Social Media's Impact On The Civil Rights Movement

Social activism is an act that has been around for decades. It is mostly used to stress the issues in society that the government is hesitant to fix or talk about. In Malcolm Gladwell’s excerpt, Small Change, gladwell elaborates on his evidence that social media was not around during the civil rights era and the impact social media has on social activist today.
While I agree with Gladwell’s claim that social media was not needed for social activism in the past, I in-part believe that social media is an essential resource for social activism today.
During the civil rights era, some of the most critical protests that took place formed what social activism truly means in present day. However, there were no forms of major technology that activists …show more content…
Once it was heard that a friend or acquaintance of yours or someone you knew was involved in a movement, it was highly likely that they would join the sort of bandwagon that was formed and fight for their rights and beliefs as well. After reading upon this, it is very clear evidence that without the use of social media, social change and reform was possible even though time has changed.
Today social media which was created for the sharing of day-to-day lives of people, has greatly impacted the social activism world. When there is any controversial social situation, society’s initial way of finding out these events is through the means of social media. Cell phones, laptops, and networking applications allow you to find out more about it while being able to place opinion on it for the world to see. I believe that this is what makes social activism so impactful with social media today. With social media, you obtain a voice, dig deeper and allows the sharing of your own personal …show more content…
Maybe if we all stayed “behind the screen” and not take in- person action for change, there would be none. Though, there is a very distinct trend to social media and in crowd social protest as forms of social activism. Many riots and protests have evolved because of an ethical or social problem being brought to light through social media. As far as statistics go, more research should be conducted in order to see if there is a correlation between what happens online and in person. Whether we will continue to use social media over in-person social protest is something we will not really know but there is no doubting that social media has paved a way for social activist to better influence and bring together topics of social