Consider This

Let us recall one of the popular chants of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2020: “We can’t breathe.” It was amplified by social media and mainstream media during the spikes in the movement caused by the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

Unlike the earlier civil rights movement, which relied mainly on mainstream media, a 21st-century activist movement like BLM depends on new media technology and less on traditional mass media. As BLM took advantage of the internet, a new wave of media users emerged in the global media industry. They are a fragmented audience who actively consume, create, and circulate media content that reaches broader non-media and media users or actors. This audience gave rise to the BLM hashtag on Twitter, also drawing attention to the wider, systemic racial injustice that birthed countermovements like All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, and White Lives Matter.

In essence, media in the digital age means that users and the media industry can produce and share content faster and across several outlets. As you progress through this lesson, think deeply about any aspect of your life or society that functions without the media, that is immune to its influence. Are you able to identify any?