Victor Lee | Analysis Paper 2
For those of us who choose not to be ignorant, have access to news, and are above the age of 3, the word “Ferguson” might strike a memory or two. That’s right, I’m looking at everyone four years old and above. More than that, the word should remind us of where we are today as a society.
For those of us who are addicted to social media, #Ferguson, #blacklivesmatter, and such hashtags might be more familiar to us. The events that have followed the shooting of Michael Brown have been documented all over social media, and it is hard to even avoid Tweets or other posts about related events. The context of the happenings is understood through these tweets for many people because they do not direct themselves to new articles or more credible news sources.
I’m not sure if the text that appears in these Tweets count towards the word count of this paper, but for some, these celebrities serve as their journalists, news anchors, and news reporters.
Doesn’t take 100 days to decide if murder is a crime, it takes 100 days to figure out how to tell people it isn’t…… #FergusonDecision
— Chris Rock (@ozchrisrock) November 25, 2014
This is how powerful social media has become. It has enabled anyone to be a source of credible information to the rest of the audience. Who would’ve thought that somewhere in this world, there is a person who first learned about Ferguson through Kanye West’s Tweet?
Paul Mason says in his article, Global Unrest: How the Revolution Went Viral, “The past 10 years have seen disruptions in the pattern of social life that mirror what happened in that era. But this time, it’s happening at high velocity and across the canvas of all humanity” (Mason 2012). Our newsfeeds on social media sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and whatever else is being used, are evidence of this claim and idea that what’s going on in social media sites reflects what is happening in the actual events.
Intergalactic Irrelevance 