5/2 post

In chapter 5 of Making All Black Lives Matter Ransby describes The challenges and dilemmas the Black lives matter movement faced during the time of high police brutality. One of the new themes that came with the modern movement was the use of social media. Social posed as information for political topics and it really helped birth the Black Lives Matter movement. After the death of Trayvon Martin one of the co founders made a Facebook post containing the first ever Black Lives Matter hashtag. When African Americans were wrongly killed by officers there were social media posts to inform the public. Ransby confirms the importance of social media by stating “Most people first learned of Michael Brown’s death through Twitter or Facebook. The fatal police shooting of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in a park near downtown Cleveland, videotaped on a police dash camera, went viral on the internet and triggered protests. Eric Garner’s violent strangulation death by police after he tried to break up a fight between two other men in Staten Island, New York, was sent out to social media months after his death, which is when the case got significant attention and support.”(101) this quote was really relatable to the death of Antwon Rose also. The day of his death a video recording showed police pulling over a car and Rose fleeing from the car. Before Rose could get away he was shot about four times in his back. This video was all over Numerous social media networks and can still be found on the internet today. The video sparked protests all throughout Antwon’s hometown of Pittsburgh. A year passed and the trial of the police officer who murdered Rose had begun. The officer was found not guilty and this caused even more uproar in Pittsburgh. Students from local neighborhoods marched throughout the city streets of and I even organized a candle lighting service with the Black Student Union in honor of Rose. Social Media has definitely been a major factor in protesting and spreading awareness to the battle for African American bodies.

Comments

  1. Nathaniel McIntyreMay 5, 2019 at 12:17 PM

    I think it is very interesting living in such a digital age while movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, #MeToo, to name a few. Social media is a powerful and instrumental took in gaining support and visibility for movements like the above mentioned. I remember first hearing about Trayvon Martin on the news. I was not all that in to social media because I was younger but now today, at the click of a button or a swipe to refresh a feed I can find anything out. Today, whenever the BLM movement is on the news I first hear about it either on Twitter or Instragram. Because of the power of social media, the BLM movement is better able to communicate with different kinds of black communities. This is what modern day praxis of intersectionality looks like in the age of a growing digital technological age. I think that social media will pay a major factor in helping to create a more feminist BLM movement, one in which equity and systemic progression can be sought out for all black people, no matter the background.

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  2. Adam MorrisMay 6, 2019 at 5:13 PM

    I agree with Idris about the use of social media containing incidents such as these killings. I was never into using social media accounts until I was about 12 when I made a Facebook. then by the time I was 14 I was using all of the major platforms that people use around the world today such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. On every one of those sites you are able to find events that are occurring around the world that involve any type of major news. I find that police brutality and racial profiling are among one of the most common issues revolving around social media news today. You can go on Twitter and search for a name that Idris mentioned and find all of the protests, hashtags, details of the incident, etc. in just a second. The quote that Idris stated from the book is true for me in all of those cases. I found out about all of those events from scrolling through social media whenever they occurred, and I saw most of the videos that came with it. I believe that social media being the main platform to seeing these horrible incidents occur is a good thing in a certain way considering the amount of young teenage people such as the victims listed in the book that use those platforms. By the amount of people, young and old, that use these apps and see the things happening, it allows for people to attempt to make a change through protests that have happened on multiple occasions. Social media is most definitely a major factor for spreading awareness on the problem of racial injustice in America.

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  3. Emily JackoMay 6, 2019 at 7:35 PM

    I agree with Idris’s blog post in that social media has been both influential and beneficial to our society as a whole changing, especially when pertaining to the Black Lives Matter Movement. In chapter 5 of Making All Black Lives Matter by Barbara Ransby, it is said that, “Unarguably, social media has had a powerful and profound impact as a communication tool that lends itself to democratic and inclusive practices of discourse, as well as to distortion and manipulation.” (101) I feel as though this quote is beneficial to Idris’s discussion of the benefits of social media. It discusses the impact in which social media has on our society, in that when something big happens, the go to is to get the public’s perspective on it via social media. Which will then spark a discussion and a consensus on the subject will be made. It also has had a great impact on the Black Lives Matter movement, and has helped it grow to a rising number of activists in which each voice can be heard and be taken into consideration through social media. It is also a beneficial tool when pertaining to communication because it can spark discussions from people all around the world, and connect them through a social media sight. Since social media is so profound nowadays, some news is first shared via twitter, facebook, instagram etc and can lead to peaceful protests and movements being made to benefit society and different communities worldwide. I agree with the comments in this post as well, and many movements like #MeToo being made public through social media to gain followers and beneficial content to help support others opinions and experiences.

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