Quotation: (pp. 2, paragraph 1)

“As a global public platform – accessible to anyone with a cell phone – Twitter offers users across the political spectrum opportunities to raise awareness of pressing issues; turn the spotlight on social protest; and challenge the narratives presented by major media outlets, government officials, and law enforcement.”

Comments:

It’s important that such a thing was created on a platform that anyone can access, (even if they don’t have a cell phone nowadays with public libraries). Large movements are able to hit the ground running much faster than before social media times because they are able to reach a much larger audience with a quick post, and if the uses of hashtags are present and get used in more posts, the movement will gain even more traction. The Black Lives Matter movement really gained traction after the passing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, where the hashtags #BLM and #BlackLivesMatter really took off on a worldwide level. Currently today, those two hashtags alone have been used in a combined ~35 million posts on Instagram. That doesn’t even include all the other variations of the hashtags there are. The idea of social media created as a place for your posts of thoughts to reach a possible mass number of viewers has been game-changing for movements in the modern world where potential change can happen a lot faster.

Question: I believe, though the idea of social media is a great thing, having it centralized around a group of the media’s inventors can pose issues of greed by people mirroring this where they are only in it for the money. Would the meaning change if social media platforms were more decentralized, and would movements not be the same as they are in these centralized platforms?