Misconceptions of Movements
by Nadya Okamoto
The integration of social media into our everyday life has been tremendous in the way that it has given a platform for every user to have an amplified voice when it comes to advocacy. As stand-up comedians often joke, platforms like twitter essentially give you a megaphone to carry around and narrate what you are experiencing in your life. With the conflicts and injustices that are finally being highlighted in our world today, that megaphone is turning into an amplification of our voices that gives us power to speak up for or against something we strongly believe in. Social media also makes it possible for others to write words of support or disagreement openly in response.
The danger in movements that start from having roots in social media is that because people usually post short statements stating the critical point of their belief, it is usually singularly interpreted. This easily causes misconceptions that take the posted point very literally without consideration for the deeper meaning behind one’s belief. For example, with the Black Lives Matter movement, when people usually post about their support for the movement, or they share the horrendous Facebook videos of the police shooting with an angry response attacking the broken police system we live in, those people (and the movement) are then categorized as anti-police, and potentially against other races. Similarly, being pro-gun control can quickly be misconceived as meaning anti-gun ownership or anti-second amendment rights, being pro-choice can turn into meaning pro-abortion, and larger ideas like secularism can start to be interpreted as meaning anti-religion.
This tendency to translate a movement into a fight against another group, has also affected feminism and our own School of Doodle #BeLoud movement. Feminism, which is truly the belief in gender equality, is often misinterpreted as a fight against men. Feminists may have even heard comments of their being a “man-hater.” Similarly, our #BeLoud revolution is about amplifying the voices of teen girls because they have been filtered or oppressed too much in the past, and we are changing that. We are not trying to speak over the voices of other genders or other ages, instead we are just gaining confidence and ownership in the potential that our voices have. Because social media now plays such a key factor in the success and spread of an ideology or social justice movement, it is important that quick statements about the point of one’s arguments exist. However, it is important to search deeper and understand a diverse array of perspectives so that you can fully comprehend the truthful meaning of a movement.
