Tweeting Ferguson: how social media can (and cannot) facilitate protest
Riot policemen clash with protesters near the Fire Station in Ferguson, Mo., Nov. 24, 2014. (EPA/Alexey Furman) As America awakes to the morning after protests in Ferguson and across the country, much will be made of the role played by social media in those protests (see for example here, here, and here.) At NYU’s Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) laboratory, we’ve been spending a lot of time over the past year thinking about the ways in which social media can impact the decision of an individual to join a protest (primarily examining data from Ukraine and Turkey). Social media, therefore, can play an important role in facilitating protest by making it easier for individuals to acquire information. Information about the planned and actual location and timing of protests Information about how safe participation is (is there violence? In addition to providing information about the protests, social media might affect people’s motivation to participate in the protest.
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Twitter, Facebook, and social activism
At four-thirty in the afternoon on Monday, February 1, 1960, four college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. They were freshmen at North Carolina A. & T., a black college a mile or so away. “I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” one of the four, Ezell Blair, said to the waitress. “We don’t serve Negroes here,” she replied. The Woolworth’s lunch counter was a long L-shaped bar that could seat sixty-six people, with a standup snack bar at one end. By next morning, the protest had grown to twenty-seven men and four women, most from the same dormitory as the original four. By the following Monday, sit-ins had spread to Winston-Salem, twenty-five miles away, and Durham, fifty miles away. The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. These are strong, and puzzling, claims. Some of this grandiosity is to be expected. What makes people capable of this kind of activism? This pattern shows up again and again.
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Activism Or Slacktivism? How Social Media Hurts And Helps Student Activism | St. Louis Public Radio
On Oct. 1, 1964, hundreds of University of California-Berkeley students surrounded a police car to protest the arrest of a student. Students stood on top of the car to deliver speeches and sing, “We Shall Overcome,” to a crowd that grew to include roughly two thousand students. Years later, on Nov. 21, 2013, students gathered in Saint Louis University’s student union for “The State of St. Louis,” an event planned by a SLU's Political Roundtable. Students sat around tables instead of standing on cars, but that’s not the only difference between student activism today and the sit-ins of the past. While Political Roundtable has 126 supporters on Facebook, roughly 30 students attended their event. What Is “Slacktivism”? Slacktivism is a term for giving token support for a cause, like wearing a pin or “liking” something on Facebook, without being willing to engage in more meaningful support, like donating time or money. Kirk Kristofferson is one of the authors of the study. Back at SLU, T.K.
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How our activists view social media | Power to the People | DW.DE | 27.05
Opposition politician Amr Badr from Egypt Modern communication strategy platforms such as twitter and facebook had a great influence on protest movements as they facilitated reaching a larger number of protesters and eased organizing protests in addition to media coverage. However, it is hard to reach older demographics, the poor and illiterate people who cannot or do not have access to such communication platforms. Greek lawyer Lila Bellou Social media and the internet (blogs etc.) help the dissemination of information and contribute to the pluralism of ideas and opinions, which the traditional mass media (TV, newspapers) can’t offer. Ukrainian journalist Tetiana Chornovol Every medium is important for the development of a protest movement, and there is no doubt that twitter and facebook have a contributing role. Isabelle Magkoeva, Japanese teacher from Russia The problem is that in countries ruled by dictators there is hardly any free and independent mass media.
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What you need to know about social media activism
Protests in the Middle East, known as "The Arab Spring," echoed around the world. On Friday, December 17, 2010, a fruit vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi covered himself in flammable liquid and lit a match. His body was quickly engulfed in flames and, despite attempts to save his life, Bouazizi died on January 4th, 2011. He was 26 years old. Like how Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức's self-immolation in Saigon nearly 50 years earlier represented the frustration of many Vietnamese, Bouazizi's action became symbolic of a much larger frustration in Tunisian society. What happened next, however, was a product of modern times: Word spread of Bouazizi's action through social networks, with Facebook specifically becoming a flashpoint for protest organizations across the country. The term "social media activism" is ambiguous. In the case of Tunisia, Facebook was the social service of choice, with hackers, protesters and everyday Tunisians using the service collaboratively.
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