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.
