Micah's Response 4/4

On my Facebook feed, I often have friends who are proponents for specific types of protests.  On the rare occasion that I peruse my news-feed, I will see posts like, “If you are against animal cruelty please like this post and re-post it on your wall; the animals need you!” Or I will see things like, “If you support this nations veterans, then you must re-post this!” Well I’m definitely not a fan of animal cruelty, and I most definitely support our troops, but what happens if I don’t re-post? Have I hindered the progress of important social issues?

Today, people have the opportunity to become pseudo-journalists every time they post an update or tweet a comment. If we look at the success of the protests in Egypt, we can see how popularity of the events on Facebook correlated with the amount of media coverage.  At times, news stations were even covering the different Facebook quotes that described the violence at the protests. Although this is a good example of how social media works to help protests, how helpful is social media for your everyday Facebook cry for help? If I started a newsfeed or tweet that called for the fair treatment of circus clowns and found 100,000 people who reposted and “liked” my cry for help, how much media coverage would I receive? The answer – none.

 Larson discusses, “Instead, they were a part of the emerging ideology that would soon become the dominant one.” In other words, the agenda of the majority influences the change and reforms we see that are created with social media.  The need for change in Egypt already existed and was felt by the majority of the people. Unfortunately, the existence of a problem does not necessarily mean that a change will occur.  Fortunately for the Civil Rights Movement, the northern majority were already starting to see the need for change – this is when the news coverage was in abundance; media coverage follows popularity. In modern terms, not only did enough people “like” the status and felt compelled to repost, but also these people were a part of the dominant the discourse and were very popular on Facebook.

Unfortunately, I am not very popular on Facebook.  I only have 140 friends (I only talk to about 30), and my niece tells me that this number does not make me a very popular person on the Internet. So the clowns will have to wait for now until I increase my number to at least 180.  Or, maybe I can alter my aspirations of clown freedom and join the dominant conversation on Gun Control; maybe then my voice will be heard.