Following Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, Twitter exploded with tweets on #Ferguson to raise awareness of the incident and to have people comment on it. In addition, #BlackLivesMatter was created before in response to Trayvon Martin’s death. #BlackLivesMatter was a call to action to recognize and change how black people are unfairly treated in society, and the hashtag gained support after Michael Brown’s shooting.
While the hashtags were initially used to raise awareness about the shooting incidents and call for social change, I’ve noticed that numerous people have been using those hashtags to push their own, often opposing ideas. Since then, both hashtag feeds have unintentionally evolved into ideological battlegrounds. If I had to define an audience for #Ferguson, the audience would be anyone who has at least a mild stance in the Ferguson debate. It seems as if everyone on Twitter is trying to convince the other side of one “correct” idea. I was looking under all tweets related to Ferguson, and it was quite overwhelming.
Reading Twitter is quite different from reading anything else. Each tweet only communicates a single, simple idea. Many people still call for change and recognition of black treatment. Many others say that police officers and white people are left out of the debate unfairly. And still some people are accusing others of using Ferguson for their political motives, and they don’t actually care about social change. While these tweets often present real-life evidence, I’ve found that most of them either exist in a vacuum, or they seem to ignore the other sides of the debate entirely. Because tweets are so short, they don’t look effective for complex arguments. Yet, by looking at so many tweets, I can tell that most of them are trying to argue one idea to the other side. The other purpose, undertaken by a few people, is simply to raise awareness of new events. The current story is that four journalists were arrested in Ferguson, and now they are suing the police for unwarranted arrest.
If there’s one thing I appreciated by looking at the #Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter, it’s that tweeters(?) often tag similar events that also warrant attention. Besides the journalist story, people on #BlackLivesMatter have tagged #itsmymall, about a recent protest at the Mall of America and how the mall had responded to it. I also saw #FreePalestine, where there is also anti-black racism worth paying attention to.
These hashtags don’t connect to me personally, but I’ve seen it all before. I recognize that Twitter is great for raising awareness about an issue, but too often the debate degenerates into attacking the other side, regardless of good or bad reasons. Some people seek compromise, but most commenters can’t accept that the other side could possibly be correct.
My question is that when a local incident like Ferguson happens, why don’t most people look at the trends of the country as a whole? Or if they do, is there often a lot of disagreement as to what those trends are and what they affect?
Your post, especially compared with Chandler’s right after it, shows the difference prior familiarity makes when we are looking at a Twitter hashtag. While he was able to create a narrative based on past experience, you were approaching tweets as an outsider and picked up on different aspects – especially the range of often conflicting political opinions that people express, and the ways that different arguments develop in aggregate. The answer to your last question is likely to have a lot to do with that difference in experience.