Social Media & Advocacy

How social media use in public discourse potentially challenge advocacy communications

Despite the various benefits of social media on activism, various concerns have been raised on the right ways and times to bring it in for the benefit of advocacy. A number of arguments point to the fact that social media can excessively influence how activists as well as other participating citizens engage online in terms of the various technical social media policies and features chosen for implementation. Sporadic change of such policies often disrupts the activities of advocacy individuals and organizations. These means that there will be great difference between desired and achieved results from advocate activities.

My PLN’s Level of Diversity

Personally, my public network is quite diverse because it is generally impossible to control the people we interact with online. From my end, I can classify my network in terms of activities, hobbies and socio-geographic characteristics. This means that my network isn’t really diverse enough because often at times, I link up with people with similar interests and partake the activities that I handle. For example, I am a tech enthusiast so the people I interact with online are mainly in the tech world. Looking at sexuality for example, I am straight but not homophobic. So I usually communicate with individuals of the LGBTQ community, but I don’t share their passions. Socially, I am Chinese, but my Public network is global since I am an international student. Despite the racial differences, we are still connected by common activity which is education just as Moore & Leyton opined that unity is often built & sustained by diversity. But still, a huge portion of my virtual circle is Chinese. With that, it’s easier to understand how diverse my PLN is.

Learning From My PLN’s

Yes, Honestly I am getting to learn a lot from listening to number of voices on my social network. And this is good for me because I am gradually becoming tolerant while also getting to learn from individuals whom I wouldn’t possible learn from without online interactions. For example, with time I came to understand Canadian politics because of online interactions with individuals who had interest in a particularly common topic. Furthermore, I have greatly become tolerant and passionate of members from the LGBTQ community since I noted that they are also people who deserve the love and tolerance that everyone deserves.

How Social Media Engage in Advocacy Communications

Basically, social media act as innovative tools important for informing communities into a mobilized form of advocacy. Under proper utility, social media ensures builds up with community psychology principles by enabling individuals to contribute towards social issues dialogues and through effort collaborations individuals are able to build a sense of community. These opportunities ensure that players in a particular course are able to sustain their advocacy efforts in the occurrence of unavoidable challenges. In order to effectively engage supporters, it is important to first understand their interests then gradually build awareness which accelerates their interests to eventually ensure that they maintain active contribution. Case example is by joining facebook pages and groups in addition to following certain twitter feed gives individuals knowledge about a particular issue eventually increasing their interest towards supporting the particular cause.

References

One Without the Other: Stories of Unity Through Diversity and Inclusion – Shelley Moore and Leyton Schnellert
Introduction (Page 6-10) & Part 1 (Page 11-12). https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/lib/uvic/reader.action?docID=4832579&ppg=6