Social Media Activism
More recently, these virtual protests have been mainly affiliated with race and police shootings, but can be anything from gun laws to gay marriage. As a social media user, I have found that the most popular platform for social media activism is Twitter because of its easy accessibility. In the article we read, the author says, “Accessing and spreading useful information is as easy as opening one’s preferred Twitter app and hitting the retweet button a few times while waiting in line at the movies or riding the subway to work.”
Since race is a popular topic and seems to bring more controversy than most other topics modernly, black twitter users tend to use Twitter when talking about race related issues. In the past year or so, multiple police shootings have been reported involving a black male and a death. After situations like these, Twitter goes crazy. The black community on twitter becomes very active and addresses the issue by taking the side of the victim and asking for racial justice. All this together is a way of social media activism, in which a specific community is standing up for something and instead of protesting in the streets: they use Twitter andy other social media platforms to protest.