Digital Activism

I won't lie, I am one of those gen-zers that gets a lot of their news from social media. You would never really see me turning on the news, but instead scrolling on my TikTok feed to see what is going on. Of course, everything should initially be taken with a grain of salt and additional research should always be done to ensure its legitimacy. However, many news stations have already adopted and accepted these new platforms. So many news stations have their own TikTok accounts and are posting clips from their shows or making new content to fit the TikTok format. You could even see this new shift during the last election, when KamalaHQ was posting TikToks almost daily to catch the attention of younger voters. Like it or not, social media is engrained into the political lives of not only gen-z, but other generations as well. 

I have seen a lot of digital activism on social media, and have even participated in it. I think digital activism allows for accessibility and for more people to participate and be part of something larger, when before it could be more limited. Now, it takes little time to repost links to resources, fundraisers, or to share your political stances. There are even certain Instagram and TikTok accounts that are dedicated to making material meant to be reposted to share the word. 

I think a big criticism of digital activism is that it doesn't translate to the real world, but I disagree. I think being able to share could help and make a larger group of people aware of what is going on, when without seeing it on social media, they might not have known about it. Further, take protests, for example. A lot of protests are planned, shared, and spread online via different social media platforms. I think digital activism gives people a great opportunity to support and raise awareness to things that are important to them in a low cost way.