If the 18-24yo’s involvement has been discreet since the hippie movement, it doesn’t mean it has disappeared ! Indeed, the youth involvement moved from the streets to social networks. The instantaneity and the wide spread of those ones transformed the involvement in something viral
First example : Black Lives Matter. If you didn’t hear about this movement, you must live in a cave. It was born in 2013. Its creators, Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza, posted the famous sentence on Twitter and created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. This one aims at denouncing violence against black people and especially police violence. It instantly became viral. Today, it has been tweeted more than 115,3k (according to Talkwalker Social Search). If to your mind, it is not a massive involvement, what do you think it is ?
Social networks are also the dreamt place to share petitions to fight for a cause. Indeed, the connectivity on social networks allows people to spread petitions around the world. Even if most of them are unsuccessful, it creates new debates between the politicians and shows them the people feelings. For example, in 2016, a petition asked the UK Government a second EU referendum. This petition ran for 6 months and collected 4,150,262 signatures (incredible, isn’t it ?). The petition has been unsuccessful but the UK Government debated on the question. It proves that petitions have a little impact on the politicians minds.
Through social networks, more and more people share online funds for caritative. These online funds are uploaded on platforms as Leetchi, etc. They allow people to give money for a cause they fight for in a few clicks. These little acts, repeated many times, can become a big opportunity for some caritatives defending an issue.
Obviously, the youth involvement moved from the streets to the social networks. Today, it’s much easier to get involved in a project than it used to be thanks to the connectivity persisting between people on social medias. And you, are you fighting for a cause through social networks ? Answer in the comments !
GUILLAUME PAULUS
Hello Fleur,
If you want to spread your movement, I think that indeed, you'll have to retweet/repost your hashtag so that he reaches in the trends. You also have to post quality content such as videos, little photo/video reports, articles, etc. You can even create fake accounts and repost your posts with them, so that they get a higher reach.
Great article. Could you please answer all the questions. I'm particularly interested in Fleur's question.
Hey Guillaume, could you talk to me about the actual process to create a movement on social media ? Like besides posting a #, how can we make the thing we are fighting for to blow up just like it did with the #BlackLivesMatter movement ? Do we have to reach certain people or certain accounts ? Or is it just with the spreading of informations like retweets, reposts ?
Hello Alice ! I think that to get the petitions more popular, social networks could integrate a "petition" tool which would stand directly on the platform, so that you wouldn't need to share a link from an other website to spread the petition. Do you see what I mean ?
Hello Guigui, really nice article !
I agree with you, I think social media is a very good mean to fight for a cause. But, I am sure that lots of people don't know the existence about the petition online... In your opinion how could we spread this technic ? Do you think, there would be more votes ?