The notability of media and propaganda in modern-day politics is becoming increasingly significant due to the evolving state of social media as an agent for unprecedented communication and scrutiny. It is no doubt that the media informs people and influences our lives in many ways, but has social media diminished its influence and claim to impartial reporting? Has it become what President Trump refers to as the ‘Lamestream media’ – or has its role simply evolved from a world where people would have faith in their news headlines to one in which the roles of broadcast and print media has significantly reduced? In a contemporary society, social platforms such as Twitter and radio talk shows like LBC show more evidence of having greater influence.
This doesn’t mean everything projected onto social media is validated. In fact, the platform is very dangerous, and the overwhelming amounts of reposts and hashtags can blind us into thinking that progress is being made. A notable example of this is Jeremy Corbyn’s performance in the last two elections; many thought he would do much better than he ended up due to his widespread support amongst the youth who heavily advocated him on social platforms. This was deceiving, and the posts proved only to do so much. Where it really mattered, voter turnout amongst younger voters in both elections ended up being considerably low, but the advocacy Corbyn had on social media was a misleading measure of his popularity. What’s the point here? That young people need to take action on the issues they feel so strongly about - and it is essential we address this now, whilst the Black Lives Matter movement, which I’ll be referencing for the remainder of this article, is at prevalent heights.
I’m not going to dip into the unjust infringement of basic human rights minorities have to put up with, we’ve should have heard about the horrific tragedies, but what can we do to change things? We’ve heard people bang on lately about ‘silence is violence’, but is blindly posting and sharing even more harmful to the movement? Blackout Tuesday, for instance, involved posting a black screen and logging off socials for the day - there are countless problems with this. I will mention the obvious fact that a black screen contains no information and therefore is not spreading useful information of any sort, but there are other issues involved with this too. The non-chronological algorithm on social media means that our feeds will be drowned with these black screens for days to come, hindering us from seeing alternative important and informative posts. Additionally, Blackout Tuesday is a course that directly benefits from social media publicity so surely would not be helping itself if everyone is supposed to log off for the day.
This is only an example of some of the media defiances that have been and still are taking place; a small case in the plethora of Instagram tagging challenges, meaningless hashtags and retweets. To prevent this, we need to start off by questioning our intentions. If you sincerely believe in, support and want to make a difference to the movement, you need to be doing more than just this. The development of technology is advantageous in that it makes taking action easier than ever - it takes just seconds to sign a petition, send a letter to your local MP (templates are easily accessible), or make donations. We have no excuse. Now, if your intention is disgenuine, if you’re posting because you’ve been tagged by your friends, or because you feel pressured to, you need to refocus to inform yourself and others about what is happening right now. Information can be so easily found and there are endless amounts of helpful threads everywhere online. If all you’ve done is post a black screen, or tag some friends, you need to be doing more. This is performative allyship and can be incredibly damaging and counterproductive to the intrinsic aims of the movement itself.
The takeaway from this is that, whilst posting on your socials can be helpful to a certain extent, this does not mean we should stay complacent. There’s no denying that social media is a significant part of the revolution, but it is the way we utilise it that makes all the difference. Black Lives Matter isn’t a trend. We need to take action.
Written by Aaliyah - Instagram @ohnotaaliyah
Below I’ve linked Google documents I strongly urge you all to take a look at - included is books, twitter threads, podcasts and movies you can watch to inform yourself and others, as well as donation sites, petitions and letter templates that are useful internationally amongst more general advice such as how to stay safe during protests and further contact information.
· https://docs.google.com/document/d/12q9DfEn185se87KOJXXEu1XP-pFLw5QS0O0qSBSn6pI/mobilebasic
· https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/13O7yipKHeIF2-QJ_K9IKIdLQAlN8NgEOF62qQjUjEVM/mobilebasic
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