#societalissues

Society is changing at a rapid rate. With rapidly growing and newly built technology, humanity has new ways of communicating with one another that has never imagined. That method is social media. A gathering of people online that allows them to post, blog, comment, share videos text and pics,  and more as they please. With this new outlet of discussion that is commonly becoming the norm, one may question, is social media the proper means of communicating between one another?

In May, I wrote an article for the Lawrentian (Lawrence University's school newspaper) on the subject of rape culture on campus and how it affects students. I mentioned two fraternities that live on campus in events -one having members accused of rape and one whose group home students have been raped in- that made rape culture exist and it immediately backfired all on social media. The amount of emails, facebook messages and posts, and fake profiles to stalk me, was immense. The subjects of the content I recieved are as followed:
                       - I am idiot
                       - I am idiot for ever thinking that it was okay for allowing something like that to ever be written
                       - I should die
                       - I should save humanity and never write again 
                       - I should watch where I am going and keep the eyes on the back of my head
                       - I have the writing capacity of a six year old and never write again
Those are the few that stood out amongst the hatemail that I have recieved. Social media is a bad means of communicating due to being hidden. Many of the messages I have recieved was anonymous, allow the messenger to say anything that they feel and I will never be able to know who it was. This is a common feature on social media and because of it many people feel safe enough to say anything that they want regardless of the intent. Due to that feature of communication I was hurt countless times over. If social media was not the norm of communicating for the generation and did not certain feature, nothing that would have happened. 

Howard Rheingold's article "Participatory Power" focuses one of the five social media literacies, participation and how it should used in society for users to voice their opinions. Participation occurs when the user interacts with the tool, the tool being the online source they are using. Participating allows a user to feel different then they normally would in real life by being an active consumer instead of watching passively. When you have a significant amount of people who are able to be active and apart of there online settings you then have a  paritcipatory culture. Twitter, and other sites are prime examples of people participating online and transforming the way they protest and speak about issues. With use of the hashtag, people around the globe can share, comment, view, and blog about important issues. #Ferguson, #IAmRepublican, #Whiteculture, and more are ways participatory culture is clearly shaping our views on political matters and trying to find ways to solve them. When you look at social media in this light, it can be an overly good thing. Social media will always be a two-sided coin, one for the proper way to use it and one for those who misuse it and take advantage of the potential they could have.