Chiara Vanoli

Global Media

Miriam Tola

December 2017

The Role of Social Media in Initiating and Sustaining The #BlackLivesMatter Social Movement.

 This paper describes the role of social media in initiating and sustaining the

#BlackLivesMatter social movement. The Black Lives Matter movement is an activist movement

that began within the African American community to highlight acts of racism and police violence

against African Americans. The online movement was founded in 2013 with the hash tag

#BlackLivesMatter and its purpose is to raise awareness towards violence against African

Americans through the use of social platforms. The research uses academic sources, journals and

newspaper articles in order to analyze how social media and social movements are correlated. This

correlation is shown through the concepts of visual and physical proximity, with reference also to

the perspectives of authors Malcom Gladwell and Clay Shirky. The conclusion reflects on how

social media facilitates the rising of protest movements against social injustice and the abuses by

public authorities, therefore reinforcing the democratic systems of nations.

  Protests have always been part of our society, some memorable ones date back to the

16th century, from the Storming of the Bastille, The Women’s Suffrage Parade of 1913 through to

the 2017 Women’s March. Protests have always been a sign of discontent toward disputable actions

by monarchies, authorities, and Government policies but nowadays they are also a tool to raise

awareness about environmental and social issues. In days gone by, being part of a protest consisted

in physical gatherings of resistance such as marching down the streets, occupying federal buildings

or blocking traffic. These tactics are still in use, but are nowadays supported by Internet

“propaganda” which is able to reach people all over the world. Modern communication

technologies, and the use of social media have evolved the way in which social movements are

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initiated and supported;  they have furthermore contributed to the spread of social causes across the

oceans. In his book “Tweets and The streets” Paulo Gerbaudo, a lecturer in Digital Culture  recalls a

moment during the Occupation of Tahir Square in Cairo in 2011. He observed two

main situations:  he witnessed an encounter between a group of almost 200 protesters and the

authorities, he then noticed a girl outside of the protest camp, whom he deduced was from the

Cairo upper classes taking her smartphone out of her purse and starting to snap pictures of the

arrests.   She immediately started pressing the keyboard and finally clicked the enter

button (Gerbaudo). This event can be interpreted as a symbol of the beginning of the interaction

between digital media and social movements. From that moment forward social platforms such as

Twitter and Facebook have taken relevant roles in founding, organizing and spreading the messages

of social movements. In the last couple of years, the Black Lives Matter

movement, which highlights the acts of racism and violence against African Americans, has used

these new technological tools to develop and spread their ideals.  

  The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was created in 2013 by three activists: Patrice Cullors,

Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, after Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old African American was shot dead

by a police officer (Rickford). The fact that Martin was an unarmed young boy and shot dead by a

person who is supposed to protect people further shocked the Black community which was already

sensitive towards issues of equality due to a long history of repression

and exploitation. After Trayvon Martin’s death the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was used more than

6 million times within a year. This event was unfortunately followed by the other deaths of African

Americans at the hands of police officers, raising even more awareness of such abuses and

keeping the hash tag circulating until today (Darran). Unlike Trayvon Martin’s death which was

reported by witnesses, the deaths of Eric Garner, a 43 year old man from Staten Island who was

choked to death by a police officer while he was selling cigarettes,  and Walter Scott, a 50 year old

man who was innocently killed after a traffic stop; were filmed by bystanders and then released

on social media (Darran). Both videos went viral; the whole world could see the acts of police

brutality with their own eyes. Facebook recently added the live stream option that allows users to

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record and watch a video in real time. In 2016, 32 year old Philando Castile was pulled over by

police after a traffic violation; the encounter with the officer ended with Philando being shot dead

while his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds live streamed the event on Facebook as proof of what was

happening (“Philando Castile”). The live-streamed video on Facebook introduced users to a new

perspective by virtually taking them inside the car with the victim and his wife, so they were

able to witness what was truly happening. Without the video, the sequence of events that led

to Philando’s death could have been rearranged or modified by the police and media but the video

shows the authenticity of what exactly happened. Diamond Reynolds later claimed that she wanted

the video to go viral so people could see what police do (Donnella). The event was in fact later

broadcast all over the world via internet creating an overall sentiment of anger, fear, and injustice.

Philando Castille’s death is a perfect example of how videos recorded by bystanders have become

the main way people inside and outside of the internet learn about police brutality. Events like

these, which raised people’s emotional reaction to the issue of police violence, kept the hash tag

#BlackLivesMatter circulating on all social media platforms.

Nonetheless, this crossing point between technologies and physical action raised some

theoretical debates that question its effectiveness. NYU professor Clay Shirky argues that social

media enables new forms of participation thanks to faster communication which, in turn, leads to

the speed of group actions and more efficient coordination. These tools have also enabled easier

ways of forming groups, and the networked population can have faster access to

information creating more opportunities to engage in the movement (Shirky).  Right now, the Black

Lives Matter movement counts for 700,400 online followers: 309,987 on Facebook, 272,000 on

Twitter and 122,000 on Instagram. The scholar Evgeny Morozon however takes the opposite view

to Shirky; he in fact raises the issue of “slacktivism” a feel good activism that has close to

no political impact but creates the illusion of making a difference by simply joining a Facebook

group. This furthermore raises the question of how many of those followers truly follow the

movement and are active within social networks. According to Morozon  communication

technologies in the United States will reinforce a sense of democracy, which could not

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otherwise be obtained. He additionally points out that Facebook and Twitter are used

more frequently for leisure rather than political motives. The fact that organizations like the

BlackLives Matter movement use internet based social networks could increase the

possibility of being monitored by state security apparatus (Gerbaudo). Even if Morozov’s opinion

on the matter of “slacktivism” is too pessimistic, it has to be acknowledged that

the BLM movement gained the attention of high-profile politicians such as Bill de Blasio and Barak

Obama. During an interview with CNN, De Blasio said that he believes the way to resolve the

problem of police violence across the country is through retraining, helping law enforcement realize

there's "implicit bias" and working to get the bias "out of our systems” (Diaz) .Furthermore, the

movement attracted the attention of president Obama who during a police memorial in

Dallas stated: “We have all seen this bigotry in our lives at some point, none of us is entirely

innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know

this” (Boyer).Additionally, on August 11th 2015 a group of protesters met with Hillary Clinton to

discuss issues such as drugs, mass incarcerations and anti-black racism. 

This suggests that a movement that is active on the networks has the possibility to gain the right

attention particularly if it touches a sensitive issue like police violence and equality of minorities.

The New Yorker writer Malcom Gladwell also suggests that social media are not suitable

for driving radical political actions which require “strong ties”;  in his opinion social networks

provide an experience of “weak ties” which are not sufficient to ensure effective revolutionary

actions (Gerbaudo).  Nonetheless, despite these pessimistic views, it is essential to recognize the

fact that social media facilitate interpersonal connections across distances. This

attribute, referred to as “virtual proximity”, is very diverse to the reality of protest camps full of

people which offer the experience of “physical proximity”. Both types of proximity should be at the

base of a social movement; they allow people to engage and participate but in different ways:

people can take part in a protest even if they are not physically present, and those who do not use

social media can still be engaged in the protest on the spot. 

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The movement itself however has its own tactics besides spreading the hash tag through social

networks. The activists of the Black Lives Matter movement have used a series of disruptive tactics

to lead their protest such as occupying highways, sporting events, municipal buildings and police

stations amplifying the routine attacks on African Americans by police officers

(Rickford). Some examples are the #RiseUpOctober weekend of marches, The Charleston church

shooting March, the occupation of the Minneapolis mall and airport in December 2015. Modern

protests like these have used the combination of mediated communication and physical gathering in

public spaces. Social media has given people the opportunity to become “citizen journalists” by

directly reporting the events on social networks without using the mediation of the press. According

to the American author Jared Cohen, each platform has a different scope in terms of organization,

for instance: Facebook is used to gather groups of people, Twitter is used as a real time tool to

organize, and finally YouTube is used to document the acts of resistance. The use of these

technologies consequently plays an important role in mobilization and, as Gerbaudo said, they

are a means to choreograph collective actions (Gerbaudo). The organization in fact uses their

official twitter account to communicate dates and times of meetings and events (Appendix 1). Their

Facebook account is used to share content which leans more towards the cultural side of black

associations, newspaper articles (Appendix 2), or social events (Appendix 3). YouTube provides

numerous videos of their marches and protests through the search “black lives matter” (Appendix

4).

The strength in using social media to support a social movement is that the media content can

be shared and reach audiences all over the world. The use of modern technologies definitely

accelerates a global exchange of ideas. The two main scapes that contribute to globalization in

relation to social media as a support for social movements are the free flow of media

content, referred as mediascape, and the flow of ideas and movements referred to as

ideoscape (Appandurai). The era of digitalization is making global flows more

inclusive; each internet user can contribute, whereas globalization used to happen as an initiative

of corporations and governments. This content exchange contributed and sustained the Black Lives

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Matter movement. By sharing a tweet, or a Facebook post such as the live stream video of Philando

Castile’s death, the core ideas and values will keep circulating among networks and people

will keep talking about it; by raising the awareness of police brutality against African

Americans there could be more chances for a call of action by the US government and politicians. 

According to recent statistics ,internet users have reached 3,773 billion worldwide, equal to

50% of the total world population and active social media users are 2,789 billion (+21% vs 2016),

mainly connected through mobile devices (91%) (“I Nuovi Dati”). These numbers fully represent

the dramatic changes that have taken place and are still taking place in the way information

circulates and is shared. The consequences of this development are not always positive; for instance

problems related to the violation of privacy are constantly increasing as well as the diffusion of fake

news. The misuse of social media is correctly considered a risk for the right working of democracy.

Nevertheless it is undeniable that social media play a paramount role in the opposite direction by

making public opinion aware of the abuses of government agencies and law enforcers. The step

from gaining knowledge through to the organization of a successful protest movement depends on

multiple factors: the social relevance and level of violence of the events, the initiative of motivated

and competent activists and the support of political leaders. All these factors are evident in the case

of #BlackLivesMatter: police abuse towards African Americans which is a highly sensitive issue

because of its deep roots in US society; three dedicated founders who established the movement;

the support of high profile politicians such as the mayor of New York and the President of the

USA.It is hard to think that such diverse elements could generate a powerful movement without the

uniting power of social media. Once again the development of modern day technologies proves to

be an important element for the social progress and the improvement of the democratic life of a

nation.

 

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Bibliography 

Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy." Theory, culture & society 7.2 (1990): 295-310. Boyer, Dave. “Obama defends Black Lives Matter protests at police memorial in Dallas”. The Washington Times.  12 July 2016. www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/12/obama-defends-black-lives-matter-protests-police-m/ Darran, Simon. “Trayvon’s Martin death sparked a movement that lives on five years later”. CNN, 27 February 2007. http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/26/us/trayvon-martin-death-anniversary/index.html Donnella, Leah. “Two Days, Two Deaths: The Police Shootings Of Alton Sterling And Philando Castile”. Code Switch: race and identity remixed. 7 July 2016. www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/07/07/485078670/two-days-two-deaths-the-police-shootings-of-alton-sterling-and-philando-castile Diaz, Danielle. “Bill de Blasio: Black Lives Matter changed discussion 'for the better'”. Cnn Politics. 11 July 2016. http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/bill-de-blasio-chirlane-mccray-black-lives-matter/index.html Gerbaudo, Paolo. Tweets and the Streets : Social Media and Contemporary Activism. London, Pluto Press, 2012. “Philando Castile and Alton Sterling- latest US police shooting black victims”. Bbc. 7 July 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36733673 Rickford, Russell. "Black lives matter: Toward a modern practice of mass struggle." New Labor Forum. Vol. 25. No. 1. Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications, 2016. Shirky, Clay. Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. Penguin, 2008.  “I nuovi dati della Total Digital Audience del mese di settembre 2017”.Audiweb. 08-11-2017. http://www.audiweb.it/news/total-digital-audience-settembre-2017/

@BLMLA. “Tomorrow 11am-211 W. Temple…Stand with the family of those killed by police and demand” Twitter, 17 November

Black Lives Matter. Article from The Guardian newspaper. Facebook, 1st Nov 2017.

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Black Lives Matter. Article of BLM and Sydney Peace foundation. Facebook, 30th Nov 2017.  

Appendix 1   

  

  Example of a Twitter post from the #BlackLivesMatter movement Los Angeles Twitter account                       

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Appendix 2                                  

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Example of a Facebook post of the Black Lives Matter Facebook account sharing an article from The Guardian newspaper       

Appendix 3                                   

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Example of the Black Lives Matter Facebook account sharing a post concerned with the Sydney Peace Foundation       

Appendix 4      

               

  

Example of content found on YouTube by typing “black lives matter march”

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