We all use social media in our day to day life. From entertainment to even sometimes gather information on a certain topic. Best school in Himachal Pradesh always gives different topics to students for gathering information. People can use these platforms for free and that’s important because that’s what makes it free, so more people use it. If it were paid, I bet, it wouldn’t have been this popular.
They are just basically like normal protests but the thing is that, more people can participate in these protests as unlike normal protests they’re not limited to a particular area. People from distant places can participate in a protest together without safe transport and use their creative minds.
In fact, it has been used quit a lot and had a played a major role in big worldwide protests like “black lives matter”, there were several controversies going on many platforms but mainly twitter as we all know 99% of controversies happen on twitter and nowhere else. People who were not supporting “black lives matter” and were coming-off as racists were getting criticized a LOT!
In March of 2018, even Facebook, was accused of privacy scandal. As you guessed it, social media did play quite a big role in this too. Several people in platforms like YouTube, twitter, instagram and even on Facebook itself were criticizing Facebook for the sake of users’ privacy. A cache of documents inside Cambridge Analytica made its way into the hands of the New York Times. These documents were proof that Stephen K. Bannon, a board member of Cambridge Analytica and a former Trump aide, had illegally obtained data from tens of millions of Facebook users and used it to create voter profiles. People were furious. At the end, in July of 2019, Facebook had to pay $5 billion to Federal Trade Commission in United States.
But sometimes, let’s just say, social media is not so-good at starting protests. Like, just when in 202, when we actually started defeating the COVID-19 virus, some very “smart” people thought the vaccines doesn’t work and actually harms you and some even “smarter” people thought viruses don’t even exist. Yeah, they really did, mostly then, as they think of themselves, the “intellectuals of social media.” This really wasn’t helpful for the society. Many people, due to this, don’t vaccinated and this caused a lot of trouble. Not only they were in trouble, but so where the people they were in contact with especially their families. And for your information, this was said by people who don’t even study micro-biology and if they did, they’re probably stupid or didn’t pay attention in their classes.
So we can conclude from this that, yes, social media can help a lot in protests but, misinformation is something to keep an eye on. This can cause a lot of problems in the society and effect overall development. Best faculty in different school always guides the students for positive use of social media. People can help as they’re more available than normal protests. Even in the protests like the farmers protest, even they used social media, as they said “it allows us to tell truth in our words.” So the availability of social media can to make a difference on what’s being spread. Such as some people can be manipulative and manipulate others into supporting or not supporting a good or bad protest using the art of words. While the social media can help the protest but some people just ruin it, like in the “black lives matter” protest. It stated that, no black person should be discriminated and as it said, their lives matter too. But some racist people of social media just weren’t convinced.
Social Media just like everything else has a positive and negative effect on society that includes protests too.
Prabhav Thakur
C-VIII
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