Digital Media: Culture and Technology

During the Civil Rights Movement, there were three forms of digital mass media communication: television, newspaper and radio. All three played a huge role highlighting the plight of black Americans, as we know, the revolution WAS televised. Take for instance the photographs of Bloody Sunday , without these photos, the public would have been largely unaware of this unprovoked attack by law enforcement against peaceful civil rights protesters. But, what if these civil rights activists of yesteryear had access to the Internet? What role could social media have made in the fight for equal rights? What difference would access to digital technologies and current technological advancements have made? Equality in America is (unfortunately) a never ending battle and social media technologies have changed the way we fight. Protests are accompanied by hashtags;  #blacklivesmatter , #stopthebans . There are websites, Twitter pages, Facebook groups dedicated to organizing marches, creatin...

For many, social media is an echo chamber; we "follow", "like" and "subscribe" only to information and people that share our interests. What we see on a daily basis only affirms and repeats information that we already agree with, are aware of, and care about. But social media and digital technologies allow us to break free from these affirmations (if we choose) and open ourselves to hearing voices that we may have otherwise been deaf to. American's live largely in a vacuum, we are often ignorant of people and events that happen outside our borders. But there is a vast and varied world of people out there, and social media and digital communication technologies have given these people a voice that we should want to hear. "With Internet technology, social media platforms have made the communication process faster, interactive, user friendly, and enabling user-generated contents. All these make the influence of social media usage far reaching; wi...