Effectiveness of Twitter as a Social Change Communication Tool

Effectiveness of Twitter as a Social Change Communication Tool
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Effectiveness of Twitter as a Social Change Communication Tool
Social media is a combination of interactive networking, whether through pictures, video, texts, tweets, or posts. It has grown on such a large scale that it has become a social "norm" in everyday activities. Social media takes positive and negative effects on individuals' mental health, which determines how they perceive and interact with society. Coherently, social media acts as a tool that amplifies people's intentions based on their experiences and philosophies in life. As a result, social networking platforms are crucial in directing the lives and societies which people want.
Nevertheless, social media also acts as a component that dissuades others from reaching their goals and leads to anxiety in situations that involve mockery of a person. Such a side effect is most significant in schools, leading to the emergence of the term cyber-bullying. Correspondingly, people's experiences from interaction in social media sites would inform whether they should continue to use such platforms to seek personal/societal help or avoid them entirely because of interacting with hostile or uncaring people. Notably, social media platforms may also become channels in which people with low political and economic power join forces to trigger a nationwide/global revolution. One of such cases is in Sudan. Berridge's (2020) article brings forth the idea that social media renders it fast and effective for an individual to activate massive demonstrations against the high and mighty in a country. It indicates that Sudanese railways workers, in the past, would take a long time before effecting a change that favors their working conditions and benefits. However, the advent of social media increased communication speed, leading to short-term demonstrations accommodated by substantial change. Notably, Berridge (2020) informs of Sudan railway workers staging a protest back in 1985 against the rise of basic food prices during President Nimeiri's regime. The protests did not use social media technologies that are common in today's world, hence, taking two and a half weeks before achieving the objective of topping the regime from power. Contrastingly, a similar situation arose in December 2018 and only took less than three days before the protest was popularized to the extent of prompting government response. However, there are also cases in which social media sites have become tools for advancing divisions among people and war. For example, Shead (2019) reports that the extent to which hate speeches feature on Facebook necessitated the use of artificial intelligence to detect and delete such posts. As a result, there is an emerging dilemma on whether social media platforms effectively establish positive social and political change. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the extent to which social media communication, especially Twitter, would mitigate problems that are prone among minorities or marginalized communities. It suffices to say that Twitter is an effective communication platform for social and political change because of its global reach, ease of access, and freedom of speech policy. 
Research Rationale
The increasing income gap between the rich and the poor indicates that those with significant political and economic power do not consider improving the lives of those languishing in poverty or less fortunate being important. However, the high and mighty have the resources to neutralize the ordinary people who advocate for equality/equity. As a result, it is paramount for ordinary people, especially minorities and marginalized community members, to strive for political and social change through mobilizing themselves. The responsibility, henceforth, calls for meaningful and effective communication to foster a sense of mass movements, which are impossible for those holding public offices and other influential positions to ignore. As a result, it is critical to evaluate social media platforms to understand whether they are proper and effective channels with which the marginalized may interact to foster the social and political change they desire. Worth noting is that whenever the question of mass protest emerges in the current social sphere, conjured images of the Civil Rights Movement, the 1968 protests, the Vietnam War, and the 1989 toppling of the Berlin wall are bound to emerge. However, the past few years have seen an unprecedented drastic increase in political uprisings. In 2019 alone, there were on all the continents, distributed across 114 countries. On average, global protests have increased by 11.5% annually since 2009 (Brannen, Haig & Smidt). Several reasons can explain the rise of protest, including economic, leadership, ethnic, and religious tensions, police brutality, violence against women, and the continued marginalization of vulnerable groups. Underlying these forces is the effectiveness of communication across social groups through current technological tools that have made it possible for real-time global updates, organization, and planning. Social media platforms, Twitter, in particular, have been instrumental as communication and mobilization tools for a majority of the protest. Therefore, there is a need to understand the effectiveness of Twitter as a communication tool for political and social change, especially among marginalized groups across the world. Henceforth, the rationale of the present study is to decipher how Twitter would help mitigate many of the social vices and political challenges posed to marginalized communities due to the lack of access to information and channels that foster unity.
Literature Review
Social media, especially Twitter, has been an instrumental tool for confronting racists and accounting for Americans' discrimination against African Americans. Although it is clear to see the difference in which social media has brought towards each generation, it has an even more significant effect on different minority groups. Beginning with the black Americans, it created a positive effect for the community. A study conducted on Pew Research Center found that on average, about 17,000 times a day, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter is used to highlight modern American activism and protest for the under-represented communities (Lei, 2018). According to the research findings, #BlackLivesMatter, just as the #MeTooMovement, "continues to spike following the highly publicized fatal deaths of black Americans by law enforcement and refers to #BlackLivesMatter as an 'archetypal example' of hashtags associated with political issues or causes" (Lei, 2018). At a glance, minorities such as African Americans are at substantial risks of marginalization considering that 27%, 40%, 45%, and 40% of the population live in poverty, juveniles in the criminal justice system, in foster care homes, and homeless, respectively. Overall, African Americans grow up experiencing racism and microaggression from those around them, resulting in many different types of results in the way they live. The consistent advocacy that these minorities receive from social media helps in their mental development as they feel that they have more support globally than they ever did before. As a result, there is an encouragement for those who experience exploitation and oppression to share their encounters and seek further social support to come out of miserable systems, such as those which favor new-age slavery and police brutality against black. For this reason, Edringtong, LaShara, and Lee (2018) acknowledge that BLM has been successful in using Twitter in sharing information, establishing an online community, and encouraging action. BLM social medial movement is an example of a minor society coming together to air their dissatisfactions and call for social change. With that, it is proper to assert that extant literature indicates that Twitter is a formidable platform of communication to help African Americans alleviate racial-based hate and discrimination. 
Moreover, Twitter is fundamental in helping marginalized communicate to mitigate problems associated with sexuality. Two of the minority groups that benefit from social media are females and the LGBT community. With social media, these minorities can find a community that fosters a sense of belonging and validation as the world does and does not treat them in ways that show they are accepted. Through social media networks like Twitter that the feminists movement becomes a powerful voice to advocate for gender equality and dissuade factors that contribute to domestic violence. The article by Li et al. helps to bring the argument into perspective because it focuses on the use of social media in advancing feminist agendas. Li et al. found that online protests are preferred to physical protests by numerous victims of sexual assault because of the associated shame and stigma. Therefore, there is a sense in which Twitter becomes a haven for various people to onset activism based on the issues that they undergo. However, they are not brave enough to confront the culprits publicly.
Social Media platforms have revolutionized. They are just not meant for social interactions but also staging revolutions intended to change the prevailing situation in a society. Twitter is one of the leading social media platforms being used as a social change communication tool. Different societal groups use these platforms to voice their concerns and injustices, including marginalized groups. Marginalized populations include communities and groups of people going through discrimination and social, political, and economic injustices due to unequal power relationships. Marginalized populations do not fully enjoy their rights, and they have limited access to resources and opportunities meant to better their lives. This aspect makes them very vulnerable to a lot of harm and social evils because the law does not protect them, and they can inadequately deal with them. The marginalized population comprises homeless people, people using alcohol and drugs, prisoners or criminal offenders, and mental health issues.
Another important concept in using Twitter as a social change communication tool for the marginalized population is social change. The social change concerns the transformation of human interactions and relationships over time, which significantly impacts society. Change always happens, and it is inevitable in every society, and people ought to appreciate it as it comes. For a long time, the marginalized population did not have a voice in society. With many social media platforms, especially Twitter, they can voice their concerns, and discriminatory behavior meted against them. Social movements concerning civil rights, women’s rights, and LBGTQ rights, among others, have informed most of the social changes in modern society (Berridge, 2020). These changes occur frequently, and they have a lasting impact on society and among the populations associated with it. Social...