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Public, Platforms, and Visibility
MEITONG WAN
CCT 109: Contemporary Communication Technologies
Dr. Daniel Guadagnolo & Ryan Mitchell
Word count: 1505
November 2nd , 2022
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Public, Platforms, and Visibility
Introduction
Besides being practical tools for entertainment, digital platforms contribute significantly
to reconstructing and influencing behavioral expressions of different individuals concerning
specific values. Currently, media platforms are associated with commerce, technology, and
politics. Other daily interactions have found themselves today in media platforms, even if they
have been meant to target specific people. People have different underlying reasons why they
decide to go public by use of digital platforms. Through their businesses, they may want their
users to have high-quality experiences and increasing customer satisfaction, among others.
However, despite digital platforms being associated with so many benefits, they have different
challenges. This essay addresses how social media brings social change if used correctly by
amplifying peoples’ voices and reaching a larger audience quickly.
Discussion
Social media can change the public’s ideas. One of the ways this can happen is by the
emergence of new publics. For instance, it was too difficult for the voice of minority groups to
be heard by anyone during the time of newspapers and TV, long before social media was
common among people. However, with the emergence of social media platforms such as
Facebook, Twitter, and others, it is very easy for minority groups to reach wider audiences in no
given time. This has resulted in people having a platform on which they can lay their voices, and
this can reach as many people as they can. Furthermore, one may state that social media has
created “echo chambers” where different individuals have information reinforcing their beliefs.
Even if this can cause hegemonic power relations reinforcement, it may also allow voices to be
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heard by more people and even much quickly. As Jackson and Foucault Welles (2016) argue,
globally, people use social media to protect against racism and police brutality against African
Americans with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. This changed the hashtag to an online
movement, leading to different victims, such as George Floyd, receiving justice. Furthermore,
this has led to the cases of police brutality among Blacks and racism being on a decline in the US
and other places globally. This indicates how social media has the power to challenge power
structures by giving the oppressed power to push so that people can hear their voice.
As earlier stated, social media platforms are practical tools for enhancing social change.
Through social media platforms, there might be a reproduction of a select social group with a
hegemonic power that may control political institutions or personalities' decisions. A good
example is how people used social media to remove the corrupt Philippines president (Shirky,
2011). According to Shirky (2011), angry Filipinos sent seven million text messages between
themselves after the President's loyalists had decided to hide key evidence that stood against his
freedom and his trial. Seeing this, the loyalists backed down, and prosecution went on, and by
January 20th, President Joseph Estrada was gone. Later, the President stated that the "test-
messaging generation" had resulted in his downfall. Therefore, one may state that through social
media, there is power. However, this tool is associated with different limitations. Generally, there
are different times when social media or digital media platforms have been used by people in
positions of power to control how people think, their public opinion, and their narrative. A great
example is when Donald Trump, a presidential election candidate in the US presidential elections,
used Twitter to communicate with voters directly (Kayam, 2020). Therefore, despite social
media being used by others to have a voice and to stand for what is right in society, others in
power may use it to maintain their status quo.
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Social media platforms ensure that outlying ideas, views, people, or issues gain public
visibility. There are limitless times globally when social media platforms have been able to give
a voice to ideas, discriminated people, or issues. According to Singh (2018), the Feminist
movement Women's March in Washington during President Trump's regime gained much
popularity due to social media platforms. These movements have mainly been associated with
hashtags such as #TimesUp and #MeToo, which many social media users push. Feminists and
activists heavily rely on social media platforms because they can reach many people in no time.
Furthermore, social media platforms are very flexible. Moreover, passing issues through digital
media platforms attracts the attention of both local and international communities. All this
qualifies the mechanism to increase public visibility of people's views, emotions, or ideas that
require public attention. Even if there will be others who will resist these movements, it is a clear
indication that it would contribute to a debate that would be heard by an even larger number of
persons around the globe.
Social media has political power, as identified earlier. People tend to push for hashtags
that may be effective in changing what they see as not fitting. According to Papacharissi (2016),
the #egypt hashtag is one of the most prominent hashtags and has been used along with other
tags in this period of turmoil. The then president, Hosni Mubarak, was under fire because the
people were not satisfied with his rule and therefore were calling for him to resign. However,
Mubarak tried not to listen to his people and even had Twitter banned in his country. However,
after 18 days of demonstrations and people ranting on social media, Mubarak stepped down as
Egypt’s fourth president. This is an indication that social media has political power. The actions
of the former Egyptian president clearly indicate that media platforms can shape and restructure
public opinions. Generally, in this case, one may state that digital platforms not only give people
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the news but also tell them what to do after receiving it. It indicates that through social media,
people may come together and achieve what they want and what is good for them.
Social media platforms like TikTok are being used to propel effective content. In a study
by Hautea et al. (2021) on how users use TikTok to spread the message on climate change and
actions to save the environment, the study concludes that the platform effectively spreads
effective content. This is through visibility, where it is easy for other people to locate this
message and the message being perceivable. This may be through hashtags. However, the
authors note that these hashtags may be misleading because user feeds display algorithmically
generated content. Furthermore, TikTok is associated with editability, where users can create
content, modify it and then send it to others. Through video editors, it is easy for users to capture,
change, annotate and combine sound, videos, and images in different ways. Finally, there is also
the power of association. There is an ease in identifying and developing patterns of relationships
between entities. This means that people can use existing sounds or songs. Furthermore, users
can create duets where there is a combination of old and new content. Furthermore, these authors
state that many TikTok users are between 13 and 24 years old. Therefore, it may be a positive
given that this generation will be there tomorrow. It may be advantageous through humor and the
other means that these users use to spread content, given that it will reach many people.
Changes
This paper has a lot of changes that I should have included in the first paper. The first
change is an inclusion of a thesis statement which in the first paper seemed too broad. This
paper’s thesis statement is specific and states that social media brings social change if used
correctly, amplifying peoples’ voices and reaching a larger audience quickly. This paper includes
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some changes in the arguments that were in the draft. For example, in the draft, I stated that
Shirky (2011) wrote that Filipinos protected their corrupt president.
In contrast, the president’s loyalists protected their corrupt president by hiding crucial
evidence. Furthermore, I have deleted some of the examples I had listed in power and added
different examples that seem to support the argument. Furthermore, there are no typos in this
paper, as was the case in the draft. These changes come from the feedback that I received from
the draft paper. These changes ensure that this current paper is more informative and self-
explanatory as possible. These changes also involve arguments that simplify the paper and
follow the thesis statement. I have also ensured that I have accredited authors by citing their
specific work as asked through the feedback.
Conclusion
Social media is nevertheless a potent tool for enacting social change despite its
drawbacks. It can disrupt established power systems and amplify voices, ideas, and perceptions
that might go unheard when appropriately used. Furthermore, social media is flexible and can
quickly reach a massive number of people with limited time. To prevent being taken advantage
of by individuals in positions of authority or being a target of online abuse, it is crucial to be
aware of social media limitations. There is a need for people to avoid being manipulated by
people in power so that they can maintain their status quo or for their benefit.
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References
Hautea, S., Parks, P., Takahashi, B., & Zeng, J. (2021). Showing they care (or don’t): Affective
publics and ambivalent climate activism on TikTok. Social Media+ Society, 7(2),
20563051211012344.
Jackson, S. J., & Foucault Welles, B. (2015). Hijacking# myNYPD: Social media dissent and
networked counterpublics. Journal of communication, 65(6), 932-952.
Kayam, O. (2020). Straight to the people: Donald Trump’s rhetorical style on Twitter in the 2016
US presidential election. Language and Dialogue, 10(2), 149-170.
Papacharissi, Z. (2015). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. Oxford University
Press.
Shirky, C. (2011). The political power of social media: Technology, the public sphere, and
political change. Foreign affairs, 28-41.
Singh, R. (2018). Platform feminism: Protest and the politics of spatial organization.
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Reflection
Compared with the previous outline, I made changes in the paper structure and its content.
First, I gave up the form of marked the questions with subtitles and answering questions one by
one, but integrated them into the paragraphs. And the article is divided into four parts by
Introduction, Discussion, Changes and Conclusion, which clearly elaborated that, “In addition to
being a practical tool for entertainment, digital platforms have an important contribution to
rebuilding and influencing the behavior expression of different individuals about specific values.
Which is part of my thesis statement.” Further more the changes could better answering the
question of "How to bring about social change by amplifying people's voice and quickly
reaching more audiences if social media is used correctly."in my paper. According to the
comments for my TA that I didn’t express my own point of view, this final paper illustrate my
strong and clearly point of view of “Social media is flawed, but it is still a powerful tool for
implementing social change. People must be aware of the limitations of social media and need to
avoid being manipulated by those in power, so that they can maintain the status quo or for their
own benefit.”