Social Media and the Gay Pride Movement

          Social media has obviously had a major effect on the way social movements in the United States form and progress. Originally social movements were seen as large movements that people actively went out and took part in, like the Civil Rights Movement or the Feminist Movement. These two types of movements were very involved, and made people actually go out and take part in them by doing whatever it is that the movement has decided is necessary in order to get what they want from their movement. With Social media this has changed completely. We have entered the age of the “Twitter Movements” which have allowed for major social movements to happen on the Internet, instead of in large groups of actual people. By using hashtags as a way to start social movements it has allowed for more people to be involved in the overall movement which has made it bigger, and allowed for more people to be involved in the movement. Some examples of this are #BlackLivesMatter, which was created in order to help end police brutality in the United States, and #YessAllWomen, which was started as a rejection of #NotAllMen. #NotAllMen was a way for men to not be stereotyped by women for things that they may or may not do, an example of which is shown below. Both of these hashtags came from the amount of publicized sexual assaults and rapes that were occurring in the world.

          A major example of how social media can change social movements is with the gay pride movement. The gay pride movement started in 1969 with the Stonewall Riots in New York, and are what sparked a movement that has lasted until today. While there are many hashtags that have been used the main one that has been used the most and is very easily found is #LoveWins. This hashtag was created to bring people together when the Supreme Court was deciding whether or not gay marriage should be considered legal or not. The use of this hashtag brought the case into an even more public eye, considering some people in the US don’t follow the news like they should, but will look at what is trending on twitter, because if its trending on twitter then it must be important. The number of times #LoveWins was used was extremely high, around 13 million, which is the second highest of any social movement related hashtag on twitter, only to be beat out by #Ferguson with over 27 million uses. While the use of #LoveWins has slowed down it is still being used today, and according to ritetag.com there are around thirty-three unique tweets an hour still being posted with that hashtag. If you look at the image below you will see more estimated hourly statistics on this tag.

As you can see the exposure on this tag may seem high, but in reality it has reached a low point for it usage as compared to the time it first began being very popular with the public. The site does say that this tag would be useful to get seen over time, but not right at the moment. 

          Now if we go in and look at some of the people that actually used this tag, then you will see many celebrities that backed gay marriage and were extremely happy when this got passed. Taylor Swift, who has always been very open about her support for equal marriage tweeted using the tag not long after the verdict was revealed to the people. By quoting her song "Welcome to New York" Swift further shows her longtime support, while also supporting the movement in the moment. 

Another major person that tweeted in support of the movement was the POTUS. 

President Obama came in to the white house showing support for the LGBTQ community, and with marriage equality becoming a real part of life he was able to show his support once again for the community. He talks about how equality is something that we are working towards overall, which is true, and then goes on to say that we have made a big step in getting to that point. In acknowledging the movement Obama puts more stock into it. 

          Now that we see the beginning of the movement and the end, we should probably talk about what is in the middle, and how social media has helped further the movement as much as it has. If someone was to look at a timeline of the Gay Rights Movement, they would notice that not very many gains were made at the beginning. Overall you really just had one, maybe two gains a year and a majority of these gains related back to the same people doing something that would seem small, if not normal now. The movement begins to get a lot of major gains in a very fast time in 2008, which was when sites that catered towards instant messaging, blogging, forums, and even Facebook were seen as popular. While this is very different from the way we see social media now, it did allow for people to begin to come together in a way that allowed them to be a part of something bigger than themselves. People in the LGBTQ community had a way to speak to each other and know that they weren't alone in the world. 2013 was another year full of gains for the LGBTQ community, which also was when twitter was getting to be very popular. The use of twitter has allowed for people all over the world to be able to talk to each other and connect in a way that they would never been able to do before. With people that are similar to you being only a search away you feel more connected, and therefore more likely to speak your mind and fight for the things that you feel are right. Which is probably how there was so much support behind getting equal marriage to be allowed in the United States. Once this social movement became a "Twitter movement" it skyrocketed itself forward, and made gains that it had been trying to make for years. 

          The use of social media has helped shape a new form of social movement, but has also helped transform movements that have been going on for years. By introducing hashtags into our lives we have introduced an entirely new form of protest that allows millions of people to come together in a way that never would have been possible before. While hundreds of thousands of people go to Pride every year across the United States that does not connect people in the way social media does. Social media has brought people from San Francisco and New York together in a way that allows them to fight for the exact same cause in a stronger, more unified way, which is what makes it so important to our society as it is today. 

Always On Crowds

     The Internets ability to work together to find something, or crowd sourcing, is a fascinating thing, especially since some people cant even work that well together. The only problem is that the Internet can come together to be helpful, and end up being very wrong. This is shown very well with the peoples beliefs that they had found the Boston Bomber before the police had. The used the images that they found of the bombing to figure out who the bomber was. They even decided that they had figured out exactly what the bomb looked like based off of these images. The only problem: they were completely  wrong. 

     In the picture above it shows what they thought was the backpack that the bombers used and they're even saying that the guy with the blurred face is the bomber, he wasn't. While its great that all of these people came together to help solve a problem it didn't work, an had the FBI actually taken this into consideration they could have gotten the wrong person and that would have just created an even bigger mess than was already there. 

     On the other hand it is possible for people to solve problems. Facebook and Reddit users actually solved the case of a boy that had gone missing twenty years before. They created an image and had it posted all over the Internet, until people began to figure out who the boy, dubbed Grateful Doe, was. The people that helped figure this out helped close a cold case while also helping the boys mother move on. Below is the image that was posted for people to see, the image that actually helped find out what had happened to "Grateful Doe".

     In this instance crowd sourcing actually worked to help solve an important issue, but what about when people use crowed sourcing for something stupid? Does that still make it useful to the world? There is an entire database for Bigfoot sightings in America, this is an example of using crowd sourcing for something stupid. They have all of their sightings organized by state, which you can see below, and then by county within each state. While some states haven't had any updates in recent years, some are very up to date, which shows us where all of the crazies live in our country. 

     Crowd sourcing can be used for very helpful things on the Internet, like finding a missing person, or idiotic things, like finding Bigfoot. It can also be wrong when it thinks it is completely right, like with the Boston Bomber. I think this shows us that crowd sourcing can be great, or it can be a complete disaster, lets all hope that there is some middle ground out there somewhere. 

Always On Response

      In Matt's blog he talks about how the political candidates are always on twitter and goes into detail with Donald Trumps tweets. He explains that the political battlefield is getting even worse since someone handed the candidates a twitter account. Donald Trumps constant attacks on Hillary show this really well, and lead me to believe that Matt is correct in his evaluation. Donald Trump uses his tweets to attack Hillary, like the one below.

     Matt goes on to explain that the use of twitter allows for us to get a glimpse into the candidates lives that we may have not gotten otherwise. I'm not sure If I agree with this because the candidates don't really use their accounts for this. If you followed both of them on twitter you would really only see election related tweets, and not much else. They don't really delve into their own lives on their social media. If they did tweet about their every day lives more then maybe that would make them seem more real to some people. 

     In Tyler's blog he talks about how we as a society are always on our phones and social media. He compares Hillary Clinton to Vitaly Zdorovetskiy, one being the Democratic nominee and the other being a YouTube sensation. In comparing these two Tyler shows us that we as people will follow whats popular, and right now they both are. I agree with Tyler because its true, these are almost like fad follows. Hillary Clinton is popular because she is running for president and we all want to know what she is going to say next on Twitter, and Vitaly is YouTube famous, and we made him that way. So until something better comes along these two will be big on twitter. 

Response to gifting

Many of the people wrote about how gifting saw it as a way to get something out of other people. While this can be the case gifting can also be less selfish than everyone wants it to be. In Matts response he begins with a basic definition of gifting, giving someone something without expecting anything in return.  This shows us a less selfish side of the idea of gifting in our world, but this is also a very outdated definition. Hannahs post about gifting shows us a much more relevant version of gifting. In her post she discusses how we give each other gifts that are basic acknowledgements of each other's existence on our social media accounts. This is exactly how we gift each other in today's society. I'm more likely to post a collage on Instagram of pictures of my friend with her tagged in it saying something nice about her, and of course there are going to be pictures of me in the collage with her. Hannahs view of selfish gifting is much more realistic than Matts old school definition, but I think people want to believe that we are being more like Matt when we gift than we are like Hannah.

Social media and ownership

     In today's society the idea of ownership is so blurred because of our desire to share everything with everyone. We use social media to tell everyone about our daily lives and hope that the funny things we say and do get retweeted so that the entire world can see them. Being twitter and instagram famous are things many people strive for, and if a million people follow you on snapchat then it almost seems like a million people care. When it comes to information that is available on sites like Wikipedia it blurs the lines of ownership even more. Almost anything you Google these days will lead you to a Wikipedia page, or one of Wikipedia other sites such as wiki answers. When you Google sites that Wikipedia owns it take you to a link for a Wikipedia page that shows all of them. People actively go onto sites like these to correct the information that is provided or change it completely. As people we share everything on the Internet and once it gets out there it no longer belongs to us. This is also beginning to apply to print media as well. If someone wants a book they don't actually have to buy it now they just have to bootleg it, so the last form of media that is actually still able to be owned by someone is losing that title too. 

     If you ask my roommate she will tell you that she has a much stricter view of ownership. If she tweeted it then it belongs to her and people shouldn't be allowed to just take that from her. I feel like many people would also feel this way about their own things, but once it gets out in the world it cant really be yours anymore, so this view is very outdated and cant actually be held very well anymore. The only thing I can think of in my every day life that still has its own owner that can be found is my tattoos. Tattoos have a shared ownership, while it is on my body Ill never be able to truly say they're mine. The design and work put into them belongs to the artist, Tosha Carnes. When anyone ever asks me about them they ask who did them, and I tell them Tosha Carnes, so in a way they are Tosha's. Tattoos are really the only thing that ownership can truly be had on, and even then that line is blurred because while the artist did them, they are on someone elses body.