We learned this week about the pros and cons of the protests of the BLM movement and the #Metoo movement. These are both great movements with great intentions, but sadly they do have some downfalls to them both. We see downfalls in the way that they are interpreted by the actions through protest. Mostly everyone knows that black lives matter and can agree on that. Protests are needed to make a statement and show when change is needed. Protests shouldn't be used to tear others down and destroy lives, businesses, and buildings. In my opinion, this isn't how you are going to get someone to agree with your movement.
There are many pros of gathering a group of protestors through social media. The easiest part of devising a protest through social media is garnering a following. It's simple to make your message clear through social media and find people that agree with your message. You can create a social media page that has all of the values your organization represents, so know one interprets your message the wrong way. If someone thinks that your organization represents something different than what they perceive, then there could be confusion throughout your movement. Another pro of gathering a group of protesters through social media is that it is much easier to get your supporters together in one place at the same time. This makes it easier to get a larger group to show that your movement has numbers, and people are behind your message. You can post pictures on your social media page of the protest to show support of your message to garner new members. Pulling out ads for your Facebook group so that the friends of your fans can see the group helps as well, and this can attract new members. As you can see, there are a lot of pros when it comes to gathering protesters through social media.
While there are pros to gathering protesters through social media, there are also a couple of cons. It is easy to face backlash through social media. Everyone always has something to say, and everyone seems to be a critic nowadays. If you are the type of group with the mindset of " you're either with me or against me" then you are going to have many people trying to rile you up to make your organization or movement look bad. You have to be careful what your leaders are doing or saying on social media, because one slip up can cause a lot of harm to a movement. If there is a protest set up through your group and people from another group start causing destruction and harm, it is important you disaffiliate yourself from them as fast as you can. If you don't, people will start to slowly distance themselves from the movement because they don't want to associate themselves with that. Another con of gathering protesters through social media is that people may say they are with your movement when they really aren't. You may seem like you have enough protesters riding with your movement, when in reality no one wants to be in public representing it.
In conclusion, there are most definitely pros and cons to gathering protesters through social media. It's how you deal with them which is the most important part. I think that before an organization tries to gather protesters through social media, they should have a plan. They should have a plan for of the protest goes good or bad. There are always going to be bad apples in a movement, and organizations need to distance themselves from those to not deter from the main message. If the organization doesn't distance themselves from those bad apples, then it will hurt the organization and the message. This is what hurt the BLM movement the most. Encouraging violence to get the message out there actually hurt what was supposed to be a great movement and message. There are always going to be people who criticize your movement, but it's imperative to be open to criticism to expand your audience.
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