Consider what you have learned about collective behaviour, social movements, and social change this week. How is the global expansion of social media likely to affect how people pursue social change? How has it done so already? Use specific examples as you analyze social movements, social change, technology, and the media.
Student 1:
Social media has come along way since the days of MySpace with nearly 1.5 billion Facebook users signing in every day. The ability to spread a campaign or a message across the world is only the click of a button away. Social media has become a platform for social change that is unmatched in today’s technology driven age. Examples of past times where social media was used to make a positive impact on the world are easily identifiable.
In 2010 when the 7.0 magnitude earth quake rocked Haiti killing 220,000 people and destroying 250,000 residences, Facebook and Twitter launched fundraising support campaigns. The American Red Cross collected over $7 million dollars in 24 hours from people sending in $10 donations using their cell phones. Even online poker sights donated winnings and entry fees to relief efforts. Same type of thing happened with the Kony 2012 campaigned which created enough buzz on social media to become a resolution in the House of Representatives. After the Boston Marathon Bombing, the FBI was able to use a photo shared by the man who took it to be shared on Facebook. The photo went viral and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother were identified not shortly after. Today people have the ability to donate their birthday gifts to various charities through Facebook.
Social media can harbor a lot of negative attention, but its potential to spread awareness and make an impact in the world is unmatched. No where else do people have to ability to blast something out to everyone with internet access then on social media. Even U.S. officials and the President make sure to have an active presence on social media because of its far reach in society. If people want to make a change in the world or even just their own society, they turn to social media first.
Student 2:
The global expansion of social media is already affecting how people pursue social change in multiple ways. Social media outlets such as twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. has practically doubled over the years in percentage. The using of hashtags is the movement to spread awareness online regarding social issues embraced and defined as important by well-known public figures and ordinary people alike (Chambliss & Eglitis, 2016, p. 475).Hashtags are being seen all over social media. In a 2014 campaign that was started in response to the kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from a Nigerian boarding school. Through online resources they initiated #BringBackOurGirls which turned into a global movement that accrued over two million tweets (Chambliss & Eglitis, 2016, p. 475). To me these types of movements are affecting people in a positive and negative type of way. While there are things that social media are good for there also the bad things that bring on more hate and negativity that doesn’t need to be there. I feel the most current social movements that have been happening are for pure stardom and fame and not really getting across what the true meaning of what they’re doing is. You don’t need to march through streets, set fires and rally to make a change, it’s only caused more problems in the world.
Student 3:
For this final week I chosen question one. Living up north east of the country and having family in Brooklyn, NY I have seen how companies and real state have turned Brooklyn into the new Manhattan. Old buildings, houses and commercial areas have been revitalized to the extent of being so expensive to live in. Even doe it has brought a lot of jobs it has become so expensive to live that the lower and some of the middle class have to move due to not being able to afford it. Just think how sad it is for those that lived there all their life and their how social change will affect their entire sociological perspective and the way they live their daily life.
I research a NIMBY protest that did not win their dispute against the Brightline train company. According to PersaudTwitter, Chris from Forefront “Inside a massive West Palm Beach garage, sleek yellow and silver train cars outfitted with high-tech controls and plush leather seats sit and wait. Manufactured by Siemens in a new California plant and owned by All Aboard Florida, a subsidiary of one of Florida’s oldest real estate, infrastructure and rail companies, the train doesn’t look like anything the United States has seen before. It isn’t. When the custom-built, high-speed “Brightline” coaches start running later this year, they will be the nation’s first privately run trains in more than 30 years – and the first ever in a new generation of fast, privately operated U.S. rail.” The plan is to reach Orlando, Florida and their attractions. The main benefits will be to have about 3 million cars less on the roads. It will help tremendously with the three mayor cities in south Florida.
While this has its advantages there are counties like Indian River and Martin that have spent millions of tax payer money to fight and not have this train made. But their attempt did not have any success. Their main concern was to not trains got through their towns and changing there social and relax community.
I personally agree with trying to find ways to make our cities better but I also think we should not hurt the innocent and hard-working families that will be affected by the change.
Student 4:
For this week’s forum, I have chosen to write about topic number two. From what we learned in our lesson, the global expansion of social media is and will continue to influence collective behavior, social movements and social change. Because of the large number of people that can accessed through social medial and integrated into a group to influence their collective behavior, the effects are compounded in comparison to pre-social media outlets. For this reason, it only makes since that these influencers can take advantage of the social theories we learned in our lesson. For example, the contagion theory believes that individual acts contiguous and spread across a group of people. Social media can streamline these effects causing quick violent or peaceful group movements and the fallout from this can cause social change to take place before it can be controlled. I do not think I can find a better example of this than when President Trump ran for President. The Republican Party went back and forth on whether or not they wanted Donald Trump to represent their party, but because he understood the power of social media he was able to force the party to recognize him as the candidate by influencing mass groups of people. I am not sure if he understood what he was doing, but he has caused a social movement within America that is bringing on change to how the government communicates with Americans and the world. Social media continues to be a pipeline to start social movements that effect social change. Just recently CNN reported that protestors at the University of North Carolina knocked down a confederate statue on campus. This movement really took hold in America after the Charleston Church Shooting in 2015 and continues to gain traction through media and news outlets with similar examples around the states. These are just a few examples, but we will continue to see more across the world as more and more people gain access to social media outlets. The use of social media is as bad as it is good since false information can be disseminated through the same outlets causing negative impact to social change. Take the shooting at the a pizza restaurant in northwest Washington that ignited Edgar M. Welch to try to shoot the owners because he read on Facebook that they were running a children sex slave and child abuse ring. Had he been successful and this taken root, others might have followed him causing major damage to the social stability in America.
