Impacts of Social Media on Political Issues.

Social media has grown significantly in the past few years. It has now become a part of our everyday lives. While social media was mainly designed to increase connectivity, it has now become an important tool for activism and raising awareness about political issues. Social movements organizations (SMO’s) often use social media to spread the objective of their movements (Xiong, Cho & Boatwright 2019).

Anonymous9000 2010, 2nd Anoniversary, retrieved September 2, 2019.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/anonymous9000/4281777022/in/photolist-7wne8L-nMwCwf-8cQwPp-nx4J4Z-dpidaU-7bbtrz-6GjcwH-rRs4Q8-nPrgMJ-sy1sbH-7weqDw-3e2raZ-98wuHq-6rUxWa-6rQfNN-nQNwYN-TFiMBJ-nPhyYz-dn6PLw-8YsY7H-dp9QG6-2cSqHWj-2fDeCxN-eQkqwi-7bhSPn-mbq9J-8926S6-6rnqvr-6rQKhf-TzyLY5-6rRW73-7wSMAM-q2quw-6rYEVb-8Yw1ro-6rRHqJ-6rLzND-6yhdb7-2fHWiZ8-eQknJF-2fHRiRx-TzyQuU-2ejWiDD-v9snNi-WATzHX-7wKWYJ-6rYFjC-RXrc2p-RXma46-7waBji

Since the news on social media is not only from the news agencies but from various alternative news providers such as citizens, non-profit organizations, civic organizations, etc., it increases the scope of news sources. Therefore, it becomes easier for users to encounter news on social media platforms. It has been noted that about 58.2% users of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube encounter news unintentionally (Park 2019).  

Hamama, MA 2009, Twitter For Activism, retrieved September 2, 2019. https://www.flickr.com/photos/14712865@N05/3732080219

Social media portrays immense power over political issues often taking up issues that are sensitive or taboo. It provides a platform for people to connect and start discussions. Social media also increase interactivity helping people to connect with multiple people and multiple groups at the same time. Some major examples of such movements are:

#METOO: the movement started with a post from a leading actress to respond to her post with the hashtag in an urge to motivate other women to talk about their experiences with harassment. The movement created a whirlwind, reaching almost every part of the globe. it had such a strong impact, that it led to great personalities ranging from actors to politicians being punished.

#EGYPTIANREVOLUTION or Arab spring: in 2011, the Egypt revolution took place against the president. Social media however, changed the dynamics of the mobilization. the blogs, articles and news that spread due to social media helped the people to gather and stand in solidarity. Social media helped organize events, protests and convey information through its reach. People connected through Facebook groups, through hashtags and protested, resulting in the revolution to be successful. (Eltantawy, Nahed, Wiest, Julie B, 2011).

#BLACKLIVESMATTER: the phrase was first used in a Facebook post by a black community organizer following the shooting of a black 17-year-old boy. The hashtag spread from there to different platforms and became a tool for addressing racism against the people of color. the hashtag has since been used 11.8million times on twitter. Followed by this, people on social media started #AllLivesMatter to address a great issue of humanity (‘History of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter: Social activism on Twitter’ 2016).


‘openphoto.net’, retrieved September 2, 2019.
https://openphoto.net/gallery/image/view/31518

With these examples, social media has been able to prove the influence it has on people and the power it holds. Social media has changed the face of activism and made it stronger. When these movements started on social media, they became a tool to bring actual change, involving authorities and amending laws. On the other hand, social media faces criticism as the credibility of the information can not be assessed. While most of the information people receive through news channels and newspapers can be counted on, information online cannot be trusted completely. The issue of fake news has led to the credibility of the entire platform to be questioned.

While there are cases of fake news, social media has been able to prove its credibility with the help of movements and the positive impact it has made. Now, it not only connects people but also helps to address issues and make a change.

References:

An amateurs guide to video making

“Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.”

I have always believed that everyone should love themselves and to do that one needs to accept themselves. For the longest time I wanted to create content, but I was always afraid because I did not have enough confidence to put myself in the public eye and was afraid of people’s judgements. In my opinion, authenticity means being your most natural self and as genuine as you can be with your content. With my introduction video, I wanted to portray myself in the most normal way possible and I wanted to keep my content very simple. I decided to share very light and basic information about myself since I didn’t want the audience to watch my video and feel intimidated as I have felt when I see other youtubers. I wanted to be honest about the things that I do daily and therefore I decided to talk about such basic things which are a part of my everyday life. In the future, I want to work on something that makes people feel normal and good about themselves when they see content online instead of feeling intimidated

As the assignment was introduced and I got to know that we had to shoot a video about ourselves, I was clear that I wanted to talk about things that I do daily. Before shooting my video, I had written a script about everything that I wanted to talk about in the video. I wrote the script and edited it multiple times as I was not satisfied with it. As I was certain that shooting the video in public would be problematic as the audio would not be clear I decided to shoot it in my house as it would be quiet, which would help to get clear audio. For shooting my video I had tried and tested various spots in my house, along with a lot of angles. since I didn’t have a tripod, I had to use things like tissue box, phone case and water bottles to keep my phone stable and at the proper angle. I watch a lot of youtubers, hence I knew that sunlight is the best lighting and I took advantage of all the windows in my house and opened them to shoot my video for proper lighting. As I have never shot and edited a video before I could not use editing apps. Therefore, I decided to edit on my phone using iMovie. I did very basic editing by cropping all the sections that I wanted from the main video and merging them together and adding some of my photos.

For me the most difficult task was to get accustomed to seeing myself on camera and putting myself out there. I had recorded multiple times, but I could not get comfortable and therefore I decided to watch those videos of myself again and again. The most challenging part of the entire process was editing. I have never edited videos and therefore I was not comfortable with using any app. I had most difficulty in importing my video from my phone to my laptop for which I then decided to edit on my phone itself. Shooting alone was also very difficult as I could not see if I was sitting in the centre or if the lighting was proper or not, which is why I had to do multiple takes of the video. Even after all the difficulty, I really enjoyed the process. I learned to be comfortable with myself on camera and be more open on social media platforms even though there is a long way to go.

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