A Final Goodbye
Creating this blog
has been quite the journey. Black Lives Matter is an infamous topic and
showcasing my research and findings to the world meant I could reach an
audience with a great interest in what I had to write. I am proud to say my
work reached many people. The page views of ‘A Student’s Perspective’ grew
throughout the weeks meaning I had created something which was resonating with
people. It is rather humbling to know that the research I was conducting and
the topics I was writing about had reached multiple people and were affecting
their thoughts on the controversial topic of Black Lives Matter.
Furthermore I managed
to reach an international audience which is unsurprising due to Black Lives
Matter being a global movement. This is in part due to the social media efforts
I had put forth for the blog. With every post I created the Students
Perspective Twitter and Facebook would share the link utilizing trending
hashtags to further reach more people. This allowed for the blog to reach even
more people throughout the world and provided a base for the blog to create an
audience. The blog space is so saturated in this current postmodern age and
Black Lives Matter is a subject which multiple blogs are dedicated too. Thus
social media hubs like Facebook and Twitter were necessary to reach the masses
and in creating an audience.
As can be seen almost
half the page views of this blog were in the last month conveying how over time
the blog’s audience grew and grew.
However in terms of
facilitating a discussion over the past few months I believe I could have done
better. My Twitter page gained 1 follower which seemed to be an actual bot
rather than an actual person. Furthermore my Facebook page never gained more
than 4 followers. I now realize that to have gained more ground on social media
sites, more discussion and involvement in the movement would have been
imperative. I did share my blog every week and often shared links related to
the topic however I never re-tweeted nor liked nor shared anyone else’s social
media posts. This would have most definitely increased my user base and thus my
followers. If in the future I undergo an endeavor similar to this project I
will certainly make the most of the tools which such social media hubs can
provide.
The above showcases
the most popular posts and to my surprise ‘The Digital Divide’ was the most
popular. This blog was rather important as for decades the digital divide has
been an issue relating to that of Blacks and Hispanics. Yet through this post I
portrayed just how wrong this is in the digital age particularly with relation
to young African Americans. In fact, there is a 12% gap between Blacks and
Whites on Twitter with African Americans holding the greater percentage.
Twitter is most popular amongst African Americans and this is a large reason
why the Black Lives Matter movement has been so successful on there.
Another post that I
am proud of is the Participatory Culture one. As Jenkins et. al states,
participatory culture is a culture “which members believe their contributions
matter, and feel some degree of social connection.” This is at the heart of
Black Lives Matter. Each member is part of this large community hoping to bring
about activism and change to the world. They create posters, tweets, videos and
organize protests together to bring about their final goal. The movement is so successful
and their voice is so loud because of this.
Lastly, my post on
Social Media brought about an understanding as to how essential these
technologies are to movements like Black Lives Matter. As DeRay Mckesson
writes, “the tools that we have to organize and to resist are fundamentally
different to anything that’s ever existed before in black struggle.” Just
10 years ago, a campaign like Black Lives Matter would not have been as famous
and global as it is. Though mass media is powerful it doesn’t provide the grassroots
tools to create a campaign and have it exponentially grow through millions of
users.
Creating A Student’s
Perspective and updating it weekly for you readers out there has been an
excellent learning experience for myself and I hope my messages and findings
inspired many of you.
Here's me signing out!
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