Social Activism through Twitter

As Rotman, Vieweg, Yardi, Chi, Preece, Shneiderman, and Glaisyer point out, social media provides a forum for action that delivers value on a daily basis (2011).

It offers a free and open global village in which citizens have free will and can improve real-time social impact. Opponents say that social media activism (’hashtag activism’) is ineffective since it involves engaging parties with whom one only has virtual interactions. But, my experience with social media this semester through Twitter showed otherwise. Twitter is a social and news networking website where users engage with one another through messages known as ’tweets’ (Rotman et. al., 2011). Originally the ‘tweet’ characters were restricted to only 140, but were later adjusted to 280, making the platform even more reliable in terms of communicating social activism information. Amidst only a few challenges, I was able to conduct several policy discussions in my areas of interest, especially with regards engaging in anti-terrorism social on it again. It was surprising how many ‘retweets’ I managed to garner, in addition to many new followers; to be precise, 18 new people followed me on the first day of ‘tweet’.

Social Activism through Twitter

Social media is mostly used by the 21st century young generation and marks the most common practice for the age group (Rotman et. al., 2011). Most of my ‘retweets’ were done by fellow university students, classmates and a number of ‘tweets’ came from people below the age of 30 according to my research. I managed to get invites from anti-terrorism activists who wanted me to join their other social network forums such as Facebook towards the same campaign. It was as if I had become a celebrity within only a week after tweeting the words, “Justice will be Served in Heaven for Stephen Paddock and other Terrorists.” Stephen Paddock was the suspected gunman who conducted the mass shootings in Las Vegas.

The media attention I received depicts how effective twitter is in advancing social activism. I found out that everyone knew about Stephen Paddock, despite the fact that through my tweet I had not mentioned who he was. Many people had come to know the perpetrator through social media, especially twitter, making the campaign against terrorism effective, especially concerning extremism awareness. Moreover, through the array of messages I received, I learned that the number of people who had died in the incident was about 58. I had never known this before. As such, twitter, as a social media, is also effective for learning since it allows for immediate feedback, an aspect which forums such as television networks and newspapers do not cater for.

A number of people who started following me on twitter have also been asking how they can be engaged as anti-terrorism activists. I managed to connect them with the group that invited me to join their anti-extremism Facebook forum earlier. This facet exhibited just one scenario amongst many on how twitter can help to make social activism become real. Users became not only aware of terrorism but also got influenced to practice as anti-terrorism activists, moved by some of the comments on my tweet. The ordeal motivated my intentions of becoming a ‘hash tag’ social activist.

Limitations of Using Twitter as a Social Activism Tool

Lesser impact than other Social Forums

Twitter users have often argued that all social media engage users in a similar manner across the board. However, Facebook has got more population than twitter. Currently at more than 2 billion active users, Facebook is the most populated social media forum (Ulanat and Jacob, 2017). Moreover, the Facebook users are more active as compared to twitter. This posed a challenge to me because in comparison to fellow anti-terrorism activists who used other social media platforms, my influence was lower. Despite the comparative low impact, however, I still preferred twitter. The latter attracts a more learned and enlightened group as compared to other media forums.

Insufficient Follow-Ups (Seasonal Influence)

Ineffective and insufficient follow-ups are characteristics that equally cut across all social media platforms. Many people only press the ‘like’ button for activist ‘tweets’ and become aware of them but fail to follow up later. Twitter, the social media platform I used, only created instant awareness that disappeared from the mind after the tweet incidences. I attracted new followers each day. However, the tweet which I pinned to my personal forum did not attract repeat influence. For instance, amongst the people who commented on the first day, only less than 10 were more permanently influenced. As such, twitter only creates short-term appeal with regards to social activism.

Conclusion

During the semester, I engaged twitter as a social media with the aim of enhancing anti-terrorism as my area of interest in social activism. The forum posed numerous advantages and a few demerits as well. On the one hand, twitter proved to be an effective media in attracting influence and popularity in social activism. It was effective in spreading my activism message to many people. At the same time, I faced challenges, one of which was the fact that twitter only attracted a ‘temporary’ influence appeal which disappeared with the seasonality of the tweet. Additionally, while comparing myself with fellow social media activists, I wished I had also used Facebook because of the large number of users it has established as compared to twitter.

References

Rotman, D., Vieweg, S., Yardi, S., Chi, E., Preece, J., Shneiderman, B., ... & Glaisyer, T. (2011, May). From slacktivism to activism: participatory culture in the age of social media. In CHI’11 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 819-822). ACM.

Ulanat, M., & Jacob, K. P. (2017). Facilitating Brand Promotion Through Online Social Media: A Business Case Study. In Hybrid Intelligence for Social Networks (pp. 207-225). Springer, Cham.

Wintemute, G. J. (2017). What you can do to stop firearm violence. Annals of internal medicine.