Social Media’s Impact on the Black Lives Matter Movement
Unlike the easy use of social media today, if you were a civil rights worker in the deep south and needed to get urgent news of a beating or an activists arrest or some brewing state of danger, you would head to a telephone in an office or phone booth in a likely hostile territory. You would then dial a WATS (Wide Area Telephone Service) line from anywhere in the region and the call would be patched directly to the business or organization that paid for the line (ex. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). On the other end another civil rights worker would be ready to take down your report, along with others pouring in through the line. The write-ups would then be compiled into a “WATS Report” which would be mailed out to organization leaders, the media, Justice Department, Lawyers, etc. across the country. In other words, it took a lot to get the word out.
In the early ’60s, many African-American protests due to police brutality didn’t ultimately fix the issue of injustice faced by black America. But Civil rights leaders figured out that images showing brutality of Jim Crow forced an “indifferent white America” to take black citizens seriously. Civil rights was cited as being the most important issue by only 5 percent of Americans in December of 1962, but the percentage spiked to 48 percent in mid-1963 as the march on Washington captured the attention of millions of television viewers across the nation, but the hype dissipated almost as quickly as it had risen. On March 7, 1965 a peaceful march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery Alabama led to what is known today as “bloody Sunday,” when state troopers bludgeoned and tear-gassed protestors after determining the peaceful march to be unlawful. The brutality of Selma was broadcasted on national television to 48 million people across the nation. It became a stain on the American name and led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to be passed five months later.
Civil rights leaders were very aware of the media’s role in magnifying the narrative that could help or hurt their cause and they would actively make themselves the object of violence in hopes of shocking the conscience of the nation. Social media, in todays civil rights movements, has simplified organization and coordinating large groups. However, unlike the ’60s, “there isn’t a deep well of trust among demonstrators as there was among the people who did the first sit-ins of lunch counters and all knew each other.”
Black Lives Matter, after seven years, is now really in the DNA and the muscle memory of this country,” said Garza. “We all have watched how our community members, our family members, are being murdered on camera.
In a huge contrast to the ’60s sit-ins at lunch counters, the Black Lives Matter movement was propelled by a hashtag following the acquittal of Treyvon Martin’s murderer. According to a study, #BlackLivesMatter was used 12 million times on Twitter from July 12, 2013 to March 1, 2016. Unlike the ’60s where activists were defined by their cause, today activists are defined by their tools. Leaders in the Black Lives Matter organization don’t have to put their bodies and lives in harms way to get the media’s eye on their cause like they had to do in the ’60s. These days, anyone can pull out a smart phone to record a beating, activist’s arrest, or the killing of unarmed black men, women and children and within minutes the rest of the world is able to witness an injustice.
After the acquittal of Treyvon Martin’s murderer in 2013, #blacklivesmatter was posted on Facebook by Alicia Garza signaling the start to a new era of civil rights. In 2014 following the deaths of Mike Brown in Ferguson, and Eric Garner in New York, the Black Lives Matter hashtag was used 189,210 times on Twitter in a single day. In October of 2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders voiced his support for the Black Lives Matter Movement, spurring the hashtag to appear more than 127,000 times on Twitter the following day. In that same year on the anniversary of Mike Brown’s death, the hashtag appeared 120,067 times on Twitter and 98,518 times the following day. In 2016, following the murders of Philando Castio and Alton Sterling, #blacklivesmatter was used 1.1 million times on Twitter in a single day.
With millions unemployed due to a global pandemic and hours spent on social media, the raw power of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police captured on video on May 25, 2020, followed by the Black Lives Matter hashtag, which was used 47.8 million times from May 26-June 7, with an average of 3.7 million times a day. It led to sweeping protests across America with 1.5 million Americans demonstrating in 2,500 towns and cities, setting a tidal wave of support across the globe. Hundreds of thousands in Tokyo, Cape Town, London, Sydney, Stockholm and Rio de Janerio took to the streets in a show of solidarity.
A major difference between the Black Lives Matter Movement and the Civil Rights Movement, as stated by Rep. John Lewis, “It’s so much more massive and all inclusive.” This can be attributed to the tools we have now that civil rights leaders in the ’60s didn’t. Social media has made it possible for people who were either unware of the problem of injustice in America or were completely ignoring it to become allies of the cause.
Although leaders in the Black Lives Matter Movement don’t necessarily all know each other like the civil rights leaders did, it feels as though there is more solidarity across the board between leaders and demonstrators as well as allies. You can feel a sense of oneness across the globe because everyone is experiencing the same thoughts and feelings almost at the same time, which then propels millions to take to the streets in this global show of solidarity.
