The battle for public opinion

    Social media has played a huge role in the 2020 civil rights movement and protests. Because information spreads like wildfire, so did the news and information for protests. Many protests happened during COVID, and it was still possible for people to advocate their views and to have their voices heard through the use of social media. As well, many people were able to post links to petitions, articles, and news sources, all relating to the events happening at the time. Without social media, it would only be possible to see the outrage in person or through news coverage (which is sometimes quite biased).

    With everyone joining Black Lives Matter protests, then came many incidents of police brutality. Luckily, because everyone nowadays has a smartphone, it was easy to record something if someone went out of control. Obviously, these videos would be posted to the internet and within a few days or less, the video would be viral. The number of horrifying videos demonstrating police brutality was truly shocking and extremely disturbing. Fortunately, these videos will not be forgotten and will forever be on the internet, so they will not be erased from history. Rather than textbooks and writing to document history, there will be many live videos and pictures of the incidents, which will give a clearer picture of what was going on.

    I think social media has done a lot of great things to raise awareness about these current events, but it can also lead to avoidance of real issues. Because people conform to their peer's use of social media, I saw many posts on Instagram stories, often of the same article or video, which is great! But what did it change besides bringing more awareness... to the same community of people who have seen the same exact post a few times earlier? I think that in many instances, people would post something like this for a superficial reason; to let their peers know that they too stand against these issues, instead of actually trying to make a change. The best example I can think of for this is #blackouttuesday, an Instagram trend in which people posted a black square with that exact hashtag, #BLM, or something similar. Of course, awareness is great but I think it also made it difficult for those using the hashtags to find relevant information.