The Technological Impact on Activism
The world today has been shifting towards the direction moving society to a more online world. People have access to news and everything with the click of a few buttons and not only are they given access to this information, people are allowed to share their thoughts for others to hear on social media. Social media has given people the ability to share thoughts on any topic to whoever they choose to hear it. Some people are sharing thoughts to 15 people, while others share thoughts to 15 million people. This has played a huge role in the world today, because so many people are on these sites, they use this as a source of information to learn about many issues. The article discussing the case for digital activism talks a lot about the power digital activism has, because people have the ability to post videos and share things going on in the real world to show issues and spark protests.
There are both positives and negatives to digital activism. The positives outweigh the negatives in this case due to the fact that it gives people access to more than just the news, but it allows them to hear the voices of everyday people. It also allows them to have their own voice and gives the choice to use it or not, some people prefer to just read through what other people think, while some people prefer to express their thoughts on issues by writing about it. It allows people to connect and relate and also debate on things where people disagree. It is an open platform for expression in most cases as long as they follow the guidelines put out. The one main negative is that it is not always the most credible source of information since people are allowed to put whatever they want out there, and if someone uses social media as a source of information this can lead to misinformation.
To continue off the idea that it gives people a voice and also an audience willing to listen. The most common platform for digital activism is Twitter, just because it has become the place to share all types of media. An interesting point made by DeRay McKesson that is sort of opposite to the negative I mentioned in the previous paragraph. I talked about how the credentials of people who posted on social media can often times lead to misinformation, but he states that people would not look at data the same way without digital activism. Basically relating to police related deaths and homicides are often times not as clear in local media, because they would not report a homicide if it was a police shooting, so the way that people analyze data online can help bring information that was not apparent in things like local media. Things posted on social media are able to attract national attention if enough people see it, which makes it the most effective way for regular people to express themselves.
