With internet advancement as well as increasing availability of technological devices, the number of social media users around the world has surged. According to eMarketer, a digital market research company, Instagram alone currently has approximately 1.07 billion users worldwide. As such, social media has become a popular platform where users can rapidly share information, creating opportunities for activism. With speed and a multitude of users, social media has been contributing to activism by putting social issues that may once have remained a regional problem into the global spotlight.
Police brutality, protests, and school shootings, among others, are all recent issues that have covered the feeds of all social media platforms. In fact, platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have substantially contributed to putting these issues in the limelight. For instance, during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020, millions of people uploaded posts in support of the movement after a video showing the death of George Floyd, a victim of police brutality, surfaced on the internet. Moreover, while people protested throughout the United States (U.S.), the online community created the #blackouttuesday campaign, where users posted a black square image to their feed with the hashtag to show solidarity with the black community.
It is notable how social media has evolved from platforms for sharing personal interests and daily life into major players at raising awareness of relevant problems. People who support communities through such methods share information with the objective of spreading awareness of issues that would otherwise be buried. Hashtags and “trending” sections allow users to learn of important issues easily, while pictures, videos, data, and personal stories elevate empathy. Social media has become a tool for activism that does not necessarily require in-person participation, since it gives people an easy outlet to keep them informed immediately and participate without constraints.
Others, on the contrary, maintain that participating only in the virtual world through hashtags and posts does not truly benefit the struggling communities or individuals in question. Instead, they regard it as an act of self-gratification or a result of peer pressure. From their perspective, the main objective of posting is to avoid feeling guilt for not participating and to satisfy egos.
Does it matter, however, whether a person is sincere when acting in support of a community online? Can it be said that all people who participate in in-person activism as opposed to social media activism are sincere? There is no way of knowing the real intention behind an action. Nevertheless, it is a fact that posting information about an issue spreads awareness, even if its effect may be minimal. Not every social movement, protest, or event is well-known; however, with social media they become easier to approach and support. For instance, the Uyuni concentration camp in China was not well-known globally until it spread through news and social media outlets. This is also how online activism is meaningful; an injustice becomes an issue when multiple people share and know about it. Social media acts as a medium where we can send a message: “We are watching.”
Regardless of a person’s real objective when participating in social media activism, posting relevant information *does* spread awareness and, consequently, instigates in-person social movements. If people all over the world did not participate online during the BLM protests, police brutality and racist profiling in the U.S. might not have gathered the attention needed despite it being a recurring problem. If silence persists, so will injustice.