Social media changing the landscape of social activism

 Social media is definitely having an impact on social change and social activism. I think it is having both positive and negative impacts depending on the situation. Social media is having a positive impact on social change and activism as it is allowing more people access to information and resources about specific movements, etc. This in turn leads to more people being aware of the issue, so more people might be willing to get involved. Social media is connecting the world like never before and helping to keep governments, organizations, etc accountable for their actions as anyone (i.e. not just journalists, etc, but anyone that has access to the internet) has the ability to post information, blogs, videos online for all to see. In this sense people from outside an issue are likely to gain information from those inside an issue and so are more likely to understand what is really going on.

There is some negative impact to social media however, one negative impact is that is has led to what some call “slacktivism” or the passive participation by individual’s online in activities that really do not lead to social change. Social media makes more people aware of issues, but it does not guarantee that more people are likely to act on those issues. So there is much more of a passive audience for social change through social media. Also because anyone can put up anything they want to online, sometimes messages or intent of movements or issues gets misconstrued or misrepresented online which can lead to people not really knowing the truth about the movement and spreading false information to their networks. Also social media networks are also focused around loose ties and although these loose ties make awareness and the spread of information virally more likely to occur, it is harder to organize large committed groups of individual’s through social media than through other more physical means (e.g. the civil rights movement of the 1960's would have happened very differently if it had been organized through social media). I think although there are some drawbacks to the use of social media, overall it is having a positive impact, because I believe that awareness is the first step to change of any issue, etc.

I think the impact of social media is influenced by the country and culture that it is in. Put simply many countries are still lacking access to the internet and social media, so therefore issues in those countries are much less likely to be seen on websites like twitter, etc and thus their voice might not travel as far as others.They might have no idea what the internet is or how to use it effectively. Also if information does come out online about the issue, it is possible that is comes from a source that is not directly associated with the issue, because of this, it is possible that the information, although useful is slightly incorrect and can lead to false assumptions by others. Also some countries have government control that limits the internet usage, that can make social media networking more difficult. Different countries cultural values also change social media behavior, in America for instance we live in a largely individualistic society were by social media is readily available and used by many, because of this the large amount of social media out there transmits these values and is in English, thus limiting the participation of others who don't speak English or can understand the values.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement is a good example of good use of social media as it helped clarify what was really going on on the ground as mass media sources often provided a distorted account of what was going on. Also Occupy was able to go viral and reach a much larger audience from all over the globe through the use of social media. This lead to a unified effort by many to follow the movement, although they might not share the same intentions, they do share the same name and that has an impact. Through the use of social media, Occupy was able to make clear their ideology and mission and also organize many different subgroups from all over the world so that individual's knew what to get involved in and how to get involved. Without the use of social media and the large audience that participated in this movement, it is possible that Occupy would not have had the impact that it is having and that it would have been shut down fairly quickly.