ve played their part and thus don’t feel the need to protest.
Based on my research and the results of past protests, it is undeniable social media has the potential to help and inspire people to protest for something they believe in. Platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter connect people with people from within their communities and with the entire world like never before. Anyone with a phone or computer has the potential to talk to anyone and share their thoughts and opinions. This gives a voice to people who haven’t had the chance to speak or be heard. And when there’s a large group of people who feel their oppressed and/or share grievances about an institution, social media allows them to talk to each other about these issues, and in cases like in Egypt in 2011, organize a revolution against the institution that oppresses them. All in all, social media makes it easier for oppressed groups to join together and share their opinions.
In addition to this, social media makes it easier for these oppressed groups to organize protests without institutions like their governments finding out. While some strict governments, such as Russia or China, have the power and resources to monitor certain social media platforms for serious things like a major protest or revolution and potentially censor or suppress dissent, they can’t monitor everywhere and see everything. This means social media can be an effective way to express dissent towards even the most powerful governments without them finding out, as long the people expressing their dissent do it low-key and privately. This could be something like a private Instagram page or Facebook group. Although, not all governments have the power and resources to monitor social media platforms for dissent. People could openly share their opinions without fear of persecution. And through the uses of hashtags and the like, large groups of people can organize, share, and bring awareness to events like protests or revolutions. According to Ajay Seebaluck in the paper “How Social Media Affects The Dynamics of Protest”, the Internet has a positive relationship with social protests. In a study regarding Africa and the introduction of widespread Internet availability, the availability and usage of Internet lead to an increase in the number of social protests. Having the resources for mass communication is also crucial to triggering widespread mobilization for protesting.
Now that I’ve established social media has the potential to aid people’s pursuit of social reform/protest, I’m going to look into how social media can hurt people’s willingness to protest and how it can fail to bring about change. Just putting out a tweet about your dissenting opinion or support for a cause isn’t always enough to bring about change. Sometimes mass awareness and support through social media for a reform fails to translate to real life change. A big example of this is the “Kony2012” movement that occurred 7 years ago. According to the Washington Post, The organization Invisible Children put out a video in 2012 entitled “Kony 2012” to raise awareness about the African warlord Joesph Kony and his usage of child soldiers in central Africa and Uganda. The video went on to go viral and accumulated well over 100 million views and people all over the world were spreading the video and the hashtag #Kony2012. With the help of the massive following of supporters on social media, Invisible Children organized an event called “Cover The Night”, which encouraged people worldwide to go out and put up Kony 2012 posters in their communities on the night of April 20th, 2012. Despite the huge following and support on social media, “Cover The Night” received very little support the night of. Only a fraction of the large amount of people who pledged to participate actually ended up participating and the whole movement lost credibility. As time went on, people started forgetting all about the Kony 2012 movement, and Joseph Kony is still out there today.
Regardless of the massive support on social media and awareness that came with it, the Kony2012 movement ultimately ended being a failure. The goal of the movement to bring Kony to justice was not met and no real change came from the whole event, aside from it becoming a joke. In contrast to the movements in Egypt and the rest of Africa, social media isn’t always enough to bring about change.