#Black Lives Matter: then and now

👋👋What's up crazies.Today's topic is a movement which spilled the sweat and blood of numerous activists in the USA 😓.It is the black lives matter movement . Many may think that this movement started in 2014 with the death of Michael brown, an unarmed teenager who was shot several times by the police in Ferguson. However this movement actually started with the pacific protest of Martin Luther king. Unfortunately I am not giving an historian perspective but a  public relation's one. In brief I am going to compare the two protests according to the use of social media.

 The movement without social media in 1960

• Drawbacks of not having social media

Many researchers have proven that majority of Americans were not supportive or  of the movement because they did not have enough information of what the movement was all about. Yes the mass media was present but let us not forget that the broadcasting industry constitutes a one way communication. The citizens could not deny the information received. At that time the government could have easily threatened the media to display only a bad image of the protest. However if social media existed, independents journalists would have reported objectives and unbiased facts. Link 1

• Advantages of not having social media

As everyone is free to circulate any type of information, defamation and false information could have been the cause of huge riots and mutiny Link 2

The movement with social media in 2014

• Benefits: The movement went viral

Because of its large spread, within hours millions of people were aware of the outrageous event that happened to Michael brown, immediate effects could have been felt around the world. We can easily say that unity was the fuel which gave the energy to the activists around the world  Another advantage is that because the movement went viral, it had a bigger influence and impact. In the 1960s that problem only concerned Americans but now with social media it became a global issue.Link 3

Recommendations

 As a public relations practitioner, social media is used to reach a large audience that we can not normally reach. In the case of this movement, social media was mostly used for good purposes. A lot of people are still septic about the veracity of the movement. Social experiments can be a good way to convince them. Putting these experiments on social media will definitely prove to a lot people that our fight is legit and it is based on facts.

Here is an example of one of these experiments. 

 What do you think of the movement? Do you think that using social media is a good mean to solve the issue? What are your propositions to tackle the problem? Leave your comment down below. Peace 👊😉.

Link 4