Movement Building And Twitter — A Double-Edged Sword

(Quotes condensed for clarity)

The internet has been around for 40 years, but it wasn’t until the early 2000’s that the social media landscape started to stabilize. Out went MySpace and LiveJournal and in came sites with staying power like Facebook and Twitter. These sites would go on to shape public discourse. Twitter, in particular, has played a vital role in many social movements.

Twitter might have started off as a side project of some tech entrepreneurs in 2006, but it wasn’t long before Twitter demonstrated its power: The Arab Spring in 2010 showed the world that Twitter could be a driving force in a revolution. In 2012, after Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter kicked off a social justice movement likened to the 1950’s U.S. Civil Rights Movement, but much larger in scale. It then surged, becoming even morepopular in 2020 after George Floyd’s murder. The term “Me Too” may have been coined in 2006, but it wasn’t until October 2017 that Twitter brought it to the forefront of public consciousness. As a hashtag, #MeToo spread like wildfire following an exposé of Harvey Weinstein.

These are just a few examples of the power Twitter has to set the news agenda, document and broadcast human rights abuses around the world and grow movements. So, what would movement building lose if it lost Twitter?

The theme of this year’s Mozilla Festival is “Collective Power of the People.” With this in mind, we spoke with the experts: eight movement builders in a two-part discussion that you can listen to here and here. Or keep reading for highlights from our favorite parts of the discussion below.

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Giving A Voice To The Unheard

A site like Twitter allows for everyday voices to, at least occasionally, be as loud as celebrities. With that comes specific downsides. “My relationship with social media as an organizing tool has been complicated over the years,” said Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls On The Internet and producer at iHeart Media. “The work I do right now involves creating safe spaces for marginalized people, women, communities of color and LGBTQ folks.” Bridget said work like this can be difficult when social media’s purpose is to attract as many eyeballs as possible at all times. “At first, social media was an invaluable tool but these days I see social media as a double-edged sword. It’s important to show up there and having influence can be great, but I can’t deny the reality that one can make themselves so visible that it almost becomes a detriment.”

Johnetta Elzie is someone who’s familiar with visibility. On August 9, 2014, when Michael Brown was killed by former police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, Johnetta showed up later that same day, alongside hundreds, to protest the killing. She noted in a tweet Brown’s blood still on the street.

The story of Ferguson reverberated throughout the internet. In 2016, Pew Research reported that #BlackLivesMatter was the third most used hashtag in all of Twitter’s (at the time) 10-year existence. Number one was #Ferguson. Johnetta was one of the most prominent voices chronicling the activity in the Missouri city. She’s amassed a large following online since and, with it, has found the increased visibility comes with increased privileges — sometimes.

A seat at the table

“I was invited to Twitter headquarters by Jack Dorsey in 2016,” said Johnetta. “I remember being in a meeting room full of white people, minus me and one other black person. No one asked me anything. I messaged Jack in the moment, saying, ‘Why am I here? You’re wasting my time. I could be outside right now, helping the movement.’ Jack came downstairs, interrupted the woman speaking and said, ‘We all need to be asking Netta about what she thinks and what she’s experienced,’” noted Elzie. “I know it’s a privilege to be in the room I was in, to be invited by Jack and a privilege to be what Twitter considers a ‘power user’ of the site. There are people I’m outside in the streets with that can’t DM Jack Dorsey.

Social media’s power lies in giving anyone a platform. Johnetta is just one example. “We see a constant power struggle in places like Twitter,” said Bridget Todd. “Many see how people who have been traditionally marginalized are able to have a big impact on a platform like Twitter. It’s one of the reasons you see it as a site that has emerged as a battleground of building power and building a voice.”

Trading scale for depth

Giving a voice to those who need it most is just one advantage of social media when it comes to activism. Another is social media’s ability to cast a wide net, allowing organizers to get many people onboard with their cause, and quickly. “I’ve spoken with elders who were organizing back in the 60’s and 70’s,” said Steven Renderos, the executive director of MediaJustice. “It was an interesting time where many movements coincided with each other, from the Black power movement to women’s liberation to the American-Indian movement to the Chicano movement. Many were happening at the same time but rarely did these movements cross-pollinate. That’s one of the advantages of the internet, and in particular social media, in making the struggle visible and allowing for movements to be more interconnected. Which is incredible, and was less feasible 20-50 years ago.” A movement like the one in Ferguson, for example, doesn’t have to take place just in Ferguson.

As you can expect, however, it isn’t all pros and no cons. “I credit a friend, Ari Trujillo-John, who pointed out the downsides,” said Steven. “The technology allows for scale but in place of people on the ground and good relationship building, specifically the depth of those relationships.” The internet allows for greater awareness but how often do folks do more than just change their profile picture and tweet a hashtag?

Trujillo-John’s breadth-versus-depth effect can be seen in the movement Johnetta fights for, Black Lives Matter. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 led to a surge of BLM support. The New York Times noted that, at its peak, it may have been the most popular movement in U.S. history. Since summer 2020, support of the Black Lives Matter has waned — interestingly, white support specifically.

Three months after Floyd’s murder, Pew Research noted Black and democratic support of BLM stayed roughly the same while bigger drop-offs were seen in white groups (12% drop) and republican groups (21% drop). Another survey by the group Civiqs that tracks BLM support over the years notes support for Black Lives Matter slowly waning with opposition slowly increasing — here too, in January 2023, the biggest differences are within groups of white people (51% oppose) and republicans (85% oppose).

Black Lives Matter may have achieved scale more successfully than any movement in the U.S., but a lack of depth could mean that those who can afford to care the least, over time, drop out of the movement. Just because social media platforms like Twitter can help get the word out doesn’t mean that those who subscribe to the movement are dedicated members of it.

The Double-Edged Sword

Nothing is without its pros and cons. Even when someone like Elon Musk performs a hostile takeover of a site like Twitter, it’s still one of the only places where Average Joe and Jane can publicly tell Elon exactly how they feel about his takeover. It’s also one of the only places where a hashtag like #Ferguson can lead to social upheaval.

Twitter allows for new voices to be heard but surfaces new challenges. Movements can achieve scale in exchange for short attention spans. And then there’s social media’s knack for allowing misleading news posts to spread like wildfire or how they’ve struggled in the past to curb hate groups on their platforms. Even Arab Spring, the uprisings that felt like the first example of how social media could be used for social good, showed how Facebook and Twitter could be used to encourage counter movements and spread disinformation. Still, Twitter’s blade may be double-edged but it’s still useful for what the site is good at. If that ever changes, we can always switch back to MySpace or LiveJournal.

Movement Building And Twitter — A Double-Edged Sword

Written By: Xavier Harding

Edited By: Ashley Boyd, Audrey Hingle, Carys Afoko

Audio - What Would Movement Building Lost If It Lost Twitter?

Produced by Audrey Hingle, Carli Cole, Xavier Harding

Special thanks to the panelists!

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