This is a huge problem that we witness every single day on social media. As recently as 2017 and 2018, at least 30 U.S. state legislatures mooted, and in some cases passed, proposals that restricted the freedom of assembly.
I’ll say this much — In my own city there’s massive drives to plant trees, clean lakes and help clean plastic waste — the amount of people at these scarcely touches a thousand compared to the tens of thousands at these protests.If the amount of people protesting would do something “The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.” — Sydney HarrisThe people protesting governments and politicians should not fall prey to the very things they’re protesting such as fake news circulated via Instant Messaging and Social Media.If you must take a stand, let it be an informed, well-researched one, not just a re-share from a friend who you know is “woke”. More than half the people on my Social Media are protesting an issue or advocating a cause almost daily. The That’s aside from more recent revelations that foreign actors, trolls, and automated bot farms pretending to be citizens not only can hack away at societal unity through amplifying divisions, but also can generate millions of online comments aiming to sway public policy one way or another.Digital technology has opened up unimaginable worlds of access and connectivity, but it has also brought into question its own role in undermining the foundations of governments built by people, for people. These interactions can be small, often almost inconsequential (that borrowed cup of sugar, say), but our brains have evolved to look for our tribes, our communities, Effective protest requires not just the right of the people to gather, but accessible public spaces in which gathering is possible and citizens who understand what those rights are. Social media is key in sharing this type of information to all those who might want it. Were you even “really” there if you were just recording for your newsfeed and typing paragraphs of captions?After the protest once everyone patted themselves on the back for a job well done, the streets would be littered with coffee cups, water bottles, even protest posters and snacks — hardly eco-friendly of them.And then there came the worst of it all — the band-wagoners, the uninformed, the ones who weren’t even sure what the movement was about but knew being part of it was “the right thing to do”. Protests have defined our society even into more recent history.In the late 20th Century alone, these movement had sweeping changes in legislation, human rights, governance and regimes. All Rights Reserved.
Whether it be Climate Change Awareness, the Citizenship Amendment Bill in India and even rising oil prices in Iran, Zimbabwe and Haiti.You could even share your support for the Hong Kong anti-extradition protests or over a dozen anti-government/leadership protests across Africa and South America.One could argue that 2019 is a watershed year when it comes to protests. the Black Lives Matter movement, #MeToo, etc., especially during the covid-19 pandemic. What government institution would respond to a hologram protest? Online movements can burn out faster than campaigns that spend months or even years forging in-person connections.Social media are often thought of as the new ground for political and social activism. In answer to a blanket ban on protests of any kind, as well as marches or assemblies in front of Congress, activists resorted to protest by hologram.
Without a doubt, social media is a very important platform for activism and helps increase the number of people who side with a cause. Friends posting impassioned calls to action would post timings and locations of protests they planned to attend and asked others to join. The realities of face-to-face contact and in-person mass protests, the tools of centuries of struggle for full citizenship and rights, have become even more essential to grounding us as we navigate through a new era of humans’ relationship with technology.