Well, I think I may have taken my Social Media Lab a little
too far. I have recently been checking my RSS feeds and found an article on Wednesday about 80 people arrested in New York. I wasn’t immediately shocked until I
noticed that the arrests were from an ongoing protest in New York, for at that
time what was in its eleventh day. I would thought I would have heard something about
it before, I don’t watch the T.V. but I had just started watching news feeds
online pretty regularly for a class assignment and had not seen anything before
this and much about it right away.
So I goggled, found out that this movement was based in
Social Media, having no ability to resist, I started to Facebook and tried to
find out as much about this stuff as possible. Honestly I would have a choice, my uncle started posted articles he found, so did my aunt and one of my friends.I had really only recently started
Facebooking regularly, so I thought this would be a good exercise. And the more I learned
about what was happening, and the more I realized the mainstream media’s attempt
to dismay the movement. Then I realized something; this social media stuff is ridiculously
powerful!
In seconds I was jumping back and forth from Facebook to
blogs, to YouTube to international news sources. I watched police corral young woman up against a wall with
plastic fencing, then an officer walked up, sprayed them in the face with
pepper spray. I watched a cop grab a cameraman by the neck and smash his head
into a parked car. I watched a police officer grab a girl and push her to the
ground, and drag her under the fence of the makeshift
pin while kicking and screaming. I was shocked, but not as shocked as to learn that there was little mainstream
media coverage. Here is the one piece of scathing mainstream media coverage.
I started to “join” and “like” the occupy movement, I found
articles stating the police covering up the brutality. I watched the support
from people like Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon. Then on Saturday I found out
the police arrested 400 people on the Brooklyn Bridge. I checked it out, watch
some YouTubes then put my ear to the ground for the media’s response. As what
was predicted they spun it into the movement “occupying the bridge” and attacked
the perceived ambiguity of the movement.
By the time Fox New launched their
attacks on the movement, It was too late to sway me, I had already seen, the cops tell the protesters to
stay off the road, holding them at the bridge, allowing people to cross on the
walkway. I also saw that once the lane the cops closed was clear the cops
turned their backs to the protesters and walked toward the middle of the bridge
in the road ahead of the protesters. Then they met other officers from the
other side of the bridge and brought out their nets. It was like fishing in a bath tub. The officers held traffic for 4 hours to arrest protesters and give
them what equates to a parking ticket. After awhile the blue shirt officers in
the back started to let people leave, but later the white shirt officers came
to stop them from letting people go.
I was astounded; I watched real time events unedited, I was
allowed to formulate my own judgment based on unambiguous raw video. All sent
to me through user driven content surpassing the mainstream media that
apparently does not want the whole story to be told.
I think it’s safe to say that I learned something from my assignment,
both about the function of social media, its influence and raw power. It really
can be overpowering.
What a story Mike!!! This was really interesting.
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