The Power of Social Media
On July 13, 2013, Alicia Garza watched as George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. In an attempt to voice her anger, she posted what she described as a love letter on Facebook that ended with “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter. Black lives matter.” Nearly 10 years later, Black Lives Matter is one of the most notable social movements of the 21st century. On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini was killed for allegedly wearing her headscarf improperly. Months later protests continue to sweep Iran. Black Lives Matter protests and the protests for Mahsa Amini have one key commonality: they were popularized by the Internet. Social media plays a key role in civic engagement and activism, exemplified by Black Lives Matter and the protests in Iran.
I remember opening Twitter back in September and seeing the hashtag #MahsaAmini trending. Curious about who that was and why that person was trending, I clicked on the hashtag. I scrolled through hundreds of tweets that contained images of medical scans, videos of police brutality, and quotes from her friends and family. In the following days, I would read CNN, New York Times, and Washington Post articles all about Mahsa Amini. None of the articles contained any information I had not previously gotten from Twitter, and most of the articles referenced tweets I had already seen. Social media is looked down upon as an unreliable source of information, but if it is so unreliable, why do reputable news outlets often reference social media in many of their articles?
Some people view social media as the laziest form of activism. Those who add a filter to their Facebook profile picture, share a photo on their Instagram story, or post a video on their Snapchat as a way to participate in activism are deemed slacktivists who participate in clicktivism. Clicktivism is described as mere awareness, rather than activism, and has gotten a bad reputation because it is based on false assumptions. Two of the biggest misconceptions are that it does not have any real effects and that it somehow displaces or replaces offline activism, both of which are false. New research argues that clicktivism can be very effective in spreading unknown ideas and broadcasting alternative opinions. Richard Fisher puts it best when he says, “While one tweet or post won’t change the world, thousands of them can disseminate beliefs that will.” Studies also show that the users who are liking, sharing, and retweeting on social media are the same people who are donating, marching, and protesting on the streets. There is a correlation between online activism and offline engagement. Critics who disregard online activism fail to comprehend the subtle power that social media has in the modern era.
The influence that the Internet has can be seen in the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement which harnessed frustrations already present and organized them into a coherent movement. “This sort of grassroots mobilization is not new to popular movements, but Black Lives Matter was the first to replicate the process on social media,” says Johnathan Moyer. Politics on social media have been mocked for their perceived inability create change, but Black Lives Matter and other popular movements have proven a different reality. Jane Hu explains how the protests for George Floyd in the summer of 2020 were able to “scale up quickly and take care of all sorts of logistical tasks without building any substantial organizational capacity before the first protest or march” as a result of the Internet. During these protests, screenshots of bail-fund donations and protest guides made from years of activist experience that told readers how to blur faces in photographs or aid in de-arrests were easily shared over Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. As a result of these protests, real change is occurring. Those who still believe that social media has no place in activism have failed to understand that digital actions can and already have had material consequences.
The power of social media was also seen in Dallas when five police officers were killed during a Black Lives Matter protest. Mark Hughes, a Black protestor who had been legally carrying a rifle at the scene, was arrested as a suspect. In record time, Twitter users were able to exonerate him by posting photos and videos of him without a gun during the actual shooting. Usually, sorting out such a dangerous misidentification would have taken days with separate individuals writing letters to newspapers and police. Even then, the mistake might not have been corrected, but with Twitter the record was quickly set straight while TV crews were still covering the incident. Another example of the influence of social media is the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. The hashtag was created after Michael Brown, a Black man, was killed, and news outlets were circulating a photograph of him scowling at the camera. Black users began spreading a photo of Brown at his high school graduation as a response to the narrative forming that Brown deserved to be shot. Eventually, Black Twitter was posting their own paired photos: one where they looked innocent and one where they looked threatening. They asked which photo the media would use of them #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. Many news outlets changed the photo of Brown that they were circulating as a direct result of the hashtag which shows that social media can be used as a tool to keep major news outlets in check.
The importance of social media is not unique to Western countries. The morality police in Iran killed Mahsa Amini for allegedly violating their mandatory headscarf law. Less than 24 hours later, “the hashtag bearing her name had been tweeted, retweeted, or liked more than nine million times.” Waves of protests against the regime incited by the Internet have swept the country. While the battle is being fought on the streets of Iran, online outrage over what had happened to Mahsa Amini was the spark that incited the countrywide demonstrations. It is clear that the Iranian government understands the importance of social media as they implement “nightly internet and app outages” to thwart efforts to organize more protests and slow momentum. Even the United States is becoming aware of the power of the Internet as the Treasury Department announced that they are relaxing sanctions that “discouraged technology companies from providing service to the people of Iran.” The protests that began with Mahsa Amini and Iran’s treatment of women is now a nationwide uprising across 85 cities which challenges the entirety of the Iranian regime, and at the center is the importance of protestors’ access to technology to express, document, and put pressure on the government.
Social media not only helps protestors but also brings awareness to people around the world of the brutalities the people of Iran face. A father crying over his son’s grave, police opening fire on a crowd of people, and a woman being brutally beaten by officials are just some of the videos I have seen circulating Twitter. As horrific as the videos are to watch, I understand it is nothing compared to living it, which makes the videos powerful. They have been shared thousands of times and viewed by millions of people. Social media has played an important role in documenting the reality that faces protesters, and Twitter makes it possible for the world to see the treatment of protestors in Iran. In a country where the media is closely monitored by the government, social media provides a lifeline for Iranians to access unbiased information and for the world to see what Iranians must endure.
If you were to be unjustly killed by the police, who would know? Maybe your family would know and cry for you. Maybe your friends would know and be distraught. But who else would know? Would there be articles written about you? Would the news report it? Would the media care that you are no longer alive, or are you just another statistic that has lost its appeal? Trayvon Martin and Mahsa Amini could have ended up as just another Black man that was a victim of police brutality and just another woman killed by the morality police. Through social media, their family and friends made what happened known to the broader public. One tweet has the power to start change. But will it be enough? People protested on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, but Darren Wilson never faced any charges. Trayvon Martin is a name that will be remembered for years to come, but George Zimmerman was acquitted of his death. Mahsa Amini is a name known to all Iranians, yet women are still being killed by the morality police. Because the way in which oppression manifests has changed over the years, the tools used to fight it must also change. Social media is just one of many new tools in the fight for liberation and one which we are still learning to use. Change has and never will be easy. It requires motivated individuals whether online on social media or offline on the streets.
