HOW DO SOCIAL MEDIA CREATE COMMUNITIES AND SUPPORT.

In our day, new technologies are more and more developed every day. As a consequence, social media are even more used everyday. In fact, since cellphones had been democratized, everybody is able to call, text, be contacted by anybody else.

First of all, we know that social platforms make people able to share their own life such as Snapchat, Instagram, or even Twitter. Most of the time, people use social medias in order to communicate, interact with other people’s life. Social Media such as Youtube, or Facebook are also used to watch new and to be informed about what is going on in the world.

But since few years, Hashtags are used by a lot of people to denounce causes. In fact, as social media make their users able to communicate with each other, even if they are anonymous. As a consequence, people feel more and more free on social platforms, and are able to denounces causes that they would never have been able to denounce in real life (most of the time because the fear to be shamed).

As an exemple, we can observe the 2017 Hashtag representing a global movement of men and women sharing experiences about sexual abuse and harassment.

« In 2007, the US activist Tarana Burke started the Me Too movement that would be rekindled in 2017 by the hashtag #MeToo. It emerged following allegations of rape and sexual harassment by Hollywood film-maker Harvey Weinstein. The term gained momentum after actress Alyssa Milano took to Twitter to ask victims of sexual assault to come forward in a show of solidarity. »

This kind of denunciation as a snowball effect. In fact, as a lot of men and women are screaming out loud their story, other people that were hiding themselves from the society feel able to talk about their experiences. (Source BBC)

« Between October and December 2017, the hashtag was used on Twitter and Facebook more than six million times. Around the world other countries started to use different hashtags to join the debate. In France #balancetonporc or « rat on your dirty old man » was used more than 500,000 times during the same period, while in India #abusefreeindia was used to discuss sexual abuse. » (Source BBC)

Moreover, even if it is a chance for millions of people to share about their experiences and also to be able to have feedbacks, compassion..etc, il can also be risky if it becomes a trend. People had been inventing sexual abused at work to be a part of these communities, putting the person they accused in a uncomfortable situation.

We know that social media can create multiples communities, and help people grow and expand around the world their opinion and sometimes make them out of an uncomfortable situation due to the support they can find online. But it can only be dangerous as people, sometimes anonymous, can create their own fake story to be a part of these movement. Never forget that we all need to be careful on Internet, because we never ever know who is the real person behind his computer.

-- EVA