Social media platforms are a place for more than entertainment
Social media platforms that afford the use of free speech through uncensored posts provide civic identities a stage to express their position on topical issues and engage in political discourse. The accessibility to various platforms is crucial to the civic human experience and exercising the right to political freedom. Particularly to people of colour (Anderson et al.) states 54% of black social media users say these platforms are somewhat important to them for finding people with the same ideals versus 39% of white users. In addition, 54% of black users found social media important for getting involved with issues important to them as opposed to 36% of white users. From a global perspective, social media platform like Twitter afford individuals located in third-world countries a mouthpiece to expose corruption and exploitation within an authoritarian sovereign.
Activist groups such as ‘Black Lives Matter’ efficiently commandeered social media to make their outrage known against police known. BLM used Twitter hashtags like #sayhername to enlighten members of the public of Sandra Bland. An African American woman died of asphyxiation which was ruled a “suicide”. The state of Texas found the jail which housed bland to have been neglect towards prisoner observation and in 2017 it passed the ‘Sandra Bland Act’ (Editors). The act aims to educate police officers regarding de-escalating situations, mental illness and requires jails to be designed to provide alternate pathways for people with mental health into treatment.
The 2019 Zimbabwean protests demonstrate how media platforms can highlight corruption. The BBC reported soldiers/ police exercised disproportionate and unjustified authoritative force to kill 12 members of a coalition for human rights (“Zimbabwe Blocks Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter amid Crackdown”). This entire debacle was disappointing to witness as a second-generation Zimbabwean with family overseas. My family relied upon independent bias-free YouTube Channels, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook to remain accurately updated.
Through these social media platforms, people raised questions regarding “internal” disciplinary measures imposed upon the soldiers for breaching the code of conduct. Members of the public are afforded an intrinsic voice to participate in political engagements allows a call to attention to countries willing to listen. Zimbabwean locals taking to Twitter to describe their first-hand experience through Twitter and Facebook allowed my family to maintain our civic Zimbabwean identities and engage in political support through supporting protests via sharing and reposting. Unfortunately, local’s voices were completely censored by the tyrannical government, stripping civic identities and opportunities for political engagements. Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook were blocked nationally amid protest crackdowns. (“Zimbabwe Blocks Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter amid Crackdown”).
In conclusion, various social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook have explicitly shown how they afford civic identities; through intertwining like-minded people, promoting a universal human right of freedom of speech and its ability to broadcast injustices for all to see and ignite political engagement. Engagement free from censorship, for the most part. As a parting message I’d like to leave readers with this, should social media platforms be denied to certain countries like Zimbabwe due to civil unrest? If not what must be done to combat this?