Social Media Activism
More recently, these virtual protests were mainly affiliated with race and police shootings, but it can be anything, from gun laws to gay marriage. As a social media user, I would say 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 brings more controversy than we would want it to, black twitter users tend to use Twitter when talking about race related issues. In the past year or so, multiple police shooting involved a black male and resulted in 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 or any other social media platform to protest on.