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I decided to write about Chapter 8 in this blog post. The title of Chapter 8 is Social Media Toolbox. This chapter discusses how you can use social media as a platform to make your voice heard. Social media is a revolutionary phenomenon. According to smallbitztrends.com, it mentions “after the invention of blogging, social media began to explode in popularity. Sites like Myspace and LinkedIn gained prominence in the early 2000s, and sites like Photobucket and Flickr facilitated online photo sharing. YouTube came out in 2005, creating an entirely new way for people to communicate and share with each other across great distances (Hendricks 2013).

               Myspace was the social media site that first blew up. It was the most popular form of social media from 2004-2010. This was the first social media site I had ever used. I was only 11 years old when I had first made an account in 2008. My parents would have killed me if they found out I was using Myspace. This was a social media site that literally had “no filter.” No filter is a term used today to describe something as explicit, and no form of a filter had been used. This was a big deal. On the positive side, it was like the early form of Facebook. People could use it to communicate with their friends, share pictures, blogs, and the usual stuff we see today on Facebook and Twitter. Just 2 years after Myspace was created, YouTube emerged.

               YouTube wasn’t that big when it was first created in 2005, but this changed shortly. It is a website that you can watch videos, make videos, and vlog. YouTube has landed multiple people careers. If they supply content people enjoy, they can make an actual living off the social media website.

               Back to the chapter, using social media to find a target audience can expose your ideas to people who feel the same way. This is where hashtags can be used. #BlackLivesMatter was a popular hashtag for a while responding to the shootings of African Americans by police. Someone who uses this hashtag can have a conversation with someone else who feels the same way about the topic. This can be with anything. It’s just up to the person trying to reach their audience, to be able to find it. Popular ideas for the most part can be found, but if not a lot of people are talking about something you feel should be exposed it’s up to them to find that audience.

               Twitter and Facebook are where we can find almost every type of person on social media, but mainly twitter. Twitter can expose you to a group of people you never thought existed. On page 203 in Social Media Freaks, Kidd mentions that “social activists, professionals, and leaders are missing out on opportunities simply by not having a Twitter account” (Kidd 203). He mentions that when his colleague published a book, Kidd would use Twitter to tell people about it. He says she didn’t have a Twitter account, so she couldn’t be included in the tweet. Is this a big deal? Would social media users say that you can get access to more information by being on a popular social media website like Twitter?

               Many would say that “oh social media’s addicting” and “it’s just a waste of time. This can be true for some instances, but not if you use it to your advantage. A lot of people my age especially doesn’t use social media to their advantage. My friends like to sit around for 3 hours just sitting on their phones switching between Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. What are they accomplishing? This is simply when people win the argument that social media can be a waste of time. Taking Media, society, and culture has changed my perspective on social media. You can use it to advertise a product, idea, or an opinion. Social activists now a day have Twitter accounts, and you can reach out to them by direct messaging them, tweeting them, or just simply sharing your ideas using a similar hashtag. Sometimes they won’t respond because they are busy with other things, but I have seen this a lot with my friends. If you simply reach out and take advantage of this revolutionary platform, you can learn a lot and find out who your target audience is.

               Sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, or links on Facebook can all come back using Twitter. If the content someone is sharing is worth viewing, it can create a sense of attention using these other sites too, which is cool. If the content someone posts finds a general audience that finds the content useful, the other users will share and agree with the posts. This opens a new door to the people that follow them, and links new people to your content. This is the power of social media.

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Short history of how the Black Lives Matter movement was started.

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In this blog post, I’m referring to chapter 7: Black Lives Matter: Racial Perspectives on Social Media. I know we haven’t covered it yet, but I follow social media closely like Twitter, and can see what the movement is all about, what’s happening in society, and why the movement was created. It was created in 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. The reason for starting this movement was in response to the shooting of Treyvon Martin by George Zimmerman. It has made its way across all social media platforms, the mainstream media, and even the previous president of the United States, President Barack Obama. He stated, “In a movement like Black Lives Matter there are always going to be folks who say things that are stupid or imprudent or over generalized or harsh," Obama said after meeting with acting Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Black Lives Matter has been a very controversial topic over the last couple years. According to the textbook, the thirteen “guiding principles” of the Black Lives Matter movement are: Diversity, Restorative justice, Unapologetically black, Globalism, Black women, Collective Value, Transgender affirming, Black villages, Empathy, Black families, Queer affirming, Loving engagement, and Intergenerational.

           There is a presence of Social Inequality when it comes to Black Lives Matter. Social inequality is the situation in which members of society have different amounts of wealth, prestige, or power. Blacks are nearly three times as likely to be poor as whites and more than twice as likely to be unemployed. There is a large gap between whites and blacks. The racial demographic of the United States according to the census bureau was 76.9% were white, and 13.3% being black. This is a HUGE divide. There are currently more blacks incarcerated than any other ethnicity in the United States. There needs to be a line drawn somewhere. This is why we saw the Black Lives Matter movement blow up. We were clearly seeing a racial group being treated unjustly, and it’s not like we haven’t seen this before.

           Shortly after this movement, we saw the All Lives Matter movement starting to pick up. Was this wrong? Is it appropriate to start this movement when it was a tough time to be black in America? (which it still is). This nation has seemed to always be separated. Who is it to blame? Politicians, Congress, Police officers? Racism has always been present in the United States, and no matter what we do, it never seems to go away. There were 987 shot and killed by police officers in 2017. Just under half of the victims were white, while 1 in 5 were black. We can obviously see that there is something wrong. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2016, 1,408 blacks, 378 Hispanic, and 275 whites were arrested based on the Average rate of incarceration by race and ethnicity, per 100,000 population. There is a lot of controversy that surrounds Congress and many prisons. We just must ask ourselves, is something wrong here? It seems like it to me, that blacks are discriminated and have a higher chance of going to jail than white or Hispanic person. And the statistics don’t lie, when blacks only make up 13% of the United States, this becomes a huge problem. When we look at amount of whites there are and see how much more than are than blacks, we know that this isn’t right. "For a society that considers itself to be fair and just and hold these values ... it forces us to question whether we're really abiding by that value system," said Ashley Nellis, the author of the study. "There's definitely a growing concern about our system of mass incarceration in the USA."

           All in all, I believe all lives matter. But at this day and age, blacks are getting discriminated at high rates, and the statistics are there to back it up. It isn’t fair. The unjust police shootings got out of hand too, even though there were still more white people that were shot in 2017. The population gap shows how unfair this was. It’s 2018, 4 years after Black Lives Matter started, and I am 100% all for it. It’s hard being black in America today. Even though it isn’t as bad as it was during the civil rights movement, we still see racism and discrimination in society today. I support Black Lives Matter and like how far it’s come, but it’s really time for a true change.

                                                Reference Page

Geier, K. (2015, March 12). Inequality in Black and White. Retrieved March 30, 2018, from https://psmag.com/economics/the-rigged-economics-of-race-in-america

Simon, C. (2016, June 16). There is a stunning gap between the number of white and black inmates in America's prisons. Retrieved March 30, 2018, from http://www.businessinsider.com/study-finds-huge-racial-disparity-in-americas-prisons-2016-6

Worrall, P. (n.d.). FactCheck: Do black Americans commit more crime? Retrieved March 30, 2018, from https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime

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Has social media made us unsocial?

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Social Media today plays a big role in the way society interacts with eachother. 

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This blog post is a response to the sociologic concept of the Queer Theory, how it’s related to social media, and how the youth on social media plays a big role in this. The queer theory from an online definition is a reaction to a school of 1970s feminism that believed each sex comes with its own essential characteristics. The LGBTQ community started in the mid to late 1980’s, so it’s been around for a while. The LGBTQ community on social media is huge. Even after the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States in 2016, the LGBTQ community has been making a big name for themselves. Riki Wilchins, according to the textbook, describes the Queer Theory as “is at heart about politics- things like power and identity, language, and difference. A huge way that the LGBTQ community has used social media to their advantage, is starting the #ComingOutMatters hashtag across all major social media platforms. It is a way for people to share their coming out stories, and to have an audience that supported them. This was important because some people might not have friends or family that didn’t support their decision of coming out. #ComingOutMatters even has their own website where members can find safety and security in themselves, and others.

Being a part of LGBTQ back in the 1980’s and later was a tough time for a lot of individuals. Yeah, there were people that came out, but I feel like all they got was negative responses from whoever they told. Whether this was family, friends, or just peers. It really didn’t happen much. Social media plays a big role. Just imagine, if there was social media back in the day, wouldn’t you think it would change certain aspects in history? Everyone gets a voice through social media, and it has changed the way society works in today’s world, connecting everyone from across the globe through certain websites. There are now teenagers that are 16 and 17 that let people know on their social media, that they identify themselves as Gay, or transgender. And trust me, this is no easy task. It’s clear that back in the day most people would not be too happy about this. Like I mentioned earlier, social media gives people huge voices, being able to say what’s on their mind, and having an audience to back them up.

According to Kidd, another issue of concern that is frequently mentioned with regard to sexuality and social media is sexting. These are text images that are of sexual nature via phone. It lets women explore their own sense of pleasure, according to Kidd. This is a big thing now a day, since almost everyone has a phone, and can basically do what they want with no filter. Yeah, social media tries to filter out a lot of things and stop posts that are explicitly before they’re even posted. But when it’s communication through text or live video chat, there is literally no filter. Teens are willingly doing this, because they might not be able to see their “partner” in real life, so they communicate in a sexual way via text. According to Kidd, treating the creation of a sext is a positive form of media production allows for a recognition that abusively distributing a sext without the creator’s permission is a form of harassment and abuse.

Sexting has created many cases where just a nude photo of someone can be considered child pornography. This is a big deal for girls. We see this a lot today. People simply like socializing over a social media platform or via text, rather than actual human interactions. Is this a good or bad thing? I see it as a good and bad thing. We’ve somewhat lost a sense of practiced acts of interacting in person, through real communication. This was the go to for socializing before social media was even created. Now, we especially see millennials only having a sense of interaction through social media. There’s a term for this, which is “hiding behind a phone.” There might be that one kid in class that doesn’t ever talk much, but once you go to his social media page, he has thousands of posts. Why is this? In a way, it’s his way of giving himself a voice through a different audience, rather than getting shut down by his peers. I have seen this before. Social media is changing the way we interact with each other, but gives us a different way of interacting, which could be an advantage for most young people.