The Role of Social Media and Celebrities in Social Justice

Louella Konner, ‘22

December 2019

In early November, social media outlets such as Twitter and Instagram began to flood with one name: Rodney Reed. Reed is a Texas prisoner who is currently on death row, after being convicted of rape and murder in 1998 by an all-white jury. He is scheduled to be executed on November 20th, but new evidence (along with old evidence) has shed light on his innocence. In turn, people -- celebrities and others --  have turned to the internet and social media to spread awareness and to stop the execution from being carried out. Celebrities such as Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, and Quest Love have urged their followers to sign a petition on Change.org that demands the conviction be rescinded, and for Reed to be granted a new trial. Over 5,000 people have signed the petition so far; the aforementioned celebrities, and the social media platforms they frequent have certainly played a large role in publicizing the cause. And this isn’t the first time — celebrities and social media have become inextricably linked to politics and social justice, whether people like it or not. Kim Kardashian, for instance, met with Donald Trump in June 2018 about Alice Johnson, who had been serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug-related crime. She convinced the president to grant Johnson clemency. Celebrities, for the most part, seem to be using their status to generate positive social and political change. 

Rodney Reed

Credit: Jana Birchum

But what about social media itself? Without platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, celebrities wouldn’t have nearly as much political influence on their fans. Many people even get most or all of their news from social media, whether it be updates on the political crisis in Sudan or desperate cries over the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade. Utilizing social media in this way seems like a purely positive thing, and for the most part, it is. But it can also be a problematic way to understand or achieve social justice. In a bizarre way, social media activism can encourage complacency among its advocates, and all of us. It is easy to post a ten-second story about climate change, or a tweet about the women’s march, but it is much more difficult to actually generate social change -- and it is far less common for people to attempt to do so. Social media-based politics can give users a false sense of their own activism and political awareness. We feel as though we are creating change by reposting news articles and changing our profile pictures, when, in reality, real change requires so much more. 

While social media may not be the most effective way to create real change, it can be a useful tool in spreading awareness -- it can help us reach out to people who don’t keep up with politics, or who have different political opinions. However, this becomes a challenge when our followers and the people we follow all have similar political views, and are even posting and reposting the same things as us. It can become a dangerous bubble, in which we all spout the same political jargon back and forth to each other. In other words, instead of convincing or educating people of our own beliefs, we are merely posting for the people who are already educated, or who already have the same beliefs as we do.

Social media can also become dangerous because it can be hard to convey nuance or to consider more than one side, in such a fast-paced, technological setting. It is difficult to speak about the complexities of an issue through a 140 character tweet, for instance. As a result, social media platforms have generated not only a bubble of people with the same beliefs, but also a bubble in which such beliefs aren’t always subject to much consideration. The nature of this kind of activism is that it doesn’t often allow for very productive debate or disagreement, which is, in my opinion, essential to these issues.

Social media is certainly a powerful tool for navigating politics and for generating social change in today’s world, but if we aren’t careful, it can end up causing more harm than good.