Using Social Media

This article, 4 Tips for Using Social Media in Your Activism, cited four main methods for using social media in activism.

Interactive Activism

• Research has shown people are more likely to participate in activism when there is a personal aspect. This is what happened with the ALS ice bucket challenge. By seeing friends and family post, donate, support, others were more likely to do it.

Make the activism accessible and inclusive

• This involves making it easy for all types of people to join. Whoever the target audience is you factor in their age, what forms of activism would be easiest, how to get the most to participate, what will convince them and other things like this.

• An example of this is the disability person's march which utilized online methods like zoom to show support for disabled persons.

The small steps are critical

• All forms of support are important in reaching the ultimate goal. Nothing big gets done without the small steps taken by people in the community.

• Activities such as emailing state representatives, participating in small protests, local elections, all the small steps like these are crucial to supporting the overall movement.

Show what others are doing

• Even if you physically can't support something you can share the work of others doing that. You can amplify the impact their actions have.

The author of this article then goes on and says their activism is online and in-person, but there is one thing that always happens. Whenever social media is used people reach out telling them how empowered they feel, or that they used their resource to donate. It shows us how easy social media is to bring widespread change and knowledge about a subject.

Leary, Alaina, and Alaina Leary. “4 Tips for Using Social Media in Your Activism.” YES! Magazine, YES!, 26 Nov. 2019, https://www.yesmagazine.org/democracy/2018/04/23/yes-social-media-can-be-used-for-positive-change?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+yes%2Fmost-recent-articles+%28YES%21+Magazine+Most+Recent+Articles%29.