Social Media: America’s Strongest Social Justice Warrior

#BlackLivesMatter #TimesUp #MeToo #LoveWins #FreeKodak

These are just a sample of hashtags you could find on the Twittersphere any given day, each one of them backing their own cause for social justice and equality.

As theorized in Joshua Meyrowitz’s book No Sense of Place, as our primary forms of mass communication shift and become more and more integrated with the day-to-day lives of younger generations, how we collectively act as a society does as well. Written in 1985, Meyrowitz focuses primarily on how television helped shape our culture in the 1960’s and 70’s when television became widely accessible to American families. Much akin to observing the first generations being raised with a television set in their house, we are currently experiencing a very similar phenomenon with the increased usage of cell phones and the internet among our youth.

One thing that the earliest environmental movements, women’s liberation movements and anti-war movements all had in common is that they gained traction through broadcasting footage of the movements to anyone willing to tune-in on their TV screens. As more and more news reports about these movements were shown to the American populous, people were quickly beginning to realize the impact that these revolutions could have on the country, which encouraged more people to support the cause.

Compared to the early years of television, the use of the internet has shown a genuine potential to become even more influential among our country’s population. Whereas television audiences of the 60’s and 70’s were subjected to simply sit down in their living room and monitor whatever the network decided to air that evening, internet users are able to research anything that interests them. As well as having the capability of seeking out information according to their own agenda, they also possess the ability to interact with others in an online community of people that share similar interests, which was unattainable in past years.

With such a vast population of users, Twitter is quickly becoming a hotbed for social awareness and activism. Simply by adding a hashtag such as “#TimesUp”, users can immediately become far more engaged with a social movement than had they just been watching a news broadcast about the movement. After sending a tweet with the hashtag they desire, a user’s thoughts can be read by anyone who decides to search for that same hashtag, which can immediately spark a dialogue between two people who otherwise would’ve never interacted with one another.

Along with the online community of social saviors being larger and more active than it ever has before, it is now easier for information to spread like wildfire than at any previous time in human history. Take the story of Eric Garner for example. In 2014 — towards the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement — New York City resident Eric Garner was captured on video being choked to death by officers in the New York Police Department after repeatedly pleading, “I can’t breathe”. Numerous videos of the incident (or, murder) were captured and then posted on social media for the rest of the world to see. This occurrence was one of the first events to help catapult the Black Lives Matter movement to the forefront of American culture and the many movements consuming our current nationwide revolutions, and it was all because of the medium in which it was shown through.

As the bold arrow of time marches forward, our technology will continue to progress alongside with it. Seeing as social media is a relatively brand-new medium in the grand scheme of all of human history, there’s no real reason to believe that it’ll slow down anytime soon. In the past five years (roughly the time Twitter became a commonly accessed tool) our country has seen the rise of new movements and socially aware citizens, focusing on things such as: gender inequality, gay rights activism, racial inequality and the worldwide refugee crisis.

Until there is a new medium that’s even more accessible and inclusive than social media is, it is imperative to continue using social media as a way to promote rights for all of those who deserve them, and it doesn’t look like it’ll be leaving us anytime soon.